The man’s a convicted criminal. Adjudicated fraud. Rapist.
So when we have a national tragedy, he’s going to behave humanly?
Of course not. He’s trapped in his cycles of venomous poisons, one of which is his hatred for diversity, equity, and inclusion (D.E.I.).
Reptilian, his auto-reactions always take over, whether his D.E.I. hatreds his phobia for windmills, his racism toward immigrants of color, or his bing-bing-boing-bong skit on toilets and showers insufficient for cleaning, storing, or ridding the hoard of classified documents he stole or his junk food need for enormous craps.
Yes, Pete Buttigieg correctly uses the adjective despicable, Tim Kaine the adjective sickening, and Heather her ref to "their enthusiasm for breaking things" for this criminal, fraud, rapist, reptile.
And he has already committed several "face plants."
Musk and his Project 2025 buddies are making him look even worse than he did in 2017. How long before Trump kicks either of both of them out on their ear -- or can he?
They do not know they are failing. Odd but true. They are so caught up in the lie, the drama and the pretense of victory they can't see they are fools and failures. Talk about delusional thinking.
One extremely thing to remember over the next four years. We will lose some battles. It is our job to make sure we win the war of preserving our form of Government.
He hasn't created "face plants". He throws shit at the wall, if it sticks, he uses it, if it doesn't, it creates chaos and like his hero, he uses that too to grow/maintain power.
Following his hero in the policy of invading and threatening his neighbors. A symbolic extension of his power is seen in renaming the Gulf of Mexico. It's even worse, he is threatening friends and allies. I love Trudeau standing up to him. He actually is only granting trump things that are already in place. But he is a man with plan. Watch out red states! And in a speech by one of the Danish leaders. he had a nice speech how Greenland has been part of Demark for 800 years and it is not for sale. Then he says (I love this) To put this words you understand: President trump-f--k off!.
Speaking of IOUs and Musk. The acting Treasury Secretary retired yesterday when Elon Musk brought in some of his cronies to review the top secret US Treasury payment system. I'm sure Trump ok'd it since he has immunity to do whatever he wants.
Sadly Suzanne, my mother-in-law did one about 6 months ago when she fell in our driveway. My understanding is that it just means someone falling and landing on their face without bracing themselves for the fall. One of the google definitions says that it is used more in relation to a sports accident like skate boarding where you land face first.
We know what you mean, but where I come from, POS stands for point-of-sale. As it happens, that still fits. With Donald, everything's for sale. Just ask Zuck, who's been selling our browsing history (and god-knows-what-else) since 2006, and just bought himself a seat on the dais in the tent.
Dale R, POS means Piece o crap. Also, regarding our other discussion(s). Sorry if I was 'over the top'. I'm all for live and let live. The hypocrisy we've been pummeled with, and then the mid-air comments, just put me in a super-foul place. Thank you for your thoughtful and most polite comments.
Indeed we have NOT “worn those out.” He is ALL of those awful things: a rapist, a felon, a liar, and a fascist. And it bears repeating and repeating and repeating.
This “election” and every reprehensible action this administration has taken since has felt like a RAPE. Again and again and again.
RAPE. That’s how it feels. To my core being as a human, as a person, and as a woman.
A brutal, depraved violation against our collective body.
But Jessie.., you are correct. And, it bears repeating just the way you have spelled it out. I'm just so dis-heartened seeing women fall for the baloney these "reprehensible" people, his sycophants, are putting forth.
Being a rapist or conspiracy theorist, or Christian Nationalist or all 3 seems to be criteria for a job in the Trump administration. I think Putin can easily slip his agents into our government this way, particularly since Trump does not seem to want the FBI doing background checks on people he is hiring.
And pay attention to this comprehensive video on immigration.
It is truly terrifying. One of my client's friends is from Puerto Rico living here in Philadelphia with her husband and two kids and does not speak English. While her husband was in Columbia to be with his sick mother, the friend was out on an errand when she was stopped and asked for her ID which she didn't have on her. Her phone was taken and she was thrown into a bus. My client got a call from her from Tijuana (very far from Puerto Rico)! Her husband had to return and send photos of her passport. She arrived back home yesterday. It's like we are living in a different country....
I have a physical passport and a passport card I carry in my wallet. I thought about how good it would be for everyone to have that card but my immediate concern was if they applied for it now it may make them a target in the brown man bad maniacs. When will we teach the insipid white racists that Puerto Rico is part of our country?
In this case it didn't matter that PR is part of the US--the woman was brown and didn't speak English. It is unconscionable that they would not let her call her husband...so much for treating people with dignity....
We are Sophie. It’s hard to comprehend since so far you..I admit to assuming..have not YET directly felt the impact personally, but even close by through hear say.
Rump the cruel Rump the dumb Rump the bump on a dead stump. If we can funnel our outrage and anger successfully, it might take him down without a shot being fired.
Famous American writer and Native American, Sherman Alexie, posted that he and all his community are now carrying ID cards everywhere they go due to native Americans being carted off due to their brown skin. Despicable.
That’s just TERRIBLE! I’m so sorry that happened to her. But I do suggest she learn English. I used to teach English & writing at a community college who were from all over the world. I urged them to watch American TV - start with the news. BUT American humor is the hardest to learn! We don’t know how unique it is. BUT if she can finally understand Seinfeld, she’s nailed it! You can help her out! In the meantime, try to hear American English with “fresh” ears! Very different from the British!!!
I think it is a good idea to learn some English especially if you live in a country which has English as the main language.
Actually, I think all Americans should learn two languages. As it seems that Spanish is the most prevalent, that might be a good start. Start in preschool or kindergarten. Highschool is really too late. We just assume that everyone speaks English when we travel. At least we can learn to be polite and give the natives a chuckle at our attempts. I am sure they will appreciate our effort.
Either way, they are in! In Spy News there was a discussion that working the Secret Service was considered the hardest in the Intelligence Community because guarding Trump's family is so difficult. I think Trump compromises his own safety if he at all succumbs to his own lies. Like, not having the FBI vet who works for/with him. Do you think Musk got vetted? He has close proximity all the time, and seems like a loose cannon.
Exactly. Let us also look at our immigration actions right now. This is our avoid being Nazis moment in how we insist on humans being treated with dignity. Here is Leeza Miller laying out what the EOs mean and what their impacts are as well as how they tie to past administrations. https://youtu.be/Ccwk8qvp14U?si=SKX9tztDrQL374Sx
There as so many issues that directly affect people, I can say White people in the USA, that it is easy to ignore the immigration issues, but they are going to have implications for everyone with our military.
Absolutely, his bombastic, outrageous moves are going to blow up in his face. He and his regime are so dumb, they don't even consider what might be the flow-on effect of their mass firings and money freezes. You can barely run a pizza shop short-staffed, let alone a major city's air traffic control tower. Maybe when the planes start dropping out of the sky, and the vegetables start disappearing from the shelves, and eggs are a hundred dollars a piece because bird flu has killed all the chickens...maybe then he'll be carted off to the looney bin where he belongs - hopefully before polio comes back to town.
I have said, Ronald Reagan may be dead, but we have to live with his having fired all the air traffic controllers. That has never been made up and it certainly won't be in this administration.
Linda, in a union shop, one man would not be doing the work of two people, even on an assembly line. Being short staffed in a control tower can only be ignored until the inevitable occurs. How many towers nationwide currently operate “understaffed”?
Leaders get to root causes and fix them. Trump is no leader and his Lib Shaming will come to an end, but this incident is ripe for repetition
I read an extensive article on the problems in air traffic controlling with people being sleep deprived while working because of the long shifts. It was a whistle blowing article. It made me think of the husband of my friend who is an air traffic controller for Chicago' O'hare airport. He is Black, so one of what Trump "DEI hires," yet one does not hear about crashes at O'hare. I believe the last plane crash there was in 1979. That was not the fault of air traffic control. It was an engine problem. In general the conditions for Air Traffic controllers are unsafe though and they still do an amazing job. It was because they had a strike that Ronald Reagan fired them all, and we never got them fully replaced. He should not have been able to do that.
Which is why I am glad that the second largest union in Germany, Verdi, is strong and is marching with everyone in anti-fascist marches, in support of their immigrant union members. I am here in Germany right now preparing to vote against right wing hatred, and a horrid immigration bill. I did just voted in November in the US elections. My country I am voting in may change but my politics don't.
There are demonstrations scheduled in Germany every day until the election on February 23, and beyond all over the country. Here is their list. If you do not read German scroll down. It is under the title Together against Right wing extremism.
Strengthening unions strengthens people. My neighbors in Chicago say no one they know who works for the government is accepting Musk's invitation to quit. I was a proud member of the American Federation of Teachers, and I say union yes!
Yes, Reagan went the wrong way, forcing out many of the best air traffic controllers, who were striking to try to make the systems safer.
As a weather equipment repairman, I often worked on wind indicating equipment in the control towers and RAPCON radar approach control, as well as 6 different weather radar types and other equipment used in the weather sections of base operations facilities (where pilots were briefed), and remote observation facilities with better views of he runways.
I've seen some of the coordination problems from their side and know how much they depend on the pilots doing what they say they were doing. In many cases there is no other way to know exactly what they are doing without constantly monitoring the very best information possible, and every second with so much else also requiring attention. Even if they could catch the deviation, they would need a few seconds to get that information to the right aircraft.
Back when I worked around them (before Reagan's action meant a lot of ATC military seemed to go to work replacing the fired FAA ones), there were enough on duty to allow breaks where we could share experiences. I tried to be careful to never distract them when they were working, though I did question one who had cleared a C-124 to land at Westover (on another runway 33/15), when I mentioned I thought we'd be able to see his landing lights. It wasn't really a great risk, but the pilot had visually lined up on the better lighted Mt Tom ski slope and simply had to do a missed approach to go around and line up properly on our runway.
I heard today that the ATCs walked out at SFO today. Not sure if that's true.
I'm not sure exactly how many hubs there are but it seems to me that if the ATCs walked out at SFO, LAX, DFW, Denver, ORD, JFK, LGA, ATL, Logan, Miami, Charlotte and Philadelphia that you have essentially grounded almost all flights within the US plus international as well. Is that true or are there several more?
His reign of terror is filled with rich men with experience running companies where their word is law. This frustrated tfg the first time because he was used to giving orders to be submissively carried out.
The trouble is, those rich men don't actually run their companies; they sit in penthouse offices, reading spreadsheets and taking meetings with executives who also sit in offices, reading spreadsheets. The people who really run the companies are the people who earn hourly paychecks and do the actual work. Remember The Peter Principle?
This is why it's such a terrible idea to have business executives running a government. Business operates for profit. Government is a not-for-profit enterprise ... or at least it was until Donald got into it.
Even if we had a normal president, letting Musk, Zuckerberg, et.al. dictate policy on things far beyond their comprehension would be a monumental disaster. With Trump (supposedly) in charge, we are doomed as a functioning Democracy. A benign corporatocracy is probably out of reach, but it is the best we can hope for. In the meantime, Protest. Resist. Never capitulate to evil and greed.
The once eradicated measles (2020) due to vaccines developed in the 60's. The herd immunity level has almost been destroyed. The big anti vaxx movement during Covid probably has encouraged those undecided to go the no vaccine route. They had a good episode on Madame Secretary about 2 children contracting measles while on a cruise. One of the ports still had measles. Both were very sick. The vaccinated child recovered with no aftereffects. The other never recovered and was permanently damaged.
Just wait until ICE agents start raiding our K-12 schools. I know I would have been terrorized if a group of Federal agents raided my junior high or high school.
Are we really going to allow them to do this? If so, let's raid the hometown schools of the Republican Senators and Congresscritters and see how well that goes over.
ICE is already coming to schools here in Albermarle County Virginia. Even if they haven't snatched children, their very presence keeps the children of targeted groups away. We need to organize to protect and resist.
As for plane crash comments, the Musk backstory is an interesting account of payback to promote private interests but such stories are is not new in the annals of government. The far more important story is what Trump said. It needs to be called out for what it is WHITE SUPREMACIST RACIST SEWAGE!! "Good people on both sides" magnified twenty times. And to the racism, Trump adds his fear and revulsion at the sight of the physically disabled. Remember his reaction to the sight of wounded veterans at a military memorial?
My husband just read that about 350 of 3,000 students (my numbers could be a little off) in a small Texas town are put from the flu. My first question was were they sick or were they trying to protect themselves from ICE?
I her Oklahoma school superintendent Ryan Walters is welcoming them to come raid his schools. He the character that spent millions on Trump bibles to put in every classroom and insists on prayer and the 10 commandments. If only he followed those 10 commandments himself.
This "raiding business" to capture brown skinned people reminds me of when Christ came to us as a little child to humble parents, Mary and Joseph . Joseph brought Mary with him to Bethlehem to pay taxes. He brought Mary with him and though traveling so far on a donkey and being fully pregnant could not have made the trip an easy one....there they were.
There was "no room for them in the inn" but the innkeeper offered the stable with the animals and birds. And there...for those of us who believe, our Lord and Savior was born...in such a humble place. God allowed Himself to be made small and vulnerable to all that He created ...though it was a creation distorted by sin....which His created beings had freely chosen.
Wise men from the East had observed a star in the sky signifying that a King had been born. They had been looking for this star...they traveled on their camels for many days to see this "new born king".
Shepherds were guarding their flocks....they too came ....
It was not long before King Herod heard that a King had been born in Bethlehem. He was terrified that someone would take his place so wanted Jesus to be killed!
God protected Jesus through the message of an angel. Mary and Joseph fled to Egypt where God watched over them.
As many of the dear ones who share their opinions in this "sacred" place Heather has made for us....some who have a faith and some who choose a different belief or no belief....as a Christian, if God Himself who I believe had the power of creation yet allowed Himself to come to us in human form, and to be made vulnerable ....to be despised and rejected....to allow Himself to be
taken by the religious leaders of the day.....to allow Himself to become a human sacrifice for us...and following a cruel death on a cross,....to rise from the dead....to overcome death and in doing so to remove the power of sin and death that keeps us from being more of the amazing individuals He made us to be.....then I must endure these days and find ways to contribute to the SANITY and STABILATY we need at this time. We are here, in these times, for a reason.
With so much chaos and cruelty coming out of this administration by the minute day after day, I miss HCR's well deserved day of rest and a peaceful picture .
🎯 Your comment says it all, and sick as it is, makes sense. In sheds light on the darkness. Your post should be a meme, billboard, etc, and shared often and widely.
Consider an attorney who has practiced under Substack Inc's choice of law. You may consider a licensed professional who is able to legally understand Substack Inc's 9/24 Terms of Use (TOU) to which we are all bound.
FYI, 'Democracy Forward' has really demonstrated some Courtroom smarts.
Trump also hates people who are smarter and more skilled than he is - it adds to his delight he can attack and subjugate them to his wishes.
I encourage everyone to watch a chilling interview on January 29 with Nancy MacLean about the radical right's plan to transform the US into an autocracy. The Trump administration's response to this tragic air crash is straight out of the authoritarian playbook. Here's the link to the interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQuS9vJHPzs/
I recommend her chilling book, 'Democracy in Chains'. Also the New Yorker's Jane Mayer's book, 'Dark Money'. This has been a project with a long gestation.
I strongly second those two book recommendations. What we're seeing today are the fruits of the poison trees planted some 75 years ago by Fred Koch and nurtured by Charles and David Koch and a coterie of far-right extremist billionaires. The big money was dark 'til Citizens United, then the doors got blown off and the oligarchs were empowered and emboldened like never before. Now we have asshole mega-billionaires openly buying the presidency and giving Nazi salutes.
Don't forget Koch bagman and Opus Dei acolyte Leonard Leo. Who is pushing the narrative that Catholics are being persecuted - so when you hear Republicans putting that into many statements, it's for Leo. Over 40% of Project 2025 funding came from Leo affiliates. Leo, Vought et al are using Trump as their test crash dummy for Project 2025.
Yes, Leo, the Federalist Society kingpin and Opus Dei member, has been a major player in the capture of the judicial system. Six of nine SCOTUS justices are Roman Catholic, and at least two, possibly three, justices are reportedly members of Opus Dei.
Sonia Sotomayor is Catholic, and definitely not Opus Dei. There are many of us Catholics who detest what Trump is doing, we can’t stand OD, and we don’t like Leonard Leo’s agenda.
Author and former Christian Nationalist,Andra Watkins,believes there will eventually be a holy war.I’ve been following her for months as she educates on P2025. All her predictions are becoming our reality…
“If Christian Nationalists ever obtain power, they will fight a holy war over whose faith will be enforced as the national religion. Will it be Catholicism? A strain of Protestantism? Non-denominationalism? Dominionism? (It absolutely WON’T be Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Unitarianism, Paganism, or similar.)”
Astute comment, Kathy. In virtually all ways, Western Religion is the obverse of Eastern Religion. The Muslims have their Kharijites, Sunnīs, and Shīʿas, et al, who are bitter rivals over which sect best follows Islam.
Right now, christian nationalists all seem to be on the same side. But if they gain control of the government, there will be serious conflict. I grew up in evangelicalism. Most evangelicals regard Roman Catholics as idol-worshiping non-christians. They label Mormons as cultists. They reject infant-sprinkling as not real baptisms and consider mainstream denominations as liberal, permissive and "bound for hell." If that were not enough, there is also sharp disagreement among charismatic evangelicals who require glossolalia and being "slain in the Spirit" (holy rollers) and possibly snake-handling as evidence of true belief vs. evangelicals who take a dim view of these practices.
Currently, these groups tolerate each other because they have a common cause. But if they feel that the "heathens have been vanquished," their differences will become "worth dying for."
I don't know anything about these people, but apparently they are full of themselves.
Our primary problem is that Trump is either an agent or willing idiot for the love of money, if not Russia. Meanwhile, China is cleaning our clock internationally. IMHO BRIC countries are a present threat to the value of the dollar, that could bankrupt all of us. Think the Weimar Republic when a box car load of deutschemarks couldn't buy a loaf of bread.
Preoccupation with religion, according to the philosophy of some BRIC members is the "opiate" that can do us in. A holy war is a communist or fascist wet dream.
Our country was founded by mostly Deists and God is not mentioned in the Constitution. As the American revolution was fomenting, simultaneously the Great Awakening apparently had no (zero) impact on government.
Thomas and Alito have taken the position in essence that "natural law" is primary and the Constitution is secondary.
That is the position taken by crackpot antifederalists like Patrick Henry, who wanted Anglicism to be the national religion. We always had a crackpot minority undermining democracy. But we now have those crackpots as a majority in SCOTUS.
All those religious groups will do is feed into totalitarianism.
I’ve heard absolutely nothing about Catholic’s being persecuted. Where is this happening (besides in Leonard Leo’s mind). Who the hell is Leonard Leo anyway? Never heard of him either.
Leonard Leo is the leader of the Federalist Society, a right-wing legal organization. He hatches baby conservative lawyers to be groomed for the judiciary - coming up the pipeline to eventually become federal judges and SCOTUS. Many of the judges Trump named in his first term were Leonard Leo projects. There will be more.
Saying "I understand..." without providing a citation means that your post is meaningless.
Here are some actual facts: "Of the total $1.9 billion spent by America’s richest families on all federal campaigns, $1.36 billion (72%) went to support Republicans while Democrats were buoyed by about $413 million (22%)."
Yup, you are exactly right, MisT, we all need to make sure we - in all of our discussions - separate FACT and OPINION. Please note that BOTH are good things to have. But, we must remember that the real strength of our OPINIONS come from the strength, accuracy, veracity, and excellence (SAVE) of our FACTS.
I'm not sure if he could have gotten 60 votes from the McConnell Senate. And if he expanded the court to 13 wouldn't the Republicans responded by expanding it further to regain control.
I agree Judy that it should be expanded but I'm afraid of the consequences.
He considers empathy, sympathy, and humility to be signs of weakness. When you hold none of those virtues, you surely hate the people who do. In his not very deep psyche, he knows he has no strength or wisdom. Projection and self-loathing propel him.
I think the clear and objective fact that Trump is a sociopath is something that a frightening percentage of the general public, irrespective of political position, simply fails to grasp. The despicable and loathsome statement he felt compelled to make today in the wake of the tragic plane crash is yet another example of his sociopathy. This is akin to his desecration of the fallen soldiers at Arlington last year with his preposterous photo ops.
The only semi-silver lining in the perpetually dark Trumpian sky is that he will continue to decline mentally and psychologically, and will begin to repulse enough people that he will be wheeled off ala Salieri in "Amadeus".
Then again, we'd be left with Peter Thiel's boy toy as President at that point.
Daniel, you've said exactly what I think every day. The clear and objective fact that he's a sociopath and an unbelievable percentage of the general public fails to grasp it.
I also think that it will be harder and harder for his team of sociopaths to conceal his decline.
Vance is despicable, but he is not the anointed one and people will fall away when he expires.
More frightening is that Vance is the bought and paid for tool of Thiel, who funded his rise to power as well as at least some of his education. Both Vance and Theil seem to think of women as second class citizens who ought to be exclusively focused on child rearing. I wonder what Vance's wife, a well-educated woman and person of color and the daughter of immigrants, really thinks and feels about all this.
Right as rain, Daniel, when you say “…Then again, we'd be left with Peter Thiel's boy toy as President at that point.” I think that is exactly the point of what Trump’s ruling clown car of right-wing nutters had planned.
Orange El Roundo was used to gain access to the levers of power. His rapidly progressing dementia would inevitably take him to a point that the Tech Bro contingent could then seek to have the 25th Amendment Solution completely completely activated to invest JDVance, their wholly owned idiot protege, with all the power Silicon Valley’s movers and shakers crave could never have fully acquired on their own for so many reasons. 49.6% of our gullible electorate got this evil stratagem rolling by reinserting Orange Mussolini at the pinnacle of power this past November 5th.
It’s chilling to think how much work we, the Real Majority of anti-Trumpers in this country, has on its to-do list already, not even 2 weeks past the inauguration of the Greatest Mistake in our history!
Margaret, I agree with your assessment up until "self-loathing." If that is defined as "hating oneself," then that doesn't describe Donald. However, knowledge of his life story shows that he is propelled by a search for love, which he was denied for his entire life. He was, and is, so profoundly unloved that he doesn't even know what love is.
Fred Trump was raised in a garbage family and acquired no moral compass. He was incapable of showing love or affection to anyone. Mary Anne Trump was a cleaning woman who married Fred as a way out of hard work and poverty. With access to Fred's wealth, she became a self-absorbed hypochondriac with no time for her children. Trump family wealth isolated Donald from any extra-familial examples of loving relationships.
And of course, all three of his wives married him for money, not love. Donald has a massively empty cavity where love is supposed to be, and he has tried to fill it with wealth, adulation and power. Those aren't filling the emptiness and he will die empty and unloved. Not soon enough.
Thank you for this great interview with Nancy MacLean by Patt Morrison (one of the last bastions of integrity at the LA Times). For what we can do, Nancy mentions Democracy 2025:
1. Scroll through their list of over 350 affiliate organizations for a heartening reminder of our grassroots and legal forces.
2. Donate to Democracy 2025 and/or their 501(c)3 Democracy Forward—who filed one of the first lawsuits against Trump Admin’s funding freeze.
Nancy observed that like trans people today, Jews in 1930s Germany comprised a small percentage of the population (only about 1%), so were easy to scapegoat for riling up the masses.
As Nancy points out, the time to save ourselves is now.
"Trump and Musk ... comprise a new ideological oligarchy that has erased the line between capital and decision-making. Zuckerberg and Bezos, for all the eyebrows their moves are raising, belong to the old vanguard of oligarchs—they are defending their own interests, and, as evidenced by their previous support of liberal politicians, are ready to move in either direction to do so. The danger we face is of a new breed of ideologically-motivated billionaires, ones who believe that democratic institutions have lost purpose in our world, and are ready to use their wealth and connections to advance their own alternative vision." [Garry Kasparov, Jan 29, 2025, The New Oligarchs]
Call me crazy, Phil, but I feel like it’s already well-established how despicable Trump and his cronies are. Can we move on to what we’re doing to stop him? Thanks
Get active with Indivisible.org, which has well-thought out strategy and tactics, and 1000+ local groups around the country. Call your Members of Congress to find out what they're doing and tell them what you want them to do. They need to hear from constituents. Write letters to the editor. Post on social media. Support pro-democracy groups with time and money. Start an Indivisible group where you are. Read ON TYRANNY: TWENTY LESSONS FROM THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. Do not obey in advance. Stay courageous and hopeful. Onward!
Thanks, Laurie - I find Indivisible's Action page has great action items that you can copy and paste bullet points from to create quick letters of outrage to your reps: https://indivisible.org/take-action-now
Great minds think alike! I am a big fan of Timothy Snyder and I have taken his points in "on tyranny" to heart. As a historian of eastern Europe, he knows a little something about authoritarianism. Also reaching out to my local Indivisible chapter.
Trump is Commander in Chief of the armed forces. His first duty to fallen soldiers and their families is one of fairness and consolation. Instead he throws them in front of the bus. Point this out to every service person you know: any suspect order, anything that goes wrong he'll blame you and toss you to the wolves. The lowest private will see the logic of this latest awful example.
Sorry Stephen, but they won’t “see the logic” if they watch Fox “News” or pay attention to Breitbart or to Sinclair stations. Trump is too incompetent to be the problem. Extreme right wing / extreme fundamentalist religious propaganda is the problem.
We've got to put the personal back in schools -- humanities, essay writing to see and celebrate individuals, their cultures, their complications.
Right now standardized testing has a stranglehold on all the schools, by design from the 1971 Powell memo on stressing the impersonal, the neutered, the abstracted and categorical.
More immediately, read "Stolen Pride," by Arlie Russell Hochschild. It will let you see how having shed the personal from schools let all those tens of millions damaged by the offshoring of their jobs all feel abandoned, unseen, disrespected and betrayed by our university-educated elites.
You see, Riversong, you err when you imagine "it's already well-established ow despicable Trump and is cronies are."
No, Riversong. They, the far-right, are winning with their scenarios of victimization, group hate, and hostility (which gets programmed for them by the social media billionaires flanking, buoying their orange felon). They have the White House, the Senate, the House, and the Clarence court. They are the "well-established," particularly so long as all the schools follow the death trip of other billionaires' standardized testing.
Wasn't China let into the WTO in 2003 under the G.W.Bush Admin?... I read once that over 10,000 Factories in the USA were closed-down, or off-shored during the GWB Admin... We are still Reaping the Whirlwind on that Stupidity... The People, Communities, affected by that Stupidity were mad at being treated as Expendable... Besides having a Disastrous Foreign Policy, GWB had a Disastrous Domestic Policy... To His Great Credit, Joe Biden Tried To Reverse Both...
Vouchers. Destroying schools in every state where passed. Project 2025 and executive order (I forget #) but he signed it last week, to establish FEDERAL VOUCHERS. Dollar for dollar tax deduction for that specific cause. Rural schools are hanging by a thread already.
I called the Superintendent of our small school district in ME on Tuesday. I actually was concerned about ICE coming into our schools. Their mere presence is terrorism and bullying in my opinion. Why do they need to arrest kids in the school. They should have their addresses available to them. If not, they are dumber than Trump. A case of our the Emporer's New Clothes, which will probably be banned for inferring that our "dear leader" and his followers are morons. Anyway, the Super told me that they are not allowing entrance by ICE into any of the schools in her district. I certainly hope that's true. If my daughter was still in school I would have also confirmed that with the Principal.
Phil, do you know your school superintendent and have you talked to her about curriculum? Or your school board members?
Japan has many good writers focused on the still-suffocating-patriarchy here, the worse-than-that-rule of all schools by standardized testing, and TV and advertising's infantilizing and worse than that of all women.
Still, somehow, the great, nature-aware older culture lives on in many ways.
Great work Gary. Apparently the ICE goons need to have a warrant, and you can intercept an arrest asking them to produce one - reminding them it’s illegal to arrest and detain someone without a warrant - I might add, only if you’re feeling brave and in a public place. Spread the word.
I agree. What does society do with the dementia soaked people we isolate them from hurting anyone else including themselves. Impeachment yet a third time and including Vance and Johnson. Deport Musk. Election of Democrats to replace any post on left open by a result of working for Trump. Remove the current administration people who are enforcing project 2025.
The current Republican Senators are scarcely of the same caliber as those who sat in the Senate during Nixon's impeachment trial. There is no way that the MAGA/Freedom Caucus majority House of Representatives would even consider bringing a charge of impeachment against Trump, let alone get him removed by a guilty vote from this Senate.
Somewhere in HCR's brilliant letter it says "Musk appears to believe that humans must colonize Mars in order to become a multiplanetary species as insurance against the end of life on Earth." How about musk being the first human on Mars, 'deported' maybe, playing king there?
Exactly! E-freaking-nuff with the clinical dianosisee's's's! It's also clear, according to the most recent enlightenment that our education "system" has failed in the "reading" department. So, the kids don't understand those words like sociopath or fascist. Nor do they know where Hungary is, or Phoenix, for that mattter.
Yes we need to move into more action and I'm not sure what that means. I've email Oregons Senators and their boxes are so full the message may never get thru. Oh yes it will but in time. I also remember the days when we met in neighbors homes and addressed postcards
It's so frustrating that we don't get context like this in the coverage of mainstream media. Most stories mentioned Trump blaming others but how many informed their readers at the same time about this. None that I saw.
"Whitaker resigned the day Trump took office. That same day, the administration froze the hiring of all federal employees, including air traffic controllers, although the U.S. Department of Transportation warned in June 2023 that 77% of air traffic control facilities critical to daily operations of the airline industry were short staffed. The next day, January 21, Trump fired Transportation Security Administration (TSA) chief David Pekoske, and administration officials removed all the members of the Aviation Security Advisory Committee, which Congress created after the 1988 PanAm 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland. The Trump administration vacated the positions with an eye to “eliminating the misuse of resources.”
His "DEI" campaign is rooted in his mental illness . Narcissists resent to their tiny souls that they don't receive their deserved adulation. It's even worse when a "lesser"being, a woman, or god forbid a black one, is smarter, more capable or just more appealing than he is. Pete Buttigieg must drive him crazy.
Ask Sen. Tim Scott whether the elimination of DEI is really the elimination of Blacks from government.
Same for Representative Byron Donalds of Florida, Representative Burgess Owens of Utah. Representative Wesley Hunt of Texas, and Representative John James of Michigan about the rejection of DEI as a pretext to discriminate on the basis of race.
How can they be Republicans?
Didn't they hear that the plane crash was caused by DEI? Did that mean the boogeyman did it?
John Fugelseng urged us to stop using the term DEI, which is as nebulous as MAGA and start saying pro-discrimination. Most Republicans couldn't tell you what DEI stands for -- just that it must be a bad thing because Trump told them so.
This very comprehensive video on what is going on with immigration in the US is helpful for us to understand what is going on, and is the story they want you to ignore while you are looking at all the other outrages that seem to directly affect you, but they are wrong.
Yes, Exactly. What kind of people do you think this criminal monster would want to work for him?There are no surprises in his nominations and unless we have some heroes in Congress, we are going to get RFK Jr and the other hideous nominees to fill key positions in our government.
Well said, Phil. What’s the over under on either CFT or the US democracy not lasting out his first year in office? Despite the cluster fu*k of his first ten days, I’m still leaning toward the collapse of the US as a world class democracy.
The U.S. could do untold damage to all our democratic allies, just as it is poised to worsen climate change and thumb its nose at the collective work necessary at WHO (mass pandemic of bird flu, anyone?) It could hand over Ukraine to Putin and let Netanyahu commit final, Gaza-style genocide in the West Bank.
And Dem elites, void of humanities, still haven't got the slightest clue as to what's been happening to American working classes.
The treatment of fellow human beings in Gaza by Netanyahu makes me feel like my heart is being ripped out and torn to pieces by the beak of a bird of prey.
No homes, no schools, no hospitals, no water, no food!!!!
He alone cannot do much. We must also stop Musk. Professor clearly defines that the front line of the battle is the federal government. We must encourage every current employee to stay, never to consider leaving. Otherwise, we have to plan Normandy landing later - a more costly takeback.
Which is why we should be doing a South Korean on him and marching and protesting and insisting he get impeached AGAIN, and then removed from office and thrown into prison. Or, better yet, deported to Guantanamo!
Utterly disgusting. When condolences are appropriate for the tragic loss of life from the plane crash last night, instead, we got a rant from the President of the United States blaming the two former Democratic Presidents, the DEI policy, and whoever he chose to blame for the tragedy. I had to turn off my television to grieve. I live in Charlotte, NC. The flight crew was from here. Meteorologist James Scott WCCB · Follow
5h ·
We’ve confirmed the names of the four Charlotte-based crew members on American Eagle Flight 5342. They are as follows:
Jeri, I don't believe for one second that you or I and so many others herein flunked. I did all I could, and following you and so many others of my favorite folks herein, I 'know' you didn't flunk. That said, how to 'move' other folks beyond talk and approaching all this beyond academic blather 'is' the question.
Thank you, Vicki. I have commercial pilots in my family: sister-in-law is a captain with FedEx. Niece is an FO with United, her fiancé is a captain with Horizon. Airline crashes hit home.
... And at a moment such as this, when families are living their worst nightmares, what some see as a 'leader' of our nation can only spout such vile, self - serving hogwash !
As a former pilots wife, it really does hit different and hard! We suffered over the years the stress of wondering and worrying. Knowing too much. We divorced years ago and he’s since retired. But you’re right! It’s a grief I wouldn’t want anyone to suffer through. The few we knew who lost their lives to plane accidents were so heartbreaking! Children growing up without their father. Families who never got to say goodbye or say I love you one last time. You just feel all over again when another tragedy happens.
My daughter’s in laws were very much involved with 911! A family of public servants several were at Ground Zero. None were lost that day but an uncle died of cancer from exposure during the cleanup. Their stories are nothing short of miraculous and spine tingling!
Amazing! My sister lives in Manhattan. She was on a plane to Pittsburg when the Pittsburg plane went down. Since 9/11, she has flown only one time and has never gone to Ground Zero. That day was horrible for me and my family. My kids stayed home from school. I couldn’t find out which plane my sister was on. The lines were down. Suddenly, my phone rang at 3:30pm. I picked up and it was my sister asking what happened! I started sobbing and between tears, I told her. She said her plane was diverted to Boston but they were still on the tarmac. Fortunately she had friends she was able to stay with there. She said once they were allowed to disembark, they entered the terminal and all of the screens or boards were solid black. She later took a train back to NYC and that’s how she travels now…by train. **Our mother, who always watched the news at 10 decibels, for some reason never turned her television on that day and I never called her to tell her what happened!**
That had to be such an overwhelming relief! I can’t imagine what you went through!
My husband had just come from Boston the weekend before from flight training. We had a million calls that day of family checking on him. I don’t know why, but my mother also hadn’t turned on the news that day. Very strange for her! Then his flight was the first one out of DFW when they opened up again. I had to drive him to and from the airport. He slept for two days after he got home.
Female pilots! DEI hires! Too emotional, too affected by hormones, not smart enough! Only good for receiving white male sperm (whether they like it or not) and gestating babies who will help us colonize Mars after denuding our own planet of all usable resources. We are moving ever closer to a dystopian mashup of Handmaid’s Tale, 1984, and Brave New World.
Well, this reflects their family values and pro life positions. They spend more "moral" engergy on a group of cells than about fighting genocide or on the appalling suffering of millions of sick people during COVID, and demonstrate an obscene lack of empathy toward victims of climate-related events, and similarly toward this recent plane crash. None of his rhetoric can assure society's health and well-being.
Thank you for acknowledging the crew; we need to know their names. 🙏 It's also a reminder that even though a crew may be "based" out of a particular city, they fly us all over the country.
Do you personally believe that the midterm elections won’t be stolen? I’m holding onto that belief myself in order to stay sane, but with each passing day it feels increasingly naive.
First we have to undo the voter suppression tactics that have disenfranchised millions of voters. That's what rigging an election really looks like, and we saw how well it worked in 2024.
You are so right Celia. Cutting down number of days to vote, cutting number of polling places, bomb threats by Russians which closed polling places, early results by AP before all ballots are counted, cutting back mail-in voting and number of ballot boxes to use and Lies lies lies. They are eating cats and dogs etc. fat thumb on the scales of Justice…. Act local is a good way to start.
Yes ! And, how about including an omnibus voter referendum from coast to coast to coast regarding the elevation of voters rights and a failure proof rebuttal measure to Citizens United. *Calling all constitutional lawyer patriots if we have any !! In a democracy, securing the rights of voter must be the highest calling; above presidents, legislators, judges, and the 1 or 2 percent who effectively rule over all of us as though their wealth merits them more than their singular votes.
There is so much that we have to undo, and Citizens United is one of the worst decisions in terms of taking power out of people's hands. But I guess the 1% figured that they bought that Supreme Court fair and square, so they deserve it.
They didn’t have to mess with any machines, simply keep targeted people from voting. It’s shameful we call ourselves a free nation when we keep so many of our fellow citizens from voting or having their votes counted. Voting should be considered a fundamental right of citizenship, and we need to reeducate our students and adults about American government.
Yeah, the repubs have been working against voters for decades. The south just picks up where it left off in Jim crow times. All the MAGAts want to party like it's 1899!
One thing I gotta give them, they've been working long and hard to bring to back their dreams of the good ole days, so we've got to work harder and longer. People say "where's the resistance?" but personally I realize it's not going to cut it to put on a pussy hat and go to a couple marches. But maybe as a white person, I'm used the system working for me. We should study the Civil Rights movement, and be inspired by how black folks persevered for centuries to get their rights.
That reminds me of the 1619 project. I listened to the podcast... inspiring! I want to read the book. Her message is powerful, and best of all, it freaks out all the white supremacists!
All I'm saying is that if we want our country to reach its true promise, we need to be patient, learn from history, and make common cause with everyone else who's had to struggle against injustice.
Sadly, for now it seems they've assembled a winning coalition; Wealth, broadcast media, religious zealots, white supremacists; enough of which to harness and steer long simmering anger, disappointment, and resentments among large enough numbers. Add in the voter disenfranchisement, gerrymandering, and there it is.
That's an enormous task, especially considering the fact that in the 2024 presidential election, with the stakes so high and our fragile democracy hanging precariously in the balance, 36.1% of registered voters – more than a third – DIDN'T VOTE. Disgraceful. The "winner"? Autocracy.
One reason many didn't was because they were "purged" from the voter rolls. Others did vote, but their ballots were challenged and discarded. Voter suppression in action. Let's focus on that first.
But also non-participation. Voting is essential to establishment and preservation of a just democratic republic. I ran across a motto that said "Bad politicians are elected by good people who don't vote." It's not the whole story, but it's major.
"The president made the comments as he dismissed a Democratic-led push for reforms such as vote-by-mail, same-day registration and early voting as states seek to safely run elections amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Democrats had proposed the measures as part of the coronavirus stimulus. They ultimately were not included in the $2.2tn final package, which included only $400m to states to help them run elections.
“The things they had in there were crazy. They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again,”
Pretty soon (I’m hoping) voters will see what they voted for & what they stayed home for. I’m hoping for incentive - and a miracle, I know - I’m holding out for hope, Gene. We have to do that - AND the work involved.
Yes, Nickie, this is going to take some time, and your “pretty soon” is probably hopeful thinking. But, your point is spot on: “voters will see what they voted for.” It is a FACT that 77.3 million people voted for Trump-Vance. AND, Trump is doing what he said he was going to do. Plus, we are/were all aware of Trump’s behavior and supporters. What is happening right now is no surprise! What is perhaps the most difficult choice for the rest of We, the People is - do we let Trump’s “administration” crash and burn? Or, do we work harder than ever before to make sure America survives? Of course (SHUDDER SHUDDER), if WE are successful and if WE save America from Trump Destruction, will that make #47 a Great President and give him a spot on Mt. Rushmore? If Trump deposits our nation in his Golden Toilet, his Presidency will be flushed….Goodness, it’s too early for me to have a glass of wine (or whine)
Getting out the vote is important for sure, but what can be done to pierce the pall of misinformation and a certain lack of caring about governance? Clone Ms Richardson? Oh to be so articulate
The first step, always, is to take care of ourselves when we are feeling despair. "Epic face-plant" - at the end of HCR's letter today - I was grateful for whoever wrote that and I am grateful every day for HCR. Timothy Snyder said that this is going to get very ugly before it gets better. Finding gratitude is essential to mental health.
I don't know how we do it. I've written postcards, letters, supported Vote.org and other organizations, contributed to various campaigns. More than a million people didn't vote in this last election. How do we move the needle? I don't know. Unless people are affected in a negative way, and that is not my wish, will they go out and vote? Add to that voter suppression, gerrymandering, and all the other garbage thrown at would-be and regular voters, I'm bewildered as to how we will move the needle. I agree with you that we have to work on this. I think the Democrats have some serious work to do. Democratic "leaders" seem to be bewildered as to what to do. We need some serious leadership. We need some serious pushback as to what has happened since January 20th. We cannot afford to waste another day.
𝔸𝕟𝕕 𝕪𝕖𝕥, here we all are in our silos writing about it. Where is the fucking Democratic leadership? The party has totally gone underground safe for a couple of them. Who are doing all the shouting.
This election was stolen from voter rolls purged in the swing states for one. They are now in power and they will never go away unless we remove them other than through the ballot box. We are totally naïve to believe that we are going to have a free and fair election ever again. That is not how autocracy works. We need to all wake up and figure out another way.
Focus on a small number of swing districts. Flip them, and with them, flip Congress Democratic so they start acting like a co-equal branch of government again.
It shouldn't be hard to find enough swing districts that have buyer's remorse over their shiny new MAGA Republican representation. And it's much harder for oligarch money to swing single local elections that everyone in the country can pay attention to, instead of being able to manipulate a few of the more than five hundred races that will be happening simultaneously during the midterms.
Want a real-world example, on a small scale? On January 28, a special election in Iowa State Senate District 35 put Democrat Mike Zimmer over his Republican opponent. He won by 4 points in a district that voted for Trump by a 21 point margin in November. And Iowa is about as red as states get.
If it can happen in a state Senate race, it can happen in the House of Representatives. It would require recalling a MAGA representative, but given current and developing sentiments about our government, that probably wouldn't be a heavy lift either.
There is no provision in the Constitution for recall elections for the president or members of the House or Senate. State by state, some states allow recalls of state/local officials under certain circumstances, but a lot don't.
I too am clinging onto hope for the midterms. Unfortunately, it is human nature that change does not occur until we hit rock bottom...and the coming food scarcity might just be the agent....
I expect that there will be an "executive decree" issued sometime before November 2026 which will say that from here on out, there will be no more elections. Of course, that would be illegal, but Agent Orange can't be prosecuted for any crimes, and the SCOTUS will support the decree.
Apologies if you have heard this before, but it's more relevant than ever. Another thing the loyal opposition does is an idea Timothy Snyder (who wrote On Tyranny) has been pushing for a People's (shadow) cabinet. Imagine if we had Pete speaking as people's transportation sec today! Or AOC as people's attorney general, or pick-your-favorite as people's health sec.
If anyone feels like it, you can sign this petition and >please repost< the following:
Democrats, we must get louder to respond forcefully to the administration and make them own their unpopular actions. Let's form a Democratic People's Cabinet, our best folks speaking out. Please sign and repost! Over 2.5K signed so far.
Pete was great! Tim and Rachel were great! How do we encourage cowards to change their strips? By calling them out! Letters, phone calls…to every GOP governor! And more Pete!
Yes, when we were talking about “mini-primary” ideas there were ways floated to have quick elections within the Democratic party. Or the grassroots could just vote and draft people!
Ideally, the Democratic National Committee would play a role such as this, but that doesn't seem to be in the cards. Seems that the people's party will have to be guided by the people.
While I empathize, we're ALL emotionally exhausted and traumatized. That's what the fascists want. They need to get it in gear or give it over to those who will.
Are you the Steve Engel who has worked for DJT since 2016? Please let us know who you are working for. I am very much in favor of a Peoples Cabinet, but I do need to know that you are not the one working for DJT. Or if someone else knows who this is. I have not been able to confirm that it is not.
Have you gone to his bio? He is not an attorney. All you have to do is click on his picture and it will take you to his bio. Then you don't ask questions that are ummm embarrassing in the charged political climate.
Some of us are technologically challenged and may not know how to do that - click on the photo to go to the person's bio. For younger people, it's intuitive, but for some of us born many decades ago it's not always easy to know how to navigate and find out things.
I’m a fan of Timothy Snyder but when I first read his piece about the “shadow cabinet” I thought the idea was overwrought and “overthunk?.” I also thought the Dems would never be able to mount such a project. But now I think there might be a possibility. Buttigieg is speaking out with professional authority.Why shouldn’t others with professional credibility join him and speak out regularly as a shadow cabinet? And bill themselves as such. Perhaps over time the MSM will realize there is an audience there.Or maybe not……
No, I despise the President but he is not to blame for this tragic and possibly avoidable accident. Some aircraft was not where it was supposed to be and I will bet on the helicopter as commercial aircraft follow a beam for landing for miles before the runway. We all know this !! And flight controller schedule is in place, not decided on day by day. The Reagan tower was short staffed that night. And the visibility was excellent.
We cannot blame him for EVERYTHING ! Concentrate on his words of sympathy and compassion when he commented on this accident. Enough there for a moral impeachment !!!
There was one person doing the work of two, because HE gutted the FFA on day one. I am very careful about where I place blame. This is going to get worse.
"And they put politics at a level that nobody has ever seen, because this was the lowest level. Their policy was horrible and their politics was even worse."
Trump continues his signature pathological mirroring, identifying his own horrific behaviors as that of his perceived rivals. Every candidate nominated for POTUS should be subject to a thorough and comprehensive mental health exam.
As Rachel Maddow pointed out, the explosion of one of Musk’s SpaceX rockets recently caused multiple passenger planes to have to suddenly divert in flight to avoid falling wreckage. The head of the FAA that resigned the day Trump took office had grounded SpaceX rockets due to safety concerns .
This deadly crash is what Project 2025 looks like. How tragically appropriate that it happened at Reagan, because ever since Reagan busted the union air traffic controllers have been working under impossible conditions. This is just a foretaste of what decimating the federal workforce and gutting regulatory agencies looks like. Please call every Republican on the Budget Committee to vote no on Vought.
(☞ ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)☞ Thank you,Lin. I just took a screenshot of all the numbers and links to follow up in the morning and the next day and the next day and the next day. This is what Rachel Maddow was talking about. We all have to step up, step in, and save this country from evil.
🙏I found that out in the past, always call the local offices to leave a comment if can’t get thru to Washington. Especially important on Vought. I think he is actually the most dangerous, the biggest ideologue of the whole group.
Thank you for this. This is the action we all need to drill down on. For every DJT/Vance/Musk/Hegseth/Patel/Gabbard offence, the people need to remind these folks who the government is for and who they work for. Pitting their ambition against each other might help shift or slow down the senator's obeyance. And if enough are subjected to this, then the primary threat won't matter if we decide to primary them ourselves.
I will meet Senator Merkley this Sunday at a town hall meeting in Salem. I am planning to ask him about Donald Trump's ominous message to evangelical Christians during the campaign: “Get out and vote. Just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what? It’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore.” Trump does not speak idly.
I don't know. I'm sitting here in front of the fire. When we don't pay attention, it starts to go out, but when we miss the warmth and the flames, we put on another log and use the bellows to make some of the embers reignite, and then the new log bursts into flame. I don't know how long it will take, but I'm guessing that disgruntlement may turn from an ember into a burning log into a raging fire. It depends on how many people get hurt by this administration and, to mix my metaphors, where their boiling point is.
A million people died of COVID on US alone. He totally mismanaged it. Inject bleach—. Ugh. Just remembered he was cured of Covid by drs he’s trying to downsize. 🤮
Bird flu was gonna be his next opportunity to shit the bed but the first midair collision since 1978 jumped the line. And he will continue to blame every disaster on his watch on his personal boogeymen, DEI, Biden, Obama, etc like a misbehaving toddler. At some point, these own goals will reach a tipping point, and the Emperor’s fat naked body will be seen by all.
Ridiculous! Whom will they blame when Trump fails to act against bird flu, because Dr. Fauci has now retired. There will be another pandemic, this time it will be bird flu, and they are completely unprepared for it, and want RFK, Jr. in as head of HHS. He vaccinated his own kids, but makes a lot of money from telling people not to vaccinate their own kids. Disgusting!
How will the people who voted for him find out whose fault the resultant destruction is? They will never learn it from Trump and his cohorts, who will always blame the Democrats--and Fox News will amplify the blame.
What accountability? The 51 people that signed the letter saying Hunter Biden's Laptop with Russian's disinformation should be in Jail for Election Interference.
The 51 signers admitted to not knowing the authenticity of the Laptop. They were perfectly justified in stating that releasing the story a month before the 2020 election seemed like a Russian disinformation operation.
Paragraph 5...
"We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails, provided to the New York Post by President Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement -- just that our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case."
That doesn't seem jail-worthy to me. There was nothing ever disclosed on that Laptop to implicate Joe Biden... so how would this have affected the election if the truth had come out?
Hunter Biden didn't know then that the Laptop was his. The FBI, who had the computer at the time, was legally required not to disclose information that could affect an election (though granted, they had broken that policy in 2016 in announcing an investigation into Hillary Clinton's stolen emails - which was, in fact, a Russian disinformation campaign.)
Hunter Biden's Laptop is a nonstory. It was always a nonstory to everyone but Hunter, who was convicted of his crimes or admitted to his faults. The political use of that Laptop was a gross invasion of his privacy and a warning to us all never to leave our personal property in the hands of those we can't trust.
The 51 signers (and if you read it, you will see that there were nine additional ICs who supported the assessment - so 60 total - get it straight) were all former Intelligence officials who served under Presidents of both parties. They were patriots then, and they are patriots now.
I'm being lazy, but here's what I posted on a Boston Globe column about the chaos on all levels:
How can our Congress confirm a slate of unqualified people to run our government?
How can anyone support a "leader" who can barely utter a statement of sympathy for the families and friends of those who died in yesterday's crash before erroneously blaming his predecessors and DEI for the deadly event?
What sort of lawless, wannabe dictator thinks that he can get away with impounding funds dedicated by Congress to making the lives of Americans better?
What kind of people support the evident cruelty of the man they elected to be our president?
Yes, elections have consequences, but those who voted because they expected action to lower the price of eggs did not expect the consequences that we have been seeing or the consequences yet to come.
Because they believed his lies even though many, many people were calling out his lies yet there is never any accountability…Only ridiculous complaints about “in real time”fact checking. What a world !!!
People died and Donny used this opportunity to score points..apparently thinking Pete was still in charge…God I wish! The poor traffic controller would have been cared about and not worried about being fired! Imagine you are a disabled controller striving to do a good job and you learn the president, your boss, thinks you are less than human? How would you feel?
Remember his 2016 campaign where he very visibly and creepily made fun of a disabled journalist?!? As I stated earlier, his sociopathy is getting worse and manifesting itself more and more
A reporter challenged his accusatory rant earlier today, pointing out that we didn’t yet even the names of the victims & this should be a time for grieving, not blaming. Trump replied, “What do the names matter”?!?!?! No words…
Thank you Kathy Rolland. The "press corp" particularly the 'DC Press Corp' seems be the walking dead EXCEPT just like the example you reported - just a relevant, poignant question.
“MeidasTouch posted: ‘Trump's handling of this situation should be treated as one of the biggest scandals in presidential history.’”
After reading stories about Trumpists’ handling of the D.C. air disaster, I wrote to the editors of The NY Times and Washington Post that they should publish editorials urging opponents of Trumpism in the US House of Representatives to bring forward the first call for impeachment of Trump. It won’t be voted on given the make up of the House, but it will be the first shot across the bow of Trumpism’s leaky wooden boat.
Trump will never admit the truth—his first instinct is always to deflect, blame, and fabricate. The real tragedy isn’t just the disaster itself, but the fact that we have a president who prioritizes self-preservation over real leadership. It’s up to the rest of us to make sure the facts don’t get buried under his lies.
“But there is a larger story than that of Trump’s attempt to blame Democrats for a disaster that happened on his watch. His administration seems to be trying to replace the government Americans have created through their representatives over centuries to promote the interests of all Americans with a group of white men who can operate as they see best, without restraint.”
I am compelled to respectfully suggest that there is an even larger story than this government replacement story that we must come to grips with immediately. That story is the organized effort to eliminate all insights gained from The Enlightenment.
Authoritarians only survive when the people they rule are too ignorant of their options… Ignorance frequently, resulting from an overload of fear-based input from those leaders. But that ignorance also results from a lack of wisdom gained from self discipline and self knowledge generating activities, such as going to churches that actually teach the principles of Jesus or studying Buddhism or studying certain forms of martial arts. The Enlightenment gave humanity a huge opportunity to transform into a culture of progress that benefits all over time. Authoritarians fear The Enlightenment. Therefore, I believe the aim of Trump and the Christo-fascists and the tech oligarchs is to make humanity too fearful and stupid to resist their plans.
Exactly! 😢 Another way of seeing it is that they want to create the world portrayed in The Matrix… Where everybody thinks they live in one reality and it’s a reality where they just go about their ordinary lives
And Trump is even worse. It’s a comparison. I stand by my original assessment. It’s not an attempt to make Nixon look good. He was horrible, you’re right, but Trump is even worse. I have one additional thing to say: I will never get over or forgive babies in cages, forbidden even the consolation of strangers when they cried. Never! And that’s not to mention the ones who were lost in the shuffle, or put on an airplane to an orphanage in the Soviet Union. I don’t doubt for a red hot minute that he’s revving up to do something like that all over again. Irredeemable scumbag!
It's a new low but as between Nixon, Andrew Johnson undoing the Civil War and Trump it's hard to distinguish the all time worst. BUT Trump has another 1460-10.5 days to separate himself from that crowd.
The man’s a convicted criminal. Adjudicated fraud. Rapist.
So when we have a national tragedy, he’s going to behave humanly?
Of course not. He’s trapped in his cycles of venomous poisons, one of which is his hatred for diversity, equity, and inclusion (D.E.I.).
Reptilian, his auto-reactions always take over, whether his D.E.I. hatreds his phobia for windmills, his racism toward immigrants of color, or his bing-bing-boing-bong skit on toilets and showers insufficient for cleaning, storing, or ridding the hoard of classified documents he stole or his junk food need for enormous craps.
Yes, Pete Buttigieg correctly uses the adjective despicable, Tim Kaine the adjective sickening, and Heather her ref to "their enthusiasm for breaking things" for this criminal, fraud, rapist, reptile.
When you elect a rapist who nominates rapists is it any surprise that they want to rape the country?
Rapist.., felon..., Lies.., lying.., fascist.., c'mon we've worn those out. Besides, we all know what he is. A POS.
And he has already committed several "face plants."
Musk and his Project 2025 buddies are making him look even worse than he did in 2017. How long before Trump kicks either of both of them out on their ear -- or can he?
They do not know they are failing. Odd but true. They are so caught up in the lie, the drama and the pretense of victory they can't see they are fools and failures. Talk about delusional thinking.
One extremely thing to remember over the next four years. We will lose some battles. It is our job to make sure we win the war of preserving our form of Government.
Felon47 says we are going to feel pain!
He hasn't created "face plants". He throws shit at the wall, if it sticks, he uses it, if it doesn't, it creates chaos and like his hero, he uses that too to grow/maintain power.
Following his hero in the policy of invading and threatening his neighbors. A symbolic extension of his power is seen in renaming the Gulf of Mexico. It's even worse, he is threatening friends and allies. I love Trudeau standing up to him. He actually is only granting trump things that are already in place. But he is a man with plan. Watch out red states! And in a speech by one of the Danish leaders. he had a nice speech how Greenland has been part of Demark for 800 years and it is not for sale. Then he says (I love this) To put this words you understand: President trump-f--k off!.
Very good questions, Gary!
Elon gave him lots of money for his campaign!
Gary he owes them too much money, they bought the presidency for him. Hi is an employee performing an act.
He can't...it says so on the IOU he signed for Musk!
Speaking of IOUs and Musk. The acting Treasury Secretary retired yesterday when Elon Musk brought in some of his cronies to review the top secret US Treasury payment system. I'm sure Trump ok'd it since he has immunity to do whatever he wants.
Well that’s just plain scary.
What does that phrase "face plants" mean?
It means, a vaudeville-like pratfall, face down.
Sadly Suzanne, my mother-in-law did one about 6 months ago when she fell in our driveway. My understanding is that it just means someone falling and landing on their face without bracing themselves for the fall. One of the google definitions says that it is used more in relation to a sports accident like skate boarding where you land face first.
We know what you mean, but where I come from, POS stands for point-of-sale. As it happens, that still fits. With Donald, everything's for sale. Just ask Zuck, who's been selling our browsing history (and god-knows-what-else) since 2006, and just bought himself a seat on the dais in the tent.
Dale R, POS means Piece o crap. Also, regarding our other discussion(s). Sorry if I was 'over the top'. I'm all for live and let live. The hypocrisy we've been pummeled with, and then the mid-air comments, just put me in a super-foul place. Thank you for your thoughtful and most polite comments.
I see that you cleaned that up a bit.
Now THERES a POS.
Excuse me, don't forget "murderer."
Indeed we have NOT “worn those out.” He is ALL of those awful things: a rapist, a felon, a liar, and a fascist. And it bears repeating and repeating and repeating.
This “election” and every reprehensible action this administration has taken since has felt like a RAPE. Again and again and again.
RAPE. That’s how it feels. To my core being as a human, as a person, and as a woman.
A brutal, depraved violation against our collective body.
That sums it up nicely and succinctly, Joanna.
And above all racists: DT and Musk.
... and a geriatric psychopath.
But Jessie.., you are correct. And, it bears repeating just the way you have spelled it out. I'm just so dis-heartened seeing women fall for the baloney these "reprehensible" people, his sycophants, are putting forth.
Being a rapist or conspiracy theorist, or Christian Nationalist or all 3 seems to be criteria for a job in the Trump administration. I think Putin can easily slip his agents into our government this way, particularly since Trump does not seem to want the FBI doing background checks on people he is hiring.
And pay attention to this comprehensive video on immigration.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ccwk8qvp14U&si=itnqRyZHpxShUZcn
It is truly terrifying. One of my client's friends is from Puerto Rico living here in Philadelphia with her husband and two kids and does not speak English. While her husband was in Columbia to be with his sick mother, the friend was out on an errand when she was stopped and asked for her ID which she didn't have on her. Her phone was taken and she was thrown into a bus. My client got a call from her from Tijuana (very far from Puerto Rico)! Her husband had to return and send photos of her passport. She arrived back home yesterday. It's like we are living in a different country....
That is unconscionable. Period.
I am so sorry. 😢
It is scary. That is why when I return to the US, I will carry my passport on me everywhere I go.
I have a physical passport and a passport card I carry in my wallet. I thought about how good it would be for everyone to have that card but my immediate concern was if they applied for it now it may make them a target in the brown man bad maniacs. When will we teach the insipid white racists that Puerto Rico is part of our country?
In this case it didn't matter that PR is part of the US--the woman was brown and didn't speak English. It is unconscionable that they would not let her call her husband...so much for treating people with dignity....
Look how trump treats Puerto Rico. That could be the same fate for Greenland.
We are Sophie. It’s hard to comprehend since so far you..I admit to assuming..have not YET directly felt the impact personally, but even close by through hear say.
Rump the cruel Rump the dumb Rump the bump on a dead stump. If we can funnel our outrage and anger successfully, it might take him down without a shot being fired.
I always admire your posts!
Thank you. How about mump (musk + trump)....
Or Mutrskum (you can add the P anywhere).
Famous American writer and Native American, Sherman Alexie, posted that he and all his community are now carrying ID cards everywhere they go due to native Americans being carted off due to their brown skin. Despicable.
Thanks for news from Sherman Alexie. Great writer. I have relatives who are half or quarter Navajo. I may pass that on.
Guilty until proven innocent.
That’s just TERRIBLE! I’m so sorry that happened to her. But I do suggest she learn English. I used to teach English & writing at a community college who were from all over the world. I urged them to watch American TV - start with the news. BUT American humor is the hardest to learn! We don’t know how unique it is. BUT if she can finally understand Seinfeld, she’s nailed it! You can help her out! In the meantime, try to hear American English with “fresh” ears! Very different from the British!!!
I think it is a good idea to learn some English especially if you live in a country which has English as the main language.
Actually, I think all Americans should learn two languages. As it seems that Spanish is the most prevalent, that might be a good start. Start in preschool or kindergarten. Highschool is really too late. We just assume that everyone speaks English when we travel. At least we can learn to be polite and give the natives a chuckle at our attempts. I am sure they will appreciate our effort.
OMG! 😠
Putin doesn’t have to slip them in - they’ll just walk right in the front door
Either way, they are in! In Spy News there was a discussion that working the Secret Service was considered the hardest in the Intelligence Community because guarding Trump's family is so difficult. I think Trump compromises his own safety if he at all succumbs to his own lies. Like, not having the FBI vet who works for/with him. Do you think Musk got vetted? He has close proximity all the time, and seems like a loose cannon.
The cannn needs to be up trumps rear
Musk is a MENACE! Get him away from NASA! OMG!
Musk is a fellow racist: Afrikaner (remember why Nelson Mandela spent all those years in jail?) as is Vance’s mentor Peter Thiel.
Of course. Putin and other oligarchs own Trump.
Exactly. Let us also look at our immigration actions right now. This is our avoid being Nazis moment in how we insist on humans being treated with dignity. Here is Leeza Miller laying out what the EOs mean and what their impacts are as well as how they tie to past administrations. https://youtu.be/Ccwk8qvp14U?si=SKX9tztDrQL374Sx
There as so many issues that directly affect people, I can say White people in the USA, that it is easy to ignore the immigration issues, but they are going to have implications for everyone with our military.
Absolutely, his bombastic, outrageous moves are going to blow up in his face. He and his regime are so dumb, they don't even consider what might be the flow-on effect of their mass firings and money freezes. You can barely run a pizza shop short-staffed, let alone a major city's air traffic control tower. Maybe when the planes start dropping out of the sky, and the vegetables start disappearing from the shelves, and eggs are a hundred dollars a piece because bird flu has killed all the chickens...maybe then he'll be carted off to the looney bin where he belongs - hopefully before polio comes back to town.
I have said, Ronald Reagan may be dead, but we have to live with his having fired all the air traffic controllers. That has never been made up and it certainly won't be in this administration.
Linda, in a union shop, one man would not be doing the work of two people, even on an assembly line. Being short staffed in a control tower can only be ignored until the inevitable occurs. How many towers nationwide currently operate “understaffed”?
Leaders get to root causes and fix them. Trump is no leader and his Lib Shaming will come to an end, but this incident is ripe for repetition
I read an extensive article on the problems in air traffic controlling with people being sleep deprived while working because of the long shifts. It was a whistle blowing article. It made me think of the husband of my friend who is an air traffic controller for Chicago' O'hare airport. He is Black, so one of what Trump "DEI hires," yet one does not hear about crashes at O'hare. I believe the last plane crash there was in 1979. That was not the fault of air traffic control. It was an engine problem. In general the conditions for Air Traffic controllers are unsafe though and they still do an amazing job. It was because they had a strike that Ronald Reagan fired them all, and we never got them fully replaced. He should not have been able to do that.
Which is why I am glad that the second largest union in Germany, Verdi, is strong and is marching with everyone in anti-fascist marches, in support of their immigrant union members. I am here in Germany right now preparing to vote against right wing hatred, and a horrid immigration bill. I did just voted in November in the US elections. My country I am voting in may change but my politics don't.
There are demonstrations scheduled in Germany every day until the election on February 23, and beyond all over the country. Here is their list. If you do not read German scroll down. It is under the title Together against Right wing extremism.
https://www.verdi.de/themen/politik-wirtschaft/++co++d4797bf2-b570-11ee-be97-b9c9a39c4013
Strengthening unions strengthens people. My neighbors in Chicago say no one they know who works for the government is accepting Musk's invitation to quit. I was a proud member of the American Federation of Teachers, and I say union yes!
Yes, Reagan went the wrong way, forcing out many of the best air traffic controllers, who were striking to try to make the systems safer.
As a weather equipment repairman, I often worked on wind indicating equipment in the control towers and RAPCON radar approach control, as well as 6 different weather radar types and other equipment used in the weather sections of base operations facilities (where pilots were briefed), and remote observation facilities with better views of he runways.
I've seen some of the coordination problems from their side and know how much they depend on the pilots doing what they say they were doing. In many cases there is no other way to know exactly what they are doing without constantly monitoring the very best information possible, and every second with so much else also requiring attention. Even if they could catch the deviation, they would need a few seconds to get that information to the right aircraft.
Back when I worked around them (before Reagan's action meant a lot of ATC military seemed to go to work replacing the fired FAA ones), there were enough on duty to allow breaks where we could share experiences. I tried to be careful to never distract them when they were working, though I did question one who had cleared a C-124 to land at Westover (on another runway 33/15), when I mentioned I thought we'd be able to see his landing lights. It wasn't really a great risk, but the pilot had visually lined up on the better lighted Mt Tom ski slope and simply had to do a missed approach to go around and line up properly on our runway.
I heard today that the ATCs walked out at SFO today. Not sure if that's true.
I'm not sure exactly how many hubs there are but it seems to me that if the ATCs walked out at SFO, LAX, DFW, Denver, ORD, JFK, LGA, ATL, Logan, Miami, Charlotte and Philadelphia that you have essentially grounded almost all flights within the US plus international as well. Is that true or are there several more?
Then why do you wear a shirt with his goddamn emblazoned on it??! GAH. Hate that mofo
His reign of terror is filled with rich men with experience running companies where their word is law. This frustrated tfg the first time because he was used to giving orders to be submissively carried out.
The trouble is, those rich men don't actually run their companies; they sit in penthouse offices, reading spreadsheets and taking meetings with executives who also sit in offices, reading spreadsheets. The people who really run the companies are the people who earn hourly paychecks and do the actual work. Remember The Peter Principle?
This is why it's such a terrible idea to have business executives running a government. Business operates for profit. Government is a not-for-profit enterprise ... or at least it was until Donald got into it.
Even if we had a normal president, letting Musk, Zuckerberg, et.al. dictate policy on things far beyond their comprehension would be a monumental disaster. With Trump (supposedly) in charge, we are doomed as a functioning Democracy. A benign corporatocracy is probably out of reach, but it is the best we can hope for. In the meantime, Protest. Resist. Never capitulate to evil and greed.
Good point.
The once eradicated measles (2020) due to vaccines developed in the 60's. The herd immunity level has almost been destroyed. The big anti vaxx movement during Covid probably has encouraged those undecided to go the no vaccine route. They had a good episode on Madame Secretary about 2 children contracting measles while on a cruise. One of the ports still had measles. Both were very sick. The vaccinated child recovered with no aftereffects. The other never recovered and was permanently damaged.
Just wait until ICE agents start raiding our K-12 schools. I know I would have been terrorized if a group of Federal agents raided my junior high or high school.
Are we really going to allow them to do this? If so, let's raid the hometown schools of the Republican Senators and Congresscritters and see how well that goes over.
ICE is already coming to schools here in Albermarle County Virginia. Even if they haven't snatched children, their very presence keeps the children of targeted groups away. We need to organize to protect and resist.
As for plane crash comments, the Musk backstory is an interesting account of payback to promote private interests but such stories are is not new in the annals of government. The far more important story is what Trump said. It needs to be called out for what it is WHITE SUPREMACIST RACIST SEWAGE!! "Good people on both sides" magnified twenty times. And to the racism, Trump adds his fear and revulsion at the sight of the physically disabled. Remember his reaction to the sight of wounded veterans at a military memorial?
My husband just read that about 350 of 3,000 students (my numbers could be a little off) in a small Texas town are put from the flu. My first question was were they sick or were they trying to protect themselves from ICE?
I haven’t seen the article yet.
I her Oklahoma school superintendent Ryan Walters is welcoming them to come raid his schools. He the character that spent millions on Trump bibles to put in every classroom and insists on prayer and the 10 commandments. If only he followed those 10 commandments himself.
UGH!!!
Gary Loft,
This "raiding business" to capture brown skinned people reminds me of when Christ came to us as a little child to humble parents, Mary and Joseph . Joseph brought Mary with him to Bethlehem to pay taxes. He brought Mary with him and though traveling so far on a donkey and being fully pregnant could not have made the trip an easy one....there they were.
There was "no room for them in the inn" but the innkeeper offered the stable with the animals and birds. And there...for those of us who believe, our Lord and Savior was born...in such a humble place. God allowed Himself to be made small and vulnerable to all that He created ...though it was a creation distorted by sin....which His created beings had freely chosen.
Wise men from the East had observed a star in the sky signifying that a King had been born. They had been looking for this star...they traveled on their camels for many days to see this "new born king".
Shepherds were guarding their flocks....they too came ....
It was not long before King Herod heard that a King had been born in Bethlehem. He was terrified that someone would take his place so wanted Jesus to be killed!
God protected Jesus through the message of an angel. Mary and Joseph fled to Egypt where God watched over them.
As many of the dear ones who share their opinions in this "sacred" place Heather has made for us....some who have a faith and some who choose a different belief or no belief....as a Christian, if God Himself who I believe had the power of creation yet allowed Himself to come to us in human form, and to be made vulnerable ....to be despised and rejected....to allow Himself to be
taken by the religious leaders of the day.....to allow Himself to become a human sacrifice for us...and following a cruel death on a cross,....to rise from the dead....to overcome death and in doing so to remove the power of sin and death that keeps us from being more of the amazing individuals He made us to be.....then I must endure these days and find ways to contribute to the SANITY and STABILATY we need at this time. We are here, in these times, for a reason.
sacrifice for us....
Tfg doesn’t seem to mind Patel’s brown skin. So he’s selective.
Or that of second lady, Usha Vance.
Here is a comprehensive discussion of the OEs that have to do with immigration. Lawyer Leeja Miller lays it out for us.
https://youtu.be/Ccwk8qvp14U?si=8OWlN-L2Ws8Qayec
With so much chaos and cruelty coming out of this administration by the minute day after day, I miss HCR's well deserved day of rest and a peaceful picture .
Yeah, until their gardener and housekeeper don't show up and they can't find a replacement!
Thanks Linda, take it in a little later, subscribed in any case.
No one is watching your videos. I watched one and I left THIS program. No one cares
Thanks, Linda! Such useful links and information.
Point well taken!
Sometimes you just have to look at what's right in front of your eyes. Bravo.
But Trump is only deporting VIOLENT RAPISTS. Not ordinary rapists like himself. Or Hegseth. Or wannabe rapists like Kavanaugh.
No surprise from an idiot & his minions😣
🎯 Your comment says it all, and sick as it is, makes sense. In sheds light on the darkness. Your post should be a meme, billboard, etc, and shared often and widely.
You might want to LAWYER up. Trump IS NOT a rapist. That's slander.
You might want to check with George Stepanopolous and ABC NEWS. They just settled a defamation lawsuit for $15,000,000.
You can't be ALLOWED to lie and slander.
You should lawyer-up.
Consider an attorney who has practiced under Substack Inc's choice of law. You may consider a licensed professional who is able to legally understand Substack Inc's 9/24 Terms of Use (TOU) to which we are all bound.
FYI, 'Democracy Forward' has really demonstrated some Courtroom smarts.
LETS SEE IF HAVE ANY INTEGRITY.
Is Trump a RAPIST?
Of course you won’t answer, because you are a dishonest liar.
You are a MORON.
You aren’t fooling with your bullying.
BUZZ OFF.
comment not read
blocked and comment collapsed whenever your name appears
Thank you
Trump also hates people who are smarter and more skilled than he is - it adds to his delight he can attack and subjugate them to his wishes.
I encourage everyone to watch a chilling interview on January 29 with Nancy MacLean about the radical right's plan to transform the US into an autocracy. The Trump administration's response to this tragic air crash is straight out of the authoritarian playbook. Here's the link to the interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQuS9vJHPzs/
I recommend her chilling book, 'Democracy in Chains'. Also the New Yorker's Jane Mayer's book, 'Dark Money'. This has been a project with a long gestation.
I strongly second those two book recommendations. What we're seeing today are the fruits of the poison trees planted some 75 years ago by Fred Koch and nurtured by Charles and David Koch and a coterie of far-right extremist billionaires. The big money was dark 'til Citizens United, then the doors got blown off and the oligarchs were empowered and emboldened like never before. Now we have asshole mega-billionaires openly buying the presidency and giving Nazi salutes.
Don't forget Koch bagman and Opus Dei acolyte Leonard Leo. Who is pushing the narrative that Catholics are being persecuted - so when you hear Republicans putting that into many statements, it's for Leo. Over 40% of Project 2025 funding came from Leo affiliates. Leo, Vought et al are using Trump as their test crash dummy for Project 2025.
Yes, Leo, the Federalist Society kingpin and Opus Dei member, has been a major player in the capture of the judicial system. Six of nine SCOTUS justices are Roman Catholic, and at least two, possibly three, justices are reportedly members of Opus Dei.
Sonia Sotomayor is Catholic, and definitely not Opus Dei. There are many of us Catholics who detest what Trump is doing, we can’t stand OD, and we don’t like Leonard Leo’s agenda.
Author and former Christian Nationalist,Andra Watkins,believes there will eventually be a holy war.I’ve been following her for months as she educates on P2025. All her predictions are becoming our reality…
“If Christian Nationalists ever obtain power, they will fight a holy war over whose faith will be enforced as the national religion. Will it be Catholicism? A strain of Protestantism? Non-denominationalism? Dominionism? (It absolutely WON’T be Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Unitarianism, Paganism, or similar.)”
https://open.substack.com/pub/andrawatkins/p/if-christo-fascist-republicans-win?
Astute comment, Kathy. In virtually all ways, Western Religion is the obverse of Eastern Religion. The Muslims have their Kharijites, Sunnīs, and Shīʿas, et al, who are bitter rivals over which sect best follows Islam.
Right now, christian nationalists all seem to be on the same side. But if they gain control of the government, there will be serious conflict. I grew up in evangelicalism. Most evangelicals regard Roman Catholics as idol-worshiping non-christians. They label Mormons as cultists. They reject infant-sprinkling as not real baptisms and consider mainstream denominations as liberal, permissive and "bound for hell." If that were not enough, there is also sharp disagreement among charismatic evangelicals who require glossolalia and being "slain in the Spirit" (holy rollers) and possibly snake-handling as evidence of true belief vs. evangelicals who take a dim view of these practices.
Currently, these groups tolerate each other because they have a common cause. But if they feel that the "heathens have been vanquished," their differences will become "worth dying for."
I don't know anything about these people, but apparently they are full of themselves.
Our primary problem is that Trump is either an agent or willing idiot for the love of money, if not Russia. Meanwhile, China is cleaning our clock internationally. IMHO BRIC countries are a present threat to the value of the dollar, that could bankrupt all of us. Think the Weimar Republic when a box car load of deutschemarks couldn't buy a loaf of bread.
Preoccupation with religion, according to the philosophy of some BRIC members is the "opiate" that can do us in. A holy war is a communist or fascist wet dream.
Our country was founded by mostly Deists and God is not mentioned in the Constitution. As the American revolution was fomenting, simultaneously the Great Awakening apparently had no (zero) impact on government.
Thomas and Alito have taken the position in essence that "natural law" is primary and the Constitution is secondary.
That is the position taken by crackpot antifederalists like Patrick Henry, who wanted Anglicism to be the national religion. We always had a crackpot minority undermining democracy. But we now have those crackpots as a majority in SCOTUS.
All those religious groups will do is feed into totalitarianism.
I’ve heard absolutely nothing about Catholic’s being persecuted. Where is this happening (besides in Leonard Leo’s mind). Who the hell is Leonard Leo anyway? Never heard of him either.
Look him up. Along with Opus Dei. Several current and former government officials are or were members.
Leonard Leo is the leader of the Federalist Society, a right-wing legal organization. He hatches baby conservative lawyers to be groomed for the judiciary - coming up the pipeline to eventually become federal judges and SCOTUS. Many of the judges Trump named in his first term were Leonard Leo projects. There will be more.
Anytime Christians don't get their way, they think they're persecuted.
dead on pts, you can certainly thank the Supremes for their vital contribution to financing this morass
I understand that 85 billionaires donated to Kamala Harris's campaign so I guess they're not interested in politics so much as power.
Saying "I understand..." without providing a citation means that your post is meaningless.
Here are some actual facts: "Of the total $1.9 billion spent by America’s richest families on all federal campaigns, $1.36 billion (72%) went to support Republicans while Democrats were buoyed by about $413 million (22%)."
https://americansfortaxfairness.org/billionaire-clans-spend-nearly-2-billion-2024-elections/
Yup, you are exactly right, MisT, we all need to make sure we - in all of our discussions - separate FACT and OPINION. Please note that BOTH are good things to have. But, we must remember that the real strength of our OPINIONS come from the strength, accuracy, veracity, and excellence (SAVE) of our FACTS.
You could have looked it up yourself. I think I heard this figure quoted on Stephen Colbert's show. However, Forbes puts the figure at 83 (https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2024/10/30/kamala-harris-has-more-billionaires-prominently-backing-her-than-trump-bezos-and-griffin-weigh-in-updated/). The point I was making, which you appear to have ignored, is that both parties depend heavily on donations from rich individuals and that's not good for your democracy. I trust that you will have less difficulty discerning my meaning now.
And SCOTUS is all in on Citizens United so no relief there.
Another inept decision by our criminal “Supreme Court”. Biden should have expanded the court.
I'm not sure if he could have gotten 60 votes from the McConnell Senate. And if he expanded the court to 13 wouldn't the Republicans responded by expanding it further to regain control.
I agree Judy that it should be expanded but I'm afraid of the consequences.
Undoubtedly true. I believe he also hates people who are more humane, more empathetic and sympathetic than he.
He considers empathy, sympathy, and humility to be signs of weakness. When you hold none of those virtues, you surely hate the people who do. In his not very deep psyche, he knows he has no strength or wisdom. Projection and self-loathing propel him.
Excellent point, Margaret.
I think the clear and objective fact that Trump is a sociopath is something that a frightening percentage of the general public, irrespective of political position, simply fails to grasp. The despicable and loathsome statement he felt compelled to make today in the wake of the tragic plane crash is yet another example of his sociopathy. This is akin to his desecration of the fallen soldiers at Arlington last year with his preposterous photo ops.
The only semi-silver lining in the perpetually dark Trumpian sky is that he will continue to decline mentally and psychologically, and will begin to repulse enough people that he will be wheeled off ala Salieri in "Amadeus".
Then again, we'd be left with Peter Thiel's boy toy as President at that point.
Daniel, you've said exactly what I think every day. The clear and objective fact that he's a sociopath and an unbelievable percentage of the general public fails to grasp it.
I also think that it will be harder and harder for his team of sociopaths to conceal his decline.
Vance is despicable, but he is not the anointed one and people will fall away when he expires.
We've said the same since 2015.
Yes, a Vance presidency is frightening. His reptilian obsequiousness, among other things.
More frightening is that Vance is the bought and paid for tool of Thiel, who funded his rise to power as well as at least some of his education. Both Vance and Theil seem to think of women as second class citizens who ought to be exclusively focused on child rearing. I wonder what Vance's wife, a well-educated woman and person of color and the daughter of immigrants, really thinks and feels about all this.
Vance worships Peter Thiel and Curtis Yarvin’s antihuman social philosophies.
Right as rain, Daniel, when you say “…Then again, we'd be left with Peter Thiel's boy toy as President at that point.” I think that is exactly the point of what Trump’s ruling clown car of right-wing nutters had planned.
Orange El Roundo was used to gain access to the levers of power. His rapidly progressing dementia would inevitably take him to a point that the Tech Bro contingent could then seek to have the 25th Amendment Solution completely completely activated to invest JDVance, their wholly owned idiot protege, with all the power Silicon Valley’s movers and shakers crave could never have fully acquired on their own for so many reasons. 49.6% of our gullible electorate got this evil stratagem rolling by reinserting Orange Mussolini at the pinnacle of power this past November 5th.
It’s chilling to think how much work we, the Real Majority of anti-Trumpers in this country, has on its to-do list already, not even 2 weeks past the inauguration of the Greatest Mistake in our history!
Margaret, I agree with your assessment up until "self-loathing." If that is defined as "hating oneself," then that doesn't describe Donald. However, knowledge of his life story shows that he is propelled by a search for love, which he was denied for his entire life. He was, and is, so profoundly unloved that he doesn't even know what love is.
Fred Trump was raised in a garbage family and acquired no moral compass. He was incapable of showing love or affection to anyone. Mary Anne Trump was a cleaning woman who married Fred as a way out of hard work and poverty. With access to Fred's wealth, she became a self-absorbed hypochondriac with no time for her children. Trump family wealth isolated Donald from any extra-familial examples of loving relationships.
And of course, all three of his wives married him for money, not love. Donald has a massively empty cavity where love is supposed to be, and he has tried to fill it with wealth, adulation and power. Those aren't filling the emptiness and he will die empty and unloved. Not soon enough.
This how Trump thinks as he’s a malignant narcissist and sociopath.
Yes. And he doesn't understand them either.
That’s everybody
Thank you for this great interview with Nancy MacLean by Patt Morrison (one of the last bastions of integrity at the LA Times). For what we can do, Nancy mentions Democracy 2025:
1. Scroll through their list of over 350 affiliate organizations for a heartening reminder of our grassroots and legal forces.
2. Donate to Democracy 2025 and/or their 501(c)3 Democracy Forward—who filed one of the first lawsuits against Trump Admin’s funding freeze.
https://www.democracy2025.org/
Nancy observed that like trans people today, Jews in 1930s Germany comprised a small percentage of the population (only about 1%), so were easy to scapegoat for riling up the masses.
As Nancy points out, the time to save ourselves is now.
Donate to project 2025? I believe you could edit that to say what you mean.
Yikes! Thank you for the catch--corrected!
*Democracy2025
thank you--I got confused there for a few moments...
Done.
"Trump and Musk ... comprise a new ideological oligarchy that has erased the line between capital and decision-making. Zuckerberg and Bezos, for all the eyebrows their moves are raising, belong to the old vanguard of oligarchs—they are defending their own interests, and, as evidenced by their previous support of liberal politicians, are ready to move in either direction to do so. The danger we face is of a new breed of ideologically-motivated billionaires, ones who believe that democratic institutions have lost purpose in our world, and are ready to use their wealth and connections to advance their own alternative vision." [Garry Kasparov, Jan 29, 2025, The New Oligarchs]
https://substack.com/home/post/p-156053497?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
That must be why he hates everyone.
Call me crazy, Phil, but I feel like it’s already well-established how despicable Trump and his cronies are. Can we move on to what we’re doing to stop him? Thanks
Get active with Indivisible.org, which has well-thought out strategy and tactics, and 1000+ local groups around the country. Call your Members of Congress to find out what they're doing and tell them what you want them to do. They need to hear from constituents. Write letters to the editor. Post on social media. Support pro-democracy groups with time and money. Start an Indivisible group where you are. Read ON TYRANNY: TWENTY LESSONS FROM THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. Do not obey in advance. Stay courageous and hopeful. Onward!
Thanks, Laurie - I find Indivisible's Action page has great action items that you can copy and paste bullet points from to create quick letters of outrage to your reps: https://indivisible.org/take-action-now
Great minds think alike! I am a big fan of Timothy Snyder and I have taken his points in "on tyranny" to heart. As a historian of eastern Europe, he knows a little something about authoritarianism. Also reaching out to my local Indivisible chapter.
thanks for this website
I just signed up for info on indivisible.
Trump is Commander in Chief of the armed forces. His first duty to fallen soldiers and their families is one of fairness and consolation. Instead he throws them in front of the bus. Point this out to every service person you know: any suspect order, anything that goes wrong he'll blame you and toss you to the wolves. The lowest private will see the logic of this latest awful example.
Sorry Stephen, but they won’t “see the logic” if they watch Fox “News” or pay attention to Breitbart or to Sinclair stations. Trump is too incompetent to be the problem. Extreme right wing / extreme fundamentalist religious propaganda is the problem.
It's a long slough, Riversong.
Above all else, the schools.
We've got to put the personal back in schools -- humanities, essay writing to see and celebrate individuals, their cultures, their complications.
Right now standardized testing has a stranglehold on all the schools, by design from the 1971 Powell memo on stressing the impersonal, the neutered, the abstracted and categorical.
More immediately, read "Stolen Pride," by Arlie Russell Hochschild. It will let you see how having shed the personal from schools let all those tens of millions damaged by the offshoring of their jobs all feel abandoned, unseen, disrespected and betrayed by our university-educated elites.
You see, Riversong, you err when you imagine "it's already well-established ow despicable Trump and is cronies are."
No, Riversong. They, the far-right, are winning with their scenarios of victimization, group hate, and hostility (which gets programmed for them by the social media billionaires flanking, buoying their orange felon). They have the White House, the Senate, the House, and the Clarence court. They are the "well-established," particularly so long as all the schools follow the death trip of other billionaires' standardized testing.
Wasn't China let into the WTO in 2003 under the G.W.Bush Admin?... I read once that over 10,000 Factories in the USA were closed-down, or off-shored during the GWB Admin... We are still Reaping the Whirlwind on that Stupidity... The People, Communities, affected by that Stupidity were mad at being treated as Expendable... Besides having a Disastrous Foreign Policy, GWB had a Disastrous Domestic Policy... To His Great Credit, Joe Biden Tried To Reverse Both...
Chump is continuing the horror of the W/Dickie mess but on steroids. Wonder if Dickie has regrets…
I watched GWB during the Services for Jimmy Carter... GWB didn't look too Good... Notice how the Bushes have Disappeared?
From Prescott to W, they have been anything but statesmen. They should have disappeared long ago. W was practice for chump
Vouchers. Destroying schools in every state where passed. Project 2025 and executive order (I forget #) but he signed it last week, to establish FEDERAL VOUCHERS. Dollar for dollar tax deduction for that specific cause. Rural schools are hanging by a thread already.
I called the Superintendent of our small school district in ME on Tuesday. I actually was concerned about ICE coming into our schools. Their mere presence is terrorism and bullying in my opinion. Why do they need to arrest kids in the school. They should have their addresses available to them. If not, they are dumber than Trump. A case of our the Emporer's New Clothes, which will probably be banned for inferring that our "dear leader" and his followers are morons. Anyway, the Super told me that they are not allowing entrance by ICE into any of the schools in her district. I certainly hope that's true. If my daughter was still in school I would have also confirmed that with the Principal.
Phil, do you know your school superintendent and have you talked to her about curriculum? Or your school board members?
I live in the mountains of Kyushu, Japan, Gary.
Japan has many good writers focused on the still-suffocating-patriarchy here, the worse-than-that-rule of all schools by standardized testing, and TV and advertising's infantilizing and worse than that of all women.
Still, somehow, the great, nature-aware older culture lives on in many ways.
Great work Gary. Apparently the ICE goons need to have a warrant, and you can intercept an arrest asking them to produce one - reminding them it’s illegal to arrest and detain someone without a warrant - I might add, only if you’re feeling brave and in a public place. Spread the word.
Not to mention, civics class, gym class, and how about shop and home ec classes??
I agree. What does society do with the dementia soaked people we isolate them from hurting anyone else including themselves. Impeachment yet a third time and including Vance and Johnson. Deport Musk. Election of Democrats to replace any post on left open by a result of working for Trump. Remove the current administration people who are enforcing project 2025.
The current Republican Senators are scarcely of the same caliber as those who sat in the Senate during Nixon's impeachment trial. There is no way that the MAGA/Freedom Caucus majority House of Representatives would even consider bringing a charge of impeachment against Trump, let alone get him removed by a guilty vote from this Senate.
Somewhere in HCR's brilliant letter it says "Musk appears to believe that humans must colonize Mars in order to become a multiplanetary species as insurance against the end of life on Earth." How about musk being the first human on Mars, 'deported' maybe, playing king there?
They rule, can’t remove them yet…
Sometimes people need to rant. People here have lots of ideas of what to do.
Exactly! E-freaking-nuff with the clinical dianosisee's's's! It's also clear, according to the most recent enlightenment that our education "system" has failed in the "reading" department. So, the kids don't understand those words like sociopath or fascist. Nor do they know where Hungary is, or Phoenix, for that mattter.
Yes we need to move into more action and I'm not sure what that means. I've email Oregons Senators and their boxes are so full the message may never get thru. Oh yes it will but in time. I also remember the days when we met in neighbors homes and addressed postcards
He was never anything but the viper he is today.
Phil, beautifully said, thank you!
It's so frustrating that we don't get context like this in the coverage of mainstream media. Most stories mentioned Trump blaming others but how many informed their readers at the same time about this. None that I saw.
"Whitaker resigned the day Trump took office. That same day, the administration froze the hiring of all federal employees, including air traffic controllers, although the U.S. Department of Transportation warned in June 2023 that 77% of air traffic control facilities critical to daily operations of the airline industry were short staffed. The next day, January 21, Trump fired Transportation Security Administration (TSA) chief David Pekoske, and administration officials removed all the members of the Aviation Security Advisory Committee, which Congress created after the 1988 PanAm 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland. The Trump administration vacated the positions with an eye to “eliminating the misuse of resources.”
It was all there. See the links on the post from HRC.
*Don't feel bad; I've been in a hurry too. HRC is Hilary Rodham; HCR is 'our' Prof. Lol !
I believe that's what Bonny is referring to.
No more doing the right thing!
stop insulting reptiles🤪
As through this world you travel, and in this world you stay
You will never see a reptile
Destroy the FAA.
Ha !
I'm sticking with narcissistic criminal sociopath, but I am entertaining other adjectives that are more concise and/or appropriate.
His "DEI" campaign is rooted in his mental illness . Narcissists resent to their tiny souls that they don't receive their deserved adulation. It's even worse when a "lesser"being, a woman, or god forbid a black one, is smarter, more capable or just more appealing than he is. Pete Buttigieg must drive him crazy.
Ask Sen. Tim Scott whether the elimination of DEI is really the elimination of Blacks from government.
Same for Representative Byron Donalds of Florida, Representative Burgess Owens of Utah. Representative Wesley Hunt of Texas, and Representative John James of Michigan about the rejection of DEI as a pretext to discriminate on the basis of race.
How can they be Republicans?
Didn't they hear that the plane crash was caused by DEI? Did that mean the boogeyman did it?
John Fugelseng urged us to stop using the term DEI, which is as nebulous as MAGA and start saying pro-discrimination. Most Republicans couldn't tell you what DEI stands for -- just that it must be a bad thing because Trump told them so.
To them, DEI is just the code word for non-white. And we know how racist those MAGAs are.
I think you can add “hatred for anything American.”
What did anyone expect? Don’t you remember his advice to drink bleach?
This very comprehensive video on what is going on with immigration in the US is helpful for us to understand what is going on, and is the story they want you to ignore while you are looking at all the other outrages that seem to directly affect you, but they are wrong.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ccwk8qvp14U&si=itnqRyZHpxShUZcn
Yes, Exactly. What kind of people do you think this criminal monster would want to work for him?There are no surprises in his nominations and unless we have some heroes in Congress, we are going to get RFK Jr and the other hideous nominees to fill key positions in our government.
Well said, Phil. What’s the over under on either CFT or the US democracy not lasting out his first year in office? Despite the cluster fu*k of his first ten days, I’m still leaning toward the collapse of the US as a world class democracy.
Could be as you suspect, Maureen.
The U.S. could do untold damage to all our democratic allies, just as it is poised to worsen climate change and thumb its nose at the collective work necessary at WHO (mass pandemic of bird flu, anyone?) It could hand over Ukraine to Putin and let Netanyahu commit final, Gaza-style genocide in the West Bank.
And Dem elites, void of humanities, still haven't got the slightest clue as to what's been happening to American working classes.
Phil Balla,
The treatment of fellow human beings in Gaza by Netanyahu makes me feel like my heart is being ripped out and torn to pieces by the beak of a bird of prey.
No homes, no schools, no hospitals, no water, no food!!!!
- Pulled Quote -
''MeidasTouch posted: “Trump's handling of this situation should be treated as one of the biggest scandals in presidential history.”''
Sadly and probably horrifically it will be lost in the many scandals to follow.
He alone cannot do much. We must also stop Musk. Professor clearly defines that the front line of the battle is the federal government. We must encourage every current employee to stay, never to consider leaving. Otherwise, we have to plan Normandy landing later - a more costly takeback.
Which is why we should be doing a South Korean on him and marching and protesting and insisting he get impeached AGAIN, and then removed from office and thrown into prison. Or, better yet, deported to Guantanamo!
Utterly disgusting. When condolences are appropriate for the tragic loss of life from the plane crash last night, instead, we got a rant from the President of the United States blaming the two former Democratic Presidents, the DEI policy, and whoever he chose to blame for the tragedy. I had to turn off my television to grieve. I live in Charlotte, NC. The flight crew was from here. Meteorologist James Scott WCCB · Follow
5h ·
We’ve confirmed the names of the four Charlotte-based crew members on American Eagle Flight 5342. They are as follows:
Jonathan Campos - Pilot
Sam Lilley - First Officer
Danasia Elder - Flight Attendant
Ian Epstein - Flight Attendant
May their memories always be a blessing. 🕊️
This will never be normalized.
Trump is Trash. Never forget that,
And yet he has fans who defend his every word. Quite a few.
For sure.
Hi Vicky, I had just written a reply in our local on line paper about how utterly devastated
my family is. Young skaters with their parents, the crew and all others,
US Army out of Fort Belvoir, where I-was born right after it opened…..
and the “the President” condemns Biden, Obama, gays, women, blacks…
I ask: what the hell are we willing to put up with? He is garbage and is
not only ruining this nation but subjugating everyone with fear. This is
not only disgusting but a test for everyone.
Right on, Deidre. It truly is time to rise up against this monstrous insult to everything our Nation stands for.
Brava Deirdre ! Push back... Every. Single. Opportunity - from here on out !
Push’em back! Push’em out!
Brava Dee !
I am ready💪
We flunked, the election was the test
Jeri, I don't believe for one second that you or I and so many others herein flunked. I did all I could, and following you and so many others of my favorite folks herein, I 'know' you didn't flunk. That said, how to 'move' other folks beyond talk and approaching all this beyond academic blather 'is' the question.
So many questions, need answers
From my inbox later this day and I concur - 'loudly' >
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/oppose-oppose-oppose-and-do-it-loudly
Thank you, Vicki. I have commercial pilots in my family: sister-in-law is a captain with FedEx. Niece is an FO with United, her fiancé is a captain with Horizon. Airline crashes hit home.
... And at a moment such as this, when families are living their worst nightmares, what some see as a 'leader' of our nation can only spout such vile, self - serving hogwash !
As a former pilots wife, it really does hit different and hard! We suffered over the years the stress of wondering and worrying. Knowing too much. We divorced years ago and he’s since retired. But you’re right! It’s a grief I wouldn’t want anyone to suffer through. The few we knew who lost their lives to plane accidents were so heartbreaking! Children growing up without their father. Families who never got to say goodbye or say I love you one last time. You just feel all over again when another tragedy happens.
I imagine the families of the 9/11 and Lockerbie tragedies feel the same way too. It just cuts through our hearts.
My daughter’s in laws were very much involved with 911! A family of public servants several were at Ground Zero. None were lost that day but an uncle died of cancer from exposure during the cleanup. Their stories are nothing short of miraculous and spine tingling!
Amazing! My sister lives in Manhattan. She was on a plane to Pittsburg when the Pittsburg plane went down. Since 9/11, she has flown only one time and has never gone to Ground Zero. That day was horrible for me and my family. My kids stayed home from school. I couldn’t find out which plane my sister was on. The lines were down. Suddenly, my phone rang at 3:30pm. I picked up and it was my sister asking what happened! I started sobbing and between tears, I told her. She said her plane was diverted to Boston but they were still on the tarmac. Fortunately she had friends she was able to stay with there. She said once they were allowed to disembark, they entered the terminal and all of the screens or boards were solid black. She later took a train back to NYC and that’s how she travels now…by train. **Our mother, who always watched the news at 10 decibels, for some reason never turned her television on that day and I never called her to tell her what happened!**
That had to be such an overwhelming relief! I can’t imagine what you went through!
My husband had just come from Boston the weekend before from flight training. We had a million calls that day of family checking on him. I don’t know why, but my mother also hadn’t turned on the news that day. Very strange for her! Then his flight was the first one out of DFW when they opened up again. I had to drive him to and from the airport. He slept for two days after he got home.
That is amazing about your Mom and her usual habits. That is one of the horrible collateral impacts that is never talked about.
He is as much a 9-11 casualty as all who died that day. NYFD has lost more active and (noe) retired personnel to post 9-11 syndrome than they lost on
9-11.
💔
Female pilots! DEI hires! Too emotional, too affected by hormones, not smart enough! Only good for receiving white male sperm (whether they like it or not) and gestating babies who will help us colonize Mars after denuding our own planet of all usable resources. We are moving ever closer to a dystopian mashup of Handmaid’s Tale, 1984, and Brave New World.
Why not throw in all the Mad Max movies as well. Who knows, they may be real foretellers if what to expect.
I think of those scenes often and wonder how long it will be before we’re living like that.
Everyone:
FYI, as of 1/31/25 early morn, MSNBC's 'Way too Early' reports 4 items have been recovered:
2 black boxes
1 cockpit recorder
1 flight data recorder
Already have been sent to the NTSB Lab
❤️
Real people who others love and will miss them! They deserve our thoughts and prayers…We all do! My heart goes out!
The Charlotte Observer has a full article about the four crew members who died and one community member who died. Very real people who had full lives.
https://www.threads.net/@nc_governor/post/DFdfyHjJhmC?xmt=AQGz41COqsDxgxlmzcahQuc4FtvJaO6cMOFLVURAKtcsoA
NC Governor Josh Stein
Oh Vicki…I didn’t know that. 😢
So very sad. 😢
"When condolences are appropriate for the tragic loss of life from the plane crash last night, "
A classic Trump performance though.
Well, this reflects their family values and pro life positions. They spend more "moral" engergy on a group of cells than about fighting genocide or on the appalling suffering of millions of sick people during COVID, and demonstrate an obscene lack of empathy toward victims of climate-related events, and similarly toward this recent plane crash. None of his rhetoric can assure society's health and well-being.
Thank you for acknowledging the crew; we need to know their names. 🙏 It's also a reminder that even though a crew may be "based" out of a particular city, they fly us all over the country.
It gives me the chills to read their names. Your post makes the tragedy real. I am stunned, but shouldn't be, by the lack of any compassion. None.
May they be blessed and forever be remembered 🙏
Do you personally believe that the midterm elections won’t be stolen? I’m holding onto that belief myself in order to stay sane, but with each passing day it feels increasingly naive.
We’ve just got to get EVERYONE TO VOTE. Let’s work on that -
First we have to undo the voter suppression tactics that have disenfranchised millions of voters. That's what rigging an election really looks like, and we saw how well it worked in 2024.
You are so right Celia. Cutting down number of days to vote, cutting number of polling places, bomb threats by Russians which closed polling places, early results by AP before all ballots are counted, cutting back mail-in voting and number of ballot boxes to use and Lies lies lies. They are eating cats and dogs etc. fat thumb on the scales of Justice…. Act local is a good way to start.
Yes ! And, how about including an omnibus voter referendum from coast to coast to coast regarding the elevation of voters rights and a failure proof rebuttal measure to Citizens United. *Calling all constitutional lawyer patriots if we have any !! In a democracy, securing the rights of voter must be the highest calling; above presidents, legislators, judges, and the 1 or 2 percent who effectively rule over all of us as though their wealth merits them more than their singular votes.
There is so much that we have to undo, and Citizens United is one of the worst decisions in terms of taking power out of people's hands. But I guess the 1% figured that they bought that Supreme Court fair and square, so they deserve it.
Bob, this arrived in my inbox later this day and I concur - Loudly >
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/oppose-oppose-oppose-and-do-it-loudly
Thanks for that... 💯!
They didn’t have to mess with any machines, simply keep targeted people from voting. It’s shameful we call ourselves a free nation when we keep so many of our fellow citizens from voting or having their votes counted. Voting should be considered a fundamental right of citizenship, and we need to reeducate our students and adults about American government.
Yeah, the repubs have been working against voters for decades. The south just picks up where it left off in Jim crow times. All the MAGAts want to party like it's 1899!
One thing I gotta give them, they've been working long and hard to bring to back their dreams of the good ole days, so we've got to work harder and longer. People say "where's the resistance?" but personally I realize it's not going to cut it to put on a pussy hat and go to a couple marches. But maybe as a white person, I'm used the system working for me. We should study the Civil Rights movement, and be inspired by how black folks persevered for centuries to get their rights.
That reminds me of the 1619 project. I listened to the podcast... inspiring! I want to read the book. Her message is powerful, and best of all, it freaks out all the white supremacists!
All I'm saying is that if we want our country to reach its true promise, we need to be patient, learn from history, and make common cause with everyone else who's had to struggle against injustice.
Sadly, for now it seems they've assembled a winning coalition; Wealth, broadcast media, religious zealots, white supremacists; enough of which to harness and steer long simmering anger, disappointment, and resentments among large enough numbers. Add in the voter disenfranchisement, gerrymandering, and there it is.
Yeah, not gonna lie, we're in a big hole. That's why it's going to take a lot of hard work and solidarity.
I'm all in Bob !
Agreed!
Agreed.
The gerrymandering must be outlawed also.
That will be a monumental task, impossible in Texas
Spot On Nickie.
Over 60,000,000 qualified U.S. Voters did not vote in the November 2024 Election.
I recall Theodore Roosevelt, the rough rider's comment on the right & wrong things to do:
"In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the Right thing,
the next best thing you can do is the Wrong thing,
the Worst thing you can do is Nothing.
Exactly this - there is work to do.
Over 60 million?? I stand corrected!
Joanna, I was trying to use a conservative estimate of 60M
I just checked two sources:
(1). The Florida Election Lab states there are 245 Million eligible voters in the U.S. but, only 36% voted leaving 89 MILLION non-voters.
(2) I checked The Guardian's 12/13/24 "What a Circus" article which tallys 90,000,000.
So I stand corrected. 🧐
re "We've just got to get EVERYONE TO VOTE":
That's an enormous task, especially considering the fact that in the 2024 presidential election, with the stakes so high and our fragile democracy hanging precariously in the balance, 36.1% of registered voters – more than a third – DIDN'T VOTE. Disgraceful. The "winner"? Autocracy.
One reason many didn't was because they were "purged" from the voter rolls. Others did vote, but their ballots were challenged and discarded. Voter suppression in action. Let's focus on that first.
But also non-participation. Voting is essential to establishment and preservation of a just democratic republic. I ran across a motto that said "Bad politicians are elected by good people who don't vote." It's not the whole story, but it's major.
"The president made the comments as he dismissed a Democratic-led push for reforms such as vote-by-mail, same-day registration and early voting as states seek to safely run elections amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Democrats had proposed the measures as part of the coronavirus stimulus. They ultimately were not included in the $2.2tn final package, which included only $400m to states to help them run elections.
“The things they had in there were crazy. They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again,”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/30/trump-republican-party-voting-reform-coronavirus
Pretty soon (I’m hoping) voters will see what they voted for & what they stayed home for. I’m hoping for incentive - and a miracle, I know - I’m holding out for hope, Gene. We have to do that - AND the work involved.
Yes, Nickie, this is going to take some time, and your “pretty soon” is probably hopeful thinking. But, your point is spot on: “voters will see what they voted for.” It is a FACT that 77.3 million people voted for Trump-Vance. AND, Trump is doing what he said he was going to do. Plus, we are/were all aware of Trump’s behavior and supporters. What is happening right now is no surprise! What is perhaps the most difficult choice for the rest of We, the People is - do we let Trump’s “administration” crash and burn? Or, do we work harder than ever before to make sure America survives? Of course (SHUDDER SHUDDER), if WE are successful and if WE save America from Trump Destruction, will that make #47 a Great President and give him a spot on Mt. Rushmore? If Trump deposits our nation in his Golden Toilet, his Presidency will be flushed….Goodness, it’s too early for me to have a glass of wine (or whine)
Did Trump admit that Musk won Pa by chicanery?
Aren't the Russians bragging that their psy ops did it?
https://www.gregpalast.com/trump-lost-vote-suppression-won/
https://www.gregpalast.com/trump-lost-vote-suppression-won/
Getting out the vote is important for sure, but what can be done to pierce the pall of misinformation and a certain lack of caring about governance? Clone Ms Richardson? Oh to be so articulate
Good question - don’t we all just have to do something- anything ? If we don’t, the consequence’s are dire .
The first step, always, is to take care of ourselves when we are feeling despair. "Epic face-plant" - at the end of HCR's letter today - I was grateful for whoever wrote that and I am grateful every day for HCR. Timothy Snyder said that this is going to get very ugly before it gets better. Finding gratitude is essential to mental health.
I don't know how we do it. I've written postcards, letters, supported Vote.org and other organizations, contributed to various campaigns. More than a million people didn't vote in this last election. How do we move the needle? I don't know. Unless people are affected in a negative way, and that is not my wish, will they go out and vote? Add to that voter suppression, gerrymandering, and all the other garbage thrown at would-be and regular voters, I'm bewildered as to how we will move the needle. I agree with you that we have to work on this. I think the Democrats have some serious work to do. Democratic "leaders" seem to be bewildered as to what to do. We need some serious leadership. We need some serious pushback as to what has happened since January 20th. We cannot afford to waste another day.
I’m reading (on Substack) Joyce Vance, Heather Richardson Cox, MeidasTouch, Robert Reich for starters. Things are getting organized .
You can go to Substack, ‘subscribe’ to who you want to read - a paywall comes up , however you can chose ‘none’ instead of payment - it’s all good.
I don’t have a tv, and prefer reading the news (less words hitting the eardrums).
“Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything.”
― Joseph Stalin
We have to count the votes. According to several credible sources, Harris actually won.
Ha, and I believe he and his fascist sidekick fixed this last election….
I think they rigged it in Pennsylvania… trump actually praised Musk’s great computer skills by saying “ look what he did in PA… we won!”
How about the rump precision ear wounding?
Performance art, good as wrestling
𝔸𝕟𝕕 𝕪𝕖𝕥, here we all are in our silos writing about it. Where is the fucking Democratic leadership? The party has totally gone underground safe for a couple of them. Who are doing all the shouting.
https://www.gregpalast.com/trump-lost-vote-suppression-won/
A great many of us out here aren't so sure the 2024 vote wasn't stolen or rigged via Starlink.
Worse than that, I don't have any confidence that a proper investigation of this event will be made under the current administration.
This election was stolen from voter rolls purged in the swing states for one. They are now in power and they will never go away unless we remove them other than through the ballot box. We are totally naïve to believe that we are going to have a free and fair election ever again. That is not how autocracy works. We need to all wake up and figure out another way.
Three words: recall elections, NOW.
Focus on a small number of swing districts. Flip them, and with them, flip Congress Democratic so they start acting like a co-equal branch of government again.
It shouldn't be hard to find enough swing districts that have buyer's remorse over their shiny new MAGA Republican representation. And it's much harder for oligarch money to swing single local elections that everyone in the country can pay attention to, instead of being able to manipulate a few of the more than five hundred races that will be happening simultaneously during the midterms.
Want a real-world example, on a small scale? On January 28, a special election in Iowa State Senate District 35 put Democrat Mike Zimmer over his Republican opponent. He won by 4 points in a district that voted for Trump by a 21 point margin in November. And Iowa is about as red as states get.
If it can happen in a state Senate race, it can happen in the House of Representatives. It would require recalling a MAGA representative, but given current and developing sentiments about our government, that probably wouldn't be a heavy lift either.
MCRA (Make Congress Relevant Again).
There is no provision in the Constitution for recall elections for the president or members of the House or Senate. State by state, some states allow recalls of state/local officials under certain circumstances, but a lot don't.
Which states do allow recalls? With a three seat margin in both houses, we don't need many.
True, you can't recall congresscritters, but there are off-cycle elections like the one in Iowa, and it'd be fun if the house went Democrat...
But even if they're not up for election, if we are having buyer's remorse, we should be asking our reps all the hard questions and make them squirm.
I too am clinging onto hope for the midterms. Unfortunately, it is human nature that change does not occur until we hit rock bottom...and the coming food scarcity might just be the agent....
I expect that there will be an "executive decree" issued sometime before November 2026 which will say that from here on out, there will be no more elections. Of course, that would be illegal, but Agent Orange can't be prosecuted for any crimes, and the SCOTUS will support the decree.
I'm not sure there will be any elections.
Apologies if you have heard this before, but it's more relevant than ever. Another thing the loyal opposition does is an idea Timothy Snyder (who wrote On Tyranny) has been pushing for a People's (shadow) cabinet. Imagine if we had Pete speaking as people's transportation sec today! Or AOC as people's attorney general, or pick-your-favorite as people's health sec.
If anyone feels like it, you can sign this petition and >please repost< the following:
Democrats, we must get louder to respond forcefully to the administration and make them own their unpopular actions. Let's form a Democratic People's Cabinet, our best folks speaking out. Please sign and repost! Over 2.5K signed so far.
www.change.org/shadowcabinet
(see https://snyder.substack.com/p/shadow-cabinet)
Tim Snyder's shadow cabinet is a VERY good idea. It could give us unity, a focal point.
We should have an "election" of shsdow cabinet officers
Pete was great! Tim and Rachel were great! How do we encourage cowards to change their strips? By calling them out! Letters, phone calls…to every GOP governor! And more Pete!
Yes, when we were talking about “mini-primary” ideas there were ways floated to have quick elections within the Democratic party. Or the grassroots could just vote and draft people!
I wish I could sign your petition, and invoke its operation. Great idea. Sadly I’m an innocent bystander 🇨🇦
So am I. Arguing with diehard Trump fans at the WSJ that a 25% tariff won’t benefit the US. I’m told it’s punishment for an “open border.”
Fraud, do they understand that they too are going to pay those tariff? Are they ever going to stop being morons?
Me too!! Canadian but following enthusiastically!!!
We appreciate our allies. We got into this mess by arrogance and indifference.
ditto
You are a valuable ally. Thank you!
Ideally, the Democratic National Committee would play a role such as this, but that doesn't seem to be in the cards. Seems that the people's party will have to be guided by the people.
I think they’re emotionally exhausted and traumatized. Once they feel the support, hopefully they’ll regroup…
While I empathize, we're ALL emotionally exhausted and traumatized. That's what the fascists want. They need to get it in gear or give it over to those who will.
They’re in dire need of new leadership and people with new and effective ideas.
Faiz Shakir seems to fit the criteria here. look him up.
Are you the Steve Engel who has worked for DJT since 2016? Please let us know who you are working for. I am very much in favor of a Peoples Cabinet, but I do need to know that you are not the one working for DJT. Or if someone else knows who this is. I have not been able to confirm that it is not.
Have you gone to his bio? He is not an attorney. All you have to do is click on his picture and it will take you to his bio. Then you don't ask questions that are ummm embarrassing in the charged political climate.
Some of us are technologically challenged and may not know how to do that - click on the photo to go to the person's bio. For younger people, it's intuitive, but for some of us born many decades ago it's not always easy to know how to navigate and find out things.
SE does write like a camelian.
This gives me hope!!! Calling on your best!!! Inspire them!!! I’m Canadian. We need to do that here as well!!!
I’m a fan of Timothy Snyder but when I first read his piece about the “shadow cabinet” I thought the idea was overwrought and “overthunk?.” I also thought the Dems would never be able to mount such a project. But now I think there might be a possibility. Buttigieg is speaking out with professional authority.Why shouldn’t others with professional credibility join him and speak out regularly as a shadow cabinet? And bill themselves as such. Perhaps over time the MSM will realize there is an audience there.Or maybe not……
exactly! We need to make them listen, which we can do if united.
10 days in and planes are already falling out of the sky.
Right ? !!!
No, I despise the President but he is not to blame for this tragic and possibly avoidable accident. Some aircraft was not where it was supposed to be and I will bet on the helicopter as commercial aircraft follow a beam for landing for miles before the runway. We all know this !! And flight controller schedule is in place, not decided on day by day. The Reagan tower was short staffed that night. And the visibility was excellent.
We cannot blame him for EVERYTHING ! Concentrate on his words of sympathy and compassion when he commented on this accident. Enough there for a moral impeachment !!!
There was one person doing the work of two, because HE gutted the FFA on day one. I am very careful about where I place blame. This is going to get worse.
I would not fly anywhere now.
"And they put politics at a level that nobody has ever seen, because this was the lowest level. Their policy was horrible and their politics was even worse."
Trump continues his signature pathological mirroring, identifying his own horrific behaviors as that of his perceived rivals. Every candidate nominated for POTUS should be subject to a thorough and comprehensive mental health exam.
Barry, no surprises there, we know the results before the exam.
As Rachel Maddow pointed out, the explosion of one of Musk’s SpaceX rockets recently caused multiple passenger planes to have to suddenly divert in flight to avoid falling wreckage. The head of the FAA that resigned the day Trump took office had grounded SpaceX rockets due to safety concerns .
It's too bad Elmo wasn't riding that rocket.
This deadly crash is what Project 2025 looks like. How tragically appropriate that it happened at Reagan, because ever since Reagan busted the union air traffic controllers have been working under impossible conditions. This is just a foretaste of what decimating the federal workforce and gutting regulatory agencies looks like. Please call every Republican on the Budget Committee to vote no on Vought.
Please call everyone on the Budget Committee:
.https://www.budget.senate.gov/about/committee-members.
Chair Lindsey Graham
.https://www.lgraham.senate.gov/public/.
Washington, DC 20510
Office: (202) 224-5972
His DC phone mail box may be full, call other offices
Ranking Member Jeff Merkley
.https://www.merkley.senate.gov/connect/office-locations/.
Phone: (202) 224-3753
Senate Switchboard (202) 224-3121.
(☞ ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)☞ Thank you,Lin. I just took a screenshot of all the numbers and links to follow up in the morning and the next day and the next day and the next day. This is what Rachel Maddow was talking about. We all have to step up, step in, and save this country from evil.
Will do👍😡
Sometimes their DC phone mailboxes are full, but the links to their websites have their state office numbers.
🙏I found that out in the past, always call the local offices to leave a comment if can’t get thru to Washington. Especially important on Vought. I think he is actually the most dangerous, the biggest ideologue of the whole group.
Thank you for this. This is the action we all need to drill down on. For every DJT/Vance/Musk/Hegseth/Patel/Gabbard offence, the people need to remind these folks who the government is for and who they work for. Pitting their ambition against each other might help shift or slow down the senator's obeyance. And if enough are subjected to this, then the primary threat won't matter if we decide to primary them ourselves.
I will meet Senator Merkley this Sunday at a town hall meeting in Salem. I am planning to ask him about Donald Trump's ominous message to evangelical Christians during the campaign: “Get out and vote. Just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what? It’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore.” Trump does not speak idly.
Sadly, I’m sure it goes without saying that Trump will face no accountability for any of this. Disgusting.
I don't know. I'm sitting here in front of the fire. When we don't pay attention, it starts to go out, but when we miss the warmth and the flames, we put on another log and use the bellows to make some of the embers reignite, and then the new log bursts into flame. I don't know how long it will take, but I'm guessing that disgruntlement may turn from an ember into a burning log into a raging fire. It depends on how many people get hurt by this administration and, to mix my metaphors, where their boiling point is.
A million people died of COVID on US alone. He totally mismanaged it. Inject bleach—. Ugh. Just remembered he was cured of Covid by drs he’s trying to downsize. 🤮
Bird flu was gonna be his next opportunity to shit the bed but the first midair collision since 1978 jumped the line. And he will continue to blame every disaster on his watch on his personal boogeymen, DEI, Biden, Obama, etc like a misbehaving toddler. At some point, these own goals will reach a tipping point, and the Emperor’s fat naked body will be seen by all.
One of thee gop talking points is to indict Fauci for Covid deathe.
Ridiculous! Whom will they blame when Trump fails to act against bird flu, because Dr. Fauci has now retired. There will be another pandemic, this time it will be bird flu, and they are completely unprepared for it, and want RFK, Jr. in as head of HHS. He vaccinated his own kids, but makes a lot of money from telling people not to vaccinate their own kids. Disgusting!
They will blame that on Biden.
How will the people who voted for him find out whose fault the resultant destruction is? They will never learn it from Trump and his cohorts, who will always blame the Democrats--and Fox News will amplify the blame.
They never will. Their “information” sources will tell them the mis and dis information that feeds their souls.
Constant and continued calling out the lies must persiat and be easily retrievable for dialogue.
This is my fear, too, Constance
Agree.
What accountability? The 51 people that signed the letter saying Hunter Biden's Laptop with Russian's disinformation should be in Jail for Election Interference.
George,
The 51 signers admitted to not knowing the authenticity of the Laptop. They were perfectly justified in stating that releasing the story a month before the 2020 election seemed like a Russian disinformation operation.
Paragraph 5...
"We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails, provided to the New York Post by President Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement -- just that our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case."
https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000175-4393-d7aa-af77-579f9b330000
That doesn't seem jail-worthy to me. There was nothing ever disclosed on that Laptop to implicate Joe Biden... so how would this have affected the election if the truth had come out?
Hunter Biden didn't know then that the Laptop was his. The FBI, who had the computer at the time, was legally required not to disclose information that could affect an election (though granted, they had broken that policy in 2016 in announcing an investigation into Hillary Clinton's stolen emails - which was, in fact, a Russian disinformation campaign.)
Hunter Biden's Laptop is a nonstory. It was always a nonstory to everyone but Hunter, who was convicted of his crimes or admitted to his faults. The political use of that Laptop was a gross invasion of his privacy and a warning to us all never to leave our personal property in the hands of those we can't trust.
The 51 signers (and if you read it, you will see that there were nine additional ICs who supported the assessment - so 60 total - get it straight) were all former Intelligence officials who served under Presidents of both parties. They were patriots then, and they are patriots now.
Tim
Wtf?
We can agree to disagree and life goes on.
Ben ,he never did he never will. A travesty of the Rule of Law.
He avoids accountability like the plague.
I'm being lazy, but here's what I posted on a Boston Globe column about the chaos on all levels:
How can our Congress confirm a slate of unqualified people to run our government?
How can anyone support a "leader" who can barely utter a statement of sympathy for the families and friends of those who died in yesterday's crash before erroneously blaming his predecessors and DEI for the deadly event?
What sort of lawless, wannabe dictator thinks that he can get away with impounding funds dedicated by Congress to making the lives of Americans better?
What kind of people support the evident cruelty of the man they elected to be our president?
Yes, elections have consequences, but those who voted because they expected action to lower the price of eggs did not expect the consequences that we have been seeing or the consequences yet to come.
Because they believed his lies even though many, many people were calling out his lies yet there is never any accountability…Only ridiculous complaints about “in real time”fact checking. What a world !!!
Tuck Frump.
Screw you.
People Died, you idiot.
People died and Donny used this opportunity to score points..apparently thinking Pete was still in charge…God I wish! The poor traffic controller would have been cared about and not worried about being fired! Imagine you are a disabled controller striving to do a good job and you learn the president, your boss, thinks you are less than human? How would you feel?
Exactly, Ryan.
Remember his 2016 campaign where he very visibly and creepily made fun of a disabled journalist?!? As I stated earlier, his sociopathy is getting worse and manifesting itself more and more
It's called "cognitive decline." He now speaks on a 5th grader's level.
As a retired 5th grade teacher, I can authoritatively say that's giving him waaaaay too much credit. 😈
A reporter challenged his accusatory rant earlier today, pointing out that we didn’t yet even the names of the victims & this should be a time for grieving, not blaming. Trump replied, “What do the names matter”?!?!?! No words…
But I was so surprised and happy to hear that reporter speak up!!! Brave!!! More of this please…
Sociopaths gonna sociopath.
Thank you Kathy Rolland. The "press corp" particularly the 'DC Press Corp' seems be the walking dead EXCEPT just like the example you reported - just a relevant, poignant question.
I will be taking names.
Like as a result of his 1/6/2021 insurrection? Get out of the cult.
The bigger the tragedy, the bigger the circus. Absolutely shameless.
And Trump is an unfunny clown leading the show.
Absolutely right Kathy, and all that in a week and a half. Brace yourself, only about four years left.
“MeidasTouch posted: ‘Trump's handling of this situation should be treated as one of the biggest scandals in presidential history.’”
After reading stories about Trumpists’ handling of the D.C. air disaster, I wrote to the editors of The NY Times and Washington Post that they should publish editorials urging opponents of Trumpism in the US House of Representatives to bring forward the first call for impeachment of Trump. It won’t be voted on given the make up of the House, but it will be the first shot across the bow of Trumpism’s leaky wooden boat.
If “DEI” is the reason for the plane collision, and if he hates people of color that much, why does he use spray tan **to make his skin look DARKER**?
Trump will never admit the truth—his first instinct is always to deflect, blame, and fabricate. The real tragedy isn’t just the disaster itself, but the fact that we have a president who prioritizes self-preservation over real leadership. It’s up to the rest of us to make sure the facts don’t get buried under his lies.
He doesn’t seem to think first. Just says whatever comes into his head.
That is because his instinct is to strike back first at others. He never accepts responsibility for anything.
Heather writes:
“But there is a larger story than that of Trump’s attempt to blame Democrats for a disaster that happened on his watch. His administration seems to be trying to replace the government Americans have created through their representatives over centuries to promote the interests of all Americans with a group of white men who can operate as they see best, without restraint.”
I am compelled to respectfully suggest that there is an even larger story than this government replacement story that we must come to grips with immediately. That story is the organized effort to eliminate all insights gained from The Enlightenment.
Authoritarians only survive when the people they rule are too ignorant of their options… Ignorance frequently, resulting from an overload of fear-based input from those leaders. But that ignorance also results from a lack of wisdom gained from self discipline and self knowledge generating activities, such as going to churches that actually teach the principles of Jesus or studying Buddhism or studying certain forms of martial arts. The Enlightenment gave humanity a huge opportunity to transform into a culture of progress that benefits all over time. Authoritarians fear The Enlightenment. Therefore, I believe the aim of Trump and the Christo-fascists and the tech oligarchs is to make humanity too fearful and stupid to resist their plans.
Yes! Anti-thinking, anti-curiosity, anti-science, anti-spirituality, anti-love, anti-responsibility.
Merchants of doubt on steroids!
Deflect and blame..St. Peter is getting another book for the christo-fascists!
Exactly! 😢 Another way of seeing it is that they want to create the world portrayed in The Matrix… Where everybody thinks they live in one reality and it’s a reality where they just go about their ordinary lives
I thought Nixon was the worst president I would ever see. Unfortunately, trump beats him a thousand times. Dispicable.
First Nixon, then Bush, Jr. Now Trump. The only worse person I can think of would be JD Vance.
You forgot Ronnie the Ray Gun, described perfectly by James Garner who worked with him in SAG: "amiable dunce."
You are right! I must be suppressing that memory.
Jane, I never thought it possible that any president could actually make Nixon look good. And yet, here we are. 🙄
I said that very thing tonight!!
👊🏻<fistbump>
👊
My dad has said Trump makes GWB look like a statesman.
Your dad is right!
Nixon will never look good, too much blood on his hands
And Trump is even worse. It’s a comparison. I stand by my original assessment. It’s not an attempt to make Nixon look good. He was horrible, you’re right, but Trump is even worse. I have one additional thing to say: I will never get over or forgive babies in cages, forbidden even the consolation of strangers when they cried. Never! And that’s not to mention the ones who were lost in the shuffle, or put on an airplane to an orphanage in the Soviet Union. I don’t doubt for a red hot minute that he’s revving up to do something like that all over again. Irredeemable scumbag!
100% right, they are irredeemable. The cruelty is for any living creature, the more helpless the better for these vipers
And Jane, Trump will be the worst *2* presidents.
It's a new low but as between Nixon, Andrew Johnson undoing the Civil War and Trump it's hard to distinguish the all time worst. BUT Trump has another 1460-10.5 days to separate himself from that crowd.
In 'that' regard, I'm sure he will reign easily.
Deplorable…I love that word!!!