The United States is currently in the grip of an outbreak of the Cyclospora parasite, which causes severe diarrhea and has sickened more than 3,000 people across the U.S.
A government that can’t tolerate the truth will eventually dismantle every system designed to reveal it.
The experts disappear. The warnings are ignored. The suffering is hidden. And the people responsible insist everything is working exactly as it should.
The danger is not only that they’re lying to us. It’s that they’re systematically destroying our ability to know the truth at all.
I feel less safe than ever in this country as public health expertise is sidelined, those serving our nation lack essential support, and billions are spent glorifying one leader instead of strengthening the systems that protect us from disease and growing global threats
All those layoffs at important agencies (CDC, EPA, FDA, NOAA, DOE) were driven by the Project 2025 manifesto. Apparently these geniuses, like most of the Trump regime, did not think it through. Their zeal to dismantle the government was not about cost-cutting, certainly not about safety for the American people, but replacing democracy temporarily with anarchy and chaos as an intermediate step to the planned dictatorship.
Our masters most assuredly thought it through. Project 2025 is ultimately what it is proving itself to be: the most plausibly deniable ecogenocide program ever conceived.
Loren, I will go further and say this world is so messed up and incomprehensible that I can believe an unknown, other worldly entity has overtaken the earth. I’m not convinced of the goal but we’re being experimented on. Sound too crazy? (I am not certifiable 😊. ) I know I am not the only scared human out here.
Actually, Gloria -- not the least because as a both as a vet from a military family and as a journalist, though I myself have only seen one UFO (that in 1959), I have more [credible] UFO stories than I can count -- I think extraterrestrial invasion a possibility that most assuredly should be included in our catalogue of inquiries asking, "why are we being destroyed?" It would certainly explain the ecogenocide implicit in the smallpox-contaminated-blanket effect of the patriarchal conquest that overthrew the Gaian ethos of our first approximately 240,000 years, also the appearance of smoke-and-fire shrouded "deities," talking serpents, loquacious brush-fires and fiery wheels in the sky that fostered the patriarchal conquest. And we already know the core dynamic of colonial conquest: the invader merely finds locals who are morally imbecilic enough to become the conquerors' viceroys in exchange for guaranteed jobs as slavemasters once the conquest is complete. (Apparently the viceroy/slavemasters don't realize the terraforming we know as terminal climate change will eventually result an an atmosphere poisonous to humans -- or maybe that's the real reason they're all building bunkers.)
Not necessarily the diarrhea or the screwworms, measles, etc. Those are just vectors that opened up because the authors of Project 25 put forth a thesis that some lives matter more than others. Everything else is just details. I'm sure they think the plan is working to perfection.
Of course, because Christian Nationalists believe and preach that if something goes wrong with your health is it because you did not worship God in the proper way.
Judy, yeah, and we are paying them to be incompetent for the chaos wing of Trumplandia! Now, how could we cut their salaries to say $7.25 per hour? That would mean, since they hardly work at all, we would be paying them only a few bucks a week. That is a big cut from what they are getting now to wreck things.
C’mon! Really? When infrastructure, expertise and organization is severely disrupted - like the funding theft, firing and layoffs, gutting the mission of important organizations and watch-dog entities - that these small-gov’t, money-hungry, sycophants have done ( for self enrichment or funding things like ICE), then foodborne illnesses, industrial disasters, environmental degradation, infectious diseases and all the rest of what we are seeing is a direct consequence. There! All in one massive run-on sentence.
(Note: originally this was the first response to Signe's comment, above. Now, thanks to an AI lightning bolt that disappeared the entire text, it's so far down this thread, its vital facts will mostly be ignored. Accident? Somehow, given the sea of technologically omnipotent ChristoNazi malevolence in which we are all being drowned, I cannot but wonder.)
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Firstly, Signe, understand we are at war, and every soldier, buck private to commanding general, knows that in wartime, the one truly suicidal error is to underestimate the enemy, to “misunderestimate” (the Bush malapropism seems perfect for this context) enemy intentions and/or enemy capabilities. Note a few of the glaring historical examples: in WWII, the major under-estimators were Neville Chamberlain, the entire French government and Joseph Stalin. Winston Churchill and his Lend-Lease ally/financier Franklin Delano Roosevelt literally saved the world from them all. The British-Empire/U.S. alliance rescued us from the Franco/Chamberlain error, while U.S. aid delivered mostly by the Royal Navy enabled Russian geography and “Comrade Winter” to save Stalin. But the U.S. was obviously too arrogant to heed the lesson, because its own “misunderestimations” damn near lost the Korean War and indisputably resulted in the U.S. Empire’s glaring defeats in the Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the democracy-destroying debacle of 9/11 and the looming defeat in the Iran War. And for us to fail to recognize what Project 2025 truly is – that it’s the operations order for a new reign of world-conquest Nazi terror including a new and radically expanded Holocaust – is to be party to our own genuinely apocalyptic underestimation of the enemy, quite possibly the deadliest in all human experience.
Secondly, it is a long-established fact that in the U.S. – even before its [methodically bipartisan] reduction to a failed state – the lower one’s income, the more deadly is sickness and disease. This is because in the always tacitly Nazified U.S. economy, adequate health care is available only to the wealthy. The rest of us are given what amounts to death care – that is, a deliberate, ever expanding denial of access to modern medicine. Low-income families whose children’s inoculations were formerly provided by the government at no cost are now denied these safeguards entirely; epidemics are becoming commonplace; and – precisely as our murderous Project 2025 masters intend – death by [resurrected] disease is skyrocketing as a result.
Thirdly, the op-order P2025 anti-vax strategy is clearly based on the fact the Covid epidemic proved that, even before the ChristoNazi ban on inoculations, deaths amongst low-income demographic groups – especially Blacks, Hispanics, First Nations peoples and Peoples of Color – radically outpaced deaths amongst those whose wealth grants them access to modern medicine. Given the longstanding, oft-repeated Chinese claim the U.S. started the epidemic – see https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/30/china/china-covid-origin-white-paper-us-intl-hnk – it is entirely possible the pandemic was a Project 2025 anti-vax test-run deliberately disguised by its international magnitude; anyone who assumes our masters aren’t Ted-Bundy-Evil enough to [gleefully] approve such an unprecedentedly outrageous atrocity is simply deluded.
Lastly, thanks to George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison (“Hutchison” is the correct spelling), we now know one of the primary purposes of neoliberalism’s Nazified economics is the [plausibly deniable] extermination of chronically impoverished people. (See “The Invisible Doctrine: the Secret History of Neoliberalism & How It Came to Control Your Life,” George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison [correct spelling]; Allen Lane: 2024; PDF: https://cdn.penguin.co.uk/dam-assets/books/9780241635902/9780241635902-sample.pdf ) Thus the ChristoNazi regime has weaponized disease, including any sickness the definitive symptoms of which are projectile diarrhea and explosive regurgitation. The regime is waging selective CBR (Chemical/Biological/Radiological) warfare on the entire nation, the military included. This is a form of ethnic “cleansing,” a crime against humanity, and the corollary fact the Democrats refuse to charge the ChristoNazi regime with it proves the Democratic Party’s collaboration in the destruction of our nation.
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(Sorry this vanished for a bit; my AI-contaminated computer disappeared my first effort as I was making a minor correction, necessitating an hour and 45 minutes of sheer drudgery to reconstruct it from memory, a chore all the more infuriating because the second effort, invariably formatted by the associated rage and frustration, can never begin to approach the quality of the first. This is why – though I have never before hated an inanimate object – I despise computers with an intensity of fury that is beyond my ability to describe and in this incident, as is typical, still has me trembling.)
Loren, this statement is exemplary of your brilliance: "The rest of us are given what amounts to death care – that is, a deliberate, ever expanding denial of access to modern medicine.” I am likely to steal that phrase, “death care” and hope you won’t mind if I sprinkle it liberally (pun intended) across BlueSky.
Dismantling of public health and health research is an intentional step to gain power. They’re undermining experts in all fields because experts in their fields are usually really good at recognizing patterns in general and are usually the first to speak up against authoritarians. If the public believes that scientists and physicians have been lying to them all these years, then the public won’t believe physicians and scientists when they speak up against authoritarianism. There’s also a side effect of making us all sicker, which makes it harder for us to organize against authoritarianism because we will be spending more time/effort to survive. Undermining the experts/intellectuals is what dictators and fascists do. In this case, they took doubts that were already brewing around vaccines/science and validated those doubts by weaving the doubts into the government institutions. The “wellness industry” is part of this strategy.
I understand what you’re saying, L M, and agree about the undermining of expertise (see the excellent book, *The Death of Expertise*), but I rather doubt that the outcome of explosive diarrhea is celebrated by the afflicted and their families and friends. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that our food supply is no longer being monitored and thus the health of people not protected. Even the MAGAts should be able to discern that.
You mean the supporters of maga? Dont forget that they’re listening to RFK who is telling them that as long as they drink their raw milk, eat only protein, avoid vaccines, have the right genetics and go to tanning beds, they will be uniquely strong to avoid any sort of illness caused by pathogens.
Signe, the challenge is that so many Americans are so overwhelmed that they can't even take time to realize what is being done to them, particularly those under Trump's spell. They are being told by FoxFraud that it is Biden's and Obama's fault that there are problems and our media are not covering what is true while repeating the lies as if they are true. We do need to find ways to reach the American people who are not engaged and let them know they are pawns in a deadly game of "Let Corporations rule Because They Know How to Do Things." They don't know and if it were not for the government's super support of those corporations, they would not be close to where they are now. The people, if asked really don't want to be ruled by corporations or fools or ignoramuses, but don't realize they are being had by the inhabitants of Trumplandia, the cause of most of their current woes. The whiny rich white boys are the only ones benefiting from Trump's bullying BS.
Ruth — well said! One of our lyricist posters needs to take "whiny rich white boys” and re-tool that song, “dirty white boy” with some new 2026 lyrics. I would love to see it!
Signe K, it's "only" 3000 people so far affected by cyclospora. HCR readers understand this is one of countless, preventable situations created by trump's incompetent administration. And that these crises are harbingers of many more to come. MAGAs suffer from a lack of empathy, so unless they are one of the 3000 they dismiss the problem and don't look at the larger picture (dangerous food supply.) Until it hits them. By the time enough trump supporters have been negatively impacted by trump's craziness (and they realize it's trump's fault) it will be game over for our republic.
GMB, true, and when they do become infected with something, they will blame it on Biden or Obama or claim it isn't the bug that MAGA/Trumplandia released. It is amazing how well MAGAs can pretend things aren't what they actually are. It must be a game for them to see who is best at it. I think all of them are losing to their Baby Donnie, though!
L M, we are going to have to intervene. I am not much of an organizer, but there are folks out here who are. Maybe we need to focus on children's health to get people motivated to stop this insanity. Trumplandia are merchants of death and are totally OK with that. Our senate Republicans and a few Democrats are responsible for this because they knew full well what they were approving and let an old man with dementia dictate to them. Maybe they don't even have a "better judgment" for them to stand against.
Ruth, yes, children's health as many parents are now refusing Vitamin K shots and vaccines for their children, not only endangering them, but the rest of us. I once had a discussion about measles vaccines with my then LMT. He wanted to know if I would vaccinate my children andI said yes. Shortly after that he praised the polio vaccine. He was at one time a follower of Baghwan Sri Rajneesh, so that might tell you something.
EUWDTB, yes, no Democrat would! That is why I think Fetterman is moving quickly in the direction of Trumplandia so he can fit right in with Republicans there, like his fellow PA senator McCormick, a pathetic sycophant if you ever saw one!
The corporate Democrats who are so soaked in PAC money they have no real say in how they handle the decisions of their office are in fact complicit in where we are today. They are beholden and afraid. Go to AIPAC Tracker and integrityindex.us. You will be amazed at the number of Democrats receiving millions from AIPAC. Look at the other PACs who donate to Democrats. Now go look at which committees these people are serving on. Now ask yourself how in the name of everything sane could the Democratic Party lose to this guy-twice?! It took decades to land us where we are living under a fascist White House and Government. The Democratic Party was playing business as usual while the Heritage Foundation worked away, the Christian Nationalists did their thing, and the Tea Party organized which all morphed into MAGA.
Only until we stop excusing the ineptitude and cowardice of the Democratic Party elite will we experience real change. Only until we stop being the victim to those big bad Republicans and take responsibility for where we are will we get out of this.
I can’t help thinking about the steps the Third Reich took leading up to the Holocaust. Deny Jews jobs, relocate them to horrendous, overcrowded places (eg Warsaw ghetto), send them to the concentration camps, cut their food to starvation levels, force them to labor for the Reich until they were no longer profitable and then gas/burn them. Those stresses would overwhelm most people’s ability to resist.
Now….what are all those immense “detention” prisons for? Why require poor people to work any job just to keep their healthcare and food supports? Why the increase in private for-profit prisons where - according to the Constitution - prisoners can be forced into modern slavery, to the benefit of corporations? I am not saying that the government will ultimately kill off huge numbers of immigrants (the new Jews) and protestors, journalists, etc. Or maybe they will.
It’s been pretty obvious for quite a while that republicans really don’t care how many of us peasants get harmed, injured, sick or even die as long as they can “get those libs”. MAGA doesn’t seem to realize there is nothing in place to protect them from the same harm. While billionaires get richer and richer and our government gets further and further from giving rats ass if we live or die.
The GOP has put its voter base in an "alternative facts" bubble ever since it created Fox Entertainment, 25 years ago.
So of course by now its voters don't realize what the GOP is actually doing in DC.
Remember the "death panel" myths?
This has been going on for years and years already.
The only solution is that WE stop demonizing GOP voters, recognize that they are victims of a very sophisticated and truly fascist propaganda machine, and then constantly engage in real, respectful debates with them. First, we need to focus on building common ground. Then, we can challenge more of the lies they've been made to believe.
We don't need an organization to do so. Many people have GOP voters in their family etc. That's where it all starts!
EUWDTB, I have been engaging with this group since 2008. They do not accept "that they are victims of a very sophisticated and truly fascist propaganda machine, and then constantly engage in real, respectful debates with them. First, we need to focus on building common ground. Then, we can challenge more of the lies they've been made to believe." All they reply with is "no, yours is propaganda and lies, not mine!" Almost 20 years of trying to counter their belief structure, and I have come to believe that only cult deprogramming will work.
Just look at how Adam Mockler goes to MAGA rallies and then has real, respectful debates with MAGA voters. Very often, by the end of the discussion, they actually agree with him.
We need to study how he does it and then never give up. Because it's the only option.
Ally, you were in LE and that may explain some of what you have seen. I was in a high school, mix of political opinions. A lot of the problem was in the coaching corner which for years was all men. We did have a few conservative women, but not many.
I hope you are right. My alternative facts adult son doesn’t speak to me at all anymore. It’s reached this point over many years and many attempts to do better. We always end up in a fight, so no contact is better. I wonder how many other families have just given up.
Kathryn, I’m so sorry. This administration continues to degrade the ability to have productive conversations. It was accelerated by the making “politically correct” comments incorrect and letting insults fly. Our families with differing political views are a microcosm of the relationships (or lack of) we see all over this country.
We are in desperate need of deprogramming those whose views have been distorted by the lies and venom that have seeped into our society.
I’m hoping, with time, all of these painful wounds will be healed.
Ally House, yes, and that is why we need to fight them with everything we have. There is nothing positive about the whole of Trumplandia. They have done nothing good for the American people and don't plan to. They just like to keep those who are not well-informed or are desperate to do harm to those they have been groomed to hate, on the hook to be called on whenever our Baby Donnie and his Klan want a despicable human being elected to some office or other or when they need liars to jump in to claim that ICE men were being run down by a person's car. Those folks have chosen to be despicable just like their creepy boss.
Signe, I do not see in the thread that follows your comment any significant discussion of the christofascist (evangelical) aspect of the P2025 agenda. I think it matters.
The P2025 operatives have "thought it through," but not in the context most of us would.
Christofascist evangelicals are deeply skeptical of science. They prefer to rely on "divine healing." The Prosperity Gospel is the dominant theology among evangelicals. This doctrine is not concerned only with financial prosperity, but with all forms of prosperity, including health. The belief among evangelicals (and far too many non-evangelical Christians) is that "God blesses those who are faithful to him." So if you get sick, and you and all your Christian friends pray for your healing, God will heal you. If you are not healed, it's because "there is unconfessed sin in your life."
The extension of this doctrine is that all the "right" people will be saved, and all the "wrong" people will die. That is the point.
The agencies you mentioned are either being dismantled because they "do not honor God," or they are being repopulated with people who rely on "evangelical faith" rather than fact-based science.
When reality reveals the fallacy of this doctrine, practitioners simply refuse to acknowledge it or they cover it up.
To see how this plays out in life-or-death situations, look no further than the command of christofascist evangelical Pete Hegseth, and how our wounded service members are being mistreated.
Donald's obsession with Iran isn't entirely his own. He has demonstrated countless times that his opinions have been fed to him by influential people. Another goal of christofascist evangelical doctrine is to bring about The Millennium, when Jesus returns to earth and rules the world for "a thousand years' reign of peace." According to evangelical doctrine, this cannot happen until the "Battle of Armageddon" is fought in which the forces of good defeat the forces of evil, and "Satan is bound forever." This battle will supposedly take place in the Middle East, according to evangelical misinterpretation of the biblical book of The Revelation.
What you describe Dale is a harrowing condition now loose on the land! It completely justifies Jefferson's insistence (and Monroe's) on the critical concept of complete religious autonomy and his later coining of the phrase "a wall of separation between church and State" which deeply guided the philosophical intent behind the the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause in the First Amendment!
Now there's a massive legal battle playing out in the lower federal courts over the Johnson Amendment, the 70-year-old provision in the U.S. tax code that bans all 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organizations—including churches, charitable foundations, and universities—from participating or intervening in political campaigns. Under this law, if an organization wants to keep its tax-exempt status and allow its donors to write off their contributions, it cannot endorse, oppose, or fund any candidate running for public office.
For now, pastors can still preach heavily on moral, social, and political issues from a theological standpoint, but explicitly telling a congregation to vote for or against a specific candidate remains a violation of federal tax law. However, this will likely be appealed to the Supreme Court. You think their "originalist" tendencies will prevail?
The blind "faith" of religion should not be weaponized with the free speech rights of individuals to provide tax-free religious businesses permission to earn money by supporting designated candidates. That is disgusting, immoral and dangerous! In Jefferson's own words, we now definitely need more than ever "a wall of separation between church and State"!
Philip, although you are right in every respect, the tax law is being ignored with impunity. One commenter here has related the story of attending a gathering at a Roman Catholic church in Nebraska (either Lincoln or Omaha) and finding Trump campaign posters displayed on the walls of the building interior.
Here in Arkansas, Baptist and non-denominational pastors routinely instruct their congregations on how to vote on issues and whom to vote for. With Sarah Huckabee Sanders in the governor's mansion, nothing will be done to discourage the practice.
Lots of well-meaning laws are routinely ignored everyday. And few among us would want to live in a police state. However, a SCOTUS ruling reinforcing this tax law would clarify that mixing politics and religion is contrary to our nation's founding principles and is still illegal.
Oh I think they most definitely thought through Project 2025. Because they have been planning this for so long and 2/3 of the country gave them the opportunity they are succeeding brilliantly.
Marj, you are right, they have been planning this takeover for at least 60 years, even before Nixon and his criminal crew took office. They have too often succeeded, so we are in trouble, but need to stand against this hoard of incompetent, but truly evil members of the Trump Kiddies' Kindergarten Klan.
Project 2025 factored in a large number of expendable people, mostly those who were most vulnerable to these illnesses! Billionaires families need not worry!
Louis, you are right about the expendables. That is shameful, but nearly everything Trumplandia does is appalling. It is so sad that so many Americans are either OK with it or too scared to speak up. They haven't realized yet that they are potential targets of this insanity too. How do we make it clear that they are not safe from Trumplandia's claws?
It functioned exactly as intended - kneecapping the federal administrative agency system so that it could be claimed that unrestrained capitalism does a better job.
I think another goal was to stop regulating private businesses who pollute, or take over natural resources, engage in shoddy work or produce shoddy products, and take advantage of their consumers, all to create more profit. There's a money/power angle to a lot of plans in Project 2025.
Yes. I had told my daughter that the water, air and food would not be safe, and that products would not be safe either. The baby formula problem under Biden made worse by extending into more realms.
Keri, yes this is a problem. Our media has helped to create the problem and has worked hard to make things worse. They cover Trump and his white house toddler pool as though they are an unstoppable force, putting Trump as the top story since before he rode down his stupid golden escalator into an insane world of Trumplandia.
The media, even NPR, thought "balanced" meant to cover Trump as much as even the actual presidents of the United States: Obama and Biden. Even now, the first two words spoken on nearly all NPR news reports are "president Trump." It is disgusting particularly when despite NPR's and CBS's efforts to normalize Trump, he pushed/threatened Congressional Republicans into cutting funding for public broadcasting. To me that is when one knows there is enormously deep corruption. It is hard to see who is not involved in it.
My "Democratic" senator, Fetterman, has proven that Trumplandia can reach and spread corruption nearly anywhere (OK, Fetterman was never what he claimed to be. It appears he was really a Republican but thought he would have a better chance in his neck of the woods if he ran as a "Democrat," one who lies, deceives, and sells out to an ignoramus for the power he thought he could get, just as Republicans do. Now, he pretends to be "bipartisan"; he isn't! He's Republican all the way!
Judy, I suspect the reason he won is the same reason I voted for him. He was running against a quack doctor who didn't even live in PA, Oz. No matter how crappy Fetterman is, Oz would have been worse. We who care in PA are working on getting a good, honest person to primary Fetterman in 2028. Now that we all know just what Fetterman is, we have something to work with. There are some really good Dems in PA who could run. What we really don't want is another Fetterman!
Judy, there was probably some sympathy involved, but more importantly, Pennsylvania is a "swing state" with almost equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans, plus a significant number of Independents. The only way for a Democratic candidate to pull enough voters from the other side is to sound like a Republican.
Democratic voters in these mostly rural states hope their guy will be persuaded by the Democratic Caucus, but it's a crapshoot, often with disappointing results. See: Joe Manchin, Kristin Sinema.
It appears that one diseased "public servant" leaves but is replaced by several more diseases nationwide. The cyclospora and screwworm advancements are only relatively governable compared to this administration's ineptness and incompetence. A push for Annie Andrews is now paramount. Donate if you can.
RFK Jr. is der Trumpster's Adolph Eichmann, managing the anti-vax population-extermination campaign, the withholding of vital inoculations our masters' equivalent of Zyklon B. (Might this be his vengeance on the nation that murdered his father and his uncle? That's the only explanation I can think of for how someone raised a progressive becomes a ChristoNazi Obergruppenführer.)
Loren, anything is possible, I suppose, with this fascist administration. Rumor and "make it up as you go along" is their reason to rule while common sense questions are themselves questioned due to the tone that challenges those who create chaos. I can't psychoanalyze RFK; I'm still trying to wrap my head around why he holds the office he has. All the Kennedys are rolling in their graves.
Riad, my understanding is that RFK Jr. has his office because Donald promised him "something" in exchange for his pre-election support. The Kennedy name used to carry some weight with Americans. As I replied to Loren, RFK Jr. is insane, but he clings to his weird health beliefs, so Donald gave him that office for lack of any other incompetent to fill the position.
RFK Jr. retains the position because his anti-science views comport with those of the P2025 cabal of christofascists led by Russell Vought.
Ahhh…yes, you are correct. Many thanks for that reminder of the quid pro quo exchange between Trump and RFK. Essentially, they found each other in order to scratch each other’s back. That does seem to be it in a nutshell.
Loren, I'm not convinced that RFK Jr. is motivated by vengeance. More likely is that he was psychologically fragile to begin with. The violent and very public losses of his uncle and father caused him to have a mental breakdown that was never acknowledged or treated. In short, he's nuts.
Once his mind went off the rails, it just kept spiraling in a fractal pattern.
Nothing he says or does suggests to me that he has any ulterior motives. He's just barking mad, clinging to little modules of thought that make sense to him in his fog of insanity.
Democratic candidate for Lindsey Graham's seat in South Carolina. She was giving him one hell of a run for his money when he was alive. Keep the momentum going. She needs the help. I've donated three times already and I live in VA.
What was it Lindsey said when he was still rational, trump will destroy us & we will deserve it? Seems he was on to something. It's one thing to want to become a dictator & rule with an iron fist (tiny as it is) it's a whole other thing to completely dismantle what made the US a leader in science & medicine & philanthropy, you know soft power, & what made America great.
I figured that the US would eventually slide down the scale as the number one country in the world, no kingdom can last forever but I did NOT think we would do it to ourselves. I listened to my Mom when she would tell me that we would rot from within, I didn't dismiss the idea but it seems I should have paid a bit more attention to what she was saying.
Me too; I’ve become much more vigilant and careful. At this point it’s up to us to find out as much as we can from other sources, stock pile what we feel is appropriate for the future (masks, disinfectant), buy fruit/vegetables and other food stuff from local and organic, non agri-business monopoly sources (if we are lucky to live in an area that has them and can afford them) wash our hands frequently, continue to get vaccines, and pay attention more than ever to how we live and our actions. This intestinal parasite is just the tip of the iceberg I fear.
I had pointed this out in one of my pieces, since my book club read Project 2025 before Trump was reelected by the many conspiracy believing, racist, haters in the US.
I said it was going to turn the US into a third world country if even some of that stuff was enacted. It is now a country governed by conspiracy believing, mentally ill, racist, haters, not science.
I wrote this before Trump came to power, but one can consider health care too.
That is why we must recognize that we are engaged in a third American Revolution: the one in the 1770's from England, the one in the1860's from each other, and now this one in the 2020's from our very identity as a constitutional democratic republic. We absolutely had to prevail in the first two.That remains so for the third as well because losing this one will leave us with nowhere to go. Kelli accurately describes our path. We are the ones who must prervail.
Dr. Richardson's valiantly superb reporting reveals our plight is infinitely worse than 99.9 percent of us will ever dare admit: Trump is not only the destroyer of the United States; he is literally the personification of the Apocalypse, the end of the world.
Actually Al, by some counts this is our fourth revolution. You left out the Great Depression and New Deal. Seems these "resets" happen on a cycle every 80-year-old years or so.
That's why Trump and the regime don't want reporters asking pesky questions about them, or investigative journalism or even a news report that he had to fly home from the NATO Summit in Ankara on the old Air Force One instead of the Qatar plane he flew in on.
Dismantling agencies, DOGEing 100s of thousands federal employees, censoring government websites and history, scientists, researchers, doctors, etc. quitting, retiring or leaving the U.S. for better opportunities and conditions...A brain drain leaving our Nation even further diminished and behind. It will be very hard to get back to where we should be even when this finally ends, because, like you said, "they're systematically destroying our ability to know the truth at all".
There are multiple terms to describe this maladministration. The one that will be prominently featured in history books is "incredibly arrogant and egregious INCOMPETENCE". They really don't care who or how many people suffer and die. Heather's piece today makes it clear. Again.
During the early days of Covid, Trump said that we shouldn't test more. It would make "his" numbers look bad. So...people should suffer and die to make the "leader" look better. That is a psychopathic outrageously narcissistic position.
I hope Veterans across America are reading how our wounded troops in the Middle East are being treated. I'm getting a General Westmoreland feeling.
As a young medical student I was offended when one of the senior attending physicians casually remarked, “There ain’t no cure for stupid.” But living and practicing in the real world soon set me straight on that point.
Responses today resonate deeply. We must not be silenced by fear or even hesitancy in the face of disagreement. We must handle the inevitable disagreement with profound courage and tactful discernment.
Jane, we must do that, but not at the expense of holding those who orchestrated this atrocity accountable in some meaningful way. These mostly rich white men knew what they were doing, maybe even knew the harms their actions would cause, yet did it anyway.
Senate Republicans, for example, with a few Democrats approved absolutely appalling people for nearly all the offices in our government, then our Supreme Roberts 6 said it was OK for Trump and his Klan to fire anyone in the government who didn't agree with him. That is a definite kind of treason perpetrated against the American people, even putting people's lives at risk. Then our congressional Republicans with a partisan vote gave $70 Billion of our tax dollars to two paramilitary forces that are set against the people of this nation (ICE and CBP). That is unforgivable as is letting Steve Miller, a man elected to nothing by no one dictate what our policy on immigrants would be, letting Miller's hate push ICE/CBP into appalling cruelties with their street thuggery, murders, and concentration camp prisons. Americans don't want that, but, it has been done in our name anyway. Yep, unforgivable!!
David, thanks, I do try hard to keep up and to call for responsibility to be placed where it belongs, and right now, it is squarely on Trump and his Klan of sycophants!
And also by continuously writing and calling our elected representatives to inform them of our dissatisfaction with the state of affairs. We must demand better.
Horhai, I do think it will be hard to come back, but we can do this. It is going to take all of us together though, and a strong will to do our best to make things work, but not return to where we have been because clearly that didn't work well.
One step would be to cut corporate power since it is corporate America that helped to a huge extent to orchestrate Trumplandia and will support them to the bitter end. We have laws on the books to stop monopolies, to stop cheating, and so many of the things the corporate world is doing, but when Trumplandia employs only corrupt, incompetent, and ignorant actors for our government agencies, and our Supreme Roberts 6 ignore our Constitution, the comeback will be more challenging.
We must have a mechanism for holding those accountable who perpetrated this destruction. They stomped on our rights, put our lives and the lives of people around the world at risk. They want to steal even more power to disrupt, control, and take over. We on't have to allow it and shouldn't.
We messed up by not holding those who led the rebellion when our Civil War ended accountable. Then after the 1920 rampage of theft, deceit, and destruction that led to the Great Depression, no one paid for what they had done. We also failed after Nixon's criminal administration except in a few instances where a couple went to prison for short terms. The ones who actually caused the corruption were never held accountable in any of those cases I cited. That must change this time! I'm thinking, maybe losing half to 3/4 of their wealth, imprisonment for some, massive supervised public service, inability to run for any office at any level in this nation, some kind of penance, etc. That would be an adequate beginning.
Leslie, lying is a critical issue, but right now, it is not the Democrats who are making it a sacrament. Republicans seem to be required to lie at every opportunity as though it is necessary for being in the Party at all. They will lie even when it is not something important. Maybe it is just their practice run and every Republican, even the younger ones and older few who still have a conscience need a lot of practice to get the vocal inflections just right!
Unfortunately, our media at most levels can't even identify the lies as lies. They use "no real evidence, can't be substantiated, a false statement, not accurate, " or "untrue." None of those has the power of the word "lie!"
Maybe the problem is that Repubs don't want to be seen as liars or called that and so are working hard to block the term. The problem is that when Trump lies with nearly every breath as do his sycophants, it is hard to get people to pay attention because it seems those folks doing the reporting don't want to be sued or something because they called a lie a lie. Maybe that's where We the People come in. Maybe we just have to be the ones to call Republicans out at every turn and do it loudly. Maybe we need a rating system to see which Republican lied most often that day in public. Of course, Trump would win, but I bet Hegseth, RFK,Jr., Blanche, and Leavitt would be battling for second place every day.
The media is a huge reason for the predicament we are in. Reagan repealed the Fairness Doctrine of truth in the media. I remember in the '70s (?) when a True/False block on the side of a political ad would indicate how true or false the statement was. Believe it was decided by an impartial organization. When we allowed the media to control political debates instead of the League of Women Voters, that was the beginning of biased questions.
Daniel, that is so sad related to Ohio. In the past Ohio has had some pretty good folks in office. I especially like Sherod Brown and have and will support him for the Senate. He got cheated out of his seat in 2024 and needs that seat back for the sake of the people of OH.
Ruth, that 'past' is well in the rear-view mirror! Today, Ohio is more known for the presently incarcerated, former Ohio Speaker Larry Householder. The corruption here is, I firmly believe, the model other Republican controlled, corrupt states follow. Once it works in Ohio... Sen. Brown is a good, honorable man, but he's 72 years old. We here, and throughout the nation, sorely need an influx of young, strong candidates, and we can't seem to find them, at least here. Sen. Brown was not cheated in '24; he was comfortable that his seat was safe, and he was proven wrong. Ohio turned during the Clinton years, due to the passage of NAFTA, that took away so many blue-collar jobs. All the yokels along the Ohio River blamed "them dang Dem-O-Crats", and have never come back. Just ask Tim Ryan, who should have defeated JD Vance, but allowed all the money to blame not him directly, but the Dems for making their lives poorer. Even though the truth was obviously Republican policy on both the state and National levels. I'll be a vocal backer of Sen. Brown right up to the Nov election, but I sure wish folks my kids ages were in the running.
Daniel, I am sorry to hear your commentary about the 2024 election. I heard Brown speaking often to the people of Ohio and the US and he talked a lot about standing with the people. He had ideas to improve life and supported the bills to bring more jobs to the state and to work on green energy. I honestly don't get how he lost to a jerk who knows nothing and is only in Trump's back pocket so he can smooch as often as demanded.
I really do think Democrats are guilty as well - and on a level that is significant. Take redistricting, for instance. It is a way of lying as it can (hopefully for those proposing it) result in a favorable but false representation of the people. The entire system right now is considering doing it - or has already done it from the Supreme Court down to state level governments. Right now, we the people - it seems - are the only part of our governing design who can fix it
it. Yes, we have to get the vote out by helping all voters in red AND blue districts to vote.
Voters are turning away from MAGA at greater levels than politicians are.
The system will be more easily convinced if we start getting blue votes in red districts - and getting them at good percentages.
I don't think MAGA politicians have any idea how they are now damaging their own followers.
It's summertime and we are now warned against eating the fruits of summer - berries, lettuce and other fresh produce -- foods we've waiting all winter and spring to enjoy - in case we get a case of "explosive diarrhea" (or worse) from the parasite. This is a minor side note - but cooking the berries in a cobbler or crumble will kill the parasite. So, if you find, like me, you don't want to give them up all together this is the way to go! Sometimes I wonder if this administration is actively trying to kill us.
lauriemcf, there are those in the know who believe that is what is happening, banking on sick people being too scared to try to stop the insanity in case medical care might be withheld from them because they aren't the right political persuasion! That truly is criminal!
I'm always amazed and humbled every time I come across a piece of writing that so perfectly and succinctly predicted the future. It proves to me there is clairvoyance in art. Heller wrote this in the late 1950's. It was published in 1961.
"It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character."
''The Trump Doctrine: If We Stop Counting, Nothing Is Wrong''
The Trump administration has apparently discovered the cure for bad news: stop collecting it.
Cyclospora is sending Americans sprinting toward bathrooms, so FoodNet made reporting optional for it and several other pathogens. Other CDC systems still track the parasite, but the nation’s premier active-surveillance network now concentrates on salmonella and toxin-producing E. coli. This is called “maintaining vigilance,” much as closing your eyes is called “improving the scenery.”
Meanwhile, flesh-eating screwworms are spreading through Central American wildlife and American livestock while Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins blames Joe Biden. One assumes Biden personally carried the maggots across the border in Hunter’s laptop. The administration also thinned the ranks of the USDA professionals needed to contain the pest, because nothing defeats a biological threat like fewer veterinarians.
Overseas, Trump insists America “holds all the cards,” although Iran appears to control the Strait of Hormuz, the card table, and possibly the casino’s valet parking. At Port Shuaiba in Kuwait, survivors say commanders ignored warnings and left troops inadequately protected before an Iranian drone attack killed six service members.
Pete Hegseth assured the public that almost 90 percent of the injuries were “minor.” In Pentagon bookkeeping, that can apparently include shrapnel, lung damage, concussions, impaired hearing, impaired vision, and multiple surgeries. You are not “seriously injured” unless you might die within 72 hours. Survive until Thursday and congratulations, soldier, you are officially inconvenienced.
Then Lindsey Graham died, completing one of Washington’s strangest political transformations: from telling Trump to go to hell to helping him renovate the place.
Graham once warned, “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed...and we will deserve it.”
He spent the next decade helping Trump prove him right.
It doesn't take much imagination to guess what the president threatened Graham with or promised him in return for his support. I'd love to be inside Lindsay's mind now that he's in eternity, whatever/wherever that is.
The actual suffering is the one thing that cannot be hidden especially when it has become part of the quotidian reality for so many American households. Senior GOP leaders know this very well but they cannot get Trump to seriously address the issues that most concern voters.
Here is some data from the morning Asian market summary.
"Asian markets traded lower on Monday as escalating geopolitical tensions in the Gulf and Iran's claims to have closed the Strait of Hormuz sent Brent crude surging roughly 3% to around $78.50 a barrel. The jump in oil prices stoked inflation fears globally ...". And, gets Cheato's attention.
******************
General Barry McCaffrey this AM 7/13 on 'Money, Power & Politics with Stephanie Ruhle':
Trump will not use ground troop power. The U.S. Navy will not solve the Problem.
"Where is this all this going" asks the General, "Confrontation with no end".
It is 100% on the American person to know the truth. If people want to sit and stare at the inane junk that they scroll through and believe it to be true then that is on all of us. If people haven't been willing to look around and figure out that things are really stinky around America, then they are deliberately ignorant.
It is time to stop excusing the lazy behavior of the voters in America on that nasty corrupt media everyone likes to complain about but still watches.
Willful ignorance is tremendously different from propaganda.
Sen. Graham demonstrated the truth of your statement. He also demonstrated why we are lost as a nation, with little, if any, hope of recovery. It is when the Grahams, who do know the truth, bury the truth to gain the favor of the evil king that you know the country you cherish is gone. When a true jackass like Kennedy is put in charge of the nation’s health you better know it is time to abandon all hope. This administration has stated that those who serve in the military are idiots. Those are Trump’s very words. You may, if you choose, and we did, elect him despite his honesty as to the kind of leader he would be and apparently be fine with the human tragedies he creates.
These columns, and those of others whose courage I admire, are wonderful. But look at the numbers my friends. Look at the numbers. We are not winning. To those who are young, and I am not, I say flee this sinking ship while there still is time. As a famous coach once said about his pathetic team, “This is who we are.”
All fascists and neofascists regimes not only need to hide the truth, they need something even more important, as experts have shown: constant incompetence.
In a democracy, the exact opposite is true. Incompetent governments tend to be voted out (if the media are doing their job).
Fascism however vitally needs incompetence. It needs the economy to become worse, diseases to become worse, etc.
Why?
Because they need a high level of cynicism, so that people give up all hope for a better future and stop all resistance against those in power.
That's the goal behind slashing vital government agencies.
The twisting of truth has been in gear since trump road that escalator down and it continues at high speed now using AI as well to replace reality with whatever the source wants. Is the source good? Is the source bad? We can't tell.
Why is America so dysfunctional? Does no-one worry about your diplomats from the State Dept failing to negotiate and relying on 'megaphone diplomacy. Can you not keep talking - dot the i and cross the Ts. What happened to the win-win 'Art of the Deal?
From the Guardian:
“We’re taking over the strait. They’ve got nothing,” the US president told Fox & Friends.
Referring to the strait of Hormuz, he continued: “We’re going to guard it. We’re going to get paid for guarding it - a lot of money.”
“We’re going to be reimbursed, because the other nations are very wealthy. They’re on our side, and we can’t be expected to do that for nothing,” Trump said, as he suggested the US would charge countries for safeguarding passage through the dangerous waterway.
During the phone interview, Trump complained about the tactics of Iranian negotiators seeking changes in what he suggested was agreed during hours of talks over the weekend.
“Yesterday, they had an 11-hour meeting ... And everything was agreed to yesterday. And they leave the room, and they call back, and they say we had to make a couple of changes,” he added, without elaborating."
Such a damaged individual. We’re seeing a battle of the aged playing out where people seem to be dying the way they lived.
Lindsay Graham, ever the diva took the easy way out with sudden death by dissecting aortic aneurysm. Mitch McConnell is bouncing back from the ninth circle of hell just to torture us. Trump the malignant narcissist is taking us all with him for the ride.
One of the more favorable obits out there, thanks to Frau Katze. Graham helped the author get some key protection legislation passed, who also acknowledges his vital support for Ukraine over the years, most recently in pushing the procedures under which Ukraine would get licensing rights to produce its own Patriot missile system.
But the rest -- a reminder that everything that comes into contact with Trump dies, often in a truly abominable, wretched way...
Yes ICTT, they do. What I can say for Graham is that a broken clock is right twice a day. He did do some good things; however, his betrayals to the Constitution of our nation and allegedly, to his so called "best friend" John McCain, will not serve him well when history continues to be written. I say "allegedly" because the relationship between McCain and Graham is too personal and well beyond any right, or "feeling" I may have, of what it may have been.
As the saying goes Senator Graham… 1 AahSh_t wipes out 100 Attaboys. Your ending was just karma. I’m sure when you see your old friends John McC, his greeting will be “Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot, over…”
As a shy young Catholc middle-class child in the 1950s I was taught never to use 'bad' words. I still don't. But finally, with every headline, every report of what "he" says or is doing, while pulling my hair out, waving my arms and jumping up and down, I want to scream at the top of my lungs, in all caps and bold, "IS HE F**KING MAD???!!!??$?#**#!?"
" a reminder that everything that comes into contact with Trump dies, often in a truly abominable, wretched way..." Good! So Putin and Erdogan and Mojtaba are on the way out?
And we are being destroyed piece by shit piece. No shit (please forgive my use of words but I can no longer be nice.) Everything good is being destroyed. On food pathogens, boil everything. Do not eat any more fresh fruit. So far my apples and peaches haven’t given me the food borne diarrhea but no more purchases.
Everything is falling apart. 1984 is taking the Government Think messaging to lie repeatedly until believing lies is all we will accept. The Dawn of Total Deconstruction is at hand. We must fight on all fronts. If we riot in the streets Trump will activate the insurrection act and the military will be deployed into every city and town in the nation. The midterms will be suspended.
We must organize nationally to send an army of volunteers to red states on Election Day to assist with transportation of voters. Now is the time to mobilize.
Trying to live only on processed foods is probably going to kill you anyway. That's why you must tackle this problem of food safety and it must be tackled at source. Surely even food producers will demand this because of the threat it poses to their businesses. What's the point of a Golden Dome missile defence system if you're all shitting yourselves?
I don’t eat factory food. I don’t include sugar. Generally low carbs diet. I make the best pizza in the world using whole wheat mixed with white flour. I love making eggplant with a variety of hard cheeses. ( I’m an Italian boy not Jewish, lol.) I make the perfect veggie burger. It’s time to make my whole wheat wrap with sautéd spinach, egg, cheese, flax and chia seed power, a touch of vinegar… bye.
Along with their many other crimes, these unprincipled, greedy, narcissistic old men, in the US and across the globe, is their damage to older human beings who are healthy in mind, body, and spirit, who care about their neighbors, who don’t want to harm others, who are contibutors of good rather than evil. Their is enough ageism without them, but they have added layers of ignorant generalizations.
I think your insight is spot on across the globe! And because of the children we just have to do all that we can. And I would say patriarchy along with oligarchy and other archies. Why the Epstein Files are so important and the work of Anonymous and Bellingtoncat?. It is around the world corruption with pieces here and there from old world families to all the corporations from colonial times on to various religious systems, to academia and ivory towers which was written about by of all people C S Lewis in his syfy series and the academic corporation NICE.
"Patriarchy" wrote the US Constitution, created our currency, fought two World Wars and the Civil War, invented airplanes, cars, electricity, medicine, pharmaceuticals, central heating, birth control, vaccines, computers, software, soccer...and even the computers and the software and the internet that allow you to express your anger here daily.
Oh come on. So they baked bread and made the beds? Sure, history and the absence of (male invented) birth control restricted women. But why argue a hopeless position? The comment to which I replied walked about "patriarchy" in a bumper sticker slogan kind of way. It deserved a factual reply.
Also infused the dna of our nation with fascism through accepting slavery! Patriarchy fostered the all out assault on Indiginous Americans by moving them from their homelands or outright killing them! Easy on the inventions AK, women calculated the orbits of our first space flights when a 16k hand held calculators was the only device available? Ever hear of Ada Lovelace if not read up on HER! Pharmaceuticals like the poison pumped into cancer victims that killed all cells not just cancer cells!
Lou -- I'll go easy on you. Slavery began with, it appears, Egyptians. 25% or so of Athens and Rome were slaves. 60,000 Jewish slaves dragged from Jerusalem built the Colosseum. Slavery here began with the British as there were no "Americans" at the time. "Indigenous Americans" had slaves too.
Ada Lovelace was one of a relatively tiny handful of women inventors, along with Curie and a few others. They get hearty consolations prizes.
"layers of ignorant generalizations"? Without them, there would not be Letters from an American. And without that, you guys would be forced into Mahjong and Bingo games. So your "old" people are better than the ones who work in government?
There's no way that photo of McConnell is real of him sitting in a hospital bed in JEANS after a month plus of no word. Btw, he also appears to be younger in it as well. I call B.S. It's either AI or an old image that's been photoshopped, but it ain't real.
the thing about being in the public eye is that there will always be people who will dig up something we don't want revealed. it's obviously true with Trump. with the 180 degree turnaround that Graham did, i'm pretty sure it was true for him, as well...
Successful politicians have this survivalist element ingrained in their DNA. It’s not pretty. I have often ridiculed Biden for using it. After all, he allowed Clarance Thomas to climb the legal evolutionary trail. He tossed Anita Hill under the bus to survive. So what do I think of him? Like so many other politicians, I wouldn’t want them living next door to me to be able to smell their stench. I would call the better ones necessary for survival. Ok, I’m really being hard I know.Mayor Mandami of New York is one I fully admire. I don’t get to sense this good feeling often. With presidents, I can’t say I’ve fallen in love with any in my lifetime. The good ones: LBJ - great progressive legislation and I spent my youth on the streets protesting that stupid useless Vietnam war. That was the good ones. Jimmy Carter just wanted to smile like JFK to win election. And btw, his photo is the only one I hve on my wall the reminds me of the goodness he achieved post president. Bill Clinton? Shit, he had to get bjs in the oval and didn’t leave much for Al Gore. And he signed the NAFTA Accords leaving millions of American workers disemployed. That of course is arguable. Everything is arguable. Now we revenge vote into office because of the stumbling Ole Joe and we revenge vote the Antichrist of the century. So now what. We end democracy as we have known it. As for the closeted Miss Lindsey, after everything is said and done, he only protected his sequined ass and here I’m not ridiculing his gender preferences just poking some innocent fun.
I won't believe that "proof of life" picture of McConnell and Chao isn't fakery unless and until Andy Beshear walks to a microphone and tells us he visited Mitch in his hospital/rehab facility and had a conversation of substance with him.
Graham may have experienced a quick death, but we have NO IDEA what he might be experiencing now. Fingers crossed he is in his own personal episode of THE TWILIGHT ZONE.
"Some men improve the world only by leaving it." Oscar Wilde
Mitch was often called the grim reaper because he prevented so much good legislation from being passed. He worked for the oligarchs and NEVER we the people.
I'd voted for Ted Cruz to go next or even Tom Cotton.
Everything spewing out that gaping orange oral sphincter is a lie, an inanity, or just the sound made by exploding rancid Velveeta no longer hemmed in by dementia-proof filters.
In fact, the more I think about it, the more it seems likely that it was Trump who called him, not the other way round. ("Donald, d'you mind if we don't talk now? I'm not feeling too good.") If he didn't also invent the whole phone call outright, after the news broke that LG had died.
Institutions are easy to criticize and expensive to rebuild. A society often notices their value only when they stop working. Competence is usually invisible—until it disappears.
It takes wisdom and patience to build a real village -- one that serves its inhabitants through the enforcement of laws, the search for common ground, respect for the past, hope for the future. It takes a true idiot about a half an hour to burn it all to the ground, get rid of the people who once knew how to build it in the first place, then brag about how life is now so much better than it used to be.
Trump, the administration and current Republican Congress are all dangerous for our country/world 💔🤍💙 BE LOUD.
Resource below to easily contact all of Congress -
Use/share this spreadsheet (bit.ly/Goodtrouble) to contact members of Congress, the Cabinet and news organizations. Call. Write. Email. Protest. Unrelentingly!
Reach out (beyond your own) to as many in the Senate and House as you can. All of this is bigger than “I only represent my constituents” issues.
Lindsey Graham has died unexpectedly but can be replaced by an immediately appointed caretaker. Mitch McConnell is out of commission for undisclosed reasons. The dynamics of the Senate are in flux.
Both Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell have consistently supported keeping the Senate legislative filibuster in place and opposed efforts to abolish it.
The filibuster is the only thing preventing the SAVE America Act from passing. Trump wants the filibuster gone and for SAVE America to pass. Expect an all-out push and pressure on the South Carolina Governor to appoint an anti-filibuster replacement for Graham.
I am not talking about conspiracy theories here. This is pure politics taking advantage of the situation.
It only takes a simple majority to change the filibuster rule using the "nuclear option." In that process, a senator raises a point of order that the current rule doesn’t apply in a given way, the presiding officer rules, and the Senate then votes on whether to uphold or overturn that ruling. Overturning the chair’s ruling—and thereby setting a new binding precedent—takes only a simple majority of those voting.
Expect a full court press by Trump and his minions to, at the very least, get the filibuster suspended for votes related to "election integrity." Republicans did it for nominations. They can do it for rigging the elections, a far, far bigger prize.
Other Republicans support keeping the filibuster intact, especially John Thune, the President of the Senate. Most of them do. All Democrats do (save John Fetterman, I suppose). Pure politics is also involved in those who want to keep the status quo intact, fearing the day will come when they themselves will be deprived of it. And Trump will be waging "full court presses" about literally everything under the sun, just as he has been, as his own desperation and terror mount. It doesn't follow that will actually happen.
Most of us are rightly scared for the future, fired up, ready to vote, organize, donate, move, demonstrate. It's not like we need to be woken up in the middle of night just for the sake of some additional terror we might have missed the first time round...
Those Republicans that want to kill the filibuster may feel that that's all they need as long as it can assure them power. Then they can finish the job of stealing elections "legally".. Trump says he wants to disempower the Democrats, get rid of them, altogether.
Gov Beshear needs to just call a special election. Call their bluff. If he does, there will be a lawsuit, which will lead to the need for them to prove he is alive/capable of doing his job. The photo of Mitch circulating yesterday is so obviously altered, which is just more evidence that he is in fact not coming back to work. This is how democrats need to resist.
Thank you Megan for continuing to keep this information prominently displayed! It’s so frustrating to continually write our congresspeople but it does help them to understand that actual voters are aware of the issues. I write regularly, and I actually craft my messages rather than forwarding someone else’s opinion. It does help make a difference to send your own thoughts.
The same people that allowed this to happen also sat on this info for six weeks. So, since there was a stifling 8 day heat wave in that time--many people loaded up on SALAD.
They are claiming (now that those gangsters are admitting a problem) that there are 3000 cases nationally. We know they under-report so call it 4500. Now assume 10 that tough it out at home for every 1 that seeks help and gets counted. So 45,000. Now add the ones who ate it but are incubating. 55,000? So maybe 100K, and since they are not STOPPING the gangsters from SELLING the bad produce, or from contaminating it, and millions are functionally illiterate, this is a slow motion disaster.
And they are doing NOTHING to cut it off at the source.
THEY KNOW IT IS FACTORY PRODUCE. Maybe they can't pull all the commercial produce. That may be logistically impossible. But they could stop any more from getting into the market stream. They could clamp down on the corporate perps. They could make restaurants stop serving ANY uncooked fresh produce. They could make all grocery stores put up big signs about COOKING all of it, and they could pull the leafy greens.
But they won't do any of that.
They are saying nobody has died. I say "yet" and "that we know of".
Elders, small children, and the immune compromised have a far greater risk. Have any died of cyclospora cayetanensis thus far? How could we know?
Part of my expertise is in food and local food systems. This is a public service announcement I published on Saturday. It contains some STRATEGIES for protecting yourself from sickness:
Great info, Annabel. Thank you. In my area (the Willamette Valley) we are blessed with an abundance of good, organic produce from truly LOCAL farmers (within about a 60 mile radius of Eugene). We quit buying bagged lettuce/salad mixes long ago. I'm currently harvesting what is probably the tail end of my lettuce that I've grown.
Thank you Annabel. You know I just rediscovered kale. Now I need to boil it. Fresh fruit, forget it. I’m I overreacting? It’s a judgement call for sure.
Annabel -- would you say that buying produce at a Farmer's market -- where vendors are not industry ag factories is relatively safe -- or, more likely, there is simply no way to know? There is nothing like a tomato sandwich with mayo in July!
@Signe K.--You have to hunt out the genuine small farms and ask a ton of questions. We have a small market in my city with a "grew it yourself" rule. I am filled with gratitude to the non-profit behind it.
@Lauricf--The reseller problem is real. BUT if you are SURE they are a small local farm that does not wash down with wastewater or other factory farm practices, then that produce is as safe as your own garden.
Good luck finding those good tomatoes! I will be going to our own hyper-local Westside Market in search of mine.
Thank you -- I got gorgeous heirloom tomatoes on Saturday at the Brooklyn Heights farmers market -- from the farm in NJ -- I will wash the outsides, but I do not think they are a reseller.
The success of a parasite depends on its ability to live off its host without killing it. Ticks. Cyclospora. Mosquitoes. Vampire bats. Cuckoo birds. A very successful, and amoral, niche in the animal kingdom. Putin in Russia and Kim in North Korea use this strategy.
There is a giant orange colored parasite living in the people's White House now. See his recent public disclosure that he had drawn $2,000,000,000 from his willing MAGA follower host and kept $635,000,000 of the bounty for himself. If each MAGA buyer of "Trump Meme Tokens" lost an average of $2,000, that's one million MAGAs that contributed to the parasite's pockets. Not a big enough loss to kill the host. But significant for the parasite.
The parasite also earned $500,000,000 from its other digital money projects, which are in competition with our Federal Reserve. The parasite's children are trying to rig the laws so they have a monopoly on digital dollars.
The parasite has helpers. The FBI, the Dept of Justice, the GOP Congress and two thirds of the Supreme Court are working for him now. The latest scam game for the parasite's family was the raid on the Treasury for $1,776,000,000. Assisted by the Acting Attorney General and the Secretary of the Treasury. The unwilling host in this case is the American citizen. The parasite is not letting go and is still trying to take the public funds for his own use.
Now the parasite realizes its feeding days are coming to an end. And he won't go away quietly or honorably. So he is pushing the SAVE Act to control elections and use other tricks to retain power.
Thanks. It seems the good faith opposition and press fail to understand the pathology of the parasitic life strategy. We live in the symbiotic world of thinking the best of our fellow man.
Every reader of the McCarthy-Cohn era recognizes the amoral/immoral behavior choice of the human parasite. Roy Cohn was Trump's mentor. In that light, Trump's behavior the past 10 years is not a surprise.
The parasite has no morals. Right and wrong are irrelevant, except to be exploited to fool the good faith host. The tick bluffs and lies and threatens and cheats and bribes to be allowed to feed on the host, just one more day. One day at a time.
The Democratic Party treats the Trump Party as though it is legitimate. It is not. The Trump Family Parasite is counter to the precepts of self-rule that America was founded on. Patrick Henry forecasted a bad man would use the power of the Office of President for his own benefit. Here we are.
Those who fail to see this truth and state i it out loud and demand the removal of the tick set themselves up as victims. The parasite moves fast and destroys anything that could remove its head from the flesh of the host and stop it from feeding. We know how to pull a tick from our skin. First we have to recognize it for what is. Not what it claims to be. This tick has burrowed in tight and we citizens, its host, allow it to grow and grow. It will do anything and everything to keep feeding on us.
A reminder that it was a childless Lindsey Graham who told South Carolina's mothers and fathers earlier this year that they should gladly send their own sons and daughters to die for a Strait called Hormuz...
His support for Ukraine, its military, its people, should be remembered. As for all the rest, it's virtually incomprehensible. During the Kavanaugh nomination hearings, his snarling, self-righteous sobs, televised for maximum effect, were dispensed with enough tears and Grade B emoting it would have embarrassed Gloria Swanson. Senator Graham's moral compass flapped in the breeze alongside his loyalties to whatever alpha he deemed the most powerful at the moment. In his later moments on Meet the Press and the like, he always looked drunk. It was likely how his self-damaged soul managed to get through the day.
Pests destroying American health as the administration cuts monitoring efforts; downplaying and hiding soldiers wounds while delaying treatment; and using Senator Graham’s death to hype legislation are corrupt and insensitive governing as usual. For your health and the nation’s keep your eyes on the ball, contact your representatives, and vote Blue!
And everyone may have to walk or wheel themselves to a voting booth as per the Trump blue state voting law. In red states they got things wrapped up. The VIGILANTES will be removing democrats from the rolls as they did in 2024. See gregpalast.com .
She, rather than he. Hearing news that her lifelong nemesis, Joan Crawford, had just died, Bette Davis wrote: "it's said you should never speak ill of the dead, only good. Joan Crawford is dead. Good."
Will just quote a famous American lawyer and civil libertarian Clarence Darrow — “I have never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure"
Mehdi Hasan interviewed Canadian author and speechwriter for Mark Carney Omar Aziz(bit.ly/4wGHvUb), author of the book Shadows of the Republic. The discussion and questions shed light on the current American fascist movement led by the Nazi Republicans and the history of neo-fascism in the US.
Although Aziz thinks the comparison of Hitler and Cheeto may be over done, he speaks of the substantive nature of the similarities and makes the point that fascists vary from country to country because of the nuanced effect of the country’s culture and its effect on the flavor of fascism exhibited. Aziz points to a 25 point plan to counter fascistic ideology and lands on reclaiming meaning as a culture. Is meaning greed, consumerism, and scrolling all day or does it mean becoming politically active at a local level and being a force in the political future? That is, becoming a citizen and reclaiming our responsibility.
The Nazi Republicans want to destroy our country and should not be trusted on any political matter. And as they continue to push the lie of voter fraud all the while the Nazis across the country have passed 500+ pieces of legislation that support voter suppression. WE the People need to reclaim our office as citizen, demand campaign contribution reform to prevent money from buying elections, expect more from elected representatives, and deny sweeping unitary executive powers to the president. WE
In keeping with the thoughts above, "Nazi" does not quite fit here, although they share in vainglory, sociopathy, and repression. I think we need to stay aware if the dedicated plutocrats that had much to do with creating this state of affairs and much to do with advancing and protecting it. The pattern at bought and paid for "Robert's Court", for example is less anti-democratic than it is pro-plutocratic, and you see that pattern in what they do and don't support. I'm a believer in free enterprise, but monopoly or oligopoly, privately or state controlled, is the opposite of freedom. Freedom is the universal right to diversely pursue happiness, within the bounds of responsible behavior toward others. We mutually contract with one another to agree on some boundaries for the latter.
THAT is regulation, and regulation can be wise or foolish, just or unjust, excessive, inadequate, or "just right"; but it's a social tool, not in and of itself a goal nor an evil. Presumably, a government of, by and for the people that is wise will regulate wisely, including admitting and correcting inevitable errors. Truly "free enterprise" is a subset of a "free society"; liberty and justice for ALL. Monopolies of money, ownership, and political power, left, right, or whatever, is it's nemesis.
As Thom Hartmann writes the 13 colonies declared war against the monarch and his corporate monopoly the East Indian Tea Company. So there will always be this tug and pull between private company interest vs the governmental regulatory agencies.
Use of the word Nazi is done explicitly to invoke the dark evil side of the Republican unitary executive ie autocratic government that they want to establish. Zakaria at CNN did a piece on the Imperial Presidency that has grown out of the Reagan admins supported by the Roberts court. Hopefully WE the People can wrest the government back from this type of presidency but I think it will take removal of the filibuster to do it.
I remember a few years ago, a high speed train in China derailed killing a large number of people. The local government's response was to try and bury the entire train, including the injured and dead. If you can hide the truth, it didn't happen.
Apparently, all authoritarian governments use the same playbook, including ours.
Lindsay Graham's best service to America was dying when he did. With Mitch McConnell in the hospital for in indeterminate future, this means the GOP in the Senate doesn't have the votes to pass the NDAA or the Defense supplemental as "clean bills" and that attaching Trump's assault on the midterms - the SAVE Act - is DOA, even assuming the Island of Misfit Toys in the House could get themselves together enough to pass it there.
Beyond being useful by not being able to vote, I hope Graham is already on the Ninth Level of Hell, spitted and roastng over a hot fire for the 10 eternities, here I hope every other one of these Traitors joins that spineless weathervane.
The six dropped pathogens that the Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network, or FoodNet, since 1995 dropped monitoring are: Campylobacter, Cyclospora, Listeria, Shigella, Vibrio and Yersinia. Most foodborne illnesses people get over through time but the populations that are most affected are the young, elderly and immune compromised individuals. What White House spokesperson Kush Desai really is saying is, “We will no longer track or monitor diseases/illnesses… this way we don’t have to admit they exist…” with an added “Good luck cause we don’t give a rats ass about the health and safety of the American people…” Feel free to drink that unpasteurized milk while taking another ivermectin tablet..
It’s the same for our military members if their injuries aren’t tracked there are no serious injuries. No long term issues like PTSD, or brain injuries that last their lifetimes. No worries folks everything is looking great because we’ve got this handled..
As for Graham as we’ve witnessed his trajectory of selling his integrity, morals, values basically his soul by signing his name on the dotted line to attain and retain his power and wealth — “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." — Lord Dalberg-Acton
Have never believed democracy dies only because of one man like Trump. Democracy dies because intelligent people who know better decide that preserving their own political future matters more than preserving the institutions they swore to defend. Trump didn’t create this movement alone. He required willing participants. Lindsey Graham became one of the most indispensable among them. Lyndsey pushed the Felon’s fascist agenda through and was proud in doing so.
Graham’s betrayal wasn’t towards the Democrats and it wasn’t even towards Republicans. It was a betrayal to the American people. The collective group of us that should expect more from our elected officials than we end up getting. Every oath of office carries an implied promise that the Constitution comes before any individual. Lindsey Graham had countless opportunities to honor that promise. Again and again, he chose otherwise.
Some men leave behind monuments.
Some leave behind cautionary tales.
Believe Lindsey Graham leaves behind the latter.
"The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones."
Very well said. Especially "Have never believed democracy dies only because of one man like Trump. Democracy dies because intelligent people who know better decide that preserving their own political future matters more than preserving the institutions they swore to defend."
Do we believe Trump's account of his last conversation with Lindsay Graham? It strikes me that "SAVE" has now been hoisted as a sacred banner - the last wish of a patriot.
A government that can’t tolerate the truth will eventually dismantle every system designed to reveal it.
The experts disappear. The warnings are ignored. The suffering is hidden. And the people responsible insist everything is working exactly as it should.
The danger is not only that they’re lying to us. It’s that they’re systematically destroying our ability to know the truth at all.
I feel less safe than ever in this country as public health expertise is sidelined, those serving our nation lack essential support, and billions are spent glorifying one leader instead of strengthening the systems that protect us from disease and growing global threats
All those layoffs at important agencies (CDC, EPA, FDA, NOAA, DOE) were driven by the Project 2025 manifesto. Apparently these geniuses, like most of the Trump regime, did not think it through. Their zeal to dismantle the government was not about cost-cutting, certainly not about safety for the American people, but replacing democracy temporarily with anarchy and chaos as an intermediate step to the planned dictatorship.
Our masters most assuredly thought it through. Project 2025 is ultimately what it is proving itself to be: the most plausibly deniable ecogenocide program ever conceived.
By gutting all those health-related departments, that is exactly the message sent and received.
Or: they are trying to kill off the "lower classes." Pretty shortsighted.
Loren, I will go further and say this world is so messed up and incomprehensible that I can believe an unknown, other worldly entity has overtaken the earth. I’m not convinced of the goal but we’re being experimented on. Sound too crazy? (I am not certifiable 😊. ) I know I am not the only scared human out here.
Actually, Gloria -- not the least because as a both as a vet from a military family and as a journalist, though I myself have only seen one UFO (that in 1959), I have more [credible] UFO stories than I can count -- I think extraterrestrial invasion a possibility that most assuredly should be included in our catalogue of inquiries asking, "why are we being destroyed?" It would certainly explain the ecogenocide implicit in the smallpox-contaminated-blanket effect of the patriarchal conquest that overthrew the Gaian ethos of our first approximately 240,000 years, also the appearance of smoke-and-fire shrouded "deities," talking serpents, loquacious brush-fires and fiery wheels in the sky that fostered the patriarchal conquest. And we already know the core dynamic of colonial conquest: the invader merely finds locals who are morally imbecilic enough to become the conquerors' viceroys in exchange for guaranteed jobs as slavemasters once the conquest is complete. (Apparently the viceroy/slavemasters don't realize the terraforming we know as terminal climate change will eventually result an an atmosphere poisonous to humans -- or maybe that's the real reason they're all building bunkers.)
“We have met the enemy and he is…” someone else.
Yah well…have a nice life living in a bunker! I’d prefer to die and move on to another existence, thank you.
You’re saying, Loren, that these honor society rejects decided to plan for explosive diarrhea?
Not necessarily the diarrhea or the screwworms, measles, etc. Those are just vectors that opened up because the authors of Project 25 put forth a thesis that some lives matter more than others. Everything else is just details. I'm sure they think the plan is working to perfection.
Planned collateral damage!
Of course, because Christian Nationalists believe and preach that if something goes wrong with your health is it because you did not worship God in the proper way.
Hear hear!
They certainly aren’t doing anything to protect us anymore.
Judy, yeah, and we are paying them to be incompetent for the chaos wing of Trumplandia! Now, how could we cut their salaries to say $7.25 per hour? That would mean, since they hardly work at all, we would be paying them only a few bucks a week. That is a big cut from what they are getting now to wreck things.
Like the convicted sex offender 47 who streams explosive verbal diarrhea daily!
C’mon! Really? When infrastructure, expertise and organization is severely disrupted - like the funding theft, firing and layoffs, gutting the mission of important organizations and watch-dog entities - that these small-gov’t, money-hungry, sycophants have done ( for self enrichment or funding things like ICE), then foodborne illnesses, industrial disasters, environmental degradation, infectious diseases and all the rest of what we are seeing is a direct consequence. There! All in one massive run-on sentence.
(Note: originally this was the first response to Signe's comment, above. Now, thanks to an AI lightning bolt that disappeared the entire text, it's so far down this thread, its vital facts will mostly be ignored. Accident? Somehow, given the sea of technologically omnipotent ChristoNazi malevolence in which we are all being drowned, I cannot but wonder.)
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Firstly, Signe, understand we are at war, and every soldier, buck private to commanding general, knows that in wartime, the one truly suicidal error is to underestimate the enemy, to “misunderestimate” (the Bush malapropism seems perfect for this context) enemy intentions and/or enemy capabilities. Note a few of the glaring historical examples: in WWII, the major under-estimators were Neville Chamberlain, the entire French government and Joseph Stalin. Winston Churchill and his Lend-Lease ally/financier Franklin Delano Roosevelt literally saved the world from them all. The British-Empire/U.S. alliance rescued us from the Franco/Chamberlain error, while U.S. aid delivered mostly by the Royal Navy enabled Russian geography and “Comrade Winter” to save Stalin. But the U.S. was obviously too arrogant to heed the lesson, because its own “misunderestimations” damn near lost the Korean War and indisputably resulted in the U.S. Empire’s glaring defeats in the Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the democracy-destroying debacle of 9/11 and the looming defeat in the Iran War. And for us to fail to recognize what Project 2025 truly is – that it’s the operations order for a new reign of world-conquest Nazi terror including a new and radically expanded Holocaust – is to be party to our own genuinely apocalyptic underestimation of the enemy, quite possibly the deadliest in all human experience.
Secondly, it is a long-established fact that in the U.S. – even before its [methodically bipartisan] reduction to a failed state – the lower one’s income, the more deadly is sickness and disease. This is because in the always tacitly Nazified U.S. economy, adequate health care is available only to the wealthy. The rest of us are given what amounts to death care – that is, a deliberate, ever expanding denial of access to modern medicine. Low-income families whose children’s inoculations were formerly provided by the government at no cost are now denied these safeguards entirely; epidemics are becoming commonplace; and – precisely as our murderous Project 2025 masters intend – death by [resurrected] disease is skyrocketing as a result.
Thirdly, the op-order P2025 anti-vax strategy is clearly based on the fact the Covid epidemic proved that, even before the ChristoNazi ban on inoculations, deaths amongst low-income demographic groups – especially Blacks, Hispanics, First Nations peoples and Peoples of Color – radically outpaced deaths amongst those whose wealth grants them access to modern medicine. Given the longstanding, oft-repeated Chinese claim the U.S. started the epidemic – see https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/30/china/china-covid-origin-white-paper-us-intl-hnk – it is entirely possible the pandemic was a Project 2025 anti-vax test-run deliberately disguised by its international magnitude; anyone who assumes our masters aren’t Ted-Bundy-Evil enough to [gleefully] approve such an unprecedentedly outrageous atrocity is simply deluded.
Lastly, thanks to George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison (“Hutchison” is the correct spelling), we now know one of the primary purposes of neoliberalism’s Nazified economics is the [plausibly deniable] extermination of chronically impoverished people. (See “The Invisible Doctrine: the Secret History of Neoliberalism & How It Came to Control Your Life,” George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison [correct spelling]; Allen Lane: 2024; PDF: https://cdn.penguin.co.uk/dam-assets/books/9780241635902/9780241635902-sample.pdf ) Thus the ChristoNazi regime has weaponized disease, including any sickness the definitive symptoms of which are projectile diarrhea and explosive regurgitation. The regime is waging selective CBR (Chemical/Biological/Radiological) warfare on the entire nation, the military included. This is a form of ethnic “cleansing,” a crime against humanity, and the corollary fact the Democrats refuse to charge the ChristoNazi regime with it proves the Democratic Party’s collaboration in the destruction of our nation.
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(Sorry this vanished for a bit; my AI-contaminated computer disappeared my first effort as I was making a minor correction, necessitating an hour and 45 minutes of sheer drudgery to reconstruct it from memory, a chore all the more infuriating because the second effort, invariably formatted by the associated rage and frustration, can never begin to approach the quality of the first. This is why – though I have never before hated an inanimate object – I despise computers with an intensity of fury that is beyond my ability to describe and in this incident, as is typical, still has me trembling.)
Loren, this statement is exemplary of your brilliance: "The rest of us are given what amounts to death care – that is, a deliberate, ever expanding denial of access to modern medicine.” I am likely to steal that phrase, “death care” and hope you won’t mind if I sprinkle it liberally (pun intended) across BlueSky.
Dismantling of public health and health research is an intentional step to gain power. They’re undermining experts in all fields because experts in their fields are usually really good at recognizing patterns in general and are usually the first to speak up against authoritarians. If the public believes that scientists and physicians have been lying to them all these years, then the public won’t believe physicians and scientists when they speak up against authoritarianism. There’s also a side effect of making us all sicker, which makes it harder for us to organize against authoritarianism because we will be spending more time/effort to survive. Undermining the experts/intellectuals is what dictators and fascists do. In this case, they took doubts that were already brewing around vaccines/science and validated those doubts by weaving the doubts into the government institutions. The “wellness industry” is part of this strategy.
I understand what you’re saying, L M, and agree about the undermining of expertise (see the excellent book, *The Death of Expertise*), but I rather doubt that the outcome of explosive diarrhea is celebrated by the afflicted and their families and friends. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that our food supply is no longer being monitored and thus the health of people not protected. Even the MAGAts should be able to discern that.
You mean the supporters of maga? Dont forget that they’re listening to RFK who is telling them that as long as they drink their raw milk, eat only protein, avoid vaccines, have the right genetics and go to tanning beds, they will be uniquely strong to avoid any sort of illness caused by pathogens.
I think the MAGA crowd has proven, beyond a doubt, that they are completely incapable of discerning anything at all.
Bingo!
Signe, the challenge is that so many Americans are so overwhelmed that they can't even take time to realize what is being done to them, particularly those under Trump's spell. They are being told by FoxFraud that it is Biden's and Obama's fault that there are problems and our media are not covering what is true while repeating the lies as if they are true. We do need to find ways to reach the American people who are not engaged and let them know they are pawns in a deadly game of "Let Corporations rule Because They Know How to Do Things." They don't know and if it were not for the government's super support of those corporations, they would not be close to where they are now. The people, if asked really don't want to be ruled by corporations or fools or ignoramuses, but don't realize they are being had by the inhabitants of Trumplandia, the cause of most of their current woes. The whiny rich white boys are the only ones benefiting from Trump's bullying BS.
Ruth — well said! One of our lyricist posters needs to take "whiny rich white boys” and re-tool that song, “dirty white boy” with some new 2026 lyrics. I would love to see it!
Signe K, it's "only" 3000 people so far affected by cyclospora. HCR readers understand this is one of countless, preventable situations created by trump's incompetent administration. And that these crises are harbingers of many more to come. MAGAs suffer from a lack of empathy, so unless they are one of the 3000 they dismiss the problem and don't look at the larger picture (dangerous food supply.) Until it hits them. By the time enough trump supporters have been negatively impacted by trump's craziness (and they realize it's trump's fault) it will be game over for our republic.
GMB, true, and when they do become infected with something, they will blame it on Biden or Obama or claim it isn't the bug that MAGA/Trumplandia released. It is amazing how well MAGAs can pretend things aren't what they actually are. It must be a game for them to see who is best at it. I think all of them are losing to their Baby Donnie, though!
L M, we are going to have to intervene. I am not much of an organizer, but there are folks out here who are. Maybe we need to focus on children's health to get people motivated to stop this insanity. Trumplandia are merchants of death and are totally OK with that. Our senate Republicans and a few Democrats are responsible for this because they knew full well what they were approving and let an old man with dementia dictate to them. Maybe they don't even have a "better judgment" for them to stand against.
Ruth, yes, children's health as many parents are now refusing Vitamin K shots and vaccines for their children, not only endangering them, but the rest of us. I once had a discussion about measles vaccines with my then LMT. He wanted to know if I would vaccinate my children andI said yes. Shortly after that he praised the polio vaccine. He was at one time a follower of Baghwan Sri Rajneesh, so that might tell you something.
Uh... what Democrat would be responsible for this... ?
EUWDTB, yes, no Democrat would! That is why I think Fetterman is moving quickly in the direction of Trumplandia so he can fit right in with Republicans there, like his fellow PA senator McCormick, a pathetic sycophant if you ever saw one!
The corporate Democrats who are so soaked in PAC money they have no real say in how they handle the decisions of their office are in fact complicit in where we are today. They are beholden and afraid. Go to AIPAC Tracker and integrityindex.us. You will be amazed at the number of Democrats receiving millions from AIPAC. Look at the other PACs who donate to Democrats. Now go look at which committees these people are serving on. Now ask yourself how in the name of everything sane could the Democratic Party lose to this guy-twice?! It took decades to land us where we are living under a fascist White House and Government. The Democratic Party was playing business as usual while the Heritage Foundation worked away, the Christian Nationalists did their thing, and the Tea Party organized which all morphed into MAGA.
Only until we stop excusing the ineptitude and cowardice of the Democratic Party elite will we experience real change. Only until we stop being the victim to those big bad Republicans and take responsibility for where we are will we get out of this.
Exactly!
It's great to see so many comments here recognizing that this IS what characterizes fascism.
Now, let's hope that HCR will finally begin to mention this fact more too!
Yes EUW, but we are the choir.
Well, at least, FINALLY, the choir starts singing!
Notice how until now, most people did truly suffer from TDS instead... . So I consider this an important step forward.
Now, we need to spread the news beyond the walls of our choir.
I can’t help thinking about the steps the Third Reich took leading up to the Holocaust. Deny Jews jobs, relocate them to horrendous, overcrowded places (eg Warsaw ghetto), send them to the concentration camps, cut their food to starvation levels, force them to labor for the Reich until they were no longer profitable and then gas/burn them. Those stresses would overwhelm most people’s ability to resist.
Now….what are all those immense “detention” prisons for? Why require poor people to work any job just to keep their healthcare and food supports? Why the increase in private for-profit prisons where - according to the Constitution - prisoners can be forced into modern slavery, to the benefit of corporations? I am not saying that the government will ultimately kill off huge numbers of immigrants (the new Jews) and protestors, journalists, etc. Or maybe they will.
It’s been pretty obvious for quite a while that republicans really don’t care how many of us peasants get harmed, injured, sick or even die as long as they can “get those libs”. MAGA doesn’t seem to realize there is nothing in place to protect them from the same harm. While billionaires get richer and richer and our government gets further and further from giving rats ass if we live or die.
The GOP has put its voter base in an "alternative facts" bubble ever since it created Fox Entertainment, 25 years ago.
So of course by now its voters don't realize what the GOP is actually doing in DC.
Remember the "death panel" myths?
This has been going on for years and years already.
The only solution is that WE stop demonizing GOP voters, recognize that they are victims of a very sophisticated and truly fascist propaganda machine, and then constantly engage in real, respectful debates with them. First, we need to focus on building common ground. Then, we can challenge more of the lies they've been made to believe.
We don't need an organization to do so. Many people have GOP voters in their family etc. That's where it all starts!
YES WE CAN!!
EUWDTB, I have been engaging with this group since 2008. They do not accept "that they are victims of a very sophisticated and truly fascist propaganda machine, and then constantly engage in real, respectful debates with them. First, we need to focus on building common ground. Then, we can challenge more of the lies they've been made to believe." All they reply with is "no, yours is propaganda and lies, not mine!" Almost 20 years of trying to counter their belief structure, and I have come to believe that only cult deprogramming will work.
It's an art, for sure. But it IS possible.
Just look at how Adam Mockler goes to MAGA rallies and then has real, respectful debates with MAGA voters. Very often, by the end of the discussion, they actually agree with him.
We need to study how he does it and then never give up. Because it's the only option.
Ally, you were in LE and that may explain some of what you have seen. I was in a high school, mix of political opinions. A lot of the problem was in the coaching corner which for years was all men. We did have a few conservative women, but not many.
I hope you are right. My alternative facts adult son doesn’t speak to me at all anymore. It’s reached this point over many years and many attempts to do better. We always end up in a fight, so no contact is better. I wonder how many other families have just given up.
Kathryn, I’m so sorry. This administration continues to degrade the ability to have productive conversations. It was accelerated by the making “politically correct” comments incorrect and letting insults fly. Our families with differing political views are a microcosm of the relationships (or lack of) we see all over this country.
We are in desperate need of deprogramming those whose views have been distorted by the lies and venom that have seeped into our society.
I’m hoping, with time, all of these painful wounds will be healed.
They thought it through and didn’t care. It’s just impossible to be THIS stupid.
It is what they wanted. It isn't "not caring", it is evil destruction.
Ally House, yes, and that is why we need to fight them with everything we have. There is nothing positive about the whole of Trumplandia. They have done nothing good for the American people and don't plan to. They just like to keep those who are not well-informed or are desperate to do harm to those they have been groomed to hate, on the hook to be called on whenever our Baby Donnie and his Klan want a despicable human being elected to some office or other or when they need liars to jump in to claim that ICE men were being run down by a person's car. Those folks have chosen to be despicable just like their creepy boss.
MLMinET. Half the population has an IQ of 100 or less. Critical thinking is not taught in schools. Yes, it's possible to be THIS stupid.
No, they did "think it through". They are getting EXACTLY what they want. They don't realize that they are vulnerable as well.
Signe, I do not see in the thread that follows your comment any significant discussion of the christofascist (evangelical) aspect of the P2025 agenda. I think it matters.
The P2025 operatives have "thought it through," but not in the context most of us would.
Christofascist evangelicals are deeply skeptical of science. They prefer to rely on "divine healing." The Prosperity Gospel is the dominant theology among evangelicals. This doctrine is not concerned only with financial prosperity, but with all forms of prosperity, including health. The belief among evangelicals (and far too many non-evangelical Christians) is that "God blesses those who are faithful to him." So if you get sick, and you and all your Christian friends pray for your healing, God will heal you. If you are not healed, it's because "there is unconfessed sin in your life."
The extension of this doctrine is that all the "right" people will be saved, and all the "wrong" people will die. That is the point.
The agencies you mentioned are either being dismantled because they "do not honor God," or they are being repopulated with people who rely on "evangelical faith" rather than fact-based science.
When reality reveals the fallacy of this doctrine, practitioners simply refuse to acknowledge it or they cover it up.
To see how this plays out in life-or-death situations, look no further than the command of christofascist evangelical Pete Hegseth, and how our wounded service members are being mistreated.
Donald's obsession with Iran isn't entirely his own. He has demonstrated countless times that his opinions have been fed to him by influential people. Another goal of christofascist evangelical doctrine is to bring about The Millennium, when Jesus returns to earth and rules the world for "a thousand years' reign of peace." According to evangelical doctrine, this cannot happen until the "Battle of Armageddon" is fought in which the forces of good defeat the forces of evil, and "Satan is bound forever." This battle will supposedly take place in the Middle East, according to evangelical misinterpretation of the biblical book of The Revelation.
What you describe Dale is a harrowing condition now loose on the land! It completely justifies Jefferson's insistence (and Monroe's) on the critical concept of complete religious autonomy and his later coining of the phrase "a wall of separation between church and State" which deeply guided the philosophical intent behind the the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause in the First Amendment!
Now there's a massive legal battle playing out in the lower federal courts over the Johnson Amendment, the 70-year-old provision in the U.S. tax code that bans all 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organizations—including churches, charitable foundations, and universities—from participating or intervening in political campaigns. Under this law, if an organization wants to keep its tax-exempt status and allow its donors to write off their contributions, it cannot endorse, oppose, or fund any candidate running for public office.
For now, pastors can still preach heavily on moral, social, and political issues from a theological standpoint, but explicitly telling a congregation to vote for or against a specific candidate remains a violation of federal tax law. However, this will likely be appealed to the Supreme Court. You think their "originalist" tendencies will prevail?
The blind "faith" of religion should not be weaponized with the free speech rights of individuals to provide tax-free religious businesses permission to earn money by supporting designated candidates. That is disgusting, immoral and dangerous! In Jefferson's own words, we now definitely need more than ever "a wall of separation between church and State"!
Philip, although you are right in every respect, the tax law is being ignored with impunity. One commenter here has related the story of attending a gathering at a Roman Catholic church in Nebraska (either Lincoln or Omaha) and finding Trump campaign posters displayed on the walls of the building interior.
Here in Arkansas, Baptist and non-denominational pastors routinely instruct their congregations on how to vote on issues and whom to vote for. With Sarah Huckabee Sanders in the governor's mansion, nothing will be done to discourage the practice.
Lots of well-meaning laws are routinely ignored everyday. And few among us would want to live in a police state. However, a SCOTUS ruling reinforcing this tax law would clarify that mixing politics and religion is contrary to our nation's founding principles and is still illegal.
Oh I think they most definitely thought through Project 2025. Because they have been planning this for so long and 2/3 of the country gave them the opportunity they are succeeding brilliantly.
Marj, you are right, they have been planning this takeover for at least 60 years, even before Nixon and his criminal crew took office. They have too often succeeded, so we are in trouble, but need to stand against this hoard of incompetent, but truly evil members of the Trump Kiddies' Kindergarten Klan.
Exactly!
THIS is what the media should be writing about each day, rather than spreading the fake news that the tweeter in chief would have concocted it all!
Project 2025 factored in a large number of expendable people, mostly those who were most vulnerable to these illnesses! Billionaires families need not worry!
Louis, you are right about the expendables. That is shameful, but nearly everything Trumplandia does is appalling. It is so sad that so many Americans are either OK with it or too scared to speak up. They haven't realized yet that they are potential targets of this insanity too. How do we make it clear that they are not safe from Trumplandia's claws?
It functioned exactly as intended - kneecapping the federal administrative agency system so that it could be claimed that unrestrained capitalism does a better job.
I think another goal was to stop regulating private businesses who pollute, or take over natural resources, engage in shoddy work or produce shoddy products, and take advantage of their consumers, all to create more profit. There's a money/power angle to a lot of plans in Project 2025.
Yes. I had told my daughter that the water, air and food would not be safe, and that products would not be safe either. The baby formula problem under Biden made worse by extending into more realms.
Exactly. And we can’t get enough.
Keri, yes this is a problem. Our media has helped to create the problem and has worked hard to make things worse. They cover Trump and his white house toddler pool as though they are an unstoppable force, putting Trump as the top story since before he rode down his stupid golden escalator into an insane world of Trumplandia.
The media, even NPR, thought "balanced" meant to cover Trump as much as even the actual presidents of the United States: Obama and Biden. Even now, the first two words spoken on nearly all NPR news reports are "president Trump." It is disgusting particularly when despite NPR's and CBS's efforts to normalize Trump, he pushed/threatened Congressional Republicans into cutting funding for public broadcasting. To me that is when one knows there is enormously deep corruption. It is hard to see who is not involved in it.
My "Democratic" senator, Fetterman, has proven that Trumplandia can reach and spread corruption nearly anywhere (OK, Fetterman was never what he claimed to be. It appears he was really a Republican but thought he would have a better chance in his neck of the woods if he ran as a "Democrat," one who lies, deceives, and sells out to an ignoramus for the power he thought he could get, just as Republicans do. Now, he pretends to be "bipartisan"; he isn't! He's Republican all the way!
It's very important that NPR is recognized for what it is: a normalizer of the president who puts him out there incessantly. Thank you for this.
And remember that Fetterman's campaign was led by the same charlatan who gave us Graham Platner: Morris Katz.
Oh, now that is a great tidbit of information! It explains a lot.
Yes, I didn’t know that either!
In fairness: Katz also led Mamdani's use of video messaging in campaigning so in that he did us a great favor.
Ruth- You are so right about NPR. They sold right out to false “bothsiderism”. Broke my heart, but I walked away in 2024.
Will he be replaced?
I don’t think he would have been elected if he didn’t have that stroke. I think there were a lot of sympathy votes involved.
Judy, I suspect the reason he won is the same reason I voted for him. He was running against a quack doctor who didn't even live in PA, Oz. No matter how crappy Fetterman is, Oz would have been worse. We who care in PA are working on getting a good, honest person to primary Fetterman in 2028. Now that we all know just what Fetterman is, we have something to work with. There are some really good Dems in PA who could run. What we really don't want is another Fetterman!
Judy, there was probably some sympathy involved, but more importantly, Pennsylvania is a "swing state" with almost equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans, plus a significant number of Independents. The only way for a Democratic candidate to pull enough voters from the other side is to sound like a Republican.
Democratic voters in these mostly rural states hope their guy will be persuaded by the Democratic Caucus, but it's a crapshoot, often with disappointing results. See: Joe Manchin, Kristin Sinema.
It appears that one diseased "public servant" leaves but is replaced by several more diseases nationwide. The cyclospora and screwworm advancements are only relatively governable compared to this administration's ineptness and incompetence. A push for Annie Andrews is now paramount. Donate if you can.
RFK Jr. is der Trumpster's Adolph Eichmann, managing the anti-vax population-extermination campaign, the withholding of vital inoculations our masters' equivalent of Zyklon B. (Might this be his vengeance on the nation that murdered his father and his uncle? That's the only explanation I can think of for how someone raised a progressive becomes a ChristoNazi Obergruppenführer.)
Loren, anything is possible, I suppose, with this fascist administration. Rumor and "make it up as you go along" is their reason to rule while common sense questions are themselves questioned due to the tone that challenges those who create chaos. I can't psychoanalyze RFK; I'm still trying to wrap my head around why he holds the office he has. All the Kennedys are rolling in their graves.
Riad, my understanding is that RFK Jr. has his office because Donald promised him "something" in exchange for his pre-election support. The Kennedy name used to carry some weight with Americans. As I replied to Loren, RFK Jr. is insane, but he clings to his weird health beliefs, so Donald gave him that office for lack of any other incompetent to fill the position.
RFK Jr. retains the position because his anti-science views comport with those of the P2025 cabal of christofascists led by Russell Vought.
Ahhh…yes, you are correct. Many thanks for that reminder of the quid pro quo exchange between Trump and RFK. Essentially, they found each other in order to scratch each other’s back. That does seem to be it in a nutshell.
Loren, I'm not convinced that RFK Jr. is motivated by vengeance. More likely is that he was psychologically fragile to begin with. The violent and very public losses of his uncle and father caused him to have a mental breakdown that was never acknowledged or treated. In short, he's nuts.
Once his mind went off the rails, it just kept spiraling in a fractal pattern.
Nothing he says or does suggests to me that he has any ulterior motives. He's just barking mad, clinging to little modules of thought that make sense to him in his fog of insanity.
Who is Annie Andrews?
Democratic candidate for Lindsey Graham's seat in South Carolina. She was giving him one hell of a run for his money when he was alive. Keep the momentum going. She needs the help. I've donated three times already and I live in VA.
Thank you for your donations, from a Yankee resident of SC!
https://drannieandrews.com
She’s running for office in _____.
South Carolina, and no one could be finer, MLM,
thank you. I knew I had heard the name but couldn't remember the state.
Today, a Democrat running for office should be enough reason already to donate!
Well almost, we are dealing with Platner's BS right now.
What was it Lindsey said when he was still rational, trump will destroy us & we will deserve it? Seems he was on to something. It's one thing to want to become a dictator & rule with an iron fist (tiny as it is) it's a whole other thing to completely dismantle what made the US a leader in science & medicine & philanthropy, you know soft power, & what made America great.
I figured that the US would eventually slide down the scale as the number one country in the world, no kingdom can last forever but I did NOT think we would do it to ourselves. I listened to my Mom when she would tell me that we would rot from within, I didn't dismiss the idea but it seems I should have paid a bit more attention to what she was saying.
From Dr. Ryan McCormack, some good information on cyclosporine….
https://mccormickmd.substack.com/p/diarrhea-coming-to-a-town-near-you?r=7g4as&utm_medium=ios
Me too; I’ve become much more vigilant and careful. At this point it’s up to us to find out as much as we can from other sources, stock pile what we feel is appropriate for the future (masks, disinfectant), buy fruit/vegetables and other food stuff from local and organic, non agri-business monopoly sources (if we are lucky to live in an area that has them and can afford them) wash our hands frequently, continue to get vaccines, and pay attention more than ever to how we live and our actions. This intestinal parasite is just the tip of the iceberg I fear.
I had pointed this out in one of my pieces, since my book club read Project 2025 before Trump was reelected by the many conspiracy believing, racist, haters in the US.
I said it was going to turn the US into a third world country if even some of that stuff was enacted. It is now a country governed by conspiracy believing, mentally ill, racist, haters, not science.
I wrote this before Trump came to power, but one can consider health care too.
https://lindaweide.substack.com/p/a-plan-b-for-catastrophe?r=f0qfn&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
I also find the vaccination scheduling for children of concern under this anti science regime.
That is why we must recognize that we are engaged in a third American Revolution: the one in the 1770's from England, the one in the1860's from each other, and now this one in the 2020's from our very identity as a constitutional democratic republic. We absolutely had to prevail in the first two.That remains so for the third as well because losing this one will leave us with nowhere to go. Kelli accurately describes our path. We are the ones who must prervail.
Dr. Richardson's valiantly superb reporting reveals our plight is infinitely worse than 99.9 percent of us will ever dare admit: Trump is not only the destroyer of the United States; he is literally the personification of the Apocalypse, the end of the world.
Originally, the word apocalypse meant “the lifting of the veil,” something that the current POTUS is actually good at.
Actually he's not lifting anything; he's dropping trou, showing arse and wiggling his doomsday finger.
Actually Al, by some counts this is our fourth revolution. You left out the Great Depression and New Deal. Seems these "resets" happen on a cycle every 80-year-old years or so.
Quite so, Philip. Thank you for the correction.
That's why Trump and the regime don't want reporters asking pesky questions about them, or investigative journalism or even a news report that he had to fly home from the NATO Summit in Ankara on the old Air Force One instead of the Qatar plane he flew in on.
Dismantling agencies, DOGEing 100s of thousands federal employees, censoring government websites and history, scientists, researchers, doctors, etc. quitting, retiring or leaving the U.S. for better opportunities and conditions...A brain drain leaving our Nation even further diminished and behind. It will be very hard to get back to where we should be even when this finally ends, because, like you said, "they're systematically destroying our ability to know the truth at all".
Well said horhai.
There are multiple terms to describe this maladministration. The one that will be prominently featured in history books is "incredibly arrogant and egregious INCOMPETENCE". They really don't care who or how many people suffer and die. Heather's piece today makes it clear. Again.
During the early days of Covid, Trump said that we shouldn't test more. It would make "his" numbers look bad. So...people should suffer and die to make the "leader" look better. That is a psychopathic outrageously narcissistic position.
I hope Veterans across America are reading how our wounded troops in the Middle East are being treated. I'm getting a General Westmoreland feeling.
Husband of Ruth writing:
Shitforbrains is a mass murderer.
Bill, I know two vets. They love dear leader and they love the VA health care system. They would vote for him again.
They love the VA now. Good. But wait until the services they need are farmed out to money grubbing private sector. That is the new direction.
As a young medical student I was offended when one of the senior attending physicians casually remarked, “There ain’t no cure for stupid.” But living and practicing in the real world soon set me straight on that point.
Responses today resonate deeply. We must not be silenced by fear or even hesitancy in the face of disagreement. We must handle the inevitable disagreement with profound courage and tactful discernment.
Jane, we must do that, but not at the expense of holding those who orchestrated this atrocity accountable in some meaningful way. These mostly rich white men knew what they were doing, maybe even knew the harms their actions would cause, yet did it anyway.
Senate Republicans, for example, with a few Democrats approved absolutely appalling people for nearly all the offices in our government, then our Supreme Roberts 6 said it was OK for Trump and his Klan to fire anyone in the government who didn't agree with him. That is a definite kind of treason perpetrated against the American people, even putting people's lives at risk. Then our congressional Republicans with a partisan vote gave $70 Billion of our tax dollars to two paramilitary forces that are set against the people of this nation (ICE and CBP). That is unforgivable as is letting Steve Miller, a man elected to nothing by no one dictate what our policy on immigrants would be, letting Miller's hate push ICE/CBP into appalling cruelties with their street thuggery, murders, and concentration camp prisons. Americans don't want that, but, it has been done in our name anyway. Yep, unforgivable!!
Thanks for an outstanding summary of all the mayhem, Ruth. Accountability must be included at the top of the list of reforms to come.
David, thanks, I do try hard to keep up and to call for responsibility to be placed where it belongs, and right now, it is squarely on Trump and his Klan of sycophants!
And also by continuously writing and calling our elected representatives to inform them of our dissatisfaction with the state of affairs. We must demand better.
Horhai, I do think it will be hard to come back, but we can do this. It is going to take all of us together though, and a strong will to do our best to make things work, but not return to where we have been because clearly that didn't work well.
One step would be to cut corporate power since it is corporate America that helped to a huge extent to orchestrate Trumplandia and will support them to the bitter end. We have laws on the books to stop monopolies, to stop cheating, and so many of the things the corporate world is doing, but when Trumplandia employs only corrupt, incompetent, and ignorant actors for our government agencies, and our Supreme Roberts 6 ignore our Constitution, the comeback will be more challenging.
We must have a mechanism for holding those accountable who perpetrated this destruction. They stomped on our rights, put our lives and the lives of people around the world at risk. They want to steal even more power to disrupt, control, and take over. We on't have to allow it and shouldn't.
We messed up by not holding those who led the rebellion when our Civil War ended accountable. Then after the 1920 rampage of theft, deceit, and destruction that led to the Great Depression, no one paid for what they had done. We also failed after Nixon's criminal administration except in a few instances where a couple went to prison for short terms. The ones who actually caused the corruption were never held accountable in any of those cases I cited. That must change this time! I'm thinking, maybe losing half to 3/4 of their wealth, imprisonment for some, massive supervised public service, inability to run for any office at any level in this nation, some kind of penance, etc. That would be an adequate beginning.
Yes, we must make lying wrong again - in both political parties.
Leslie, lying is a critical issue, but right now, it is not the Democrats who are making it a sacrament. Republicans seem to be required to lie at every opportunity as though it is necessary for being in the Party at all. They will lie even when it is not something important. Maybe it is just their practice run and every Republican, even the younger ones and older few who still have a conscience need a lot of practice to get the vocal inflections just right!
Unfortunately, our media at most levels can't even identify the lies as lies. They use "no real evidence, can't be substantiated, a false statement, not accurate, " or "untrue." None of those has the power of the word "lie!"
Maybe the problem is that Repubs don't want to be seen as liars or called that and so are working hard to block the term. The problem is that when Trump lies with nearly every breath as do his sycophants, it is hard to get people to pay attention because it seems those folks doing the reporting don't want to be sued or something because they called a lie a lie. Maybe that's where We the People come in. Maybe we just have to be the ones to call Republicans out at every turn and do it loudly. Maybe we need a rating system to see which Republican lied most often that day in public. Of course, Trump would win, but I bet Hegseth, RFK,Jr., Blanche, and Leavitt would be battling for second place every day.
The media is a huge reason for the predicament we are in. Reagan repealed the Fairness Doctrine of truth in the media. I remember in the '70s (?) when a True/False block on the side of a political ad would indicate how true or false the statement was. Believe it was decided by an impartial organization. When we allowed the media to control political debates instead of the League of Women Voters, that was the beginning of biased questions.
And it’s not just on a national level. Ohio Nazis, er, Republicans, wouldn’t tell the truth even if it meant eternal life. They simply can’t anymore.
Daniel, that is so sad related to Ohio. In the past Ohio has had some pretty good folks in office. I especially like Sherod Brown and have and will support him for the Senate. He got cheated out of his seat in 2024 and needs that seat back for the sake of the people of OH.
Ruth, that 'past' is well in the rear-view mirror! Today, Ohio is more known for the presently incarcerated, former Ohio Speaker Larry Householder. The corruption here is, I firmly believe, the model other Republican controlled, corrupt states follow. Once it works in Ohio... Sen. Brown is a good, honorable man, but he's 72 years old. We here, and throughout the nation, sorely need an influx of young, strong candidates, and we can't seem to find them, at least here. Sen. Brown was not cheated in '24; he was comfortable that his seat was safe, and he was proven wrong. Ohio turned during the Clinton years, due to the passage of NAFTA, that took away so many blue-collar jobs. All the yokels along the Ohio River blamed "them dang Dem-O-Crats", and have never come back. Just ask Tim Ryan, who should have defeated JD Vance, but allowed all the money to blame not him directly, but the Dems for making their lives poorer. Even though the truth was obviously Republican policy on both the state and National levels. I'll be a vocal backer of Sen. Brown right up to the Nov election, but I sure wish folks my kids ages were in the running.
Daniel, I am sorry to hear your commentary about the 2024 election. I heard Brown speaking often to the people of Ohio and the US and he talked a lot about standing with the people. He had ideas to improve life and supported the bills to bring more jobs to the state and to work on green energy. I honestly don't get how he lost to a jerk who knows nothing and is only in Trump's back pocket so he can smooch as often as demanded.
I really do think Democrats are guilty as well - and on a level that is significant. Take redistricting, for instance. It is a way of lying as it can (hopefully for those proposing it) result in a favorable but false representation of the people. The entire system right now is considering doing it - or has already done it from the Supreme Court down to state level governments. Right now, we the people - it seems - are the only part of our governing design who can fix it
it. Yes, we have to get the vote out by helping all voters in red AND blue districts to vote.
Voters are turning away from MAGA at greater levels than politicians are.
The system will be more easily convinced if we start getting blue votes in red districts - and getting them at good percentages.
I don't think MAGA politicians have any idea how they are now damaging their own followers.
It's summertime and we are now warned against eating the fruits of summer - berries, lettuce and other fresh produce -- foods we've waiting all winter and spring to enjoy - in case we get a case of "explosive diarrhea" (or worse) from the parasite. This is a minor side note - but cooking the berries in a cobbler or crumble will kill the parasite. So, if you find, like me, you don't want to give them up all together this is the way to go! Sometimes I wonder if this administration is actively trying to kill us.
lauriemcf, there are those in the know who believe that is what is happening, banking on sick people being too scared to try to stop the insanity in case medical care might be withheld from them because they aren't the right political persuasion! That truly is criminal!
Top that cobbler with some quality ice cream (vanilla) and I'll be over for dessert!😋
Paul Rosenau:
I'm always amazed and humbled every time I come across a piece of writing that so perfectly and succinctly predicted the future. It proves to me there is clairvoyance in art. Heller wrote this in the late 1950's. It was published in 1961.
"It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character."
Joseph Heller, Catch-22
''The Trump Doctrine: If We Stop Counting, Nothing Is Wrong''
The Trump administration has apparently discovered the cure for bad news: stop collecting it.
Cyclospora is sending Americans sprinting toward bathrooms, so FoodNet made reporting optional for it and several other pathogens. Other CDC systems still track the parasite, but the nation’s premier active-surveillance network now concentrates on salmonella and toxin-producing E. coli. This is called “maintaining vigilance,” much as closing your eyes is called “improving the scenery.”
Meanwhile, flesh-eating screwworms are spreading through Central American wildlife and American livestock while Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins blames Joe Biden. One assumes Biden personally carried the maggots across the border in Hunter’s laptop. The administration also thinned the ranks of the USDA professionals needed to contain the pest, because nothing defeats a biological threat like fewer veterinarians.
Overseas, Trump insists America “holds all the cards,” although Iran appears to control the Strait of Hormuz, the card table, and possibly the casino’s valet parking. At Port Shuaiba in Kuwait, survivors say commanders ignored warnings and left troops inadequately protected before an Iranian drone attack killed six service members.
Pete Hegseth assured the public that almost 90 percent of the injuries were “minor.” In Pentagon bookkeeping, that can apparently include shrapnel, lung damage, concussions, impaired hearing, impaired vision, and multiple surgeries. You are not “seriously injured” unless you might die within 72 hours. Survive until Thursday and congratulations, soldier, you are officially inconvenienced.
Then Lindsey Graham died, completing one of Washington’s strangest political transformations: from telling Trump to go to hell to helping him renovate the place.
Graham once warned, “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed...and we will deserve it.”
He spent the next decade helping Trump prove him right.
It doesn't take much imagination to guess what the president threatened Graham with or promised him in return for his support. I'd love to be inside Lindsay's mind now that he's in eternity, whatever/wherever that is.
The actual suffering is the one thing that cannot be hidden especially when it has become part of the quotidian reality for so many American households. Senior GOP leaders know this very well but they cannot get Trump to seriously address the issues that most concern voters.
Here is some data from the morning Asian market summary.
"Asian markets traded lower on Monday as escalating geopolitical tensions in the Gulf and Iran's claims to have closed the Strait of Hormuz sent Brent crude surging roughly 3% to around $78.50 a barrel. The jump in oil prices stoked inflation fears globally ...". And, gets Cheato's attention.
******************
General Barry McCaffrey this AM 7/13 on 'Money, Power & Politics with Stephanie Ruhle':
Trump will not use ground troop power. The U.S. Navy will not solve the Problem.
"Where is this all this going" asks the General, "Confrontation with no end".
They tell the truth consistently in its opposite. Everything they say is the opposite of what is true. Their lies are a tell.
The administration can always blame the Cyclospora outbreak and the screw worm problem on a Chinese lab...
It is 100% on the American person to know the truth. If people want to sit and stare at the inane junk that they scroll through and believe it to be true then that is on all of us. If people haven't been willing to look around and figure out that things are really stinky around America, then they are deliberately ignorant.
It is time to stop excusing the lazy behavior of the voters in America on that nasty corrupt media everyone likes to complain about but still watches.
Willful ignorance is tremendously different from propaganda.
Sen. Graham demonstrated the truth of your statement. He also demonstrated why we are lost as a nation, with little, if any, hope of recovery. It is when the Grahams, who do know the truth, bury the truth to gain the favor of the evil king that you know the country you cherish is gone. When a true jackass like Kennedy is put in charge of the nation’s health you better know it is time to abandon all hope. This administration has stated that those who serve in the military are idiots. Those are Trump’s very words. You may, if you choose, and we did, elect him despite his honesty as to the kind of leader he would be and apparently be fine with the human tragedies he creates.
These columns, and those of others whose courage I admire, are wonderful. But look at the numbers my friends. Look at the numbers. We are not winning. To those who are young, and I am not, I say flee this sinking ship while there still is time. As a famous coach once said about his pathetic team, “This is who we are.”
All fascists and neofascists regimes not only need to hide the truth, they need something even more important, as experts have shown: constant incompetence.
In a democracy, the exact opposite is true. Incompetent governments tend to be voted out (if the media are doing their job).
Fascism however vitally needs incompetence. It needs the economy to become worse, diseases to become worse, etc.
Why?
Because they need a high level of cynicism, so that people give up all hope for a better future and stop all resistance against those in power.
That's the goal behind slashing vital government agencies.
The twisting of truth has been in gear since trump road that escalator down and it continues at high speed now using AI as well to replace reality with whatever the source wants. Is the source good? Is the source bad? We can't tell.
Why is America so dysfunctional? Does no-one worry about your diplomats from the State Dept failing to negotiate and relying on 'megaphone diplomacy. Can you not keep talking - dot the i and cross the Ts. What happened to the win-win 'Art of the Deal?
From the Guardian:
“We’re taking over the strait. They’ve got nothing,” the US president told Fox & Friends.
Referring to the strait of Hormuz, he continued: “We’re going to guard it. We’re going to get paid for guarding it - a lot of money.”
“We’re going to be reimbursed, because the other nations are very wealthy. They’re on our side, and we can’t be expected to do that for nothing,” Trump said, as he suggested the US would charge countries for safeguarding passage through the dangerous waterway.
During the phone interview, Trump complained about the tactics of Iranian negotiators seeking changes in what he suggested was agreed during hours of talks over the weekend.
“Yesterday, they had an 11-hour meeting ... And everything was agreed to yesterday. And they leave the room, and they call back, and they say we had to make a couple of changes,” he added, without elaborating."
Such a damaged individual. We’re seeing a battle of the aged playing out where people seem to be dying the way they lived.
Lindsay Graham, ever the diva took the easy way out with sudden death by dissecting aortic aneurysm. Mitch McConnell is bouncing back from the ninth circle of hell just to torture us. Trump the malignant narcissist is taking us all with him for the ride.
One of the more favorable obits out there, thanks to Frau Katze. Graham helped the author get some key protection legislation passed, who also acknowledges his vital support for Ukraine over the years, most recently in pushing the procedures under which Ukraine would get licensing rights to produce its own Patriot missile system.
But the rest -- a reminder that everything that comes into contact with Trump dies, often in a truly abominable, wretched way...
https://saltypolitics.substack.com/p/come-at-me-blueanon
His negatives far and away outnumber his positives. This nation will know soon enough that we had absolutely no use for him.
The purpose of an obit, or any reflection, is to list the details, rather than add them up on the scales. The writing speaks for itself...
Yes ICTT, they do. What I can say for Graham is that a broken clock is right twice a day. He did do some good things; however, his betrayals to the Constitution of our nation and allegedly, to his so called "best friend" John McCain, will not serve him well when history continues to be written. I say "allegedly" because the relationship between McCain and Graham is too personal and well beyond any right, or "feeling" I may have, of what it may have been.
Once from Syria, always from Syria.
Talk about what you know, Kauffmann; don't talk about what you don't know. That you are a Zionist; your irrelevance presents itself daily.
As the saying goes Senator Graham… 1 AahSh_t wipes out 100 Attaboys. Your ending was just karma. I’m sure when you see your old friends John McC, his greeting will be “Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot, over…”
Ah, but will he see McCain? Of course, , McCain took on Sarah Palin, but he returned to sanity before he died, unlike Graham.
As a shy young Catholc middle-class child in the 1950s I was taught never to use 'bad' words. I still don't. But finally, with every headline, every report of what "he" says or is doing, while pulling my hair out, waving my arms and jumping up and down, I want to scream at the top of my lungs, in all caps and bold, "IS HE F**KING MAD???!!!??$?#**#!?"
" a reminder that everything that comes into contact with Trump dies, often in a truly abominable, wretched way..." Good! So Putin and Erdogan and Mojtaba are on the way out?
And we are being destroyed piece by shit piece. No shit (please forgive my use of words but I can no longer be nice.) Everything good is being destroyed. On food pathogens, boil everything. Do not eat any more fresh fruit. So far my apples and peaches haven’t given me the food borne diarrhea but no more purchases.
Everything is falling apart. 1984 is taking the Government Think messaging to lie repeatedly until believing lies is all we will accept. The Dawn of Total Deconstruction is at hand. We must fight on all fronts. If we riot in the streets Trump will activate the insurrection act and the military will be deployed into every city and town in the nation. The midterms will be suspended.
We must organize nationally to send an army of volunteers to red states on Election Day to assist with transportation of voters. Now is the time to mobilize.
Trying to live only on processed foods is probably going to kill you anyway. That's why you must tackle this problem of food safety and it must be tackled at source. Surely even food producers will demand this because of the threat it poses to their businesses. What's the point of a Golden Dome missile defence system if you're all shitting yourselves?
I don’t eat factory food. I don’t include sugar. Generally low carbs diet. I make the best pizza in the world using whole wheat mixed with white flour. I love making eggplant with a variety of hard cheeses. ( I’m an Italian boy not Jewish, lol.) I make the perfect veggie burger. It’s time to make my whole wheat wrap with sautéd spinach, egg, cheese, flax and chia seed power, a touch of vinegar… bye.
We need to jail the producers of potato chips and a death sentence for the producers of Cheetos.
The New Rebel Leftist Movement needs your dress so we can bring you in for behavior modification with eyes lipped open. It won’t hurt too much.
It’s risky to *demand* anything from Trump—he might put them out of business or worse, regulate them.
Along with their many other crimes, these unprincipled, greedy, narcissistic old men, in the US and across the globe, is their damage to older human beings who are healthy in mind, body, and spirit, who care about their neighbors, who don’t want to harm others, who are contibutors of good rather than evil. Their is enough ageism without them, but they have added layers of ignorant generalizations.
I think your insight is spot on across the globe! And because of the children we just have to do all that we can. And I would say patriarchy along with oligarchy and other archies. Why the Epstein Files are so important and the work of Anonymous and Bellingtoncat?. It is around the world corruption with pieces here and there from old world families to all the corporations from colonial times on to various religious systems, to academia and ivory towers which was written about by of all people C S Lewis in his syfy series and the academic corporation NICE.
"Patriarchy" wrote the US Constitution, created our currency, fought two World Wars and the Civil War, invented airplanes, cars, electricity, medicine, pharmaceuticals, central heating, birth control, vaccines, computers, software, soccer...and even the computers and the software and the internet that allow you to express your anger here daily.
All the inventions had unnamed women behind them getting no credit.
Oh come on. So they baked bread and made the beds? Sure, history and the absence of (male invented) birth control restricted women. But why argue a hopeless position? The comment to which I replied walked about "patriarchy" in a bumper sticker slogan kind of way. It deserved a factual reply.
What an amazing reply.
Also infused the dna of our nation with fascism through accepting slavery! Patriarchy fostered the all out assault on Indiginous Americans by moving them from their homelands or outright killing them! Easy on the inventions AK, women calculated the orbits of our first space flights when a 16k hand held calculators was the only device available? Ever hear of Ada Lovelace if not read up on HER! Pharmaceuticals like the poison pumped into cancer victims that killed all cells not just cancer cells!
💝
Lou -- I'll go easy on you. Slavery began with, it appears, Egyptians. 25% or so of Athens and Rome were slaves. 60,000 Jewish slaves dragged from Jerusalem built the Colosseum. Slavery here began with the British as there were no "Americans" at the time. "Indigenous Americans" had slaves too.
Ada Lovelace was one of a relatively tiny handful of women inventors, along with Curie and a few others. They get hearty consolations prizes.
You missed the point entirely.
Oppsies misspellings! Behind many males an uncreated human.
"layers of ignorant generalizations"? Without them, there would not be Letters from an American. And without that, you guys would be forced into Mahjong and Bingo games. So your "old" people are better than the ones who work in government?
Mitch may be bouncing back, but not for long, and not very high. He’s a short-timer.
There's no way that photo of McConnell is real of him sitting in a hospital bed in JEANS after a month plus of no word. Btw, he also appears to be younger in it as well. I call B.S. It's either AI or an old image that's been photoshopped, but it ain't real.
Mitch was with Downin Hades Trump.
At one time he saw truth and said — well spread — it.
On May 3, 2016, Senator Lindsey Graham posted on social media: “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed…….and we will deserve it.”
He also more recently said that he believed that Donald Trump represented the 'gold standard' of US foreign policy.
the thing about being in the public eye is that there will always be people who will dig up something we don't want revealed. it's obviously true with Trump. with the 180 degree turnaround that Graham did, i'm pretty sure it was true for him, as well...
Successful politicians have this survivalist element ingrained in their DNA. It’s not pretty. I have often ridiculed Biden for using it. After all, he allowed Clarance Thomas to climb the legal evolutionary trail. He tossed Anita Hill under the bus to survive. So what do I think of him? Like so many other politicians, I wouldn’t want them living next door to me to be able to smell their stench. I would call the better ones necessary for survival. Ok, I’m really being hard I know.Mayor Mandami of New York is one I fully admire. I don’t get to sense this good feeling often. With presidents, I can’t say I’ve fallen in love with any in my lifetime. The good ones: LBJ - great progressive legislation and I spent my youth on the streets protesting that stupid useless Vietnam war. That was the good ones. Jimmy Carter just wanted to smile like JFK to win election. And btw, his photo is the only one I hve on my wall the reminds me of the goodness he achieved post president. Bill Clinton? Shit, he had to get bjs in the oval and didn’t leave much for Al Gore. And he signed the NAFTA Accords leaving millions of American workers disemployed. That of course is arguable. Everything is arguable. Now we revenge vote into office because of the stumbling Ole Joe and we revenge vote the Antichrist of the century. So now what. We end democracy as we have known it. As for the closeted Miss Lindsey, after everything is said and done, he only protected his sequined ass and here I’m not ridiculing his gender preferences just poking some innocent fun.
Breathe, Bill, breathe....
In what middle school did you pick up your clever play on words?
Ah, AK back to Epstein island into you toddler cave!
Deadly rejoinder.
I won't believe that "proof of life" picture of McConnell and Chao isn't fakery unless and until Andy Beshear walks to a microphone and tells us he visited Mitch in his hospital/rehab facility and had a conversation of substance with him.
“Ever the diva” is exactly right. His abject worship of Trump, and of military force, spoke volumes.
Graham may have experienced a quick death, but we have NO IDEA what he might be experiencing now. Fingers crossed he is in his own personal episode of THE TWILIGHT ZONE.
Talk about disrespecting the deceased. We all know that's a load of BS that Lady G was focusing on his SAVE Act. I'm so tired of all the gaslighting.
At least he can't vote for that now. His best service was dying when he did.
"Some men improve the world only by leaving it." Oscar Wilde
Mitch was often called the grim reaper because he prevented so much good legislation from being passed. He worked for the oligarchs and NEVER we the people.
I'd voted for Ted Cruz to go next or even Tom Cotton.
I’d rather Steven miller or Russell vought to be next
How about a twofer?😁
👍
Everything spewing out that gaping orange oral sphincter is a lie, an inanity, or just the sound made by exploding rancid Velveeta no longer hemmed in by dementia-proof filters.
Now that is a fabulous sentence!
In fact, the more I think about it, the more it seems likely that it was Trump who called him, not the other way round. ("Donald, d'you mind if we don't talk now? I'm not feeling too good.") If he didn't also invent the whole phone call outright, after the news broke that LG had died.
Trump does talk to the dead. Teddy Roosevelt had a conversation with Trump recently. The stupid...it hurts!
😂 😂 😂
almost guaranteed it's a lie. Trump will do ANYthing to get what he wants.
Thanks, Laurie. I've just posted to the same effect.
He treats the dead as he does the living: no respect for anyone.
More to come Laurie. Much more.
Institutions are easy to criticize and expensive to rebuild. A society often notices their value only when they stop working. Competence is usually invisible—until it disappears.
It takes wisdom and patience to build a real village -- one that serves its inhabitants through the enforcement of laws, the search for common ground, respect for the past, hope for the future. It takes a true idiot about a half an hour to burn it all to the ground, get rid of the people who once knew how to build it in the first place, then brag about how life is now so much better than it used to be.
Don't it always seem to go...
The great Joni...how true.
He paved the Rose Garden and put up a parking lot.
Can't say that Joni didn't warn us.
Trump, the administration and current Republican Congress are all dangerous for our country/world 💔🤍💙 BE LOUD.
Resource below to easily contact all of Congress -
Use/share this spreadsheet (bit.ly/Goodtrouble) to contact members of Congress, the Cabinet and news organizations. Call. Write. Email. Protest. Unrelentingly!
Reach out (beyond your own) to as many in the Senate and House as you can. All of this is bigger than “I only represent my constituents” issues.
Comments/reactions help keep this bumped ✊
Lindsey Graham has died unexpectedly but can be replaced by an immediately appointed caretaker. Mitch McConnell is out of commission for undisclosed reasons. The dynamics of the Senate are in flux.
Both Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell have consistently supported keeping the Senate legislative filibuster in place and opposed efforts to abolish it.
The filibuster is the only thing preventing the SAVE America Act from passing. Trump wants the filibuster gone and for SAVE America to pass. Expect an all-out push and pressure on the South Carolina Governor to appoint an anti-filibuster replacement for Graham.
I am not talking about conspiracy theories here. This is pure politics taking advantage of the situation.
It only takes a simple majority to change the filibuster rule using the "nuclear option." In that process, a senator raises a point of order that the current rule doesn’t apply in a given way, the presiding officer rules, and the Senate then votes on whether to uphold or overturn that ruling. Overturning the chair’s ruling—and thereby setting a new binding precedent—takes only a simple majority of those voting.
Expect a full court press by Trump and his minions to, at the very least, get the filibuster suspended for votes related to "election integrity." Republicans did it for nominations. They can do it for rigging the elections, a far, far bigger prize.
Other Republicans support keeping the filibuster intact, especially John Thune, the President of the Senate. Most of them do. All Democrats do (save John Fetterman, I suppose). Pure politics is also involved in those who want to keep the status quo intact, fearing the day will come when they themselves will be deprived of it. And Trump will be waging "full court presses" about literally everything under the sun, just as he has been, as his own desperation and terror mount. It doesn't follow that will actually happen.
Most of us are rightly scared for the future, fired up, ready to vote, organize, donate, move, demonstrate. It's not like we need to be woken up in the middle of night just for the sake of some additional terror we might have missed the first time round...
Those Republicans that want to kill the filibuster may feel that that's all they need as long as it can assure them power. Then they can finish the job of stealing elections "legally".. Trump says he wants to disempower the Democrats, get rid of them, altogether.
Gov Beshear needs to just call a special election. Call their bluff. If he does, there will be a lawsuit, which will lead to the need for them to prove he is alive/capable of doing his job. The photo of Mitch circulating yesterday is so obviously altered, which is just more evidence that he is in fact not coming back to work. This is how democrats need to resist.
Thank you Megan for continuing to keep this information prominently displayed! It’s so frustrating to continually write our congresspeople but it does help them to understand that actual voters are aware of the issues. I write regularly, and I actually craft my messages rather than forwarding someone else’s opinion. It does help make a difference to send your own thoughts.
Thank you for continuing to speak up! I agree, I usually start with an example script and change it to sound more like me
Add the Supreme Court to your list of dangerous Trump kissers
Yes 100%. Their contact is on my spreadsheet as an option too!
The same people that allowed this to happen also sat on this info for six weeks. So, since there was a stifling 8 day heat wave in that time--many people loaded up on SALAD.
They are claiming (now that those gangsters are admitting a problem) that there are 3000 cases nationally. We know they under-report so call it 4500. Now assume 10 that tough it out at home for every 1 that seeks help and gets counted. So 45,000. Now add the ones who ate it but are incubating. 55,000? So maybe 100K, and since they are not STOPPING the gangsters from SELLING the bad produce, or from contaminating it, and millions are functionally illiterate, this is a slow motion disaster.
And they are doing NOTHING to cut it off at the source.
THEY KNOW IT IS FACTORY PRODUCE. Maybe they can't pull all the commercial produce. That may be logistically impossible. But they could stop any more from getting into the market stream. They could clamp down on the corporate perps. They could make restaurants stop serving ANY uncooked fresh produce. They could make all grocery stores put up big signs about COOKING all of it, and they could pull the leafy greens.
But they won't do any of that.
They are saying nobody has died. I say "yet" and "that we know of".
Elders, small children, and the immune compromised have a far greater risk. Have any died of cyclospora cayetanensis thus far? How could we know?
Part of my expertise is in food and local food systems. This is a public service announcement I published on Saturday. It contains some STRATEGIES for protecting yourself from sickness:
https://annabelascher.substack.com/p/warning-dangerous-parasite-in-produce
Many thanks, Annabel.
Great info, Annabel. Thank you. In my area (the Willamette Valley) we are blessed with an abundance of good, organic produce from truly LOCAL farmers (within about a 60 mile radius of Eugene). We quit buying bagged lettuce/salad mixes long ago. I'm currently harvesting what is probably the tail end of my lettuce that I've grown.
Thank you Annabel.
Thanks, Annabel!
Yes, thank you very much, Annabel.
I have been studying this outbreak since I first became aware of it on Friday the 10th. Food security is one of my big topics. Here is my analysis:
https://annabelascher.substack.com/p/the-cyclospora-outbreak-of-summer
Thank you so much, Annabel., for sharing your knowledge. This is one subject that none of us should ignore!
But, dang, just when I was embarking on a serious diet to include fresh, green salads, and copious amounts of vegetables...ugh!
Buy from local farmer's markets and be diligent about washing produce.
Thank you Annabel. You know I just rediscovered kale. Now I need to boil it. Fresh fruit, forget it. I’m I overreacting? It’s a judgement call for sure.
Annabel -- would you say that buying produce at a Farmer's market -- where vendors are not industry ag factories is relatively safe -- or, more likely, there is simply no way to know? There is nothing like a tomato sandwich with mayo in July!
Many vendors at such markets are simply re-sellers… it seems (almost) nothing is safe.
good point. ugh.
@Signe K.--You have to hunt out the genuine small farms and ask a ton of questions. We have a small market in my city with a "grew it yourself" rule. I am filled with gratitude to the non-profit behind it.
@Lauricf--The reseller problem is real. BUT if you are SURE they are a small local farm that does not wash down with wastewater or other factory farm practices, then that produce is as safe as your own garden.
Good luck finding those good tomatoes! I will be going to our own hyper-local Westside Market in search of mine.
Thank you -- I got gorgeous heirloom tomatoes on Saturday at the Brooklyn Heights farmers market -- from the farm in NJ -- I will wash the outsides, but I do not think they are a reseller.
At last I have a good reason for my aversion to produce. I knew it would come in handy one day.
Happy Birthday, TC!
Today, just eat cake!
😂
The success of a parasite depends on its ability to live off its host without killing it. Ticks. Cyclospora. Mosquitoes. Vampire bats. Cuckoo birds. A very successful, and amoral, niche in the animal kingdom. Putin in Russia and Kim in North Korea use this strategy.
There is a giant orange colored parasite living in the people's White House now. See his recent public disclosure that he had drawn $2,000,000,000 from his willing MAGA follower host and kept $635,000,000 of the bounty for himself. If each MAGA buyer of "Trump Meme Tokens" lost an average of $2,000, that's one million MAGAs that contributed to the parasite's pockets. Not a big enough loss to kill the host. But significant for the parasite.
The parasite also earned $500,000,000 from its other digital money projects, which are in competition with our Federal Reserve. The parasite's children are trying to rig the laws so they have a monopoly on digital dollars.
The parasite has helpers. The FBI, the Dept of Justice, the GOP Congress and two thirds of the Supreme Court are working for him now. The latest scam game for the parasite's family was the raid on the Treasury for $1,776,000,000. Assisted by the Acting Attorney General and the Secretary of the Treasury. The unwilling host in this case is the American citizen. The parasite is not letting go and is still trying to take the public funds for his own use.
Now the parasite realizes its feeding days are coming to an end. And he won't go away quietly or honorably. So he is pushing the SAVE Act to control elections and use other tricks to retain power.
De Burgh: Wow. That's a disgustingly clear picture. Brilliant.
Thanks. It seems the good faith opposition and press fail to understand the pathology of the parasitic life strategy. We live in the symbiotic world of thinking the best of our fellow man.
Every reader of the McCarthy-Cohn era recognizes the amoral/immoral behavior choice of the human parasite. Roy Cohn was Trump's mentor. In that light, Trump's behavior the past 10 years is not a surprise.
The parasite has no morals. Right and wrong are irrelevant, except to be exploited to fool the good faith host. The tick bluffs and lies and threatens and cheats and bribes to be allowed to feed on the host, just one more day. One day at a time.
The Democratic Party treats the Trump Party as though it is legitimate. It is not. The Trump Family Parasite is counter to the precepts of self-rule that America was founded on. Patrick Henry forecasted a bad man would use the power of the Office of President for his own benefit. Here we are.
Those who fail to see this truth and state i it out loud and demand the removal of the tick set themselves up as victims. The parasite moves fast and destroys anything that could remove its head from the flesh of the host and stop it from feeding. We know how to pull a tick from our skin. First we have to recognize it for what is. Not what it claims to be. This tick has burrowed in tight and we citizens, its host, allow it to grow and grow. It will do anything and everything to keep feeding on us.
Yes, disgustingly clear.
Outstanding post,DeBurgh.
Judge Williams' order to stop the tick from stealing $1,776,000,000 from the American people.
https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/28468904/trump-v-irs-order.pdf
A reminder that it was a childless Lindsey Graham who told South Carolina's mothers and fathers earlier this year that they should gladly send their own sons and daughters to die for a Strait called Hormuz...
His support for Ukraine, its military, its people, should be remembered. As for all the rest, it's virtually incomprehensible. During the Kavanaugh nomination hearings, his snarling, self-righteous sobs, televised for maximum effect, were dispensed with enough tears and Grade B emoting it would have embarrassed Gloria Swanson. Senator Graham's moral compass flapped in the breeze alongside his loyalties to whatever alpha he deemed the most powerful at the moment. In his later moments on Meet the Press and the like, he always looked drunk. It was likely how his self-damaged soul managed to get through the day.
I don't believe there were zero US casualties in Venezuela either.
Pests destroying American health as the administration cuts monitoring efforts; downplaying and hiding soldiers wounds while delaying treatment; and using Senator Graham’s death to hype legislation are corrupt and insensitive governing as usual. For your health and the nation’s keep your eyes on the ball, contact your representatives, and vote Blue!
And everyone may have to walk or wheel themselves to a voting booth as per the Trump blue state voting law. In red states they got things wrapped up. The VIGILANTES will be removing democrats from the rolls as they did in 2024. See gregpalast.com .
I think it was Betty Davis who said, "Speak only good of the dead. He's dead. Good!"
She, rather than he. Hearing news that her lifelong nemesis, Joan Crawford, had just died, Bette Davis wrote: "it's said you should never speak ill of the dead, only good. Joan Crawford is dead. Good."
Okay, thanks.
Will just quote a famous American lawyer and civil libertarian Clarence Darrow — “I have never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure"
A classic....
lol.
The Most Important American Office: The Citizen
Mehdi Hasan interviewed Canadian author and speechwriter for Mark Carney Omar Aziz(bit.ly/4wGHvUb), author of the book Shadows of the Republic. The discussion and questions shed light on the current American fascist movement led by the Nazi Republicans and the history of neo-fascism in the US.
Although Aziz thinks the comparison of Hitler and Cheeto may be over done, he speaks of the substantive nature of the similarities and makes the point that fascists vary from country to country because of the nuanced effect of the country’s culture and its effect on the flavor of fascism exhibited. Aziz points to a 25 point plan to counter fascistic ideology and lands on reclaiming meaning as a culture. Is meaning greed, consumerism, and scrolling all day or does it mean becoming politically active at a local level and being a force in the political future? That is, becoming a citizen and reclaiming our responsibility.
The Nazi Republicans want to destroy our country and should not be trusted on any political matter. And as they continue to push the lie of voter fraud all the while the Nazis across the country have passed 500+ pieces of legislation that support voter suppression. WE the People need to reclaim our office as citizen, demand campaign contribution reform to prevent money from buying elections, expect more from elected representatives, and deny sweeping unitary executive powers to the president. WE
In keeping with the thoughts above, "Nazi" does not quite fit here, although they share in vainglory, sociopathy, and repression. I think we need to stay aware if the dedicated plutocrats that had much to do with creating this state of affairs and much to do with advancing and protecting it. The pattern at bought and paid for "Robert's Court", for example is less anti-democratic than it is pro-plutocratic, and you see that pattern in what they do and don't support. I'm a believer in free enterprise, but monopoly or oligopoly, privately or state controlled, is the opposite of freedom. Freedom is the universal right to diversely pursue happiness, within the bounds of responsible behavior toward others. We mutually contract with one another to agree on some boundaries for the latter.
THAT is regulation, and regulation can be wise or foolish, just or unjust, excessive, inadequate, or "just right"; but it's a social tool, not in and of itself a goal nor an evil. Presumably, a government of, by and for the people that is wise will regulate wisely, including admitting and correcting inevitable errors. Truly "free enterprise" is a subset of a "free society"; liberty and justice for ALL. Monopolies of money, ownership, and political power, left, right, or whatever, is it's nemesis.
As Thom Hartmann writes the 13 colonies declared war against the monarch and his corporate monopoly the East Indian Tea Company. So there will always be this tug and pull between private company interest vs the governmental regulatory agencies.
Use of the word Nazi is done explicitly to invoke the dark evil side of the Republican unitary executive ie autocratic government that they want to establish. Zakaria at CNN did a piece on the Imperial Presidency that has grown out of the Reagan admins supported by the Roberts court. Hopefully WE the People can wrest the government back from this type of presidency but I think it will take removal of the filibuster to do it.
I remember a few years ago, a high speed train in China derailed killing a large number of people. The local government's response was to try and bury the entire train, including the injured and dead. If you can hide the truth, it didn't happen.
Apparently, all authoritarian governments use the same playbook, including ours.
Lindsay Graham's best service to America was dying when he did. With Mitch McConnell in the hospital for in indeterminate future, this means the GOP in the Senate doesn't have the votes to pass the NDAA or the Defense supplemental as "clean bills" and that attaching Trump's assault on the midterms - the SAVE Act - is DOA, even assuming the Island of Misfit Toys in the House could get themselves together enough to pass it there.
Beyond being useful by not being able to vote, I hope Graham is already on the Ninth Level of Hell, spitted and roastng over a hot fire for the 10 eternities, here I hope every other one of these Traitors joins that spineless weathervane.
Graham and McConnell were against getting rid of the filibuster.
Granted. But that was then, and this is now. Look forward, not at may have been...
The six dropped pathogens that the Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network, or FoodNet, since 1995 dropped monitoring are: Campylobacter, Cyclospora, Listeria, Shigella, Vibrio and Yersinia. Most foodborne illnesses people get over through time but the populations that are most affected are the young, elderly and immune compromised individuals. What White House spokesperson Kush Desai really is saying is, “We will no longer track or monitor diseases/illnesses… this way we don’t have to admit they exist…” with an added “Good luck cause we don’t give a rats ass about the health and safety of the American people…” Feel free to drink that unpasteurized milk while taking another ivermectin tablet..
It’s the same for our military members if their injuries aren’t tracked there are no serious injuries. No long term issues like PTSD, or brain injuries that last their lifetimes. No worries folks everything is looking great because we’ve got this handled..
As for Graham as we’ve witnessed his trajectory of selling his integrity, morals, values basically his soul by signing his name on the dotted line to attain and retain his power and wealth — “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." — Lord Dalberg-Acton
Have never believed democracy dies only because of one man like Trump. Democracy dies because intelligent people who know better decide that preserving their own political future matters more than preserving the institutions they swore to defend. Trump didn’t create this movement alone. He required willing participants. Lindsey Graham became one of the most indispensable among them. Lyndsey pushed the Felon’s fascist agenda through and was proud in doing so.
Graham’s betrayal wasn’t towards the Democrats and it wasn’t even towards Republicans. It was a betrayal to the American people. The collective group of us that should expect more from our elected officials than we end up getting. Every oath of office carries an implied promise that the Constitution comes before any individual. Lindsey Graham had countless opportunities to honor that promise. Again and again, he chose otherwise.
Some men leave behind monuments.
Some leave behind cautionary tales.
Believe Lindsey Graham leaves behind the latter.
"The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones."
Very well said. Especially "Have never believed democracy dies only because of one man like Trump. Democracy dies because intelligent people who know better decide that preserving their own political future matters more than preserving the institutions they swore to defend."
Do we believe Trump's account of his last conversation with Lindsay Graham? It strikes me that "SAVE" has now been hoisted as a sacred banner - the last wish of a patriot.
How do we know when the FPFOTUS is lying? Whenever his lips move.
Arncha' just tickled by the waaay Orwellian labels Repubs cook up for all their dastardly schemes? Orwell's ghost is thinking "Told you so".