At 8:22 this morning, Trump posted on social media: “The United States will be hitting Iran (Whose Navy, Air Force, Radar, Anti Aircraft, and all other forms of Defense, together with most of its offensive capability, are GONE!), VERY HARD TONIGHT.
I had to stop for a moment at; “Fox News hosts are urging Trump to increase US military involvement in Iran.” A right wing news staton” conducting the war by feeding thoughts into dumbos head is almost too much to bear.
The real question is how many continue to listen, of course. No one's going to say it out loud, but there's such a sense that the tides are shifting. The booing and hissing in New York at the Knicks game when Velveeta Voldemort stood there trying to look serious during the national anthem was kind of a give-away. Yes, it's New York, and not Arkansas, but you get the sense that those tired old dogs just won't hunt anymore. Shelling out hundreds of dollars more a month for basics will do that to you.
Sometimes it's hard to believe just how stupid Trump really is...
He is stupid as a fox!! He lacks culture, basic general knowledge, but has learned the Hitler playbook and played into the hands of billionaires who whisper sweet nothings in his ears, and pull all his puppet strings. He is as conniving as anyone can get. We, the people, get poorer, more indebted, less healthy and mentally taxed, while the orange helium balloon gets fatter in body and bank accounts, like Orban did for 16 years in Hungary. Now WE NEED A PÉTER MAGYAR and the mobilization of all patriots against tyranny. Long live the DEMOCRATIC UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!
I agree with everything you wrote Veronica, with one cautionary note. I feel that we do not "need" someone like Magyar, as truly professional a cleaner of the Augean stables he appears to be, as what we really need is to take the opportunity handed us by the Mad Mango Mussolini and re-configure the long corrupted corners of our government gasping since before Trump, for ourselves. It's not about who we rally around as much as it is about demanding a comprehensive accountability from our elected representatives, making sure they respect and respond to the People's interests, not those of the Billionaires, and exercising self-government in concert with the current culture's more grandiose and efficient technological soapboxes.
We cannot fall for the Siren song of the "Savior" candidate. We have an abundance of good and capable candidates for the Presidency two years hence, but let us not forget that the Article I branch of Congress is the most important of the three branches of the Federalist system of government the Founders built, and pay that the attention it needs.
Virtually ALL of our current woes can be traced to the gobsmackingly embarrassing level of Congressional cowardice within the former Party of Lincoln's representatives, cowering in the pancake made up face of Despicable Don, and refusing to do their sworn duty or even exercise their own constitutional power.
Every one of those repugnant republicans were elected, were they not? We got what we voted for, right? I blame my neighbors and racist, family members.
Shortly after Trump was re-elected, I told my Republican sister that Trump was a rapist and a monster. “That’s what YOU think,” she sneeringly replied.
You have to say it for Faux News: they are really good at brainwashing.
But also, the weenie representatives are still too afraid of holding any town meetings. They know the voters now see through their lies, no matter how much propaganda faux entertainment spews.
Daniel, very well-said! The congressional cowardice, mostly among Republicans is at least as disturbing as Trump himself. Trump has always been a creep, but now his dementia makes him even more problematic and unpredictable than ever and that is saying a lot!!
.... a moment of sanity reading, "comprehensive accountability from our elected representatives, making sure they respect and respond to the People's interests"
When you speak of "making sure they respect and respond to the People's interests, not those of the Billionaires," you breast the machinery of schools all set to billionaires' playbooks, and zero to peoples' interests.
Testing guarantees strangulation for the sake of billionaires widening the wealth gap, sucking up for themselves more yet more of what used to be income the working classes and middle classes held.
The opposite? Some fluid mixture of essay writing, civics, and humanities (including history) -- with rigorously higher standards for the reading of whole books
It's very simple. The billionaires engineered things so the tests rigorously reduce "intelligence" only to the forms of rationality conducive to conformity to the packagers, groupers, and clever knaves to power.
All the works outside these narrow regimes? Gone. No longer in public circulation.
Daniel: don’t forget SCROTUS, the puffed-up high-T men who brought us Citizens United, thus selling us out to the highest bidders, while offering Mad Mango Mussolini (I like that) the Get Out of Jail Free card and totally emasculating the Voting Rights Act, while Jack-hammering the wall of separation between Church and State. They’ve done more damage than the Idiot-In-Chief.
Yes Veronica. Earlier this week as you recall, it was announced the known donors of the East Wing Ballroom calamity have received over $50 billion in new government contracts. These oligarchs are the ones that pay marginal Federal tax rates way less than a family earning $100,000 a year.
Meanwhile his arcane budget demands we the people pay to restock the weapons he wasted in Iran committing war crimes and other atrocities while cutting scientific research.
The massive cuts to research are bad enough but the gross gutting off even monitoring the Oceans exposes us to greater danger (far more than just kelp), that we could be avoiding with the best present instrumentation.
I was amazed at what we could observe and support other organizations with in our Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) back in 1974 - 84 years I spent there, but it pales in comparison to what we can do now.
The segment title is "Trump Admin Guts Vital Sea Monitoring, “Tears Out the Eyes and Ears of Science”: David Helvarg" and some of the description from the link follows:
"...We’re joined by ocean policy expert David Helvarg to discuss the Trump administration’s dismantling of the Ocean Observatories Initiative, the “cutting-edge eyes [and] ears” of the ocean. The program’s closure, proposed in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 playbook for Trump’s second administration, involves the decommissioning of a vast network of ocean floor sensors that collect data on marine ecosystems, ocean currents and global climate data, protecting the world’s oceans and providing critical information about extreme weather. In their place is the increasingly unregulated expansion of resource extraction driven by the fossil fuel industry, “essentially developing the ocean for offshore oil drilling and mining — basically, as a gas station and a garbage dump.”
Helvarg, the author of Forest of the Sea: The Remarkable Life and Imperiled Future of Kelp, also discusses “the world’s other forest crisis”: the loss of over half of kelp forests to warming ocean temperatures, throwing coastal ecosystems deeply out of balance. “We have an ocean,” adds Helvarg. “It’s full of life. It’s at risk. And we need to better understand the other 71% of our blue marble planet to protect it — and not to let a few individuals and corporations destroy it...”
As always, the rushed transcript is one of the best for speedy delivery and accuracy.
We are demonstrating that "taking" for short term gain is the way of the majority of human beings.
It takes the deep, active respect for humans and all creation, the air we breath, the beautiful waters that thrive with plant life and fish, and many others forms of living plants and creatures, to keep our planet safe for the future.
We also should be looking towards other planets on which life is possible for humans and other fellow creatures.
Not only is brilliance and deep respect for life needed but drive and purpose and love for those who are with us now and who will face a future that is unknown to us at this time.
Emily, I agree with you, especially about the deep, active respect for humans and all creation. This is the only criteria for seeking out other habitable planets, because what good is it to scurry off to another planet if we're only going to continue our self-destructive habit of ravaging and gutting our home (wherever it may be) for the sake of profit?
Jim, the oligarchs are convinced that they own every resource on land, in sea, and - now - in space. They are God and the Universe is theirs. I suspect they will buttress their greed Biblically:
Genesis 1:26-28: Often called the "dominion mandate," God commissions humanity to "subdue" the earth and rule over the living creatures.
Deuteronomy 8:9: Describes a promised land "whose stones are iron and out of whose hills you can dig copper," illustrating that extracting mineral wealth is a natural provision from God.
Hello Veronica... DJT plays for the 'Ratings'... DJT learned this by manipulating the NYC Tabloids, and MSM... Hitler did the same with the German Media.... How did that work out for the Germans?...
Worked out fine, Apache, for the thugs lining concentration camp inmates for death.
Just as it's working out similarly fine for the thugs of U.S. ICE and CBP reenacting the same lawlessness, systematic cruelty, slow murder by U.S.-federal-style starvation and lack of medical care, and on top of that flagrant, cold-blooded, broad daylight murder, with the federal pay-rolled murderers as protected and unaccountable as all Donald's pals in their rapes of underage girls.
Hitler's playbook along with his deplorable business ethics that he has honed for decades, using threats against contractors who don't have the money to fight him in court. He's the antithesis of anything Christian.
It’s time to think of Papa Putin again. Who else is running the show? So much of what Professor Richardson bas put together for US today seems directly “inspired” by the Trump-Putin phone calls. Time to have a Vindeman back in the Oval Office.
When do Americans “get it”? Paying attention is necessary. HISTORY IS REAL.
WheweeeWOW Veronica! Indeed…. “Stupid as a fox!” Thank YOU for saying what I have thought for a long while…. He IS IGNORANT, however, NOT STUPID! And quite deadly….
Apologies! I wrote my brief comment before I read yours! I promiseI didn't steal stupid like a fox from you! But I love that we both came up with it even as I grieve the reason!
He's clearly said he doesn't think much about what people are experiencing and that he loves inflation! We are in a much worse place than any Twilight Zone.
At least half of the cholesterol lining my veins and arteries is from all the Velteeta I have ingestion throughout my life. Thanks again for the laugh ICTT.
Wall Street is still behind him. These and the Tech Bros plus the Beautiful People (High Society) are the first people he has always wanted acceptance from even before the Dictators of the World. It is necessary for his inner being to feel superior to those he considers below him. Mary Trump has diagnosed that he is seeking the love his mother didn't have the health and care his toddler self desired. Like always, he also suffers from "Too Much, but Never Enough". Same disease that afflicts many of the Hedge Fund types and other types of investors. Pretty soon I expect the Stock Market to take a more permanent dive. Just wait till oil shortages hit at the same time the Fed is forced by inflation to raise interest rates again! Also, I would no longer trust any information coming out of any part of the Administration including employment numbers and the like.
So true, Louise. Numerous Trump “announcements” are solely meant to influence the stock market and Trump-favored businesses. Musk’s SpaceX IPO is a perfect example of what is going on yesterday and today.
Yes, Trump appears to be experiencing mental and physical problems, and I can understand the stress that puts him in. On the other hand, Trump’s handlers seem to just be willing to pull his strings and make money. The LOVE of Money….
Thank you, Louise. I have tired of reading comments like Veronica's agreeing with Donald that he's some kind of genius. As you point out in Mary L. Trump's book, her Uncle Donald actually has a learning disability that was never addressed by his parents, other than to paper it over with $100 bills. That disability was exacerbated by emotional issues, making Donald an extremely broken creature. I would add that Mary has continued to write and speak out against Donald, always supporting her positions with firsthand personal and professional evidence.
As I have pointed out ad infinitum, Donald has two – and only two – motivations: 1. Enriching himself without limits, and 2. staying out of prison.
EVERYTHING he does is animated by those two motives. He is actually not smart enough to achieve those goals on his own, so he has surrounded himself with sycophants and enablers who are smart enough and devious enough to help him. Example: The Situation Room brainstorming session to devise a plan for concealing the Epstein files, as reported by NYT.
Whatever other heinous actions taken by the Trump regime that don't serve the above-mentioned goals are the brainchildren of Steven Miller, Russell Vought and other operatives who have their own agendas.
Donald's various remodeling and construction projects around the capital city serve both of his motivations. He is remaking the environment to his liking because he intends to remain in the White House for life. Also, each of those projects is overpriced in order to provide under-the-table kickbacks that go into his personal coffers. This is exactly how he operated in his personal business before he was president.
Hey, Frau. On the Grounded podcast with Maritsa Georgiou, I follow former Senator Jon Tester (a Democrat from Montana), who runs a farming operation. He basically said no matter how bad it gets for them with Trump, the farmers will always vote Republican. So disheartening.
Tester has a candidate in the US Senate race who would be one more voice challenging Trump. Former President of the University of Montana, Seth Bodnar, running as an Independent, will attract the votes of farmers and other from Montana. Jon Tester's support for him is important. Donations are also important. Bodnar can win.
"Seth Bodnar is running for Senate to take on corruption and the Washington donor class. Seth Bodnar is a political independent who is running to take on party elites."
"Paid for by SETH BODNAR FOR MONTANA
Seth Bodnar for MT - Make a Donation - An Independent Fighter."
Still have hope that farmers will see the light…A 2026 Farm Futures Q1 survey revealed that farmer confidence in Donald Trump dropped 10% points from previous polls.. Every move on the needle helps..
Thank you for noting Senator Jon Tester, a great and steady leader, a Democrat and a farmer (as was my family) but my family was from North Carolina.
My friends who are "the salt of the earth" vote for Republicans. There is no room for argument with them....I guess we will pay the price for believing lies! UNLESS WE VOTE OUT AS MANY REPUBLICANS AS POSSIBLE!!! THAT MEANS WE DO NOT LET ANYTHING KEEP US FROM GOING TO THE POLLS!!!! IF WE CANNOT PHYSICALLY GO TO THE POLLS TO PLACE OUT VOTE
WE MUST MAIL IN OUR VOTE FOR OUR DESIRED LEADERS!!!
We can still hand deliver in Colorado, f*** the Post Office. I realize not everone can do this but maybe those of us that can should set up a "pickup/delivery" service.
As one who lived in NYC 50 years...it is not like anywhere else in the world.
People say it's changed...but, I still believe it has the same mix of every nationality. They all belong there....and, always an energy, that, who knows, may come from geology.
I've lived in NY for 46 years and I completely agree - there's no place like it. We raised our son here and now he is raising his two little daughters here. Diversity is just a way of life here and it makes it so rich in culture and amazing food.
NYC is electric, probably better now than when I was born and raised there -- in the Bronx -- because it's now more diverse, with more little communities of folks from all different cultures. But we who were born and grew up there took it for granted. The one thing we knew and didn't take for granted is that NYC has everything and anything you possibly could want.
Hello ICTT.... From HCR Today: "Trump is “increasingly frustrated with everyone, from his own team to the Senate…. He’s pissed, and people are not recognizing the level of pissed that he is,” the operative said. “He does not like being put in a box,” the operative told Burns and Wren. “When you put him in a box, then Trump’s going to blow the box up.”" || Seems that DJT will do something Extreme... Per Mary Trump, DJT has always fantasized about Nuclear Götterdämmerung.... DJT is feeling his mortality, and DJT still has the Nuclear Codes... Pray For Divine Intervention Soon...
Sometimes it's hard to believe just how intellectually bankrupt Trump is. Yet 37% of Americans support him. They're not stupid—they're choosing stupidity because it channels their rage.
The world watches in disbelief. This country once stood for democracy, rule of law, human dignity. Now it stands for authoritarianism and cruelty. And tens of millions are cheering.
We—the majority—sit in disgust. We believed in democracy. We believed America was better than this.
But belief doesn't matter. The majority doesn't rule. Democracy is dead in the world's oldest democracy.
The Mexican World Cup opening ceremony even booed the American flag. Mexico has now replaced Canada as our biggest trading partner, and this is how they see us.
Four dozen former Fox personalities have positions in the Trump administration.
Listen to Decoding Fox News on Substack to hear a week of Fox soundbites in 45 min plus a comparison on Fox Vs PBS news hour topics. It is alarming and illuminating: Https://decodingfoxnews.substack.com?r=4j5a4
I love your use of "Velveeta Voldemort", ICCT. My Dad (USAAC WWII Staff Sergeant) always said that the best use of Velveeta was as fish bait. So thankful he is not here to witness the debacle that is 45/47.
To your last comment: I DO believe it. Just as I do believe in air, water, my periodic thirst for a cold IPA and my love for my wife. Ole cocksplat is tripping all over his swollen ankles.
Marj, I think that was a big part of it. The Trump family tried desperately to gain entry into NYC aristocracy and were rejected. Greater NYC hates Trump and he hates them back. His visit to the game was mainly to f*ck up the experience for Knicks fans and flip them the bird from the safety of his plexiglass box.
Also keep in mind that he has a history with studio (it's not professional) wrestling. In that industry, there is always a "heel." The loudmouthed, obnoxious villain that whips the blue-collar crowd into a slobbering frenzy of hate. Heels have just as strong a following among wrestling fans as the heroes. Donald has embraced the "heel" persona and relishes the attention, even if it is negative.
That’s whyI don’t watch Fox News. FOX news is owned by billionaires and says whatever President Trump says. Watch Rachel Maddow on MSNBC on 356 and you will get the truth
It is not and never has been news. Classified as entertainment. They even won a lawsuit in 2006 saying they could lie because they were entertainment. We are being entertained to death. The golden chain saw added pizazz. Now chump is yelling “they’re fired” to any country or opponent he wants.
We don’t have Churchill, who fought with every fiber of his being, nor do we have Ike but we have Rupert. When will we stop being entertained and take up our torches.
It was Pearl Harbor that stopped the blather and spurred the action. But now the Chamberlain’s rule snd the Churchill’s are silent. Silent was something that Churchill never was. Stir the pot Dems.
Meanwhile let us smile in appreciation of the genuinely karmic irony in the fact that the plutocrats who assaulted us with their Trumpian suppositories are now -- obviously in the bottomless terror of recognizing their own vulnerability to the Evil they sicced on life itself -- manipulating capitalism in what appears to be a successful attempt to re-assert their mastery over their tantrum-twisted puppet, hopefully before said puppet comes completely unstrung and pushes the wrong button.
Axios News is a reliable source for admissible facts:
Per Axios, "A year's worth of inflation-adjusted wage gains vanished in just four months, leaving workers little better off than when President Trump returned to office."
Axios Explainer: "Why it matters: The reversal shows how the recent energy-driven inflation surge is eating into household purchasing power. Real pay for rank-and-file workers is up just 0.1% since Trump took office in January 2025."
MSNBC is absolutely also owned by Billionaires. They may have what we consider to be more reasonable positions on what we think is important. But don't for a second think that they are not propaganda for the rich and influential.
At this point America's media system... radio, TV, newspapers and print... are all owned by Billionaires. Approach every story you watch/read/hear with a grain of salt. Always ask yourself.. 'who's making money off of this'.
EXCUSE ME: DID YOU WRITE " ALMOST TOO MUCH TO BEAR"? THIS WHOLE GOVERNMENT IS LIKE A BAD FUTURISTIC NOVEL, WITH WEIRD CHARACTERS AND NO END IN SIGHT! COULD WE JUST RETURN TO NORMAL,PLEASE??!!
But I am not sure we should want the previous "normal". There was some tiny incremental change. But the Democrats still thought they could negotiate in good faith (Joe Biden: those days ended years ago). There IS NO GOOD FAITH or inclusiveness in the Republican party. It is corruption and fascism on steroids.
And Democrats still embraced a capitalism that talked the talk of fairness and inclusivity. But health care was still spiraling out of control. Having child care was still a joke for all but the most affluent. Housing was still unaffordable for too many. The fossil fuel oligarchs and giant agriculture were still getting subsidies. Unions were still losing their influence. States were still depriving women of reproductive rights and healthcare. Our infrastructure was still crumbling - aging electric grids incapable of handling the exploding demand for cheaper sustainable production. Antique water systems. Antique bridges ready to collapse. I could go on...
The Orange Menace won twice because people wanted radical change. They were sold on the idea that the insiders were not going to solve their problems.
We can use the same strategy now. The problems are even worse. Every president always gets blamed for everything that goes wrong. Just ask Obama. "47" is no different.
But wishing we could get back to normal isn't going to get the bystanders to the voting booth. We need to make some GOOD trouble by demanding radical reform of everything. Taxes! Health Care! Child Care! Housing! Cost of food and utilities!
Here's the pitch:
"If the Republican unregulated capitalist version of our economy was going to give us good care - health, education, clean air and water, better paying jobs - it would have happened by now. Instead the billionaires are becoming trillionaires and millions of American kids are hungry. Millions are dying too early. Infant mortality is growing. America is sliding backwards."
It is time for a revolution. A massive redistribution of wealth. The old normal was well intentioned but failed.
My sense of a "new normal" is radical. If we lived in another "western democracy" it might be called every day common sense.
Bill, I think the change the Trump voters want is the ability to carry on with racist and misogynistic policies—the ones DEI initiatives were chipping away. I propose the Democrats (or a new party?) work for the common (public) good and call for the funding and equitable administration of free public healthcare, free public transportation and free public K16 education. For starters. Less money for the budgets of violence (military, police, prisons) and more for those supporting well being. And you might say our economy where profit taking is the ultimate virtue is also violent—exploitation of labor and resources is unfettered. The predatory nature of our economy has to be addressed in order to move funds from the budgets supporting violence. It is clear to more and more people—dawning on us—that war and weapons are depriving all but a few getting wealthy on the backs of the rest of us. Perhaps we can thank social media for helping more of us see where our hard earned money is going—toward violence and not toward our well being.
Well said! My hope is that the vast number of independents, many of whom voted for 47, will be disillusioned enough, angry enough to vote for their better interests. One can hope...
But I am so with you on this. Going back to 'normal' is never going to be enough. Going back to a calm Biden apologist administration will not make me happy.
America has never hit the goals promised in the Declaration of Independence or the Bill of Rights. But at least before it felt like we were moving towards it.
Now we have taken 6 steps back. And that isn't good enough for me anymore.
I just blew up a Military sub of veterans dissn Graham. My blood's still high. Lying sanctimonious b#&&$@* coming from a bunch of men who have never lifted a gun except to shoot a defenseless deer or a paper target (aka Cold War Vets)... daring to bad mouth actual combat veterans because they don't agree with them politically? I've been caring for my combat disabled veteran for nearly 30 years now. He's a complex human being with multiple sides like many of us. But at this point... he actively disassociates from anything 'Veteran'. Because he's not a MAGA cuck and everyone assumes that veterans are.
Nope too late for normalcy. The 2nd American Revolution must commence as Paulo Revereo lights his lantern in the Old North Church belfry one if by land two if by sea.
We were just two years into renovating an 1870 yo total wreck of a Victorian when the "Money Pit" came out with Tom Hanks and Shelley Long. We laughed until we cried as we were living that movie!! My husband also kept saying, we'll have this done in ten years (we did a lot of the work alongside contractors) . . . well 4+decades later we have a special place but everyone else has enjoyed incredible price appreciation without $hundreds of thousands in sweat equity! Yes, an old house is constant work, but we survived and have great stories!
At this end of the age spectrum, it's unbelievable that we have to "survive" (I'm mildly active and don't shut up!) the debacle that is trump that has scarred our brains more than hanging and sanding sheet rock in the primary bedroom (before we smartened up and had contractors do the rest of that project!!)
I was renovating a post WWII Colonial when that movie came out, doing most of the work myself. I sold it unfinished and moved to Bermuda! “Two weeks” still makes me laugh.
I believe “Money Pit” was a great remake of the 1940s hit “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House” with Gary Grant and Myrna Loy. It’s also a very funny film. My favorite scene is where Mrs. Blandings (Myrna Loy) tells the painting contractor and his painter the colors she wants in each room, but maybe that’s because my father was a painting contractor (also my grandfather, brothers and several uncles).
Truly one of the best movies of all time. As someone who has tackled at least one renovation project, "Building Off the Grid" has many humorous moments each episode. Plus, it brings back memories of our many challenges during our renovations.
I keep thinking of that line too every time I hear his "in 2 weeks" routine, I love that movie but hate this money pit that we're all embroiled in now.
It's also in the movie 'Total Recall', when Quaid(played by Arnold Schwarzenegger) is in disguise going through a security checkpoint. The disguise starts malfunctioning and he's repeating '2 weeks' over and over until dystopian mayhem ensues...not so unlike Donold actually...
For years people thought that Fox News as the propaganda wing of the Republican Party, but as it turns out, the Republican Party is merely the political wing of Fox News.
Donold watches Fox News and follows those commentators, hosts and propagandists so much that he even calls in to spout his tirades at times.
He even hires Faux News employees for his staff and to be part of the Trump regime.
Whiskey Pete Hegseth was a contributor and host for the Fox network since 2014 before he was confirmed as Secretary of Defense in January of 2025. Kegsbreath being such a jingoistic and ardent war hawk that he wants the title of Secretary of War instead and is one of the most gung-ho about war on Iran or whatever other country or just committing war crimes for whatever reason...
America woke up to another episode of Foreign Policy by Mood Swing, starring Donald Trump as the man who thinks diplomacy means yelling “mine” at another country’s oil infrastructure.
First, he announced Iran would be hit “very hard tonight,” because nothing says strategic genius like previewing military plans before breakfast. Then came the idea of taking Kharg Island, apparently under the theory that world peace is just Monopoly with aircraft carriers.
Naturally, Fox News leaned in like a barroom uncle shouting advice during brain surgery. “Do it, Mr. President,” they seemed to say, “we saw a map once.” Trump then explained that Iran is basically already defeated, except for the small detail that Iran appears not to know this.
His model was Venezuela, where America allegedly took the oil, called it freedom, and somehow made imperialism sound like a clearance sale.
Then, as always, the great deal materialized on the horizon. Not an actual deal, of course. More of a shimmering Trump-shaped mirage, the kind that appears whenever bombs, polls, or prosecutors get too close. CNN counted it as the 39th time he announced that peace was just around the corner.
Meanwhile, Trump searched for an intelligence chief with no intelligence experience, which, in this administration, apparently counts as cultural fit.
I was hoping to choose only one of your creative as well as well as accurate comments but appreciate each one ....so "thank you" for capturing my same thoughts regarding the sad reality of the disturbing person who sits in the seat of "President of the USA".
Mike, for me what is even more disgusting is that those pundits and others on Fox don't have kids or siblings in this war, so they are OK with pushing Trump to expand the war in which many Americans may be lost or be made disabled, and for nothing. They talk about our troops making a sacrifice when the ones who sent them never sacrifice anything.
I had the blessing of building a friendship with an Iranian citizen during college as well as meeting his Iranian friends. They are wonderful people.
That we should consider them non-human...good only to test our powerful military equipment, sends more of a message regarding who we are and who we are not as Americans.
Theses strikes on Iran are inhumane!!!!.....totally unnecessary!!!! We are only creating more enemies in the middle east! Who will trust us???
If Americans cannot see that Trump has "straw" for brains and a huge "rock" for a heart then we have become "blind, deaf and dumb"!!!!
Fox News is what's left of the other half of Trumps brain. It's been an obvious assessment for far too many years. As a combat veteran I wouldn't want to be a young person on one of those carriers knowing that our experienced officer corps has been shit canned by a drunk head of the Department of Defense.
No, no, no… Trump and/or his lieutenants likely pressed Fox News to say those things as part of a broader strategy to seed support for his taking more control of Iran and its oil. The thing about Trump et al is that their grand plan is ridiculously stupid BUT their methodology can be smart and calculated.
And after talking LOUD, vote LOUD! Plan to vote this November like your republic depended on you alone. In so many ways, it always has, though you probably didn't realize it then the way you do now. Donate to as many as you can -- as much as you can. Make sure your name is the same as the one your Registrar has for you. Get that ID in order. And volunteer for a campaign -- there's a role for everybody. Or be a poll worker or poll watcher -- the need is so very great right now.
The catchphrase -- 'Too Big To Rig.' Nothing destroys a planned gerrymander more effectively than massive voter turnout. We must do our part to be sure the tsunami is big enough and high enough to sweep all of us out of the insane asylum he keeps trying to put us into.
In Nebraska, one of the many Republican Super PACs sent out a mailing lying about how the Democratic candidate for Congress was in complete alignment with the Trump administration. Of course, this couldn't be further from the truth.
Here in ME, various Super PACs have touted Susan Collins's support for all Mainers, often never listing a single example. We are getting at least one mailing every week. And all of these PACs have out of state addresses and mostly out of state donors.
My suggestion for what to write to your representatives about for today is the danger posed by the Trump regime's rolling coup.
Former Democratic Senators Richard Gephardt and Tim Wirth are warning that the Trump regime has built a complete apparatus to execute a coup through presidential executive orders and massive funding bills approved by the Republican Congress.
They make a persuasive case that few people in America recognize the big picture and see how far the plan has progressed. The coup could be initiated at the midterms.
This is the clearest, most concise articulation of the danger we are facing. It will be a seminal document in the American fight to restore democracy and demand accountability from the Trump regime. for their assault on our freedoms. THIS IS AN ABSOLUTE MUST-READ.
In related news, in her politics chat today, Heather discussed JD Vance's moves to take over MAGA. Robert Reich also focused on Vance as a major threat on June 10. Both warn that, despite Vance's gaffes and total lack of charisma, he has Thiel's backing. Heather noted that the Haberman and Swann NYTimes White House Epstein files freak-out investigative reporting put Vance in a definitely positive light. All of Haberman's reporting has, to me, a certain "I'm an insider" pro-Vance slant. You all know I have been beating the "Vance would be worse than Trump" drum for months. Heather is focusing on how quickly Trump is devolving under the pressure. If Trump breaks down, we get Vance, like it or not, no election required.
Putting a Vance ascension together with the Gephardt and Wirth warning about the coup apparatus that is already up and running makes the case that the danger to democracy is closer and greater than many perceive. Vance is a true believer in Thiel's vision for America, so he will have no hesitation in using the authoritarian apparatus to achieve it.
There are 30 states's Secretaries of State that meet regularly according to Shenna Bellows the ME Secretary of State. This group includes SOS from Idaho and Mississippi. They work together to insure safe and democratic elections.
We need to watch out for the other 20. Ironically most of the 20 have their state minimum wage stuck at $7.25 an hour.
Here is some follow-up information regarding an earlier suggestion, if you haven't yet written to the NY and DC bar associations to advocate for disbarment proceedings against Todd Blanche. Blanche's nomination for AG was announced yesterday.
From the Talking Feds substack, Harry Litman interviews Senator Sheldon Whitehouse about disbarring Blanche.
Megan, here is the DOJ's contact info that I have been using to tell them to release the Epstein Files. I simply said, "As required by the Epstein Files Transparency Act, DOJ needs to release the entirety of the unredacted Epstein Files, without victim identification.
Thank you."
I thought it might be helpful if you would provide this link inside your chart. You can also copy/paste my script if you choose.
Once you click on the link, just scroll down to input profile info before entering your message.
An important article to add to your MUST READ list on how to talk to independents and "lean Republicans" about supporting "problematic" blue candidates.
I have been advocating that, when it comes to casting your vote in the midterms, you have to hold your nose and vote blue no matter what. The stakes are too high to have to face another 2 years of Republican control of Congress.
I was put to the test on June 2 when I had to vote in the NJ07 primary. I listened to my own advice, but was uncomfortable with it. I was more uncomfortable thinking about the choices Mainers had to make with Platner. The simple prescription would do little to convince any unmotivated voter, or unhappy independent or non-cultist Republican who would immediately raise the "what about so and so?' objection.
Jay Kuo provides a deeply thoughtful answer, one that develops an ethical framework for deciding whether to support a candidate with a less-than-squeaky-clean past. The post is replete with examples of what questions to ask and what to look for in how dark revelations are examined and in the context of the behavior. Kuo points out the dangers of purity tests while not minimizing the behavior.
Our job between now and the midterms has to be to get disaffected non-voters and people who voted for Trump before to vote blue. Our winning strategy has to be based on outing the Trump regime's corruption and its cost to the average American. MAGA will fight back hard with false equivalences and the counter charges of corruption. We have to have tools to fight back against the allegations, certainly more than "Vote Blue no matter who." Kuo's post gives us the tools.
“Normally you wouldn’t increase the likelihood of US casualties by announcing something like this ahead of time, unless you are bluffing to use it as a negotiating ploy, you are stupid, you don’t really care about the troops, or all three.”
I think we may have just stumbled on the explanatory trifecta here...
Normally one assumes at least some distant sincerity in the remark. The only people Drumpf is negotiating with are his perceived base. Everything he’s been saying is aimed there … and it’s entirely lies.
As the insane asylum deteriorates and intensifies, we must seek out voices of the sane in order to stay sane ourselves.
Yesterday, Pete Buttigieg laid out a blueprint for the kind of structural re-alignment we have to undertake to keep our tortured nation a functioning republic after He Who Must Not Be Named departs from the scene (which can’t happen soon enough). An interview with Yusef Jackson, current head of the PUSH Rainbow Coalition, with Lieutenant-Mayor-Secretary Pete in Chicago about reining in a rogue Supreme Court, re-fashioning a House of Representatives to become truly representative, re-inventing a shattered presidency, broken by lies, scandal, grand corruption and daily violations of the Constitution and decency itself.
If we are to restore faith in ourselves and regain the respect of the rest of the world wondering how America lost its mind and whether we'll ever get it back again, we must heed the voices of would-be architects of our transformation, rather than just complain about the cesspool. No time like the present to shape and clarify what a better future looks like, one with solid floors below which we can never sink again.
I'm always so taken with how Pete speaks, not just what he says -- never an "uh' or an 'um' -- every thought an articulate, complete, coherent sentence, every sentence a laid-out paragraph -- a step-by-step argument for practicality, common sense, compassion.
He. speaks the way one should EXPECT A STATESMAN TO SPEAK: with knowledge, complete sentences, clarity, examples. Gotta love Pete!! He sure has what it takes to be a good leader. If only America wasn't filled with so many bigoted fools!
In another timeline, he could have been the president this country needed. He's still young though and it could still happen some years down the road, but for now we just need to get past the current unfit morally bankrupt subhuman occupying the position of potus.
"You know, make a fortune ... Venezuela has worked out great for everybody. We’ve taken millions and millions of barrels of oil out of Venezuela..."
Who exactly has a made a fortune, and where is the money from these barrels of oil? I haven't seen the price of gasoline come down, the debt reduce, or our taxes come down. The taxpayers' funds are paying to extract the fortunes of oil, and we are not benefiting. How can Trump's support even be in the 30's?
And the US national debt to hit 40 trillion long before 2026 ends. Unsustainable and the consequences per usual will be heaviest on those less well off.
Several threads in tonight's dispatch point to the same underlying question: what does congressional oversight actually require, and when does the executive branch need explicit authorization to act?
The War Powers Act issue is the clearest example. The 60-day clock exists so that sustained military action requires deliberate congressional buy-in, not just tolerance. Whatever one thinks of U.S. involvement in Iran, the mechanism matters independently of the outcome, because the next president inherits whatever precedent this one sets.
The FISA vote tells a similar story from the other direction. Nineteen Republicans joined Democrats to block the extension, not because they opposed the surveillance program, but because they did not trust the person being placed in charge of it. That is oversight working as designed: members making a structural judgment rather than a partisan one.
The Venezuela oil arrangement raises the same question in a third register. A GAO audit request is the ordinary tool Congress uses to verify that executive action is being conducted lawfully. Whether the funds are well-managed or not, the audit process is what produces an answer citizens can rely on.
These are not questions that resolve cleanly along party lines. They are questions about what citizens are owed in the way of transparency and authorization from the people who govern them.
The failure to extend FISA is a genuinely serious development with consequences that range from terrible to frightening. And it failed, as you mentioned, not because anybody opposed it, but because so many -- even within the GOP -- no longer trust the guardians responsible for implementing it. The Bunker Administration just kept insisting an unqualified lackey be made the head of counterintelligence, never once considering the consequences of either option before it.
Not just the arrogance, but the total fuckupery. Breathtaking in scope.
Do we really need FISA to be extended at all?!? I'm not saying we don't, but there should certainly be a vigorous debate about its very existence, especially Section 702 and related provisions, as they could certainly not stand up to proper constitutional analysis.
How the Iranians have played this president. They have his number. They take their time. They see that his bullying threats are empty. They see his instability and TACO-ing. And they won't be coerced. The Iranians have held him up on the global stage to be seen for what he is: a loser.
The Iranians "played" this president? You mean after USrael attacked them without reason, murdered their leader, the daughter-in-law and wife of the current leader, their child and a nephew, they got a bit pissed off? Who would have thought, hey?
250 years of a nation built on genocide, enriched through slavery, with hardly a day that it didn't kill people all over the place, thanks to 180-odd military bases all over the planet.
Happy birthday, USrael! 😥 Looking at you feels weirder by the day.
It's all done to make the stock market wildly go down on his signal and up on his next signal. Nothing else matters to him except the use of money to increase fealty. Doesn't matter who suffers. 86 47.
If Trump is now in a box and could be expected to blow up the box, can we assume a change in his abilities to wreak havoc on those of us outside his box? Or are we now in the box with him? This image is ripe and unsettling.
Heather's today proves her skill at comedy. Black comedy, perhaps. Showcasing insanity, certainly.
I like best the part where she writes of criminal Donald, “He does not like being put in a box,” the operative told Burns and Wren. “When you put him in a box, then Trump’s going to blow the box up.”
See? I think this is Heather also making reference to criminal Donald's ultimate vulgarity this week -- his cage fight. Heather knows rapist Donald is a stupid, stupid, pathetically stupid man. She knows he surrounds himself with lickspittle sycophants. They all go in Keystone Cops mad circles.
But it's funny, if we can say all those the fool has damaged might have any innocent let alone funny dimensions.
The comedy is so black and real, unlike the Fox “entertainment.” Still, we plan vacations, pay at the pump and stream distractions. The ostrich is our national symbol.
Too bad the operative didn’t draw the exploding box on a paper bar napkin, Ahmad Chalabi style. It could become a document preserved in the Drumpf Lie-berry.
Reminds me of those toy Jack in the box my children all had. The ones where you crank the handle and the clown would jump out of the box, scaring you half to death. If we stop cranking, would he just stay in his box!?!
The national situation has become so bizarre and surreal that I sometimes feel that I have been paid to read a very bad novel, one that I have no respect for or engagement with, but also one that I have to finish in order to honor my contract. I am in the twilight of my life, and the fact that my country is being ruined by these grotesque oafs saddens me to the core.
With a 27 point lead the San Antonio Spurs managed to lose to the NY Knicks in the second half in what Barkley called the "dumbest play" by a pro basketball team.
The DNC has a stacked deck with many political issues going their way but nothing can be assumed a done deal until the midterms are in the books. Clearly with its lousy autopsy report out for public view, the party has many problems: leadership, unwilling to admit to Palestinian genocide, reliance on a political loser in AIPAC which is supporting DNC candidates who swear allegiance to the fascist Israeli state and its war that drug the demented psychopath's country into a war that the plurality doesn't want.
The "establishment" Democrats like Schumer and Jeffries have failed to get behind the American populist movement manifested in Mamdani and now many candidates unwilling to take $$$ from the AIPAC foundational money, such as Platner, Villegas,, Ladner, Flanagan etc. So there is a under reported rift going on in the party and if they don't solve it fast, the Democrats may find themselves in a Spurs Moment.
I appreciate your commentary on the DNC. In this telling, I like to think of us (the citizens fighting for this country) as the Knicks, fighting from down and out. I am hoping for the same outcome.
ICYMI: Good news that shows that “We the People” are not powerless if we stand together. A lesson for Democrats to UNITE. E Pluribus Unum!
LA LABOR UNION STANDS UP TO OLIGARCHS AND WINS
Kurt Petersen J.D. (Yale Law), Co-President of UNITE HERE Local 11 - a powerful labor union representing >32,000 hotel, airport, stadium and food service workers across Southern California and Arizona - negotiated and won contracts to secure raises to over $40/hr, worker housing, worker privacy protections, protection against federal immigration enforcement, etc. just days before the World Cup which begins in LA on Friday 6/12. He is interviewed on Legal AF by Associate Dean and Chair in Law and Technology at Albany Law School in Albany, NY. “Legal AF interviews Kurt Petersen UNITE HERE contract with FIFA” https://michaelpopok.substack.com/p/labor-scores-major-win-right-before?r=1d2cea&utm_medium=ios
I had to stop for a moment at; “Fox News hosts are urging Trump to increase US military involvement in Iran.” A right wing news staton” conducting the war by feeding thoughts into dumbos head is almost too much to bear.
The real question is how many continue to listen, of course. No one's going to say it out loud, but there's such a sense that the tides are shifting. The booing and hissing in New York at the Knicks game when Velveeta Voldemort stood there trying to look serious during the national anthem was kind of a give-away. Yes, it's New York, and not Arkansas, but you get the sense that those tired old dogs just won't hunt anymore. Shelling out hundreds of dollars more a month for basics will do that to you.
Sometimes it's hard to believe just how stupid Trump really is...
He is stupid as a fox!! He lacks culture, basic general knowledge, but has learned the Hitler playbook and played into the hands of billionaires who whisper sweet nothings in his ears, and pull all his puppet strings. He is as conniving as anyone can get. We, the people, get poorer, more indebted, less healthy and mentally taxed, while the orange helium balloon gets fatter in body and bank accounts, like Orban did for 16 years in Hungary. Now WE NEED A PÉTER MAGYAR and the mobilization of all patriots against tyranny. Long live the DEMOCRATIC UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!
I agree with everything you wrote Veronica, with one cautionary note. I feel that we do not "need" someone like Magyar, as truly professional a cleaner of the Augean stables he appears to be, as what we really need is to take the opportunity handed us by the Mad Mango Mussolini and re-configure the long corrupted corners of our government gasping since before Trump, for ourselves. It's not about who we rally around as much as it is about demanding a comprehensive accountability from our elected representatives, making sure they respect and respond to the People's interests, not those of the Billionaires, and exercising self-government in concert with the current culture's more grandiose and efficient technological soapboxes.
We cannot fall for the Siren song of the "Savior" candidate. We have an abundance of good and capable candidates for the Presidency two years hence, but let us not forget that the Article I branch of Congress is the most important of the three branches of the Federalist system of government the Founders built, and pay that the attention it needs.
Virtually ALL of our current woes can be traced to the gobsmackingly embarrassing level of Congressional cowardice within the former Party of Lincoln's representatives, cowering in the pancake made up face of Despicable Don, and refusing to do their sworn duty or even exercise their own constitutional power.
Every one of those repugnant republicans were elected, were they not? We got what we voted for, right? I blame my neighbors and racist, family members.
Shortly after Trump was re-elected, I told my Republican sister that Trump was a rapist and a monster. “That’s what YOU think,” she sneeringly replied.
You have to say it for Faux News: they are really good at brainwashing.
But also, the weenie representatives are still too afraid of holding any town meetings. They know the voters now see through their lies, no matter how much propaganda faux entertainment spews.
Hope springs eternal.
Yes, there's that 1/3. I just can't make rationale sense out of that. But then it's not rationale in the way that's necessary to think critically.
"We cannot fall for the Siren song of the "Savior" candidate" -- I love this and agree completely.
How many candidates do what they say they were going to do before being elected?
Daniel, very well-said! The congressional cowardice, mostly among Republicans is at least as disturbing as Trump himself. Trump has always been a creep, but now his dementia makes him even more problematic and unpredictable than ever and that is saying a lot!!
.... a moment of sanity reading, "comprehensive accountability from our elected representatives, making sure they respect and respond to the People's interests"
Very simple, Daniel.
When you speak of "making sure they respect and respond to the People's interests, not those of the Billionaires," you breast the machinery of schools all set to billionaires' playbooks, and zero to peoples' interests.
Testing guarantees strangulation for the sake of billionaires widening the wealth gap, sucking up for themselves more yet more of what used to be income the working classes and middle classes held.
The opposite? Some fluid mixture of essay writing, civics, and humanities (including history) -- with rigorously higher standards for the reading of whole books
It's very simple. The billionaires engineered things so the tests rigorously reduce "intelligence" only to the forms of rationality conducive to conformity to the packagers, groupers, and clever knaves to power.
All the works outside these narrow regimes? Gone. No longer in public circulation.
Daniel: don’t forget SCROTUS, the puffed-up high-T men who brought us Citizens United, thus selling us out to the highest bidders, while offering Mad Mango Mussolini (I like that) the Get Out of Jail Free card and totally emasculating the Voting Rights Act, while Jack-hammering the wall of separation between Church and State. They’ve done more damage than the Idiot-In-Chief.
Your reply (along with others) IS why I do have HOPE…. And then there are the Knicks!
It's older than that look to Milton Friedman and the foul Chicago school economics.
Art Laffer is still tossing out drunken stupidity on economics as if he had two brain cells to rub together.
Absolutely!
Daniel: Your opinion and Veronica’s are not mutually exclusive. A Courageous & charismatic leader needed to clean up this mess.
Yes Veronica. Earlier this week as you recall, it was announced the known donors of the East Wing Ballroom calamity have received over $50 billion in new government contracts. These oligarchs are the ones that pay marginal Federal tax rates way less than a family earning $100,000 a year.
https://thebulwark.substack.com/p/trump-ocean-observatories-initiative-nsf-research-funding?r=2bqjpz&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
Meanwhile his arcane budget demands we the people pay to restock the weapons he wasted in Iran committing war crimes and other atrocities while cutting scientific research.
The massive cuts to research are bad enough but the gross gutting off even monitoring the Oceans exposes us to greater danger (far more than just kelp), that we could be avoiding with the best present instrumentation.
See https://www.democracynow.org/2026/6/10/david_helvarg_science_cuts_ocean_kelp
I was amazed at what we could observe and support other organizations with in our Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) back in 1974 - 84 years I spent there, but it pales in comparison to what we can do now.
The segment title is "Trump Admin Guts Vital Sea Monitoring, “Tears Out the Eyes and Ears of Science”: David Helvarg" and some of the description from the link follows:
"...We’re joined by ocean policy expert David Helvarg to discuss the Trump administration’s dismantling of the Ocean Observatories Initiative, the “cutting-edge eyes [and] ears” of the ocean. The program’s closure, proposed in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 playbook for Trump’s second administration, involves the decommissioning of a vast network of ocean floor sensors that collect data on marine ecosystems, ocean currents and global climate data, protecting the world’s oceans and providing critical information about extreme weather. In their place is the increasingly unregulated expansion of resource extraction driven by the fossil fuel industry, “essentially developing the ocean for offshore oil drilling and mining — basically, as a gas station and a garbage dump.”
Helvarg, the author of Forest of the Sea: The Remarkable Life and Imperiled Future of Kelp, also discusses “the world’s other forest crisis”: the loss of over half of kelp forests to warming ocean temperatures, throwing coastal ecosystems deeply out of balance. “We have an ocean,” adds Helvarg. “It’s full of life. It’s at risk. And we need to better understand the other 71% of our blue marble planet to protect it — and not to let a few individuals and corporations destroy it...”
As always, the rushed transcript is one of the best for speedy delivery and accuracy.
Jim Young, Freeport, ME,
We are demonstrating that "taking" for short term gain is the way of the majority of human beings.
It takes the deep, active respect for humans and all creation, the air we breath, the beautiful waters that thrive with plant life and fish, and many others forms of living plants and creatures, to keep our planet safe for the future.
We also should be looking towards other planets on which life is possible for humans and other fellow creatures.
Not only is brilliance and deep respect for life needed but drive and purpose and love for those who are with us now and who will face a future that is unknown to us at this time.
Emily, I agree with you, especially about the deep, active respect for humans and all creation. This is the only criteria for seeking out other habitable planets, because what good is it to scurry off to another planet if we're only going to continue our self-destructive habit of ravaging and gutting our home (wherever it may be) for the sake of profit?
Jim, the oligarchs are convinced that they own every resource on land, in sea, and - now - in space. They are God and the Universe is theirs. I suspect they will buttress their greed Biblically:
Genesis 1:26-28: Often called the "dominion mandate," God commissions humanity to "subdue" the earth and rule over the living creatures.
Deuteronomy 8:9: Describes a promised land "whose stones are iron and out of whose hills you can dig copper," illustrating that extracting mineral wealth is a natural provision from God.
The "Grift Administration".
Hello Veronica... DJT plays for the 'Ratings'... DJT learned this by manipulating the NYC Tabloids, and MSM... Hitler did the same with the German Media.... How did that work out for the Germans?...
Worked out fine, Apache, for the thugs lining concentration camp inmates for death.
Just as it's working out similarly fine for the thugs of U.S. ICE and CBP reenacting the same lawlessness, systematic cruelty, slow murder by U.S.-federal-style starvation and lack of medical care, and on top of that flagrant, cold-blooded, broad daylight murder, with the federal pay-rolled murderers as protected and unaccountable as all Donald's pals in their rapes of underage girls.
This is horrifying.
https://eleanorsquad.substack.com/p/americas-largest-concentration-camp?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=105j13
Hitler's playbook along with his deplorable business ethics that he has honed for decades, using threats against contractors who don't have the money to fight him in court. He's the antithesis of anything Christian.
It’s time to think of Papa Putin again. Who else is running the show? So much of what Professor Richardson bas put together for US today seems directly “inspired” by the Trump-Putin phone calls. Time to have a Vindeman back in the Oval Office.
When do Americans “get it”? Paying attention is necessary. HISTORY IS REAL.
WheweeeWOW Veronica! Indeed…. “Stupid as a fox!” Thank YOU for saying what I have thought for a long while…. He IS IGNORANT, however, NOT STUPID! And quite deadly….
Apologies! I wrote my brief comment before I read yours! I promiseI didn't steal stupid like a fox from you! But I love that we both came up with it even as I grieve the reason!
Amen, sister! Amen! Keep the faith- ole cocksplat is short for his current status.
He's clearly said he doesn't think much about what people are experiencing and that he loves inflation! We are in a much worse place than any Twilight Zone.
So who wrote that last “Truth” Social post? Cheetolini is too illiterate and too demented to be the author.
''Velveeta Voldemort''
Man, you crack me up!
At least half of the cholesterol lining my veins and arteries is from all the Velteeta I have ingestion throughout my life. Thanks again for the laugh ICTT.
🍊is incredibly stupid but he still has supporters. I see them constantly in the comments at the WSJ. In fact, they typically dominate the comments.
The only positive development is a strong anti-🍊contingent that dominates the Iran war articles
Wall Street is still behind him. These and the Tech Bros plus the Beautiful People (High Society) are the first people he has always wanted acceptance from even before the Dictators of the World. It is necessary for his inner being to feel superior to those he considers below him. Mary Trump has diagnosed that he is seeking the love his mother didn't have the health and care his toddler self desired. Like always, he also suffers from "Too Much, but Never Enough". Same disease that afflicts many of the Hedge Fund types and other types of investors. Pretty soon I expect the Stock Market to take a more permanent dive. Just wait till oil shortages hit at the same time the Fed is forced by inflation to raise interest rates again! Also, I would no longer trust any information coming out of any part of the Administration including employment numbers and the like.
Yeah; he says the numbers are “glitched.” Well who controls those who report those numbers, buddy?
So true, Louise. Numerous Trump “announcements” are solely meant to influence the stock market and Trump-favored businesses. Musk’s SpaceX IPO is a perfect example of what is going on yesterday and today.
Yes, Trump appears to be experiencing mental and physical problems, and I can understand the stress that puts him in. On the other hand, Trump’s handlers seem to just be willing to pull his strings and make money. The LOVE of Money….
Thank you, Louise. I have tired of reading comments like Veronica's agreeing with Donald that he's some kind of genius. As you point out in Mary L. Trump's book, her Uncle Donald actually has a learning disability that was never addressed by his parents, other than to paper it over with $100 bills. That disability was exacerbated by emotional issues, making Donald an extremely broken creature. I would add that Mary has continued to write and speak out against Donald, always supporting her positions with firsthand personal and professional evidence.
As I have pointed out ad infinitum, Donald has two – and only two – motivations: 1. Enriching himself without limits, and 2. staying out of prison.
EVERYTHING he does is animated by those two motives. He is actually not smart enough to achieve those goals on his own, so he has surrounded himself with sycophants and enablers who are smart enough and devious enough to help him. Example: The Situation Room brainstorming session to devise a plan for concealing the Epstein files, as reported by NYT.
Whatever other heinous actions taken by the Trump regime that don't serve the above-mentioned goals are the brainchildren of Steven Miller, Russell Vought and other operatives who have their own agendas.
Donald's various remodeling and construction projects around the capital city serve both of his motivations. He is remaking the environment to his liking because he intends to remain in the White House for life. Also, each of those projects is overpriced in order to provide under-the-table kickbacks that go into his personal coffers. This is exactly how he operated in his personal business before he was president.
Hey, Frau. On the Grounded podcast with Maritsa Georgiou, I follow former Senator Jon Tester (a Democrat from Montana), who runs a farming operation. He basically said no matter how bad it gets for them with Trump, the farmers will always vote Republican. So disheartening.
Tester has a candidate in the US Senate race who would be one more voice challenging Trump. Former President of the University of Montana, Seth Bodnar, running as an Independent, will attract the votes of farmers and other from Montana. Jon Tester's support for him is important. Donations are also important. Bodnar can win.
"Seth Bodnar is running for Senate to take on corruption and the Washington donor class. Seth Bodnar is a political independent who is running to take on party elites."
"Paid for by SETH BODNAR FOR MONTANA
Seth Bodnar for MT - Make a Donation - An Independent Fighter."
ActBlue 🔵
https://secure.actblue.com
***************************
As of 6/12/26
💵
DONE.
Still have hope that farmers will see the light…A 2026 Farm Futures Q1 survey revealed that farmer confidence in Donald Trump dropped 10% points from previous polls.. Every move on the needle helps..
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5905918-midwest-farmers-trump-gop-midterms/
Lynell(VA by way of MD&DC),
Thank you for noting Senator Jon Tester, a great and steady leader, a Democrat and a farmer (as was my family) but my family was from North Carolina.
My friends who are "the salt of the earth" vote for Republicans. There is no room for argument with them....I guess we will pay the price for believing lies! UNLESS WE VOTE OUT AS MANY REPUBLICANS AS POSSIBLE!!! THAT MEANS WE DO NOT LET ANYTHING KEEP US FROM GOING TO THE POLLS!!!! IF WE CANNOT PHYSICALLY GO TO THE POLLS TO PLACE OUT VOTE
WE MUST MAIL IN OUR VOTE FOR OUR DESIRED LEADERS!!!
Emily I read the USPS plans to prohibit mail-in voting in blue states.
We can still hand deliver in Colorado, f*** the Post Office. I realize not everone can do this but maybe those of us that can should set up a "pickup/delivery" service.
No fix for stupid Lynell.
It is disheartening, Lynell.
We, the rational, decent people should be the ones dominating the war articles and everything else Frau. Thanks for your comment 👍.
As one who lived in NYC 50 years...it is not like anywhere else in the world.
People say it's changed...but, I still believe it has the same mix of every nationality. They all belong there....and, always an energy, that, who knows, may come from geology.
I've lived in NY for 46 years and I completely agree - there's no place like it. We raised our son here and now he is raising his two little daughters here. Diversity is just a way of life here and it makes it so rich in culture and amazing food.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1S828Y7Eais
https://postergroup.com/products/the-new-yorker-saul-steinberg-3551
NYC is electric, probably better now than when I was born and raised there -- in the Bronx -- because it's now more diverse, with more little communities of folks from all different cultures. But we who were born and grew up there took it for granted. The one thing we knew and didn't take for granted is that NYC has everything and anything you possibly could want.
Hello ICTT.... From HCR Today: "Trump is “increasingly frustrated with everyone, from his own team to the Senate…. He’s pissed, and people are not recognizing the level of pissed that he is,” the operative said. “He does not like being put in a box,” the operative told Burns and Wren. “When you put him in a box, then Trump’s going to blow the box up.”" || Seems that DJT will do something Extreme... Per Mary Trump, DJT has always fantasized about Nuclear Götterdämmerung.... DJT is feeling his mortality, and DJT still has the Nuclear Codes... Pray For Divine Intervention Soon...
Apache I am too busy praying for an electrical storm for Sunday night in DC! Pls join me!
"Thank you for your attention to this matter"
MATTER = Minimise Attention To Trump Epstein Relationships
when it quacks like a diversion, it is a diversion.
Sometimes it's hard to believe just how intellectually bankrupt Trump is. Yet 37% of Americans support him. They're not stupid—they're choosing stupidity because it channels their rage.
The world watches in disbelief. This country once stood for democracy, rule of law, human dignity. Now it stands for authoritarianism and cruelty. And tens of millions are cheering.
We—the majority—sit in disgust. We believed in democracy. We believed America was better than this.
But belief doesn't matter. The majority doesn't rule. Democracy is dead in the world's oldest democracy.
The Mexican World Cup opening ceremony even booed the American flag. Mexico has now replaced Canada as our biggest trading partner, and this is how they see us.
So unbelievably stupid! Thank you, I needed a good laugh.
No, I have no problem believing that Trump is that stupid!
If the ‘tide’ is shifting, I don’t see it.
There are still people who will hold a sign with Trump’s name on it!
When those signs are in a dumpster, I might change my mind.
Four dozen former Fox personalities have positions in the Trump administration.
Listen to Decoding Fox News on Substack to hear a week of Fox soundbites in 45 min plus a comparison on Fox Vs PBS news hour topics. It is alarming and illuminating: Https://decodingfoxnews.substack.com?r=4j5a4
I love your use of "Velveeta Voldemort", ICCT. My Dad (USAAC WWII Staff Sergeant) always said that the best use of Velveeta was as fish bait. So thankful he is not here to witness the debacle that is 45/47.
My dad died in 2012. Will always be grateful he didn't live to see the first slithering approach of evil back then. It would have devastated him.
Mine's been gone since '87. So sad he did not live to see Obama elected.
What I wouldn't give for the chance to talk to him once more...
But neoliberal Ayn Rand believers are still atop the trump cabal and will settle for nothing less than the destruction of the United States.
Stateless soulless ghouls
Stupid like a fox! He managed to get a whole party paralyzed to the point where there are absolutely no checks on his madness!
To your last comment: I DO believe it. Just as I do believe in air, water, my periodic thirst for a cold IPA and my love for my wife. Ole cocksplat is tripping all over his swollen ankles.
Did he attend that game for any other reason than to give New Yorkers the middle finger?
Marj, I think that was a big part of it. The Trump family tried desperately to gain entry into NYC aristocracy and were rejected. Greater NYC hates Trump and he hates them back. His visit to the game was mainly to f*ck up the experience for Knicks fans and flip them the bird from the safety of his plexiglass box.
Also keep in mind that he has a history with studio (it's not professional) wrestling. In that industry, there is always a "heel." The loudmouthed, obnoxious villain that whips the blue-collar crowd into a slobbering frenzy of hate. Heels have just as strong a following among wrestling fans as the heroes. Donald has embraced the "heel" persona and relishes the attention, even if it is negative.
That’s whyI don’t watch Fox News. FOX news is owned by billionaires and says whatever President Trump says. Watch Rachel Maddow on MSNBC on 356 and you will get the truth
That’s why we call it “Faux News”.
It is not and never has been news. Classified as entertainment. They even won a lawsuit in 2006 saying they could lie because they were entertainment. We are being entertained to death. The golden chain saw added pizazz. Now chump is yelling “they’re fired” to any country or opponent he wants.
We don’t have Churchill, who fought with every fiber of his being, nor do we have Ike but we have Rupert. When will we stop being entertained and take up our torches.
As the bumper sticker says "Fox News makes you dumb and angry".
And there are almost a plurality of dumb and angry who revenge vote on Election Day.
Yes, But. Fox is highest the highest rating of all. THE most A-holes tuning in.
Pres. A-hole every night. ..getting instructions and adoration.
J-Biden for president 2028. Thank you Joe for losing it.
That is a great question!
It was Pearl Harbor that stopped the blather and spurred the action. But now the Chamberlain’s rule snd the Churchill’s are silent. Silent was something that Churchill never was. Stir the pot Dems.
Meanwhile let us smile in appreciation of the genuinely karmic irony in the fact that the plutocrats who assaulted us with their Trumpian suppositories are now -- obviously in the bottomless terror of recognizing their own vulnerability to the Evil they sicced on life itself -- manipulating capitalism in what appears to be a successful attempt to re-assert their mastery over their tantrum-twisted puppet, hopefully before said puppet comes completely unstrung and pushes the wrong button.
Or Fox Noise.
Axios News is a reliable source for admissible facts:
Per Axios, "A year's worth of inflation-adjusted wage gains vanished in just four months, leaving workers little better off than when President Trump returned to office."
Axios Explainer: "Why it matters: The reversal shows how the recent energy-driven inflation surge is eating into household purchasing power. Real pay for rank-and-file workers is up just 0.1% since Trump took office in January 2025."
REPEAT: "just 0.1％"
Thanks for the info Bryan!!!
MSNBC is absolutely also owned by Billionaires. They may have what we consider to be more reasonable positions on what we think is important. But don't for a second think that they are not propaganda for the rich and influential.
At this point America's media system... radio, TV, newspapers and print... are all owned by Billionaires. Approach every story you watch/read/hear with a grain of salt. Always ask yourself.. 'who's making money off of this'.
EXCUSE ME: DID YOU WRITE " ALMOST TOO MUCH TO BEAR"? THIS WHOLE GOVERNMENT IS LIKE A BAD FUTURISTIC NOVEL, WITH WEIRD CHARACTERS AND NO END IN SIGHT! COULD WE JUST RETURN TO NORMAL,PLEASE??!!
Veronica, it does feel like a bad novel or movie.
But I am not sure we should want the previous "normal". There was some tiny incremental change. But the Democrats still thought they could negotiate in good faith (Joe Biden: those days ended years ago). There IS NO GOOD FAITH or inclusiveness in the Republican party. It is corruption and fascism on steroids.
And Democrats still embraced a capitalism that talked the talk of fairness and inclusivity. But health care was still spiraling out of control. Having child care was still a joke for all but the most affluent. Housing was still unaffordable for too many. The fossil fuel oligarchs and giant agriculture were still getting subsidies. Unions were still losing their influence. States were still depriving women of reproductive rights and healthcare. Our infrastructure was still crumbling - aging electric grids incapable of handling the exploding demand for cheaper sustainable production. Antique water systems. Antique bridges ready to collapse. I could go on...
The Orange Menace won twice because people wanted radical change. They were sold on the idea that the insiders were not going to solve their problems.
We can use the same strategy now. The problems are even worse. Every president always gets blamed for everything that goes wrong. Just ask Obama. "47" is no different.
But wishing we could get back to normal isn't going to get the bystanders to the voting booth. We need to make some GOOD trouble by demanding radical reform of everything. Taxes! Health Care! Child Care! Housing! Cost of food and utilities!
Here's the pitch:
"If the Republican unregulated capitalist version of our economy was going to give us good care - health, education, clean air and water, better paying jobs - it would have happened by now. Instead the billionaires are becoming trillionaires and millions of American kids are hungry. Millions are dying too early. Infant mortality is growing. America is sliding backwards."
It is time for a revolution. A massive redistribution of wealth. The old normal was well intentioned but failed.
My sense of a "new normal" is radical. If we lived in another "western democracy" it might be called every day common sense.
I agree; we can't go back to the way things were. That's partly what got us into this mess. We need radical change.
Bill, I think the change the Trump voters want is the ability to carry on with racist and misogynistic policies—the ones DEI initiatives were chipping away. I propose the Democrats (or a new party?) work for the common (public) good and call for the funding and equitable administration of free public healthcare, free public transportation and free public K16 education. For starters. Less money for the budgets of violence (military, police, prisons) and more for those supporting well being. And you might say our economy where profit taking is the ultimate virtue is also violent—exploitation of labor and resources is unfettered. The predatory nature of our economy has to be addressed in order to move funds from the budgets supporting violence. It is clear to more and more people—dawning on us—that war and weapons are depriving all but a few getting wealthy on the backs of the rest of us. Perhaps we can thank social media for helping more of us see where our hard earned money is going—toward violence and not toward our well being.
Well said! My hope is that the vast number of independents, many of whom voted for 47, will be disillusioned enough, angry enough to vote for their better interests. One can hope...
Your comment hit it out of the park, Bill. I’ve been thinking this way for years.
Very good synopsis of some of what we need to achieve. Too bad I only see 9 likes, so far--your post deserves more.
Radical Common sense!!! 👏 👏👏💥💯💥 EXACTLY 💯 % what we need!
A decade ago I was a centrist.
Trump has made me a radical 'leftist'.
Ironically not one of my positions have changed.
But I am so with you on this. Going back to 'normal' is never going to be enough. Going back to a calm Biden apologist administration will not make me happy.
America has never hit the goals promised in the Declaration of Independence or the Bill of Rights. But at least before it felt like we were moving towards it.
Now we have taken 6 steps back. And that isn't good enough for me anymore.
I just blew up a Military sub of veterans dissn Graham. My blood's still high. Lying sanctimonious b#&&$@* coming from a bunch of men who have never lifted a gun except to shoot a defenseless deer or a paper target (aka Cold War Vets)... daring to bad mouth actual combat veterans because they don't agree with them politically? I've been caring for my combat disabled veteran for nearly 30 years now. He's a complex human being with multiple sides like many of us. But at this point... he actively disassociates from anything 'Veteran'. Because he's not a MAGA cuck and everyone assumes that veterans are.
We both voted for Platner.
Nope too late for normalcy. The 2nd American Revolution must commence as Paulo Revereo lights his lantern in the Old North Church belfry one if by land two if by sea.
Not sure any more that it is possible. :-(
We could and we must Veronica. And it's not like a bad futuristic novel, it's like in real time nightmare. Thanks for your comment 👍
There was a comedic film in the mid80s called “The Money Pit”. Drumpf seems to be channeling the stonewalling tactics of contractors in the movie.
Homeowner, “How long will it take?”
Umpteenth Contractor, “2 weeks.”
We were just two years into renovating an 1870 yo total wreck of a Victorian when the "Money Pit" came out with Tom Hanks and Shelley Long. We laughed until we cried as we were living that movie!! My husband also kept saying, we'll have this done in ten years (we did a lot of the work alongside contractors) . . . well 4+decades later we have a special place but everyone else has enjoyed incredible price appreciation without $hundreds of thousands in sweat equity! Yes, an old house is constant work, but we survived and have great stories!
At this end of the age spectrum, it's unbelievable that we have to "survive" (I'm mildly active and don't shut up!) the debacle that is trump that has scarred our brains more than hanging and sanding sheet rock in the primary bedroom (before we smartened up and had contractors do the rest of that project!!)
We were also renovating a Victorian house in the Catskills when that movie came out -- it was great - and on the money!
Our daughter's house was built in 1792, the same year as they started the White House. They are still working on it.
Hers probably looks better right now …
It is a forever project!
😂🙈
I was renovating a post WWII Colonial when that movie came out, doing most of the work myself. I sold it unfinished and moved to Bermuda! “Two weeks” still makes me laugh.
I believe “Money Pit” was a great remake of the 1940s hit “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House” with Gary Grant and Myrna Loy. It’s also a very funny film. My favorite scene is where Mrs. Blandings (Myrna Loy) tells the painting contractor and his painter the colors she wants in each room, but maybe that’s because my father was a painting contractor (also my grandfather, brothers and several uncles).
So now we can re-watch Idiocracy. It even had an RFK jr. character.
Truly one of the best movies of all time. As someone who has tackled at least one renovation project, "Building Off the Grid" has many humorous moments each episode. Plus, it brings back memories of our many challenges during our renovations.
I keep thinking of that line too every time I hear his "in 2 weeks" routine, I love that movie but hate this money pit that we're all embroiled in now.
It's also in the movie 'Total Recall', when Quaid(played by Arnold Schwarzenegger) is in disguise going through a security checkpoint. The disguise starts malfunctioning and he's repeating '2 weeks' over and over until dystopian mayhem ensues...not so unlike Donold actually...
For years people thought that Fox News as the propaganda wing of the Republican Party, but as it turns out, the Republican Party is merely the political wing of Fox News.
Donold watches Fox News and follows those commentators, hosts and propagandists so much that he even calls in to spout his tirades at times.
He even hires Faux News employees for his staff and to be part of the Trump regime.
Whiskey Pete Hegseth was a contributor and host for the Fox network since 2014 before he was confirmed as Secretary of Defense in January of 2025. Kegsbreath being such a jingoistic and ardent war hawk that he wants the title of Secretary of War instead and is one of the most gung-ho about war on Iran or whatever other country or just committing war crimes for whatever reason...
Stephen Colbert and Scott Pelley fired from CBS. And Fox “News” people are still praising Trump. EVERYTHING is SO wrong now…
The Art of the Oil Grab
America woke up to another episode of Foreign Policy by Mood Swing, starring Donald Trump as the man who thinks diplomacy means yelling “mine” at another country’s oil infrastructure.
First, he announced Iran would be hit “very hard tonight,” because nothing says strategic genius like previewing military plans before breakfast. Then came the idea of taking Kharg Island, apparently under the theory that world peace is just Monopoly with aircraft carriers.
Naturally, Fox News leaned in like a barroom uncle shouting advice during brain surgery. “Do it, Mr. President,” they seemed to say, “we saw a map once.” Trump then explained that Iran is basically already defeated, except for the small detail that Iran appears not to know this.
His model was Venezuela, where America allegedly took the oil, called it freedom, and somehow made imperialism sound like a clearance sale.
Then, as always, the great deal materialized on the horizon. Not an actual deal, of course. More of a shimmering Trump-shaped mirage, the kind that appears whenever bombs, polls, or prosecutors get too close. CNN counted it as the 39th time he announced that peace was just around the corner.
Meanwhile, Trump searched for an intelligence chief with no intelligence experience, which, in this administration, apparently counts as cultural fit.
Michael Corthell,
I was hoping to choose only one of your creative as well as well as accurate comments but appreciate each one ....so "thank you" for capturing my same thoughts regarding the sad reality of the disturbing person who sits in the seat of "President of the USA".
Mike, for me what is even more disgusting is that those pundits and others on Fox don't have kids or siblings in this war, so they are OK with pushing Trump to expand the war in which many Americans may be lost or be made disabled, and for nothing. They talk about our troops making a sacrifice when the ones who sent them never sacrifice anything.
Anyone voting on war actions needs to have kids in the game - kids without bone spurs.
Hello Mike... This is the 'Fox News' Administration... So How Is It Working Out?...
I feel that.
Yes dumbo with a b for the bloviating, blowhard, buffoon that Donold is...
Mike Hammer,
I had the blessing of building a friendship with an Iranian citizen during college as well as meeting his Iranian friends. They are wonderful people.
That we should consider them non-human...good only to test our powerful military equipment, sends more of a message regarding who we are and who we are not as Americans.
Theses strikes on Iran are inhumane!!!!.....totally unnecessary!!!! We are only creating more enemies in the middle east! Who will trust us???
If Americans cannot see that Trump has "straw" for brains and a huge "rock" for a heart then we have become "blind, deaf and dumb"!!!!
Fox News is what's left of the other half of Trumps brain. It's been an obvious assessment for far too many years. As a combat veteran I wouldn't want to be a young person on one of those carriers knowing that our experienced officer corps has been shit canned by a drunk head of the Department of Defense.
No, no, no… Trump and/or his lieutenants likely pressed Fox News to say those things as part of a broader strategy to seed support for his taking more control of Iran and its oil. The thing about Trump et al is that their grand plan is ridiculously stupid BUT their methodology can be smart and calculated.
I must add that even if he appears to be flailing, the rule still applies - never drop your guard because he’ll hurt you.
Hubert Thomason,
Maybe it is time for Trump to "feel the pain"!!!!
Thank you Megan Rothery for your comment as well as contact info!!!!
Fox News is ruled by the Devil....ah, Devil's.
I am So constantly shocked at what America has become.
Hard for an American....(been one since 1939)
BUT, Now!, I am switching teams and rooting for the smartest, most decent team.
Team Iran!
They do right. America does wrong, every time.
We have to stop being ruled by these "Zionists" who are not good Americans and not good Jews.
...then there are the 95% of Israelis...who can not be fixed....except from some outside force.
Hope to live to see it....
Trump/the administration is dangerous for our country/the world 💔🤍💙 Don’t just doom scroll about everything! Read and speak up!
Resource below to easily contact all of Congress - Be LOUD. Unrelentingly.
Use/share this spreadsheet (bit.ly/Goodtrouble) to contact members of Congress, the Cabinet and news organizations. Call. Write. Email. Protest.
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 ✊
And after talking LOUD, vote LOUD! Plan to vote this November like your republic depended on you alone. In so many ways, it always has, though you probably didn't realize it then the way you do now. Donate to as many as you can -- as much as you can. Make sure your name is the same as the one your Registrar has for you. Get that ID in order. And volunteer for a campaign -- there's a role for everybody. Or be a poll worker or poll watcher -- the need is so very great right now.
The catchphrase -- 'Too Big To Rig.' Nothing destroys a planned gerrymander more effectively than massive voter turnout. We must do our part to be sure the tsunami is big enough and high enough to sweep all of us out of the insane asylum he keeps trying to put us into.
In Nebraska, one of the many Republican Super PACs sent out a mailing lying about how the Democratic candidate for Congress was in complete alignment with the Trump administration. Of course, this couldn't be further from the truth.
Here in ME, various Super PACs have touted Susan Collins's support for all Mainers, often never listing a single example. We are getting at least one mailing every week. And all of these PACs have out of state addresses and mostly out of state donors.
We've been following the Senate race in Maine as if we lived there! I hope to see Collins go down in defeat. How can anyone believe her?
Thank you for following the ME Senate race. Harry Reid described Collins well when he said, "Susan Collins is always there when you don't need her."
There are no billionaires that claim ME as their primary residence but it doesn't stop them from buying her votes to remain in power.
Doesn't Leonard Leo have a residence near Bar Harbor? Maybe it's not his primary residence.
But you will get Nazi Platner in exchange. COLLINS IS NEARING 80. PLATNER IS 40.
I vote for your suggestion! Let's go down it!!
My suggestion for what to write to your representatives about for today is the danger posed by the Trump regime's rolling coup.
Former Democratic Senators Richard Gephardt and Tim Wirth are warning that the Trump regime has built a complete apparatus to execute a coup through presidential executive orders and massive funding bills approved by the Republican Congress.
They make a persuasive case that few people in America recognize the big picture and see how far the plan has progressed. The coup could be initiated at the midterms.
This is the clearest, most concise articulation of the danger we are facing. It will be a seminal document in the American fight to restore democracy and demand accountability from the Trump regime. for their assault on our freedoms. THIS IS AN ABSOLUTE MUST-READ.
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/warning-trumps-rolling-coup-is-underway
In related news, in her politics chat today, Heather discussed JD Vance's moves to take over MAGA. Robert Reich also focused on Vance as a major threat on June 10. Both warn that, despite Vance's gaffes and total lack of charisma, he has Thiel's backing. Heather noted that the Haberman and Swann NYTimes White House Epstein files freak-out investigative reporting put Vance in a definitely positive light. All of Haberman's reporting has, to me, a certain "I'm an insider" pro-Vance slant. You all know I have been beating the "Vance would be worse than Trump" drum for months. Heather is focusing on how quickly Trump is devolving under the pressure. If Trump breaks down, we get Vance, like it or not, no election required.
Putting a Vance ascension together with the Gephardt and Wirth warning about the coup apparatus that is already up and running makes the case that the danger to democracy is closer and greater than many perceive. Vance is a true believer in Thiel's vision for America, so he will have no hesitation in using the authoritarian apparatus to achieve it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuKULt61Ggg
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/jds-strategy?r=dvhmb&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/10/magazine/trump-epstein-files-white-house-vance-doj.html
There are 30 states's Secretaries of State that meet regularly according to Shenna Bellows the ME Secretary of State. This group includes SOS from Idaho and Mississippi. They work together to insure safe and democratic elections.
We need to watch out for the other 20. Ironically most of the 20 have their state minimum wage stuck at $7.25 an hour.
Excellent advice and detail, as always.
Thanks Pam - I hope you have a good weekend (ignoring the government craziness)
Have you figured out HOW to ignore it? Please,tell me!! On second thought: I do not wish to ignore it. I wish to fight it with all I've got!!
Exactly! Well said. 👍🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻‼️
✊🏼☺️ Power to the people!
Of, by, and for after all.
Here is some follow-up information regarding an earlier suggestion, if you haven't yet written to the NY and DC bar associations to advocate for disbarment proceedings against Todd Blanche. Blanche's nomination for AG was announced yesterday.
From the Talking Feds substack, Harry Litman interviews Senator Sheldon Whitehouse about disbarring Blanche.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1i0jDRrJQDI
Megan, here is the DOJ's contact info that I have been using to tell them to release the Epstein Files. I simply said, "As required by the Epstein Files Transparency Act, DOJ needs to release the entirety of the unredacted Epstein Files, without victim identification.
Thank you."
I thought it might be helpful if you would provide this link inside your chart. You can also copy/paste my script if you choose.
Once you click on the link, just scroll down to input profile info before entering your message.
https://register.state.gov/
Thanks for your important work.
Morning, Lynell! Thanks for contributing to Megan's outstanding work.
An important article to add to your MUST READ list on how to talk to independents and "lean Republicans" about supporting "problematic" blue candidates.
https://thinkbigpicture.substack.com/p/problematic-political-figures-hegseth-platner
I have been advocating that, when it comes to casting your vote in the midterms, you have to hold your nose and vote blue no matter what. The stakes are too high to have to face another 2 years of Republican control of Congress.
I was put to the test on June 2 when I had to vote in the NJ07 primary. I listened to my own advice, but was uncomfortable with it. I was more uncomfortable thinking about the choices Mainers had to make with Platner. The simple prescription would do little to convince any unmotivated voter, or unhappy independent or non-cultist Republican who would immediately raise the "what about so and so?' objection.
Jay Kuo provides a deeply thoughtful answer, one that develops an ethical framework for deciding whether to support a candidate with a less-than-squeaky-clean past. The post is replete with examples of what questions to ask and what to look for in how dark revelations are examined and in the context of the behavior. Kuo points out the dangers of purity tests while not minimizing the behavior.
Our job between now and the midterms has to be to get disaffected non-voters and people who voted for Trump before to vote blue. Our winning strategy has to be based on outing the Trump regime's corruption and its cost to the average American. MAGA will fight back hard with false equivalences and the counter charges of corruption. We have to have tools to fight back against the allegations, certainly more than "Vote Blue no matter who." Kuo's post gives us the tools.
Thank you, Megan. 🫶✌️🖖 ✊✊✊
Thank you, Megan!! always good to see you here.
Thank you, Megan! (How did the rocks land?😊)
Thank you Megan!
“Normally you wouldn’t increase the likelihood of US casualties by announcing something like this ahead of time, unless you are bluffing to use it as a negotiating ploy, you are stupid, you don’t really care about the troops, or all three.”
I think we may have just stumbled on the explanatory trifecta here...
Ron is good like that! He makes a heck of a lot of sense.
Normally one assumes at least some distant sincerity in the remark. The only people Drumpf is negotiating with are his perceived base. Everything he’s been saying is aimed there … and it’s entirely lies.
Sincerity? It’s like cheese on the moon.
As the insane asylum deteriorates and intensifies, we must seek out voices of the sane in order to stay sane ourselves.
Yesterday, Pete Buttigieg laid out a blueprint for the kind of structural re-alignment we have to undertake to keep our tortured nation a functioning republic after He Who Must Not Be Named departs from the scene (which can’t happen soon enough). An interview with Yusef Jackson, current head of the PUSH Rainbow Coalition, with Lieutenant-Mayor-Secretary Pete in Chicago about reining in a rogue Supreme Court, re-fashioning a House of Representatives to become truly representative, re-inventing a shattered presidency, broken by lies, scandal, grand corruption and daily violations of the Constitution and decency itself.
If we are to restore faith in ourselves and regain the respect of the rest of the world wondering how America lost its mind and whether we'll ever get it back again, we must heed the voices of would-be architects of our transformation, rather than just complain about the cesspool. No time like the present to shape and clarify what a better future looks like, one with solid floors below which we can never sink again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=806TEpAy1xE
Thanks for that link!
I'm sooooo with you! Thanks for posting this 🙏
I'm always so taken with how Pete speaks, not just what he says -- never an "uh' or an 'um' -- every thought an articulate, complete, coherent sentence, every sentence a laid-out paragraph -- a step-by-step argument for practicality, common sense, compassion.
He. speaks the way one should EXPECT A STATESMAN TO SPEAK: with knowledge, complete sentences, clarity, examples. Gotta love Pete!! He sure has what it takes to be a good leader. If only America wasn't filled with so many bigoted fools!
In another timeline, he could have been the president this country needed. He's still young though and it could still happen some years down the road, but for now we just need to get past the current unfit morally bankrupt subhuman occupying the position of potus.
And Pete is not afraid to hold town halls in Oklahoma to say it. 👍🏻
Thank you! Great link.
"You know, make a fortune ... Venezuela has worked out great for everybody. We’ve taken millions and millions of barrels of oil out of Venezuela..."
Who exactly has a made a fortune, and where is the money from these barrels of oil? I haven't seen the price of gasoline come down, the debt reduce, or our taxes come down. The taxpayers' funds are paying to extract the fortunes of oil, and we are not benefiting. How can Trump's support even be in the 30's?
And the US national debt to hit 40 trillion long before 2026 ends. Unsustainable and the consequences per usual will be heaviest on those less well off.
The VZ "oil" is this hard-to-refine-sludge with substantial volume being shipped to China.
Keep those letter coming, Heather Cox Richardson. you always tell exactly what I need to hear. You and Joyce Vance White are my favorites.
Several threads in tonight's dispatch point to the same underlying question: what does congressional oversight actually require, and when does the executive branch need explicit authorization to act?
The War Powers Act issue is the clearest example. The 60-day clock exists so that sustained military action requires deliberate congressional buy-in, not just tolerance. Whatever one thinks of U.S. involvement in Iran, the mechanism matters independently of the outcome, because the next president inherits whatever precedent this one sets.
The FISA vote tells a similar story from the other direction. Nineteen Republicans joined Democrats to block the extension, not because they opposed the surveillance program, but because they did not trust the person being placed in charge of it. That is oversight working as designed: members making a structural judgment rather than a partisan one.
The Venezuela oil arrangement raises the same question in a third register. A GAO audit request is the ordinary tool Congress uses to verify that executive action is being conducted lawfully. Whether the funds are well-managed or not, the audit process is what produces an answer citizens can rely on.
These are not questions that resolve cleanly along party lines. They are questions about what citizens are owed in the way of transparency and authorization from the people who govern them.
The failure to extend FISA is a genuinely serious development with consequences that range from terrible to frightening. And it failed, as you mentioned, not because anybody opposed it, but because so many -- even within the GOP -- no longer trust the guardians responsible for implementing it. The Bunker Administration just kept insisting an unqualified lackey be made the head of counterintelligence, never once considering the consequences of either option before it.
Not just the arrogance, but the total fuckupery. Breathtaking in scope.
All true, save for one important aspect---
Do we really need FISA to be extended at all?!? I'm not saying we don't, but there should certainly be a vigorous debate about its very existence, especially Section 702 and related provisions, as they could certainly not stand up to proper constitutional analysis.
I believe that was exactly what Democrats wanted -- and what most Republicans refused to speak one word about.
Ok but 7 democrats DO trust the person in charge of FISA? This is a big problem.
How the Iranians have played this president. They have his number. They take their time. They see that his bullying threats are empty. They see his instability and TACO-ing. And they won't be coerced. The Iranians have held him up on the global stage to be seen for what he is: a loser.
It’s not just the Iranians; Putin and Xi have also played Trump.
And Netanyahoo.
Umm … you may have left out Drumpf’s hairdresser.
You mean the taxidermist who glued the dead ferret to his scalp?
Iranians are trying survive this, if it looks like playing, I think it's pure strategy...they have been expecting this for 40 some years.
Iran could be the savior of the Palestinians and the Lebanese...betting their lives on it.
No Western country has given a damn.
The Iranians "played" this president? You mean after USrael attacked them without reason, murdered their leader, the daughter-in-law and wife of the current leader, their child and a nephew, they got a bit pissed off? Who would have thought, hey?
250 years of a nation built on genocide, enriched through slavery, with hardly a day that it didn't kill people all over the place, thanks to 180-odd military bases all over the planet.
Happy birthday, USrael! 😥 Looking at you feels weirder by the day.
Without a doubt, they are winning the psy-ops war. I guess it wasn't such a high bar after all.
What DECADES of HISTORY have shown us ALL...
trump has NO LOYALTY to ANYONE ELSE EVER!!
NEVER EVER TRUST A BULLY because they are SO insecure narcissistic and paranoid..
that sooner than later EVERYONE becomes one of their TARGETS!!
AND that includes maga!!
VOTE 'EM ALL OUT!!!
A walking embodiment of the quintessence of narcissism.
Honestly, at this point, I'm effing speechless at the unbelievable sheer and utter lying and the surreal corruption of this administration.
It's all done to make the stock market wildly go down on his signal and up on his next signal. Nothing else matters to him except the use of money to increase fealty. Doesn't matter who suffers. 86 47.
Today: 7.02% Up on my portfolio.
...tomorrow...Prob. 7.02% down
👍
If Trump is now in a box and could be expected to blow up the box, can we assume a change in his abilities to wreak havoc on those of us outside his box? Or are we now in the box with him? This image is ripe and unsettling.
We are inside, he chose his voters
Heather's today proves her skill at comedy. Black comedy, perhaps. Showcasing insanity, certainly.
I like best the part where she writes of criminal Donald, “He does not like being put in a box,” the operative told Burns and Wren. “When you put him in a box, then Trump’s going to blow the box up.”
See? I think this is Heather also making reference to criminal Donald's ultimate vulgarity this week -- his cage fight. Heather knows rapist Donald is a stupid, stupid, pathetically stupid man. She knows he surrounds himself with lickspittle sycophants. They all go in Keystone Cops mad circles.
But it's funny, if we can say all those the fool has damaged might have any innocent let alone funny dimensions.
The comedy is so black and real, unlike the Fox “entertainment.” Still, we plan vacations, pay at the pump and stream distractions. The ostrich is our national symbol.
Too bad the operative didn’t draw the exploding box on a paper bar napkin, Ahmad Chalabi style. It could become a document preserved in the Drumpf Lie-berry.
Reminds me of those toy Jack in the box my children all had. The ones where you crank the handle and the clown would jump out of the box, scaring you half to death. If we stop cranking, would he just stay in his box!?!
The national situation has become so bizarre and surreal that I sometimes feel that I have been paid to read a very bad novel, one that I have no respect for or engagement with, but also one that I have to finish in order to honor my contract. I am in the twilight of my life, and the fact that my country is being ruined by these grotesque oafs saddens me to the core.
The DNC Better Not Pull A Spurs Moment
With a 27 point lead the San Antonio Spurs managed to lose to the NY Knicks in the second half in what Barkley called the "dumbest play" by a pro basketball team.
The DNC has a stacked deck with many political issues going their way but nothing can be assumed a done deal until the midterms are in the books. Clearly with its lousy autopsy report out for public view, the party has many problems: leadership, unwilling to admit to Palestinian genocide, reliance on a political loser in AIPAC which is supporting DNC candidates who swear allegiance to the fascist Israeli state and its war that drug the demented psychopath's country into a war that the plurality doesn't want.
The "establishment" Democrats like Schumer and Jeffries have failed to get behind the American populist movement manifested in Mamdani and now many candidates unwilling to take $$$ from the AIPAC foundational money, such as Platner, Villegas,, Ladner, Flanagan etc. So there is a under reported rift going on in the party and if they don't solve it fast, the Democrats may find themselves in a Spurs Moment.
The DNC is crap to me. What are Dems thinking. I have a hard time claiming to be one but what choice. Tweedle Dee or Tweedle dumb
My Take: no matter who wins, we still lose.
That's one reason I've voted as an independent for so many years. I don't identify with a third party, so it's kind of symbolic nose holding.
Cat’s Cradle
I appreciate your commentary on the DNC. In this telling, I like to think of us (the citizens fighting for this country) as the Knicks, fighting from down and out. I am hoping for the same outcome.
It will happen just like the Knicks will win the series
Right on! Here's hoping!
Moi aussie. ✊
ICYMI: Good news that shows that “We the People” are not powerless if we stand together. A lesson for Democrats to UNITE. E Pluribus Unum!
LA LABOR UNION STANDS UP TO OLIGARCHS AND WINS
Kurt Petersen J.D. (Yale Law), Co-President of UNITE HERE Local 11 - a powerful labor union representing >32,000 hotel, airport, stadium and food service workers across Southern California and Arizona - negotiated and won contracts to secure raises to over $40/hr, worker housing, worker privacy protections, protection against federal immigration enforcement, etc. just days before the World Cup which begins in LA on Friday 6/12. He is interviewed on Legal AF by Associate Dean and Chair in Law and Technology at Albany Law School in Albany, NY. “Legal AF interviews Kurt Petersen UNITE HERE contract with FIFA” https://michaelpopok.substack.com/p/labor-scores-major-win-right-before?r=1d2cea&utm_medium=ios
Excellent news!