His temper tantrums make my 3 year old’s temper tantrums seem like a beautiful walk in the park 🤦♀️ Be LOUD! Trump/the administration is dangerous for our country 💔🤍💙
Resource below to easily contact all of Congress -
Use/share this spreadsheet (bit.ly/Goodtrouble) to contact members of Congress, the Cabinet and news organizations. Call. Write. Email. Protest. Unrelentingly!
Reach out (beyond your own) to as many in the Senate and House as you can. All of this is bigger than “I only represent my constituents” issues.
Miselle and fellow travelers: take a look at the photo of the "lunch" meeting the NY Times placed on their front page. It is, to say the least, highly unflattering to the Dear Leader they all want to placate. He looks like a bloated bullfrog and is clearly unsteady on his feet. Also, if you have any confidence that even the Rethuglicans who got ousted from their seats by Maggats will stick to their guns I have a bridge available for sale. The thing I am concerned about is the DNC deciding that attacking their left flank, after the glorious upheaval in New York, is a better idea than focusing on the actual task at hand: preventing the rising fascistic takeover of the USA from coming to fruition in November and January.
And, yes, It is actually that bad. The latest communication from Ken Martin arrived in the mail a few days ago. It is chock full of comments on what they're doing, doing, doing but next to nothing about to what ends, or why, or, most important how that fits into the far-reaching challenge of Trump's inclinations, and incompetence, and bold undercutting of the "American experiment." Oh, yes, DNC is presented as busy, busy, busy all right, but the missive remains really, really thin on presenting the strategic aims, whys, and hows requisite to protecting the Republic.
My suggestion to the DNC: First, Impeach the pustule---cool idea for a No Kings poster. Nice alliteration!---next find an AG who understands Constitutional law and how to enforce it. Then maybe Congress can start legislating again instead of sucking up to a toddler.
Getting rid of the Dem establishment IS fighting the fascists since the establishment is part of the reason Trump is in office. There are several groups like Leaders We Deserve who are working on progressive candidates while those in Congress are fighting for our democracy. It’s the establishment Dems who aren’t fighting fascism and burying their heads in the sand.
I don't think he sweet talked anyone. But I'm pretty sure nameless henchmen behind the scenes are issuing death threats against GOP members and their families. This is a straight-up crime syndicate.
I have no sympathy. These republicans have enjoyed their power and its spoils all these years, never once in the last decade taking one of the multiple opportunities to shake off this bully. Instead they’ve cowered and brought the whole country down with them.
Cassidy, yeah. He was a Trumper until Trump turned on him and he lost his primary election. Too little too late. However, always watch how they vote. Many talk big before a camera and vote Trump later...including Democrats.
Michele, there's a simple solution. Use a limousine with a privacy screen behind the driver's seat. Donny will think he's special being chauffeured in a limo, and the privacy screen will contain the whining and the stench, or as Jeff Tiedrich describes it, "the aroma of rancid ass music."
She didn’t go back to sleep in the car 🤣 both her and our 5 year old we scooped up, buckled them in and they were awake and chatty. Molly (3) slept for but an hour on the plane and is currently snuggled with me after rocking her to sleep since with the time change it’s 7:30pm here (in Hawaii), but 10:30pm back home (way past her bedtime). We had some bumps but she did amazing. And Madison (5) is still going strong helping her dad unload our grocery delivery 💜
But you have a very important thing going for you & for her, you love her enough to control the temper tantrum, to discipline her so that when she grows up she will know right from wrong & not think that she is entitled to everything! Good job, good parenting, have a good time!
Thank you, Megan!!! and good luck with your toddler!! I have a feeling she'll be more amenable than the current occupant of the White House can ever be capable of.
Ah toddler tantrums! Now that my kids are having their own toddlers I look back with respect and nostalgia.. But presidents should be past the tantrum phase. It's highly unbecoming, to say the least.
Carla, one would think that Trump is past the tantruming stage, but alas, he has been stuck in toddlerhood for decades, maybe his whole life. Too much money can do that to you. It has done that to Musk, Vought, and the rest of the too-rich white house toddler pool, which may be why they cling to their Baby Donnie so closely; he is the toddler-in-chief and can prove tantrums work, that is unless there are sufficient adults in the room.
Well, our Roberts 6 are among the toddlers; their tantrums are in the form of judicial decisions that are bad for everyone but themselves and ignore our Constitution and history as much as they can get away with. They do need to be countered!
Do not assume the Gang of 6 and Republicans believe in Democracy. They don't cave because of threats to their families. The Democrats don't and they are threatened too. No, Repubs believe in Project 2025 and approve of the dismantling of America.
Donald Trump has once again demonstrated the leadership style of a man trying to land a plane by yelling at the clouds.
First, we are told Iran is “on the ropes,” trembling in awe of America’s unmatched strength, apparently while the United States is negotiating from a position best described as “please clap.” According to strategic studies scholar Phillips P. O’Brien, the administration has little leverage left, which means the next phase will likely involve declaring imaginary concessions, printing them in gold ink, and selling commemorative mugs by dinner.
This is Trump diplomacy in its purest form: lose the leverage, invent the victory, blame Democrats, misspell something, then demand applause.
Meanwhile, back home, Congress had passed a rare bipartisan housing bill aimed at making homes cheaper and stopping private equity from gobbling up single-family houses like Pac-Man in a gated community. A normal president might sign that. Trump, naturally, cancelled the signing because Congress would not pass his voter ID obsession first.
Nothing says “I care about working families” like holding affordable housing hostage until states hand over voter rolls to the federal government.
Then came the midnight posting spree, because apparently the presidency now comes with a night shift at Truth Social. Gas prices, communism, fake poll numbers, emergency declarations, all served together like a political sampler platter from the Cheesecake Factory of authoritarian panic.
The funniest part, if democracy were not currently short-circuiting in public, is that even Republicans seem to know what this is. One senior Republican reportedly called it a tantrum.
That may be unfair.
Toddlers usually calm down after a nap.
Trump cancels housing bills, threatens election rules, yells at oil companies, and calls it governance.
The algae in the reflecting pool has shown more restraint.
Him thwow tantwum in ceweal aisle AGAIN. Him want voter suppression bill FIRST, not care about no housing. But poor widdle Donnie Diddums not going to get what him wants! Him going to scream, will thweaten, beg. Him tweet mucho sick shit. Him losing it now evewy day in every way.
That’s the way cookie cwumbles, Donnie Dimpledums. Loser.
I was thinking the same thing about my 4 year old granddaughter's - short-lived and a breeze compared to Trump, the 80 yr old toddler! Thank you Megan for all your work on this and for re-posting it!
That's because he didn't have adult supervision. He was allowed to be feral and had the servants wrapped around his pinky since he was old enough to wave it.
Thanx for your work/ contribution here. I am using it to write to my congressman and responsible Republican congress people. Enough of this failed POTUS.
I wonder contacting our representatives is good enough. I am concerned with the possibility that Mr. Trump would declare national emergency once the Republican loses the Congress. He would claim that the country is taken over by the communist party. This power enabling to call national emergency could make Mr. Trump a dictator. I do not know what citizens can stop such an action. I would like discussions on this possiblity.
Yeah, Megan be loud that’ll help ? I cannot believe that Heather just quoted somebody that has no freaking clue at all about what’s going on in a run and has the audacity and the temerity to post this nonsense and she doubles down and posting it again. Let me tell you what I know about it and I think you’re gonna see the difference
The war is OVER….WE WON… Let me see if I can help you here. Their entire military fleet is underwater ALL 48 warships that they process. Billions of dollars of warships
All their military aircraft is gone..billions of dollars Their industrial military complex and infrastructure is gone Their enriched uranium is buried under grounds of disaster and rubble for now, but that will end soon enough Allow me to continue
When the strait was closed They were losing $500 million a day of revenue.which is 80% of their economy Therefore they have a 50% unemployment rate right now approximately an 85% estimated inflation rate which something is over 300%
All of your original leaders, including the ayatollah, and all their , military leaders were killed in a bombing ..The secondary replacements who took their place were destroyed , in a bombing….then third tier of leadership replacements were killed in a bombing…they are trying to find new leaders who are willing… to soon look like the previous three regimes, which are dead… the analysis is that they’ve lost 1,000,000,000,000 1/2 (trillion) dollars of value of their company country and it will take them about five years to rebuild if and when they have the money to do so.
They recently killed 45,000 protesters in a big march because the populace is becoming a little bit less supportive with women walking around without heat jobs in miniskirts Which used to be punishable by stoning
And any and all money that’s going to be paid to them it’s going to come through American coppers, American companies, American suppliers, American banks, etc.
So please awaken from your truck induced delusion, evaluate what I printed up here because if this is any way to win a war I’m sure glad you’re not anywhere near a leadership position
No Pichture this Megan if nothing would’ve happened to the United States other than the president is Cabinet were killed the second president and his Cabinet were killed and the third president is Kavas were killed. Who would you say was winning the war. ?? And then we have all the devastating news of their monetary loss and their fiscal condition so I can’t believe Megan would actually post an article from somebody who is supposed to be an intellectual that has any clue at all about this war or about life in general actually
If the war is won, Rick, then what are they still negotiating about in Geneva? Why is Trump still threatening to attack them? Why is Rubio shuttling between Gulf states trying to persuade them that Trump actually knows what he's doing? Why are all those US warships and military assets still in the region at huge cost to US taxpayers? Why is Iran and Oman in talks to establish a joint commission to charge maritime fees on commercial shipping passing through the Strait? Why isn't the Strait fully open now? Why are senior Republicans so angered by the terms of the MOU? Trump has denied that the US will pay anything towards the so-called $300bn investment fund, so why are you saying that all the money will come via American banks? If Iran was so financially and militarily crippled then why aren't US warships proceeding through the Strait? If their navy was completely destroyed, then how were they able to launch attacks from the sea on tankers? If their missiles were destroyed, then why is US intelligence saying that they still have around 70% of their missiles and that 31 of 33 missile sites are now operational again?
If you can't be bothered to read the serious news, Rick, then why are you bothering coming here with your nonsense?
YOU ARE OFFICIALLY ONE OF THE PATRONS OF THE GEORGE FLOYD RIOTS. In fact, you might even be George speaking to us from your grave …THE NEWS MEANS NOTHING….YOU JUST DONT LISTEN…SECOND QUARTER….THIRD INNING…..NOT EVEN A DENOUMENT YET….
THEY ARE STILL WRITING THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE…..AND …………..ONLY….ONLY….ONLY…WHEN IT IS DONNNNNNNNNNNNE WILL THERE BE ANY NEWS …..POOR GEORGE…in the meantime oil prices in April were momentarily at 126 per barrel…but leveled out at 115…..today at 71.
Maybe if I give you a more appropriate analogy you might get it. YOU Just went to the bathroom AND took a nice dump. YOU took out some toilet paper and PREPARED to do its work. YOU tired one sheet. BUT still needed more. You haven’t even taken off the second sheet yet, so you don’t know how many more sheets you’ll need because you don’t know how big of a task you have…
ONLY WHEN YOU ARE DONE WIPING WILL THERE BE ANY NEWS. George…..
You said it was game over!!! Now you're saying it's only done when it's done - so which version are we to take?
I live in the UK, remember? I took no part in the George Floyd protests.
Your other analogy is certainly better than the baseball one. Trump has indeed taken a dump on Iran and no amount of toilet paper is going to clean up the mess he has left behind him - he leaves that to others, as usual. Anyway, the guy uses diapers so perhaps it's not that great an analogy after all.
The war so far has cost $162bn and American citizens have had to spend an additional $45bn on gasoline and diesel since the war started.
What a way to celebrate your 250th anniversary - thanks to Trump the biggest shitshow on earth (and that includes the earthquakes in Venezuela).
Iran struck another cargo vessel in the Gulf of Oman today. So much for destroying Iran's military capabilities. The Wall Street Journal reports Iran is eyeing up to $40 billion a year in tolls once the dust settles. JD Vance tells UnHerd the Emiratis are now talking directly to the IRGC because they no longer trust the US security umbrella. Nobody trusts Trump, not even the majority of the American people who did not want this war.
PCE inflation has increased to 4.1% year-over-year, the highest in three years, driven largely by the Iran war. The personal savings rate has fallen to 3%, one of the lowest readings in 15 years. That might be why the Federal Reserve held interest rates at their last meeting, ignoring Trump's calls for a cut.
And excuse me if I’m not correct here and saying that you use the ING word again. Which I told you you can’t use it’s the Gerron form which means C O N T I N U I N G. WHEN THE END IS DONE YOU YOU’LL HEAR THE WORDS AS FOLLOWS THE END OF THE WAR, THE END OF NEGOTIATIONS, PROBABLY A YEAR OR MORE FROM NOW THE BEGINNING OF REPARATIONS, WHATEVER THEY MAY BE, AND HOWEVER, THEY COME OUT AND THEN YOU CAN BEAT GEORGE FLOYD ALL OVER AGAIN
ONE MORE ING …. ONE MORE INANE THOUGHTLESS POST FROM YOU. I’LL JUST GO ELSEWHERE FOR MY ENTERTAINMENT.
Well, blimey me. It’s the end of the world. But of course you didn’t read the whole article did you you did like most of you liberals do gosh I see this headline. It looks good. I’m gonna fuck it and I’m gonna jump on it like a bitch in heat.
Well, I guess the war is not over now. Laugh my fucking ass off you know I explained to this other jerk here the other day when you talk about things like this Pichture this globe. Then Pichture the war in Iran And then picture the scope of the war in Iran
And what just happened and you didn’t know even why it happened or how it happened was that an amoeba from this entire entire globe had been interrupted. Ending humanity till the end
I’m telling you one more like that goodbye Russell goodbye all your thrills. You can sit home and play with yourself from now on if you can find it.
Further showing how Rick Sender is a right wing troll here is what I posted from The Hill about what Trump's Medicaid cuts are doing to Ohio. His response is below post:
📊 A new Commonwealth Fund analysis projects that Ohio will lose 51,000 jobs and $5.3 billion from its economy by 2029 as federal cuts to Medicaid and food assistance programs under the 2025 spending law take full effect, ranking the state eighth nationally in projected job losses.
The analysis found that Ohio stands to lose $4.4 billion in federal funding, reducing state GDP by $5.4 billion and shrinking state and local tax revenue by $368 million. Half of the projected job losses would be in healthcare, hitting hospitals, clinics, pharmacies, and nursing homes hardest. The spending law cut more than $900 billion from Medicaid over 10 years and $187 billion from SNAP. The expiration of Affordable Care Act marketplace subsidies has already caused Ohio enrollment to drop 20% this year, with roughly 600,000 Ohioans seeing their insurance premiums double 🔍.
Ohio will receive approximately $200 million in rural health funding that was built into the spending law to offset concerns about rural hospital closures, but the Commonwealth Fund analysis concludes that figure is "overshadowed" by $31 billion in federal marketplace funding cuts nationally. Proponents of the law say stricter work requirements will move people off benefits and into jobs. However, the CBO estimates that Americans in the lowest 10% of incomes will lose approximately $1,200 per year while those in the top 10% gain approximately $13,600 per year, and the analysis warns that the work requirements may actually reduce employment by eliminating healthcare jobs in the communities where recipients live
Rick Sender
13m
Yawn. Where did the money come from in the first place? Oooooops. Uh oh. Looks like once once again again, life is a do to your proposition.
It came from the PEOPLE. That's where you show your idiocy Rick. People pay state taxes. People pay federal taxes. We aren't arguing about where the money comes from we're arguing whether the people getting handouts should be rich sick-o-phants like you rather than those who suffer real need.
If YOU can create 3000 millionaires then YOU are the queen of welfare by paying less taxes than the middle class, by stealing your tax cut from the mouths of children and the elderly.
You remain morally bankrupt and corrupt. And that is why I'm willing to go to jail to see people like you deported to South America or better yet, because imo of your racist views---Africa.
" I would rather a thousand times be a free soul in jail than to be a sycophant and coward in the streets." Eugene V. Debs (the first great socialist in America).
Oh my goodness crude oil fell below $70 today. I believe it was up near $100 just a few weeks ago. Even you can figure out the percentage of Drop. And it will continue to do so
By the way once again, Kent, you really need to go see some psychologist or somebody to talk about your social awareness because I am anything but a right wing troll. In fact, one of my favorite presidents, although he had three major fuck ups, and I mean major, major major fuck-ups Bill Clinton was still one of the best presidents we’ve had Despite his foils
One reason why the oil price has dipped by around 20% is that there is now weakening demand for oil partly because of an anticipated glut in supply and partly because some countries are turning to renewable energy because they don't want to get stung again the next time a US president decides to unilaterally start a war in the Middle East. Trump's stupid war has been the biggest advert for renewable energy ever.
You are arguing with a psychotic, potty-mouth 2-year-old who couldn’t put together a coherent sentence to save his life. I don't think he's about to suddenly thank you for your careful research. Just saying....
Yeah, who happens to bring facts along with his potty mouth that you can’t stand and that you can’t argue with.
Try reading the Declaration of Independence see if you can determine what words those mean
Living the dream pal, living in the dream unlike you, America haters, I’m going to the National mall with 20 of my friends next week to celebrate the greatness of America that you can’t stand
Actually, in retrospect that was a pretty coherent sentence.
19 million more barrels passed through the rate of her moves yesterday. Russell, you fucking idiot, moron stupid jerk, worthless piece of crap If Biden were president, would you care why the price of crude came down?
I showed you yesterday a high of 115 on an average in April and now it’s at 71 and you’re still bitching and moaning. Get the fuck out of my life go pound yourself. Maybe you’ll feel better.
That's one day's worth, you moron. I care about these commodity prices, Rick, because they effect everyone around the world, including me. You are such an ignorant, insular person. The Strait of Hormuz is by no means operating normally and the fact remains that Iran could close it any time they want and all Trump can do is issue further bombastic, genocidal threats.
He won't even accept responsibility for the killing of 162 children in the Minab school bombing. Children, Rick - don't you have children, you sick fuck?
The other day you blamed Clinton for the current state of Ukraine. I have consistently called you a coward for blaming Clinton for Ukraine, defending Trump for abandoning them, and for your lack of courage to return to your native homeland and at least live the life they live now.
Once again pointing out the hypocritical side of Trump bootlickers.
And I am your Tar Baby because I cause you narcistic injury just like Barak Obama causes narcistic injury to Trump.
You are a tar baby that looks like a tar baby covered in asphalt, wet, asphalt, hot, burning, wet asphalt. Clinton Clinton Clinton Clinton Clinton Clinton Clinton one of my favorite presidents was the cost of the war and millions and millions and millions and millions of people killed of people Wounded of people murdered of people being displaced no housing no place to go no job to go to millions
Now once you get that through your head and say you know what RICK that’s absolutely true Then we may have something to discuss
The other day I blame Clinton the world blames Clinton the whole fucking universe blames Clinton because he was not out of my mouth. He was actually the reason that Ukraine and Russia are fighting right now. NO OTHER REASON. YOU WANNA PRETEND OTHERWISE NO PROBLEM
By the way, you also didn’t mention to them that the income tax returns this year were 11% higher than last year because of the big beautiful Bill. And all the rest of your nonsense, especially if you pay attention to the CBO Which I could tell you what those letters stand for, but it might be too offensive for your audience
4 million people (including 800,000 children) lost access to SNAP because of Trump. Why don't you ask them how they're doing now? Even Elon Musk is losing money.
You mention the increased tax cuts but not the increased national debt that will trigger a reduction in Medicare benefits by 2032.
We estimate the OBBBA reduces taxes by about $5 trillion, or 1.4 percent of GDP, over the next decade (2025-2034). The net cost falls to about $4 trillion after accounting for the bill’s spending reforms. Additionally, we estimate the OBBBA will boost GDP by about 1.2 percent over the long run, primarily by lowering individual income tax rates and allowing businesses to expense certain investments, generating additional dynamic revenue and reducing the burden of debt and deficits as a share of the economy. Increased economic growth reduces the cost of the bill to about $3 trillion over the next decade. However, added to the cost is about $700 billion in interest payments on debt issued to finance the deficits, resulting in a total deficit increase of nearly $3.8 trillion over the next decade.
Under passage of the bill, and accounting for the macroeconomic impacts, debt-to-GDP reaches 183 percent in 2054. If the bill were not passed, debt-to-GDP would still reach 142 percent, accounting for macroeconomic feedback.
The law’s massive deficit increase triggers automatic spending cuts under budget rules designed to control federal spending. Unless a future Congress acts, Medicare faces approximately $500 billion in cuts between 2026 and 2034.
This creates a significant challenge that could affect the long-term stability of Medicare and the care it provides to over 65 million Americans.
Please note that Troll Rick will NEVER link any source proof for anything he writes. In that way, he mimics the worst Republicans in Congress.
I suspect he is being paid by them--no proof- but his continued apologetics without supporting data would lead many a person with critical thinking skills to come to that conclusion.
I am at anything but a right wing troll. And you ought to read all the definition of what’s happening in Ohio and why not just the headlines that you jump on like I’ve called you before just a bitch in heat when you see a headline you like you jump on it like a horny Little boy.
I also love projections. They’re always seem to work out so accurately.
Can’t there’s only too much I can take of stupidity and ignorance in one night so you and I are done for the night when you come up with anything meaningful to discuss. Let me know, but that ain’t coming anytime in the next decade.
Hello Kent... "Mamdani's endorsed candidates had all won:".... Mamdani is showing a way Forward... The Old Political Ways will be inadequate to address the collapse of the Old Politics... It has been postulated that China advanced from the Iran War because they had planned to mitigate a Strait-Of-Hormuz closing... Climate-Change, and A.I. will become Existential Threats to Humanity... Only Smart Collective Action can address these Challenges, and 80yo Toddler-Tantrums will not...
Thank you I’m glad everybody gets to see that and you should hear all the commentary about the Democrat party splitting to the left and who’s gonna actually move further left and who’s gonna stick to the Democrats normal theory because they think the far left is wacko Don’t forget to tell him the whole thing of what I
I can’t wait to watch New York crumble because life is a do it to yourself proposition. And when you talk about freedom, there ain’t gonna be none. They’re gonna take what they want to take over businesses. They want to take over hotels they want to get free everything and as the wealthy leave guess what’s gonna happen the money they thought they were gonna have to pay for all this stuff will be woof gone. And when he opens up all those grocery stores at 30 million a pop and comes to realize that grocery stores only run on a one or 2% margin so they have to keep prices very low. How do you think that’s gonna affect all the grocery stores anywhere near the neighborhood they’re gonna lose business and go out of business, which is people’s livelihoods which is ownership by those who invested in their community it’s gonna be fun to watch
Everybody, Rick consistently praises and defends Trump while his own substack flat out lies that he is independent and "balanced" in his views. This is typical of Trump cultists. He's also bragged that he has given more to charity than I have without knowing my charitable contributions.
He's also bragged that HE has made over 3000 people millionaires.
And he supports Drumph's War in Iran which has resulted in Trumpflation. This news came from The Hill this morning:
"Annual inflation hit the highest level in more than three years last month as prices across the economy rose at an even quicker pace, according to data released Thursday by the Commerce Department.
Prices rose 4.1 percent over the past year and 0.7 percent in May alone, as measured by the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index. Without food and energy, prices were up 3.4 percent over the past year and 0.3 percent in May.
The annual inflation rate of 4.1 percent is the highest since April 2023, and follows several months of steadily rising price growth driven by the war in Iran."
Please don't respond to the troll RICK SENDER. I've got him square in my radar and will continue to bombard him with the news of how he and his rich buddies are ruining America.
As a 79 year old Vietnam Veteran I have now made it my life's work to troll the TROLL. He is a wicked man intent on keeping Americans enslaved to the upper 5%.
What is he afraid of, you ask. Getting impeached again, this time successfully; being arrested , jailed, put on trial for a myriad of things; losing the status he has with the MAGAts and the puppet masters behind his every move. Is that enough to frighten him? I certainly hope so.
You might see me around here, and learn I usually don't use profanity, which I did this morning as I am very unpleased.
Discovering yet another new voice on here is a balm! As the self-appointed Walmart greeter of the forum, WELCOME!!👋🏼 I am so pleased to see another soul join this community!
THANK YOU 👏🏼 for becoming a paid subscriber! Our numbers scare the MAGA.
from day 1 in his 1st term his agenda was to stay in office to avoid prison. Had he just stuck to his scam real-estate deals and not claim income tax for decades he still would have had his riches and the world would have been a better ,saner place
Doreen, I'm a senior citizen, but my memory still works pretty well.
From the day Donald took over the family business, he began losing all the equity his father had built up. When Daddy died and couldn't bail Donny out anymore, Donny got deeper and deeper in debt, by millions of dollars.
His loser butt was saved when evangelical TV producer, Mark Burnett, advanced Donny millions of NBC's dollars to play the role of a business tycoon on a game show. But every TV show has a "shelf life" and Donny's light was beginning to fade on TV. He was looking for a way to burnish the Trump brand so he could continue profiting from fraudulent businesses.
Donny didn't want to be president. Running for president was a stunt meant to make his surname a household brand by utilizing the press for free exposure rather than paying for it with advertising. He had the gift of gab and his mind was mostly intact. He had speechwriters and a teleprompter, which enabled him to make a convincing case to white folks who felt betrayed by Big Business.
Lo and behold, his poll numbers kept rising and it appeared he had a shot at winning, but he wasn't convinced he could actually win, right up to Election Day. But the Electoral College, created by racists, handed him the election he didn't win. No one was more surprised than he was!
Even after he entered the office, he didn't want to be president. He complained that the White House was a "dump" and the job took too much time from golfing. Then he discovered all the ways the Office of President could be monetized for his personal enrichment, and he decided it was a pretty good gig, after all. He used the office to pull in millions of dollars, which he used to pay off his Russian debts.
Meanwhile, numerous criminal cases against him were working their ways through the courts, and he realized he could go to prison ... unless he was president of the United States. Then it became imperative that he remain in office. His fear of going to prison motivated him to deny his election loss and foment an insurrection.
If not for the Electoral College, Donny's life would have gone a very different direction, possibly with a premature end, as a result of his unpaid Russian debts.
Good summary. It didn't take don the shitstain carpetbagger ( what me and my friends in Canada call him) long to understand the necessity of staying in power. He knew the pay off to Stormy Daniels was illegal and they'd be on to him. I too thought he was shocked by his election but looking back he knew it had to happen with Putin,Manafred, Cambridge Analytica ,Bannon's assistance he'd get in power. He saw well before the cash cow before him.
But anything further than that would require 2/3 of the Senate and those sniveling, spineless, pedo protecting Republicans will never cooperate or vote against their fascist king.
TFG will walk away, after pardoning himself and his minions, with his illegal billions. Again.
What has to happen, for any accountability, is the republican party must be burned down to the ground. Forever.
The Sniveling Republicans are no more loyal to Trump than he is to them. They just do not want another resignation/impeachment/ failed presidency on their record.
I don’t suppose it has/will ever occur to them that if they do not nominate/ support crooks, they would not be in this fix again.
I don't understand the fixation so many people seem to have with reducing everything just to one thing, like the Epstein Files, whatever that even is. It is all about so much more than just a single thing --- it's the whole house of cards, not just a joker here and there, however awful the history of that joker is. Trump's deck is made up of too many jokers even to count.
The essence of the entire Republican Party, its modus operandi, whatever now passes for a governing "philosophy," is simply adherence to a grotesque cult of personality currently unravelling at the speed of summer lightning. Not even Fox News can hide that from its viewers. It's so far and above about the whole package, not just one of its constituent parts. That's the wonderful news. The bad news is that we're still forced to slog through the madness without losing our own marbles in the process.
Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan's new exposé, "Regime Change" testifies to the degradation involved, as well as the collapse. They accurately note Trump's open comparisons of himself with Hitler, Tamerlane, Genghis Khan, Hitler, Mao, Stalin in a modern, frightening re-telling of the Emperor's New Clothes. He thinks that will impress and intimidate them. It's the kind of standard idiot swaggering that President Obama had in mind when he called Trump a “carnival-barker.”
The reality, of course, is that the Strait of Warm Ooze is what happens when a phony confuses intimidation with effectiveness. A stunning snapshot of all the absurdity, prevarication, abuse, dementia and attempted tyranny -- in a single image nobody can now unsee, prompting laughter and derision. That's the stuff that will bring down the house of cards, no matter how many jokers make it up.
Of course, the Epstein files are not the ONLY thing. But the public exposure of Trump, Epstein and Epstein‘s fellow travelers in the world of pedophilia, of exploiting underage girls for sex, is the card that, if pulled, would collapse the House of Trump. Why? Because it would reveal the deep connection between corrupt power players and knowing who the rats are will inform our placement of the traps.
first...nice piece of writing, ICTT...and i couldn't agree with you more about people's tendency to simplify...right below this is BIll Pierce's repetition of the words, 'Epstein files'. yeah. i get it. it's important, but...talk about tangled webs...and it extends, unfortunately, far beyond Trump. Katzman brought up how the system needed changing...EYE think from, pretty much, the whole thing...there is soooo much...two party system, electoral college, how taxes are spent, the homeless, weapons...making sure people have enough to eat and education...REAL education, very much including...maybe beGINning with critical thinking rather than just regurgitation...and, of course, inclusiveness...
i'm sorry to say, though, i think this is an impossibly complex task...but if people get started NOW, maaaaaaaybe it'll get done before the sun burns out...
i don't think that those in the driver's seat are about to let go of the wheel without bloodshed. to my eye, they'd just as soon do to Americans what they've done to too many other countries...not to mention the Native Americans(is that an oxymoron?).
but i've seen the writings of some very intelligent, well informed people HERE.
which makes me think there's a lot more. a LOT more. i'm just not sure about how to get around the violence that will occur with the changes necessary. or how
to bridge the chasm between the different mindsets. the divisiveness is undoubtedly part of what those in power want. making it, as i've heard people point out, a 'left vs right' battle instead of a lower income vs ridiculous opulence 'lifestyle'.
a number of decades ago when i first moved to the NL friends asked me, 'why THERE?'(and i'll admit there ARE lackings, of course)...and my response was that, for the most part that NLers seem to understand 'what enough is'. they might not rate the highest on some polls but EYE know what enough is, as well...
and i consider myself incredibly lucky to still be here...
i never much concerned myself with politics...my thought was 'it's 'THEIR' game. that was when i was young. eventually i realized that if there's more than one person, there's politics. i also came to understand that i've ALways been a 'socialist'. nothing else makes sense to me 'in the long run'.
i lost quite a bit of money having moved here...but it's nothing compared to what i feel i've gained...
thanks for your ongoing contributions, ICTT...you've made me laugh and think. very valuable, those...
if anyone's seriously considering a move to the NL and would like to ask me questions, please do x PMing me. i've lived here for 26 yrs and would try to help however i can. i'm pretty sure i can answer most questions within 48 hrs.
"when i was young. eventually i realized that if there's more than one person, there's politics."
Exactly. My take on politics is that it's the process that decides whose will prevails, and that occurs cooperatively as well as by fiat. There is politics in families, friendships, and any loose or structured organization. The heart of the big-deal document we celebrate on the Fourth is a reframing that from a fundamentally coercive to cooperative society, and what was in that way of that; bookended by a vision and a common commitment. That combination is how it is done, in creating an environment of civil liberty; and inasmuch as freedom is freedom From certain actions and circumstances, as well as freedom TO, "to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men (sic), deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...".
Easy to say, tricky to execute and maintain. We have been working on a more prefect union for 250 years, facing some very determined resistance along the way. Some still see violence and conquest as the ultimate. legitimate power, and somehow, as those of that ilk have for centuries, try to claim that's "Christianity"; that kindness and awareness are somehow a weakness, or the spawn of the devil. Lincoln had the seeing eye to call it what it was;
"What are these arguments? They are the arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world. You will find that all the arguments in favor of king-craft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the people, not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden. That is their argument, and this argument of the Judge is the same old serpent that says you work and I eat, you toil and I will enjoy the fruits of it. Turn in whatever way you will – whether it come from the mouth of a King, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent,"
Lincoln was confronting chattel slavery, but coercive domination comes in may forms, and we are still by no means rid of it, in one form or another in our civilization.
Lincoln again:
"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy."
"Liberty and Justice for all"; the (demanding) solution hiding in plain sight.
Clearly trump has spent his entire lifetime engaged in acts of extreme self gratification via manipulation and deception that he and only he currently knows of.
Trump ( who appears to have no self conscience) is actually tormented by the fact that his 80 year old runway of indulgence will soon end. He may have negotiated immunity from SCOTUS during his lifetime but not immortality from God.
So his epitaph over which he has no control will be something like "He lies with the algae".
His participation in the Epstein Documents will certainly be horrific, but remain hidden for now. The Ooze and Hormuz failures have only just recently come to the public's very public attention ......something that the public understands and can see front and center at the gas pumps and on TV.
His rate of singlehanded failure / unforced error is increasing in a very publicly understandable way.
Trump grew up on a mountain of money, with which he could play with big adult things as his personal toys. That's the problem with hyper-wealthy sociopaths; they think of us and our civilization as their personal toys. Clearly Trump does. The "same old serpent" mindset.
I note Trump has not decided to put his name on the reflecting pool. Or on any of the public toilets. Perhaps people could make stickers for public toilets like "Trump memorial shithouse" so he gets associated with his proper place in society.
It’s Come to This, yes, it is about “all of this,“ and not simply the Epstein files. Yes, the house of cards which is now primarily made up of jokers is speeding up its own demise, and the demise of the high opinion we used to hold of the United States.
My question again and again, is what is our plan for the future? A few Substack such as “ THE CRISIS AND TRANSITION SUBSTACK” has provided a useful forum for visualizing and making plans for the implementation of an improved form of economy, recent guest essays “reveal hope as something experienced differently by different people and shaped by different circumstances. Yet across these diverse perspectives runs a common thread: a willingness to remain engaged with life, with one another, and with the possibility that a better future can still be
“As we continue our examination of hope, vision, empowerment, and solutions, we invite readers to reflect on their own sources of hope and to share them in the comments below:”
It’s something Pete Buttigieg asks of voters everywhere he goes. If they can already visualize ‘the day after’ why shouldn’t we? What are we waiting for? A workable plan for the future isn’t an option, it should be the number one item on the action agenda.
Marc thank you for sharing that Substack. “What’s next” is a never-ending concern for me. If we pursue “reconciliation” again over accountability, or just assume that normalcy and reason will rule again just “because they should,” we are gravely mistaken. That was Lincoln’s biggest mistake after the Civil War and it was Biden’s biggest mistake (assisted by Garland) in our time.
Yes, as both HCR and Timothy Snyder have urged not to restore what was but to reconstruct something better and go after and punish the overwhelming amount of corruption.
Exactly. This is the conversation I keep coming back to. Accountability isn’t revenge — it’s how trust gets rebuilt. The goal can’t just be going back. It has to be building something better.
It seems to me that the heart of political corruption is abuse of entrusted power, specifically use of power entrusted to serve the welfare of the public for selfish personal gain, be it access to finacial gain or pressing a unjustified personal agenda such as nepotism r personal retaliation. The former "Party of Lincoln" has morphed into a total cesspool of corruption; though not only them; and following the money explains a lot.
Exactly. The question of “what comes next?” is the one I keep coming back to too. Accountability has to happen, but rebuilding trust, community, and connection matters just as much.
It’s actually why I started writing We Have Friends Everywhere — because none of us solve this alone.
It's complicated. International punishment of Germany after WW I contributed to the rise of Hitler. I think we must work on reconciliation, but also redraw the lines that should not be crossed, and keenly document past breaches. In condemning torture, Obama said he believed "that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards"; yet does not wisdom demand that we do both? That we learn from past mistakes by highlighting how they came to occur? Like combing an aircraft crash site for clues to enable future prevention?
Too often, the lessons necessary for future improvement are neglected in favor a palliative "smoothing over". Ford did so in pardoning Nixon, not that it was so important that Nixon go to jail, but that he face the rule of law like any other citizen. Instead we we normalized an above-the-law presidency. Pain often accompanies genuine healing. Opioids can spare some of the pain but not produce a cure. Overused, they make things far worse.
The Epstein Documents should probably be labeled the Epstein/trump Documents or Files…or the words Documents or Files should be referred to as Evils…and do not forget Maxwell.
Does anyone recall that in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, Great Britain had the Profumo scandal or affair?
This is the first taste of what we will face after the midterms. Trump will veto every bill, especially those with bipartisan support, that is good for the average American. With 2/3 majorities in both houses of Congress required to override a veto, he will have a mighty cudgel. Consider this a practice swing.
Trump is more than throwing a tantrum by canceling the signing. He is testing whether he can get away with trading not vetoing a bill in return for the passage of another bill he desperately wants. His obsession is the SAVE America Act, to require proof of citizenship to register, or in some versions to vote, before the midterms.
The man with the thinnest of thin skins is literally holding the housing bill hostage, and, as deranged as he is, I would not be surprised to see him kill it with a veto if he doesn't get his ransom, purely out of spite. He also wants to get back at the Republicans who are showing a smidgen of spine with the non-binding Iran War Powers Resolution.
Trump is going off script from what the oligarchs want. They want a destruction of democracy, but one that does not lead to mass resistance, which is bad for business. They want a quiet dismantling of regulations and the introduction of "innovations" like prediction-market ETFs available as investments in your retirement accounts, so they can siphon money out of your pocket faster. That works best in a less chaotic environment.
The question is, when will they lose patience and decide that Trump, as their frontman/puppet, is no longer performing adequately? JD is waiting in the wings...
“Just in case” — you can take action to foil the SAVE nonsene. Here’s how: get trained on how to help people get the documents they need for voter ID. This organization, Voteriders, (https://voteriders.org/about/) offers a very good basic training and they can always use volunteers. No point waiting til the last minute — get trained so you can help those voters who will have difficulty getting their docs (like women married 50 years ago who took their spouse’s name), college students, some immigrants.
http://Voteriders.org is fabulous. They even have funding to help you pay pay for documentation to prove citizenship. I wrote about what you can do to protect your vote a while back.
Everyone should be sure they have a certified copy of their birth certificate on hand. I heard from responsders to my comments and notes that in red states when you have to go through the mail to get a birth certificate, it can take 8 months to get one.
You should also be checking that your registration information is correct, and that your name matches, and keep checking so you are not “purged” from the voter rolls ahead of the elections. My concern remains that a Trump supporter now owns a company that provides many of our voting machines and another company that provides the electronic voter registration rolls used to verify that you can vote when you go to cast your ballot in person. Otherwise, you will be forced to cast a provisional ballot.
Another fact I learned when I decided to vote in person in NJ after receiving an automatic mail in ballot—under those circumstances I had to cast a provisional ballot in person. With the shenanigans about or not votes have to be counted on election day, that just adds another layer of uncertainty.
Georgia, I do the same, reminding people via BlueSky that checking your voter registration regularly is essential in this time of anti-voting. Waiting til the last minute will be disastrous for some.
This type of purge was a concern in the 2016 campaign in Ohio. It has just escalated and now the the SCOTUS latest two decisions another layer of concern. It’s like quantum layered physics for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction but so many multiverses. When I don’t hear of certain issues or people I try to find what’s going on about every three months. In Isreali news Bebe is on trial and being examined new to me. And adds another strange layer. I also check on different area of the world’s environmental status there are real problems in the so called Middle East. We don’t know because the news always brings up the eye catching stuff. I had a hard time with Stephan Colbert not because of his talent but because he was the source of news for many. He and Jon Stewart in their early years really tried to rally folks about democracy but sidelined because of too much noise and flashy lights. I hope that Dr Richardson’s great 250 brings all of the hidden or tromped on issues to the forefront . The Peter Salk video was great. She also needs to do some on the ties our government has had with diplomats and businesses throughout the world.
In truly sickening news from Bloomberg Law, Stephen Miller was identified as the driving force behind a new DOJ memo to limit the rights of people with disabilities and those with mental illness, forcing them to be institutionalized as opposed to being provided care in their communities. This is being advertised as a humanitarian act to reduce homelessness, but it reverses years of government policies to integrate the disabled into their communities with supportive care.
The White House and DOJ denied the report. The DOJ memo itself was reported by NPR.
"It is now the position of the United States government that people with disabilities don't have a right to be part of their communities," says Alison Barkoff, a health law and policy professor at George Washington University who led disability law and policy efforts during both the Obama and Biden administrations. "I can't overstate how significant this change in position is."
Don’t say we weren’t warned. This follows up on Trump’s July 24, 2025 executive order that the SPLC said would force states to choose between community care or receiving federal funding. “
The EO radically reorients our country’s policy to address homelessness toward punitive approaches that prioritize jail, forced treatment and institutionalization over evidence-based approaches that provide housing and services. The EO:
Prioritizes civil commitment and institutionalization of persons with disabilities living on the streets, paving the way to uproot core constitutional protections found in the Olmsted ruling. https://archive.ada.gov/olmstead/olmstead_about.htm
Prioritizes federal funding for localities that criminalize homelessness (specifically prohibiting camping, squatting, and loitering) and move people with mental health conditions and substance use disorders into institutions through use of civil commitment
Redirects federal funds for use in encampment removal efforts by state and local governments
Ends the federal government’s policy of Housing First (decades long evidence-based policy that prioritizes putting people into housing without barriers or preconditions) and instead requiring forced treatment programs as a condition of receiving HUD-funded homeless and housing assistance
Authorizes HUD to allow or require recipients of homeless assistance federal funding to collect medical information and share it with law enforcement
Ends funding for harm reduction programs proven to minimize negative health, social, and legal impacts for individuals struggling with substance use
Directs the Department of Justice to terminate federal and state consent decrees that could limit the use of civil commitment. These agreements were often used to address long-term and systemic issues with local law enforcement especially involving the violation of rights of people with mental health issues
Last August, BBC reported that Trump demanded that homeless people immediately leave Washington, DC, purportedly to make the city “safer and more beautiful than ever before.”
"The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY," Trump wrote on his social media site Truth Social on Sunday. "We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital. The Criminals, you don't have to move out. We're going to put you in jail where you belong."
“Alongside photos of tents and rubbish, he added: "There will be no 'MR. NICE GUY.' We want our Capital BACK. Thank you for your attention to this matter!"
“The specifics of the president's plan are not yet clear, but in a 2022 speech he proposed moving homeless people to "high quality" tents on inexpensive land outside cities, while providing access to bathrooms and medical professionals.:”
For historical context, some of the first victims of the Nazi death camps were the disabled and people who were mentally ill. In a program called Aktion T4 in 1939. Even disabled children were gassed.
From Wikipedia:
"Aktion T4" is the name given to campaigns of mass murder by involuntary euthanasia which targeted people with disabilities and the mentally ill in Nazi Germany. The term was first used in post-war trials against doctors who have been involved in the killings. The name T4 is an abbreviation for Tiergartenstrasse 4, a street address of the Chancellery department set up in early 1940, in the Berlin suburb of Tiegarten, which recruited and paid personnel associated with Aktion T4. Certain German physicians were authorized to selct patients “deemed incurably sick, after most critical medical examination” and then administer to them a “mercy death.” In October 1939 Adolf Hitler signed a “euthanasia note”, backdated to 1 September 1939, which authorized his physician Karl Brand and Reichsleiter Philipp Bouhler to begin the killing.”
Absolutely disturbing and a clear sign (as if there weren’t many already) of the disdain of the ChristoNazi position in this regime. Their view is that if G*d has assigned you a disability, you should suffer and just accept it, remove yourself from public view, expect zero support and even less empathy. These people (the Trumpites) are truly troglodytes.
Morning, Lynell! Agreed; they need us just able enough to tend to their every whim.... and if I may add, THIS is also why the Epstein Files are so important. Those freaking whims...
It’s a balance between more people paying attention and how many people will have their vote “uncounted” because of voter suppression and election interference. There has been a lot of legislation passed in the states that implements the recommendations from the Heritage Foundation’s model “voter integrity” bills, which are also in the SAVE America Act.
We will see what the birthright citizenship ruling says if it drops this morning and how it could affect that balance.
Cassidy and Paul reversed their votes for the War Powers Resolution late last night after Cassidy was brought to the White House to meet with Trump. So Republican defiance lasted less than 12 hours. Paul said he reversed his vote because the war was over.
There was no news on whether the hostage bipartisan Housing bill was signed. Trump got his flex, so he can crow about how he is the only one in charge. That will just encourage him to push harder on the SAVE America Act, which is the prize the oligarchs want.
Trump got another win this morning when SCOTUS ruled in favor of his power to revoke Temporary Protected Status from over 350,000 Haitians so he can deport them back to Haiti.
In a less-than-stellar event, Trump’s rally, replacing the concert for the start of the Great American State Fair that performers boycotted, was a bust. Apparently, only 1000 people attended. Trump spoke for 30 minutes. People left early. So went the “rally to end all rallies.”
My exact thought. Ever since the election I have been saying that he will be like a rabid animal that has been cornered only this one has access to the nuclear codes.
Hello Colette... Mary Trump, his Niece, says that DJT is a SocialPath with no concern for others... It is always 'Me, Me, Me'... It seems that some in the GOP are becoming aware of that fact... DJT will become Nero as DJT watches DC Burn...
Hello Apache, Mary Trump has been saying this for years and she should know all about him, as a psychologist and family member who has seen how he operates first hand. It seems like many people didn’t want to listen to her (that’s a shocker!). But, I totally agree with you, he would sooner burn our entire country to the ground than to admit he was EVER wrong about anything.
I listened to a conversation between Ruth Ben Ghiat and Mary Trump which was especially interesting because of Ruth's specialty work on strongmen; she knows some horrific historical details about how it rarely ends well. There will be no end to Trump's effects, but turnarounds as we each reckon with how to be in a post-Trump world. Generative times.
Absolutely, and that terrifies me about all the things that might happen because of his lack of anything decent! If he cannot win, he doesn't care about the extent of the destruction he causes.
I agree. I think that all these prisons that they are building all over the country are not for immigrants, but for those of us who participate in demonstrations and protests. Stephen Miller and his cohorts could care less that the Constitution's Bill of rights gives us the right to peaceably assemble and protest.
The same question may be applied to Kegsbreath in asking what he was so worried about in firing a female 3-star admiral last August: for that matter, firing any competent military officer from their military position? In doing so, Nancy Lacore may have lost her position in the Navy; however, she was just recently elected to the House in one of South Carolina's districts. This administration clearly, at least, knows how to do one thing correctly: shoot itself in the foot - not once - but repeatedly. The leadership of a nation should be at the top of the apple barrel, if the apples rot, the culprit is often to be at the bottom. In this case, the leadership is at the bottom rotting away perfectly healthy apples at the top. This is worse than Bizarro in a Superman comic strip. I don't know how I may be able to explain what is worse than up is down or right is left, but tRump and co. seem to have a patent on how to do this. Democrats, when hopefully returning to power in the House and Senate, will have their work cut out. Wednesday, November 4th, the day after elections, democrats need to show their aggressive stance. No excuses!!
The true price, indeed. I wish more people understood just how high a price that really is. Firing the competent, the skilled, the educated, those with inside and outside knowledge and replacing the lot with boobs, stooges, drunks, scalawags and wormtongues is the quickest and surest way to destroy a once-great empire, to make a formerly strong nation irrelevant.
I cannot begin to testify just how horrendous such developments truly are.
Thank you for the thoughtful conversation here. This is why spaces like Heather’s matter so much — people are paying attention and connecting the dots.
I’ve been writing more about these same patterns and building a community around a simple reminder:
I think it’s much simpler than that. Let’s be realistic, he will NEVER have to face accountability; he needn’t fear going to jail for raping underage girls, because that will never happen. Because IF democracy is revived in the US, it will be long after trumpty-dumpty is dead. And if not, he’ll simply flee to Russia, whining to Putin how mean the Americans are being to him, or to Argentina, or some other of his ‘friends’.
No, it’s much simpler: he’s afraid of losing. Period. He needs to be the biggest bestest president evah, better than Obama at last. His galactic-size ego simply cannot handle defeat. That’s all there is to it.
Exactly. That’s the part people underestimate. Someone terrified of losing power will do almost anything to avoid the moment when the applause stops and accountability begins.
And frankly I wonder if Putin would take him in. Trumpet would be another burden for Putin, because his use for trump would be over if he’s no longer president. Tbh, I’d be happy to start investigation with miller and hegseth.
Not to mention, Trump has already committed himself to calling Assad "a butcher and an animal." It will be interesting to see if they ever become next door neighbors 🤣.
Maybe so, Dutch; maybe so. I would like to remind everyone here who suspects, at the very least, that Trump will not have to bear any account for his criminality, that the mid-terms are soon coming. Let's at least wait and see. Should the democrats give Trump a "shellacking" in Obama's reference to the 2014 mid-terms, then Trump may well not get off so easily. He will be impeached and he will be removed. Now, what happens after that will be the interesting part: will Juvenile Delinquent Vance pardon Trump? If he does, he may do so at his own peril. If democrats win in a few months (big time), then Vance may well have to answer the same way Trumpty dumpty answered. There are still too many possibilities. Let's not rush into this with a fait accompli believing that Doofus is home free no matter what.
He ran to line his pockets, massage his ego, and avoid prison. As is his usual MO, he overplayed his hand and is losing cards by the hour. He's been doing this his whole life. Over-promise, under-deliver. Over-leverage businesses to borrow money until the interest payments alone bury them. Same old Donnie. Always overestimates himself.
The presidency for him, especially after the SCOTUS immunity ruling is the ultimate con, a chance to loot the government of our money while also raiding our privacy and stealing our data. It's also the perfect get-and-stay out of jail free card. But the jig is almost up. Accountability is coming for him, and it's pissed.
In April John Kerry appeared on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert and said he thought what Trump is doing in Iran “is challenging the validity of his FIFA World Peace Prize.” 🤣
Here's the comment that should be at the very top of the heap. Absolute truth blended with tongue in cheek -- it's what's going to get us through the slog between now and November. Thank you.
Trump hilariously told Axios last Thursday that the MOU was equivalent to Iran's unconditional surrender. He lives literally in a world of his own, estranged from family and from reality.
I’m not sure he’s “estranged from family” — I’ve never had the impression that they had any sort of “normal” family connection. He manipulates his kids the same way he manipulates business contractors and everyone else. It’s part of his personality disorder: no true human connection, only pawns to be manipulated for one’s own interests.
They are all taking turns cleaning his diaper, they are all part of the grift. When he’s gone they are going to be standing there with their thumbs up their asses trying to figure out which way to jump, Russia might be the only place where they will feel safe, and as soon as Putin is gone the Russians will give them up in a heartbeat. As ignorant as he is, he thinks that he’ll be ably to avoid accountability, karma is going to have teeth that will make him wish he had never been born.
For Trump and his family - it’s all about the money. Money that gets crammed into their pockets and purses. They have questionable values unless there is a $ in front of it. Unfortunately, this is not a condition that is exclusively Trumpian.
I grew up in very Conservative Christian environment and the following Bible verses are not meant to demean other religions/beliefs. They just explain my viewpoint on how money should be positioned in my life.
ICYMI: (1) Ruth Ben-Ghiat is an internationally known and respected authority on authoritarianism, Professor of History and Italian Studies at NYU, author of “Strongmen”, and podcaster at Lucid. She interviews Marc Elias, a prominent voting rights lawyer who won over 60 cases against Trump lawyers in 2020 election fraud cases (The Elias Law Group), has argued cases in front of the Supreme Court and podcasts at Democracy Docket. “Ruth Ben-Ghiat interviews Marc Elias”. https://lucid.substack.com/p/ruth-ben-ghiat-and-marc-elias-on?r=1d2cea&utm_medium=ios
They discussed “The Authoritarian Logic of Election Denial” and “Risks to Voting by Mail and How to Support its Protection”. Trump has a plan to collect all the voter registration and voting in the country and then decide who is allowed to vote. He has had his Postmaster General recently issue a requirement that states release this information to Trump or the US Post Office won’t deliver their mail-in ballots. It’s a very informative discussion by two star advocates for democracy.
(2) Heather’s very informative “Politics Chat, June 18, 2026 - YouTube”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJj7aAxtXCA She discusses all the details of the Reflecting Pool and how it exposes Trump to ridicule because it shows what a terrible developer he is. She also discusses hoe Trump uses declarations of emergency to circumvent laws forbidding no bid contracts.
“In the coming days, the Supreme Court will confront a question the Founders thought they had already answered: How much power should one person have?
The Court is about to decide several cases that could define the scope of Trump’s authority. One case concerns Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship. Another involves the administration’s attempt to revoke legal protections from hundreds of thousands of immigrants. Others could expand presidential control over independent agencies and officials Congress deliberately insulated from political pressure.”
(4) NYC Mayor Mamdani hit a trifecta in endorsing three Democratic Party Primary Election candidates who subsequently won their primaries: Darializa Avila Chevalier (NY13), Brad Lander (NY10) and Claire Valdez (NY7). All progressives.
(5) Joyce Vance, Prominent American lawyer, Distinguished Professor of the Practice of Law at the University of Alabama School of Law, Senior Fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, prior U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, and podcaster interviewed Timothy Snyder, Professor and Temerty Chair in Modern European History at the University of Toronto, famous author of “On Tyranny” and thirteen other books “Strongmen Can Fail if We Act with Joyce Vance - YouTube”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOZxvxGViKw They both agree that if “we the people” regain the power of the Congress, we should not focus on just repair or buffing up what once was but on new beginnings. We have to talk clearly about why we won. Then (1) take money out of politics - excessive wealth is the cause of inequality. (2) investigate corruption - especially people around the President. Use violations of State law to prosecute so they can’t be pardoned. (3) Reform SCOTUS. They agree it has become rogue. It’s rulings are against the democratic renewal of our country. They are actively creating conditions for authoritarianism. It is no longer possible to venerate the Supreme Court - their rulings are a “folly”/a Greek tragedy in real time. They also agree that the popular metaphor that history is just a pendulum waiting to swing back is false. Or that the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice. There are no inevitable processes in history (T. Snyder is a prominent historian). The final word is “ACTION”.
“Freedom is not free.” U.S. Colonel Walter Hitchcock and engraved on the Korean War Veteran’s Memorial, Washington, DC and Simon Wiesenthal, Holocaust survivor, Nazi hunter and writer.
“In the coming days, the Supreme Court will confront a question the Founders thought they had already answered: How much power should one person have"?
"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty."
– John Adams, Notes for an oration at Braintree, Spring 1772.
Thank you for the reply. Yes the Founders were a different breed of men. John Adams was so devoted to justice and the rule of law that he volunteered to defend the British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre when everyone else refused because it was so unpopular. My son’s public school assigned each student a Revolutionary War figure and had them in the 5th grade present the person’s life in front of the class. The presentations showed how different these people were from the ethically challenged ones we have today. My son was assigned John Adams. It makes me question how well our k-12 schools are teaching civics. Should there be a requirement for high school graduation of being able to pass the citizenship examination given to immigrants applying for naturalization?
Yes! As a former teacher I totally agree that every high school student should have to pass a citizens test. On passing, they should be given a certificate of citizenship that they can use to enable them to vote. O f course only if they are born here or naturalized.
James Marriott, a contemporary Brit social critic on Substack, if I understand him correctly, advances the notion that modern communications technologies (e.g., cellphones, so-called 'social' media, etc.) have a negative effect on our ability to grasp and communicate thoughts, ideas, and complexities of all kinds. I believe him, but there are implications for democracies which depend on the demos to accurately grasp real differences and make responsible choices. At 90, and post COVID, I Know my capacities have diminished but I daily recognize that and have devised strategies for addressing them. It still requires attention -- much additional time, frequent checks on my work, and the like, but it also suggests a graduation test might be re-upped at five year intervals after, say, sixty-five . . . (oh my, the screams that I just heard from Substack rival the ten-minutes fire alarm test just now that building fire protocols oblige me to stay in my apartment with two separate alarms blaring in my room, index fingers in my ears lest I be driven crazy at the full ten minutes of the test . . . )
Four (4) opinions published today: Durrell, the AI case, Wolford & Mullen vs DOE but, not the birthright case, Trump vs Barbara. but, hang on Barb. Almost all of Today's opinions were 6-3 as they take longer to write.
On the Wolford case Hawaii barred taking licensed guns on to Private property. Judged unconstitutional, but that's easily legislatively changed. Monsanto is about insecticide law. Sotomajor read her lengthy dissent from the Bench.
That leaves 9 more opinions to go this Term:
* Birthright Citizenship, Trump vs Barbara
*Executive Authority to Fire Fed Member, Trump vs Cook
* Executive Power Authority to Fire Agency Heads, Trump vs Slaughter
*Campaign Finance, NRSC vs FEC
*Mail Ballot Grace Periods. Watson vs RNC
*Transgender Athlete Cases, Little vs Hecox & West Virginia vs BPJ
Hat Tip: ALICIA MENENDEZ, MS Now Show, "On the Line". Alicia also Tipped me to the "Strict Scrutiny" Platform. I will check it out.
excellent summary of these podcasts. Vance and Snyder nailed it. A new Dem Congress must get $ out of politics ..it starts with ending Citizens United and that can only be done by increasing seats in SCOTUS and that can only be done if you have Dem controlled WH and Congress. AND most importantly the PEOPLE holding their elected to DO IT! The elected csn no longer just say they will in order to get elected they have to ACT. I'm looking to Rep Massie...said he'd release names in the Epstein files..not a peep. Hold them to account!!
Thank you for the reply. Massie may be receiving death threats and fear for his family’s and his own life. These people are ruthless and powerful elites. An unusual number of people associated with the case have died many in questionable circumstances that were labeled “suicide”. After she publicly challenged Trump, MTG received death threats and then moved to Puerto Rico. Right now Trump has succeeded in distracting the attention away from the Trump-Russia-Epstein files with the Iran war, the Reflecting pool disaster, the ballroom, etc.. But it’s not going away.
more and more I see how brave my Opa in Nazi Germany was to have defended his home town from Nazi military taking over the town ( he was the mayor) and for hiding an allie soldier in the barn. His life was threatened too. But he did it anyways. Town was saved.
more and more I see how brave my Opa in Nazi Germany was to have defended his home town from Nazi military taking over the town ( he was the mayor) and for hiding an allie soldier in the barn. His life was threatened too. But he did it anyways. Town was saved.
more and more I see how brave my Opa in Nazi Germany was to have defended his home town from Nazi military taking over the town ( he was the mayor) and for hiding an allie in the barn. His life was threatened too. But he did it anyways.
more and more I see how brave my Opa in Nazi Germany was to have defended his home town from Nazi military taking over the town ( he was the mayor) and for hiding an allie in the barn. His life was threatened too. But he did it anyways.
Fred, thank you for this lengthy and excellent synopses that must have taken you some time to compile. I’ve read/heard some of them and you hit the highlights for sure!
The war is OVER….WE WON… Let me see if I can help you here. Their entire military fleet is underwater or 48 warships but they process. Billions of dollars of warships
All their military aircraft is gone..billions of dollars Their industrial military complex and infrastructure is gone Their uranium is buried under grounds of disaster and rubble for now, but that will end soon enough Allow me to continue
In the suite was closed. They were losing $500 million a day of revenue.which is 80% of their economy Therefore they have a 50% unemployment rate right now approximately an 85% estimated inflation rate which something is over 300%
All of your original leaders, including the ayatollah, and alter, military leaders were destroyed in a bombing ..The secondary replacements who took their place was destroyed, in a bombing….Derek third tier of leader ship replacements were destroyedIn a bombing…they are trying to find new leaders who are willing to soon look like the previous three regimes, which are dead…
They recently killed 45,000 protesters in a big march because the populace is becoming a little bit less supportive with women walking around without heat jobs in miniskirts Which used to be punishable by stoning
And any and all money that’s going to be paid to them it’s going to come through American coppers, American companies, American suppliers, American banks, etc.
So please awaken from your truck induced delusion, evaluate what I printed up here because if this is any way to win a war I’m sure glad you’re not anywhere near a leadership position
You are either (1) being paid to promulgate propaganda or (2) have way too much time on your hands (“Idle hands are the devil’s workshop”) or are living in an alternative reality with “alternative facts” (Kellyanne Conway) defined by the leader of your cult - a folie a deux. If the latter, it is what psychologists might call delusional which usually requires treatment with a therapist.
Criminal Donald now brazenly tries to cheat on and steal our November midterms.
He’s not even bothering anymore in the lies he spun in 2024 as to caring for and helping ordinary Americans. That game, over. Except for his continuing idiot, thuggish policies that put such a world of hurt on ordinary people.
Criminal Donald all his life has protected, covered up for only criminal rackets. These, the Trump/Epstein elites, have for decades mixed money laundering, arms dealing, double agenting, drug running, and girl trafficking with Putin’s oligarchs and those of Mohammed bin Salman, Bolsonaro, Bukele, Duterte, Erdogan, Milei, Modi, Netanyahu, Sisi, Xi’s cadres, and the worst of U.S. elites.
Read Jane Mayer’s “Dark Money.” Read George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison’s “The Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism.”
Heather's today details the combinations of lawlessness and incompetence that make criminal Donald's attempts both dangerous but incoherent, too.
Trouble is, how much does his buy-in to the international authoritarians tilt more to eventual and interlocking dangers than to our own mere Keystone cop spectacle?
please remember all the energy wasted on name calling later. instead of using it to come up with a plan on how to extricate yourself(ves) from the thickening quagmire.
Jane Mayer, George Monbiot, and Peter Hutchison do no name calling, Isaac.
They point out the deep, interlinked stratagems of the U.S. moneyed classes to widen the gap between their privileges and plight of the bottom U.S. 93%.
I hope Dem candidates for public office will address all such plans they can imagine going into November. My own: return essaying, civics, and humanities (ideally all three ever interconnected) as key to our schools, rather than testing's domination.
Based upon where Russell's comment falls, the answer is yes. Commenting on the comment you made that reads it is the second comment of Phil's on this thread.
Phil elaborates quite well, and his positions on the state(s) of education and communication are quite well articulated.
He has never done an honest day’s work. Nor has he ever had to “pay the price” for his terrible decisions. He is the bad seed from the rotten tree. I hope that some of his “common people” supporters will wake up!
Why is Bill Pulte firing dozens of National Security experts? Check the Epstein Files for his dad’s role in helping Trump flip a $95 million property to a Russian oligarch.
Only about half of the files have been released, and heavily redacted with accessibility and viewing restrictions. Still waiting for another 3 million TrumpEpstein Files that really don't ever seem to be forthcoming.
I know of the Donald Barr-Bill Barr connection and really it's how the entire Epstein scheme and tangled web of disgustingness was spawned.
There is also the Father-Daughter pairing connected to Epstein with Robert Maxwell and Ghislaine Maxwell. Ghislaine used her father's political and elite social networks to help Epstein build his infamous operation. The origin of Epstein's initial wealth has historically been a mystery. However, historical evidence and later legal and declassified FBI files revealed that Epstein may have operated as a financial intermediary for the Maxwell family, helping move and hide assets in the years immediately following Robert Maxwell's death.
Many of the Trump regime's actions can be explained either as a result of a desire for complete chaos or a response to the demands of a foreign adversary to whom Trump is indebted, namely Russia. I think the dismissal of foreign policy/intelligence experts is very much like the dismissal of scientists from government agencies. It speaks of contempt for expertise, and a desire to replace them with loyalists with blind obedience to the regime. Or it is a considered plan to rid the government of people who could respond to Russian interference that depends on Trump's divided loyalties.
🧨 Oppose Proposed Mail-In and Absentee Ballot Regulations 🧨
This comment period is open until 5pm EST on July 2, 2026.
“Under Postmaster General David Steiner, the Postal Service has proposed refusing to accept and deliver outbound federal election ballots unless states submit voters’ names, addresses, and unique barcodes for both outgoing and return envelopes through a new federal portal. The rule’s language attempts to soften that arrangement with bureaucratic assurances about “enrollment,” “verification,” and technical specifications, but its practical consequence is plain: a state that declines to hand over sensitive absentee-voter information risks having its ballot mail rejected at the postal counter. USPS Proposed Rule.pdf
“The U.S. Postal Service’s proposed ballot-mail rule marked one of the clearest attempts yet to convert a trusted public institution into an enforcement arm of Donald Trump’s campaign to restrict voting before the 2026 midterm elections.”
"A proposed USPS rule would let the federal government pressure states into surrendering voter data or risk having mail ballots rejected before they ever reach voters”
That is coercion disguised as logistics.
✅ Please see link below to read full article on the Substack app.
➡️ Email your comments, containing the name and address of the commenter, may be sent to: PCFederalRegister@usps.gov, with a subject line of “Ballot Mail.”
➡️ Mail or deliver written comments to:
Director, Product Classification, U.S. Postal Service, 475 L’Enfant Plaza SW, Room 4446, Washington, DC 20260-5015.
⛔️ Faxed comments will not be accepted.
'Return to Sender: Trump’s Postal Service Threatens the 2026 Vote'
Both Marc Elias and Ruth Ben-Ghiat urge all of us to send comments to the Postal Service." As Ruth states: "One of my maxims is to use every tool and space at your disposal. Because I can tell you in Putin's Russia or Erdogan's Turkey, they are not interested in having a comment period at all. They don't care. or they would use it to track you and arrest you if you disagreed."(Lucid video 6/24/26)
Marc Elias: " Like, fundamentally,it is the cynics who say that all is lost are just doing Donald Trump's work, because he wants you to think it's all lost, but it's not. When we fight back we can win. It doesn't mean we will win every time... " Jaksaa's information is a great tool for action, and it is one more thing we can do to "flood the zone" with a large response...
"...it is the cynics who say that all is lost are just doing Donald Trump's work, because he wants you to think it's all lost, but it's not..."
As Timothy Snyder presciently wrote in 'On Tyranny', first off “Do not obey in advance.
Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.”
It's Our republic...We the People can keep it if we really want it, if we vote en masse, if we use every tool and space available...
🤨 “Here’s a deal nobody offered you, and you’re about to fund it.”
‘An oil company leases a piece of your public land. It drills a well, pulls the oil, and posts a $10,000 bond up front as a promise to clean up the site when the well runs dry. Years later the company goes bankrupt, or it simply walks. The well stays where it is, thousands of feet deep, venting methane and leaking toxic brine into the ground. The cleanup runs north of $300,000. The company forfeits its $10,000 and disappears. You cover the rest.
The math rewards walking away.
☠️ Unplugged wells vent methane and benzene, a known carcinogen, and leak produced water laced with heavy metals and radioactive material into soil and groundwater.
These are real holes in real ground
An orphaned well is a federal term with a plain meaning. It’s a well with no company left to plug it and no bond big enough to do the job, so the responsibility lands on you.
✅ Comment on the rule. Go to the federal docket at regulations.gov under BLM-2025-0037 and tell BLM, in your own words, that you don’t want to inherit the oil industry’s cleanup bill. Specific comments carry more weight than form letters. If a well sits near where you hunt, camp, ranch, or draw your water, say so, and name the place.
✅ Then share this. Independent public lands journalism runs on readers, not advertisers and not grants. Forward this to the person who fishes the creek downstream of a lease, and check how your members of Congress have voted on public lands at our Congressional Public Lands Scorecard.
🔥 The land is yours.
🔥 So is the bill, unless enough of us say otherwise before August 24.🔥
‘Trump Admin Pushes More Public Lands Oil Cleanup Costs to Taxpayers’
“The company forfeits its $10,000 and disappears. You cover the rest.” <> The Friedman doctrine, extractive capitalism’s self-created get out of jail free card, incentivizes it. 47’s alignment with the petrochemical industry, crypto-currency & mainstream finance industry in general, is the work of malevolent fascist mafia colonialism. They are compelled to suppress freedom, democracy, and the concepts of regeneration, planetarity, subsidiarity, and selfrelience in the context of social responsibility. They can be boycotted into oblivion. They’re forcing a general strike. Trump-Vance, R. Congress & 6/9 SCOTUS are illegally suppressing our natural rights as described by James Otis Jr. in Boston, February, 1761 in his writing and publishing “Against Writs of Assistance”.
Most articles relating to the oil industry fail to mention that many of the companies that drill these wells set up each well or well(s) in close proximity as separate LLCs just so they can avoid any clean up costs of capping the wells.
If Exxon-Mobil, Phillips Petroleum, Shell, etc. had to clean-up all of the messes across the globe they have created, it would cost them big time. Plus the Big Ugly Bill gave Big Oil (and little Oil) huge tax breaks and subsidies.
The Roberts Court: The Nazi Republican Judicial Tool
An in depth review of John Roberts (bit.ly/4gEvZDR) as chief justice, partnering with his Federalist appointees Alito and Thomas, joined at the hip by a McConnell manipulated Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett all join to create a Nazi Republican tool to judicially advance the CNPP(Christian Nationalist Pedo Party) agenda now commonly thought of as Project 2025.
These Nazi Republican judicially robed hacks have been planted over the years to direct the demise of voting rights(removal of Sections 2 and 5 of the VRA), reproductive health care for American women(Roe v Wade), allowing campaign contributions to flood the political zone(Citizens United decision), ensuring that the minority Nazi Republicans could be justified in holding power even if they didn’t fulfill their obligations to WE the People(GW Bush presidential campaign succeeds over Gore settled by a conservative SCOTUS without all the Florida ballots being counted), and most recently giving Cheeto a wanna be dictator full immunity from actions as president. Pretty awesome work by JR and his partisan political judicial incompetents.
Now at the apex of their power the Nazi Republicans with all branches of government under their control, it’s now to power through holding onto power. So election subversion, interference, and if push comes to shove, a judicial ruling protecting the federal removal of ballots or voting machines. Time for SCOTUS expansion which should be one of the first on the agenda in 2029.
The war is OVER….WE WON… Let me see if I can help you here. Their entire military fleet is underwater or 48 warships but they process. Billions of dollars of warships
All their military aircraft is gone..billions of dollars Their industrial military complex and infrastructure is gone Their uranium is buried under grounds of disaster and rubble for now, but that will end soon enough Allow me to continue
In the suite was closed. They were losing $500 million a day of revenue.which is 80% of their economy Therefore they have a 50% unemployment rate right now approximately an 85% estimated inflation rate which something is over 300%
All of your original leaders, including the ayatollah, and alter, military leaders were destroyed in a bombing ..The secondary replacements who took their place was destroyed, in a bombing….Derek third tier of leader ship replacements were destroyedIn a bombing…they are trying to find new leaders who are willing to soon look like the previous three regimes, which are dead…
They recently killed 45,000 protesters in a big march because the populace is becoming a little bit less supportive with women walking around without heat jobs in miniskirts Which used to be punishable by stoning
And any and all money that’s going to be paid to them it’s going to come through American coppers, American companies, American suppliers, American banks, etc.
So please awaken from your truck induced delusion, evaluate what I printed up here because if this is any way to win a war I’m sure glad you’re not anywhere near a leadership position
You know with all your motivation I think I’m probably gonna throw this up there a dozen times tomorrow and I’m gonna do it even in advance before people say anything that way maybe they won’t say anything once they know the truth and I’m gonna have a blast doing it too. You gave me the inspiration to be proactive instead of reactive so thank you very much. Now look what you’ve done lol O L
Well, the reason it’s been posted three times is because three separate people questioned it and And they made the most ignorant comments that defy, logic, rational thought and intelligence. And I will keep posting it as long as I keep hearing it how’s that?
How did you learn the Pledge of Allegiance there pal?
Now you’re gonna learn the truth about the war in Iran. If you’d like, I can post it here again for you You call it screed unfortunately it’s Truth… You guys hate facts when you’re not in control of them. In fact, you give me some impetus Here I give you this for dessert
The war is OVER….WE WON… Let me see if I can help you here. Their entire military fleet is underwater or 48 warships but they process. Billions of dollars of warships
All their military aircraft is gone..billions of dollars Their industrial military complex and infrastructure is gone Their uranium is buried under grounds of disaster and rubble for now, but that will end soon enough Allow me to continue
In the suite was closed. They were losing $500 million a day of revenue.which is 80% of their economy Therefore they have a 50% unemployment rate right now approximately an 85% estimated inflation rate which something is over 300%
All of your original leaders, including the ayatollah, and alter, military leaders were destroyed in a bombing ..The secondary replacements who took their place was destroyed, in a bombing….Derek third tier of leader ship replacements were destroyedIn a bombing…they are trying to find new leaders who are willing to soon look like the previous three regimes, which are dead…
They recently killed 45,000 protesters in a big march because the populace is becoming a little bit less supportive with women walking around without heat jobs in miniskirts Which used to be punishable by stoning
And any and all money that’s going to be paid to them it’s going to come through American coppers, American companies, American suppliers, American banks, etc.
So please awaken from your truck induced delusion, evaluate what I printed up here because if this is any way to win a war I’m sure glad you’re not anywhere near a leadership position
You know what they say, pal can’t get enough of a good thing. So thanks for the motivation
Actually, you should be happy with Trump. He took one of the most important decision ever rendered by the court, and he sent it back to the voters. Oh wait a minute it wasn’t the Roberts court. I’m sorry there’s only certain courts you like and support and certain courts you don’t. Lmfnao
I would pay $10,000 tomorrow maybe even more just to have you meet a Nazi and have him treat you like a Jew. Until you’re dead. That would be worth it for me.
Never use that word it just proves how fucking ignorant people can be and you’re at the bottom of the sea and you’re filling the oceans with whale shit
Not to mention that there is no such thing as Christian nationalism doesn’t exist, except in your distorted mind if you have one at all
Thank you Professor Richardson. In some respects, the Trump plan to manufacture exhaustion is working.
For example the fact that the DOJ is still not complying with the Epstein-Trump-Maxwell file transparency act is no longer front page. Every corrupt action of this administration, or criminal organization as is more accurate, is quickly superseded by the next corrupt action (https://bomdia.substack.com/p/the-architecture-of-corruption).
His Cabinet is full of cronies lacking experience, competence and often, both. His “negotiating team” consisting of his son in law and a real estate developer coupled with an alcoholic Secretary of War Crimes who likes to strike fishing boats with missiles and belongs at The Hague.
At least Musk, Ellison, Thiel, and Bezos have their tax cuts, Milei has his $20 billion, and the criminal elect has his gifted jet (that cost $934 million of taxpayer funds to retrofit).
Rather than an inadvertent mistake, these episodes epitomize Trump’s approach to intentionally creating and layering controversy upon controversy
as a continual, never-ending cycle of diversion and distraction, which is one of his favorite, recurring tactics he deploys repeatedly to great effect.
Trump's Perpetual Distraction Machine is an ever-spinning engine of new headlines, intentionally outrageous statements, and sudden moves designed to
overwhelm, scatter, and redirect public attention—especially when he's intent on driving attention away from bad news.
Although it often appears to be an emotional, impulsive-looking delivery, it can be entirely calculated and intentional as a diversionary tactic to shift
attention away from tough news cycles and wipe the slate clean on issues he doesn’t want to talk about, dodging accountability and depth.
(i saw this somewhere some time ago and copied it).
Trump is really trying hard to imitate his buddy Putin. At the same time that it is all unravelling for that master of propaganda.
Zelenskyy's Ukraine is hammering Putins war machine and economy, taking out fuel and logistics. He has alot of "cards". The Iranian's, as much as I hate to say it, have The card in that fight. Trump has a fetid pond of his own making. His former allies look sadly in his direction, knowing what was once, is no longer...
Unfortunately we're all about to feel the massive economic pain this fools folly has wrought. No matter where on this planet we are..
Hey Frank, this Post by me is gonna be a pleasure for me because you mentioned the word Zelenskyy. Let’s test you out because I’ve asked 4000 of you in the past year and a half and only four people out of 4000of you have given me the right answer. So here’s the big question.
WHY ARE RUSSIA AND UKRAINE FIGHTING RIGHT NOW? WHY IS UKRAINE IN THE POSITION THAT IT’S IN RIGHT NOW HAVING TO DEFEND ITSELF AGAINST RUSSIA INCURSION. TAKE YOUR TIME DIG A LITTLE BIT DEEPER NOT ONLY YOU’RE GONNA FIND THE ANSWER, BUT IT’S GONNA REALLY PISS YOU OFF
"A party can't fully insulate itself from electoral backlash through redistricting. Redistricting is a seawall. It stops modest tides. An electoral tsunami comes in right over top of that seawall."
— Justin Levitt, Professor, LMU Loyola Law School · Feb. 18, 2026
Democracy will die in November. Why? Because Trump ALWAYS finds ways to get around the law... either through loopholes ("emergencies") or through coercion (extortion, such as being told voting by mail will not happen). And all the pro-democracy judges in the world CANNOT STOP TRUMP FROM MAKING THE FIRST MOVE! Judges only REACT. As long as Trump gets to act first, we are doomed. Sorry for the bad news. But legal people like Marc Elias are not going to save us. Who will? WE THE F-ING PEOPLE... BY PROTESTING IN SUCH HUGE NUMBERS THAT WE CANNOT BE STOPPED ... AND BY VOTING IN SUCH HUGE NUMBERS **IN PERSON*** (F VOTING BY MAIL) THAT WE OVERWHELM ALL OF TRUMP'S ATTEMPTS TO WIN BY RIGGING THE GAME!!!
Voting is not going to help, because there won’t be any elections in November. trumpty-dumpty will simply declare a nation emergency and have the elections cancelled. Protesters will be labeled ‘traitors’ and ‘domestic terrorists’ and will be shot on the spot by ICE or the military. It’s absolutely naive to think that the Orange Goblin King won’t go that far. Buckle up.
Well, they can’t shoot all of us… not if the protests involve 50 to 100 million Americans. I appreciate your pessimism. But we outnumber them… by a lot. And that will always be our advantage.
You're absolutely right, Steve. But it is about time that American citizens are actually going to use this advantage against the Orange Toddler Emperor...
His temper tantrums make my 3 year old’s temper tantrums seem like a beautiful walk in the park 🤦♀️ Be LOUD! Trump/the administration is dangerous for our country 💔🤍💙
Resource below to easily contact all of Congress -
Use/share this spreadsheet (bit.ly/Goodtrouble) to contact members of Congress, the Cabinet and news organizations. Call. Write. Email. Protest. Unrelentingly!
Reach out (beyond your own) to as many in the Senate and House as you can. All of this is bigger than “I only represent my constituents” issues.
Comments/reactions help keep this bumped ✊
Frequent readers here know I limit my use of profanity, but I"m up very early today and don't appreciate getting pissed off this early.
WHAT THE FUCK IS WITH THESE REPUBLICAN SENATORS!?!?!
I see Trump "sweet talked" to them last night. So they switch votes. The should all go soak themselves in the Strait of Warm Ooze.
Anybody else here missing Colbert as much as me?!?!
Please call your reps. Just do it.
Thanks, Megan!
Miselle and fellow travelers: take a look at the photo of the "lunch" meeting the NY Times placed on their front page. It is, to say the least, highly unflattering to the Dear Leader they all want to placate. He looks like a bloated bullfrog and is clearly unsteady on his feet. Also, if you have any confidence that even the Rethuglicans who got ousted from their seats by Maggats will stick to their guns I have a bridge available for sale. The thing I am concerned about is the DNC deciding that attacking their left flank, after the glorious upheaval in New York, is a better idea than focusing on the actual task at hand: preventing the rising fascistic takeover of the USA from coming to fruition in November and January.
HE IS a bloated perianal pustule. Poor frogs...they are cute.
I have heard those particular pustules are very....aromatic...
uggh just the thought.....uggh they smell only when punctured.
Nice only heard…never experienced.
And, yes, It is actually that bad. The latest communication from Ken Martin arrived in the mail a few days ago. It is chock full of comments on what they're doing, doing, doing but next to nothing about to what ends, or why, or, most important how that fits into the far-reaching challenge of Trump's inclinations, and incompetence, and bold undercutting of the "American experiment." Oh, yes, DNC is presented as busy, busy, busy all right, but the missive remains really, really thin on presenting the strategic aims, whys, and hows requisite to protecting the Republic.
Hendrik, a secret supercut of DNC meetings was just leaked on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pid70tRkDJo
Vaway interwesting!! (Took me twenty seconds to get your joke and pun! . . . ) I'll take any humor I can get these days. ;-)
My suggestion to the DNC: First, Impeach the pustule---cool idea for a No Kings poster. Nice alliteration!---next find an AG who understands Constitutional law and how to enforce it. Then maybe Congress can start legislating again instead of sucking up to a toddler.
Which is why progressive candidates are winning. Martin needs to go and the DNC needs to be reformed!
I agree wholeheartedly. Democrats, all of them, MUST enfold ANY effort to highlight democratic properties from the citizenry!
Whatever photo on whatever issue you're seeing, it seems already to have been replaced with a different front page. Perhaps because of Venezuela....
Getting rid of the Dem establishment IS fighting the fascists since the establishment is part of the reason Trump is in office. There are several groups like Leaders We Deserve who are working on progressive candidates while those in Congress are fighting for our democracy. It’s the establishment Dems who aren’t fighting fascism and burying their heads in the sand.
He sweet talked them? I haven’t seem that’s. Last thing I read said Cassidy raised his voice to trump in their meeting with republicans.
I don't think he sweet talked anyone. But I'm pretty sure nameless henchmen behind the scenes are issuing death threats against GOP members and their families. This is a straight-up crime syndicate.
I have no sympathy. These republicans have enjoyed their power and its spoils all these years, never once in the last decade taking one of the multiple opportunities to shake off this bully. Instead they’ve cowered and brought the whole country down with them.
Let me be clear, I'm not excusing the behavior. Courage is a component of public service and they have demonstrated an utter lack of it at every turn.
Vote Democracy and retire. If the heat is too bad, get out of the kitchen. You are spoiling the main course!
Disguised as sweet talk? Like: "What grade did you say your grandson is in at the Quaker School?" Godfather style. They'd get the idea.
That's what I meant.
Cassidy, yeah. He was a Trumper until Trump turned on him and he lost his primary election. Too little too late. However, always watch how they vote. Many talk big before a camera and vote Trump later...including Democrats.
🎯
We're I Cassidy, I would be almost relieved to not get re-elected so I wouldn't have to be Trump's whipping boy anymore.
Doesn't it automatically become law in 10 days if he doesn't sign it?
Pocket Veto
Exactly. It can be overridden by Congress, but that requires a 2/3 majority in both the House and Senate.
Not until mikey johnson won't bring it up to announce the vote toll.
AND mikey johnson says he WON'T do it!
That sniveling little toady !
More like they were shown the dossiers the Administration has on each of them.
I miss Colbert so much....and as for profanity.....it fits. Bring it on!
Profanity is healthy, it’s a medical fact !
The naked obscenities of the Trump regime's politics almost require profanity to describe how objectionable they are.
I sure miss Colbert. He could make me laugh even when I was furious.
Yes, I try really hard to control my profanity. But this "changing" your vote after the vote thing has really pissed me off.
Brava!
What do you mean? They switched votes on the housing bill?
I believe the discussion revolved around the War Powers resolution bill by Tim Kaine from VA.
But whoever supposedly switched didn't gain the victory. The resolution passed the Senate.
Granted, we leave for vacation tomorrow and have to wake her up at 4:25am…we’ll see how the temper tantrums are in comparison tomorrow 🤪
Enjoy your time with family!
She’ll go back to sleep on the car. Just pick her up, jammies and all, and put her in her car seat!
I wonder if someone would volunteer to pick Trump up in his jammies and drive him around (without his phone)
Liz V, LOL, but can you imagine trying to concentrate on driving while death star whines nonstop. Then there is the smell.
Michele, there's a simple solution. Use a limousine with a privacy screen behind the driver's seat. Donny will think he's special being chauffeured in a limo, and the privacy screen will contain the whining and the stench, or as Jeff Tiedrich describes it, "the aroma of rancid ass music."
Dale, good idea. Love Jeff's phrase "aroma of rancid ass music."
There would have to be hazard pay for that job. Absolutely. And a hazmat suit and noise canceling headphones.
LOL.
Though it's illegal in California, I'd put i
Him in the back of my pickup. He ended forbid he fall out on the freeway.
Yeah, heaven forbid....hopefully a freeway where people are driving way too fast and can't stop.
🤭🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
She didn’t go back to sleep in the car 🤣 both her and our 5 year old we scooped up, buckled them in and they were awake and chatty. Molly (3) slept for but an hour on the plane and is currently snuggled with me after rocking her to sleep since with the time change it’s 7:30pm here (in Hawaii), but 10:30pm back home (way past her bedtime). We had some bumps but she did amazing. And Madison (5) is still going strong helping her dad unload our grocery delivery 💜
🙂 I like the precision in your time. Not 4:30 am, not 4:15 am, but 4:25. That implies a very serious vacation. Well done.
Haha I’m always nervous getting to the airport on time so am particular about timings 🤣
Enjoy family time…
But you have a very important thing going for you & for her, you love her enough to control the temper tantrum, to discipline her so that when she grows up she will know right from wrong & not think that she is entitled to everything! Good job, good parenting, have a good time!
I am so glad you’re taking a vacation Megan. You know I call you a lawyer and you are but even warriors need vacations with their families!
I'm pretty sure that if she throws ketchup during a tantrum you make sure that she doesn't have access to it.
Thank you, Megan!!! and good luck with your toddler!! I have a feeling she'll be more amenable than the current occupant of the White House can ever be capable of.
Ah toddler tantrums! Now that my kids are having their own toddlers I look back with respect and nostalgia.. But presidents should be past the tantrum phase. It's highly unbecoming, to say the least.
Carla, one would think that Trump is past the tantruming stage, but alas, he has been stuck in toddlerhood for decades, maybe his whole life. Too much money can do that to you. It has done that to Musk, Vought, and the rest of the too-rich white house toddler pool, which may be why they cling to their Baby Donnie so closely; he is the toddler-in-chief and can prove tantrums work, that is unless there are sufficient adults in the room.
Well, our Roberts 6 are among the toddlers; their tantrums are in the form of judicial decisions that are bad for everyone but themselves and ignore our Constitution and history as much as they can get away with. They do need to be countered!
Do not assume the Gang of 6 and Republicans believe in Democracy. They don't cave because of threats to their families. The Democrats don't and they are threatened too. No, Repubs believe in Project 2025 and approve of the dismantling of America.
The Art of the Tantrum
Donald Trump has once again demonstrated the leadership style of a man trying to land a plane by yelling at the clouds.
First, we are told Iran is “on the ropes,” trembling in awe of America’s unmatched strength, apparently while the United States is negotiating from a position best described as “please clap.” According to strategic studies scholar Phillips P. O’Brien, the administration has little leverage left, which means the next phase will likely involve declaring imaginary concessions, printing them in gold ink, and selling commemorative mugs by dinner.
This is Trump diplomacy in its purest form: lose the leverage, invent the victory, blame Democrats, misspell something, then demand applause.
Meanwhile, back home, Congress had passed a rare bipartisan housing bill aimed at making homes cheaper and stopping private equity from gobbling up single-family houses like Pac-Man in a gated community. A normal president might sign that. Trump, naturally, cancelled the signing because Congress would not pass his voter ID obsession first.
Nothing says “I care about working families” like holding affordable housing hostage until states hand over voter rolls to the federal government.
Then came the midnight posting spree, because apparently the presidency now comes with a night shift at Truth Social. Gas prices, communism, fake poll numbers, emergency declarations, all served together like a political sampler platter from the Cheesecake Factory of authoritarian panic.
The funniest part, if democracy were not currently short-circuiting in public, is that even Republicans seem to know what this is. One senior Republican reportedly called it a tantrum.
That may be unfair.
Toddlers usually calm down after a nap.
Trump cancels housing bills, threatens election rules, yells at oil companies, and calls it governance.
The algae in the reflecting pool has shown more restraint.
Poor widdle Donnie Butthurt.
Him thwow tantwum in ceweal aisle AGAIN. Him want voter suppression bill FIRST, not care about no housing. But poor widdle Donnie Diddums not going to get what him wants! Him going to scream, will thweaten, beg. Him tweet mucho sick shit. Him losing it now evewy day in every way.
That’s the way cookie cwumbles, Donnie Dimpledums. Loser.
It's, I can always count on you for a smile. Thank you.
His lips are moving - he's lying. I wonder if he's told the same lies often enough he thinks they are real.
It's time WE threw a tantrum with the aim of getting him and his "sicko-phants" out of office.
Thank you, Megan. As these times will have it, the tools you are providing are becoming ever more crucial. ✊✊✊
Exactly. And this thread itself is proof of something important — people are paying attention and taking action.
Fear works best in isolation. Community is how we get through this.
I was thinking the same thing about my 4 year old granddaughter's - short-lived and a breeze compared to Trump, the 80 yr old toddler! Thank you Megan for all your work on this and for re-posting it!
No, toddlers have more humanity in them then he does.
Seriously! Way more humanity - and they know it's wrong to hurt people or to tell lies!
That's because he didn't have adult supervision. He was allowed to be feral and had the servants wrapped around his pinky since he was old enough to wave it.
Toddlers, when toddling, are at least adorable!
if they weren't so cute they might not make it to adulthood!
Thanks, Megan! Enjoy your vacation!
Thanks Megan. What you have done with this directory is fantastic, and especially impressive knowing you have a young child!👍🏻❤️🥳💙
Thanx for your work/ contribution here. I am using it to write to my congressman and responsible Republican congress people. Enough of this failed POTUS.
Thank you Megan!
I wonder contacting our representatives is good enough. I am concerned with the possibility that Mr. Trump would declare national emergency once the Republican loses the Congress. He would claim that the country is taken over by the communist party. This power enabling to call national emergency could make Mr. Trump a dictator. I do not know what citizens can stop such an action. I would like discussions on this possiblity.
Oh I think more needs to be done, but if we go silent with them, they think all is fine.
Yeah, Megan be loud that’ll help ? I cannot believe that Heather just quoted somebody that has no freaking clue at all about what’s going on in a run and has the audacity and the temerity to post this nonsense and she doubles down and posting it again. Let me tell you what I know about it and I think you’re gonna see the difference
The war is OVER….WE WON… Let me see if I can help you here. Their entire military fleet is underwater ALL 48 warships that they process. Billions of dollars of warships
All their military aircraft is gone..billions of dollars Their industrial military complex and infrastructure is gone Their enriched uranium is buried under grounds of disaster and rubble for now, but that will end soon enough Allow me to continue
When the strait was closed They were losing $500 million a day of revenue.which is 80% of their economy Therefore they have a 50% unemployment rate right now approximately an 85% estimated inflation rate which something is over 300%
All of your original leaders, including the ayatollah, and all their , military leaders were killed in a bombing ..The secondary replacements who took their place were destroyed , in a bombing….then third tier of leadership replacements were killed in a bombing…they are trying to find new leaders who are willing… to soon look like the previous three regimes, which are dead… the analysis is that they’ve lost 1,000,000,000,000 1/2 (trillion) dollars of value of their company country and it will take them about five years to rebuild if and when they have the money to do so.
They recently killed 45,000 protesters in a big march because the populace is becoming a little bit less supportive with women walking around without heat jobs in miniskirts Which used to be punishable by stoning
And any and all money that’s going to be paid to them it’s going to come through American coppers, American companies, American suppliers, American banks, etc.
So please awaken from your truck induced delusion, evaluate what I printed up here because if this is any way to win a war I’m sure glad you’re not anywhere near a leadership position
No Pichture this Megan if nothing would’ve happened to the United States other than the president is Cabinet were killed the second president and his Cabinet were killed and the third president is Kavas were killed. Who would you say was winning the war. ?? And then we have all the devastating news of their monetary loss and their fiscal condition so I can’t believe Megan would actually post an article from somebody who is supposed to be an intellectual that has any clue at all about this war or about life in general actually
If the war is won, Rick, then what are they still negotiating about in Geneva? Why is Trump still threatening to attack them? Why is Rubio shuttling between Gulf states trying to persuade them that Trump actually knows what he's doing? Why are all those US warships and military assets still in the region at huge cost to US taxpayers? Why is Iran and Oman in talks to establish a joint commission to charge maritime fees on commercial shipping passing through the Strait? Why isn't the Strait fully open now? Why are senior Republicans so angered by the terms of the MOU? Trump has denied that the US will pay anything towards the so-called $300bn investment fund, so why are you saying that all the money will come via American banks? If Iran was so financially and militarily crippled then why aren't US warships proceeding through the Strait? If their navy was completely destroyed, then how were they able to launch attacks from the sea on tankers? If their missiles were destroyed, then why is US intelligence saying that they still have around 70% of their missiles and that 31 of 33 missile sites are now operational again?
If you can't be bothered to read the serious news, Rick, then why are you bothering coming here with your nonsense?
Still nothing between the ears guy huh?
YOU ARE OFFICIALLY ONE OF THE PATRONS OF THE GEORGE FLOYD RIOTS. In fact, you might even be George speaking to us from your grave …THE NEWS MEANS NOTHING….YOU JUST DONT LISTEN…SECOND QUARTER….THIRD INNING…..NOT EVEN A DENOUMENT YET….
THEY ARE STILL WRITING THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE…..AND …………..ONLY….ONLY….ONLY…WHEN IT IS DONNNNNNNNNNNNE WILL THERE BE ANY NEWS …..POOR GEORGE…in the meantime oil prices in April were momentarily at 126 per barrel…but leveled out at 115…..today at 71.
Maybe if I give you a more appropriate analogy you might get it. YOU Just went to the bathroom AND took a nice dump. YOU took out some toilet paper and PREPARED to do its work. YOU tired one sheet. BUT still needed more. You haven’t even taken off the second sheet yet, so you don’t know how many more sheets you’ll need because you don’t know how big of a task you have…
ONLY WHEN YOU ARE DONE WIPING WILL THERE BE ANY NEWS. George…..
YOU ARE A SAD SOUL.
You said it was game over!!! Now you're saying it's only done when it's done - so which version are we to take?
I live in the UK, remember? I took no part in the George Floyd protests.
Your other analogy is certainly better than the baseball one. Trump has indeed taken a dump on Iran and no amount of toilet paper is going to clean up the mess he has left behind him - he leaves that to others, as usual. Anyway, the guy uses diapers so perhaps it's not that great an analogy after all.
The war so far has cost $162bn and American citizens have had to spend an additional $45bn on gasoline and diesel since the war started.
What a way to celebrate your 250th anniversary - thanks to Trump the biggest shitshow on earth (and that includes the earthquakes in Venezuela).
Iran struck another cargo vessel in the Gulf of Oman today. So much for destroying Iran's military capabilities. The Wall Street Journal reports Iran is eyeing up to $40 billion a year in tolls once the dust settles. JD Vance tells UnHerd the Emiratis are now talking directly to the IRGC because they no longer trust the US security umbrella. Nobody trusts Trump, not even the majority of the American people who did not want this war.
PCE inflation has increased to 4.1% year-over-year, the highest in three years, driven largely by the Iran war. The personal savings rate has fallen to 3%, one of the lowest readings in 15 years. That might be why the Federal Reserve held interest rates at their last meeting, ignoring Trump's calls for a cut.
And excuse me if I’m not correct here and saying that you use the ING word again. Which I told you you can’t use it’s the Gerron form which means C O N T I N U I N G. WHEN THE END IS DONE YOU YOU’LL HEAR THE WORDS AS FOLLOWS THE END OF THE WAR, THE END OF NEGOTIATIONS, PROBABLY A YEAR OR MORE FROM NOW THE BEGINNING OF REPARATIONS, WHATEVER THEY MAY BE, AND HOWEVER, THEY COME OUT AND THEN YOU CAN BEAT GEORGE FLOYD ALL OVER AGAIN
ONE MORE ING …. ONE MORE INANE THOUGHTLESS POST FROM YOU. I’LL JUST GO ELSEWHERE FOR MY ENTERTAINMENT.
Well, blimey me. It’s the end of the world. But of course you didn’t read the whole article did you you did like most of you liberals do gosh I see this headline. It looks good. I’m gonna fuck it and I’m gonna jump on it like a bitch in heat.
Well, I guess the war is not over now. Laugh my fucking ass off you know I explained to this other jerk here the other day when you talk about things like this Pichture this globe. Then Pichture the war in Iran And then picture the scope of the war in Iran
And what just happened and you didn’t know even why it happened or how it happened was that an amoeba from this entire entire globe had been interrupted. Ending humanity till the end
I’m telling you one more like that goodbye Russell goodbye all your thrills. You can sit home and play with yourself from now on if you can find it.
Further showing how Rick Sender is a right wing troll here is what I posted from The Hill about what Trump's Medicaid cuts are doing to Ohio. His response is below post:
📊 A new Commonwealth Fund analysis projects that Ohio will lose 51,000 jobs and $5.3 billion from its economy by 2029 as federal cuts to Medicaid and food assistance programs under the 2025 spending law take full effect, ranking the state eighth nationally in projected job losses.
The analysis found that Ohio stands to lose $4.4 billion in federal funding, reducing state GDP by $5.4 billion and shrinking state and local tax revenue by $368 million. Half of the projected job losses would be in healthcare, hitting hospitals, clinics, pharmacies, and nursing homes hardest. The spending law cut more than $900 billion from Medicaid over 10 years and $187 billion from SNAP. The expiration of Affordable Care Act marketplace subsidies has already caused Ohio enrollment to drop 20% this year, with roughly 600,000 Ohioans seeing their insurance premiums double 🔍.
Ohio will receive approximately $200 million in rural health funding that was built into the spending law to offset concerns about rural hospital closures, but the Commonwealth Fund analysis concludes that figure is "overshadowed" by $31 billion in federal marketplace funding cuts nationally. Proponents of the law say stricter work requirements will move people off benefits and into jobs. However, the CBO estimates that Americans in the lowest 10% of incomes will lose approximately $1,200 per year while those in the top 10% gain approximately $13,600 per year, and the analysis warns that the work requirements may actually reduce employment by eliminating healthcare jobs in the communities where recipients live
Rick Sender
13m
Yawn. Where did the money come from in the first place? Oooooops. Uh oh. Looks like once once again again, life is a do to your proposition.
Can’t I think you should post this five or six times a day? Maybe that’ll help you mentally but I truly really doubt it.
And you didn’t answer the question where did the money come from in the first place? Did it come from Ohio or did it come from the feds?
It came from the PEOPLE. That's where you show your idiocy Rick. People pay state taxes. People pay federal taxes. We aren't arguing about where the money comes from we're arguing whether the people getting handouts should be rich sick-o-phants like you rather than those who suffer real need.
If YOU can create 3000 millionaires then YOU are the queen of welfare by paying less taxes than the middle class, by stealing your tax cut from the mouths of children and the elderly.
You remain morally bankrupt and corrupt. And that is why I'm willing to go to jail to see people like you deported to South America or better yet, because imo of your racist views---Africa.
" I would rather a thousand times be a free soul in jail than to be a sycophant and coward in the streets." Eugene V. Debs (the first great socialist in America).
Why don’t you get involved in reality? Nothing has been taken away not a damn thing. Except for all the scams
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1029484912942781
a few super MAGA bootlickers are changing their minds:
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/17ZTFaK4Ez/
Oh my goodness crude oil fell below $70 today. I believe it was up near $100 just a few weeks ago. Even you can figure out the percentage of Drop. And it will continue to do so
By the way once again, Kent, you really need to go see some psychologist or somebody to talk about your social awareness because I am anything but a right wing troll. In fact, one of my favorite presidents, although he had three major fuck ups, and I mean major, major major fuck-ups Bill Clinton was still one of the best presidents we’ve had Despite his foils
One reason why the oil price has dipped by around 20% is that there is now weakening demand for oil partly because of an anticipated glut in supply and partly because some countries are turning to renewable energy because they don't want to get stung again the next time a US president decides to unilaterally start a war in the Middle East. Trump's stupid war has been the biggest advert for renewable energy ever.
You are arguing with a psychotic, potty-mouth 2-year-old who couldn’t put together a coherent sentence to save his life. I don't think he's about to suddenly thank you for your careful research. Just saying....
Yeah, who happens to bring facts along with his potty mouth that you can’t stand and that you can’t argue with.
Try reading the Declaration of Independence see if you can determine what words those mean
Living the dream pal, living in the dream unlike you, America haters, I’m going to the National mall with 20 of my friends next week to celebrate the greatness of America that you can’t stand
Actually, in retrospect that was a pretty coherent sentence.
19 million more barrels passed through the rate of her moves yesterday. Russell, you fucking idiot, moron stupid jerk, worthless piece of crap If Biden were president, would you care why the price of crude came down?
I showed you yesterday a high of 115 on an average in April and now it’s at 71 and you’re still bitching and moaning. Get the fuck out of my life go pound yourself. Maybe you’ll feel better.
That's one day's worth, you moron. I care about these commodity prices, Rick, because they effect everyone around the world, including me. You are such an ignorant, insular person. The Strait of Hormuz is by no means operating normally and the fact remains that Iran could close it any time they want and all Trump can do is issue further bombastic, genocidal threats.
He won't even accept responsibility for the killing of 162 children in the Minab school bombing. Children, Rick - don't you have children, you sick fuck?
The stock market is soaring as well. Everything the rich could possibly desire--except a trip to Epstein Island.
Meanwhile for normal human beings inflation has reached 4.1% last month, the highest since 2023.
Trumpflation is YOU.
The other day you blamed Clinton for the current state of Ukraine. I have consistently called you a coward for blaming Clinton for Ukraine, defending Trump for abandoning them, and for your lack of courage to return to your native homeland and at least live the life they live now.
Once again pointing out the hypocritical side of Trump bootlickers.
And I am your Tar Baby because I cause you narcistic injury just like Barak Obama causes narcistic injury to Trump.
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1Pq25BFntQ/
I own you baby, you can't get me out of your mind and it frustrates the friggin bejesus out of you!!! :)
You are a tar baby that looks like a tar baby covered in asphalt, wet, asphalt, hot, burning, wet asphalt. Clinton Clinton Clinton Clinton Clinton Clinton Clinton one of my favorite presidents was the cost of the war and millions and millions and millions and millions of people killed of people Wounded of people murdered of people being displaced no housing no place to go no job to go to millions
Now once you get that through your head and say you know what RICK that’s absolutely true Then we may have something to discuss
The other day I blame Clinton the world blames Clinton the whole fucking universe blames Clinton because he was not out of my mouth. He was actually the reason that Ukraine and Russia are fighting right now. NO OTHER REASON. YOU WANNA PRETEND OTHERWISE NO PROBLEM
By the way, you also didn’t mention to them that the income tax returns this year were 11% higher than last year because of the big beautiful Bill. And all the rest of your nonsense, especially if you pay attention to the CBO Which I could tell you what those letters stand for, but it might be too offensive for your audience
4 million people (including 800,000 children) lost access to SNAP because of Trump. Why don't you ask them how they're doing now? Even Elon Musk is losing money.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jun/24/elon-musk-trillionaire-spacex
You mention the increased tax cuts but not the increased national debt that will trigger a reduction in Medicare benefits by 2032.
We estimate the OBBBA reduces taxes by about $5 trillion, or 1.4 percent of GDP, over the next decade (2025-2034). The net cost falls to about $4 trillion after accounting for the bill’s spending reforms. Additionally, we estimate the OBBBA will boost GDP by about 1.2 percent over the long run, primarily by lowering individual income tax rates and allowing businesses to expense certain investments, generating additional dynamic revenue and reducing the burden of debt and deficits as a share of the economy. Increased economic growth reduces the cost of the bill to about $3 trillion over the next decade. However, added to the cost is about $700 billion in interest payments on debt issued to finance the deficits, resulting in a total deficit increase of nearly $3.8 trillion over the next decade.
Under passage of the bill, and accounting for the macroeconomic impacts, debt-to-GDP reaches 183 percent in 2054. If the bill were not passed, debt-to-GDP would still reach 142 percent, accounting for macroeconomic feedback.
1. https://taxfoundation.org/blog/obbba-debt-deficits-tax-revenue/
2. https://budgetlab.yale.edu/research/long-term-impacts-one-big-beautiful-bill-act
The law’s massive deficit increase triggers automatic spending cuts under budget rules designed to control federal spending. Unless a future Congress acts, Medicare faces approximately $500 billion in cuts between 2026 and 2034.
This creates a significant challenge that could affect the long-term stability of Medicare and the care it provides to over 65 million Americans.
https://govfacts.org/money/social-safety-net/medicare-medicaid/how-the-one-big-beautiful-bill-targets-medicare-and-medicaid/
Please note that Troll Rick will NEVER link any source proof for anything he writes. In that way, he mimics the worst Republicans in Congress.
I suspect he is being paid by them--no proof- but his continued apologetics without supporting data would lead many a person with critical thinking skills to come to that conclusion.
Congressional Budget Office. I, for one, am not offended Rick. Just saying.
I am at anything but a right wing troll. And you ought to read all the definition of what’s happening in Ohio and why not just the headlines that you jump on like I’ve called you before just a bitch in heat when you see a headline you like you jump on it like a horny Little boy.
I also love projections. They’re always seem to work out so accurately.
Can’t there’s only too much I can take of stupidity and ignorance in one night so you and I are done for the night when you come up with anything meaningful to discuss. Let me know, but that ain’t coming anytime in the next decade.
You're a moron, Rick.
Has it ever occurred to you that no one here has ever "Liked" any of your comments? Ever? Do you think you might want to retool?
For people who want to know who Rick Sender really is, this is how he responded to my post that Mamdani's endorsed candidates had all won:
Rick Sender
12:23 AM (1 hour ago)
Oh, and that’s the other thing I’m glad we got rid of the antisemitic Jew by the name of Dan goldman that was a major win for the right. ͏ ͏ ͏
Hello Kent... "Mamdani's endorsed candidates had all won:".... Mamdani is showing a way Forward... The Old Political Ways will be inadequate to address the collapse of the Old Politics... It has been postulated that China advanced from the Iran War because they had planned to mitigate a Strait-Of-Hormuz closing... Climate-Change, and A.I. will become Existential Threats to Humanity... Only Smart Collective Action can address these Challenges, and 80yo Toddler-Tantrums will not...
Did you say postulating or did you say masturbating?
Keep it in your pants, troll. 🙄
Rick's answer to you shows he has no character. A truly evil human being much like the one he worships in the White House.
Thank you I’m glad everybody gets to see that and you should hear all the commentary about the Democrat party splitting to the left and who’s gonna actually move further left and who’s gonna stick to the Democrats normal theory because they think the far left is wacko Don’t forget to tell him the whole thing of what I
I can’t wait to watch New York crumble because life is a do it to yourself proposition. And when you talk about freedom, there ain’t gonna be none. They’re gonna take what they want to take over businesses. They want to take over hotels they want to get free everything and as the wealthy leave guess what’s gonna happen the money they thought they were gonna have to pay for all this stuff will be woof gone. And when he opens up all those grocery stores at 30 million a pop and comes to realize that grocery stores only run on a one or 2% margin so they have to keep prices very low. How do you think that’s gonna affect all the grocery stores anywhere near the neighborhood they’re gonna lose business and go out of business, which is people’s livelihoods which is ownership by those who invested in their community it’s gonna be fun to watch
🙄
Thanks, Rick, makes you look even more unhinged.
Everybody, Rick consistently praises and defends Trump while his own substack flat out lies that he is independent and "balanced" in his views. This is typical of Trump cultists. He's also bragged that he has given more to charity than I have without knowing my charitable contributions.
He's also bragged that HE has made over 3000 people millionaires.
And he supports Drumph's War in Iran which has resulted in Trumpflation. This news came from The Hill this morning:
"Annual inflation hit the highest level in more than three years last month as prices across the economy rose at an even quicker pace, according to data released Thursday by the Commerce Department.
Prices rose 4.1 percent over the past year and 0.7 percent in May alone, as measured by the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index. Without food and energy, prices were up 3.4 percent over the past year and 0.3 percent in May.
The annual inflation rate of 4.1 percent is the highest since April 2023, and follows several months of steadily rising price growth driven by the war in Iran."
Please don't respond to the troll RICK SENDER. I've got him square in my radar and will continue to bombard him with the news of how he and his rich buddies are ruining America.
As a 79 year old Vietnam Veteran I have now made it my life's work to troll the TROLL. He is a wicked man intent on keeping Americans enslaved to the upper 5%.
So much winning! I can't take it anymore! You are truly delusional!!
🤖
This all makes a lot more sense when you ask one question:
What is he so afraid of?
Someone confident they served the country well doesn’t need to attack elections, manufacture emergencies, or rewrite the rules to stay in power.
This isn’t about stopping fraud. It’s about avoiding accountability.
He knows what happens when the protection of power disappears.
What is he afraid of, you ask. Getting impeached again, this time successfully; being arrested , jailed, put on trial for a myriad of things; losing the status he has with the MAGAts and the puppet masters behind his every move. Is that enough to frighten him? I certainly hope so.
Exactly. And he knows there will be a full reckoning.
The investigations. The corruption. The abuse of power. The people who enabled all of it.
That is why losing is not just losing for him. It means accountability comes back.
Also he is no doubt astounded -- and therefore terrified -- by the speed and solidarity of European rearmament.
Kelli of 2 weeks subscription here
You might see me around here, and learn I usually don't use profanity, which I did this morning as I am very unpleased.
Discovering yet another new voice on here is a balm! As the self-appointed Walmart greeter of the forum, WELCOME!!👋🏼 I am so pleased to see another soul join this community!
THANK YOU 👏🏼 for becoming a paid subscriber! Our numbers scare the MAGA.
😊😅 self-appointed Walmart greeter. First (and I hope not last) chuckle of my day!
Nicely done, Miselle of the Welcome Wagon! Or Walmart Greeter if you prefer.
Hi, Kelli!!
A full reckoning sounds just and I won't be surprised if he goes down in some bypass, probably medically induced oblivion.
Commonly called: the 💩hitting the 🪭.
All of the above.
Exactly. It’s not one scandal. It’s the entire pattern that matters.
Yep
from day 1 in his 1st term his agenda was to stay in office to avoid prison. Had he just stuck to his scam real-estate deals and not claim income tax for decades he still would have had his riches and the world would have been a better ,saner place
Doreen, I'm a senior citizen, but my memory still works pretty well.
From the day Donald took over the family business, he began losing all the equity his father had built up. When Daddy died and couldn't bail Donny out anymore, Donny got deeper and deeper in debt, by millions of dollars.
His loser butt was saved when evangelical TV producer, Mark Burnett, advanced Donny millions of NBC's dollars to play the role of a business tycoon on a game show. But every TV show has a "shelf life" and Donny's light was beginning to fade on TV. He was looking for a way to burnish the Trump brand so he could continue profiting from fraudulent businesses.
Donny didn't want to be president. Running for president was a stunt meant to make his surname a household brand by utilizing the press for free exposure rather than paying for it with advertising. He had the gift of gab and his mind was mostly intact. He had speechwriters and a teleprompter, which enabled him to make a convincing case to white folks who felt betrayed by Big Business.
Lo and behold, his poll numbers kept rising and it appeared he had a shot at winning, but he wasn't convinced he could actually win, right up to Election Day. But the Electoral College, created by racists, handed him the election he didn't win. No one was more surprised than he was!
Even after he entered the office, he didn't want to be president. He complained that the White House was a "dump" and the job took too much time from golfing. Then he discovered all the ways the Office of President could be monetized for his personal enrichment, and he decided it was a pretty good gig, after all. He used the office to pull in millions of dollars, which he used to pay off his Russian debts.
Meanwhile, numerous criminal cases against him were working their ways through the courts, and he realized he could go to prison ... unless he was president of the United States. Then it became imperative that he remain in office. His fear of going to prison motivated him to deny his election loss and foment an insurrection.
If not for the Electoral College, Donny's life would have gone a very different direction, possibly with a premature end, as a result of his unpaid Russian debts.
Good summary. It didn't take don the shitstain carpetbagger ( what me and my friends in Canada call him) long to understand the necessity of staying in power. He knew the pay off to Stormy Daniels was illegal and they'd be on to him. I too thought he was shocked by his election but looking back he knew it had to happen with Putin,Manafred, Cambridge Analytica ,Bannon's assistance he'd get in power. He saw well before the cash cow before him.
putin and netanyahu STARTED and PERPETUATED a WAR to stay IN POWER and OUT of PRISON!!
trump IS doing the SAME THING NOW with his TRUMP-EPSTEIN WAR in Iran!!
VOTE 'EM ALL OUT!!
He’s pocketed billions in this term.
Exactly. And that’s part of the larger pattern.
People who use public service as a path to personal enrichment are usually the ones most afraid of accountability.
Transparency shouldn’t scare anyone who has nothing to hide.
Cmon. Impeaching? Yes.
But anything further than that would require 2/3 of the Senate and those sniveling, spineless, pedo protecting Republicans will never cooperate or vote against their fascist king.
TFG will walk away, after pardoning himself and his minions, with his illegal billions. Again.
What has to happen, for any accountability, is the republican party must be burned down to the ground. Forever.
There is NO Republican Party any longer.
There IS ONLY maga!
VOTE 'EM ALL OUT!!!
The Sniveling Republicans are no more loyal to Trump than he is to them. They just do not want another resignation/impeachment/ failed presidency on their record.
I don’t suppose it has/will ever occur to them that if they do not nominate/ support crooks, they would not be in this fix again.
The truth. Like a sunny day just shining on a vampire.
or a bucket of water poured on the Wicked Witch!
If only it were that simple…
filling bucket as we speak
Water scooped right out of the straight of warm ooze!
Yes Perfect!!
Hello J L... Nice Analogy....
To be fair, he does look like he just stumbled out of a coffin.
Perfect metaphor, J L
Kelli, it’s the Epstein Files.
I don't understand the fixation so many people seem to have with reducing everything just to one thing, like the Epstein Files, whatever that even is. It is all about so much more than just a single thing --- it's the whole house of cards, not just a joker here and there, however awful the history of that joker is. Trump's deck is made up of too many jokers even to count.
The essence of the entire Republican Party, its modus operandi, whatever now passes for a governing "philosophy," is simply adherence to a grotesque cult of personality currently unravelling at the speed of summer lightning. Not even Fox News can hide that from its viewers. It's so far and above about the whole package, not just one of its constituent parts. That's the wonderful news. The bad news is that we're still forced to slog through the madness without losing our own marbles in the process.
Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan's new exposé, "Regime Change" testifies to the degradation involved, as well as the collapse. They accurately note Trump's open comparisons of himself with Hitler, Tamerlane, Genghis Khan, Hitler, Mao, Stalin in a modern, frightening re-telling of the Emperor's New Clothes. He thinks that will impress and intimidate them. It's the kind of standard idiot swaggering that President Obama had in mind when he called Trump a “carnival-barker.”
The reality, of course, is that the Strait of Warm Ooze is what happens when a phony confuses intimidation with effectiveness. A stunning snapshot of all the absurdity, prevarication, abuse, dementia and attempted tyranny -- in a single image nobody can now unsee, prompting laughter and derision. That's the stuff that will bring down the house of cards, no matter how many jokers make it up.
Of course, the Epstein files are not the ONLY thing. But the public exposure of Trump, Epstein and Epstein‘s fellow travelers in the world of pedophilia, of exploiting underage girls for sex, is the card that, if pulled, would collapse the House of Trump. Why? Because it would reveal the deep connection between corrupt power players and knowing who the rats are will inform our placement of the traps.
first...nice piece of writing, ICTT...and i couldn't agree with you more about people's tendency to simplify...right below this is BIll Pierce's repetition of the words, 'Epstein files'. yeah. i get it. it's important, but...talk about tangled webs...and it extends, unfortunately, far beyond Trump. Katzman brought up how the system needed changing...EYE think from, pretty much, the whole thing...there is soooo much...two party system, electoral college, how taxes are spent, the homeless, weapons...making sure people have enough to eat and education...REAL education, very much including...maybe beGINning with critical thinking rather than just regurgitation...and, of course, inclusiveness...
i'm sorry to say, though, i think this is an impossibly complex task...but if people get started NOW, maaaaaaaybe it'll get done before the sun burns out...
i don't think that those in the driver's seat are about to let go of the wheel without bloodshed. to my eye, they'd just as soon do to Americans what they've done to too many other countries...not to mention the Native Americans(is that an oxymoron?).
but i've seen the writings of some very intelligent, well informed people HERE.
which makes me think there's a lot more. a LOT more. i'm just not sure about how to get around the violence that will occur with the changes necessary. or how
to bridge the chasm between the different mindsets. the divisiveness is undoubtedly part of what those in power want. making it, as i've heard people point out, a 'left vs right' battle instead of a lower income vs ridiculous opulence 'lifestyle'.
a number of decades ago when i first moved to the NL friends asked me, 'why THERE?'(and i'll admit there ARE lackings, of course)...and my response was that, for the most part that NLers seem to understand 'what enough is'. they might not rate the highest on some polls but EYE know what enough is, as well...
and i consider myself incredibly lucky to still be here...
i never much concerned myself with politics...my thought was 'it's 'THEIR' game. that was when i was young. eventually i realized that if there's more than one person, there's politics. i also came to understand that i've ALways been a 'socialist'. nothing else makes sense to me 'in the long run'.
i lost quite a bit of money having moved here...but it's nothing compared to what i feel i've gained...
thanks for your ongoing contributions, ICTT...you've made me laugh and think. very valuable, those...
one more thing i'd like to add...
if anyone's seriously considering a move to the NL and would like to ask me questions, please do x PMing me. i've lived here for 26 yrs and would try to help however i can. i'm pretty sure i can answer most questions within 48 hrs.
What is “the NL”?
The Netherlands
"when i was young. eventually i realized that if there's more than one person, there's politics."
Exactly. My take on politics is that it's the process that decides whose will prevails, and that occurs cooperatively as well as by fiat. There is politics in families, friendships, and any loose or structured organization. The heart of the big-deal document we celebrate on the Fourth is a reframing that from a fundamentally coercive to cooperative society, and what was in that way of that; bookended by a vision and a common commitment. That combination is how it is done, in creating an environment of civil liberty; and inasmuch as freedom is freedom From certain actions and circumstances, as well as freedom TO, "to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men (sic), deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...".
Easy to say, tricky to execute and maintain. We have been working on a more prefect union for 250 years, facing some very determined resistance along the way. Some still see violence and conquest as the ultimate. legitimate power, and somehow, as those of that ilk have for centuries, try to claim that's "Christianity"; that kindness and awareness are somehow a weakness, or the spawn of the devil. Lincoln had the seeing eye to call it what it was;
"What are these arguments? They are the arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world. You will find that all the arguments in favor of king-craft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the people, not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden. That is their argument, and this argument of the Judge is the same old serpent that says you work and I eat, you toil and I will enjoy the fruits of it. Turn in whatever way you will – whether it come from the mouth of a King, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent,"
Lincoln was confronting chattel slavery, but coercive domination comes in may forms, and we are still by no means rid of it, in one form or another in our civilization.
Lincoln again:
"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy."
"Liberty and Justice for all"; the (demanding) solution hiding in plain sight.
Clearly trump has spent his entire lifetime engaged in acts of extreme self gratification via manipulation and deception that he and only he currently knows of.
Trump ( who appears to have no self conscience) is actually tormented by the fact that his 80 year old runway of indulgence will soon end. He may have negotiated immunity from SCOTUS during his lifetime but not immortality from God.
So his epitaph over which he has no control will be something like "He lies with the algae".
His participation in the Epstein Documents will certainly be horrific, but remain hidden for now. The Ooze and Hormuz failures have only just recently come to the public's very public attention ......something that the public understands and can see front and center at the gas pumps and on TV.
His rate of singlehanded failure / unforced error is increasing in a very publicly understandable way.
Here lies the wizard of ooze.
The Epstein Documents should probably be labeled the Epstein/trump
Documents or Files or the words Documents or Files should be referred to as Evils…and do not forget Maxwell.
Does anyone recall that in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, Great Britain had the Profumo scandal or affair?
Vaguely, in a dusty corner of my brain.
Paul the phrase maker! Were a Madison Ave guy?
Trump grew up on a mountain of money, with which he could play with big adult things as his personal toys. That's the problem with hyper-wealthy sociopaths; they think of us and our civilization as their personal toys. Clearly Trump does. The "same old serpent" mindset.
I note Trump has not decided to put his name on the reflecting pool. Or on any of the public toilets. Perhaps people could make stickers for public toilets like "Trump memorial shithouse" so he gets associated with his proper place in society.
It’s Come to This, yes, it is about “all of this,“ and not simply the Epstein files. Yes, the house of cards which is now primarily made up of jokers is speeding up its own demise, and the demise of the high opinion we used to hold of the United States.
My question again and again, is what is our plan for the future? A few Substack such as “ THE CRISIS AND TRANSITION SUBSTACK” has provided a useful forum for visualizing and making plans for the implementation of an improved form of economy, recent guest essays “reveal hope as something experienced differently by different people and shaped by different circumstances. Yet across these diverse perspectives runs a common thread: a willingness to remain engaged with life, with one another, and with the possibility that a better future can still be
“As we continue our examination of hope, vision, empowerment, and solutions, we invite readers to reflect on their own sources of hope and to share them in the comments below:”
https://crisistransition.substack.com/p/what-gives-us-hope
It’s something Pete Buttigieg asks of voters everywhere he goes. If they can already visualize ‘the day after’ why shouldn’t we? What are we waiting for? A workable plan for the future isn’t an option, it should be the number one item on the action agenda.
We have sorely needed an evidence-based and vividly stated action plan to a better future for a long time. Never more than now.
Marc thank you for sharing that Substack. “What’s next” is a never-ending concern for me. If we pursue “reconciliation” again over accountability, or just assume that normalcy and reason will rule again just “because they should,” we are gravely mistaken. That was Lincoln’s biggest mistake after the Civil War and it was Biden’s biggest mistake (assisted by Garland) in our time.
We have a lot of work ahead of us.
Yes, as both HCR and Timothy Snyder have urged not to restore what was but to reconstruct something better and go after and punish the overwhelming amount of corruption.
Exactly. This is the conversation I keep coming back to. Accountability isn’t revenge — it’s how trust gets rebuilt. The goal can’t just be going back. It has to be building something better.
I write about this often at We Have Friends Everywhere: https://wehavefriendseverywhere.substack.com/
It seems to me that the heart of political corruption is abuse of entrusted power, specifically use of power entrusted to serve the welfare of the public for selfish personal gain, be it access to finacial gain or pressing a unjustified personal agenda such as nepotism r personal retaliation. The former "Party of Lincoln" has morphed into a total cesspool of corruption; though not only them; and following the money explains a lot.
Exactly. The question of “what comes next?” is the one I keep coming back to too. Accountability has to happen, but rebuilding trust, community, and connection matters just as much.
It’s actually why I started writing We Have Friends Everywhere — because none of us solve this alone.
https://wehavefriendseverywhere.substack.com
It's complicated. International punishment of Germany after WW I contributed to the rise of Hitler. I think we must work on reconciliation, but also redraw the lines that should not be crossed, and keenly document past breaches. In condemning torture, Obama said he believed "that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards"; yet does not wisdom demand that we do both? That we learn from past mistakes by highlighting how they came to occur? Like combing an aircraft crash site for clues to enable future prevention?
Too often, the lessons necessary for future improvement are neglected in favor a palliative "smoothing over". Ford did so in pardoning Nixon, not that it was so important that Nixon go to jail, but that he face the rule of law like any other citizen. Instead we we normalized an above-the-law presidency. Pain often accompanies genuine healing. Opioids can spare some of the pain but not produce a cure. Overused, they make things far worse.
Planning is key to success!
And for all of us to see just before the 4th of July...250 years in America.
Kudos!
The Epstein Documents should probably be labeled the Epstein/trump Documents or Files…or the words Documents or Files should be referred to as Evils…and do not forget Maxwell.
Does anyone recall that in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, Great Britain had the Profumo scandal or affair?
And now he’s Epstein - in a prison of his own making. What will his handlers do to him?
Exactly. And that’s part of the larger pattern.
People with something to hide will do almost anything to protect themselves. The fear of accountability explains a lot of what we’re watching.
This is the first taste of what we will face after the midterms. Trump will veto every bill, especially those with bipartisan support, that is good for the average American. With 2/3 majorities in both houses of Congress required to override a veto, he will have a mighty cudgel. Consider this a practice swing.
Trump is more than throwing a tantrum by canceling the signing. He is testing whether he can get away with trading not vetoing a bill in return for the passage of another bill he desperately wants. His obsession is the SAVE America Act, to require proof of citizenship to register, or in some versions to vote, before the midterms.
The man with the thinnest of thin skins is literally holding the housing bill hostage, and, as deranged as he is, I would not be surprised to see him kill it with a veto if he doesn't get his ransom, purely out of spite. He also wants to get back at the Republicans who are showing a smidgen of spine with the non-binding Iran War Powers Resolution.
Trump is going off script from what the oligarchs want. They want a destruction of democracy, but one that does not lead to mass resistance, which is bad for business. They want a quiet dismantling of regulations and the introduction of "innovations" like prediction-market ETFs available as investments in your retirement accounts, so they can siphon money out of your pocket faster. That works best in a less chaotic environment.
The question is, when will they lose patience and decide that Trump, as their frontman/puppet, is no longer performing adequately? JD is waiting in the wings...
“Just in case” — you can take action to foil the SAVE nonsene. Here’s how: get trained on how to help people get the documents they need for voter ID. This organization, Voteriders, (https://voteriders.org/about/) offers a very good basic training and they can always use volunteers. No point waiting til the last minute — get trained so you can help those voters who will have difficulty getting their docs (like women married 50 years ago who took their spouse’s name), college students, some immigrants.
http://Voteriders.org is fabulous. They even have funding to help you pay pay for documentation to prove citizenship. I wrote about what you can do to protect your vote a while back.
Everyone should be sure they have a certified copy of their birth certificate on hand. I heard from responsders to my comments and notes that in red states when you have to go through the mail to get a birth certificate, it can take 8 months to get one.
You should also be checking that your registration information is correct, and that your name matches, and keep checking so you are not “purged” from the voter rolls ahead of the elections. My concern remains that a Trump supporter now owns a company that provides many of our voting machines and another company that provides the electronic voter registration rolls used to verify that you can vote when you go to cast your ballot in person. Otherwise, you will be forced to cast a provisional ballot.
Another fact I learned when I decided to vote in person in NJ after receiving an automatic mail in ballot—under those circumstances I had to cast a provisional ballot in person. With the shenanigans about or not votes have to be counted on election day, that just adds another layer of uncertainty.
Georgia, I do the same, reminding people via BlueSky that checking your voter registration regularly is essential in this time of anti-voting. Waiting til the last minute will be disastrous for some.
This type of purge was a concern in the 2016 campaign in Ohio. It has just escalated and now the the SCOTUS latest two decisions another layer of concern. It’s like quantum layered physics for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction but so many multiverses. When I don’t hear of certain issues or people I try to find what’s going on about every three months. In Isreali news Bebe is on trial and being examined new to me. And adds another strange layer. I also check on different area of the world’s environmental status there are real problems in the so called Middle East. We don’t know because the news always brings up the eye catching stuff. I had a hard time with Stephan Colbert not because of his talent but because he was the source of news for many. He and Jon Stewart in their early years really tried to rally folks about democracy but sidelined because of too much noise and flashy lights. I hope that Dr Richardson’s great 250 brings all of the hidden or tromped on issues to the forefront . The Peter Salk video was great. She also needs to do some on the ties our government has had with diplomats and businesses throughout the world.
Can we add 'blackmail' to the litany of charges he faces when he leaves office?
In truly sickening news from Bloomberg Law, Stephen Miller was identified as the driving force behind a new DOJ memo to limit the rights of people with disabilities and those with mental illness, forcing them to be institutionalized as opposed to being provided care in their communities. This is being advertised as a humanitarian act to reduce homelessness, but it reverses years of government policies to integrate the disabled into their communities with supportive care.
The White House and DOJ denied the report. The DOJ memo itself was reported by NPR.
"It is now the position of the United States government that people with disabilities don't have a right to be part of their communities," says Alison Barkoff, a health law and policy professor at George Washington University who led disability law and policy efforts during both the Obama and Biden administrations. "I can't overstate how significant this change in position is."
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/stephen-miller-said-to-drive-doj-memo-eroding-disability-rights
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/stephen-miller-was-a-driving-force-behind-doj-memo-slashing-disability-rights-report/ar-AA26nMi9
https://www.npr.org/2026/06/20/nx-s1-5865100/doj-memo-trump-disability-civil-rights-institutionalization
Don’t say we weren’t warned. This follows up on Trump’s July 24, 2025 executive order that the SPLC said would force states to choose between community care or receiving federal funding. “
The EO radically reorients our country’s policy to address homelessness toward punitive approaches that prioritize jail, forced treatment and institutionalization over evidence-based approaches that provide housing and services. The EO:
Prioritizes civil commitment and institutionalization of persons with disabilities living on the streets, paving the way to uproot core constitutional protections found in the Olmsted ruling. https://archive.ada.gov/olmstead/olmstead_about.htm
Prioritizes federal funding for localities that criminalize homelessness (specifically prohibiting camping, squatting, and loitering) and move people with mental health conditions and substance use disorders into institutions through use of civil commitment
Redirects federal funds for use in encampment removal efforts by state and local governments
Ends the federal government’s policy of Housing First (decades long evidence-based policy that prioritizes putting people into housing without barriers or preconditions) and instead requiring forced treatment programs as a condition of receiving HUD-funded homeless and housing assistance
Authorizes HUD to allow or require recipients of homeless assistance federal funding to collect medical information and share it with law enforcement
Ends funding for harm reduction programs proven to minimize negative health, social, and legal impacts for individuals struggling with substance use
Directs the Department of Justice to terminate federal and state consent decrees that could limit the use of civil commitment. These agreements were often used to address long-term and systemic issues with local law enforcement especially involving the violation of rights of people with mental health issues
Last August, BBC reported that Trump demanded that homeless people immediately leave Washington, DC, purportedly to make the city “safer and more beautiful than ever before.”
"The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY," Trump wrote on his social media site Truth Social on Sunday. "We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital. The Criminals, you don't have to move out. We're going to put you in jail where you belong."
“Alongside photos of tents and rubbish, he added: "There will be no 'MR. NICE GUY.' We want our Capital BACK. Thank you for your attention to this matter!"
“The specifics of the president's plan are not yet clear, but in a 2022 speech he proposed moving homeless people to "high quality" tents on inexpensive land outside cities, while providing access to bathrooms and medical professionals.:”
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1kzz4m3ll1o
For historical context, some of the first victims of the Nazi death camps were the disabled and people who were mentally ill. In a program called Aktion T4 in 1939. Even disabled children were gassed.
From Wikipedia:
"Aktion T4" is the name given to campaigns of mass murder by involuntary euthanasia which targeted people with disabilities and the mentally ill in Nazi Germany. The term was first used in post-war trials against doctors who have been involved in the killings. The name T4 is an abbreviation for Tiergartenstrasse 4, a street address of the Chancellery department set up in early 1940, in the Berlin suburb of Tiegarten, which recruited and paid personnel associated with Aktion T4. Certain German physicians were authorized to selct patients “deemed incurably sick, after most critical medical examination” and then administer to them a “mercy death.” In October 1939 Adolf Hitler signed a “euthanasia note”, backdated to 1 September 1939, which authorized his physician Karl Brand and Reichsleiter Philipp Bouhler to begin the killing.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aktion_T4
Absolutely disturbing and a clear sign (as if there weren’t many already) of the disdain of the ChristoNazi position in this regime. Their view is that if G*d has assigned you a disability, you should suffer and just accept it, remove yourself from public view, expect zero support and even less empathy. These people (the Trumpites) are truly troglodytes.
This is truly horrifying, but also not surprising that Stephen Miller is behind it. This man is sick with hatred.
Stephen Miller is absolutely evil, one of the most dangerous members of 🍊’s cabinet. A white nationalist too.
Very sound reporting, Georgia. The masses - that'd be us - need to function enough so that we are able to feed the oligarchs.
Morning, Lynell! Agreed; they need us just able enough to tend to their every whim.... and if I may add, THIS is also why the Epstein Files are so important. Those freaking whims...
Exactly. The chaos is the point — it keeps everyone reacting while the bigger damage happens quietly.
But the part they keep underestimating is people are paying attention.
It’s a balance between more people paying attention and how many people will have their vote “uncounted” because of voter suppression and election interference. There has been a lot of legislation passed in the states that implements the recommendations from the Heritage Foundation’s model “voter integrity” bills, which are also in the SAVE America Act.
We will see what the birthright citizenship ruling says if it drops this morning and how it could affect that balance.
Trump's MO is identical to that of organized crime, which Trump has some connections to: Bribery and extortion.
Exactly. Once you start viewing politics through the lens of organized crime, a lot of otherwise confusing decisions suddenly make sense.
Cassidy and Paul reversed their votes for the War Powers Resolution late last night after Cassidy was brought to the White House to meet with Trump. So Republican defiance lasted less than 12 hours. Paul said he reversed his vote because the war was over.
There was no news on whether the hostage bipartisan Housing bill was signed. Trump got his flex, so he can crow about how he is the only one in charge. That will just encourage him to push harder on the SAVE America Act, which is the prize the oligarchs want.
Trump got another win this morning when SCOTUS ruled in favor of his power to revoke Temporary Protected Status from over 350,000 Haitians so he can deport them back to Haiti.
In a less-than-stellar event, Trump’s rally, replacing the concert for the start of the Great American State Fair that performers boycotted, was a bust. Apparently, only 1000 people attended. Trump spoke for 30 minutes. People left early. So went the “rally to end all rallies.”
and that doesn't make him just that much more dangerous?
Yes, and this scares me more than anything. He’s like a cornered animal.
My exact thought. Ever since the election I have been saying that he will be like a rabid animal that has been cornered only this one has access to the nuclear codes.
Hello Colette... Mary Trump, his Niece, says that DJT is a SocialPath with no concern for others... It is always 'Me, Me, Me'... It seems that some in the GOP are becoming aware of that fact... DJT will become Nero as DJT watches DC Burn...
Hello Apache, Mary Trump has been saying this for years and she should know all about him, as a psychologist and family member who has seen how he operates first hand. It seems like many people didn’t want to listen to her (that’s a shocker!). But, I totally agree with you, he would sooner burn our entire country to the ground than to admit he was EVER wrong about anything.
He will burn the entire planet down with a nuclear war rather than say “sorry, I was wrong.” Those are four words you will NEVER hear him say.
I listened to a conversation between Ruth Ben Ghiat and Mary Trump which was especially interesting because of Ruth's specialty work on strongmen; she knows some horrific historical details about how it rarely ends well. There will be no end to Trump's effects, but turnarounds as we each reckon with how to be in a post-Trump world. Generative times.
Just like a domestic abuser...when cornered they are VERY dangerous, enough to kill what ever you love..you and your children ( country/ economy)
Absolutely, and that terrifies me about all the things that might happen because of his lack of anything decent! If he cannot win, he doesn't care about the extent of the destruction he causes.
Just ask the parents, Ligia, of the 168 Iranian schoolgirls he killed at Minab.
Phil, have you seen images of the Iranian soccer team wearing lapel pins that read "168"? What a statement!
... and yet, it seems only 53% of Americans feel that he should be held accountable!
What terrifies me the most Ligia, are all the concentration camps they are setting up.
I agree. I think that all these prisons that they are building all over the country are not for immigrants, but for those of us who participate in demonstrations and protests. Stephen Miller and his cohorts could care less that the Constitution's Bill of rights gives us the right to peaceably assemble and protest.
Apparently some of them are being closed, costing too much plus huge opposition from the local communities.
https://youtube.com/shorts/kvbeNw1no5o?si=pBH6-fjcM6JSRhC1
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/floridas-alligator-alcatraz-immigration-detention-center-has-closed-governor-says
I honestly had not considered that!
Yes. And that’s why the answer can’t just be watching what he does — it has to be remembering how many people are standing against it.
Fear works by making people feel isolated. But there are more of us than they want us to believe.
exactly, look at Bibi...he needs his war, genocide to stay in power
I have one answer for you. I’ve seen it here before:
EPSTEIN FILES !
EPSTEIN FILES !
EPSTEIN FILES !
EPSTEIN FILES !
EPSTEIN FILES !
EPSTEIN FILES !
EPSTEIN FILES !
EPSTEIN FILES !
EPSTEIN FILES !
EPSTEIN FILES !
The same question may be applied to Kegsbreath in asking what he was so worried about in firing a female 3-star admiral last August: for that matter, firing any competent military officer from their military position? In doing so, Nancy Lacore may have lost her position in the Navy; however, she was just recently elected to the House in one of South Carolina's districts. This administration clearly, at least, knows how to do one thing correctly: shoot itself in the foot - not once - but repeatedly. The leadership of a nation should be at the top of the apple barrel, if the apples rot, the culprit is often to be at the bottom. In this case, the leadership is at the bottom rotting away perfectly healthy apples at the top. This is worse than Bizarro in a Superman comic strip. I don't know how I may be able to explain what is worse than up is down or right is left, but tRump and co. seem to have a patent on how to do this. Democrats, when hopefully returning to power in the House and Senate, will have their work cut out. Wednesday, November 4th, the day after elections, democrats need to show their aggressive stance. No excuses!!
We are losing generations of skills and institutional knowledge with these crazy firings. Such insane, purposeful regression.
The true price, indeed. I wish more people understood just how high a price that really is. Firing the competent, the skilled, the educated, those with inside and outside knowledge and replacing the lot with boobs, stooges, drunks, scalawags and wormtongues is the quickest and surest way to destroy a once-great empire, to make a formerly strong nation irrelevant.
I cannot begin to testify just how horrendous such developments truly are.
Exactly. It says a lot when competence starts looking like a threat. Strong leaders aren’t afraid of people who know what they’re doing.
Strong leaders depend on having people who know what they are doing.
Exactly. Strong leaders surround themselves with capable people. Weak ones see competence as competition.
That difference explains a lot of what we’re watching.
Thank you for the thoughtful conversation here. This is why spaces like Heather’s matter so much — people are paying attention and connecting the dots.
I’ve been writing more about these same patterns and building a community around a simple reminder:
We have friends everywhere.
Free to read — always.
https://wehavefriendseverywhere.substack.com
I think it’s much simpler than that. Let’s be realistic, he will NEVER have to face accountability; he needn’t fear going to jail for raping underage girls, because that will never happen. Because IF democracy is revived in the US, it will be long after trumpty-dumpty is dead. And if not, he’ll simply flee to Russia, whining to Putin how mean the Americans are being to him, or to Argentina, or some other of his ‘friends’.
No, it’s much simpler: he’s afraid of losing. Period. He needs to be the biggest bestest president evah, better than Obama at last. His galactic-size ego simply cannot handle defeat. That’s all there is to it.
Exactly. That’s the part people underestimate. Someone terrified of losing power will do almost anything to avoid the moment when the applause stops and accountability begins.
Perhaps multiple truths co-exist here. Russia has compromising info on Trump, and he has no grace in losing (or anything).
And frankly I wonder if Putin would take him in. Trumpet would be another burden for Putin, because his use for trump would be over if he’s no longer president. Tbh, I’d be happy to start investigation with miller and hegseth.
You're absolutely right, but donny-boy thinks that he and Putin are bffs. "We have been through sooo much together..."
Just wait until he finds out he was only a tool… if he ever catches on.
From what I read, Putin has his own problems at the moment and is unlikely to want Trump to join his other ally, Assad.
Not to mention, Trump has already committed himself to calling Assad "a butcher and an animal." It will be interesting to see if they ever become next door neighbors 🤣.
Maybe so, Dutch; maybe so. I would like to remind everyone here who suspects, at the very least, that Trump will not have to bear any account for his criminality, that the mid-terms are soon coming. Let's at least wait and see. Should the democrats give Trump a "shellacking" in Obama's reference to the 2014 mid-terms, then Trump may well not get off so easily. He will be impeached and he will be removed. Now, what happens after that will be the interesting part: will Juvenile Delinquent Vance pardon Trump? If he does, he may do so at his own peril. If democrats win in a few months (big time), then Vance may well have to answer the same way Trumpty dumpty answered. There are still too many possibilities. Let's not rush into this with a fait accompli believing that Doofus is home free no matter what.
This.
He ran to line his pockets, massage his ego, and avoid prison. As is his usual MO, he overplayed his hand and is losing cards by the hour. He's been doing this his whole life. Over-promise, under-deliver. Over-leverage businesses to borrow money until the interest payments alone bury them. Same old Donnie. Always overestimates himself.
Exactly. I actually wrote about this recently — the pattern is always the same.
The people most desperate to avoid accountability are usually the ones telling everyone else not to look too closely.
Or... if he's NOT a Russian asset... what would be be doing differently if he was?
Husband of Ruth writing:
Shitforbrains is scared shitless of what’s in the Trump-Epstein Files.
no different than Bibi's need to stay in power. They'll stop at nothing
Yep. And that’s why keeping people afraid and isolated is part of the strategy.
The good news is millions of people see what’s happening. We are not as alone as they want us to believe.
The presidency for him, especially after the SCOTUS immunity ruling is the ultimate con, a chance to loot the government of our money while also raiding our privacy and stealing our data. It's also the perfect get-and-stay out of jail free card. But the jig is almost up. Accountability is coming for him, and it's pissed.
Accountability should also not miss its mark with certain SCOTUS sycophants. So many impeachment possibilities and so little time.
Absolutely. No position in government should come with immunity from accountability.
Presidents, Congress, the courts — the entire system only works when power has limits and the people holding it answer for their actions.
Exactly. He isn’t afraid of criticism. He’s afraid of accountability — and the power people have when they stop believing they’re alone.
It's his dead father.
Fred trump was a foul creature, hounding his older son and namesake to death, imagine how nasty that dumpty is still afraid of him.
FEAR?
EPSTEIN FILES
TAX RETURNS
and so much more. Jail.
So is Netandnotyou
John Kerry called Trump’s plan on ending the Iran war as “remarkably loosely-goosey”. Since Trump is a lame duck let him be a cooked goose.
In April John Kerry appeared on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert and said he thought what Trump is doing in Iran “is challenging the validity of his FIFA World Peace Prize.” 🤣
Here's the comment that should be at the very top of the heap. Absolute truth blended with tongue in cheek -- it's what's going to get us through the slog between now and November. Thank you.
FIFA is exactly as corrupt as the trump regime. A match made in heaven…
Trump hilariously told Axios last Thursday that the MOU was equivalent to Iran's unconditional surrender. He lives literally in a world of his own, estranged from family and from reality.
I’m not sure he’s “estranged from family” — I’ve never had the impression that they had any sort of “normal” family connection. He manipulates his kids the same way he manipulates business contractors and everyone else. It’s part of his personality disorder: no true human connection, only pawns to be manipulated for one’s own interests.
They need to keep him happy to collect their inheritances.
They are all taking turns cleaning his diaper, they are all part of the grift. When he’s gone they are going to be standing there with their thumbs up their asses trying to figure out which way to jump, Russia might be the only place where they will feel safe, and as soon as Putin is gone the Russians will give them up in a heartbeat. As ignorant as he is, he thinks that he’ll be ably to avoid accountability, karma is going to have teeth that will make him wish he had never been born.
For Trump and his family - it’s all about the money. Money that gets crammed into their pockets and purses. They have questionable values unless there is a $ in front of it. Unfortunately, this is not a condition that is exclusively Trumpian.
I grew up in very Conservative Christian environment and the following Bible verses are not meant to demean other religions/beliefs. They just explain my viewpoint on how money should be positioned in my life.
Timothy 6:10
Matthew 6:24
Luke 12:34
Tiffany would beg to differ.
?? Say more?? Does he have a warm, loving relationship with Tiffany? Or a made-for-reality-tv relationship?
He couldn’t pick her out of line-up.
ICYMI: (1) Ruth Ben-Ghiat is an internationally known and respected authority on authoritarianism, Professor of History and Italian Studies at NYU, author of “Strongmen”, and podcaster at Lucid. She interviews Marc Elias, a prominent voting rights lawyer who won over 60 cases against Trump lawyers in 2020 election fraud cases (The Elias Law Group), has argued cases in front of the Supreme Court and podcasts at Democracy Docket. “Ruth Ben-Ghiat interviews Marc Elias”. https://lucid.substack.com/p/ruth-ben-ghiat-and-marc-elias-on?r=1d2cea&utm_medium=ios
They discussed “The Authoritarian Logic of Election Denial” and “Risks to Voting by Mail and How to Support its Protection”. Trump has a plan to collect all the voter registration and voting in the country and then decide who is allowed to vote. He has had his Postmaster General recently issue a requirement that states release this information to Trump or the US Post Office won’t deliver their mail-in ballots. It’s a very informative discussion by two star advocates for democracy.
(2) Heather’s very informative “Politics Chat, June 18, 2026 - YouTube”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJj7aAxtXCA She discusses all the details of the Reflecting Pool and how it exposes Trump to ridicule because it shows what a terrible developer he is. She also discusses hoe Trump uses declarations of emergency to circumvent laws forbidding no bid contracts.
(3) Adam Kinsinger, who was a Republican member of the Jan 6th Committee, voted to impeach Trump and now is a podcaster has posted 6/24/26: “The Last Check on Presidential Power”. https://adamkinzinger.substack.com/p/the-last-check-on-presidential-power?r=1d2cea&utm_medium=ios
“In the coming days, the Supreme Court will confront a question the Founders thought they had already answered: How much power should one person have?
The Court is about to decide several cases that could define the scope of Trump’s authority. One case concerns Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship. Another involves the administration’s attempt to revoke legal protections from hundreds of thousands of immigrants. Others could expand presidential control over independent agencies and officials Congress deliberately insulated from political pressure.”
(4) NYC Mayor Mamdani hit a trifecta in endorsing three Democratic Party Primary Election candidates who subsequently won their primaries: Darializa Avila Chevalier (NY13), Brad Lander (NY10) and Claire Valdez (NY7). All progressives.
(5) Joyce Vance, Prominent American lawyer, Distinguished Professor of the Practice of Law at the University of Alabama School of Law, Senior Fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, prior U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, and podcaster interviewed Timothy Snyder, Professor and Temerty Chair in Modern European History at the University of Toronto, famous author of “On Tyranny” and thirteen other books “Strongmen Can Fail if We Act with Joyce Vance - YouTube”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOZxvxGViKw They both agree that if “we the people” regain the power of the Congress, we should not focus on just repair or buffing up what once was but on new beginnings. We have to talk clearly about why we won. Then (1) take money out of politics - excessive wealth is the cause of inequality. (2) investigate corruption - especially people around the President. Use violations of State law to prosecute so they can’t be pardoned. (3) Reform SCOTUS. They agree it has become rogue. It’s rulings are against the democratic renewal of our country. They are actively creating conditions for authoritarianism. It is no longer possible to venerate the Supreme Court - their rulings are a “folly”/a Greek tragedy in real time. They also agree that the popular metaphor that history is just a pendulum waiting to swing back is false. Or that the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice. There are no inevitable processes in history (T. Snyder is a prominent historian). The final word is “ACTION”.
“Freedom is not free.” U.S. Colonel Walter Hitchcock and engraved on the Korean War Veteran’s Memorial, Washington, DC and Simon Wiesenthal, Holocaust survivor, Nazi hunter and writer.
“In the coming days, the Supreme Court will confront a question the Founders thought they had already answered: How much power should one person have"?
"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty."
– John Adams, Notes for an oration at Braintree, Spring 1772.
Thank you for the reply. Yes the Founders were a different breed of men. John Adams was so devoted to justice and the rule of law that he volunteered to defend the British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre when everyone else refused because it was so unpopular. My son’s public school assigned each student a Revolutionary War figure and had them in the 5th grade present the person’s life in front of the class. The presentations showed how different these people were from the ethically challenged ones we have today. My son was assigned John Adams. It makes me question how well our k-12 schools are teaching civics. Should there be a requirement for high school graduation of being able to pass the citizenship examination given to immigrants applying for naturalization?
Yes! As a former teacher I totally agree that every high school student should have to pass a citizens test. On passing, they should be given a certificate of citizenship that they can use to enable them to vote. O f course only if they are born here or naturalized.
Great comment, thank you!
Thanks, Fred!
James Marriott, a contemporary Brit social critic on Substack, if I understand him correctly, advances the notion that modern communications technologies (e.g., cellphones, so-called 'social' media, etc.) have a negative effect on our ability to grasp and communicate thoughts, ideas, and complexities of all kinds. I believe him, but there are implications for democracies which depend on the demos to accurately grasp real differences and make responsible choices. At 90, and post COVID, I Know my capacities have diminished but I daily recognize that and have devised strategies for addressing them. It still requires attention -- much additional time, frequent checks on my work, and the like, but it also suggests a graduation test might be re-upped at five year intervals after, say, sixty-five . . . (oh my, the screams that I just heard from Substack rival the ten-minutes fire alarm test just now that building fire protocols oblige me to stay in my apartment with two separate alarms blaring in my room, index fingers in my ears lest I be driven crazy at the full ten minutes of the test . . . )
The "birthright case", Trump vs Barbara, will be published possibly as soon as TODAY Thursday, 6/25 or next Tuesday, 6/30/26
At 9:30AM Pacific this morning 6/25 I will be at SCOTUSblog.com with the Platform's Founder, AMY HOWE other lawyers & citizens.
I will post the UDATED results right here 👀or just go to SCOTUSblog.com.
Thank you, Counselor! I will be assisting a friend today and unable to sign on to the blog.
Got ya covered Sheriff.
**********************
Four (4) opinions published today: Durrell, the AI case, Wolford & Mullen vs DOE but, not the birthright case, Trump vs Barbara. but, hang on Barb. Almost all of Today's opinions were 6-3 as they take longer to write.
On the Wolford case Hawaii barred taking licensed guns on to Private property. Judged unconstitutional, but that's easily legislatively changed. Monsanto is about insecticide law. Sotomajor read her lengthy dissent from the Bench.
That leaves 9 more opinions to go this Term:
* Birthright Citizenship, Trump vs Barbara
*Executive Authority to Fire Fed Member, Trump vs Cook
* Executive Power Authority to Fire Agency Heads, Trump vs Slaughter
*Campaign Finance, NRSC vs FEC
*Mail Ballot Grace Periods. Watson vs RNC
*Transgender Athlete Cases, Little vs Hecox & West Virginia vs BPJ
Hat Tip: ALICIA MENENDEZ, MS Now Show, "On the Line". Alicia also Tipped me to the "Strict Scrutiny" Platform. I will check it out.
Thank you Bryan!
first off, Fred...i think your contributions are outstanding. thank you.
and yes. that system HAS to be revamped...
excellent summary of these podcasts. Vance and Snyder nailed it. A new Dem Congress must get $ out of politics ..it starts with ending Citizens United and that can only be done by increasing seats in SCOTUS and that can only be done if you have Dem controlled WH and Congress. AND most importantly the PEOPLE holding their elected to DO IT! The elected csn no longer just say they will in order to get elected they have to ACT. I'm looking to Rep Massie...said he'd release names in the Epstein files..not a peep. Hold them to account!!
Thank you for the reply. Massie may be receiving death threats and fear for his family’s and his own life. These people are ruthless and powerful elites. An unusual number of people associated with the case have died many in questionable circumstances that were labeled “suicide”. After she publicly challenged Trump, MTG received death threats and then moved to Puerto Rico. Right now Trump has succeeded in distracting the attention away from the Trump-Russia-Epstein files with the Iran war, the Reflecting pool disaster, the ballroom, etc.. But it’s not going away.
more and more I see how brave my Opa in Nazi Germany was to have defended his home town from Nazi military taking over the town ( he was the mayor) and for hiding an allie soldier in the barn. His life was threatened too. But he did it anyways. Town was saved.
more and more I see how brave my Opa in Nazi Germany was to have defended his home town from Nazi military taking over the town ( he was the mayor) and for hiding an allie soldier in the barn. His life was threatened too. But he did it anyways. Town was saved.
more and more I see how brave my Opa in Nazi Germany was to have defended his home town from Nazi military taking over the town ( he was the mayor) and for hiding an allie in the barn. His life was threatened too. But he did it anyways.
more and more I see how brave my Opa in Nazi Germany was to have defended his home town from Nazi military taking over the town ( he was the mayor) and for hiding an allie in the barn. His life was threatened too. But he did it anyways.
Fred, thank you for this lengthy and excellent synopses that must have taken you some time to compile. I’ve read/heard some of them and you hit the highlights for sure!
Fred, thank you for this lengthy collection of synopses that must have taken you some time to compile.
The war is OVER….WE WON… Let me see if I can help you here. Their entire military fleet is underwater or 48 warships but they process. Billions of dollars of warships
All their military aircraft is gone..billions of dollars Their industrial military complex and infrastructure is gone Their uranium is buried under grounds of disaster and rubble for now, but that will end soon enough Allow me to continue
In the suite was closed. They were losing $500 million a day of revenue.which is 80% of their economy Therefore they have a 50% unemployment rate right now approximately an 85% estimated inflation rate which something is over 300%
All of your original leaders, including the ayatollah, and alter, military leaders were destroyed in a bombing ..The secondary replacements who took their place was destroyed, in a bombing….Derek third tier of leader ship replacements were destroyedIn a bombing…they are trying to find new leaders who are willing to soon look like the previous three regimes, which are dead…
They recently killed 45,000 protesters in a big march because the populace is becoming a little bit less supportive with women walking around without heat jobs in miniskirts Which used to be punishable by stoning
And any and all money that’s going to be paid to them it’s going to come through American coppers, American companies, American suppliers, American banks, etc.
So please awaken from your truck induced delusion, evaluate what I printed up here because if this is any way to win a war I’m sure glad you’re not anywhere near a leadership position
Trump promised to help those Iranian dissidents. Instead, he bombed them and now he's abandoned them altogether.
You are either (1) being paid to promulgate propaganda or (2) have way too much time on your hands (“Idle hands are the devil’s workshop”) or are living in an alternative reality with “alternative facts” (Kellyanne Conway) defined by the leader of your cult - a folie a deux. If the latter, it is what psychologists might call delusional which usually requires treatment with a therapist.
It seems we keep saying Trump is doing this and now he’s doing that, when in fact he is not capable of coming up with these ideas on his own.
The mission here, is to identify exactly who it is that IS coming up with these ideas and root them out, name them, and take them down, hard. Now.
D.O. follow the money (aka The Epstein Files)
Yes, he IS the distraction while the Heritage goons dismantle our federal agencies.
I think those ideas are so dumb that it's perfectly reasonable to suppose that Trump is their author.
Criminal Donald now brazenly tries to cheat on and steal our November midterms.
He’s not even bothering anymore in the lies he spun in 2024 as to caring for and helping ordinary Americans. That game, over. Except for his continuing idiot, thuggish policies that put such a world of hurt on ordinary people.
Criminal Donald all his life has protected, covered up for only criminal rackets. These, the Trump/Epstein elites, have for decades mixed money laundering, arms dealing, double agenting, drug running, and girl trafficking with Putin’s oligarchs and those of Mohammed bin Salman, Bolsonaro, Bukele, Duterte, Erdogan, Milei, Modi, Netanyahu, Sisi, Xi’s cadres, and the worst of U.S. elites.
Read Jane Mayer’s “Dark Money.” Read George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison’s “The Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism.”
Heather's today details the combinations of lawlessness and incompetence that make criminal Donald's attempts both dangerous but incoherent, too.
Trouble is, how much does his buy-in to the international authoritarians tilt more to eventual and interlocking dangers than to our own mere Keystone cop spectacle?
But he has that winning personality, somewhere between Caligula, Hitler, Nero and Stalin.
please remember all the energy wasted on name calling later. instead of using it to come up with a plan on how to extricate yourself(ves) from the thickening quagmire.
Jane Mayer, George Monbiot, and Peter Hutchison do no name calling, Isaac.
They point out the deep, interlinked stratagems of the U.S. moneyed classes to widen the gap between their privileges and plight of the bottom U.S. 93%.
I hope Dem candidates for public office will address all such plans they can imagine going into November. My own: return essaying, civics, and humanities (ideally all three ever interconnected) as key to our schools, rather than testing's domination.
good that you elaborate, Phil. people who might be interested need road signs...
We have to count on outside forces to keep us afloat; China, Pakistan, Iran, even Saudi Arabia that has stepped up to guarantee the 12 billion.
You clearly haven't been reading any of Phil's posts.
Is that a reply to me, Russell? And, if so, would you please elaborate?
Based upon where Russell's comment falls, the answer is yes. Commenting on the comment you made that reads it is the second comment of Phil's on this thread.
Phil elaborates quite well, and his positions on the state(s) of education and communication are quite well articulated.
Sure. But most are from Swain/Habberman
can't touch that.
and slime mold...
He has never done an honest day’s work. Nor has he ever had to “pay the price” for his terrible decisions. He is the bad seed from the rotten tree. I hope that some of his “common people” supporters will wake up!
Why is Bill Pulte firing dozens of National Security experts? Check the Epstein Files for his dad’s role in helping Trump flip a $95 million property to a Russian oligarch.
https://thedemlabs.org/2026/06/24/bill-pulte-firings-epstein-file-connecton-map/
Follow the corruption behind Trump’s slimy green Reflecting Pool with this interactive map
https://thedemlabs.org/2026/06/21/reflecting-pool-corruption-map/
yes Deepak, we all need to get back to the Epstein files!
Only about half of the files have been released, and heavily redacted with accessibility and viewing restrictions. Still waiting for another 3 million TrumpEpstein Files that really don't ever seem to be forthcoming.
Well, here is a quiz for you!
Father’s Day Quiz: Name four Father-Son pairs connected to the Epstein Files?
https://thedemlabs.org/2026/06/21/epstein-files-father-son-pairs/
I know of the Donald Barr-Bill Barr connection and really it's how the entire Epstein scheme and tangled web of disgustingness was spawned.
There is also the Father-Daughter pairing connected to Epstein with Robert Maxwell and Ghislaine Maxwell. Ghislaine used her father's political and elite social networks to help Epstein build his infamous operation. The origin of Epstein's initial wealth has historically been a mystery. However, historical evidence and later legal and declassified FBI files revealed that Epstein may have operated as a financial intermediary for the Maxwell family, helping move and hide assets in the years immediately following Robert Maxwell's death.
Many of the Trump regime's actions can be explained either as a result of a desire for complete chaos or a response to the demands of a foreign adversary to whom Trump is indebted, namely Russia. I think the dismissal of foreign policy/intelligence experts is very much like the dismissal of scientists from government agencies. It speaks of contempt for expertise, and a desire to replace them with loyalists with blind obedience to the regime. Or it is a considered plan to rid the government of people who could respond to Russian interference that depends on Trump's divided loyalties.
🧨 Oppose Proposed Mail-In and Absentee Ballot Regulations 🧨
This comment period is open until 5pm EST on July 2, 2026.
“Under Postmaster General David Steiner, the Postal Service has proposed refusing to accept and deliver outbound federal election ballots unless states submit voters’ names, addresses, and unique barcodes for both outgoing and return envelopes through a new federal portal. The rule’s language attempts to soften that arrangement with bureaucratic assurances about “enrollment,” “verification,” and technical specifications, but its practical consequence is plain: a state that declines to hand over sensitive absentee-voter information risks having its ballot mail rejected at the postal counter. USPS Proposed Rule.pdf
“The U.S. Postal Service’s proposed ballot-mail rule marked one of the clearest attempts yet to convert a trusted public institution into an enforcement arm of Donald Trump’s campaign to restrict voting before the 2026 midterm elections.”
"A proposed USPS rule would let the federal government pressure states into surrendering voter data or risk having mail ballots rejected before they ever reach voters”
That is coercion disguised as logistics.
✅ Please see link below to read full article on the Substack app.
➡️ Email your comments, containing the name and address of the commenter, may be sent to: PCFederalRegister@usps.gov, with a subject line of “Ballot Mail.”
➡️ Mail or deliver written comments to:
Director, Product Classification, U.S. Postal Service, 475 L’Enfant Plaza SW, Room 4446, Washington, DC 20260-5015.
⛔️ Faxed comments will not be accepted.
'Return to Sender: Trump’s Postal Service Threatens the 2026 Vote'
from What Did Trump Do Today?
Jun 24 2026 | Substack
https://whatdiddonaldtrumpdotoday.substack.com/p/return-to-sender-trumps-postal-service?r=kxzps&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
Both Marc Elias and Ruth Ben-Ghiat urge all of us to send comments to the Postal Service." As Ruth states: "One of my maxims is to use every tool and space at your disposal. Because I can tell you in Putin's Russia or Erdogan's Turkey, they are not interested in having a comment period at all. They don't care. or they would use it to track you and arrest you if you disagreed."(Lucid video 6/24/26)
Marc Elias: " Like, fundamentally,it is the cynics who say that all is lost are just doing Donald Trump's work, because he wants you to think it's all lost, but it's not. When we fight back we can win. It doesn't mean we will win every time... " Jaksaa's information is a great tool for action, and it is one more thing we can do to "flood the zone" with a large response...
"...it is the cynics who say that all is lost are just doing Donald Trump's work, because he wants you to think it's all lost, but it's not..."
As Timothy Snyder presciently wrote in 'On Tyranny', first off “Do not obey in advance.
Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.”
It's Our republic...We the People can keep it if we really want it, if we vote en masse, if we use every tool and space available...
Challenge the validity of the voting list. Sue for a million for every error that denies a vote.
Thanks for the link
🤨 “Here’s a deal nobody offered you, and you’re about to fund it.”
‘An oil company leases a piece of your public land. It drills a well, pulls the oil, and posts a $10,000 bond up front as a promise to clean up the site when the well runs dry. Years later the company goes bankrupt, or it simply walks. The well stays where it is, thousands of feet deep, venting methane and leaking toxic brine into the ground. The cleanup runs north of $300,000. The company forfeits its $10,000 and disappears. You cover the rest.
The math rewards walking away.
☠️ Unplugged wells vent methane and benzene, a known carcinogen, and leak produced water laced with heavy metals and radioactive material into soil and groundwater.
These are real holes in real ground
An orphaned well is a federal term with a plain meaning. It’s a well with no company left to plug it and no bond big enough to do the job, so the responsibility lands on you.
✅ Comment on the rule. Go to the federal docket at regulations.gov under BLM-2025-0037 and tell BLM, in your own words, that you don’t want to inherit the oil industry’s cleanup bill. Specific comments carry more weight than form letters. If a well sits near where you hunt, camp, ranch, or draw your water, say so, and name the place.
✅ Then share this. Independent public lands journalism runs on readers, not advertisers and not grants. Forward this to the person who fishes the creek downstream of a lease, and check how your members of Congress have voted on public lands at our Congressional Public Lands Scorecard.
🔥 The land is yours.
🔥 So is the bill, unless enough of us say otherwise before August 24.🔥
‘Trump Admin Pushes More Public Lands Oil Cleanup Costs to Taxpayers’
MORE THAN JUST PARKS by WILL PATTIZ
JUN 24 2026 | Substack
https://morethanjustparks.substack.com/p/trump-admin-pushes-more-public-lands?r=kxzps&utm_medium=ios
.
“The company forfeits its $10,000 and disappears. You cover the rest.” <> The Friedman doctrine, extractive capitalism’s self-created get out of jail free card, incentivizes it. 47’s alignment with the petrochemical industry, crypto-currency & mainstream finance industry in general, is the work of malevolent fascist mafia colonialism. They are compelled to suppress freedom, democracy, and the concepts of regeneration, planetarity, subsidiarity, and selfrelience in the context of social responsibility. They can be boycotted into oblivion. They’re forcing a general strike. Trump-Vance, R. Congress & 6/9 SCOTUS are illegally suppressing our natural rights as described by James Otis Jr. in Boston, February, 1761 in his writing and publishing “Against Writs of Assistance”.
Most articles relating to the oil industry fail to mention that many of the companies that drill these wells set up each well or well(s) in close proximity as separate LLCs just so they can avoid any clean up costs of capping the wells.
If Exxon-Mobil, Phillips Petroleum, Shell, etc. had to clean-up all of the messes across the globe they have created, it would cost them big time. Plus the Big Ugly Bill gave Big Oil (and little Oil) huge tax breaks and subsidies.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-big-beautiful-bill-fossil-fuel-gifts-1235382436/
https://www.fractracker.org/2025/03/fossil-fuel-subsidies-free-market-myth/
The Roberts Court: The Nazi Republican Judicial Tool
An in depth review of John Roberts (bit.ly/4gEvZDR) as chief justice, partnering with his Federalist appointees Alito and Thomas, joined at the hip by a McConnell manipulated Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett all join to create a Nazi Republican tool to judicially advance the CNPP(Christian Nationalist Pedo Party) agenda now commonly thought of as Project 2025.
These Nazi Republican judicially robed hacks have been planted over the years to direct the demise of voting rights(removal of Sections 2 and 5 of the VRA), reproductive health care for American women(Roe v Wade), allowing campaign contributions to flood the political zone(Citizens United decision), ensuring that the minority Nazi Republicans could be justified in holding power even if they didn’t fulfill their obligations to WE the People(GW Bush presidential campaign succeeds over Gore settled by a conservative SCOTUS without all the Florida ballots being counted), and most recently giving Cheeto a wanna be dictator full immunity from actions as president. Pretty awesome work by JR and his partisan political judicial incompetents.
Now at the apex of their power the Nazi Republicans with all branches of government under their control, it’s now to power through holding onto power. So election subversion, interference, and if push comes to shove, a judicial ruling protecting the federal removal of ballots or voting machines. Time for SCOTUS expansion which should be one of the first on the agenda in 2029.
The war is OVER….WE WON… Let me see if I can help you here. Their entire military fleet is underwater or 48 warships but they process. Billions of dollars of warships
All their military aircraft is gone..billions of dollars Their industrial military complex and infrastructure is gone Their uranium is buried under grounds of disaster and rubble for now, but that will end soon enough Allow me to continue
In the suite was closed. They were losing $500 million a day of revenue.which is 80% of their economy Therefore they have a 50% unemployment rate right now approximately an 85% estimated inflation rate which something is over 300%
All of your original leaders, including the ayatollah, and alter, military leaders were destroyed in a bombing ..The secondary replacements who took their place was destroyed, in a bombing….Derek third tier of leader ship replacements were destroyedIn a bombing…they are trying to find new leaders who are willing to soon look like the previous three regimes, which are dead…
They recently killed 45,000 protesters in a big march because the populace is becoming a little bit less supportive with women walking around without heat jobs in miniskirts Which used to be punishable by stoning
And any and all money that’s going to be paid to them it’s going to come through American coppers, American companies, American suppliers, American banks, etc.
So please awaken from your truck induced delusion, evaluate what I printed up here because if this is any way to win a war I’m sure glad you’re not anywhere near a leadership position
When is the ticker tape parade, Rick? I'll mark it in my diary.
Hi, Rick, you've posted this screed 3 times that I have read, and possibly more. It doesn't get any better with repetition!
You know with all your motivation I think I’m probably gonna throw this up there a dozen times tomorrow and I’m gonna do it even in advance before people say anything that way maybe they won’t say anything once they know the truth and I’m gonna have a blast doing it too. You gave me the inspiration to be proactive instead of reactive so thank you very much. Now look what you’ve done lol O L
I’m at your beck and call. So I just posted it again. It’s amazing how many vacuous people reside here
Well, the reason it’s been posted three times is because three separate people questioned it and And they made the most ignorant comments that defy, logic, rational thought and intelligence. And I will keep posting it as long as I keep hearing it how’s that?
How did you learn the Pledge of Allegiance there pal?
Now you’re gonna learn the truth about the war in Iran. If you’d like, I can post it here again for you You call it screed unfortunately it’s Truth… You guys hate facts when you’re not in control of them. In fact, you give me some impetus Here I give you this for dessert
The war is OVER….WE WON… Let me see if I can help you here. Their entire military fleet is underwater or 48 warships but they process. Billions of dollars of warships
All their military aircraft is gone..billions of dollars Their industrial military complex and infrastructure is gone Their uranium is buried under grounds of disaster and rubble for now, but that will end soon enough Allow me to continue
In the suite was closed. They were losing $500 million a day of revenue.which is 80% of their economy Therefore they have a 50% unemployment rate right now approximately an 85% estimated inflation rate which something is over 300%
All of your original leaders, including the ayatollah, and alter, military leaders were destroyed in a bombing ..The secondary replacements who took their place was destroyed, in a bombing….Derek third tier of leader ship replacements were destroyedIn a bombing…they are trying to find new leaders who are willing to soon look like the previous three regimes, which are dead…
They recently killed 45,000 protesters in a big march because the populace is becoming a little bit less supportive with women walking around without heat jobs in miniskirts Which used to be punishable by stoning
And any and all money that’s going to be paid to them it’s going to come through American coppers, American companies, American suppliers, American banks, etc.
So please awaken from your truck induced delusion, evaluate what I printed up here because if this is any way to win a war I’m sure glad you’re not anywhere near a leadership position
You know what they say, pal can’t get enough of a good thing. So thanks for the motivation
Actually, you should be happy with Trump. He took one of the most important decision ever rendered by the court, and he sent it back to the voters. Oh wait a minute it wasn’t the Roberts court. I’m sorry there’s only certain courts you like and support and certain courts you don’t. Lmfnao
I would pay $10,000 tomorrow maybe even more just to have you meet a Nazi and have him treat you like a Jew. Until you’re dead. That would be worth it for me.
Never use that word it just proves how fucking ignorant people can be and you’re at the bottom of the sea and you’re filling the oceans with whale shit
Not to mention that there is no such thing as Christian nationalism doesn’t exist, except in your distorted mind if you have one at all
Thank you Professor Richardson. In some respects, the Trump plan to manufacture exhaustion is working.
For example the fact that the DOJ is still not complying with the Epstein-Trump-Maxwell file transparency act is no longer front page. Every corrupt action of this administration, or criminal organization as is more accurate, is quickly superseded by the next corrupt action (https://bomdia.substack.com/p/the-architecture-of-corruption).
His Cabinet is full of cronies lacking experience, competence and often, both. His “negotiating team” consisting of his son in law and a real estate developer coupled with an alcoholic Secretary of War Crimes who likes to strike fishing boats with missiles and belongs at The Hague.
At least Musk, Ellison, Thiel, and Bezos have their tax cuts, Milei has his $20 billion, and the criminal elect has his gifted jet (that cost $934 million of taxpayer funds to retrofit).
Rather than an inadvertent mistake, these episodes epitomize Trump’s approach to intentionally creating and layering controversy upon controversy
as a continual, never-ending cycle of diversion and distraction, which is one of his favorite, recurring tactics he deploys repeatedly to great effect.
Trump's Perpetual Distraction Machine is an ever-spinning engine of new headlines, intentionally outrageous statements, and sudden moves designed to
overwhelm, scatter, and redirect public attention—especially when he's intent on driving attention away from bad news.
Although it often appears to be an emotional, impulsive-looking delivery, it can be entirely calculated and intentional as a diversionary tactic to shift
attention away from tough news cycles and wipe the slate clean on issues he doesn’t want to talk about, dodging accountability and depth.
(i saw this somewhere some time ago and copied it).
Thank you Isaac. It truly is manufacturing exhaustion.
Trump is really trying hard to imitate his buddy Putin. At the same time that it is all unravelling for that master of propaganda.
Zelenskyy's Ukraine is hammering Putins war machine and economy, taking out fuel and logistics. He has alot of "cards". The Iranian's, as much as I hate to say it, have The card in that fight. Trump has a fetid pond of his own making. His former allies look sadly in his direction, knowing what was once, is no longer...
Unfortunately we're all about to feel the massive economic pain this fools folly has wrought. No matter where on this planet we are..
Hey Frank, this Post by me is gonna be a pleasure for me because you mentioned the word Zelenskyy. Let’s test you out because I’ve asked 4000 of you in the past year and a half and only four people out of 4000of you have given me the right answer. So here’s the big question.
WHY ARE RUSSIA AND UKRAINE FIGHTING RIGHT NOW? WHY IS UKRAINE IN THE POSITION THAT IT’S IN RIGHT NOW HAVING TO DEFEND ITSELF AGAINST RUSSIA INCURSION. TAKE YOUR TIME DIG A LITTLE BIT DEEPER NOT ONLY YOU’RE GONNA FIND THE ANSWER, BUT IT’S GONNA REALLY PISS YOU OFF
Everybody knows that Russia has invaded Ukraine - everybody, even that idiot Trump.
Cheers Russell. I want to see that fool come back after the crash. Im tipping he is nowhere to be seen.
The courts are going to be very busy between now and November!
Working ovetime.
"A party can't fully insulate itself from electoral backlash through redistricting. Redistricting is a seawall. It stops modest tides. An electoral tsunami comes in right over top of that seawall."
— Justin Levitt, Professor, LMU Loyola Law School · Feb. 18, 2026
Si, se puede!!!
To a blue wave tsunami & tidal surge to flush the fascism and wash away the Trumpian green slime of corruption, cruelty and criminality.
Democracy will die in November. Why? Because Trump ALWAYS finds ways to get around the law... either through loopholes ("emergencies") or through coercion (extortion, such as being told voting by mail will not happen). And all the pro-democracy judges in the world CANNOT STOP TRUMP FROM MAKING THE FIRST MOVE! Judges only REACT. As long as Trump gets to act first, we are doomed. Sorry for the bad news. But legal people like Marc Elias are not going to save us. Who will? WE THE F-ING PEOPLE... BY PROTESTING IN SUCH HUGE NUMBERS THAT WE CANNOT BE STOPPED ... AND BY VOTING IN SUCH HUGE NUMBERS **IN PERSON*** (F VOTING BY MAIL) THAT WE OVERWHELM ALL OF TRUMP'S ATTEMPTS TO WIN BY RIGGING THE GAME!!!
Voting is not going to help, because there won’t be any elections in November. trumpty-dumpty will simply declare a nation emergency and have the elections cancelled. Protesters will be labeled ‘traitors’ and ‘domestic terrorists’ and will be shot on the spot by ICE or the military. It’s absolutely naive to think that the Orange Goblin King won’t go that far. Buckle up.
Well, they can’t shoot all of us… not if the protests involve 50 to 100 million Americans. I appreciate your pessimism. But we outnumber them… by a lot. And that will always be our advantage.
You're absolutely right, Steve. But it is about time that American citizens are actually going to use this advantage against the Orange Toddler Emperor...
We have the power, Mike. Whether we choose to use it is up to us! John Denver and George Burns told this story well in “Oh, God!”
https://youtu.be/slMw2liPKY8?is=9QN38inrzbwwCfOV
So it is!
"respecting the hell out of the United States and its President, ME, ..."
Oratory for the ages.
Maine???
Oh right: HIM!
The very same.
🤣🤣🤣🤣
That’s all he thinks about. ME, ME,ME!