Last night, one of our heroes, former Congressman Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) detailed President PissyPants’ savage attack against Kaitlan Collins of CNN for daring to ask him what his opinion was about Senate Republicans blocking his planned $1.8 billion slush fund to reward January 6 instigators and conspirators. “I don’t know, I have to talk to my lawyers about it” — came the usual blah-blah, mealy-mouthed ‘I just work here’ non-answer.
She wouldn’t let it go. “But what’s your decision on it?” In Adam’s words, “that simple follow-up — calm, professional, simple — is what real journalism looks like. Not a gotcha. Just accountability. The kind of question that requires an actual answer.”
President Phony-Baloney Whineybitch then unleashed a torrent of invective against her, and her employer, calling CNN “crooked as hell”…”a very corrupt organization,” then, like a Benzedrine puff adder, spat out a vicious ejaculation of sulfuric acid. “‘A corrupt reporter standing right there, never smiles,’ he said. ‘You never see a young, beautiful woman who never smiles. I never see a smile on her face.’”….”I see her standing there with hatred in her eyes, like she has hatred, because we had borders, because we have a strong military, because we cut our taxes…’
Rancid Powder Puff meet Steel Magnolia. He told her she was a conservative from Alabama…“I’m still from Alabama, sir” — her response. Just the facts, asshole. No drama. No histrionics. No losing focus. Just eyes on the prize — a reporter doing what she’s paid to do.
Why is it so many women seem to be doing the one thing so many men still seem incapable of? Nancy Pelosi standing over him in October 2019 — “why is it with you all roads seem to end with Vladimir Putin?”
Let’s hear it for those Steel Magnolias showing us what real balls actually look like in practice.
The real mystery isn't why the wheels are falling off the bus.
It's why anyone expected a man who suggested drinking bleach as a cure for COVID would suddenly become an expert in economics, healthcare, agriculture and public administration.
The bus was always going to end up in a paddock somewhere.
The answer to your question of why anyone expected Trump to do the job is two fold.
1. The job Republicans elected Trump to do is to destroy government as we know it - a balance of legislative, judicial, and executive powers working with independent government agencies to protect constitutional rights, promote the general welfare of the people, provide equitable taxation and government regulation and protect the national security with strategic alliances. They elected Trump to institute the 'unitary executive' - whether you call it Father Knows Best, Biggest Bully On The Block, or The Divine Right of Kings. Which brings us to point 2 - The Politics of Faith
2. The Founders instituted government based on The Scientific Method - coming to consensus through reasoned debate of empirical evidence. It is how all three branches are supposed to work to legislate, adjudicate, and administer government. It is how we transfer power. They barred religion from state activities not only to prevent government establishment of state religion and imposition of the absolutes of religious creed, but to keep irrational habits of mind - belief - out of government proceedings. The leap of faith - denying empirical evidence to embrace metaphysics - essential to the pew and prayer rug, is toxic to democratic government. When George W. Bush expected us to believe he could look into Putin's heart and see he was a good man. And when he expected a cosplay pronouncement of Mission Accomplished to make it so. Republicans were pandering to base who already believed - via KKK Grand Wizard and GOP gadfly David Duke - that Putin was The Great White Hope of Christian Nationalism, and promoting government based on acts of magical thinking. That is, crafting a GOP base primed for government unmoored from evidence and paving the way for a Trump administration propped up by a judiciary and legislature using their powers to spin Trump's bad impulses into worse facts on the ground.
In other words, we still need to solve the one simple problem of getting everyone to intentionally sing the (moral) “all for one and one for all” song like three musketeers. Meanwhile, by default, too many people are singing the (not moral) “all for one but only when the one is not everyone” song like three stooges.
My nomination: Jon Ossoff in Atlanta unleashing on Trump on May 31, 2026, is the best speech by an American politician in the 21st century. Did I overlook something?
He is my senator and I am very proud of how he is standing up to this regime! Talarico and AOC are not backing down. We need more of these younger people in positions of leadership in Congress.
Yes, and while I give them credit for having a plan of attack that worked to get them this far, I never figured out what their image of America was supposed to end up being. You can't have only a relatively small number of rich, white people around because none of them most likely know how to install a toilet, do a tune up, or even mow a lawn. Who would be their bitches in the long run? Not me. And what kind of society does that create? I suppose we'll find out.
Those Republicans after power *could* think. The problem was they did not think deeply enough.They were smart but not very, just enough. So they were stupid and dangerous. Enough fell for it. Their smarts were how to win us over, getting a good bead on our vulnerabilities. They connived. They used the media. They were salesmen. They sold the *trickle down* theory.
Then came the BIG CON: Trump with his swaggering swaying, lulling, sureness, who knew nothing about governing. And still does not... nor care for it. But we the people, half of us bought it (we needed a *business man*) We were not very smart either-again in aggregate- enough of us.. We kept divided and we were conquered.
No one and nothing lasts forever. And if we are going to have democracy we had better *really* pay attention and *really* think, including teaching our children, including too and about history (as here done so well by HCR).
Good old Grover, and the Americans for Tax Reform. I can't count the times we stayed across the street at the Washington Metro at Metro Center Station (to me the best spot to take the most subway lines to anywhere we wanted to go in the D.C area).
The ATR headquarters where the Wednesday meetings were held was described in Wikipedia included, "...The meetings have been called "a must-attend event for Republican operatives fortunate enough to get an invitation", and "the Grand Central station of the conservative movement." Medvetz (2006) argues that the meetings have been significant in "establishing relations of ... exchange" among conservative subgroups and "sustaining a moral community of conservative activists..."
Its proximity to the Metro Station makes it easy to see why the would compare it to Grand Central station. I always had trouble deciding who was doing the most damage to our country in those days I sometimes watched who was going in and out of their building (never saw anyone I recognized while waiting for others), but Grover was always in the top half of those I blamed like Roger Stone, Newt Gingrich, and Mitch McConnell.
But why oh why don't the Republicans care about the huge increases in our national debt which could lead to another very real crisis of confidence in the USD? Just because their liege is a multiple bankrupt doesn't necessarily mean our whole country needs to be.
Barack Obama answered that question for David Axelrod at the 20 minute mark of The Axe Files, E538, when he quoted Putin as saying, "I don't have to get anyone to believe anything. All I have to do is convince enough people not to believe in anything." And now, the GOP thinks the way Putin told them to think.
Multiple bankrupt ….another well worded sum up ….a very long process setup 2025 culminating the perfect puppet arriving showing the world’s worst the proverbial ‘how to’ of blow yer own horns.
Classic ..double down damage..gotta be a song for the ages in there for sure…
National debt added by W. Bush: 6.1 trillian. Under Obama: 8.4 trillion. Under Trump I: 7.8 trillion. Under Biden: 8.4 trillion. And you single out Republicans?
Take a look at where the money is going. From Democrats - to the people (health care, environmental protection, affordable living, freedom of the press, freedom of speech). From Trump: payments to criminals, money to him and his family, statues, ballroom, arch, destruction of soft diplomacy, suing the US, attacks on the media, incompetent leaders, loss of health care, children thrown off SNAP, innocent people in concentration camps. Seems pretty clear why his sycophants in Congress and his party are getting a bad rap.
For a rational comparison you'd have to analyze each president's budget, how it was allocated, and which expenditures contributed to the debt. I wouldn't inflict that task on anyone.
As for what you say here, our budget this year is a tad under $8 trillion. What you agglomerate is a small faction . You're mixing up some categories: Trump isn;t collecting money from the budget. What I agree is his corrupt, or at least improper, profit is in the private sector, nothing to do with government; I don't know what "soft diplomacy" is or how much it costs, and suspect you may not either; "incompetent leaders" are in every administration and difficult to quantify, but true, more here than usual but still no $$ attributable; loss of health care is not an expense, its a saving, but it depends on what you mean, which is not clear; SNAP payments are a complex issue, many are fraud or fake, some are not. And most congressional members are sycophants when their president is in power, nothing new there. How do you think Oabamacare passed by a single vote?
As for "innocent people in concentration camps," two problems. Fisrt, you presumably mean detention centers, since the US has no concentration camps. And the people there are not innocent. They are present here illegally. Some have asylum petitions pending, but until or unless granted they are illegals. Where should they go, to Marriott Bonvoy or Quality Inns?
As for "concentration camps," that is profoundly demeaning to the millions of Jews, Romas, gays, mentally ill and political prisoners who know what concentration camps really are.
Its fine to be angry or frustrated, as you and most commenters seem to be, but when your facts are wrong or imprecise, its doesn't help anyone and leads to, I think, the kind of dangerous conflict we are living through.
Thanks for that. I hadn't seen that alignment of data. It is consistent with the numbers I reported but has other interesting ways of looking at it. It seems to affirm that Trumps' deficits are a bit less than those of Democrats, but regardless, our debt situation is frightening. Given that our defense spending is below past levels (3% of GDP vs. a usual 5%), and given that no one touches the social security/medicaid/medicare third rail (most of the commenters her appear to be partaking of those entitlements), the way out is elusive. The only way that is plausible, if speculative, would be a roaring economy.
Solid analysis. I said as many as thirty years ago that I believed Republicans wanted to install a dictatorship. People thought I was crazy. And now here we are.
Dave Dalton, lin- wrote “Enlightenment.” That’s my favorite word. It’s what all humanity needs. Arriving at the words Jefferson wrote because he understood them is both complex and perhaps as unattainable as “love your neighbor as yourself,” but the goal is the peak of human endeavor.
Thanks to both of you for writing for both of us and all of US who are mute with distress and fatigue.
Virginia, yes fatigue is setting in for me but I believe we all can play a role in salvaging the Constitution and Rule of Law. I do what I know how to do, write. Others do things I’m not good at. I depend on them
You are not mute. Your participation gives us strength to fight off the fatigue
“If liberty means anything at all, it means something worth saying that some people don’t want to hear.” - George Orwell
I fear there are some people in the audience who don’t want to hear what I have to say today. But I appreciate your forbearance in this small act of liberty." - Scott Pelley, Journalist
“It’s not much, but it beats burying your head in fear and ignorance.” - Dr. Samer Attar, orthopedic surgeon and professor of surgery who volunteers in Gaza and Ukraine.
These quotes are from the substack of political cartoonist Steve Brodner. This entry honors Scott Pelley - the journalist recently fired from 60 Minutes, for literally speaking truth to the powers at the network. The quotes are from a graduation speech Pelley gave. The full speech is included in the substack
Pelley, Patriot - by Steve Brodner - The Greater Quiet
Along the lines of enlightenment I sometimes wonder if all this chaos had to happen in order for humans to evolve. Perturbation brings about an escape to a higher order.
Susan, true it has. But look at what happened to the Greeks and the Romans. We are heading at AI speed back to the Huns. Will Americans wake up and look at the history that wasn’t a school requirement.
What's your evidence that "The job Republicans elected Trump to do is to destroy government as we know it" -- and what does that even mean? Those who voted for Trump (who weren't, sad to say, all Republicans) did so for an array of reasons, many of them based on racism and/or insufficient knowledge.
If you read Jane Mayer’s book Dark Money you will find the evidence you seek, but in a nutshell this purposeful destruction has been carefully planned by “conservative” billionaires for decades; it reached critical mass with the propaganda wing of MAGA
It was well on the way with the election and re-election of Reagan, whose tax and economic policies, come to think of it, greatly increased the number of billionaires -- and whose white, often Evangelical and/or Catholic base provided the foundation for MAGA.
As to "careful planning," I don't believe that Donald Trump is what the Koch brothers, the Mercers, et al. had in mind, especially the current Trump. A Bush II (with Cheney in the background) would have been much more to their liking. But this is the endgame, and we'll see how it plays out. Much depends on whether "we the people" can persuade the Democratic Party to take democracy seriously. (Mayer's DARK MONEY is essential reading to this day. USians in general don't think seriously enough about economic power.)
I agree that the Koch’s et al would have preferred that someone other than Cartoon Buffoon Donny had captured the MAGA wave, but that’s the racehorse they got saddled with. You can’t plan for every eventuality, but I’m thinking they’ve got a more serious Putin type being groomed for 2028; someone NOT Vance or Rubio
Susanna, I have a different observation. Republican operatives – not GOP voters who are just the rabble falling for the sales pitch – have believed that government should be run like a business. They have been planning a corporate-style government for many decades, with an elite "board of directors" and a "CEO" who sits at the head of the table by vote of the board members, not the employees or their customers.
To your point, I doubt the powerbrokers had a cabinet of idiots in mind, but they have been useful in demolishing the existing government so it could be replaced, so they've been allowed to continue running amok.
As I have often opined, Reagan was the proof of concept, Bush 2 was the crash-test dummy and Trump is the production model. He is exactly what they wanted; a manipulable figurehead who distracts from the real wielders of power. You may be correct that GOP operatives hadn't anticipated dementia incapacitating Donald. Or maybe they had. Vance was chosen for – not by – Donald. Vance has demonstrated that he is willing to become whoever or whatever is required to sit at the head of the table.
True, racism was a big factor for many to support Trump. "The Anger Games: Who Voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 Election, and Why?" published in the Feb. 2018 edition of "Critical Sociology." More recently, Charlie Kirk's white Christian nationalism. Check out Barbara McQuade's book, "Attack from Within," (2024.) She has a new book, "The Fix." So, what do we have? Corruption supported by ignorance and prejudice (race, misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, etc.) That's Corruption with a capital "C."
That’s true but it’s hard to deny the Republican fixation on reining in the government. It became an obsession under Reagan. Part of it was racism, the idea that the government was wasting money on non whites.
lin•, this is a great assessment. "The leap of faith - denying empirical evidence to embrace metaphysics - essential to the pew and prayer rug, is toxic to democratic government" is an excellent and concise assessment of how government and religion are antithetical to each other.
Ally, they don't have to be; they just need to be keep separate. People can believe what they want, but the government cannot promote religion. I note in the letter today that the agricultural secretary is bragging about how she has cost people their access to food. This is the same damn hypocrite who claims to be a Christian.
Absolutely correct. It is easy to blame Trump and his Administration for the dismantling of our government, but Nixon, Reagan, the Two Bushes - all continued to build the coalition of misfits. Republican in Congress have been elected by voters who want to be certain anyone on the rung below them does not get a chance to better themselves. Whether it is the Welfare Queen or Willy Horton or any of the mythical characters Republican Presidents have conjured, it feeds into the greedy and mean-spirited of this country. And there seem to be many of them!
Willie Horton was not a mythical character. He was a murderer and his murder on furlough was part of a serious national concern about crime. The lax bail laws in NYC, very comparable, have led to horrible murders there to the point where many are afraid to take the subway.
The very wealthy believe that they can do anything that they want to with no consequences. The Constitution has the audacity to allow consequences, so it must be abolished. King Con has a proven track record of destroying anything he touches. Thus, to destroy the US, put Agent Orange in charge. Instantaneous destruction! No more consequences for the favored few! Hear them cheering!
Your comment, Mr. lin, sums up a history that, in today's climate, almost seemed too good to be true and doomed from its inception. When Jefferson wrote "all men are created equal" while owning slaves and impregnating (7 times) one of his slaves ... hypocrisy was settling in. The title of the book by Jeffrey Rosen, The Pursuit of Liberty, with its subtitle How Hamilton vs Jefferson Ignited the Lasting Battle Over Power in America, was prescient and foretold the threats to democracy we are experiencing today.
Am a bit confused. So we should hate Jefferson? Do you know whether Hemmings consented or was forced? Should we at least remove all books from libraries written by antisemites? That would create so much more space! Should we take down Clinton's portrait from the White House because he was plausible accused of rape? Take down Michelle Obama's portrait because she wrote. a racist tract while at Princeton?
This is the kind of comment - scold - which is unnecessary. I was merely reporting what I have read . I made no recommendations re other presidents’ misdeeds. It was a historical reference. You could have responded without sarcasm… I would have accepted a more reasoned argument and you could have pointed out our social/political differences politely and informed by cogent empathetic reflection.
If scolding and sarcasm were inappropriate this comment section would implode. I did not mean either. Your Jefferson/Hemmings reference is often used to diminish the historically revolutionary contributions of Jefferson, which is inappropriate. I simply pointed out that historically significant figures of often deeply flawed or inconsistent. While rape (Clinton) and racism (M. Obama) have long been inappropriate if not morally and legally wrong, slavery was practiced worldwide and was not in any way uncommon in the 18th century. If American slavery was in any way unusual, it was that it didn't even rank in the top 15 of countries or civilizations that had it.
So I was bothered by your inconsistency and absence of important context.
And I read Rosen's book. He is a thoughtful if biased observer.
Religion is the only socially sanctioned delusional system. Moderate believers shield the extremists, as they give credibility to the whole system of fantasy.
"Republicans were pandering to base who already believed - via KKK Grand Wizard and GOP gadfly David Duke - that Putin was The Great White Hope of Christian Nationalism, and promoting government based on acts of magical thinking."
You should never drink before commenting, let alone early in the morning.
There are many, many, many more Democrats that are pro Hamas, pro Hezbollah, pro Qatar, and pro-Iran than there are Republicans who are "pro Putin" (BTW I don't know of any).
Hello Kazz... Welcome Australia!... Besides 'Recommending Drinking Bleach', by April 2020, DJT got bored with the Epidemic, and declared that DJT had no responsibility in dealing with it... OBW: Did DJT drink Bleach when DJT contracted COVID when DJT was Airlifted to Walter Reed?...
By all accounts, he did not Apache. I guess it's easier to tell people not to fear COVID when your treatment plan involves a military hospital, a helicopter, experimental drugs and a six-figure medical bill paid by someone else, lol.
The old Rose Garden Ceremony for the SCOTUS Barrett. Her children I think had all been vaccinated and it was both an inside outside event so even President Jenkins of NDU was exposed and got it among many others who were there. It was beyond irresponsible and created an even larger huge shadow over SCOTUS Barrett in my eyes.
Let's pull the wheels off in November. The republicans in Congress are the ones keeping the wheels on by their weak, pathetic excuses for that traitor, and their lack of action on behalf of America's people. November 3 midterm elections can park that treasonous bus, and we are the ones who can make that happen.
I certainly will not. A well known kid's author in my neighbourhood, died from Covid. He spent his life and money setting up clean water systems in third world countries without talking much about it. He did this because it was the right thing to do not for the applause.
It's not a mystery. As Kamala Harris repeats again and again: this has been decades in the making. It's an eternal revolution inside the GOP, from neoliberalism to neofascism, and that evolution was mostly completed during the Biden administration.
The wheels aren't falling off the buss because the GOP is in the driver's seat and it WANTS a fascist regime. It's installing it step by step, day by day, now that "we the people" gave it full control over DC.
None of this has anything to do with Trump. Trump is merely their clown in chief, an actor who keeps us all constantly distracted and deranged so that we don't see what the GOP is doing to the US.
People have been observing the wheels falling off the bus since the felon’s first term. The problem is that this bus doesn’t require wheels. It runs on hot air, lies, and thievery. And there is no indication that it will run out of any of that soon.
To Kazz: together with his delusional and incompetent staff who also just make things up, then you add the crime boss at the head of the executive branch coupled with fraud after fraud after fraud on top of fraud....
That really is a mystery and continues to boggle my mind. Why so many are taken in by this fake president and continue to gravitate towards him. He is a nothing burger yet the die hards are still there. At this point it seems like something has affected their brains.
I’m sure ‘Reality TV Star’ also had something to do with it Susan. If the people can put a demented Hollywood cowboy into office, then it’s anyone’s game - same reason why Obama became the first black president. Despite rigged elections, we cannot underestimate the power of the people’s choice - every reason for the 70 million who sat at home to get out and vote.
Susan, did you miss the summation lin• provided above your comment? Although the U.S. was NOT founded as a Christian nation (contrary to evangelical myth), Christian faith has been accommodated by U.S. government since its inception. Indeed, religious faith does affect the believer's brain. The effects are not all bad, but the believer's brain is conditioned to accept assertions for which there is no evidence. Then it becomes a matter of deciding where one draws the line between spirituality and fantasy. Evangelicalism draws the line much further from reality than mainline religions.
Survey after survey show that evangelicals make up approximately 85% of the MAGA base. I would contend that the remaining 15% may not be religious, but they've been influenced by an evangelical parent, grandparent or some other family member.
Because many women are used to this sort of targeting and finding ways to stand up to it or neutralising it. Most men don't have the same life experiences of being targetted and they worry about being 'shamed' in public if Kim Jong-Don doesn't back down when they confront him with the same kind of follow-up. What we're seeing her is the learning that comes of centuries of cross generational lived experience.
America spent decades eradicating the New World screwworm, a hideous little parasite that lays eggs in open wounds so its offspring can feast on living flesh. Naturally, the Trump era heard this and thought, “Finally, a governing philosophy.”
The screwworm does not build anything. It does not heal anything. It does not improve the host. It simply finds weakness, crawls in, multiplies, and acts like the wound belongs to it. In fairness, that is more policy detail than most Trump speeches contain.
The allegory is almost too perfect. You neglect public health, gut expertise, mock science, fire the people who know where the disinfectant is kept, and then act shocked when the parasites return. This is not draining the swamp. This is selling naming rights to the maggots.
And like any good infestation, the problem is not just the biggest worm on camera. It is the ecosystem that protects it: the flatterers, the loyalists, the cable-news wound dressers who insist the infection is actually healing beautifully, maybe the best infection anyone has ever seen.
The screwworm is not subtle. It enters through damage and makes the damage worse. So does authoritarian politics. It feeds on fear, grievance, ignorance, and institutional decay. Then it calls the decay patriotism and demands applause.
The lesson is simple enough for even a think tank to understand: parasites flourish when the body stops defending itself. Democracy, like livestock, needs inspection, care, science, and people willing to say, “No, that is not populism. That is a larva.”
So yes, the screwworm is back. But the political species has been with us for years, chewing through the republic one open wound at a time.
Isolation. Sterilization. Concentration. Ultimate eradication. Final solution. Push it all back beyond the borders south where it has been held at bay. Give it back to South America. Meanwhile, back at the ranch the real estate changes hands again.
POD management. Investor driven. Ranch manager change every two years to avoid community attachment. If you are fence neighbors they have a plan for incorporating your improvements into expanding the Pod. I recommend you run rangy longhorns or buffalo to see how their fence building skills play out.
I read an account today in more detail about how screwworm was defeated before. They released millions of sterile bugs, and that wasn’t a treatment for the infected animal it wasn’t a method to eradicate the screwworm population. Well apparently they tried doing that recently but they didn’t have enough of them or they didn’t do it soon enough I’m not sure what but that’s why we have this problem. And of course the geniuses in the Trump administration don’t know anything about their jobs so there you go.
It is the women he is always directing his hatred towards. He belongs on an island of all men. A prison island. We should all be crying lock him up, lock him up....
I'm very familiar with the problem of defining the murky phrase "high crimes and misdemeanors," as are most constitutional scholars.Nothing personal, but I suspect you don't know what it means either. And Vance is not a cabinet member. He holds an Article II position. So you'd have to impeach him too. That would elevate Mike Johnson. Then you'd have to impeach him. That yields the Senate president pro tem, Grassly. Don't like him? Impeach him and get Rubio.
It has been discussed in several Substacks I subscribe to. If you feel it is not practical than don't sign it. Let the rest of us do the heavy lifting while you wait until death for a sure thing.
I was trying to be polite. It's a silly, futile, performative and ultimately self-defeating idea. It's also impossible, literally, for the reasons I explained.
ICTT, women have ALWAYS been the front line against fascism, totalitarianism, and corruption. And the result has ALWAYS been white males panicking that they are irrelevant (hint: they mostly are) leading to the death and dismemberment of women. In pre-Revolutionary France, women had the legal right to riot when the price of bread rose to starvation level. Not men. Women. However, men DRESSED IN DRAG in order to participate in the bread riots. Emma Goldman took no prisoners: she was an equal opportunity critic of Stalinism, fascism, and the nativist policies of early 20th-century Rethuglicans. And she was punished for it. Rachel Carson, despite ridicule from the white male establishment, blew the whistle on the detrimental effects of DDT and invented the ecology movement. I could go on--there are plenty of examples from the ancient world and the medieval world of similar actions by women as well. The question is: why do the other journalists sit silently by and let one of their colleagues get beaten up by this deranged, Adderol-addled moron?
There's a saying I used to teach to my Officers ... Arguing with a fool is like wrestling a pig. All you do is get dirty and the pig enjoys it. It seems that Kaitlan has turned that around on Sideshow don... she remains calm and the pig goes berserk.
Don’t care for the “real balls” comment - it simply ties everything back to men. I believe it comes down to motherhood or the instinct of being a mother. Caring, Understanding, protecting a child at all cost, empathy. Without testosterone.
Men fight and guard. And use their balls to think.
We really need a female president - badly. Without balls.
Ally, I found this again! Perfection! I even know a brilliant man who understands it. He suffers from never having had a really “useful” teaching parent, but his understanding of the “poor design” is spot on. You got it! I wish every man two good parental examples to grow up with. It would expand joy in the world.
This kind of criticism is the bane of professional women everywhere. You’re a bitch if you’re decisive and forthright. You’re a wimp if you seek opinions of others and some consensus before moving ahead. You’re hired for your expertise and then told you don’t know what you’re talking about. Btw, all these statements are made by men.
An old quotation attributed to Simone Beauvoir, I think. “The world is made up of women and human beings. When women start acting like human beings, they’re accused of wanting to be men.”
I’m hardly the first, but it bears repeating — Hillary Clinton was way snd above the most qualified person who deserved to be President — and that includes her husband.
ICTT, I disagree. Both were qualified and as a pair would still probably be an excellent president. Read Ally on “design” and remember that Bill was not a Rhodes scholar for nothing. Two most generous patriots since FDR and Eleanor and a far more connected couple. Age: am I the only one of us who remembers Der Alte? Ageing is as different for everyone as genes, parenting, diet, schooling, and place in history.
Historically, Trump’s reaction to Kaitlan Collins when she asks the tough questions is always the same--he criticizes her straight face. He should know, he's been staight-face lying for his entire existence.
He's universally despised by all honest, open and diginified women. They sense his cruelty, his malevolence and his lack of humanity. I don't think political disposition or brainwashing matters so much in their calculation. Collins is probably a Cheney republican, just judging from where she's from. It doesn't matter. She correctly sizes up a person like Trump. She's normal.
I'm thinking people's hatred and revulsion for him isn't so tied to our age, wealth, skin color or philosophical leanings. It's more visceral. Just on the face of it, we're all so tired of the shame and embarrassment. How is a fat, raging pedophile crime boss being gifted so much air time? Why can he continue to pee in our daily puddle of news? Every day? All day? It's so vile. So well deserved. Shame on us.
Fat shaming, huh? And he's not a pedophile. Even Epstein was not a pedophile. A pedophile has sex with, or is attracted to, prepubescent children. There are so many good reasons to dislike Trump, why add false ones?
Trump is glaringly, obviously, a pedophile. Beauty contests? Come on. Story-esque escorts, among whom Melania was evidently one, became his staple later in his decades-long manwhoring spree. Good heavens friend. He punched a twelve year old in the head for biting him. Are you reading this stuff?
"Eviscerated CBS? Specifics? You mean they made management changes? Is Tanya Simon irreplaceable? Are there other news entertainers who can read scripts written by producers as well as Pelley? Aren't the scripts in English? Didn't Weiss build an extremely influential media group in just 5 years? Can't Pelley do that? Can't Alfonso start her own media company? What's the problem with diversity?
We need more Ossoff’s, AOC’s and Talarico’s! They are amazing!
Speak up to keep up pressure on Congress!
Resource below to easily contact all of Congress - Be LOUD. Trump/the administration is dangerous for our country 💔🤍💙
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.
Heather's letter is proof that Democrats are finally finding a voice, coalescing around the same message that got Orban kicked out of Hungary--a focus on the Trump regime's corruption and how it affects the average person's pocketbook.
Today is the day for each of us to tell our representatives in Congress, and our state governors and state representatives, that we will not tolerate the corruption and economic chaos of the regime, and we will vote out of office anyone who supports it.
We have to keep it up every day between now and the midterms. Choose a different corruption fact and a different economic cost, but make the feedback mechanisms overload. Do the same for mainstream media with letters to the editor. The idea is to force mainstream media to report what is happening.
I know that there are many other issues and groups that Republicans and the Trump regime have betrayed, and that Democrats neglected, that have impacted each of us and the people we love. But we have to win big first. The culture wars will be what the Republicans will use as their weapon in the fight, as they always have. It is the weapon of division. We can win with a campaign that focuses on universality, on the experience that each of us in the 99% shares.
Hello Georgia... The Designation of Bill Pulte as Temporary DNI is very Troubling... Pulte is a Nepo-Baby whose only Loyalty is to DJT.... The DNI oversees 18+ Foreign & Domestic American Intel Agencies.... While heading the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Pulte has weaponized FHFA Data against DJT's Political Enemies... Pulte will have unlimited access to Intel Data... It is questionable if Pulte has a Security Clearance... Expect a Götterdämmerung by DJT as the Midterms approach... I say, Pray For Divine Intervention
Apache-when you say he is a Nepo-baby, please tell me why you think that. I can’t disclose my reasons for asking-suffice it to say-I may be able to learn more about this person from sources who actually know him personally.
Nepo baby, I think by inheriting a fortune from his grandfather, who founded the Pulte Group, a publicly traded home-building business. That supposedly gave Bill Pulte the big bucks to get in Trump’s line of vision via his large campaign donations, but he denies it.
Bill had rows and law suits with family members over his grandfather’s estate and with the board of the Pulte Group (the public company), but claims he built his own fortune through Pulte Capital Partners, a private‑equity firm that buys and operates building‑industry-related companies, and he has held board roles connected to the family’s homebuilding legacy.
His sory has resonance and parallels with Trump’s tale of being a self-made man while ignoring his father’s seed money and bailouts, and both their willingness to sue to ratchet up the stakes when they are opposed. Apparently Pulte and Trump are talking on the phone almost daily.
I read an article about him yesterday. Pulte is the grandson of the founder of Pulte homes, one of the largest home building companies in the country. I understand he has been outcast by the family foundation and is in the bad graces of his aunt, who runs the foundation. Sorry, I cannot remember the source I read but this one has some of his background. https://wapo.st/4dQVC2I
Adams was a neo-baby. Both Roosevelts were neo-babies. Kennedy was a nepo-baby. And therefore....? There are more substantive grounds for criticising the temporary Pulte appointment.
“Listen,” Talarico said. “Ken Paxton has escaped accountability, but accountability is coming on November 3rd.”
Only if we Get Out The Vote to Vote Blue No Matter Who
Even the most poorly educated and low information Republican voters understand that voting is a strategic joint exercise in taking power. Uniting at the ballot box gave them the Supreme Court and Project 2025.
In Hungary, a full spectrum of opposition voters united to oust Orban from power, root out Orbanism, and restore democratic government. Progressives and Liberals joined Moderates and Conservatives in voting for a Center Right party lead by a former Orban official.
Time and again, 2016 and 2024, the in name only Left Wing opposition refused to unite behind Democratic candidates. They are still at it.
And in another twist, here in Maine, although Janet Mills suspended her senate campaign because of lack of support, the drumbeat of opposition research against leading Democratic contender Graham Platner has given Mills, vanity candidate David Costello, establishment Democrats, AIPAC et al - hopes of splintering the Platner coalition. In Genevieve McDonald they have found the new Linda Tripp, dishing a friend's intimate confidences as opposition research. And now a Platner former girl friend and conservative operative Lyndsey Fifield channeling Al Franken's former colleague and conservative operative Leeann Tweedon, dishing troubling recollections as opposition research. So in Maine we have a spectrum of those opposed to party reform and to government reform coalescing in effect to help reelect Susan Collins - who has her own relationship scandal but more significantly a decades long record of supporting Republican abuses of power in service of antidemocratic policy.
Every bit of dirty laundry (real and manufactured) is going to be on display in the midterms. It is the only game plan the regime has—false equivalences, in Platner’s case between sexting adults and sex-trafficking underage girls. Would I prefer Platner was squeaky clean? Of course. But we have to call out the false equivalences when they occur, and bring the focus back to the core argument—the brazen corruption and policies favoring the 1% of Trump’s cronies is hitting everyone in the 99% hard.
I’m not a Mainer, but I listened to his interview with Chris Hayes last night. I wasn’t overly impressed with his answers to Chris’s questions, but at the same time he did seem like someone who has turned his life around and wants to do good things. You certainly can’t say that about Trump, Paxton, et al.
He stood up when no one else did to provide an alternative to Janet Mills, but it speaks to a lack of depth in the Democratic bench, and an unwillingness to mentor a new generation of Democratic leaders.
If you would vote for a candidate with a KKK tattoo on his chest, Platner's your man. Only the KKK just murdered a handful of people. The Toten Nazi squad killed about 2 million. Also, I don't vote for candidates whose past girlfriends plausibly say he hit them.
That certainly was tried in the NJ07 primary this week with $650,000 in last-minute attack ads on Dem Rebecca Bennett from a GOP PAC masquerading as a left-leaning one. Bennett won anyway, but I would not rank her as a top-notch candidate with no government experience other than as a Black Hawk helicopter pilot, and thin policy knowledge. But then again, she is running against the invisible man REpublican, Tom Kean, Jr.
Why are the Democratic state legislators, mayors, and AGs with government experience not running in the primaries? Do they not want the scrutiny, or do they not have the money to self-fund their primary campaigns? Bennett was the only one of the 4 candidates who didn’t self-fund, but she garnered a lot of endorsements despite a thin, not fully disclosed resume.
Georgia, perhaps people with experience but no funding are being realistic about going up against “unlimited” funding from billionaire coffers? But I am sensing a backlash against GOP candidates overall; a resistance that even money can’t overcome
Perhaps I’m being optimistic but any vote for a Republican is now a vote for Trumpflation, war and the destruction of the rule of law
Even some MAGA Farmers are beginning to see the light
Georgia, your question, "Why are the Democratic ... with government experience not running in the primaries?" reminded me of a mentor of my youth, Joe F. Brown, Jr. He was general manager of two department store branches in Charlottesville, VA, who produced most of the managers in the rest of the company. Owners repeatedly offered him a corporate position in human resources development. He declined every offer, stating that his talents for developing talent were best used to benefit the company right where he was. I think he was right. If you have time, here's my tribute:
Today's U.S. legislative branch is useless. Granted, it can become useful again only if good legislators once again inhabit the halls of the Capitol, but what a lengthy slog it will be. The loss of time with family and relentless exercises in futility are surely daunting.
I like more, Georgia, Heather's link between corruption and the killing of government agencies.
It was also Peter Magyar's link in Hungary: how the most deeply corrupt needed first to rid themselves of all those free voices in the press, all those scientists, all those schools, all those regulatory agencies.
Heather fairly regularly couples them, too. Today while noting the introduction of a new disease (New World screwworm) that had been extinct for decades, the fatal cost to farmers rising prices for diesel and for fertilizer, and the real burden of rising gas prices for ordinary people, she also ties the eminent corruption "of 14 of the 27 known donors to Trump’s $400 million ballroom project have won new or expanded federal contracts totaling over $50 billion since they made their donations."
They go together: the hurt of the bottom 93%, in tandem with the immunity and gross, gratuitous, in-your-face profiteering of the Trump-Epstein class.
There is a lot of meat in the whole corruption saga to put flesh on the bones. You are right, it isn’t just the quid pro quo act, it is the precursor actions that allowed the quid pro quo to not be questioned. But I would argue that kind of detail belongs in the prosecution phase of accountability. We can’t let the detail clutter the big picture.
We need to think in terms of KISS, the bare bones if you will :
“The tens of millions going to paint the reflecting pool and gild the horse statues in corrupt no-bid contracts to Trump’s cronies could have paid for SNAP benefits for XXX people. He says there isn’t enough money to pay for those benefits, but there is to pay exorbitant profits to his buddies on vanity projects for him. The money is coming out of your pocket—out of the taxes you pay or the benefits you no longer receive.“
The KISS Principle!! The smartest man I've ever known - my Dad - used that on me constantly as I was reaching my present height ( I've never REALLY grown up! ). And it may be the most true Principle of my lifetime!
For the un-indoctrinated, "Keep It Simple, Stupid!"
A correction- screwworm was never extinct but had been eradicated in the US except for a small outbreak in the Florida Keys in 2017. Our dog was inspected in that outbreak, and was cleared. From USDA:
“NWS is endemic in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and countries in South America. Using sterile insect technique, we eradicated NWS from the United States in 1966 and successfully eliminated a small outbreak from the Florida Keys in 2017. USDA and Panama’s Ministry of Agriculture Development (MIDA) jointly manage and fund the only NWS sterile fly production facility currently in operation in North America through the Commission for the Eradication and Prevention of Screwworm (COPEG).”
If you want to see and hear some absolutely disgusting testimony, CSPAN had a few moments of the Secretary of Agriculture responding to a question about it and saying "it came because of the open border policies of the Biden administration". Proving the Republicans will do or say absolutely anything to keep from taking any responsibility.
Meanwhile, while the mainstream media Talking Heads are busy trying to eviscerate Grant Platner, the question would be, what did Susan Collins do yesterday? Wait for it, she was concerned. Maine voters, time to realize it’s up to you. Do you want more of this bullshit, or do you want to make a difference here?
"Trump upended that system, promising to get rid of the federal government built around the liberal consensus," The term liberal consensus is misleading. We should call it democratic consensus.
It is all so much. We have a lot of work to do to fix this mess. Too many of us fell asleep and let them divide us while they picked our pockets. Can we all please vote strategically this time? No purity tests. No "progressives vs moderates"; just top vs bottom as Talarico says.
HOUSTON (The Borowitz Report)—The US Senate race in Texas got uglier on Thursday as Republican Ken Paxton accused Democrat James Talarico of lacking the requisite criminal record to represent the Lone Star State in Washington.
“With all due respect, my opponent doesn’t have the cojones to go on a crime spree,” he told a crowd of supporters in Houston. “James Talarico never saw a law he didn’t abide.”
Drawing a stark contrast between himself and Talarico, Paxton said, “My criminal record is as big as Texas itself.”
Paxton warned that, given the lawless environment that currently prevails in Washington DC, a non-crook like Talarico would be a “dangerous choice,” adding, “Texas deserves a criminal who doesn’t need on-the-job training.”
And don't forget all the once-eradicated human diseases that are coming back to the USA, such as measles (here already) and soon, polio. Thanks to Trump and RFK, Jr., the most unqualified secretary of health and human services in history.
Well, at least we’re not facing an eviscerated CDC, together with a sudden outbreak of a strain of Ebola for which no treatment yet exists. That would be disturbing indeed.
This is what scares me for children and adults never immunized from these illnesses. I had measles, mumps and chickenpox as a child, and while I came through these diseases safely, not all children did or have come through safely. I had to get the Shingrix vaccine to prevent shingles because I had chickenpox. This antivaccine craze has gone on quite long enough.
I completely agree. I remember how relieved my Mom was when I lined up at school to get my first polio vaccine. I had measles, mumps and chickenpox also -- and I too have had the Shingrix vaccine. I have a friend who did not get it - and now he has Shingles in his eye. Yikes.
Ocular shingles is dangerous to your eyesight, and it’s likely they have to see an ophthalmologist for treatment. My dad had cingulate shingles (shingles which forms on the side of the chest and the chest itself) and it was very painful for him.
I’m concerned about what Supreme Court decisions will be dropped on the last days of their current session just in time for the biggest Republican donors to celebrate the Fourth of July on their yachts and oceanfront homes.
No matter how bad the six SCOTUS justices are they are going to have a very hard time finding a way to overrule what is perfectly clear in the Constitution. There is no “interpretation” of the 14th Amendment. It is in plain English.
That is necessary because of the cost of agri equipment, land, and the vagaries of weather that plague agriculture. Without the billionaire class, you also have no museums, hospitals, much less medical research, university scholarships and the more than 30 million jobs they create. I kind of like what they do.
How about they pay their fair share of taxes and let us decide to spend the revenue on hospitals, medical research, free college, museums, and Medicare for All, which will create more jobs than defense.
The history of government allocation of capital is not attractive. China has done brilliantly with it but now has problems in several sectors. And to do what China has done requires a level of oppression and centralized control that you might not like. "Fair share"? Don't know what that means though many use it, especially those who do not pay their fair share. The top !% current pays 40% of the cost of our government. The top 10% (the bottom rung of which is only ~$187,000) pay 72%. The top 20% pay 85%. The bottom 48% pay 3%, leaving the 23% "middle class paying 12%.
So what is a "fair share"? Seems unfair if you look at it that way, with so few supporting the rest of us. Maybe it might be more productive, and less emotional, to simply say very very very rich people can afford to pay more, so let's ask.
"Let us "decide"? Who? How? They're doing great work without us. And not to scare you, but the odds of billionaires handing over money for a plebiscite on how to spend their money are low. Gratitude is, in my view, a better approach. Without those evil billionaires, you wouldn't have the computers and software to tell us how evil they are.
Todd Blanche has worked overtime to get into Cheeto’s good graces. He’s been loyal to him all the way through his civil trials, felonies and rape charges defended unsuccessfully. After Cheeto got rid of Bondi, he put his loyalist Blanche into Bondi’s position as acting AG. Cheeto told Blanche in nominating him, “Don’t fuck this up like Bondi did”. So Blanche has his marching orders.
Unfortunately for Blanche, he has to be confirmed now with 18m of legal baggage as Deputy AG doing Bondi’s bidding. From the lack of public interviews with Maxwell to the hiding of half of the Epstein files to creating the “slush fund” for Cheeto to pay off the J6 rioters.
What gives cover for all of this corruption in Cheeto’s regime including the AG and all his secretaries, is that Cheeto more than likely either told them privately or by action, that there will be a blanket pardon for all those in the regime. Fortunately for WE the People if WE want expressed retribution Todd Blanche even if pardoned doesn’t prevent him from being disbarred, like loyalists Rudy Guiliani, Ken Chesebro, John Eastman, Michael Cohen, and Jenna Ellis(https://bit.ly/4dSBb5u)
Will Todd Blanche join the above list with a group of DOJ lawyers? Let’s hope.
Academics set out sweeping vision for planetary survival which offers a set of bold policy proposals, including hefty wealth taxes on billionaires, sharp reductions in working hours, a change in diets and a shift of investment from materially intense sectors, such as industry and mining, to education and health. If these and other measures are taken, the report says, the incomes of 89% of the world’s population would double by 2100 and global heating would be kept below 2C above the preindustrial average.
The authors say their vision provides a positive alternative to the grim projections from far-right techno extractivists, nationalists and billionaires who claim the future will inevitably bring more fossil fuels, climate disruption and inequality. “There’s a huge cultural, intellectual, political battle that is going on. And we all have a role to play,” said Thomas Piketty, a co-director of the WIL and a professor at the Paris School of Economics. The key, Piketty added, was to address inequality and planetary habitability together. “If you don’t put this at the centre of your analysis and if you talk about green policies, environment, in the abstract, this is simply not going to work,” he said.
The report will be unveiled and discussed at the World Inequality Conference from 4-6 June in Paris, with speakers including Ha-Joon Chang, Jean Drèze, Jayati Ghosh, Mariana Mazzucato, Branko Milanović, Lea Ypi and Gabriel Zucman.
The report will be unveiled and discussed at the World Inequality Conference from 4-6 June in Paris, with speakers including Ha-Joon Chang, Jean Drèze, Jayati Ghosh, Mariana Mazzucato, Branko Milanović, Lea Ypi and Gabri
Note: this report -- which contains extremely vital know-our-enemy intelligence -- is partially suppressed by Google and is uncharacteristically garbled, which is most likely also censorship. Though the result is difficult reading, the information is infinitely valuable in understanding the global magnitude of the Trumpstein onslaught.
No. Thank you for asking. To me, AI is literally the most infinitely terrifying weapon our species has ever invented. I recognize it as the ultimate fulfillment of patriarchy's intrinsic quest to perpetuate eternally omnipotent male tyranny. While this has always been the unspoken purpose of the patriarchal weapon we know as capitalism, it was first achieved by IBM in the late 1930s, which in obedient service to Hitler and his Holocaust spawned what eventually became the personal computer.
IBM's extermination technology was returned to the U.S. for further development by the legions of Original Nazi war criminals eagerly adopted by the USian capitalists as partners and comrades-at-arms after WW II; AI -- which does precisely as intended (and thus gives our Infinitely Evil Masters absolute, infinite and therefore literally irreversible omnipotence) -- is the end result. For us of the 99.9 percent, it ends [forever] any rational hope the arc of history will ever again bend toward anything other than intensified slavery and ever-more-psychologically crippling degradation. Knowing this, I avoid reading about AI simply because I know anything other than what I have stated above is Big Lie propaganda.
(Bear in mind I am one of the very few who recognized from the beginning that the computer and its derivatives were developed to be precisely what they are -- capitalism's invisible but forever inescapable collars of surveillance and control by which the naive general public is seduced to eagerly enslave themselves forever. Thus our patriarchal Masters spare themselves the cost of the violent efforts hitherto necessary to impose and perpetuate the Nazism always implicit in capitalism. Thus too I have always recognized the newly-revealed, exceptionally sadistic Nazism of the high-tech Übermenschen.)
Yet here we are communicating via a technical form I didn’t have faith in being more good than bad. I wrote you more about Ray Kurzweil but maybe the email address was incorrect. No harm will come from you googling the name to read about the man himself and not AI. I really am not an idiot and sometimes the bee in my bonnet turns out to be worthwhile.
Most assuredly never thought ill of you, Ms. Parsons; quite the opposite in fact. (By your name, we might be relatives, as Mary Blisse Parsons is a daughter of the colonial Blisses from whom I am directly descended.) Never got your email; if you sent it via gmail, Google's censors often maliciously block correspondence to me (including at least one subsubstack subscription), probably because I am an unabashed Marxian and, despite being personally agnostic, am openly supportive of both goddess-centered paganism and Catholic liberation theology. I've another, older email address, which I now use only as backup, which I'll go check now. Meanwhile thank you for your patience.
I want to know what school all of these loyalists went to. Why? Because when they face members of Congress, they all use the same rhetoric and they talk over the Dem members. “It’s the Biden Administration’s fault.”
Also today, Rep. Brendan Boyle asked Bessent a question and Bessent started to reply that it was the Biden admin’s fault. Boyle cut him off and said he was tired of Bessent and others using Biden as an excuse. He said if he counted the times everyone had invoked Biden’s name, he’d be as rich as him (Bessent)! I got a big kick out of that.
Trump totally refuses to take responsibility for his numerous errors, just as Roy Cohn taught him. Trump will never apologize for anything wrong he does, and he’s done plenty. He has instructed his toadies and minions to blame President Biden for everything going wrong, so Bessent does what he’s told and blames Biden. Rep. Boyle was correct that Bessent’s attempt to blame Biden would not pass muster with him.
The Trump administration bus is the bus at the end of The Italian Job. Hanging over the cliff as the gold moves... with Michael Caine's character saying hold on I have a plan.. The very metaphor for this "administration"....
With one exception, Frank: Trump would add to Michael Caine's plan that he, Trump, has a "concept" of a plan. And we doubt it's even his "concept." Embarrassingly pathetic.
michael, I frequently play "America the Beautiful". When I play, I also try to "sing" as I do so (never mind my part is 2 octaves lower than my voice) and I combine two verses: "O beautiful for patriot dreams, that sees beyond the years, thine alabaster cities gleam, undimmed by human tears, America, America, God mend thine every flaw; preserve thy soul in self control, thy liberty in law."
As Heather mentioned in the letter tonight "farm diesel has gone up 95% in the last year, to $5.41 a gallon; farmers lost $28 billion last year; 70% of farmers say they cannot afford fertilizer because of Trump’s war on Iran."
But here in California you can't even get regular unleaded gasoline for that price, it's around $6 dollars a gallon, $5.79 being about the cheapest that can be found.
Diesel has been about $7.50 a gallon for several months, but closer to $8.00 a gallon in some areas of California. That has to be hurting truckers and will be causing prices to go up even more severely due to shipping costs.
Furthermore, California is such a vitally important agricultural state that it's often said to be the Nation's breadbasket, even an agricultural powerhouse of the world, producing over a third of the nation's vegetables and nearly half of its fruits and nuts. But it requires a lot of effort, labor(like migrant workers for planting & picking crops), skill, and machinery to produce and harvest the crops we depend on. And with most farm equipment running on diesel fuel and fertilizer being such a burdensome cost it seems likely more farms will fail or suffer due to Trump and the regime's stupid war, ineptitude and lack of concern.
horhai, what you wrote is clear and to the point. Did anyone in California's primaries hammer this situation home? Were any farmers or truckers featured in campaign ads? California could have modeled effective messaging for primaries in other states, and later for the midterms.
The primary here in California was a bit of a fiasco with so many Democrats running and the Swalwell disaster earlier on. Mostly a lot of infighting, no one mentioned farmers, migrant workers or truckers that I’m aware of. Although Tom Steyer did say he wanted to take PG&E to task for being a monopoly and price gouging while I noticed they funded attack ads against him and some other candidates ads too.
While Oregon isn't as bad as California, both states have high fuel tax rates that skews the price per gallon at the pump. Pump prices vary with location as well; notice that you will always pay quite a bit more per gallon the closer you are to an airport rental return.
America spent decades eradicating the New World screwworm, a hideous little parasite that lays eggs in open wounds so its offspring can feast on living flesh. Naturally, the Trump era heard this and thought, “Finally, a governing philosophy.”
The screwworm does not build anything. It does not heal anything. It does not improve the host. It simply finds weakness, crawls in, multiplies, and acts like the wound belongs to it. In fairness, that is more policy detail than most Trump speeches contain.
The allegory is almost too perfect. You neglect public health, gut expertise, mock science, fire the people who know where the disinfectant is kept, and then act shocked when the parasites return. This is not draining the swamp. This is selling naming rights to the maggots.
And like any good infestation, the problem is not just the biggest worm on camera. It is the ecosystem that protects it: the flatterers, the loyalists, the cable-news wound dressers who insist the infection is actually healing beautifully, maybe the best infection anyone has ever seen.
The screwworm is not subtle. It enters through damage and makes the damage worse. So does authoritarian politics. It feeds on fear, grievance, ignorance, and institutional decay. Then it calls the decay patriotism and demands applause.
The lesson is simple enough for even a think tank to understand: parasites flourish when the body stops defending itself. Democracy, like livestock, needs inspection, care, science, and people willing to say, “No, that is not populism. That is a larva.”
So yes, the screwworm is back. But the political species has been with us for years, chewing through the republic one open wound at a time.
Brilliant! Let's hope we find that disinfectant sooner than the planned facilities to raise large quantities of sterile males are built - they say it may take a year. And the quantity being released weekly now is not adequate. Now, what disinfectant are we going to use on D.C.? Did someone say bleach?
Funny how all those MAGA folks who have their shorts all in a wad about the "fraud" being perpetrated by poor folks of color who have the nerve to want help to buy food make excuses for billionaires increasing their wealth at the expense of the American people. They are being robbed blind, not just of money, but of rights and of a decent environment in which to live. They've chosen the wrong enemy.
Last night, one of our heroes, former Congressman Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) detailed President PissyPants’ savage attack against Kaitlan Collins of CNN for daring to ask him what his opinion was about Senate Republicans blocking his planned $1.8 billion slush fund to reward January 6 instigators and conspirators. “I don’t know, I have to talk to my lawyers about it” — came the usual blah-blah, mealy-mouthed ‘I just work here’ non-answer.
She wouldn’t let it go. “But what’s your decision on it?” In Adam’s words, “that simple follow-up — calm, professional, simple — is what real journalism looks like. Not a gotcha. Just accountability. The kind of question that requires an actual answer.”
President Phony-Baloney Whineybitch then unleashed a torrent of invective against her, and her employer, calling CNN “crooked as hell”…”a very corrupt organization,” then, like a Benzedrine puff adder, spat out a vicious ejaculation of sulfuric acid. “‘A corrupt reporter standing right there, never smiles,’ he said. ‘You never see a young, beautiful woman who never smiles. I never see a smile on her face.’”….”I see her standing there with hatred in her eyes, like she has hatred, because we had borders, because we have a strong military, because we cut our taxes…’
Rancid Powder Puff meet Steel Magnolia. He told her she was a conservative from Alabama…“I’m still from Alabama, sir” — her response. Just the facts, asshole. No drama. No histrionics. No losing focus. Just eyes on the prize — a reporter doing what she’s paid to do.
Why is it so many women seem to be doing the one thing so many men still seem incapable of? Nancy Pelosi standing over him in October 2019 — “why is it with you all roads seem to end with Vladimir Putin?”
Let’s hear it for those Steel Magnolias showing us what real balls actually look like in practice.
The real mystery isn't why the wheels are falling off the bus.
It's why anyone expected a man who suggested drinking bleach as a cure for COVID would suddenly become an expert in economics, healthcare, agriculture and public administration.
The bus was always going to end up in a paddock somewhere.
The answer to your question of why anyone expected Trump to do the job is two fold.
1. The job Republicans elected Trump to do is to destroy government as we know it - a balance of legislative, judicial, and executive powers working with independent government agencies to protect constitutional rights, promote the general welfare of the people, provide equitable taxation and government regulation and protect the national security with strategic alliances. They elected Trump to institute the 'unitary executive' - whether you call it Father Knows Best, Biggest Bully On The Block, or The Divine Right of Kings. Which brings us to point 2 - The Politics of Faith
2. The Founders instituted government based on The Scientific Method - coming to consensus through reasoned debate of empirical evidence. It is how all three branches are supposed to work to legislate, adjudicate, and administer government. It is how we transfer power. They barred religion from state activities not only to prevent government establishment of state religion and imposition of the absolutes of religious creed, but to keep irrational habits of mind - belief - out of government proceedings. The leap of faith - denying empirical evidence to embrace metaphysics - essential to the pew and prayer rug, is toxic to democratic government. When George W. Bush expected us to believe he could look into Putin's heart and see he was a good man. And when he expected a cosplay pronouncement of Mission Accomplished to make it so. Republicans were pandering to base who already believed - via KKK Grand Wizard and GOP gadfly David Duke - that Putin was The Great White Hope of Christian Nationalism, and promoting government based on acts of magical thinking. That is, crafting a GOP base primed for government unmoored from evidence and paving the way for a Trump administration propped up by a judiciary and legislature using their powers to spin Trump's bad impulses into worse facts on the ground.
In other words, The Useful Idiot.
Trump has been Putin’s useful idiot for a long time.
In other words, we still need to solve the one simple problem of getting everyone to intentionally sing the (moral) “all for one and one for all” song like three musketeers. Meanwhile, by default, too many people are singing the (not moral) “all for one but only when the one is not everyone” song like three stooges.
My nomination: Jon Ossoff in Atlanta unleashing on Trump on May 31, 2026, is the best speech by an American politician in the 21st century. Did I overlook something?
He is my senator and I am very proud of how he is standing up to this regime! Talarico and AOC are not backing down. We need more of these younger people in positions of leadership in Congress.
And my Senator, NJ Andy Kim!!!!!!
Agreed! And when I listened, he gave me a very dangerous gift--hope.
Slowly I turn step by step!
My name is Inego Montoya ....
'All for one!'
'One for all!'
'Every man for himself!'
Years ago Grover Norquist (Americans for Tax Reform) stated "We don't need someone who can think. We need someone with enough digits to hold a pen." A Useful Idiot. A tool. That is all the republicans wanted and that is what they got with trump. The first 30 seconds of this clip shows GN in action: https://www.c-span.org/clip/campaign-2012/user-clip-we-dont-want-a-president-who-can-thinkwe-already-know-what-the-top-1-want-him-to-dohe-only-needs-to-be-capable-if-signing-with-a-pen/4019591.
They had that with Reagan and George W.
After Trump they'll find another one.
That’s exactly why I doubt JD Vance would last as president if trump falls off the perch - Vance is an attack dog, not the right archetype.
Yes, and while I give them credit for having a plan of attack that worked to get them this far, I never figured out what their image of America was supposed to end up being. You can't have only a relatively small number of rich, white people around because none of them most likely know how to install a toilet, do a tune up, or even mow a lawn. Who would be their bitches in the long run? Not me. And what kind of society does that create? I suppose we'll find out.
Those Republicans after power *could* think. The problem was they did not think deeply enough.They were smart but not very, just enough. So they were stupid and dangerous. Enough fell for it. Their smarts were how to win us over, getting a good bead on our vulnerabilities. They connived. They used the media. They were salesmen. They sold the *trickle down* theory.
Then came the BIG CON: Trump with his swaggering swaying, lulling, sureness, who knew nothing about governing. And still does not... nor care for it. But we the people, half of us bought it (we needed a *business man*) We were not very smart either-again in aggregate- enough of us.. We kept divided and we were conquered.
No one and nothing lasts forever. And if we are going to have democracy we had better *really* pay attention and *really* think, including teaching our children, including too and about history (as here done so well by HCR).
Good old Grover, and the Americans for Tax Reform. I can't count the times we stayed across the street at the Washington Metro at Metro Center Station (to me the best spot to take the most subway lines to anywhere we wanted to go in the D.C area).
The ATR headquarters where the Wednesday meetings were held was described in Wikipedia included, "...The meetings have been called "a must-attend event for Republican operatives fortunate enough to get an invitation", and "the Grand Central station of the conservative movement." Medvetz (2006) argues that the meetings have been significant in "establishing relations of ... exchange" among conservative subgroups and "sustaining a moral community of conservative activists..."
Its proximity to the Metro Station makes it easy to see why the would compare it to Grand Central station. I always had trouble deciding who was doing the most damage to our country in those days I sometimes watched who was going in and out of their building (never saw anyone I recognized while waiting for others), but Grover was always in the top half of those I blamed like Roger Stone, Newt Gingrich, and Mitch McConnell.
But why oh why don't the Republicans care about the huge increases in our national debt which could lead to another very real crisis of confidence in the USD? Just because their liege is a multiple bankrupt doesn't necessarily mean our whole country needs to be.
Barack Obama answered that question for David Axelrod at the 20 minute mark of The Axe Files, E538, when he quoted Putin as saying, "I don't have to get anyone to believe anything. All I have to do is convince enough people not to believe in anything." And now, the GOP thinks the way Putin told them to think.
Ref: https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/axe-files/episodes/d1da1b16-d9a5-4b91-8397-b021016e0494.
Every one that seeketh findeth.
Multiple bankrupt ….another well worded sum up ….a very long process setup 2025 culminating the perfect puppet arriving showing the world’s worst the proverbial ‘how to’ of blow yer own horns.
Classic ..double down damage..gotta be a song for the ages in there for sure…
The question is why do we have deficits if both the democrats and republicans are against them?
Republicans keep cutting taxes. They try to cut spending but often fail, by spending even more in certain areas, like deporting people.
Dems are reluctant to raise taxes as many swing voters are obsessed with low taxes too.
National debt added by W. Bush: 6.1 trillian. Under Obama: 8.4 trillion. Under Trump I: 7.8 trillion. Under Biden: 8.4 trillion. And you single out Republicans?
Take a look at where the money is going. From Democrats - to the people (health care, environmental protection, affordable living, freedom of the press, freedom of speech). From Trump: payments to criminals, money to him and his family, statues, ballroom, arch, destruction of soft diplomacy, suing the US, attacks on the media, incompetent leaders, loss of health care, children thrown off SNAP, innocent people in concentration camps. Seems pretty clear why his sycophants in Congress and his party are getting a bad rap.
For a rational comparison you'd have to analyze each president's budget, how it was allocated, and which expenditures contributed to the debt. I wouldn't inflict that task on anyone.
As for what you say here, our budget this year is a tad under $8 trillion. What you agglomerate is a small faction . You're mixing up some categories: Trump isn;t collecting money from the budget. What I agree is his corrupt, or at least improper, profit is in the private sector, nothing to do with government; I don't know what "soft diplomacy" is or how much it costs, and suspect you may not either; "incompetent leaders" are in every administration and difficult to quantify, but true, more here than usual but still no $$ attributable; loss of health care is not an expense, its a saving, but it depends on what you mean, which is not clear; SNAP payments are a complex issue, many are fraud or fake, some are not. And most congressional members are sycophants when their president is in power, nothing new there. How do you think Oabamacare passed by a single vote?
As for "innocent people in concentration camps," two problems. Fisrt, you presumably mean detention centers, since the US has no concentration camps. And the people there are not innocent. They are present here illegally. Some have asylum petitions pending, but until or unless granted they are illegals. Where should they go, to Marriott Bonvoy or Quality Inns?
As for "concentration camps," that is profoundly demeaning to the millions of Jews, Romas, gays, mentally ill and political prisoners who know what concentration camps really are.
Its fine to be angry or frustrated, as you and most commenters seem to be, but when your facts are wrong or imprecise, its doesn't help anyone and leads to, I think, the kind of dangerous conflict we are living through.
Truth Told
It’s partly the Republican tax cuts. Which the Dems leave in place.
https://www.investopedia.com/us-debt-by-president-dollar-and-percentage-7371225
Thanks for that. I hadn't seen that alignment of data. It is consistent with the numbers I reported but has other interesting ways of looking at it. It seems to affirm that Trumps' deficits are a bit less than those of Democrats, but regardless, our debt situation is frightening. Given that our defense spending is below past levels (3% of GDP vs. a usual 5%), and given that no one touches the social security/medicaid/medicare third rail (most of the commenters her appear to be partaking of those entitlements), the way out is elusive. The only way that is plausible, if speculative, would be a roaring economy.
Solid analysis. I said as many as thirty years ago that I believed Republicans wanted to install a dictatorship. People thought I was crazy. And now here we are.
Consistency is a valuable commodity
Whenever I see a comment that starts with “lin”, I know that my time spent absorbing it will be well worth it
Dave Dalton, lin- wrote “Enlightenment.” That’s my favorite word. It’s what all humanity needs. Arriving at the words Jefferson wrote because he understood them is both complex and perhaps as unattainable as “love your neighbor as yourself,” but the goal is the peak of human endeavor.
Thanks to both of you for writing for both of us and all of US who are mute with distress and fatigue.
Virginia, yes fatigue is setting in for me but I believe we all can play a role in salvaging the Constitution and Rule of Law. I do what I know how to do, write. Others do things I’m not good at. I depend on them
You are not mute. Your participation gives us strength to fight off the fatigue
We will survive this, together
“If liberty means anything at all, it means something worth saying that some people don’t want to hear.” - George Orwell
I fear there are some people in the audience who don’t want to hear what I have to say today. But I appreciate your forbearance in this small act of liberty." - Scott Pelley, Journalist
“It’s not much, but it beats burying your head in fear and ignorance.” - Dr. Samer Attar, orthopedic surgeon and professor of surgery who volunteers in Gaza and Ukraine.
These quotes are from the substack of political cartoonist Steve Brodner. This entry honors Scott Pelley - the journalist recently fired from 60 Minutes, for literally speaking truth to the powers at the network. The quotes are from a graduation speech Pelley gave. The full speech is included in the substack
Pelley, Patriot - by Steve Brodner - The Greater Quiet
.https://stevebrodner.substack.com/p/pelley-patriot-8cf.
You like Paula Poundstone too?
Along the lines of enlightenment I sometimes wonder if all this chaos had to happen in order for humans to evolve. Perturbation brings about an escape to a higher order.
Susan, true it has. But look at what happened to the Greeks and the Romans. We are heading at AI speed back to the Huns. Will Americans wake up and look at the history that wasn’t a school requirement.
Pain does it.
Blush. ThankYou.
HCR inspires us all.
What's your evidence that "The job Republicans elected Trump to do is to destroy government as we know it" -- and what does that even mean? Those who voted for Trump (who weren't, sad to say, all Republicans) did so for an array of reasons, many of them based on racism and/or insufficient knowledge.
If you read Jane Mayer’s book Dark Money you will find the evidence you seek, but in a nutshell this purposeful destruction has been carefully planned by “conservative” billionaires for decades; it reached critical mass with the propaganda wing of MAGA
It was well on the way with the election and re-election of Reagan, whose tax and economic policies, come to think of it, greatly increased the number of billionaires -- and whose white, often Evangelical and/or Catholic base provided the foundation for MAGA.
As to "careful planning," I don't believe that Donald Trump is what the Koch brothers, the Mercers, et al. had in mind, especially the current Trump. A Bush II (with Cheney in the background) would have been much more to their liking. But this is the endgame, and we'll see how it plays out. Much depends on whether "we the people" can persuade the Democratic Party to take democracy seriously. (Mayer's DARK MONEY is essential reading to this day. USians in general don't think seriously enough about economic power.)
I agree that the Koch’s et al would have preferred that someone other than Cartoon Buffoon Donny had captured the MAGA wave, but that’s the racehorse they got saddled with. You can’t plan for every eventuality, but I’m thinking they’ve got a more serious Putin type being groomed for 2028; someone NOT Vance or Rubio
They’ll pick the guy and money will flow
Susanna, I have a different observation. Republican operatives – not GOP voters who are just the rabble falling for the sales pitch – have believed that government should be run like a business. They have been planning a corporate-style government for many decades, with an elite "board of directors" and a "CEO" who sits at the head of the table by vote of the board members, not the employees or their customers.
To your point, I doubt the powerbrokers had a cabinet of idiots in mind, but they have been useful in demolishing the existing government so it could be replaced, so they've been allowed to continue running amok.
As I have often opined, Reagan was the proof of concept, Bush 2 was the crash-test dummy and Trump is the production model. He is exactly what they wanted; a manipulable figurehead who distracts from the real wielders of power. You may be correct that GOP operatives hadn't anticipated dementia incapacitating Donald. Or maybe they had. Vance was chosen for – not by – Donald. Vance has demonstrated that he is willing to become whoever or whatever is required to sit at the head of the table.
Dave Dalton, please stick with the Koch questions. The Kochs will NEVER quit Putin.
Trump was selected because he could draw in Republican votes. They made up Project 2025 as an instruction manual.
Great read Dave! I may re read.
True, racism was a big factor for many to support Trump. "The Anger Games: Who Voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 Election, and Why?" published in the Feb. 2018 edition of "Critical Sociology." More recently, Charlie Kirk's white Christian nationalism. Check out Barbara McQuade's book, "Attack from Within," (2024.) She has a new book, "The Fix." So, what do we have? Corruption supported by ignorance and prejudice (race, misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, etc.) That's Corruption with a capital "C."
Project 25 was pretty clear about republiCon intentions
Project 2025
Reagan played on the old Confederacy claim that the US government is the problem.
Trump et al made the US government a problem.
All the Republicans in between chipped away at the foundations and institutions. Trump brought in the wrecking crew. Figuratively and literally.
That’s true but it’s hard to deny the Republican fixation on reining in the government. It became an obsession under Reagan. Part of it was racism, the idea that the government was wasting money on non whites.
nearly all voters vote on the basis of "insufficient knowledge," including, from my brief sojourn here, most of the commenters.
Thanks. Lest we forget the backdrop for the insanity of this administration.
lin•, this is a great assessment. "The leap of faith - denying empirical evidence to embrace metaphysics - essential to the pew and prayer rug, is toxic to democratic government" is an excellent and concise assessment of how government and religion are antithetical to each other.
Ally, they don't have to be; they just need to be keep separate. People can believe what they want, but the government cannot promote religion. I note in the letter today that the agricultural secretary is bragging about how she has cost people their access to food. This is the same damn hypocrite who claims to be a Christian.
Absolutely correct. It is easy to blame Trump and his Administration for the dismantling of our government, but Nixon, Reagan, the Two Bushes - all continued to build the coalition of misfits. Republican in Congress have been elected by voters who want to be certain anyone on the rung below them does not get a chance to better themselves. Whether it is the Welfare Queen or Willy Horton or any of the mythical characters Republican Presidents have conjured, it feeds into the greedy and mean-spirited of this country. And there seem to be many of them!
Willie Horton was not a mythical character. He was a murderer and his murder on furlough was part of a serious national concern about crime. The lax bail laws in NYC, very comparable, have led to horrible murders there to the point where many are afraid to take the subway.
You’ve been awake
The very wealthy believe that they can do anything that they want to with no consequences. The Constitution has the audacity to allow consequences, so it must be abolished. King Con has a proven track record of destroying anything he touches. Thus, to destroy the US, put Agent Orange in charge. Instantaneous destruction! No more consequences for the favored few! Hear them cheering!
Your comment, Mr. lin, sums up a history that, in today's climate, almost seemed too good to be true and doomed from its inception. When Jefferson wrote "all men are created equal" while owning slaves and impregnating (7 times) one of his slaves ... hypocrisy was settling in. The title of the book by Jeffrey Rosen, The Pursuit of Liberty, with its subtitle How Hamilton vs Jefferson Ignited the Lasting Battle Over Power in America, was prescient and foretold the threats to democracy we are experiencing today.
That sounds like a good read; thanks for the suggestion.
Am a bit confused. So we should hate Jefferson? Do you know whether Hemmings consented or was forced? Should we at least remove all books from libraries written by antisemites? That would create so much more space! Should we take down Clinton's portrait from the White House because he was plausible accused of rape? Take down Michelle Obama's portrait because she wrote. a racist tract while at Princeton?
This is the kind of comment - scold - which is unnecessary. I was merely reporting what I have read . I made no recommendations re other presidents’ misdeeds. It was a historical reference. You could have responded without sarcasm… I would have accepted a more reasoned argument and you could have pointed out our social/political differences politely and informed by cogent empathetic reflection.
If scolding and sarcasm were inappropriate this comment section would implode. I did not mean either. Your Jefferson/Hemmings reference is often used to diminish the historically revolutionary contributions of Jefferson, which is inappropriate. I simply pointed out that historically significant figures of often deeply flawed or inconsistent. While rape (Clinton) and racism (M. Obama) have long been inappropriate if not morally and legally wrong, slavery was practiced worldwide and was not in any way uncommon in the 18th century. If American slavery was in any way unusual, it was that it didn't even rank in the top 15 of countries or civilizations that had it.
So I was bothered by your inconsistency and absence of important context.
And I read Rosen's book. He is a thoughtful if biased observer.
Religion is the only socially sanctioned delusional system. Moderate believers shield the extremists, as they give credibility to the whole system of fantasy.
Very well put, Lin.
The ground on which *they stand- what holds them up* they are working to make crack, to destroy. This cannot work.
"Republicans were pandering to base who already believed - via KKK Grand Wizard and GOP gadfly David Duke - that Putin was The Great White Hope of Christian Nationalism, and promoting government based on acts of magical thinking."
You should never drink before commenting, let alone early in the morning.
David Duke, To Russia With Hate - CBS News
.https://www.cbsnews.com/news/david-duke-to-russia-with-hate/.
David Duke isn't even as "important" as Candace Owens. Who cares about him? Or her?
There is entire wing of Republicans who are pro-Putin. I regard them as renegades.
There are many, many, many more Democrats that are pro Hamas, pro Hezbollah, pro Qatar, and pro-Iran than there are Republicans who are "pro Putin" (BTW I don't know of any).
Trump and Vance are both pro-Putin.
Ain’t that the mystery? The guy who bankrupted three casinos during an economic boom-time is suddenly a five-dimensional chess grandmaster…
Only according to Elon and other master liars like RUPERT
Hello Kazz... Welcome Australia!... Besides 'Recommending Drinking Bleach', by April 2020, DJT got bored with the Epidemic, and declared that DJT had no responsibility in dealing with it... OBW: Did DJT drink Bleach when DJT contracted COVID when DJT was Airlifted to Walter Reed?...
By all accounts, he did not Apache. I guess it's easier to tell people not to fear COVID when your treatment plan involves a military hospital, a helicopter, experimental drugs and a six-figure medical bill paid by someone else, lol.
Don't forget driving in a car and wandering the White House unmasked exposing others while still potentially contagious. What a jerk!
The old Rose Garden Ceremony for the SCOTUS Barrett. Her children I think had all been vaccinated and it was both an inside outside event so even President Jenkins of NDU was exposed and got it among many others who were there. It was beyond irresponsible and created an even larger huge shadow over SCOTUS Barrett in my eyes.
Hello Kazz... Another Example Of DJT Grift...
It's the best thing he might have done but clearly didn't. Just think how many lives It would have saved.
So true!!
Clorox (or bleach flavored) Kool Aid. That sounds like the beverage of choice for the MAGA crowd!
Right Kazz, and all of us are inside the bus.
Let's pull the wheels off in November. The republicans in Congress are the ones keeping the wheels on by their weak, pathetic excuses for that traitor, and their lack of action on behalf of America's people. November 3 midterm elections can park that treasonous bus, and we are the ones who can make that happen.
Let us not forget the number of CovID fatalities under his watch.
I certainly will not. A well known kid's author in my neighbourhood, died from Covid. He spent his life and money setting up clean water systems in third world countries without talking much about it. He did this because it was the right thing to do not for the applause.
We lost John Prine too soon as well. My gods, do we need his voice these days.
It's not a mystery. As Kamala Harris repeats again and again: this has been decades in the making. It's an eternal revolution inside the GOP, from neoliberalism to neofascism, and that evolution was mostly completed during the Biden administration.
The wheels aren't falling off the buss because the GOP is in the driver's seat and it WANTS a fascist regime. It's installing it step by step, day by day, now that "we the people" gave it full control over DC.
None of this has anything to do with Trump. Trump is merely their clown in chief, an actor who keeps us all constantly distracted and deranged so that we don't see what the GOP is doing to the US.
People have been observing the wheels falling off the bus since the felon’s first term. The problem is that this bus doesn’t require wheels. It runs on hot air, lies, and thievery. And there is no indication that it will run out of any of that soon.
To Kazz: together with his delusional and incompetent staff who also just make things up, then you add the crime boss at the head of the executive branch coupled with fraud after fraud after fraud on top of fraud....
Or maybe in a ditch. 🫤
That really is a mystery and continues to boggle my mind. Why so many are taken in by this fake president and continue to gravitate towards him. He is a nothing burger yet the die hards are still there. At this point it seems like something has affected their brains.
I’m sure ‘Reality TV Star’ also had something to do with it Susan. If the people can put a demented Hollywood cowboy into office, then it’s anyone’s game - same reason why Obama became the first black president. Despite rigged elections, we cannot underestimate the power of the people’s choice - every reason for the 70 million who sat at home to get out and vote.
Susan, did you miss the summation lin• provided above your comment? Although the U.S. was NOT founded as a Christian nation (contrary to evangelical myth), Christian faith has been accommodated by U.S. government since its inception. Indeed, religious faith does affect the believer's brain. The effects are not all bad, but the believer's brain is conditioned to accept assertions for which there is no evidence. Then it becomes a matter of deciding where one draws the line between spirituality and fantasy. Evangelicalism draws the line much further from reality than mainline religions.
Survey after survey show that evangelicals make up approximately 85% of the MAGA base. I would contend that the remaining 15% may not be religious, but they've been influenced by an evangelical parent, grandparent or some other family member.
They are discovering that racism is expensive.
Because many women are used to this sort of targeting and finding ways to stand up to it or neutralising it. Most men don't have the same life experiences of being targetted and they worry about being 'shamed' in public if Kim Jong-Don doesn't back down when they confront him with the same kind of follow-up. What we're seeing her is the learning that comes of centuries of cross generational lived experience.
I'm still hoping someone eventually claims the Tiedrich Prize of Journalism.
🤞RFF🤞 that would be a sterling—er, gold plated—moment!!!
Tiedrich has his own unique and humorous spin on the idiocracy the government has become.
Yeah, Kathy, I’m a fan!
Fan here also!
For the record, today is the 2,257th day the prize has gone unclaimed. 🙂
Q
https://www.jefftiedrich.com/p/shut-the-fuck-up-about-your-stupid
The Screwworm Caucus
America spent decades eradicating the New World screwworm, a hideous little parasite that lays eggs in open wounds so its offspring can feast on living flesh. Naturally, the Trump era heard this and thought, “Finally, a governing philosophy.”
The screwworm does not build anything. It does not heal anything. It does not improve the host. It simply finds weakness, crawls in, multiplies, and acts like the wound belongs to it. In fairness, that is more policy detail than most Trump speeches contain.
The allegory is almost too perfect. You neglect public health, gut expertise, mock science, fire the people who know where the disinfectant is kept, and then act shocked when the parasites return. This is not draining the swamp. This is selling naming rights to the maggots.
And like any good infestation, the problem is not just the biggest worm on camera. It is the ecosystem that protects it: the flatterers, the loyalists, the cable-news wound dressers who insist the infection is actually healing beautifully, maybe the best infection anyone has ever seen.
The screwworm is not subtle. It enters through damage and makes the damage worse. So does authoritarian politics. It feeds on fear, grievance, ignorance, and institutional decay. Then it calls the decay patriotism and demands applause.
The lesson is simple enough for even a think tank to understand: parasites flourish when the body stops defending itself. Democracy, like livestock, needs inspection, care, science, and people willing to say, “No, that is not populism. That is a larva.”
So yes, the screwworm is back. But the political species has been with us for years, chewing through the republic one open wound at a time.
some comment on MAGAts as maggots is surely appropriate here.
BTW a remedy that works against screwworms (I believe) is Ivermectin. So if the MAGAts were not so busy using it elsewhere ...
Isolation. Sterilization. Concentration. Ultimate eradication. Final solution. Push it all back beyond the borders south where it has been held at bay. Give it back to South America. Meanwhile, back at the ranch the real estate changes hands again.
Dang it! Another outfit on that place? Wonder if they'll help clean the irrigation ditch running thru the place there.....
POD management. Investor driven. Ranch manager change every two years to avoid community attachment. If you are fence neighbors they have a plan for incorporating your improvements into expanding the Pod. I recommend you run rangy longhorns or buffalo to see how their fence building skills play out.
A helluva thing, ain't it?
I read an account today in more detail about how screwworm was defeated before. They released millions of sterile bugs, and that wasn’t a treatment for the infected animal it wasn’t a method to eradicate the screwworm population. Well apparently they tried doing that recently but they didn’t have enough of them or they didn’t do it soon enough I’m not sure what but that’s why we have this problem. And of course the geniuses in the Trump administration don’t know anything about their jobs so there you go.
That wasn’t lost on Heather.
Excellent analogy!
It is the women he is always directing his hatred towards. He belongs on an island of all men. A prison island. We should all be crying lock him up, lock him up....
If you are a US citizen or have US residency, would you please read my piece explaining the Free Speech for People campaign to impeach Trump AND his cabinet and help them get 2 million signatures by signing the petition in it? https://lindaweide.substack.com/p/indivisible-abroad-supports-the-impeach?r=f0qfn
If you can't find the link to the petition in the above piece, here it is. Just scroll down and you will find it. https://www.impeachtrumpagain.org/
Thank you for the links.
Want to be sure I understand: you want president Vance?
No. That is why this is a petition to Impeach Trump and his cabinet, who are all complicit in crimes against our Constitution.
I'm very familiar with the problem of defining the murky phrase "high crimes and misdemeanors," as are most constitutional scholars.Nothing personal, but I suspect you don't know what it means either. And Vance is not a cabinet member. He holds an Article II position. So you'd have to impeach him too. That would elevate Mike Johnson. Then you'd have to impeach him. That yields the Senate president pro tem, Grassly. Don't like him? Impeach him and get Rubio.
So your plan may not be practical.
It has been discussed in several Substacks I subscribe to. If you feel it is not practical than don't sign it. Let the rest of us do the heavy lifting while you wait until death for a sure thing.
I was trying to be polite. It's a silly, futile, performative and ultimately self-defeating idea. It's also impossible, literally, for the reasons I explained.
ICTT, women have ALWAYS been the front line against fascism, totalitarianism, and corruption. And the result has ALWAYS been white males panicking that they are irrelevant (hint: they mostly are) leading to the death and dismemberment of women. In pre-Revolutionary France, women had the legal right to riot when the price of bread rose to starvation level. Not men. Women. However, men DRESSED IN DRAG in order to participate in the bread riots. Emma Goldman took no prisoners: she was an equal opportunity critic of Stalinism, fascism, and the nativist policies of early 20th-century Rethuglicans. And she was punished for it. Rachel Carson, despite ridicule from the white male establishment, blew the whistle on the detrimental effects of DDT and invented the ecology movement. I could go on--there are plenty of examples from the ancient world and the medieval world of similar actions by women as well. The question is: why do the other journalists sit silently by and let one of their colleagues get beaten up by this deranged, Adderol-addled moron?
Because Linda, they are not professionals like KC.
Sounds like you're in an abusive marriage. Get out if you can.
There's a saying I used to teach to my Officers ... Arguing with a fool is like wrestling a pig. All you do is get dirty and the pig enjoys it. It seems that Kaitlan has turned that around on Sideshow don... she remains calm and the pig goes berserk.
KC is a pro! I have been following her.
Don’t care for the “real balls” comment - it simply ties everything back to men. I believe it comes down to motherhood or the instinct of being a mother. Caring, Understanding, protecting a child at all cost, empathy. Without testosterone.
Men fight and guard. And use their balls to think.
We really need a female president - badly. Without balls.
I'd always used the phrase "Men use the wrong head to think with".
External dangly bits are vulnerable. Poor engineering.
Ally, LOL.
Ally, I found this again! Perfection! I even know a brilliant man who understands it. He suffers from never having had a really “useful” teaching parent, but his understanding of the “poor design” is spot on. You got it! I wish every man two good parental examples to grow up with. It would expand joy in the world.
Ally, you’re the best. Hope all is well!
It is, and thank you for asking.
Amen John.
“benzedrine puff-adder” gets my vote for Trump Description of the Year.
This kind of criticism is the bane of professional women everywhere. You’re a bitch if you’re decisive and forthright. You’re a wimp if you seek opinions of others and some consensus before moving ahead. You’re hired for your expertise and then told you don’t know what you’re talking about. Btw, all these statements are made by men.
An old quotation attributed to Simone Beauvoir, I think. “The world is made up of women and human beings. When women start acting like human beings, they’re accused of wanting to be men.”
I’m hardly the first, but it bears repeating — Hillary Clinton was way snd above the most qualified person who deserved to be President — and that includes her husband.
ICTT, I disagree. Both were qualified and as a pair would still probably be an excellent president. Read Ally on “design” and remember that Bill was not a Rhodes scholar for nothing. Two most generous patriots since FDR and Eleanor and a far more connected couple. Age: am I the only one of us who remembers Der Alte? Ageing is as different for everyone as genes, parenting, diet, schooling, and place in history.
As demonstrated, yet again, by my 1995 doctoral dissertation.
Historically, Trump’s reaction to Kaitlan Collins when she asks the tough questions is always the same--he criticizes her straight face. He should know, he's been staight-face lying for his entire existence.
He's universally despised by all honest, open and diginified women. They sense his cruelty, his malevolence and his lack of humanity. I don't think political disposition or brainwashing matters so much in their calculation. Collins is probably a Cheney republican, just judging from where she's from. It doesn't matter. She correctly sizes up a person like Trump. She's normal.
I'm thinking people's hatred and revulsion for him isn't so tied to our age, wealth, skin color or philosophical leanings. It's more visceral. Just on the face of it, we're all so tired of the shame and embarrassment. How is a fat, raging pedophile crime boss being gifted so much air time? Why can he continue to pee in our daily puddle of news? Every day? All day? It's so vile. So well deserved. Shame on us.
Fat shaming, huh? And he's not a pedophile. Even Epstein was not a pedophile. A pedophile has sex with, or is attracted to, prepubescent children. There are so many good reasons to dislike Trump, why add false ones?
Trump is glaringly, obviously, a pedophile. Beauty contests? Come on. Story-esque escorts, among whom Melania was evidently one, became his staple later in his decades-long manwhoring spree. Good heavens friend. He punched a twelve year old in the head for biting him. Are you reading this stuff?
I don't know how Yamiche Alcindor stood his degradation of her for as long as she did.
Nice to see some life in a few steel magnolias, thought that they had died out
And the Ellison's may soon be waived in to "fix" CNN now that they have eviscerated CBS
"Eviscerated CBS? Specifics? You mean they made management changes? Is Tanya Simon irreplaceable? Are there other news entertainers who can read scripts written by producers as well as Pelley? Aren't the scripts in English? Didn't Weiss build an extremely influential media group in just 5 years? Can't Pelley do that? Can't Alfonso start her own media company? What's the problem with diversity?
Ovaries.
Congratulations! You finally noticed!!!
Uh, I’ve noticed for a long time now. Most with eyes have. No “finally” involved.
Thank you. I needed to read something that reflects my anger. Now I can start my day!
We need more Ossoff’s, AOC’s and Talarico’s! They are amazing!
Speak up to keep up pressure on Congress!
Resource below to easily contact all of Congress - Be LOUD. Trump/the administration is dangerous for our country 💔🤍💙
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 ✊
Heather's letter is proof that Democrats are finally finding a voice, coalescing around the same message that got Orban kicked out of Hungary--a focus on the Trump regime's corruption and how it affects the average person's pocketbook.
Today is the day for each of us to tell our representatives in Congress, and our state governors and state representatives, that we will not tolerate the corruption and economic chaos of the regime, and we will vote out of office anyone who supports it.
We have to keep it up every day between now and the midterms. Choose a different corruption fact and a different economic cost, but make the feedback mechanisms overload. Do the same for mainstream media with letters to the editor. The idea is to force mainstream media to report what is happening.
I know that there are many other issues and groups that Republicans and the Trump regime have betrayed, and that Democrats neglected, that have impacted each of us and the people we love. But we have to win big first. The culture wars will be what the Republicans will use as their weapon in the fight, as they always have. It is the weapon of division. We can win with a campaign that focuses on universality, on the experience that each of us in the 99% shares.
Hello Georgia... The Designation of Bill Pulte as Temporary DNI is very Troubling... Pulte is a Nepo-Baby whose only Loyalty is to DJT.... The DNI oversees 18+ Foreign & Domestic American Intel Agencies.... While heading the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Pulte has weaponized FHFA Data against DJT's Political Enemies... Pulte will have unlimited access to Intel Data... It is questionable if Pulte has a Security Clearance... Expect a Götterdämmerung by DJT as the Midterms approach... I say, Pray For Divine Intervention
This one scares me the most, as it would the scores of serious intelligence professionals within DNI’s purview.
Hello ICTT... Hopefully, Pulte will not unleash a Reign-Of-Terror...
Of course he will… that’s what he’s there for. #47 says he’s only there temporarily, but that should be long enough to screw everything up.
Chump did brag that all his actions were done without intelligence or words to that effect. Who didn’t know that.
https://lithub.com/the-side-that-won-the-civil-war-is-now-banning-books-about-why-the-civil-war-was-fought/
Apache-when you say he is a Nepo-baby, please tell me why you think that. I can’t disclose my reasons for asking-suffice it to say-I may be able to learn more about this person from sources who actually know him personally.
Nepo baby, I think by inheriting a fortune from his grandfather, who founded the Pulte Group, a publicly traded home-building business. That supposedly gave Bill Pulte the big bucks to get in Trump’s line of vision via his large campaign donations, but he denies it.
Bill had rows and law suits with family members over his grandfather’s estate and with the board of the Pulte Group (the public company), but claims he built his own fortune through Pulte Capital Partners, a private‑equity firm that buys and operates building‑industry-related companies, and he has held board roles connected to the family’s homebuilding legacy.
His sory has resonance and parallels with Trump’s tale of being a self-made man while ignoring his father’s seed money and bailouts, and both their willingness to sue to ratchet up the stakes when they are opposed. Apparently Pulte and Trump are talking on the phone almost daily.
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/tyranny-or-revolution?publication_id=778851&post_id=200125332&isFreemail=false&r=cb67r&triedRedirect=true
I read an article about him yesterday. Pulte is the grandson of the founder of Pulte homes, one of the largest home building companies in the country. I understand he has been outcast by the family foundation and is in the bad graces of his aunt, who runs the foundation. Sorry, I cannot remember the source I read but this one has some of his background. https://wapo.st/4dQVC2I
I understand he went into the family home building business.
Adams was a neo-baby. Both Roosevelts were neo-babies. Kennedy was a nepo-baby. And therefore....? There are more substantive grounds for criticising the temporary Pulte appointment.
“Listen,” Talarico said. “Ken Paxton has escaped accountability, but accountability is coming on November 3rd.”
Only if we Get Out The Vote to Vote Blue No Matter Who
Even the most poorly educated and low information Republican voters understand that voting is a strategic joint exercise in taking power. Uniting at the ballot box gave them the Supreme Court and Project 2025.
In Hungary, a full spectrum of opposition voters united to oust Orban from power, root out Orbanism, and restore democratic government. Progressives and Liberals joined Moderates and Conservatives in voting for a Center Right party lead by a former Orban official.
Time and again, 2016 and 2024, the in name only Left Wing opposition refused to unite behind Democratic candidates. They are still at it.
And in another twist, here in Maine, although Janet Mills suspended her senate campaign because of lack of support, the drumbeat of opposition research against leading Democratic contender Graham Platner has given Mills, vanity candidate David Costello, establishment Democrats, AIPAC et al - hopes of splintering the Platner coalition. In Genevieve McDonald they have found the new Linda Tripp, dishing a friend's intimate confidences as opposition research. And now a Platner former girl friend and conservative operative Lyndsey Fifield channeling Al Franken's former colleague and conservative operative Leeann Tweedon, dishing troubling recollections as opposition research. So in Maine we have a spectrum of those opposed to party reform and to government reform coalescing in effect to help reelect Susan Collins - who has her own relationship scandal but more significantly a decades long record of supporting Republican abuses of power in service of antidemocratic policy.
Every bit of dirty laundry (real and manufactured) is going to be on display in the midterms. It is the only game plan the regime has—false equivalences, in Platner’s case between sexting adults and sex-trafficking underage girls. Would I prefer Platner was squeaky clean? Of course. But we have to call out the false equivalences when they occur, and bring the focus back to the core argument—the brazen corruption and policies favoring the 1% of Trump’s cronies is hitting everyone in the 99% hard.
I’m not a Mainer, but I listened to his interview with Chris Hayes last night. I wasn’t overly impressed with his answers to Chris’s questions, but at the same time he did seem like someone who has turned his life around and wants to do good things. You certainly can’t say that about Trump, Paxton, et al.
He stood up when no one else did to provide an alternative to Janet Mills, but it speaks to a lack of depth in the Democratic bench, and an unwillingness to mentor a new generation of Democratic leaders.
So who will run against Vance or Rubio given the thin bench?
Do we know he isn't a Fetterman?
If you would vote for a candidate with a KKK tattoo on his chest, Platner's your man. Only the KKK just murdered a handful of people. The Toten Nazi squad killed about 2 million. Also, I don't vote for candidates whose past girlfriends plausibly say he hit them.
Its all about negative campaign ads funded by “guess who” Dark Money With enough money to “flood the zone”, even the Pope will get vilified into dust
That certainly was tried in the NJ07 primary this week with $650,000 in last-minute attack ads on Dem Rebecca Bennett from a GOP PAC masquerading as a left-leaning one. Bennett won anyway, but I would not rank her as a top-notch candidate with no government experience other than as a Black Hawk helicopter pilot, and thin policy knowledge. But then again, she is running against the invisible man REpublican, Tom Kean, Jr.
Why are the Democratic state legislators, mayors, and AGs with government experience not running in the primaries? Do they not want the scrutiny, or do they not have the money to self-fund their primary campaigns? Bennett was the only one of the 4 candidates who didn’t self-fund, but she garnered a lot of endorsements despite a thin, not fully disclosed resume.
Georgia, perhaps people with experience but no funding are being realistic about going up against “unlimited” funding from billionaire coffers? But I am sensing a backlash against GOP candidates overall; a resistance that even money can’t overcome
Perhaps I’m being optimistic but any vote for a Republican is now a vote for Trumpflation, war and the destruction of the rule of law
Even some MAGA Farmers are beginning to see the light
Georgia, your question, "Why are the Democratic ... with government experience not running in the primaries?" reminded me of a mentor of my youth, Joe F. Brown, Jr. He was general manager of two department store branches in Charlottesville, VA, who produced most of the managers in the rest of the company. Owners repeatedly offered him a corporate position in human resources development. He declined every offer, stating that his talents for developing talent were best used to benefit the company right where he was. I think he was right. If you have time, here's my tribute:
https://lexigraphicspro.substack.com/p/the-three-mentors-part-2
Today's U.S. legislative branch is useless. Granted, it can become useful again only if good legislators once again inhabit the halls of the Capitol, but what a lengthy slog it will be. The loss of time with family and relentless exercises in futility are surely daunting.
Vital know-our-enemy intelligence that explains precisely how and why "(t)oday's U.S. legislative branch is useless": https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/how-the-war-on-terror-created-the?publication_id=778851&post_id=199540858&isFreemail=false&r=cb67r&triedRedirect=true
Perfectly stated. It's killing me what we're doing to the Platner campaign. - fellow Mainer
I like more, Georgia, Heather's link between corruption and the killing of government agencies.
It was also Peter Magyar's link in Hungary: how the most deeply corrupt needed first to rid themselves of all those free voices in the press, all those scientists, all those schools, all those regulatory agencies.
Heather fairly regularly couples them, too. Today while noting the introduction of a new disease (New World screwworm) that had been extinct for decades, the fatal cost to farmers rising prices for diesel and for fertilizer, and the real burden of rising gas prices for ordinary people, she also ties the eminent corruption "of 14 of the 27 known donors to Trump’s $400 million ballroom project have won new or expanded federal contracts totaling over $50 billion since they made their donations."
They go together: the hurt of the bottom 93%, in tandem with the immunity and gross, gratuitous, in-your-face profiteering of the Trump-Epstein class.
There is a lot of meat in the whole corruption saga to put flesh on the bones. You are right, it isn’t just the quid pro quo act, it is the precursor actions that allowed the quid pro quo to not be questioned. But I would argue that kind of detail belongs in the prosecution phase of accountability. We can’t let the detail clutter the big picture.
We need to think in terms of KISS, the bare bones if you will :
“The tens of millions going to paint the reflecting pool and gild the horse statues in corrupt no-bid contracts to Trump’s cronies could have paid for SNAP benefits for XXX people. He says there isn’t enough money to pay for those benefits, but there is to pay exorbitant profits to his buddies on vanity projects for him. The money is coming out of your pocket—out of the taxes you pay or the benefits you no longer receive.“
The KISS Principle!! The smartest man I've ever known - my Dad - used that on me constantly as I was reaching my present height ( I've never REALLY grown up! ). And it may be the most true Principle of my lifetime!
For the un-indoctrinated, "Keep It Simple, Stupid!"
A correction- screwworm was never extinct but had been eradicated in the US except for a small outbreak in the Florida Keys in 2017. Our dog was inspected in that outbreak, and was cleared. From USDA:
“NWS is endemic in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and countries in South America. Using sterile insect technique, we eradicated NWS from the United States in 1966 and successfully eliminated a small outbreak from the Florida Keys in 2017. USDA and Panama’s Ministry of Agriculture Development (MIDA) jointly manage and fund the only NWS sterile fly production facility currently in operation in North America through the Commission for the Eradication and Prevention of Screwworm (COPEG).”
If you want to see and hear some absolutely disgusting testimony, CSPAN had a few moments of the Secretary of Agriculture responding to a question about it and saying "it came because of the open border policies of the Biden administration". Proving the Republicans will do or say absolutely anything to keep from taking any responsibility.
Screw- worm. 🐛 Damn those immigrants, quarantine em.
😉
There must be a meeting every day stressing the importance of blaming Biden and using catch phrases.
True. And Democrats never do that.
Meanwhile, while the mainstream media Talking Heads are busy trying to eviscerate Grant Platner, the question would be, what did Susan Collins do yesterday? Wait for it, she was concerned. Maine voters, time to realize it’s up to you. Do you want more of this bullshit, or do you want to make a difference here?
thank you, Megan!!!
Thank. you Megan!
As always, thank you, Megan.
"Trump upended that system, promising to get rid of the federal government built around the liberal consensus," The term liberal consensus is misleading. We should call it democratic consensus.
It is all so much. We have a lot of work to do to fix this mess. Too many of us fell asleep and let them divide us while they picked our pockets. Can we all please vote strategically this time? No purity tests. No "progressives vs moderates"; just top vs bottom as Talarico says.
Sing it loud and sing it everywhere. They are found on youtube. The Raging Grannies of New Mexico.
Battle Hymn of the Donald
Lyrics by: Marcy Matasick
Gaggle: New Mexico
Tune: Battle Hymn of the Republic
Date Written or Updated: 08/07/2025
Mine eyes have seen the crime-ing
and the sliming of the Trump
He lost sight of all decency,
his head is up his rump
And with his team of crooks and liars,
sycophants and chumps
The fraud is marching on
His lawyers are on speed dial
and they’re working overtime
to fight off all the lawsuits
and the scandals and the crime
He tries to shake off Epstein
but he can’t shake off the slime
The cover-ups pile on
Lordy! Lordy! How he’ll screw ya!
With his lies he’ll try to fool ya
But, don’t ever let him rule ya!
No, we will not back down!
Mine ears have heard the smearing
and the slander from the right
defiling truth and honesty
and substituting spite
inventing Trumped-up charges
nabbing people day and night
The hate is marching on
I’ve seen them cut the taxes
for the richest billionaires
While stealing from the working class
and causing great despair
And now polluters have their way
with all our land and air
Their wreckage will live on
Lordy! Lordy! How they screw ya!
With their lies they try to fool ya
But, don’t ever let ’em rule ya!
No, we will not back down!
The link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAGr6J3ID3Q
I can’t get enough of them. I will include this song Saturday night at an open mic event who cares if there are magets in the audience.
Love this, it’s perfect!
Because it’s Friday and we need to laugh….
HOUSTON (The Borowitz Report)—The US Senate race in Texas got uglier on Thursday as Republican Ken Paxton accused Democrat James Talarico of lacking the requisite criminal record to represent the Lone Star State in Washington.
“With all due respect, my opponent doesn’t have the cojones to go on a crime spree,” he told a crowd of supporters in Houston. “James Talarico never saw a law he didn’t abide.”
Drawing a stark contrast between himself and Talarico, Paxton said, “My criminal record is as big as Texas itself.”
Paxton warned that, given the lawless environment that currently prevails in Washington DC, a non-crook like Talarico would be a “dangerous choice,” adding, “Texas deserves a criminal who doesn’t need on-the-job training.”
https://borowitzreport.substack.com/p/paxton-blasts-talaricos-lack-of-criminal?
Sounds like a good plan Laurie.
And don't forget all the once-eradicated human diseases that are coming back to the USA, such as measles (here already) and soon, polio. Thanks to Trump and RFK, Jr., the most unqualified secretary of health and human services in history.
Well, at least we’re not facing an eviscerated CDC, together with a sudden outbreak of a strain of Ebola for which no treatment yet exists. That would be disturbing indeed.
Oh wait…
Spot on.
This is what scares me for children and adults never immunized from these illnesses. I had measles, mumps and chickenpox as a child, and while I came through these diseases safely, not all children did or have come through safely. I had to get the Shingrix vaccine to prevent shingles because I had chickenpox. This antivaccine craze has gone on quite long enough.
I completely agree. I remember how relieved my Mom was when I lined up at school to get my first polio vaccine. I had measles, mumps and chickenpox also -- and I too have had the Shingrix vaccine. I have a friend who did not get it - and now he has Shingles in his eye. Yikes.
I knew someone with shingles in the eyes. I was first in line for the vaccine
Ocular shingles is dangerous to your eyesight, and it’s likely they have to see an ophthalmologist for treatment. My dad had cingulate shingles (shingles which forms on the side of the chest and the chest itself) and it was very painful for him.
My mother-in-law got that same shingles case; she was going through chemo at the time. It was awful.
I feel for your mother-in-law, and the chemo likely made her more susceptible to shingles as it weakens your immune system.
Me too!
Each day there seems to be a more ominous cloud.
I’m concerned about what Supreme Court decisions will be dropped on the last days of their current session just in time for the biggest Republican donors to celebrate the Fourth of July on their yachts and oceanfront homes.
Me too, shuddering to think of how they will rule on the birth right citizenship case.
No matter how bad the six SCOTUS justices are they are going to have a very hard time finding a way to overrule what is perfectly clear in the Constitution. There is no “interpretation” of the 14th Amendment. It is in plain English.
The billionaire class will soon own our farmland. Then how much will food cost?
Big Ag already does.
That is necessary because of the cost of agri equipment, land, and the vagaries of weather that plague agriculture. Without the billionaire class, you also have no museums, hospitals, much less medical research, university scholarships and the more than 30 million jobs they create. I kind of like what they do.
How about they pay their fair share of taxes and let us decide to spend the revenue on hospitals, medical research, free college, museums, and Medicare for All, which will create more jobs than defense.
The history of government allocation of capital is not attractive. China has done brilliantly with it but now has problems in several sectors. And to do what China has done requires a level of oppression and centralized control that you might not like. "Fair share"? Don't know what that means though many use it, especially those who do not pay their fair share. The top !% current pays 40% of the cost of our government. The top 10% (the bottom rung of which is only ~$187,000) pay 72%. The top 20% pay 85%. The bottom 48% pay 3%, leaving the 23% "middle class paying 12%.
So what is a "fair share"? Seems unfair if you look at it that way, with so few supporting the rest of us. Maybe it might be more productive, and less emotional, to simply say very very very rich people can afford to pay more, so let's ask.
"Let us "decide"? Who? How? They're doing great work without us. And not to scare you, but the odds of billionaires handing over money for a plebiscite on how to spend their money are low. Gratitude is, in my view, a better approach. Without those evil billionaires, you wouldn't have the computers and software to tell us how evil they are.
I am much too busy to continue arguing with you as much as I'd like to, because I'm right and you're wrong. Another day. Take care.
I Love You Cheeto!: A Case For Disbarment
Todd Blanche has worked overtime to get into Cheeto’s good graces. He’s been loyal to him all the way through his civil trials, felonies and rape charges defended unsuccessfully. After Cheeto got rid of Bondi, he put his loyalist Blanche into Bondi’s position as acting AG. Cheeto told Blanche in nominating him, “Don’t fuck this up like Bondi did”. So Blanche has his marching orders.
Unfortunately for Blanche, he has to be confirmed now with 18m of legal baggage as Deputy AG doing Bondi’s bidding. From the lack of public interviews with Maxwell to the hiding of half of the Epstein files to creating the “slush fund” for Cheeto to pay off the J6 rioters.
What gives cover for all of this corruption in Cheeto’s regime including the AG and all his secretaries, is that Cheeto more than likely either told them privately or by action, that there will be a blanket pardon for all those in the regime. Fortunately for WE the People if WE want expressed retribution Todd Blanche even if pardoned doesn’t prevent him from being disbarred, like loyalists Rudy Guiliani, Ken Chesebro, John Eastman, Michael Cohen, and Jenna Ellis(https://bit.ly/4dSBb5u)
Will Todd Blanche join the above list with a group of DOJ lawyers? Let’s hope.
Blanche is probably the worst AG we've had since Eric Holder.
When the world can finally leave Trump behind in the dust ‘an equal and habitable world is possible’:
Academics set out sweeping vision for planetary survival
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/04/world-inequality-lab-equality-academics-planetary-survival?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Academics set out sweeping vision for planetary survival which offers a set of bold policy proposals, including hefty wealth taxes on billionaires, sharp reductions in working hours, a change in diets and a shift of investment from materially intense sectors, such as industry and mining, to education and health. If these and other measures are taken, the report says, the incomes of 89% of the world’s population would double by 2100 and global heating would be kept below 2C above the preindustrial average.
The authors say their vision provides a positive alternative to the grim projections from far-right techno extractivists, nationalists and billionaires who claim the future will inevitably bring more fossil fuels, climate disruption and inequality. “There’s a huge cultural, intellectual, political battle that is going on. And we all have a role to play,” said Thomas Piketty, a co-director of the WIL and a professor at the Paris School of Economics. The key, Piketty added, was to address inequality and planetary habitability together. “If you don’t put this at the centre of your analysis and if you talk about green policies, environment, in the abstract, this is simply not going to work,” he said.
The report will be unveiled and discussed at the World Inequality Conference from 4-6 June in Paris, with speakers including Ha-Joon Chang, Jean Drèze, Jayati Ghosh, Mariana Mazzucato, Branko Milanović, Lea Ypi and Gabriel Zucman.
Thanks Kristin for the link to article 🌱
The report will be unveiled and discussed at the World Inequality Conference from 4-6 June in Paris, with speakers including Ha-Joon Chang, Jean Drèze, Jayati Ghosh, Mariana Mazzucato, Branko Milanović, Lea Ypi and Gabri
An impressive and ambitious initiative - thanks for sharing.
Who in power to do anything even is remotely aware?
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/jeffrey-epstein-the-russian-mob-and?publication_id=778851&post_id=200663536&isFreemail=false&r=cb67r&triedRedirect=true
Note: this report -- which contains extremely vital know-our-enemy intelligence -- is partially suppressed by Google and is uncharacteristically garbled, which is most likely also censorship. Though the result is difficult reading, the information is infinitely valuable in understanding the global magnitude of the Trumpstein onslaught.
Do you know the name Ray Kurzweil, an AI pioneer? I just discovered him. I am late to the fair .
No. Thank you for asking. To me, AI is literally the most infinitely terrifying weapon our species has ever invented. I recognize it as the ultimate fulfillment of patriarchy's intrinsic quest to perpetuate eternally omnipotent male tyranny. While this has always been the unspoken purpose of the patriarchal weapon we know as capitalism, it was first achieved by IBM in the late 1930s, which in obedient service to Hitler and his Holocaust spawned what eventually became the personal computer.
(See "IBM and the Holocaust," a PDF, https://ia601309.us.archive.org/20/items/historyDEEPWEB/IBM%20and%20the%20Holocaust%20-%20Edwin%20Black.pdf)
IBM's extermination technology was returned to the U.S. for further development by the legions of Original Nazi war criminals eagerly adopted by the USian capitalists as partners and comrades-at-arms after WW II; AI -- which does precisely as intended (and thus gives our Infinitely Evil Masters absolute, infinite and therefore literally irreversible omnipotence) -- is the end result. For us of the 99.9 percent, it ends [forever] any rational hope the arc of history will ever again bend toward anything other than intensified slavery and ever-more-psychologically crippling degradation. Knowing this, I avoid reading about AI simply because I know anything other than what I have stated above is Big Lie propaganda.
(Bear in mind I am one of the very few who recognized from the beginning that the computer and its derivatives were developed to be precisely what they are -- capitalism's invisible but forever inescapable collars of surveillance and control by which the naive general public is seduced to eagerly enslave themselves forever. Thus our patriarchal Masters spare themselves the cost of the violent efforts hitherto necessary to impose and perpetuate the Nazism always implicit in capitalism. Thus too I have always recognized the newly-revealed, exceptionally sadistic Nazism of the high-tech Übermenschen.)
Yet here we are communicating via a technical form I didn’t have faith in being more good than bad. I wrote you more about Ray Kurzweil but maybe the email address was incorrect. No harm will come from you googling the name to read about the man himself and not AI. I really am not an idiot and sometimes the bee in my bonnet turns out to be worthwhile.
Most assuredly never thought ill of you, Ms. Parsons; quite the opposite in fact. (By your name, we might be relatives, as Mary Blisse Parsons is a daughter of the colonial Blisses from whom I am directly descended.) Never got your email; if you sent it via gmail, Google's censors often maliciously block correspondence to me (including at least one subsubstack subscription), probably because I am an unabashed Marxian and, despite being personally agnostic, am openly supportive of both goddess-centered paganism and Catholic liberation theology. I've another, older email address, which I now use only as backup, which I'll go check now. Meanwhile thank you for your patience.
I want to know what school all of these loyalists went to. Why? Because when they face members of Congress, they all use the same rhetoric and they talk over the Dem members. “It’s the Biden Administration’s fault.”
Also today, Rep. Brendan Boyle asked Bessent a question and Bessent started to reply that it was the Biden admin’s fault. Boyle cut him off and said he was tired of Bessent and others using Biden as an excuse. He said if he counted the times everyone had invoked Biden’s name, he’d be as rich as him (Bessent)! I got a big kick out of that.
Trump totally refuses to take responsibility for his numerous errors, just as Roy Cohn taught him. Trump will never apologize for anything wrong he does, and he’s done plenty. He has instructed his toadies and minions to blame President Biden for everything going wrong, so Bessent does what he’s told and blames Biden. Rep. Boyle was correct that Bessent’s attempt to blame Biden would not pass muster with him.
I want to reach out and slap the smarm off Bessent's repulsive face.
The Trump administration bus is the bus at the end of The Italian Job. Hanging over the cliff as the gold moves... with Michael Caine's character saying hold on I have a plan.. The very metaphor for this "administration"....
With one exception, Frank: Trump would add to Michael Caine's plan that he, Trump, has a "concept" of a plan. And we doubt it's even his "concept." Embarrassingly pathetic.
And he will show us in 2 weeks!
Where is Michael Caine, we are in desperate need
Everyone must listen to The Raging Grannies of New Mexico singing “Battle Hymn of the Donald.” They are fantastic. In the spirit of Woody Guthrie.
Thank you!! And thank you The Raging Grannies of New Mexico!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAGr6J3ID3Q
That is great! I'd love the sheet music for that descant part!
We have a good Raging Grannies group in Eugene; I love to hear them.
I went. I looked. I found. Thank you.
See above
“The wheels on that ‘Liberation Day’ bus go klunk-klunk-klunk….wheeez…. all day long.” 🎻
The Trump threat to the liberal consensus makes me think of a line from America The Beautiful:
“… protect thy soul in self- control,
thy liberty in law.”
Perhaps we need to hum that more and rely less on bunting and fire crackers as we celebrate the Declaration of Independence!
michael, I frequently play "America the Beautiful". When I play, I also try to "sing" as I do so (never mind my part is 2 octaves lower than my voice) and I combine two verses: "O beautiful for patriot dreams, that sees beyond the years, thine alabaster cities gleam, undimmed by human tears, America, America, God mend thine every flaw; preserve thy soul in self control, thy liberty in law."
As Heather mentioned in the letter tonight "farm diesel has gone up 95% in the last year, to $5.41 a gallon; farmers lost $28 billion last year; 70% of farmers say they cannot afford fertilizer because of Trump’s war on Iran."
But here in California you can't even get regular unleaded gasoline for that price, it's around $6 dollars a gallon, $5.79 being about the cheapest that can be found.
Diesel has been about $7.50 a gallon for several months, but closer to $8.00 a gallon in some areas of California. That has to be hurting truckers and will be causing prices to go up even more severely due to shipping costs.
Furthermore, California is such a vitally important agricultural state that it's often said to be the Nation's breadbasket, even an agricultural powerhouse of the world, producing over a third of the nation's vegetables and nearly half of its fruits and nuts. But it requires a lot of effort, labor(like migrant workers for planting & picking crops), skill, and machinery to produce and harvest the crops we depend on. And with most farm equipment running on diesel fuel and fertilizer being such a burdensome cost it seems likely more farms will fail or suffer due to Trump and the regime's stupid war, ineptitude and lack of concern.
horhai, what you wrote is clear and to the point. Did anyone in California's primaries hammer this situation home? Were any farmers or truckers featured in campaign ads? California could have modeled effective messaging for primaries in other states, and later for the midterms.
Wisconsin farmers have been hurting for quite a while: FarmerAngelNetwork.net
Thanks Susan.
The primary here in California was a bit of a fiasco with so many Democrats running and the Swalwell disaster earlier on. Mostly a lot of infighting, no one mentioned farmers, migrant workers or truckers that I’m aware of. Although Tom Steyer did say he wanted to take PG&E to task for being a monopoly and price gouging while I noticed they funded attack ads against him and some other candidates ads too.
Dems herding cats, sad to watch
Argh! So many opportunities to go on offense and show who they're fighting for, lost...again. I wonder who the farmers voted for.
Utilities seem like a good place to hit; I believe it helped NJ Gov. Mikie Sherrill win.
I appreciate your time, horhai; I restacked your original comment.
Thanks Susan, I appreciate your comments too.
Farmers wiill whine about fuel and fertilizer prices, but they will never vote for Democrats.
While Oregon isn't as bad as California, both states have high fuel tax rates that skews the price per gallon at the pump. Pump prices vary with location as well; notice that you will always pay quite a bit more per gallon the closer you are to an airport rental return.
Aftermath: California Gas Prices Are Up, and It's Not just the War by David Dayen, The American Prospect is helpful here.
The Screwworm Caucus
America spent decades eradicating the New World screwworm, a hideous little parasite that lays eggs in open wounds so its offspring can feast on living flesh. Naturally, the Trump era heard this and thought, “Finally, a governing philosophy.”
The screwworm does not build anything. It does not heal anything. It does not improve the host. It simply finds weakness, crawls in, multiplies, and acts like the wound belongs to it. In fairness, that is more policy detail than most Trump speeches contain.
The allegory is almost too perfect. You neglect public health, gut expertise, mock science, fire the people who know where the disinfectant is kept, and then act shocked when the parasites return. This is not draining the swamp. This is selling naming rights to the maggots.
And like any good infestation, the problem is not just the biggest worm on camera. It is the ecosystem that protects it: the flatterers, the loyalists, the cable-news wound dressers who insist the infection is actually healing beautifully, maybe the best infection anyone has ever seen.
The screwworm is not subtle. It enters through damage and makes the damage worse. So does authoritarian politics. It feeds on fear, grievance, ignorance, and institutional decay. Then it calls the decay patriotism and demands applause.
The lesson is simple enough for even a think tank to understand: parasites flourish when the body stops defending itself. Democracy, like livestock, needs inspection, care, science, and people willing to say, “No, that is not populism. That is a larva.”
So yes, the screwworm is back. But the political species has been with us for years, chewing through the republic one open wound at a time.
And wow, does the screwworm have a perfect name or what?
Brilliant! Let's hope we find that disinfectant sooner than the planned facilities to raise large quantities of sterile males are built - they say it may take a year. And the quantity being released weekly now is not adequate. Now, what disinfectant are we going to use on D.C.? Did someone say bleach?
Spot on Michael. The analogy is perfect
Brilliant analysis
I agree with all-Briliant, MichaeI ! I hope to see more use of“screwworm” to describe project 2025 and the Rump dictatorship.
I believe Steve Miller had this plan from the beginning and project 2025 took it up immediately as the horribly evil but winning plan it will be.
Funny how all those MAGA folks who have their shorts all in a wad about the "fraud" being perpetrated by poor folks of color who have the nerve to want help to buy food make excuses for billionaires increasing their wealth at the expense of the American people. They are being robbed blind, not just of money, but of rights and of a decent environment in which to live. They've chosen the wrong enemy.
They have been brainwashed into punching down instead of punching up. And, in so doing, they are actually punching themselves.