There are no words for the sheer ignorance of Trump regarding California's water. I happen to live on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada...where 40% of LA's water comes from
Grrr. I just want to send DJT and EM out to the Devil's Golf Course in Death Valley with NO water....
What I would like to see is a series of adverts featuring disillusioned M.A.G.A. voters admitting they made a mistake by saying something like, "Yes. I voted for Donald Trump, but I did NOT sign up for this."
Conversation with my hairdresser yesterday. She says tfg feels “deeply’ about Social Security and musk has shown a great deal of waste—and tfg said so during the SOTU. Thing is, this is a good and kind person if completely brainwashed by her church and Fox.
My dental hygienist (and her police officer husband) are trumpers. I tried to engage her (we long ago stopped talking politics) but she didn't seem to understand the effect of tariffs, so it wasn't worth pursuing. Some people just want to remain ignorant.
I have one of those dental hygienists; her husband and sister-in-law were both corrections deputies at my agency. They are, however, in the minority of cops (as am I) that don't worship at the church of MAGA.
My nephew is a cop and is not MAGA. And his brother is a fireman and also not MAGA. His brother the fireman is the union rep for the entire fire department. He's done very well at getting the firemen good raises.
When I first moved back from Tunisia after the murder of George Floyd and after a difficult encounter with a policeman three years before, I was iffy on police conduct. I went to Panera one day and found two policeman from Annapolis -- a really nice town with really nice people -- 'brutally' dragging a man out of the door. I took a vid. of it with the intention of posting it.
An employee of Panera came up to me and explained to me why I had the situation all wrong. The man being 'brutally' dragged out the door had been creating a ruckus and was becoming violent; the police were protecting the patrons of the coffee-joint. You see, Ally, I had caught the very tail-end of the situation without knowledge of the situation.
The agitated man was being 'brutally' dragged out the door because he had sat down and resisted the police vigorously. He was mentally impaired. This situation was not a George Floyd repeat by any means.
The policemen had seen me vidding the incident. So, once I had realized my misapprehension of a difficult situation as some form of police over-reach, I approached the policemen and apologized, pledging to erase the vid.
The officer displayed a professional equanimity leavened with an earnestness of public service. Gently, he said to me that many times people only see a snip-it and mistake what is happening. He informed me that the gentleman whom they had removed from the restaurant was well-known to them and quite ill. In fact, the police had NOT arrested him but were taking him to hospital.
A timely reminder to me that the great majority of people in law enforcement are publicly spirited professionals who give a scheiße about communities they serve. In fact, the unpleasant experience I had encountered before did give rise to a concern over burn-out. The policemen seemed more stressed out than churlish.
Wait a while get back to them her offices closes for lack of business and her husband gets laid off for lack funds to pay him. Of course it will be to late. There's a quote from Thomas Hobbes "H**l is knowing the truth to late.
It’s not easy for people to change their minds, even when they know they are wrong. It takes time to admit to yourself, much less to others that you were mistaken, much less that you were taken for a fool.
Especially when you are being told you're wrong! You just dig in. That's what makes it so hard. I certainly don't have an answer. The best I've come up with is to acknowledge we're all in this together and watching how it goes.
It's also a team (or cult) thing. I've been a Husker football fan for over 60 years. They've had great years and really shitty years. They've had bad coaches and some crappy teams, but I still follow them and probably will until I die.
We probably all know people that think that Trump is great just because he's the quarterback of their really shitty team.
You speak to Virginia Cutler's point. Of course, I am assuming that there are five people out there with the humility and humility to make this statement.
"In fact, before Trump took office, it was the strongest of any economically developed country in the world." The MAGAs didn't know this because their sources of information (TV, radio, newsprint) never reported it. It's analogous to using the Bible as one's science textbook.
There are so many of these people who contribute to their 401k plan at work and never look at the balances or what it’s invested in. I know we rarely look at my husband’s at work now and I dumped a transferred annuity for 20 years and rarely looked at it. But I watched my other IRAs and Roth’s like a hawk. I understand finance.
Suddenly it will be retirement day or they will lose their job and have a big wake up call that maybe that 50k that went in from their paycheck is only 30k because of market losses. The they won’t have social security or Medicare either. But, not to worry, they’ll blame it on Democrats because that’s all our media can do.
Schumer and the rest in the Senate should let the government close. They keep bailing out the Republicans who will destroy everything open or closed. How will saving them now make things betters? I’ve read their reasoning and it makes no sense.
Those of us on the cusp of retirement are watching our retirement funds going down, down, down... and wondering if we will still have social security. I know who is to blame, and it ISN'T the Democrats!
My parents literally get their news from a bible based news source. I forget the title, but that's the tag line. More like Christian Nationalist Lies. SMH
Pick up a copy of Chris Hitchens' masterpiece "God is not Great: How religion spoils everything" You will understand them better. When you're done with it you could hand it to your dad and make run for it.
It is a hard time to practice charity; that is what makes it all the more necessary. If your parents realize that they have made a big mistake, they may well need your loving support without judgement.
Not that strong. When Reagan took office he cut taxes on the wealthy and encouraged them to move manufacturing overseas. We won WWII not because we had better soldiers of equipment but we could manufacture more. That capability is gone.
Trump often bragged that he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and not lose any supporters. What you have pointed out in a much more elegant way is that Trump has sat atop the Statue of Liberty and dumped a large bowel movement and his masses are flocking with soup spoons.
This comment from MLMinET is the essence of the problem. That any adult could believe the fantasy…The LIE…that Musk has found a great deal of waste is a powerful indictment of the failure of the Democratic Party to get the facts before the eyeballs of most Americans. FAILURE! FAILURE! FAILURE!
I have to put a good portion of the blame on the MSM. I've dumped the NYT, and my local paper, the Worcester T&G, for not telling the truth. And the Boston Globe is on thin ice. As to the networks, CSPAN, PBS, and (most of) MSNBC are still on my TV. ABC, CBS, and NBC are ignored except for local news.
I haven't watched any TV news since the election. I used to watch our local news - and I still subscribe to a local newspaper - but I had to stop, because they usually have at least one news report from the national network. I don't want to see that man's face on my screen.
I live in South Jersey and read a REAL newspaper, The Philadelphia Inquirer. In my 80’s and it has become a gift! Atlanta Constitution as best I know is as well!!!!!
An!d! Heather Cox Richardson has given me more history than I received in 18 years of schooling….
I haven't watched network news since last summer, around the time of the assassination "attempt" (I still wonder about that ... ), and I don't miss it. I get most of my news via independent media now. I dropped the late, great WaPo last month, but will keep the NYT for now. I want to subscribe to a national daily and there are many other features the Times does really well that I want to hold on to. I have a subscription to the Atlanta paper for state news and to the local rag for things near to home. I follow a lot of publications on FB, so I can pick and choose what I want to delve into. Substack is a BIG source for me—though I was having enormous problems logging in this morning ... they wouldn't allow me to post on here, saying I wasn't a paid subscriber! It may be an issue with my browser, IDK. Anyway, I have hardly heard a single word escape from Trump's sphincter-ish lips in months and my life is better for it.
Same. I find I get much more thorough news and analysis through a variety of Substacks lately. I have given up on watching most MSM, though that is partly because (as someone else here has said) I am more and more repulsed by seeing that face everywhere. Substack really could come up with some sort of subscription program where for $X you get 4 or 5 newsletters of your choosing and I bet it would be very popular.
James, we take the NYT which for me means the puzzles, book review, science section, food, etc. My husband reads the rest of it. We watch the local news, no national news and take the local paper online mainly for obits. People are now using funeral home pages because they don't want to pay for even a death notice.
Ed Weber the facts are out there. There is only so much Democrats can do to get their message out. trump supporters dismiss or ignore facts that contradict their beliefs, if they even encounter any. They only listen to sources that support their beliefs. Listening to Fox or conservative podcasts is like entering an alternate universe. I'm often impressed with their verbal ju-jitsu that completely twists reality. Listened to Tom Cotton on C-Span this morning for 2 minutes (all I could handle) as he explained it would be the Democrats fault if the government is shut down. Completely false, but supporters will believe it!
I know that most people in politics are decent and hard working but I do feel let down and tossed to the wolves by the Democrats. And the Republicans? Oh brother. Adam Kinzinger has a substack worth a look.
The Biden administration had every chance to put this criminal away but they didn't. I just switched to to independent. And I took down the stars and stripes I've been flying in my yard for two decades. I have my New York State flag coming in the mail. I may put Old Glory in a box and bury it. (RIP). After 21 years (65-86) in the Navy with lousy pay and many difficult experiences this is all pretty painful me.
I hear similar stories from war veterans in East Texas, Hegseth and Trump are heroes - even as veterans are being fired all over the place. They also want to invade Canada and Greenland because Trump says we should own them. THey believe we don't have friends including Europe and Australia - that all these countries are leeches sucking American dry. I have argued with them since 2016 and it is like arguing with my living room wall. And now Schumer capitulates to Maga but his party sends me a score of requests daily for money. It seems to me one party is evil and one party is either incompetent or lacking a backbone - or both.
Well when they don’t receive their VA checks or SS payments, that’s the only time when they’ll wake up. My hubs is a Vietnam Vet and he’s ready to go “locked and loaded” on stupid people. He has no gun or rifle, thank goodness, but if he is made angrier than he already is….
I do not have a gun. I can barely hit the side of a barn. If civil war does come, I will take solace in Stuart Rhodes and other militia types being as wide as a barn.
The thing that bothers me the most is the feeling of betrayal, in a sense -- that someone no longer seems to care about the same values you once (thought you) shared.
Yes, family members, especially, are difficult to deal with. They opt out on conversations about politics while Fox News is blaring in the background. Sigh…
My own elderly parents, who moved to be near me as they aged so I could help them, refuse to believe me (or my sister, the only other person who has regularly helped them). Instead, they "refuse to talk politics" or berate me for my more fact based opinions, and have gone no contact. They choose lying Republicans and feeling self righteous (or self aggrieved which they are good at that regardless of politics, and which is probably the root of their belief system) over family help.
Perhaps the problem is neither your relationship with your parents nor the divergence in politics. Your parents' behavior reminds me of me when I know deep down inside that I have been played but do not want to admit it to me, you, or anyone.
I am so sorry! I wouldn't know how to deal with my late parents being like that. Preacher Dad & Mom. Good Book used to teach kindness & empathy NOT how to let a MORTAL decide your beliefs. They hated T from the get go & I'm glad they aren't here to see this crap. Take care of yourself Barbara.
Has she no mind of her own? No critical thinking abilities? Tired of excusing these people for whatever reason you can come up with. Whatever decisions you make, whatever you do--it's on you. Period.
Maybe fearful. I remember the young adults whom I taught in Tunisia would aske me what was up with the United States (2018-2020). My answer was, "The U.S. is no longer king of the mountain and we are having trouble handling that."
When students remarked that I did not seem like "other Americans", I would tell then that, someday, I would like to introduce them to three hundred million of my closest friends.
That is to say: while I am not like the nattering nabobs of narcissism they would see on the news, etc., I was very much like the ninety per cent of decent, kind country(wo)men.
That, Debbie, is what I suspect is the big sticking point; keen perception! If we could find five intellectually honest, spiritually chastened country(wo)men in the deep South, the rust belt, Tejas, the plains states, and the mountain states to make that commercial, however phrased, a small fissure could crack open into nuclear fission.
See? So friggin' obvious to you, me and anyone with a functioning brain. Not being able to separate truth from fiction is a blatant indication of failure of reasoning ability. This is serious and apparently virulent, from observing the effects of the phenomenon so far....
This I proffer is the main issue, that being ..lies were ( and are) told repeatedly. Who can make a rational decision based upon lies.
Today I submit that 90% of our issues plaguing America (the world?)are because the truth hasn’t been there to make proper/educated decisions.
We ,at some point, were divided , lies offered as an alternate reality , to benefit whom? And is it not still going on? Dare I guess when? Perhaps right around the great shift of money between rich or poor which hollowed out the middle class?
I see explanations ,many givens ,in opposition . One is from a Republican , the other a Democrat or it has appeared so for quite some time. It boggles my mind not -being an expert in that field-to decipher whether it’s manipulation of words or fact .
Currently ,if not continuously, we have chaos running amuck w/o proof of accuracy. Based upon “Trust Me”?
Correct me if I’m wrong but aren’t laws established to prevent us all from being conned by lies/liars/scams/cheats?
With the incarcerated numbers in America…apparently that’s not working. The objective is it equality? Again…apparently not working also?
How long do we ignore this, before the principle(s) get defined, addressed, corrected? I identified two different posts this morning on this exact issue. Both stood out to me as this same premise.
If it’s a lie …how to stop it from being told over and over …as we all know the repetition basis (Pavlov proved?).
Patricia Davis, you are correct about the lies plaguing our reality. But it gets worse because at a certain point, people can't recognize truth and fact when presented to them. All the proof in the world doesn't dislodge the lies. That's a real, long-term problem.
"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on." - Pres. G.W. Bush, White House Correspondents' Dinner, 3/31/2001. They (the oligarchs, the ultra wealthy) fooled the people. (Thomas Frank, "What's the Matter with Kansas?" 2004 and Heather Cox Richardson, "How the South Won the Civil War," 2020.)
I would add to your suggested reading, "It's Even Worse Than It Looks" Thomas E. Mann & Norman J. Ornstein, 2012. and "It's Even Worse Than It Was" 2016, or Kevin Phillips' "The Politics of the Rich and Poor". They don't read, and that's why we are in the position we find ourselves.
“Today I submit that 90% of our issues plaguing America (the world?)are because the truth hasn’t been there to make proper/educated decisions.”
This jumped out at me also. I truly blame MSM for not reporting the truth - and this has been ongoing for at LEAST a year! I believe we wouldn’t be in this mess if they had been reporting the truth about the candidates. People, for the most part I believe, trust what they see/hear on the news. I believe if MSM had been reporting honestly about <among other things> the economy under Biden and the mental decline of TFG, I don’t think we’d be in this mess.
I believe whole heartedly in “common sense” which T’s recent statement sent me into gales of laughter..I can’t find right now ……but basically…..a man who has how many bankruptcies , cheated on how many wive ( let alone contractors and ‘friends’), is a convicted felon , and says things like..” it was a day of love” is NOT a man to be trusted with my money , my country, and definitely not my common sense.
Sure but that was lawfare and a weaponized Biden DOJ. Trump has never done anything wrong and all those businesses of his didn’t really fail, that was just smart financial strategy to file bankruptcy so he didn’t have to pay his bills. Let’s not forget he really is a billionaire….. on paper, not counting his billions in debt.
It is almost a given human trait not being able to admit one’s error/that you/they/we ( all the ‘pronouns’😓) were wrong. Maturity is key. Pointedly lacking in the current ‘controllers’….is it MI, greed, selfishness, evil…all of the above?
Basics: if whomever is raised in ‘wealth’ it’s pretty inconceivable to understand the problems the poor is surrounded by ..or care enough to fix them…not all of them are actually fixable …but considerable safety mechanisms can be in place to deter the worst and …AND…those are rarely a rich person’s focus …shall I repeat that?
I'm gobsmacked that Schumer caved on the budget. Does he think Felon #47 is going to finally do the "thing" that turns MAGA against him? It will never happen. The disinformation machine always covers for him.
I listened to Simon Rosenberg talk about how Schumer might be doing the right thing - I know hear me out- not my idea just repeating his thoughts - If the government shuts down many more people will be hurting, the government will be running on a skeleton crew (prepping for the way tRump/Dump wants the government work force to be carved out) and People will be mad and truly hurting. Typically people will blame it on the party that won't come to the table. I know sounds crazy but I do see some truth in this.
Fox “News”, Newsmax, Breitbart, Sinclair, etc. will assure that most Americans will blame the Democrats if they “come to the table” or not. Since it doesn’t matter what the Democrats do, why not - heaven forbid - stand on principle and refuse to cooperate with a Nazi regime?
I've gone back and forth on this. I'm still not sure. Yes, the Dems will either get blamed if the shut down happens or vilified if they ok it. There is no win here. The bill itself is essentially an extension of Pelosi's with some tweaks. It keeps things going for 6 months. Meanwhile, the courts do their jobs, but will 6 months be enough time to right the ship at all? And, what damage will Musk and the orange one do in that time to worsen things? Whatever happens, it will be a propaganda tool. I just think the Dems aren't very good at that, even when they are right. Too many self-centered, unempathetic Americans out there, and nastiness sells.
Except, no matter what the budget says, President Musk and Trump will do what they want. They will only fund what they want.
I read an article yesterday that Trump isn’t going to travel but stay at the White House. Yes, he’s had leaders visit him there. But if Biden had said that they’d be screaming for the 25th because of his mental decline. Let’s face it, Trump needs to be drugged up and then embarrasses himself when he does talk. Just reading the transcript of his whole water debacle shows he’s not mentally capable of holding office. Then putting the bulldog Vance in there to distract viewers is ridiculous.
I am positive that Hillbilly Elegy is a work of fiction being peddled as an autobiography. The man has shown us repeatedly how willing he is to lie.
Agreed Rhonda! Once government shuts down we lose even the few effective means for fighting tRump’s Muskrat-directed destruction of that government, especially the legal ones, the courts which are providing so many refutations to what they are trying to do.
People will be affected in ways they never dreamed of. Some of the ways people will be affected will be seeing those they love get hurt. One family is a veteran; another is a researcher; another works for the VA.
JennSH, this quote by the poet and novelist, George Eliot
( pen name for Mary Ann Evans) should speak to all Americans. "What do we live for if not to make life less difficult for others." Apparently, to Trump and Company this would read, "What are we here for if not to make life as difficult for others as we can, while making as much money.as we can."
THAT is what makes me incredulous! All these good CINOs ignore the teachings of Jesus and worship the deadly sins, all the while worrying about what goes on in people's bedrooms.
Neither Trump nor Musk's 'charitable arms' are very active. He has put 7 billion dollars total into "The Musk Foundation" and has received a received 2 billion in tax savings for that.
I thought when tfg fans started feeling it, they’d slap their foreheads in comprehension. Now I don’t think so. They’ll go down with the man they worship. How did people lose their ability to see and think with this man?
MLMinET...I believe it's right wing media combined with trump that has them brainwashed. However, they chose to listen/watch. No one is making them. So why do they? Because it resonates with them on some level.
Just the way WE tune into Heather, MK. We do so because she says and writes things with which we are familiar and believe to be true. “They” keep tuning in to the tRump travesty because it sounds familiar and comforting even though there is NO evidence to support it and it’s ALWAYS someone else’s fault. No evidence, few facts, unlike Heather.
It’s the familiar…why do people stay in abusive relationships…in case after case I saw the parents ‘bad parenting’ manifested again, ‘generational’ is that familiar term. Assuredly the stats are vivid but so very hard to undo years of bad programming / unlearn ,so to speak , and re-establish good moral character. It’s a defeatist attitude , but depending on how long/how bad the programming was -it’s easier just to play the victim, blame games, no responsibility needed.
Exactly, JD! Will 200% tariff on French champagne stop the ultra rich? Of course not. They can afford it even with a 1000% tariff, and for plenty of people, "expensive = desirable". The average MAGA picking up a case of Bud Lites -okay, not those, but any other NON WOKE brew, doesn't care.
Apparently Bernie Sanders is touring Red States with town halls and asking for peoples stories. I am not sure whether it is about health care only or whatever they want to talk about and then repeating then back but with analysis of what is happening with the system that contributed to their problems.
It is a brilliant example of John Dewey’s educational philosophy on his book Experience and Education. This is the idea that people learn best when theory is tied to their experiences. Bravo Bernie!
Bernie's road show may be interesting to some, but let's recall that it was Bernie, Liz Warren, AOC, et al who drove a lot of people into MAGA. Dems will need to find a more centrist platform that can form an effective coalition and win elections. That probably means leaving the 'far Left' behind.
I couldn't disagree with you more, Joseph J. Dunn. The Republicans are not interested in an effective coalition, and the centrist platform hasn't worked. The MAGA's right-wing extremism is dismantling our democracy, and you think being centrist, like Chuck Schumer continues to do, is going to accomplish anything? What you call the far-left is the heart of the Democratic party, and the only way we will save our country at this point, IMHO. It is time to re-birth our nation, and we need the passion and vision of people like Bernie, AOC, and Liz Warren, among many, many more who are stepping up to stand for "we the people" and all that entails. Blaming these people for MAGA is absurd!. Project 2025 has been in place for a long time, and finally they manipulated their way into implementing it. Compromise? Forget it! We have to fight for what we believe in or we will not have a country left!
I just posted this above, so apologies to anyone reading this but I think it might be worthy for me to put it into a reply for anyone who has already commented today. I hope the views of this goes viral, and that everyone who watches it hits the "like" button.
Judas Priest, Mr. Dunn...those folks you named are NOT "far left"...this country's right wing has gone so far right that they are fascist. The Dem "so-called" left wing would barely register as "left" in Europe. It just seems to be 'far left' because the Republican rightwing has slid SO far to the right they are dangling off the fascist edge of their flat earth.
So what are those "far left" policies that you are so afraid won't appeal to the centrists? Reinforcing the social safety net? Fixing our broken healthcare system? Making sure everybody who is eligible to vote can do so without let or hindrance? Making sure everybody--including those who have been marginalized by our culture-- are treated equally before the law?
The right wing has managed to drag the culture of this country so far rightwards that the perfectly normal desires of the majority of people in this country are treated as though those wishes are too leftist as to be beyond the consideration of any Dem.
Jim Hightower, a rare Texas liberal, has always said that the only thing in the middle of the road are yellow stripes and dead armadillos. Liz, Bernie and AOC are most definitely NOT too far left.
TL---you speak the TRUTHregarding how "left" the Democrats are. I didn't realize that myself until about a year or so ago when "Beau of the Fifth Column" explained it. Beau even said, in comparison to Europe, BIDEN was "center-right"
We can get back to a centrist platform someday. Right now, we need a fucking revolution and take this fucking administration to the woodshed for a shakedown, because that's what is happening to us right now. We're being shook down and our pockets are being emptied.
Joseph, I also disagree with your assessment, mainly because I suspect that your definitions of "centrist" and "far left" are either erroneous or more likely, don't exist.
A vocal minority, advantaged by a distorted electoral system and complicit corporate media, have pushed the political discourse to the extreme right, such that what is now labeled "far left" is actually what used to be moderate. HCR often refers to this as "liberal democracy."
When public opinion is viewed within the frame of history, both domestic and global, there is no far left. Today, public opinion ranges from moderate to fascism.
Sanders and Warren are not by any stretch of imagination, extremists. Protecting workers and consumers would not, in a functioning democracy, be considered radical. AOC has been castigated for rightly expressing concern about our destruction of the environment. Yet, if we don't immediately take radical measures to correct our destructive behavior regarding the environment, we will self-exterminate in short order. Now that's extreme!
People chose MAGA; they were not driven.
I can't account for all the reasons people gravitated to MAGA, but I recognize some of them.
1. They were mind-f*cked by religion in general and evangelicalism in particular. This created the foundation on which other grievances rest.
2. With limited education and the opportunities it provides to experience the world, they fear the unfamiliar: other ethnicities, other religions, other sexualities, etc. Untreated fear metastasizes into hate.
3. They subscribe to Scarcity Doctrine. When one believes there's a finite amount of resources that must be divvied up among all of us, greed and territorialism result.
I could think of more reasons, but this response is long enough.
The American Colonists that took up Arms against the King would be considered 'Far Left Lunatics'... That Label is a Smear used by the GOP... It Scares the Uninformed...
I think i’ve asked you this before with no reply but who do you consider to be the far left? What does it take to be far left? Is that the people who see Trump for the corrupt traitor he is?
Bernie Sanders,Eliz Warren, and AOC, and a few others, are recognized within the Democratic Party as the left wing. Remember as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi quietly told AOC and friends (the Pack) to tone down their demands? Remember how AOC backed away from challenging Schumer for Senate?
I see other Comments lamenting all that is wrong with MAGA, and proclaiming all that is good and true about Democratic proposals, etc. All of those pronouncements may be true.
But I believe the many problems HCR has identified can be corrected only by elections that replace MAGA elected officials with others--by winning elections. The same platform that lost in 2024 is unlikely to win in 2026 or 2028. So the relevant question is: What do Dems want to change, to become electable?
Agreed. If the Democratic leadership truly tipped the scales against Senator Sanders in 2016, all I can say, as a frustrated Republican at the time, is that the Elders of the wrong Party intervened. Trump should have been denied the nomination in Cleveland. He made vague threats of violence and the Elders came down with severe cases of spine-flu.
Bool-sheet. I was a Republican in 2016 and hoped for a contest between Senator Sanders and Governor Kasich. The country was in trouble then and these two candidates had visions on how to address that challenge. I think it was Democrats, like the Clintons and Speaker Pelosi, who veered toward the center too pragmatically and abandoned the middle class (as Senator Sanders observed on 06nov25) thus estranging certain traditional Democrats to M.A.G.A.
This element of the erstwhile Democratic base had not given up on the experiment of republican governance but decided that the experiment had given up on them. Anyone who listens to Representative Ocasio Cortez or other members of the 'lunatic left' can not believe that these men and women do not care about working class Americans. One may disagree with their policies, as I often do, but that person is hard-pressed to question their motives.
Of course, there are the fault-lines established in the 1950s and 1960s, rightly so in my view, that excite the racism and other malignant pre-judgements that fuel the Trump fartmobile.
Believe it or not, there were some educated voters Trump hoodwinked. I wasn’t one of them, and none of my immediate family can stand Trump. We know what an incompetent and vindictive con artist he is. His minions are no better than Trump, including JD Vance. I was embarrassed when he was elected Senator for my state courtesy of Peter Thiel’s purchasing him.
Indeed... my husband and his brother have been estranged since Trump 1. And I used to love visiting him and his wife in their lovely house in Arizona. But his brother is a narcissist, claimed Obama "raped" him because he had to pay high taxes, and once suggested that a woman be euthanised because her disability was being supported by the state!!!!!
If educated, then racist, sexist, homophobic, environmentally uncaring because you would have to be one or all to be both educated and vote for Trump. In fact, you have to have prioritised something else over all these things and it would certainly have not been the economy or the country? So then what would make an educated person vote for Trump? Someone who wanted to see the country destroyed. Russian asset? Even unwittingly, it has that effect.
Many of Trump's voters just support him because they "hate the liberals". Unfortunately, they don't understand that, over the years, " the liberals" have given them nearly all of the programs they love: Social Security, Medicare, Unemployment Insurance, the end of child labor, collective bargaining rights, voting rights, the 40 hour work week.
In fact, it's not at all a stretch to say that "the liberals" gave us "The Weekend"!
Alas, Linda, I know some highly educated people (doctors, lawyers, people with PhDs) who never lost their love of totalitarians in the person of their paternalistic and patriarchal pastors, whose antediluvian opinions are "justified" by the ways in which they glom onto certain biblical texts as ways to demonstrate some kind of elemental superiority in whiteness and maleness. Basically, I blame the conjoining of religion and what seems to be a human love of tribalism that gets infused with greed, as well as fear of the Other (carefully crafted by the leaders). It's a toxic soup that has always existed. The irony is that so many religions that preach utter intolerance and hatred were supposedly "inspired" by people who rejected those ideas. And the highly educated ones turn themselves into intellectual pretzels in order to justify their devotion to christofascism especially.
The educated voters weren't hoodwinked, they actually thought that Trump would deliver the massive tax cuts for them and their wealthy buddies. Instead the market is tanking, Trump has gone cray-cray with his tariffs dropping their net worths way below what they will save from re-upping the tax cuts.
The market will eventually recover as it did after 9/11 and the housing bubble burst, but what often happens is the wealthy and the insiders buy back in at the bottom while the rest of us usually wait too long and miss out on the much of the gains to be made from the recovery.
In the process of recovery, there will be bankruptcies and therefore no opportunities to buy back in. These are great examples but think Sears and Enron as two examples of stock that wiped out thousands of families retirement accounts.
Gary Loft, Yep. This is like 50% off at Filene's Basement for the rich. Think there's too much money at the top in this country? That's about to get much, much worse.
Hello Gary... The Seed of the housing Crisis was planted back in the Great Recession when the Private Equity funds, like Blackrock. bought all the foreclosed properties... Blackrock is now the largest Landlord in the USA...
Educated does not equal "without greed, lust for power, etc." Those are things that parents, family, (supposedly religion), and other close relationships should teach.
If anyone got bankrupted or lost their savings over Enron, it was because they overinvested in it... diversification is every financial advisor's advice. Right now, just ride this one out for most folks.
I know a man I believed to be brilliant who voted for Trump. I don't know why. Some people couldn't vote for a woman. Some rich people identified with Trump as a fellow rich person. Some people listen to him and hear a reasonable person. I hear my father, who lied to us every day.
I know a man I believed most my life to be caring and empathetic. I thought he would come around under the weight of what we are seeing, but he still believes this is the path. We are deeply estranged now.
My former bff and her educated family (except for one daughter) are all in, as far as I know since I am not much in contact much anymore. Lovely family, smart, generous, kind and totally hoodwinked, thanks to Dad who demands that all follow his lead. No logic, just another bully who demands “respect.” Intelligence can’t compare with Fox propaganda and emotional blackmail for many it seems.
Fox News is a big culprit in brain washing Americans. The only friends we have who are Trump supporters have Fox News on from morning til night. They began by worshiping everything Bill OReilly said, & it was downhill from there. Sad...
I believe that vance's election to the Senate, as well as that of moreno, was manipulated. And I believe the truth will someday come out. I hope I live long enough.
The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry by Jon Ronson says psychopaths are suited to careers in business and politics because they have the drive without the empathy and can fool some people most of the time. But any kind of mental illness is not good.
There is still plenty of hatred for Dems. And love for anything that upsets them. mark Davis, writing in the Ft Worth Star Telegram opined how chump was doing things right since Dems were so upset. When I moved here in 1998, Mark Davis was a Dem hater and as W/Dickie stole the 2000 election, could find no cause to complain, then he trashed Obama, who had to clean up that mess. Now he is the happiest clown around, keeping the nonsense justified by the most egregious lies. Works in Texas…
Remember that Stu Rhodes is from Granbury, just outside of Ft. Worth. I was born in Hico where there is a cafe right at the junction of T6 and US 281 named the Koffee Kup. Used to have Kafe as the third word. Nothing to see there. My grandad told me they had sundown rules down there and I did not understand since I grew up in SE New Mexico until my dad explained it. Made no sense to me. Rural TX is fixing to get screwed even more by the TX repubs with the vouchers. They already collapsed the health care system and the public schools are next.
ICE and local law enforcement are surveilling Liberty County immigrant neighborhoods and the poorest people to scapegoat and divert attention from stealing our lifelines: Medicaid and Social Security.
J L -- falling, yes. But only into the basement of ~35%, comprised of True MAGA Believers, people who think he is infallible and sent by god. (In other words, The Cult.)
Bingo. I'm a registered Independent and have been since 2008. Once in a while there is a Republican candidate that needs to be ousted in the primary so we register as Republican or Democrat and then switch back after the election.
Maine recently allows Independents to choose their primary ballot so we no longer have to switch parties to vote in the primaries.
I went independent a few weeks ago. I'm sick of the Dems rolling over like beaten dogs. Schumer makes me puke. I honestly see a split coming between the corporate Dems and the progressive Dems.
In fairness to the Democratic Party, I believe that the liberals are re-group and testing out different responses. Though Pittsburgh produced more steel than Germany and Japan combined, it still took three years to defeat militarists and fascists.
I am sure there are five people across the little red rioting regions with the requisite humility and intellexual integrity sufficient to speak to the denial of their peers.
I just read an Axios article interviewing ten Michigan Trump voters to determine their regrets. Nine expressed regrets, but only one said he wouldn't vote for him again. Argh!
...and how do they define a "good job?" Do they mean actions by a president with severely limited intellectual capacity and no moral core? Surrouned by self-centered, spoiled and intellectually limited syncophants, who think of the American public with contempt? Who will deny gravely ill people medical coverage to increase corporate profits? Where the human consequences of their policies never figure into their balance sheets?
I'd be happy to know they're just thinkin' it. Admitting you're wrong is not the American way. Has anyone from the "W" administration admitted that invading Iraq was wrong - even though he did so on a lie and got away with it?
Until we get smart enough collectively to figure out how to deal with psychological manipulation by the evil intentioned we will struggle to bring love and kindness and goodwill towards all back to the forefront. Evil intentioned billionaires using our latest tech advances (offering an open door into every human mind with access to them) will continue to be rewarded with increasing power and wealth for manipulating minds to scapegoat others for their own misery
YouTube is full of FAFO (Flock Around and Find Out) videos. I used to watch them for the schadenfreude. Now, it just starts a cycle of fury then hopelessness. One thing is almost constant in these MAGA buyer's remorse videos and it's that they only wake up when it affects them. If you gave them their ... whatever... back, they'd return to the flock.
I think they will. With a little help from the rest of us. We all make mistakes. The hard core - never. But there are good folks who need the room and the support to say they made a mistake. Bird flu isn't the only reason the prices haven't come down.
Ned, Rich Logis, a former MAGAnite, has a podcast called "Leaving MAGA" on which he interviews people who were deeply entrenched in the MAGA community and have seen the "light." It's so enlightening to hear their reasons for their admiration for, and dedication to the proposition that "fear, intimidation, and hatred are the only ways to make America great again." To hear their stories of rebellion, and then to hear them speak of "waking up" to the reality that what they were thinking and doing was just not right, is, again, enlightening. If only these discussions could be accessible to everyone. Some of the interviewees were there on Jan. 6 and talk about their experiences with "mob mentality."
Ned, yours it's a real message worth of spreading wide and far. I'm sure there are many maga voters turning sorry at the way they voted, silently for now.
Amen. Thank you, Ricardo, for being Lincolnesque: "With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation's wounds . . . ."
I remain incredulous that trump has any support whatsoever. But here we are. The only thing that MIGHT turn trumpers against him is if they start to feel real pain themselves -- economically, inability to get medical and other services they depend on, etc. I've concluded that all the bad shit that is coming our way has to happen in order for enough people to possibly wake up so that there becomes a critical mass of resistance.
I remember Ralph Nader said that a long time ago and was chastised for it. He did not succeed in his political career. He was a smart guy. And thanks for the seat belts!
If this were possible, in any red state/county where the MAGA elected representative is not holding a town hall meeting, the constituents of that district, including enraged MAGA who put them there, use their recall powers to force them out and elect a new representative who will listen.
Trump lies like other breathe, so why not just tell the lies, and not dump 2.5 billion cubic feet of saved irrigation water out on the ground to no one's benefit. Just because he could, I guess. It just makes his lies even more outrageous.
We all know he's a narcissist, and likes to lie, but truly look closely at him NOW. Not just the words, but his entire demeanor, especially how he holds himself. The Cabinet meeting where Musk stood and ran the show--Trump was slumped at the table. Look at the clips of him in the Tesla yesterday, his face and comments looking at it.
He is in COGNITIVE DECLINE. My late brother's dementia was manifested by aphasia. His vocabulary became smaller and smaller--both what words he used and which words he understood. It was heartbreaking to watch, especially because he KNEW what was happening. He'd try so hard to talk and get so frustrated that he'd give up and withdraw. When COVID took him in the end, he was down to about a dozen words. Trump is headed that way. The media "sane washed" him during the election.
Miselle, he never stands or sits up straight. And his rambling, like you said his few words are repeated over and over! When will the rethuglicans stand up and do their job?
It's not just the physical changes and vocabulary shrinkage. If you dare put yourself through it, read the quote HCR put in this piece from him about the CA water folly. It's a rambling, nonsensical jumble of rubbish. Water flowing down from farmlands to LA? Millions of gallons of liquid moving through "half-pipes", like he's talking about a skate park? Republicans will keep him in there as long as he can still sign to rubber stamp the Heritage Foundation's wishlist. Once he loses that capacity, he'll get 25th'd and they roll Vance in there to continue.
Just remember that FDR stated that when a democratic government stops fulfilling its duties the door opens for an autocrat. The conservatives have been undermining the government for decades. At first they just stopped being ethical and ignoring the norms, now they ignore the law.
That's the really scary thing, "just because he could." But could he really?? That's California's irrigation water. The dude is president, not dictator, king or Mao. He had no business ordering the water released. That should have a definitive NO from the management of that water.
Juanita... And what would the Paiute do to DJT, and Elon Musk? Could a Tesla Survive a Death Valley Summer?... Would the three of them become part of the Landscape?
My father-in-law was the lead engineer for the DOE dams in AK, OK, MO, KS and TX. Trump indiscriminantly fired hundreds of DOE employees, some of them were engineers that maintained the dams and monitored the water flow in most of the states. My father-in-law retired some time ago, but the DOE and Corp of Engineer jobs were critical to the safety of down river towns and to the generation of hydroelectric power. Of course, the moron-in-chief apparently didn't "intuit" this and neither did President Musk.
His rambling speech about the water indicates a serious problem with mental stability. Why would anyone who hears this jiberish even think of taking it seriously!?
Go to any protests nearby, keep the noise going... Republicans need to feel unbearable voter pressure ie Nov 2026 ... i see the Dems are stepping in and up with townhall meetings. See how long the Fox et al propaganda network can take it....
The problem is that FoxNews and others treat his ignorance and lies as truth. MAGA wants to hate California, though they eat our produce and watch our tv shows and movies. What he did when he ordered the opening of the valves was dangerous and criminal. When water is an issue in the Central Valley this summer, I hope people remember that it was Trump who hurt us.
There is a campaign to send postcards to the White House on the Ideas of March. I would hope for perhaps April 1 as well and with a more coordinated approach?
Juanita. I am not so stupid as to believe his damn rambling about the water. He will never listen or believe the experts on the California water. His ignorance is beyond belief. Everything he touches goes down the shitter!
It's not clear to me that Trump is ignorant about the water issue. It doesn't matter to him. He is "performing" for his base. Water be damned (so to speak).
Agreed. But what, other than lies, can you expect from this gasbag and his hideous band of crooks and greedy billionaires? I didn’t shop on Amazon much, and I will never buy anything from it again. My mother did this with Welch’s grape juice in the 1950’s because of Welch’s fascist leanings.
When do we get to the part where they finally admit and declare that he's non compos mentis? Before or after the complete economic and diplomatic meltdown?
When do we get to the part that all is going according to plan? It’s the billionaires’ end game. Musk, Thiel and the other billionaires WANT Trump to crash the economy, so they can buy all companies going bankrupt at discount prices. Crash hard, buy low, cash hard. Exactly what Putin did in Russia. Extra advantage: it makes the people poor and hungry, so they won’t revolt.
And the post Brexit UK’s single transferable ruling class party is speedily dismantling the postwar welfare state. Privatising the National Health Service, allowing Australian corporations to profiteer off openly polluting UK’s water ways and sources and violently pushing millions more into poverty. Same Putin oligarch Playbook.
Watch how fast they use the lack of military defenses in the postwar EU Peace Project to land and resource grab across Europe. Putin/Trump’s Ukrainian land and resources grab is just the beginning.
When do we get to the part where we all wake up and go "Gee Auntie Em, this place was REAL and they had a whole bunch of insane people running it and there were wicked witches and flying monkeys... and all I could think of was 'There's no place like home!' "
I said this to my adult daughter just yesterday: "With the way the world has gone in the last decade, you probably can't comprehend just how INSANE this is."
Through the 1990s all the former parts of the old Soviet Union had Americans crawling all over them. Bankers from the big banks. Reps from all the U.S. fossil fuel most sociopath and criminally inclined. Hot shot Ivy League grads with their freshly minted M.B.A.s.
And they were all openly, publicly doing the same thing -- with open, public help from the U.S. Department of State and its embassies and consulates across all the former Soviet Union. They were all seeking those dead states' now most greedy, ruthless, get-rich-quick former nomenklatura -- all to cash in on the timber, mineral, fertilizer, and fossil fuel wealth which had formerly (technically) belonged to all the Russian and red-star-related peoples.
The U.S. -- hail Milton Friedman, hail "free market," ethics-free greed, hail biz ed school scenarios for cornering markets -- vitally invested in all the most corrupt soon to become the most thieving, ruling oligarchs.
Not an exact equivalence, Dutch Mike, unless we count all the Russian techies now serving Putin's schemes to spread hate and division in the U.S., along with the U.S.'s own social media billionaires also long doing that.
Ally, my arthritis doesn't agree with bending, so most of what I grow is in containers. Planters can be expensive, so we use some 5 gallon buckets which are cheap from Home Depot or such, but even better, a larger fast food franchise sells their pickle buckets the same size for $2. We drill holes for drainage.
Filling them with soil can be expensive. A few years back, I saw a hack that suggested putting sticks in the bottom. Lots of sticks around here in the spring, and it works well.
I have grown bush beans, tomatoes, lettuce, green peppers, cucumbers out of these. I even have grown personal sized melons ("sugar cubes") out of them as long as I trellis them and support the melons till they are ripe. Two years ago, I found out that green peppers are perennials. I brought the bucket inside and with the help of a grow lamp, kept it alive. This is spring #3 for it, and it is covered in blossoms. :-D
There are plenty of youtubes that show how to regrow produce out of the stems (romaine works grows well in a shallow water dish. We don't get a full salad out of them, but enough to put on sandwiches). I confess to normally getting small tomato plants, but any of the above I've grown from seed.
We have had berry bushes for years and planted more last fall. Those won't produce this year, but will in the next. I ordered 25 strawberry bare roots from Burpee. They are growing in pots right now.
You probably know a lot of the above already. I offer it as suggestions to those who've never gardened. If they have only a balcony with sun (even partial sun for the lettuces) they can at least grow something. Growing is good for the soul anyhow.
I know there are gardeners on here and if they can add anything I haven't thought of, I hope they will. We might be miles and miles apart, but we are a community and can support each other.
BTW, I don't have the space to do this, but years ago I knew a couple who LOVED to garden. They took pleasure in the exercise itself. They grew way more than they could use, so they would deliver produce to neighbors. If anyone can manage to do this, you could really help people out, especially those struggling financially.
Gary, I am sorry but it is a real disservice to include the NYT with WaPo and WSJ. The NYT has been staunchly on the side of good journalism in their newsroom and mostly center left politics on their editorial pages throughout the Trump presidencies with some right wing editorials but not many. They have been much fairer and balanced in their coverage which is their job while both of the other two pubs were clearly moving towards supporting Trump in many ways. The NYT has not caved to the right wing MAGA many other papers have and if you actually read it every day as I do (both in print and online) you would know ib speak the truth. They are not perfect but they are not led by Bezos or Murdoch or others of the oligarchy either. They continue to be led by the same family which has led the paper for decades and does the best job in this country at providing fair unbiased news.
You nailed it, Dutch Mike. And drooling real estate agents in towns of all sizes (some are caring individuals doing good work, but too many are saccharine-friendly opportunists).
Yep, as I said: it's their end game. They want to control everything and profit off of every last aspect of your life. Next thing you know, they will tax the air you breathe.
My husband suggested this several years ago. All the Gar’s use the politicians to get the control they want, and then the politicians will be gone along with the country.
No, no, no Putin didn't do it. It was the too rapid transition to capitalistic economy. Putin is still very popular, bc he restored the economy , and it's doing very well now despite the sanctions.
The Russian interest rate is 21% and they are having trouble recruiting for the army. The economy is half the size of Canada's. They are not doing so well, and won't unless Trump helps them out. Call your representatives today. Ask them to support Ukraine. Keep the heat on.
I'd just like to say, bravo to the federal Judges for holding the fort right now. So important to celebrate small wins in such dark days. If you haven't read it, I urge you to read Robert Reich's very hopeful substack post from Jan 2nd:
I have practiced in U.S. District Court, Northern California Division. Yesterday's reinstatement of fired (NOT) covers federal workers across many Agencies, the VA, Interior, Agriculture, Energy, Defense & U.S. Treasury & and IRS Agents.
Do you want your refund? Be very pleased that Judge Alsup has the case.
The detailed ruling was ordered by the very experienced WILLIAM H. ALSUP. Case No. 25-cv-01780-WHA. Judge Alsup's Order stops 'OPM' from giving any "guidance" on federal worker's jobs.
These workers are real people like reinstated KATHERINE STEELE; Katherine is again a U.S. Forest Service Employee! Judge Alsup has ordered a full compliance report due next Thursday, 6 days from now.
The only federal Agency out of work is "OPM" whose actions have been declared "illegal" with no authority.
Counsel in the Northern District nicknamed Judge Alsup, "Wild Bill", yes Wild Bill Alsup. Wild Bill is Musk-OPM's worst nightmare.
Will trump comply? And if he does, where will the rehired workers report for work? They have already moved offices, the infrastructure for most of the agencies no longer exist. I don't believe trump will comply with the court orders, and he will slow walk this through the courts like he did with his criminal trials. The chaos will continue at the same fast pace, with more damage to the country that may be impossible to repair.
D4N, I find one shining light, I think--I doubt that the MAGA love them some Vance like they do Trump. "Tennessee Brando" has alluded to that in the past, but I can't find exactly which of his YouTube clips says that.
However, you make a good point. IMHO, Trump can be manipulated by stroking his ego and he's stubborn. I think Vance is motivated by wanting to be more than he is, and he will do whatever he is told to do.
Trump is a cult leader. Vance doesn't have the same "charisma" to pull it off - he's a wet fish. Same with junior. If we cut the head off the snake, will his hold on members of Congress disappear and will they then wake up?
Jane Mayer’s book, Dark Money & others about 10 years ago documented the through- line of American fascist mafia state oligopolists (FMSO) who had continued doing business with the Nazi war machine industrialists up to, and beyond the termination of legal authority to do so. They and their offspring became the major funders of the John Birch Society and burgeoning maze of think tanks & lobbying firms & new radical right wing ideological breeding labs in U.S. universities in addition to The University of Chicago. This matrix of Robber Barron ideologues are the funders of the psychological warfare - population conditioning machine that has dumbed down and cultified what became MAGA. <> Musk proudly identifies as Dark Gothic MAGA, a bizarre techbro $Billionaire death cult philosophically led by Curtis Yarvin: They publicize their intent to gain global oligopolist control of natural resources, weed out redundant populations, and destroy as much of earth’s ecology as necessary while doing it. They will always have the cash for private islands, security, and health care. Their goal is fascist mafia state hegemony. They’re proud to have officially aligned with Putin. <> Massively reaching out to Musk-Trump-Vance voters starting to stumble out of the cognitive dissonance of realizing they’ve been conned, is good and necessary work to help boycott the FMSO back to the dark id fringes of society and begin to build new, more eco-friendly & humanist based paradigms for more durable & sustainable democracy. I listed some references in my substack post yesterday.
Vance is getting booed and chased out everywhere he goes. He will not be able to replace the demagogue. He would get the title, but he will not ever have the power.
True, but the cult doesn't have the money. The Project 2025 people do, and they are the ones who know how to manipulate, mostly through fear and lies, anyone who strays.
No, all created project 2025 are the brains behind this takeover. I would love to know if they admire the fascist state that he existed in Germany and that is their goal?
When he first starting ranting about the water in California, I told my husband, "I think he thinks all the water in the entire world just runs south. Like, all the way to Antartica."
I am willing to bet if you questioned MAGA on the street, they'd believe that to be true as well.
Oh, you mean just like the Democrats responsibly and patriotically admitted that Joe Biden was losing it and needed to go....oh wait...." he runs rings around me " - " he is in top form, nothing wrong with him at all " --lies, lies, lies.
They waited so long to admit it that we got stuck with Kamala Harris, THE most incompetent, inarticulate and achievement-deficient candidate in history . She could not articulate any sensible and credible policy, she had no reasonable achievements especially her 4 years as VP, and she just nattered on about how she "loves" the American people, clearly trying to poach Trump's massive possession of the truly patriotic voters.
Attention, Democrats - if you ever want to convince the electorate that you are both honest and have America's best interests at heart, you are going to have to at least admit you blew it, apologize to all the faithful democrats you betrayed, and ask them to trust you again. I certainly won't. I do not believe you actually love this country.
I just read Senator Shumer’s opinion on why he is going to vote for the “Dirty” CR from the House. If the Senate approves that CR, it is going to be the last vote that the Senate takes on the budget until September of 2025. The Democrats need to kill the House CR, shut the government down and make the House pass the bill that the Senate passed in February.
I called Schumer's office twice yesterday imploring him not to vote yes on the CR -- literally begging him to vote no. Ditto Gillibrand - though I doubt she'd vote for it. It's time for Schumer to ride off into the sunset.
As Senate Majority Leader, he could have called the vote on Trump's disqualification under the Constitution's Article 14, Section Three.
The convicted criminal could never have gotten the 2/3 which the Constitution requires to lift disqualification for any public office. Yet Schumer just sat back and left free the rapist, Putin asset, insurrectionist.
Phil its just not true. Please get over this. It reeks off ignorance. Believe me if there was any legal ground to stand on the Democrats would have used it. You and your allies on this issue simply are reading it wrong.
There has NEVER been an adjudication of Trump as an insurrectionist and that had to happen FIRST by either a court of law or an impeachment. And forget about the Colorado decision, that was overturned by the Supreme Court.
You can whine about it all you want but it's water under the bridge. It wasn't going to happen then and it certainly isn't going to happen now.
Hmmm, Sharon, I did not read his reply as a “personal insult” at all (but that’s just my read, I’m not in his head!), just a statement of supposition based on what your words imply. And, out of genuine curiosity, based on what you wrote, do you not live in the USA?
I apologize but as Barbara suggested it was NOT intended as an insult, just a comment. And I do not end everything with personal insults! I don't criticize your rhetoric or others here which seriously insult many but mostly go unchallenged because it seems that if your insults are pointed at the "right (wing)" people, that is okay even if it is really not okay.
But enough said. Again I apologize if you misunderstood the intent which was solely to elicit information, not to insult.
I really do try to do it respectfully but I am not perfect and I have made mistakes for which I apologize. I do wish more people would try to be a little bit more balanced here. We are theoretically mostly on the same side and I fear this is the kind of problem we as a group have, i.e. not being willing to compromise to get to a sound consensus.
I read that verdict in its entirety and the basis was the same. A single state Supreme court's verdict had no control in national elections which to me makes perfect sense. If state courts could control national elections we would have more chaos than we already have.
The only decision that would permit an adjudication as an insurrectionist would be that of a federal court. And I would repeat my original thesis, Trump has never been adjudged an insurrectionist by any federal court and thus, regardless of the truth of what he is (he IS one), he legally is not and thus is still permitted to serve as the POTUS.
This failure, by the way, is clearly for me on the hands of Merrick Garland and therefore Joe Biden for not acting promptly to prosecute Trump for his crimes during Jan6. Had they not dragged their heels in getting Jack Smith appointed special prosecutor we might not be in this mess.
There won’t be a budget for the next fiscal year either. Republicans are so incompetent they can’t even write a budget but they want Democrats to vote for all their cuts.
The CR is a booby trap designed to further the Economic Extinction Event that is progressing with the terrifying speed.
WHY DO YOU THINK THAT THE MAGA/REPUBLICAN BUDGET HAWKS SO CHEERFULLY WENT ALONG - WITH OUT SO MUCH AS A PEEP — TO APPROVE IT IN THE HOUSE?!?
The oxymoronic “each day … is not a calendar day… “ clause tucked into its 90+ pages doesn’t just green light Tr-mp’s tariff insanity.
It makes Tr-mp’s Emergency Declaration a Congressionally Sanctioned Emergency (CSE) — until the end of the 119th Congressional session in September 2025.
What powers does the presidency gain under a CSE?!? Here is a (AI-generated) breakdown of SOME of the 136 statutorily available powers to the president:
* Military and National Security:
* Military Construction: Authorizing military construction projects not otherwise authorized by law, using existing defense appropriations.
* Military Personnel: Drafting retired Coast Guard officers.
* Defense Stockpiles: Drawing down equipment from national defense stockpiles.
* Communications: Shutting down or taking over radio stations, and potentially wire communications facilities in a threat of war.
* Chemical and Biological Weapons: Suspending laws regulating chemical and biological weapons, including the ban on human testing.
* Detailing Troops: Detailing U.S. troops to foreign countries.
* Economic and Financial:
* Freezing Assets: Freezing assets or blocking financial transactions in which a foreign national has an interest.
* Financial Transactions: Blocking financial transactions that may harm national security.
* Public Health and Safety:
* Clean Air Act: Suspending Clean Air Act implementation plans or excess emissions penalties upon petition of a state governor.
* Public Health: Suspending laws related to public health.
* Land Use and Resources:
* Land Use: Suspending laws related to land use.
* Other:
* Suspending Laws: Suspending various laws, including those related to chemical and biological weapons testing.
* Drawdown of Defense Articles: Directing the drawdown of defense articles from Department of Defense stocks for providing military, economic, peacekeeping, antiterrorism, and/or non-proliferation assistance to foreign countries and international organizations.
It also stipulates that Trum-p’s Emergency Declaration stays in place until Congress adjourns in September. This makes it a “ congressionally sanctioned emergency” giving Tr-mp sweeping powers over domestic, financial and military operations.
What we are experiencing now is the full flower of market fundamentalism. It was there when Reagan famously said, “government is the problem.” Even Adam Smith acknowledged that markets are not always the most efficient way to distribute goods and services. What many people don’t understand is how private industry “taxes” them. I worked for big pharma for three years before I couldn’t stand the stench anymore. The waste is incredible. Huge exotic corporate events that cost millions, company cars with unlimited personal miles and a corporate credit card to pay for gas, lavish expense accounts and travel expenses, and so on. Then, promote wildly more expensive drugs with marginally better clinical benefits than cheap generics, and incentivize physicians with “conference attendance” in Hawaii to write scripts for it out the wazoo. The consumer pays the price as much as for big government, perhaps more. Big pharma pleas that without these high prices they can’t do the kind of R&D they need to do. So, why are their drugs so much cheaper abroad? Why do US consumers have to bear the brunt of the costs alone? We know the reason. Big pharma is in bed with the Republicans and are on the big pharma teet while the rest of us pay for it. Also, why haven’t we seen a new class of antibiotics in over 50 years but have had God knows how many new antidepressants? Because antibiotics don’t pay. You take them for 5, 7, 10, 14, 21 days at the most and you’re done. You often take antidepressants for life. Not that we don’t need antidepressants, but under a public health model, the government would have the freedom to pursue research based on the public good instead of profits. So, taxpayers get their tax bills, cuss the government, vote for lower taxes that amount to next month’s rent while billionaires buy yachts with their savings. At the same time, public services that benefit regular people but billionaires don’t need get starved for money and cut to the bone. The rich say it’s all about meritocracy while hiding that the whole system is built on plutocracy.
Thank you for sharing, Michael….glad you got out with your wits about you! Sounds like you are the kind of person who wants to make a living and not make a killing! In the last decade I, for the first time, came up against the big pharma issue in the USA. A medication I began taking intermittently is proprietary in USA, as the patent does not expire here until 2029 (I got pissed when I found out the costs & started researching it after first being able to acquire it initially in CA for a reasonable co-pay—that did not last and the price skyrocketed). My most recent research is that a 21-day course costs about $3000. The exact same named-drug for 21-day course, across the border in Canada is $600. WTF??? Outside the USA, a generic of the same med is available…but not in the USA because of the proprietary patent mentioned above….the generic, from a Canadian pharmacy for the same 21-days is $200. This is SO wrong…I’d heard horror stories, but this was my first time “walking in the footsteps of others”.
I hear your pain on this one. I am Type 2 diabetic and have been on metformin for years at around $20-30/ month. My doctor wanted me to start Jardiance but like your comment, Barbara, it is still "on patent" and cost $2000 for one month. Fortunately Bidens price reduction efforts on drugs put it I n the list which brought it down to about $600 for a month. But in Social Security is still too much monthly.
It isn't the worst decision to stop taking it but it isn't the best either. I certainly wish I didn't have to make health care decisions based on how much money I make or have. And my case is just the tip of the ice berg. Many people have much worse situations to deal with.
Here’s the thing about that cap; you have to pay it up front, all at once. I had a medication I used to get for $95 a month on my plan. I went to pick it up in January and my copay was 50% of the cost or $1,000. The pharmacist said many people had $1,500 or more copays. Last year I never had $2,000 out of pocket on meds even when I hit the donut hole. The insurance company was so kind and said I could go on a payment plan and pay that $2,000 out monthly. I applied for an exception and was denied so switched to a slightly less effective drug for $42 copay. One is tier 3, the other not formulary. Almost identical drugs but the expensive one comes in a higher dose.
My disabled adult son is on the payment plan. How can they deny your request for the payment plan. I thought that was available to all Medicare recipients on a prescription plan? It just sounded so simple when it was announced. But it’s going to go away after this year under trump.My son is on some very expensive medications
They didn’t deny my payment plan. My point was I will pay $2,000 now even if under the old method I would only have paid $1,500 or if this medication would have been a one-time thing and I would have never hit the donut hole.
💔 hoping it works out for the best, Deborah, the constant stress thrumming in our bodies over the current admin’s practices is health degrading…mentally and physically. Hang in there….as must we all.
Michael, my situation perfectly illustrates your post in the starkest of terms. I am kept alive because of a drug that the drug company retails for $24,000 A MONTH but actually probably costs pennies to manufacture, as it has been out on the market for 15-20 years and they have been able to prevent generics from being offered are in the USA. But they did deals with major insurance groups (like large companies' in-house policies and those underwritten by universities) to offer the drug to patients for a 0 co-pay and, until the $2,000 maximum cap on medication for Medicare patients, also offered it for "free" to those of us on Medicare who met their financial requirements. They changed those requirements when the Medicare cap began, which dumped around 40% of patients like myself off their free "patient assistance" program. But the real kicker is this. They created a "Foundation"--a nonprofit--through which the patient assistance and zero co-pay systems are run. And that gives them a tax write-off as a CHARITABLE DONATION. If you want to see what a real kleptocracy is, all you have to do is look at the Pharma industry . . .
The richest country in the world and a disgraceful and inhumane medical system for its citizens. And we keep electing those who make it this way. It’s astonishing.
I JUST saw that. So, yeah, the overlords have not forgotten about that unhinged and illegal cluster-f**K. Will the military obey clearly unlawful orders? I am betting they will. The harder question is what happens when Muskrump orders them to fire on American citizens on American soil.
Thank you Karen. I’m not a Panamanian but many in my family are. I was born in Atlanta in 1947 and I have family roots going back over 100 years before the American Revolution. We moved to Panama in 1954 and we’re still here. It’s home. My dad was a paratrooper in the Pacific in WWII and I’m glad he’s no longer here to witness the destruction of the country he so bravely fought for and his friends died for.
This is insane. Every single article I read about Trump wanting to “take over” the Panama Canal mentions Panama’s military. We do NOT have a military. After a 20 year military dictatorship and the invasion of Panama on December 20th 1989 we have not had an army.
Wikipedia:
On February 10, 1990, the government of then President Guillermo Endara abolished Panama's military and reformed the security apparatus by creating the Panamanian Public Forces. Panama is the second country in Latin America (the other being Costa Rica) to abolish its standing army.
Many are at a point where our investment portfolios are sinking. How much more can we take from the insanity? Every day is worse and what gets me even more angry is Schumer ready to capitulate to Trump. I’m really so frustrated and angry. Sorry for the rant
I sympathize but very few investment portfolios should be in THAT much trouble at least for now. The stock market is down but only 10%, which is still NOTHING like the big crash of the 20s or even more recent down turns. Unless you were actively trading your portfolio and made some very bad trades and assuming most if not all of your money is in money markets or even cap funds, you certainly shouldn't be thinking about suicide yet. We are still a long way from that point.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't be worried. But it doesn't yet seem to be a catastrophe.
Um, Steve, now only if he’d, um, touch himself! Ok, brain bleach needed 🤮. Maybe have lots & lots of hamberders and gallons of Diet Pepsi instead…. The guy is truly Dipsh*t Donny Demento!!!! Is he high on delusions/illusions of grandeur or just grandly, bigly, stupid? Does he think of this stuff himself & others placate him & encourage it, or are others feeding him these ideas. It is amazing to me that he actually DOES NOT KNOW how things work….too lazy to learn, or too stupid to retain it, or too ignorant to understand….really is a huge puzzle to me & I don’t like to give him any room in my head, but he keeps kicking down my barriers.
All of the above. AI has given him a flock of new words that he catches like butterflies, by grabbing them in his hands, not using a net. Their meaning is either blurred or destroyed. Old, clumsy, vain, cruel, and very ignorant.
The MO of all mobsters and their fellow besuited disaster capitalist hedgefund travellers. They laugh at the suffering and death they knowingly cause as the profits roll in on the waves of innocent’s blood.
What hurts the most isn't that we have an obvious psychopath as president, it's that we have a legislative majority party that is quite OK with this situation. In fact. they vigorously defend and support his destructive behavior.
Just enter the name in any search engine. You'll get the full 28-page document.
No one, Ralph, has written a good history of how that memo soon engendered the Heritage Foundation, an expanded Hoover Institution, and ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council). Their first order of business through the 1970s was to kill humanities from all American education, K-12 and "higher." Also, reducing public funding for public colleges and universities, which meant killing tenure, which meant turning free and open atmospheres into fear-ridden, silo-set specializations, which meant more intense neutering of all standardized tests and corporate packaged textbooks.
See Diane Ravitch on this last, "The Language Police."
Once the schools were effectively dead, the far-right foundations proliferated as -- thanks to mass offshoring, and the killing of U.S. working classes -- the billionaire class grew, and they further grew the wealth gap.
Believe Ballas' directions for accessing the Powell Memorandum, and also when he says a good history of the impact of the Powell Memorandum has yet to be written. The absence of any solid such exposition, however, allows the kind of simplistic linear 'explanations' of the memo's journey and impact on America's political and educational history which Ballas periodically advances in his posts here. The threads are just way more complicated than his off-the-cuff assertions could justify about sequence and causality of the consequences he attributes to Powell. (BTW, the Powell Memorandum is 34 pages, not 28.) Readers take heed.
Democracy doesn’t erode overnight—it crumbles when we stop paying attention. From attacks on voting rights to corporate capture of government, the threats are real, but so is our power to act. Let’s expose these dangers, demand accountability, and take action to protect our future—because democracy only survives if we demand it. #StayEngaged
Here are seven areas we need to live together as one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty, and justice for All:
Defend Democracy and the Rule of Law
• Stop Executive Overreach: Oppose efforts to bypass Congress and erode constitutional checks and balances.
• Protect Judicial Independence: Ensure courts remain impartial and free from political pressure.
• Safeguard Election Integrity: Fight voter suppression, protect oversight, and expand access to voting.
• Demand Government Transparency: Reject secrecy, hold leaders accountable, and preserve public oversight.
Strengthen Public Services and Good Governance
• Protect Essential Federal Agencies: Stop the dismantling of institutions that provide education, disaster response, and humanitarian aid.
• Keep Expertise in Government: Oppose the purge of experienced civil servants and the rise of political loyalists in key roles.
• Defend Public Health and Safety: Prevent defunding of agencies that protect healthcare, disaster preparedness, and public welfare.
Build a Strong and Fair Economy
• Ensure Economic Stability: Push back against mass layoffs and funding cuts that threaten workers and industries.
• Defend Social Security and Medicaid: Stop policies that put seniors and low-income families at risk.
• Reduce Corporate Control Over Government: End billionaire influence in policymaking and prioritize the public good over private profit.
Advance Civil Rights and Social Justice
• Stop the Rollback of Civil Rights Protections: Strengthen anti-discrimination laws in workplaces and education.
• Protect Immigrant Rights and Human Dignity: Oppose inhumane policies like family separations and mass deportations.
• Defend Marginalized Communities: Stand up for LGBTQ+ rights, racial justice, and social equality.
Bolster National Security and Global Leadership
• Strengthen National Defense Responsibly: Ensure security agencies are funded and equipped to protect the nation.
• Restore Smart Foreign Policy: Repair relationships with allies and counteract harmful global power shifts.
Protect the Environment and Combat Climate Change
• Resist Environmental Deregulation: Stop policies that increase pollution and weaken climate protections.
• Advance Sustainability: Support policies that prioritize clean energy, conservation, and public health.
Secure Free and Fair Elections
• End Big Money in Politics: Push for campaign finance reform to curb the influence of special interests.
• Expand Voting Rights and Security: Support laws that ensure election integrity and prevent voter suppression.
Totally agree with your points, Bern, but for me the question is how, exactly (or even a ballpark idea) do we get from “here” to “there”? The only armor and steed I have to fight democracy’s demise is my voice and my vote, both of which I will use as long as I able (my fear is that one or both will be impeded).
Getting from here to there is both a great question and deep question. Essentially, your suggestion that all you have is your voice and vote betrays the limits you’ve set as you. You are not anything so limited. It makes sense that the task seems so daunting given the conception of your self as just a thing among other things.
Now the problem with giving a satisfying answer is that the answer will not satisfy the will to know that asks. See, not satisfying is it? We want a truth that we can use and the truth can’t be used, for anything! Very annoying isn’t it?
Coming from a different direction, it turns out there’s no place to go. This is probably more annoying than the previous “answer.”
Yet another way to say it is that you are the answer!
Still with me? Look, Barbara, obviously the circumstances need to be moved around. I’m going out of my way to not give answers and say how to do that as that will deny you the opportunity to generate your own answers which will be far more powerful than anything I could come up with for you. And further, any answers, and there are endless possibilities, ends the inquiry. It is in the ongoing authentic inquiry where possibility keeps endless emerging. The pull is to come up with an or the answer and stop thinking. Don’t stop! Ever!
See what inspires you, what lifts you up, what makes life an adventure worth getting up for and give yourself to it completely. Let what lights you up own your life. Surrender to your Self! Or not ;)
Sorry to say but this is mostly sophistic BS. Barbara is asking a concrete question because all you did in your first post was make a bunch of obvious philosophical points which we can all agree on but which require huge Investments of time, money and possibly blood to make happen.
This could become a war, a REAL HONEST TO GOD GUN SHOOTING WAR with people across this country dying for their principals (and that means people on BOTH sides because believe it or not THOSE folks think THEY are right too).
You think I am being too alarmist? Tell that to the almost a million people who died during the Civil War. And that was long before we had an military with jets, tanks, machine guns and oh yeah nuclear weapons.
It is GREAT to put up ideas to think about but it is really counterproductive to not have at least some concrete things to back it up with.
"I'm not giving you the answer because YOU are the answer. " That is the most hypocritical bull sh*t I've seen posted here and you really should be ashamed that's all you can say. If you don't have answers, that's fine, I certainly don't, but I also don't go around suggesting that I do and then like Lucy holding the football, pull it out when Charlie Brown is about to kick it.
Thank you, you put it much more succinctly than I did. As Barbara noted there were good things in there but in the end it really didn't offer any answers at all.
Well, Jon, my full name is Bern Shanfield, my father was Bill, my mother Bessie, and first wife Beth, so BS comes with the territory…
Sure, a catastrophic event is possible but the great preponderance probability is that life will go on at this petty pace it has been at forever.
Here the thing, as long as we’re gesturing which is actions taken out of hopelessness and frustration, we’re going through the motions and we are damn good at going through the motions and looking good while we do it.
I’m asking you to get down underneath yourself, underneath what you believe or hold as strong convictions to look at the principles that determine what you can believe, what’s alright to believe, what’s even real.
We live in an unrecognized box and what we seek isn’t in the box. The acceptable thoughts in the box do not include the truth. Thinking outside the box isn’t understandable in the box.
I know thinking out of the box is an old hat of an idea. Still, each age, each day even, we have to reinvent ourselves, re-inspire ourselves.
Shaming me or others is cheap and revealing your own need to bootstrap yourself back into the game.
I get your commitment, your heart, your love even in engaging here and now with me.
I also get what it takes to keep getting up again and again after so many failures. It’s not Lucy. Stop blaming the girls. Stop blaming at all and have space for your humanity when you do you’ll have space for others to have their humanity as well and see no reason to blame.
My upside down porch flag billowing in the coastal area where I live opened conversation yesterday when two electricians came to replace a GFCI breaker. We don’t see eye to eye on everything, but we quickly agreed that MUSKTRUMP$$$ is not the answer. Open conversations between rational caring people in our neighborhoods is a good starting point.
Your ". . . you are the answer," Bern, goes to the heart of Hannah Arendt.
Who got it from Immanuel Kant.
A series of good debts I got from Lyndsey Stonebridge’s recent book, “We are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt’s Lessons in Love and Disobedience.”
Your message is 20 or 30 years too late I’m afraid. These assholes have been degrading all those great points you’ve mentioned for several decades. We’ve got stage 4 cancer now.
Have your next of kin tell me where your funeral is and I’ll send flowers.
Seriously, the hard thing to get is that those assholes are us. As you find space for your humanity for your self, you naturally will extend it for others.
And look, I’m not some kind of saint who’s got it all together and figured out and smiling and sanguine all the time. It’s daily self remembrance, every single day, every single morning. The climb never ends. At best it’s being exhilarated by the climb or at least starting with appreciation for the opportunity.
They don’t. There never has been nor will be free lunches. They pay with the most precious thing there is, their aliveness. Their experience of love, health, happiness, and full self expression.
There is no satisfaction in merely going through the motions even if you arrange to make those motions successful or comfortable.
Does Musk or Trump look happy to you? Do you think you can buy or force love?
Don’t collapse glee with happiness. Glee is a manic state of excited mind. It’s superficial, very much on the obvious surface. Happiness comes from a far deeper place, a place where inspiration emerges.
You. ;) The power to make things happen isn’t out there. Demanding of others usually isn’t an option. Making a genuine request which means they are as free to decline as accept is all we have with others.
This is where the idea of enrollment comes into play. As what you are fully committed to becomes clearer to you, and you more fully allow your own expression of that commitment, so to will the opportunities for its fulfillment show up.
Start the conversation. Read LFAA. Make and read comments. This is the way I want to live. This is the way I want to die. This was not an option before LFAA.
Ahh, thank you. Yes, I’ve been reading her writings daily for years. Her honor inspires me to remember myself. I’m reminded of the quote “When I don’t know who I am I serve you. When I know who I am I am you.” Or the ending of the Shaw quote:
“Life is no "brief candle" for me.
It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment,
and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”
Trump and his lackeys can lie till hell freezes over that all the damage to the economy “will be worth it in the end.” To quote John Maynard Keynes. “In the end, we’re all dead.”
And similar to my comment about the stock market, I don't think we are at financial Armageddon... yet. I am sure there are people who have lost a lot but compared to what the people in LA and North Carolina lost to fire and flood, we are not near a financial disaster.
Many of our best novelists, memoirists, essayists, biographers, and historians see them as people in touching, apt, context-enlightening books.
But American schools assign no full books, not when the max students can do anymore is the short-passage pabulum necessary for testing's thrall to abstracted categories, reduction of life to more categories, and simpleton linear causalities.
The billionaires love these latter "skills." So amenable to monetizing the world, killing democracies.
When I was in junior high, high school, college and law school, we were expected to read, and strange person that I am, I still read, and understand what’s going on. Unfortunately, it leads to disaster.
"The water, stored in two reservoirs operated by the army corps of engineers, is a vital source for many farms and ranches in the state’s sprawling and productive San Joaquin valley during the driest times of the year. It will be especially important in the coming months as the region braces for another brutally hot summer with sparse supplies.
The reservoirs are also among the few the US president can control directly.
Staged to give weight to Trump’s widely debunked claims that flows could have helped Los Angeles during last month’s devastating firestorm and to show that he holds some power over California’s water, he ordered the army corps to flood the channels. Less than an hour of notice was reportedly given to water authorities down-river who rushed to prepare for the unexpected release, which threatened to inundate nearby communities.
The move is just the latest in a series of misinformed attempts Trump has made to wade into California’s water wars, adding new challenges and conflicts over the state’s essential and increasingly scarce water resources. But in what now appears to be just a political stunt, Trump has struck some of his strongest supporters." https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/11/california-water-trump
The understanding of water issues in the intermountain and western states is largely not understood. The great source of the the Colorado River and it's tributaries, the allocation of it has been contentious from the get go 120 years ago, to say the least. To purposely waste several thousand acre feet of it surely has to leave a bad taste in the mouth for most concerned.
Especially in California; The state is so huge. Northern Ca. water releases mean nothing for southern California, including L.A. I read a volume on it and still could learn more.
King Toot is such an idiot and seems incapable of learning…his utterances are so moronic that my eyes are getting a lifetime of exercise from rolling in my head when I hear him speak.
"President Donald Trump and his staff insist that the pain he is inflicting on Americans will pay off in long-term economic development, but ..."
"These tax cuts will pay for themselves!"
- Ronald Reagan, 1981
- GW Bush, 2001
- GW Bush, 2003
- Donald Trump, 2017
Meanwhile, deficits soared under all 3 of these presidents while income inequality exploded. And still, millions of Americans believe we need "tax relief" and are gung ho over more tax cuts. Like the Covid sufferers in 2020 who believed the disease was liberal fiction as it stole their last breaths, so today millions more are cheering on this clown as he yanks the financial rug out from under them. While they die of treatable diseases because there is no more Medicaid and starve because their SNAP benefits ended, dt, em and their ilk will enjoy major increases in their net worth.
Because $334 billion is just not enough to get by on these days.
Elon Musk is opening himself to a whole lot of lawsuits. He does not have a vote of Congress to undertake his chain-saw escapades. His minions are his employees and work directly under his control. I have only heard or read that Trump has said to Musk that he should get out all the waste in the federal government. I neither heard nor read any more detailed instructions than that. Musk’s actions are illegal, and many can be shown to be criminal. He is endangering the viability of our Nation and by restricting the funds; medically trained staff are prevented from administrating life-saving care to thousands of people and has resulted in the deaths of enumerable humans.
At some point, Musk will be stopped and his defense will be, that he only did what President Trump told him to do. And, he will have no evidence to show that he was acting under Presidential orders. Moreover, Nuremberg established that undertaking criminal acts under orders does not absolve you from the guilt. Musk will soon learn the fact that everyone who works for Trump eventually gets shoved under the bus. And Musk will soon learn that he is ripe for lawsuits: he has a contorted understanding of US law, is highly arrogant and, most importantly, has lots of money. His victims will go after the money.
He could face personal liability as he has no capacity as a public official. At the very least, we should end his contracts with the government. I suspect he may have breached clauses in them that restrict his ability to endorse or fund political candidates.
There is a lot going wrong but Sen. Bernie Sanders' rallies throughout the Midwest are going strong.
He is drawing crowds of 10,000. His message is largely economic and attacks the oligarchy while a huge proportion of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and live lives of fear and worry about adequate food and housing and health care.
Maybe his economic message, which also attacks the corruption of big money in our elections is why the press and many Democratic pundits are ignoring Sanders. As far as I have been able to see, both the NYT and Washington Post have not covered what he is saying and doing!
He and Nancy Pelosi joined forces and led a rally protesting Medicaid cuts. They aren't regular allies, but these savvy, patriotic legislators are providing the best leadership for opposition to Trump's oligarchic rule.
Where is the press? Where is the Democrat's official and pundit leadership?
Thanks. I queried "Sanders rallies 2025" and did not get a link to this. Nothing on what Bernie is saying. Article focused on defeating GOP reps, fine and good, but no bigger message on what Democrats are offering. A weak, narrow article, sadly.
There are no words for the sheer ignorance of Trump regarding California's water. I happen to live on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada...where 40% of LA's water comes from
Grrr. I just want to send DJT and EM out to the Devil's Golf Course in Death Valley with NO water....
What I would like to see is a series of adverts featuring disillusioned M.A.G.A. voters admitting they made a mistake by saying something like, "Yes. I voted for Donald Trump, but I did NOT sign up for this."
They don't have to admit that they were wrong- just that they were lied to.
Conversation with my hairdresser yesterday. She says tfg feels “deeply’ about Social Security and musk has shown a great deal of waste—and tfg said so during the SOTU. Thing is, this is a good and kind person if completely brainwashed by her church and Fox.
My dental hygienist (and her police officer husband) are trumpers. I tried to engage her (we long ago stopped talking politics) but she didn't seem to understand the effect of tariffs, so it wasn't worth pursuing. Some people just want to remain ignorant.
I have one of those dental hygienists; her husband and sister-in-law were both corrections deputies at my agency. They are, however, in the minority of cops (as am I) that don't worship at the church of MAGA.
My nephew is a cop and is not MAGA. And his brother is a fireman and also not MAGA. His brother the fireman is the union rep for the entire fire department. He's done very well at getting the firemen good raises.
Well, that is encouraging news, Ally. Thank you.
Ally,
When I first moved back from Tunisia after the murder of George Floyd and after a difficult encounter with a policeman three years before, I was iffy on police conduct. I went to Panera one day and found two policeman from Annapolis -- a really nice town with really nice people -- 'brutally' dragging a man out of the door. I took a vid. of it with the intention of posting it.
An employee of Panera came up to me and explained to me why I had the situation all wrong. The man being 'brutally' dragged out the door had been creating a ruckus and was becoming violent; the police were protecting the patrons of the coffee-joint. You see, Ally, I had caught the very tail-end of the situation without knowledge of the situation.
The agitated man was being 'brutally' dragged out the door because he had sat down and resisted the police vigorously. He was mentally impaired. This situation was not a George Floyd repeat by any means.
The policemen had seen me vidding the incident. So, once I had realized my misapprehension of a difficult situation as some form of police over-reach, I approached the policemen and apologized, pledging to erase the vid.
The officer displayed a professional equanimity leavened with an earnestness of public service. Gently, he said to me that many times people only see a snip-it and mistake what is happening. He informed me that the gentleman whom they had removed from the restaurant was well-known to them and quite ill. In fact, the police had NOT arrested him but were taking him to hospital.
A timely reminder to me that the great majority of people in law enforcement are publicly spirited professionals who give a scheiße about communities they serve. In fact, the unpleasant experience I had encountered before did give rise to a concern over burn-out. The policemen seemed more stressed out than churlish.
Now that I know, I like you better :)
Wait a while get back to them her offices closes for lack of business and her husband gets laid off for lack funds to pay him. Of course it will be to late. There's a quote from Thomas Hobbes "H**l is knowing the truth to late.
It’s not easy for people to change their minds, even when they know they are wrong. It takes time to admit to yourself, much less to others that you were mistaken, much less that you were taken for a fool.
It is similar to something in business called "sunk cost investment" https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/sunkcost.asp#:~:text=The%20sunk%20cost%20fallacy You've made the "investment" and don't want to admit you've been wrong.
Especially when you are being told you're wrong! You just dig in. That's what makes it so hard. I certainly don't have an answer. The best I've come up with is to acknowledge we're all in this together and watching how it goes.
It's also a team (or cult) thing. I've been a Husker football fan for over 60 years. They've had great years and really shitty years. They've had bad coaches and some crappy teams, but I still follow them and probably will until I die.
We probably all know people that think that Trump is great just because he's the quarterback of their really shitty team.
There is a difference between watching your team lose and watching your friends and yourself living the streets, picking through dumpsters.
You speak to Virginia Cutler's point. Of course, I am assuming that there are five people out there with the humility and humility to make this statement.
"In fact, before Trump took office, it was the strongest of any economically developed country in the world." The MAGAs didn't know this because their sources of information (TV, radio, newsprint) never reported it. It's analogous to using the Bible as one's science textbook.
There are so many of these people who contribute to their 401k plan at work and never look at the balances or what it’s invested in. I know we rarely look at my husband’s at work now and I dumped a transferred annuity for 20 years and rarely looked at it. But I watched my other IRAs and Roth’s like a hawk. I understand finance.
Suddenly it will be retirement day or they will lose their job and have a big wake up call that maybe that 50k that went in from their paycheck is only 30k because of market losses. The they won’t have social security or Medicare either. But, not to worry, they’ll blame it on Democrats because that’s all our media can do.
Schumer and the rest in the Senate should let the government close. They keep bailing out the Republicans who will destroy everything open or closed. How will saving them now make things betters? I’ve read their reasoning and it makes no sense.
Those of us on the cusp of retirement are watching our retirement funds going down, down, down... and wondering if we will still have social security. I know who is to blame, and it ISN'T the Democrats!
Sharon, the Oregon Senators are voting no.
Absolutely! Voting for it simply makes them complicit! Trump is going to do what he's going to do if he's not stopped!
Schumer is a coward just like most of them. He's afraid of not being reelected. For those people it's all that really counts.
He should be ousted from his leadership role.
Scarey times.
My parents literally get their news from a bible based news source. I forget the title, but that's the tag line. More like Christian Nationalist Lies. SMH
Ugh…so sorry, Barbara.
Pick up a copy of Chris Hitchens' masterpiece "God is not Great: How religion spoils everything" You will understand them better. When you're done with it you could hand it to your dad and make run for it.
It is a hard time to practice charity; that is what makes it all the more necessary. If your parents realize that they have made a big mistake, they may well need your loving support without judgement.
Yes, dumbing down is not a way to address a lack of knowledge.
Not that strong. When Reagan took office he cut taxes on the wealthy and encouraged them to move manufacturing overseas. We won WWII not because we had better soldiers of equipment but we could manufacture more. That capability is gone.
They would drink his toilet water if they were asked to.
Oh, *stuff* (I gave up swearing for Lent)
Cindy, they would PAY "bigly" to have a single drop of it and would worship it like it came from Lourdes~
LOL, yes!
Amen. "Curative." Trump would market it if he could make money. :-)
They already have drunk it because they are all full of sheet.
Trump often bragged that he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and not lose any supporters. What you have pointed out in a much more elegant way is that Trump has sat atop the Statue of Liberty and dumped a large bowel movement and his masses are flocking with soup spoons.
This comment from MLMinET is the essence of the problem. That any adult could believe the fantasy…The LIE…that Musk has found a great deal of waste is a powerful indictment of the failure of the Democratic Party to get the facts before the eyeballs of most Americans. FAILURE! FAILURE! FAILURE!
I have stopped supporting failure.
I have to put a good portion of the blame on the MSM. I've dumped the NYT, and my local paper, the Worcester T&G, for not telling the truth. And the Boston Globe is on thin ice. As to the networks, CSPAN, PBS, and (most of) MSNBC are still on my TV. ABC, CBS, and NBC are ignored except for local news.
I haven't watched any TV news since the election. I used to watch our local news - and I still subscribe to a local newspaper - but I had to stop, because they usually have at least one news report from the national network. I don't want to see that man's face on my screen.
I live in South Jersey and read a REAL newspaper, The Philadelphia Inquirer. In my 80’s and it has become a gift! Atlanta Constitution as best I know is as well!!!!!
An!d! Heather Cox Richardson has given me more history than I received in 18 years of schooling….
I haven't watched network news since last summer, around the time of the assassination "attempt" (I still wonder about that ... ), and I don't miss it. I get most of my news via independent media now. I dropped the late, great WaPo last month, but will keep the NYT for now. I want to subscribe to a national daily and there are many other features the Times does really well that I want to hold on to. I have a subscription to the Atlanta paper for state news and to the local rag for things near to home. I follow a lot of publications on FB, so I can pick and choose what I want to delve into. Substack is a BIG source for me—though I was having enormous problems logging in this morning ... they wouldn't allow me to post on here, saying I wasn't a paid subscriber! It may be an issue with my browser, IDK. Anyway, I have hardly heard a single word escape from Trump's sphincter-ish lips in months and my life is better for it.
Same. I find I get much more thorough news and analysis through a variety of Substacks lately. I have given up on watching most MSM, though that is partly because (as someone else here has said) I am more and more repulsed by seeing that face everywhere. Substack really could come up with some sort of subscription program where for $X you get 4 or 5 newsletters of your choosing and I bet it would be very popular.
NYT and WAPO! I'm leaning into independents, YouTube, Reuters, NPR, and watching headlines.
James, we take the NYT which for me means the puzzles, book review, science section, food, etc. My husband reads the rest of it. We watch the local news, no national news and take the local paper online mainly for obits. People are now using funeral home pages because they don't want to pay for even a death notice.
Too many are running scared these days.
What do you make of the Boston Herald?
Ed Weber the facts are out there. There is only so much Democrats can do to get their message out. trump supporters dismiss or ignore facts that contradict their beliefs, if they even encounter any. They only listen to sources that support their beliefs. Listening to Fox or conservative podcasts is like entering an alternate universe. I'm often impressed with their verbal ju-jitsu that completely twists reality. Listened to Tom Cotton on C-Span this morning for 2 minutes (all I could handle) as he explained it would be the Democrats fault if the government is shut down. Completely false, but supporters will believe it!
I know that most people in politics are decent and hard working but I do feel let down and tossed to the wolves by the Democrats. And the Republicans? Oh brother. Adam Kinzinger has a substack worth a look.
The Biden administration had every chance to put this criminal away but they didn't. I just switched to to independent. And I took down the stars and stripes I've been flying in my yard for two decades. I have my New York State flag coming in the mail. I may put Old Glory in a box and bury it. (RIP). After 21 years (65-86) in the Navy with lousy pay and many difficult experiences this is all pretty painful me.
Love Representative Special-K
https://www.c-span.org/clip/january-6-hearings/user-clip-brav-rep-kinzinger-1minvid/5021441
I hear similar stories from war veterans in East Texas, Hegseth and Trump are heroes - even as veterans are being fired all over the place. They also want to invade Canada and Greenland because Trump says we should own them. THey believe we don't have friends including Europe and Australia - that all these countries are leeches sucking American dry. I have argued with them since 2016 and it is like arguing with my living room wall. And now Schumer capitulates to Maga but his party sends me a score of requests daily for money. It seems to me one party is evil and one party is either incompetent or lacking a backbone - or both.
Well when they don’t receive their VA checks or SS payments, that’s the only time when they’ll wake up. My hubs is a Vietnam Vet and he’s ready to go “locked and loaded” on stupid people. He has no gun or rifle, thank goodness, but if he is made angrier than he already is….
I do not have a gun. I can barely hit the side of a barn. If civil war does come, I will take solace in Stuart Rhodes and other militia types being as wide as a barn.
The Sudetenland and then Poland. It's deja vu all over again. Wonder when the concentration camps will open.
I know someone just like that and I FB Message this person every month to see if there is any crack in the armor. So far, none.
There's no wiggle room with my family and old friends. People whose intellect and honesty I once admired.
The thing that bothers me the most is the feeling of betrayal, in a sense -- that someone no longer seems to care about the same values you once (thought you) shared.
I have this issue too. They're going to have to be directly impacted in a big way, but even then they will blame it on the Dems.
Yes, family members, especially, are difficult to deal with. They opt out on conversations about politics while Fox News is blaring in the background. Sigh…
My own elderly parents, who moved to be near me as they aged so I could help them, refuse to believe me (or my sister, the only other person who has regularly helped them). Instead, they "refuse to talk politics" or berate me for my more fact based opinions, and have gone no contact. They choose lying Republicans and feeling self righteous (or self aggrieved which they are good at that regardless of politics, and which is probably the root of their belief system) over family help.
Perhaps the problem is neither your relationship with your parents nor the divergence in politics. Your parents' behavior reminds me of me when I know deep down inside that I have been played but do not want to admit it to me, you, or anyone.
I am so sorry! I wouldn't know how to deal with my late parents being like that. Preacher Dad & Mom. Good Book used to teach kindness & empathy NOT how to let a MORTAL decide your beliefs. They hated T from the get go & I'm glad they aren't here to see this crap. Take care of yourself Barbara.
These are deeply religious people not to God but to the Republican party. Make no mistake it is a religion and Ronald Reagan and is it's Prophet
May I suggest also narrow minded, lazy thinking, cowardly “ punch down “ attitude and mean spirited. She has given power and wealth to cruelty.
The term I use is "willfully ignorant".
Love it
Has she no mind of her own? No critical thinking abilities? Tired of excusing these people for whatever reason you can come up with. Whatever decisions you make, whatever you do--it's on you. Period.
The first step to listening is willingness.
That's the first step for everything Ned. :)
So many are exactly that/ ignorant of the facts
Maybe fearful. I remember the young adults whom I taught in Tunisia would aske me what was up with the United States (2018-2020). My answer was, "The U.S. is no longer king of the mountain and we are having trouble handling that."
When students remarked that I did not seem like "other Americans", I would tell then that, someday, I would like to introduce them to three hundred million of my closest friends.
That is to say: while I am not like the nattering nabobs of narcissism they would see on the news, etc., I was very much like the ninety per cent of decent, kind country(wo)men.
Yes, but it would also be embarrassing for them to say "I was dumb enough to believe a man who everyone knows is a pathological liar."
That, Debbie, is what I suspect is the big sticking point; keen perception! If we could find five intellectually honest, spiritually chastened country(wo)men in the deep South, the rust belt, Tejas, the plains states, and the mountain states to make that commercial, however phrased, a small fissure could crack open into nuclear fission.
And a narcissistic psychopath………….
They were indeed... lied to!
See? So friggin' obvious to you, me and anyone with a functioning brain. Not being able to separate truth from fiction is a blatant indication of failure of reasoning ability. This is serious and apparently virulent, from observing the effects of the phenomenon so far....
This I proffer is the main issue, that being ..lies were ( and are) told repeatedly. Who can make a rational decision based upon lies.
Today I submit that 90% of our issues plaguing America (the world?)are because the truth hasn’t been there to make proper/educated decisions.
We ,at some point, were divided , lies offered as an alternate reality , to benefit whom? And is it not still going on? Dare I guess when? Perhaps right around the great shift of money between rich or poor which hollowed out the middle class?
I see explanations ,many givens ,in opposition . One is from a Republican , the other a Democrat or it has appeared so for quite some time. It boggles my mind not -being an expert in that field-to decipher whether it’s manipulation of words or fact .
Currently ,if not continuously, we have chaos running amuck w/o proof of accuracy. Based upon “Trust Me”?
Correct me if I’m wrong but aren’t laws established to prevent us all from being conned by lies/liars/scams/cheats?
With the incarcerated numbers in America…apparently that’s not working. The objective is it equality? Again…apparently not working also?
How long do we ignore this, before the principle(s) get defined, addressed, corrected? I identified two different posts this morning on this exact issue. Both stood out to me as this same premise.
If it’s a lie …how to stop it from being told over and over …as we all know the repetition basis (Pavlov proved?).
Patricia Davis, you are correct about the lies plaguing our reality. But it gets worse because at a certain point, people can't recognize truth and fact when presented to them. All the proof in the world doesn't dislodge the lies. That's a real, long-term problem.
Part of the plan.
Just re-read '1984'; yes, part of the plan.
"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on." - Pres. G.W. Bush, White House Correspondents' Dinner, 3/31/2001. They (the oligarchs, the ultra wealthy) fooled the people. (Thomas Frank, "What's the Matter with Kansas?" 2004 and Heather Cox Richardson, "How the South Won the Civil War," 2020.)
I would add to your suggested reading, "It's Even Worse Than It Looks" Thomas E. Mann & Norman J. Ornstein, 2012. and "It's Even Worse Than It Was" 2016, or Kevin Phillips' "The Politics of the Rich and Poor". They don't read, and that's why we are in the position we find ourselves.
“Today I submit that 90% of our issues plaguing America (the world?)are because the truth hasn’t been there to make proper/educated decisions.”
This jumped out at me also. I truly blame MSM for not reporting the truth - and this has been ongoing for at LEAST a year! I believe we wouldn’t be in this mess if they had been reporting the truth about the candidates. People, for the most part I believe, trust what they see/hear on the news. I believe if MSM had been reporting honestly about <among other things> the economy under Biden and the mental decline of TFG, I don’t think we’d be in this mess.
I believe whole heartedly in “common sense” which T’s recent statement sent me into gales of laughter..I can’t find right now ……but basically…..a man who has how many bankruptcies , cheated on how many wive ( let alone contractors and ‘friends’), is a convicted felon , and says things like..” it was a day of love” is NOT a man to be trusted with my money , my country, and definitely not my common sense.
I rest my case.
“common sense”?
“Any old fool knows….”
Two phrases that indicate a speaker may not know what they’re talking about.
Oh, horsefeathers. Can't anyone think for themselves and come to well-reasoned conclusions anymore without blaming somebody or something else???
They are brainwashed.
Blistering and WOWerful analysis, there, Patricia. I will have to chew the cud on that one.
No. They were wrong. They had many many many instances of his lawless behavior including felony conviction
Sure but that was lawfare and a weaponized Biden DOJ. Trump has never done anything wrong and all those businesses of his didn’t really fail, that was just smart financial strategy to file bankruptcy so he didn’t have to pay his bills. Let’s not forget he really is a billionaire….. on paper, not counting his billions in debt.
Sharon…WOW! Just made a real important point…..we have laws that SAY that is illegal.
THANK YOU THANK YOU AND THANK YOU AGAIN 👏
Laughing emoji!!
They were lied to but they also chose to believe those bald faced lies and did no research whatsoever. You reap what you sow.
It is almost a given human trait not being able to admit one’s error/that you/they/we ( all the ‘pronouns’😓) were wrong. Maturity is key. Pointedly lacking in the current ‘controllers’….is it MI, greed, selfishness, evil…all of the above?
Basics: if whomever is raised in ‘wealth’ it’s pretty inconceivable to understand the problems the poor is surrounded by ..or care enough to fix them…not all of them are actually fixable …but considerable safety mechanisms can be in place to deter the worst and …AND…those are rarely a rich person’s focus …shall I repeat that?
Great idea. People may have an easier time admitting to being misled rather than being wrong.
Yea that would be even better!
Like yesterday. Most not directly affected are ignoring the calamity. Won’t be long before we all will be affected. That will likely be too late
I'm gobsmacked that Schumer caved on the budget. Does he think Felon #47 is going to finally do the "thing" that turns MAGA against him? It will never happen. The disinformation machine always covers for him.
I listened to Simon Rosenberg talk about how Schumer might be doing the right thing - I know hear me out- not my idea just repeating his thoughts - If the government shuts down many more people will be hurting, the government will be running on a skeleton crew (prepping for the way tRump/Dump wants the government work force to be carved out) and People will be mad and truly hurting. Typically people will blame it on the party that won't come to the table. I know sounds crazy but I do see some truth in this.
Fox “News”, Newsmax, Breitbart, Sinclair, etc. will assure that most Americans will blame the Democrats if they “come to the table” or not. Since it doesn’t matter what the Democrats do, why not - heaven forbid - stand on principle and refuse to cooperate with a Nazi regime?
I've gone back and forth on this. I'm still not sure. Yes, the Dems will either get blamed if the shut down happens or vilified if they ok it. There is no win here. The bill itself is essentially an extension of Pelosi's with some tweaks. It keeps things going for 6 months. Meanwhile, the courts do their jobs, but will 6 months be enough time to right the ship at all? And, what damage will Musk and the orange one do in that time to worsen things? Whatever happens, it will be a propaganda tool. I just think the Dems aren't very good at that, even when they are right. Too many self-centered, unempathetic Americans out there, and nastiness sells.
Except, no matter what the budget says, President Musk and Trump will do what they want. They will only fund what they want.
I read an article yesterday that Trump isn’t going to travel but stay at the White House. Yes, he’s had leaders visit him there. But if Biden had said that they’d be screaming for the 25th because of his mental decline. Let’s face it, Trump needs to be drugged up and then embarrasses himself when he does talk. Just reading the transcript of his whole water debacle shows he’s not mentally capable of holding office. Then putting the bulldog Vance in there to distract viewers is ridiculous.
I am positive that Hillbilly Elegy is a work of fiction being peddled as an autobiography. The man has shown us repeatedly how willing he is to lie.
Agreed Rhonda! Once government shuts down we lose even the few effective means for fighting tRump’s Muskrat-directed destruction of that government, especially the legal ones, the courts which are providing so many refutations to what they are trying to do.
What are we losing? There is no sign of fighting Musk by Democrats in Congress.
They did not seem to blame the Republicans who were responsible for previous government shutdowns.
Sadly, Rhonda Schmit, I think you're right. But that doesn't bode well for winning back a functioning democracy.
People will be affected in ways they never dreamed of. Some of the ways people will be affected will be seeing those they love get hurt. One family is a veteran; another is a researcher; another works for the VA.
JennSH, this quote by the poet and novelist, George Eliot
( pen name for Mary Ann Evans) should speak to all Americans. "What do we live for if not to make life less difficult for others." Apparently, to Trump and Company this would read, "What are we here for if not to make life as difficult for others as we can, while making as much money.as we can."
THAT is what makes me incredulous! All these good CINOs ignore the teachings of Jesus and worship the deadly sins, all the while worrying about what goes on in people's bedrooms.
Neither Trump nor Musk's 'charitable arms' are very active. He has put 7 billion dollars total into "The Musk Foundation" and has received a received 2 billion in tax savings for that.
VERY GOOD!
I thought when tfg fans started feeling it, they’d slap their foreheads in comprehension. Now I don’t think so. They’ll go down with the man they worship. How did people lose their ability to see and think with this man?
Lacking in critical thinking skills. Brainwashed by the cult. How do you do an” intervention” for almost half the country?
Not until faux news tells the truth.
May not happen.
MLMinET...I believe it's right wing media combined with trump that has them brainwashed. However, they chose to listen/watch. No one is making them. So why do they? Because it resonates with them on some level.
Just the way WE tune into Heather, MK. We do so because she says and writes things with which we are familiar and believe to be true. “They” keep tuning in to the tRump travesty because it sounds familiar and comforting even though there is NO evidence to support it and it’s ALWAYS someone else’s fault. No evidence, few facts, unlike Heather.
It’s the familiar…why do people stay in abusive relationships…in case after case I saw the parents ‘bad parenting’ manifested again, ‘generational’ is that familiar term. Assuredly the stats are vivid but so very hard to undo years of bad programming / unlearn ,so to speak , and re-establish good moral character. It’s a defeatist attitude , but depending on how long/how bad the programming was -it’s easier just to play the victim, blame games, no responsibility needed.
Repeat it often enough & they will believe it as fact.
It resonates with them because Tramp & Muskrat are racists, and they are too. It's not the only reason, but I think it's a big part of it.
Exactly, JD! Will 200% tariff on French champagne stop the ultra rich? Of course not. They can afford it even with a 1000% tariff, and for plenty of people, "expensive = desirable". The average MAGA picking up a case of Bud Lites -okay, not those, but any other NON WOKE brew, doesn't care.
I bet that could be arranged, The disillusioned voters are out there.
Apparently Bernie Sanders is touring Red States with town halls and asking for peoples stories. I am not sure whether it is about health care only or whatever they want to talk about and then repeating then back but with analysis of what is happening with the system that contributed to their problems.
It is a brilliant example of John Dewey’s educational philosophy on his book Experience and Education. This is the idea that people learn best when theory is tied to their experiences. Bravo Bernie!
Belated Bernie lover. At least he is not speechless or a f**king coward.
I feel the same way about Bernie - he is not speechless and he is fearless
Bernie's crowds are booming. Watch Rachel Maddow these days? She makes a point of showing protests against Trump 2.X
Senator Sanders on MSNBC Chris Hayes yesterday afternoon, Bernie was pissed. Bernie ain't voting for the Rest-of-the Year "CR" titled ...
"Full Year CR & Extensions Act, 2025". Ah ... Bernies is a NO! vote.
In my emails to all the Dem senators yesterday, I mentioned Bernie is carrying the weight for all of them, and he isn't even a Dem!!
And hey--if anyone hasn't seen this clip you absolutely MUST MUST MUST take a look. Then please send a message of support to CT rep Larson!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INvMI6H58Aw
After watching that, I emailed him and asked if he could be a "spine donor" to the rest of the Democrats!!!
So are MA Senators Markey and Warren.
Schiff and Padilla say they are a no too.
Jeff Merkley (OR) and I assume Ron Wyden as well are solid "no" votes as well.
Tim Walz is also going to be doing some meetings.
Bernie's road show may be interesting to some, but let's recall that it was Bernie, Liz Warren, AOC, et al who drove a lot of people into MAGA. Dems will need to find a more centrist platform that can form an effective coalition and win elections. That probably means leaving the 'far Left' behind.
"drove a lot of people into MAGA"
It was Trump's ability to exploit the white resentment that has been festering ever since the dismantling of Jim Crow that created MAGA.
I learned yesterday that people in the south call the civil war "The Northern Invasion" bwahahahaha
I couldn't disagree with you more, Joseph J. Dunn. The Republicans are not interested in an effective coalition, and the centrist platform hasn't worked. The MAGA's right-wing extremism is dismantling our democracy, and you think being centrist, like Chuck Schumer continues to do, is going to accomplish anything? What you call the far-left is the heart of the Democratic party, and the only way we will save our country at this point, IMHO. It is time to re-birth our nation, and we need the passion and vision of people like Bernie, AOC, and Liz Warren, among many, many more who are stepping up to stand for "we the people" and all that entails. Blaming these people for MAGA is absurd!. Project 2025 has been in place for a long time, and finally they manipulated their way into implementing it. Compromise? Forget it! We have to fight for what we believe in or we will not have a country left!
I just posted this above, so apologies to anyone reading this but I think it might be worthy for me to put it into a reply for anyone who has already commented today. I hope the views of this goes viral, and that everyone who watches it hits the "like" button.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INvMI6H58Aw
YES, YES, YES!!!!!! 100% Agreement!!!
Eloquent, Carol; so many thanks.
Judas Priest, Mr. Dunn...those folks you named are NOT "far left"...this country's right wing has gone so far right that they are fascist. The Dem "so-called" left wing would barely register as "left" in Europe. It just seems to be 'far left' because the Republican rightwing has slid SO far to the right they are dangling off the fascist edge of their flat earth.
So what are those "far left" policies that you are so afraid won't appeal to the centrists? Reinforcing the social safety net? Fixing our broken healthcare system? Making sure everybody who is eligible to vote can do so without let or hindrance? Making sure everybody--including those who have been marginalized by our culture-- are treated equally before the law?
The right wing has managed to drag the culture of this country so far rightwards that the perfectly normal desires of the majority of people in this country are treated as though those wishes are too leftist as to be beyond the consideration of any Dem.
Jim Hightower, a rare Texas liberal, has always said that the only thing in the middle of the road are yellow stripes and dead armadillos. Liz, Bernie and AOC are most definitely NOT too far left.
TL---you speak the TRUTHregarding how "left" the Democrats are. I didn't realize that myself until about a year or so ago when "Beau of the Fifth Column" explained it. Beau even said, in comparison to Europe, BIDEN was "center-right"
Well said!
We can get back to a centrist platform someday. Right now, we need a fucking revolution and take this fucking administration to the woodshed for a shakedown, because that's what is happening to us right now. We're being shook down and our pockets are being emptied.
Joseph, I also disagree with your assessment, mainly because I suspect that your definitions of "centrist" and "far left" are either erroneous or more likely, don't exist.
A vocal minority, advantaged by a distorted electoral system and complicit corporate media, have pushed the political discourse to the extreme right, such that what is now labeled "far left" is actually what used to be moderate. HCR often refers to this as "liberal democracy."
When public opinion is viewed within the frame of history, both domestic and global, there is no far left. Today, public opinion ranges from moderate to fascism.
Sanders and Warren are not by any stretch of imagination, extremists. Protecting workers and consumers would not, in a functioning democracy, be considered radical. AOC has been castigated for rightly expressing concern about our destruction of the environment. Yet, if we don't immediately take radical measures to correct our destructive behavior regarding the environment, we will self-exterminate in short order. Now that's extreme!
People chose MAGA; they were not driven.
I can't account for all the reasons people gravitated to MAGA, but I recognize some of them.
1. They were mind-f*cked by religion in general and evangelicalism in particular. This created the foundation on which other grievances rest.
2. With limited education and the opportunities it provides to experience the world, they fear the unfamiliar: other ethnicities, other religions, other sexualities, etc. Untreated fear metastasizes into hate.
3. They subscribe to Scarcity Doctrine. When one believes there's a finite amount of resources that must be divvied up among all of us, greed and territorialism result.
I could think of more reasons, but this response is long enough.
Dale, I'd add to your list racism, sexism, and homo/transphobia. I see that a LOT in my MAGAt retired cop cohort.
The American Colonists that took up Arms against the King would be considered 'Far Left Lunatics'... That Label is a Smear used by the GOP... It Scares the Uninformed...
NAH. Those people drank the Kool-Aid supplied by Fox and stupidity. Shut your mind down, knee jerk responses and you will get stupid.
Joseph, your "more centrist platform" sounds like "more white guys".
We do not have a far left in this country. Liz Warren, Bernie, and AOC are much closer to the center than are those on the far right.
TL Mills below says it better.
I think i’ve asked you this before with no reply but who do you consider to be the far left? What does it take to be far left? Is that the people who see Trump for the corrupt traitor he is?
Bernie Sanders,Eliz Warren, and AOC, and a few others, are recognized within the Democratic Party as the left wing. Remember as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi quietly told AOC and friends (the Pack) to tone down their demands? Remember how AOC backed away from challenging Schumer for Senate?
I see other Comments lamenting all that is wrong with MAGA, and proclaiming all that is good and true about Democratic proposals, etc. All of those pronouncements may be true.
But I believe the many problems HCR has identified can be corrected only by elections that replace MAGA elected officials with others--by winning elections. The same platform that lost in 2024 is unlikely to win in 2026 or 2028. So the relevant question is: What do Dems want to change, to become electable?
Come down to what one uses as a political barometer. Europe? The Representatives Omar, Ocasio Cortez et al are left of centre, not far left.
Respectfully, chasing the center got us here.
Agreed. If the Democratic leadership truly tipped the scales against Senator Sanders in 2016, all I can say, as a frustrated Republican at the time, is that the Elders of the wrong Party intervened. Trump should have been denied the nomination in Cleveland. He made vague threats of violence and the Elders came down with severe cases of spine-flu.
Bool-sheet. I was a Republican in 2016 and hoped for a contest between Senator Sanders and Governor Kasich. The country was in trouble then and these two candidates had visions on how to address that challenge. I think it was Democrats, like the Clintons and Speaker Pelosi, who veered toward the center too pragmatically and abandoned the middle class (as Senator Sanders observed on 06nov25) thus estranging certain traditional Democrats to M.A.G.A.
This element of the erstwhile Democratic base had not given up on the experiment of republican governance but decided that the experiment had given up on them. Anyone who listens to Representative Ocasio Cortez or other members of the 'lunatic left' can not believe that these men and women do not care about working class Americans. One may disagree with their policies, as I often do, but that person is hard-pressed to question their motives.
Of course, there are the fault-lines established in the 1950s and 1960s, rightly so in my view, that excite the racism and other malignant pre-judgements that fuel the Trump fartmobile.
If we're going to clone, we should start with Bernie! Or some way to spread the Bernie wisdom!
Really, Ned?
You expect MAGA -- any of MAGA -- capable of or inclined to any sentence of a dozen words or, as yours here, even one word more than that?
My guess is that there are plenty out there even now. I have read the statements of a few examples. Trumps approval is falling.
Believe it or not, there were some educated voters Trump hoodwinked. I wasn’t one of them, and none of my immediate family can stand Trump. We know what an incompetent and vindictive con artist he is. His minions are no better than Trump, including JD Vance. I was embarrassed when he was elected Senator for my state courtesy of Peter Thiel’s purchasing him.
You're very lucky that none of your immediate family can stand him. Countless families and friendships have been torn apart by this moron.
Indeed... my husband and his brother have been estranged since Trump 1. And I used to love visiting him and his wife in their lovely house in Arizona. But his brother is a narcissist, claimed Obama "raped" him because he had to pay high taxes, and once suggested that a woman be euthanised because her disability was being supported by the state!!!!!
Going all the way back to Queens & his father's KKK daze.
My family and friendships, as just one of likely millions of examples.
If educated, then racist, sexist, homophobic, environmentally uncaring because you would have to be one or all to be both educated and vote for Trump. In fact, you have to have prioritised something else over all these things and it would certainly have not been the economy or the country? So then what would make an educated person vote for Trump? Someone who wanted to see the country destroyed. Russian asset? Even unwittingly, it has that effect.
Many of Trump's voters just support him because they "hate the liberals". Unfortunately, they don't understand that, over the years, " the liberals" have given them nearly all of the programs they love: Social Security, Medicare, Unemployment Insurance, the end of child labor, collective bargaining rights, voting rights, the 40 hour work week.
In fact, it's not at all a stretch to say that "the liberals" gave us "The Weekend"!
Alas, Linda, I know some highly educated people (doctors, lawyers, people with PhDs) who never lost their love of totalitarians in the person of their paternalistic and patriarchal pastors, whose antediluvian opinions are "justified" by the ways in which they glom onto certain biblical texts as ways to demonstrate some kind of elemental superiority in whiteness and maleness. Basically, I blame the conjoining of religion and what seems to be a human love of tribalism that gets infused with greed, as well as fear of the Other (carefully crafted by the leaders). It's a toxic soup that has always existed. The irony is that so many religions that preach utter intolerance and hatred were supposedly "inspired" by people who rejected those ideas. And the highly educated ones turn themselves into intellectual pretzels in order to justify their devotion to christofascism especially.
The educated voters weren't hoodwinked, they actually thought that Trump would deliver the massive tax cuts for them and their wealthy buddies. Instead the market is tanking, Trump has gone cray-cray with his tariffs dropping their net worths way below what they will save from re-upping the tax cuts.
The market will eventually recover as it did after 9/11 and the housing bubble burst, but what often happens is the wealthy and the insiders buy back in at the bottom while the rest of us usually wait too long and miss out on the much of the gains to be made from the recovery.
In the process of recovery, there will be bankruptcies and therefore no opportunities to buy back in. These are great examples but think Sears and Enron as two examples of stock that wiped out thousands of families retirement accounts.
Gary Loft, Yep. This is like 50% off at Filene's Basement for the rich. Think there's too much money at the top in this country? That's about to get much, much worse.
Hello Gary... The Seed of the housing Crisis was planted back in the Great Recession when the Private Equity funds, like Blackrock. bought all the foreclosed properties... Blackrock is now the largest Landlord in the USA...
Educated does not equal "without greed, lust for power, etc." Those are things that parents, family, (supposedly religion), and other close relationships should teach.
If anyone got bankrupted or lost their savings over Enron, it was because they overinvested in it... diversification is every financial advisor's advice. Right now, just ride this one out for most folks.
I know a man I believed to be brilliant who voted for Trump. I don't know why. Some people couldn't vote for a woman. Some rich people identified with Trump as a fellow rich person. Some people listen to him and hear a reasonable person. I hear my father, who lied to us every day.
I know a man I believed most my life to be caring and empathetic. I thought he would come around under the weight of what we are seeing, but he still believes this is the path. We are deeply estranged now.
My former bff and her educated family (except for one daughter) are all in, as far as I know since I am not much in contact much anymore. Lovely family, smart, generous, kind and totally hoodwinked, thanks to Dad who demands that all follow his lead. No logic, just another bully who demands “respect.” Intelligence can’t compare with Fox propaganda and emotional blackmail for many it seems.
Fox News is a big culprit in brain washing Americans. The only friends we have who are Trump supporters have Fox News on from morning til night. They began by worshiping everything Bill OReilly said, & it was downhill from there. Sad...
Can I say it JD ... ? Malignant deranged Patriarchy.
sounds like the Texas I left. So many patriochical like situations.
Yes, it's Tribal, JD.
I believe that vance's election to the Senate, as well as that of moreno, was manipulated. And I believe the truth will someday come out. I hope I live long enough.
Money sometimes does the trick. But once electorate sentiment has swung, all the $$$ in the world wont bring it back.
My first rule of voting is: Never vote for a narcissist! If more people abided by that rule we'd be much better off.
The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry by Jon Ronson says psychopaths are suited to careers in business and politics because they have the drive without the empathy and can fool some people most of the time. But any kind of mental illness is not good.
There is still plenty of hatred for Dems. And love for anything that upsets them. mark Davis, writing in the Ft Worth Star Telegram opined how chump was doing things right since Dems were so upset. When I moved here in 1998, Mark Davis was a Dem hater and as W/Dickie stole the 2000 election, could find no cause to complain, then he trashed Obama, who had to clean up that mess. Now he is the happiest clown around, keeping the nonsense justified by the most egregious lies. Works in Texas…
Remember that Stu Rhodes is from Granbury, just outside of Ft. Worth. I was born in Hico where there is a cafe right at the junction of T6 and US 281 named the Koffee Kup. Used to have Kafe as the third word. Nothing to see there. My grandad told me they had sundown rules down there and I did not understand since I grew up in SE New Mexico until my dad explained it. Made no sense to me. Rural TX is fixing to get screwed even more by the TX repubs with the vouchers. They already collapsed the health care system and the public schools are next.
ICE and local law enforcement are surveilling Liberty County immigrant neighborhoods and the poorest people to scapegoat and divert attention from stealing our lifelines: Medicaid and Social Security.
There's also paychecks helping him on, of course, an audience!
But the cretins lie, cheat, stack the deck now that they have all our institutions lined up.
J L -- falling, yes. But only into the basement of ~35%, comprised of True MAGA Believers, people who think he is infallible and sent by god. (In other words, The Cult.)
It breaks my brain.
Don't worry S, if your cranium is intact it will keep the brain pieces in place and functioning. :)
Maga hats may be unreachable but apparently independents are not.
Bingo. I'm a registered Independent and have been since 2008. Once in a while there is a Republican candidate that needs to be ousted in the primary so we register as Republican or Democrat and then switch back after the election.
Maine recently allows Independents to choose their primary ballot so we no longer have to switch parties to vote in the primaries.
I went independent a few weeks ago. I'm sick of the Dems rolling over like beaten dogs. Schumer makes me puke. I honestly see a split coming between the corporate Dems and the progressive Dems.
It started with Bernie and Hillary. The Dems need to stick together necessitating a shift to common ground, pronto.
In fairness to the Democratic Party, I believe that the liberals are re-group and testing out different responses. Though Pittsburgh produced more steel than Germany and Japan combined, it still took three years to defeat militarists and fascists.
I am sure there are five people across the little red rioting regions with the requisite humility and intellexual integrity sufficient to speak to the denial of their peers.
I just read an Axios article interviewing ten Michigan Trump voters to determine their regrets. Nine expressed regrets, but only one said he wouldn't vote for him again. Argh!
Progress, not perfexion.
The rub is most of his followers think Trump is doing a good job.
...and how do they define a "good job?" Do they mean actions by a president with severely limited intellectual capacity and no moral core? Surrouned by self-centered, spoiled and intellectually limited syncophants, who think of the American public with contempt? Who will deny gravely ill people medical coverage to increase corporate profits? Where the human consequences of their policies never figure into their balance sheets?
Nah – they just like the schtick.
They don't know what's really going on. Fox Spews doesn't report a lot of the stories that we read about or hear. You don't know what you don't know!
I'd be happy to know they're just thinkin' it. Admitting you're wrong is not the American way. Has anyone from the "W" administration admitted that invading Iraq was wrong - even though he did so on a lie and got away with it?
Until we get smart enough collectively to figure out how to deal with psychological manipulation by the evil intentioned we will struggle to bring love and kindness and goodwill towards all back to the forefront. Evil intentioned billionaires using our latest tech advances (offering an open door into every human mind with access to them) will continue to be rewarded with increasing power and wealth for manipulating minds to scapegoat others for their own misery
Noam Chomsky says there is no word for people like those you mention. "Evil" doesn't describe the horror.
YouTube is full of FAFO (Flock Around and Find Out) videos. I used to watch them for the schadenfreude. Now, it just starts a cycle of fury then hopelessness. One thing is almost constant in these MAGA buyer's remorse videos and it's that they only wake up when it affects them. If you gave them their ... whatever... back, they'd return to the flock.
I wanna hear Congfressional Republicans saying the same. "I did not sign up for this."
22 Republican senators and dozens of Republican House members voted to fund Ukraine. Some call him a liar. I say he was Putin's Manchurian candidate.
Big march today in DC. Noon.
Impeach. Feathers of Hope. https://jerryweiss.substack.com/p/remove-impeach-impeach
Call. https://act.commoncause.org/call_campaigns/tell-congress-stop-the-musk-budget/?source=email-share
I hope it IS big. We need more of them. I'm doing a small but mighty local. A big one in DC on April 5th.
I think they will. With a little help from the rest of us. We all make mistakes. The hard core - never. But there are good folks who need the room and the support to say they made a mistake. Bird flu isn't the only reason the prices haven't come down.
Ned, Rich Logis, a former MAGAnite, has a podcast called "Leaving MAGA" on which he interviews people who were deeply entrenched in the MAGA community and have seen the "light." It's so enlightening to hear their reasons for their admiration for, and dedication to the proposition that "fear, intimidation, and hatred are the only ways to make America great again." To hear their stories of rebellion, and then to hear them speak of "waking up" to the reality that what they were thinking and doing was just not right, is, again, enlightening. If only these discussions could be accessible to everyone. Some of the interviewees were there on Jan. 6 and talk about their experiences with "mob mentality."
Pam, I promise to check it out. Thank you for showing me the way.
Ned, yours it's a real message worth of spreading wide and far. I'm sure there are many maga voters turning sorry at the way they voted, silently for now.
They need help coming out.
Thanks for your comment 👍
Amen. Thank you, Ricardo, for being Lincolnesque: "With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation's wounds . . . ."
If we get more rain in CA, Trump would say he ordered clouds above to do it.
Good one, Hiro! Not hieroglyphics but hiero-ballistics!
I remain incredulous that trump has any support whatsoever. But here we are. The only thing that MIGHT turn trumpers against him is if they start to feel real pain themselves -- economically, inability to get medical and other services they depend on, etc. I've concluded that all the bad shit that is coming our way has to happen in order for enough people to possibly wake up so that there becomes a critical mass of resistance.
I remember Ralph Nader said that a long time ago and was chastised for it. He did not succeed in his political career. He was a smart guy. And thanks for the seat belts!
The political situation was completely different in Nader’s time. Then and now are in no way comparable.
If this were possible, in any red state/county where the MAGA elected representative is not holding a town hall meeting, the constituents of that district, including enraged MAGA who put them there, use their recall powers to force them out and elect a new representative who will listen.
Trump lies like other breathe, so why not just tell the lies, and not dump 2.5 billion cubic feet of saved irrigation water out on the ground to no one's benefit. Just because he could, I guess. It just makes his lies even more outrageous.
We all know he's a narcissist, and likes to lie, but truly look closely at him NOW. Not just the words, but his entire demeanor, especially how he holds himself. The Cabinet meeting where Musk stood and ran the show--Trump was slumped at the table. Look at the clips of him in the Tesla yesterday, his face and comments looking at it.
He is in COGNITIVE DECLINE. My late brother's dementia was manifested by aphasia. His vocabulary became smaller and smaller--both what words he used and which words he understood. It was heartbreaking to watch, especially because he KNEW what was happening. He'd try so hard to talk and get so frustrated that he'd give up and withdraw. When COVID took him in the end, he was down to about a dozen words. Trump is headed that way. The media "sane washed" him during the election.
So sorry you got to go through that with your brother. The signs are definitely there with ffpotus, for all to see.
Miselle, he never stands or sits up straight. And his rambling, like you said his few words are repeated over and over! When will the rethuglicans stand up and do their job?
It's not just the physical changes and vocabulary shrinkage. If you dare put yourself through it, read the quote HCR put in this piece from him about the CA water folly. It's a rambling, nonsensical jumble of rubbish. Water flowing down from farmlands to LA? Millions of gallons of liquid moving through "half-pipes", like he's talking about a skate park? Republicans will keep him in there as long as he can still sign to rubber stamp the Heritage Foundation's wishlist. Once he loses that capacity, he'll get 25th'd and they roll Vance in there to continue.
I agree with you, C.
Just because he could, and the MAGAts applaud. It’s why he loves the uneducated, and the fools.
Just remember that FDR stated that when a democratic government stops fulfilling its duties the door opens for an autocrat. The conservatives have been undermining the government for decades. At first they just stopped being ethical and ignoring the norms, now they ignore the law.
Both parties over time have abandoned the people to the oligarchs. Look at Schumer's capitulation last night. We need a new party for the people.
The Democrats, over time, have proven their ability to help "the people".
Well said Rickey...😃
Well said, sir.
That's the really scary thing, "just because he could." But could he really?? That's California's irrigation water. The dude is president, not dictator, king or Mao. He had no business ordering the water released. That should have a definitive NO from the management of that water.
As Bernie would add " a lie".
Juanita... And what would the Paiute do to DJT, and Elon Musk? Could a Tesla Survive a Death Valley Summer?... Would the three of them become part of the Landscape?
Batzman and Elon are spoiled rich kids with thin skins and, I suspect, little real world resilience.
I believe that they would become examples of Dead-Ends in Evolution...
In a heartbeat, but they will never leave their comfort zone.
I wouldn’t want death Valley to endure that devastation of having that man’s corpse and a beautiful place
I’m with you Juanita. Our older son is a civil engineer. He works for California’s Department of Water Resources. I follow their Facebook page.
My father-in-law was the lead engineer for the DOE dams in AK, OK, MO, KS and TX. Trump indiscriminantly fired hundreds of DOE employees, some of them were engineers that maintained the dams and monitored the water flow in most of the states. My father-in-law retired some time ago, but the DOE and Corp of Engineer jobs were critical to the safety of down river towns and to the generation of hydroelectric power. Of course, the moron-in-chief apparently didn't "intuit" this and neither did President Musk.
in Alaska?
Juanita. You wrote, "There are no words for the sheer ignorance of Trump regarding California's water."
"There are no words for the sheer ignorance of Trump." No need to qualify his ignorance.
Bingo.
His rambling speech about the water indicates a serious problem with mental stability. Why would anyone who hears this jiberish even think of taking it seriously!?
Go to any protests nearby, keep the noise going... Republicans need to feel unbearable voter pressure ie Nov 2026 ... i see the Dems are stepping in and up with townhall meetings. See how long the Fox et al propaganda network can take it....
The problem is that FoxNews and others treat his ignorance and lies as truth. MAGA wants to hate California, though they eat our produce and watch our tv shows and movies. What he did when he ordered the opening of the valves was dangerous and criminal. When water is an issue in the Central Valley this summer, I hope people remember that it was Trump who hurt us.
There is a campaign to send postcards to the White House on the Ideas of March. I would hope for perhaps April 1 as well and with a more coordinated approach?
Juanita. I am not so stupid as to believe his damn rambling about the water. He will never listen or believe the experts on the California water. His ignorance is beyond belief. Everything he touches goes down the shitter!
It's not clear to me that Trump is ignorant about the water issue. It doesn't matter to him. He is "performing" for his base. Water be damned (so to speak).
There is nothing in the English language that can describe the gibberish that comes out of his mouth ...
Bull s***?
Agreed. But what, other than lies, can you expect from this gasbag and his hideous band of crooks and greedy billionaires? I didn’t shop on Amazon much, and I will never buy anything from it again. My mother did this with Welch’s grape juice in the 1950’s because of Welch’s fascist leanings.
Oh no I drank fascist fruit juice? AAUGH!!
Me too!!! I am beyond angry that this idiot and his idiot muskrat are merrily destroying our country trying to and the Republicans are bending over.
Please do!
When do we get to the part where they finally admit and declare that he's non compos mentis? Before or after the complete economic and diplomatic meltdown?
When do we get to the part that all is going according to plan? It’s the billionaires’ end game. Musk, Thiel and the other billionaires WANT Trump to crash the economy, so they can buy all companies going bankrupt at discount prices. Crash hard, buy low, cash hard. Exactly what Putin did in Russia. Extra advantage: it makes the people poor and hungry, so they won’t revolt.
This 👆
And the post Brexit UK’s single transferable ruling class party is speedily dismantling the postwar welfare state. Privatising the National Health Service, allowing Australian corporations to profiteer off openly polluting UK’s water ways and sources and violently pushing millions more into poverty. Same Putin oligarch Playbook.
Watch how fast they use the lack of military defenses in the postwar EU Peace Project to land and resource grab across Europe. Putin/Trump’s Ukrainian land and resources grab is just the beginning.
‘Without firing a shot’ 🔥
Lots of shots have been fired, in Ukraine. Now they are turning to Europe, which is in great danger at this moment !
Got that right Linda' And, you don't have read Anne Applebaum except she now lives in a front-line nation, Poland. Better than Edward R. Murrow.
Good lord, I thought they had learned something.
History repeats itself with variations JD.
Exactly.
When do we get to the part where we all wake up and go "Gee Auntie Em, this place was REAL and they had a whole bunch of insane people running it and there were wicked witches and flying monkeys... and all I could think of was 'There's no place like home!' "
I said this to my adult daughter just yesterday: "With the way the world has gone in the last decade, you probably can't comprehend just how INSANE this is."
Yes, Dutch Mike, it's "what Putin did in Russia."
But not "exactly."
Through the 1990s all the former parts of the old Soviet Union had Americans crawling all over them. Bankers from the big banks. Reps from all the U.S. fossil fuel most sociopath and criminally inclined. Hot shot Ivy League grads with their freshly minted M.B.A.s.
And they were all openly, publicly doing the same thing -- with open, public help from the U.S. Department of State and its embassies and consulates across all the former Soviet Union. They were all seeking those dead states' now most greedy, ruthless, get-rich-quick former nomenklatura -- all to cash in on the timber, mineral, fertilizer, and fossil fuel wealth which had formerly (technically) belonged to all the Russian and red-star-related peoples.
The U.S. -- hail Milton Friedman, hail "free market," ethics-free greed, hail biz ed school scenarios for cornering markets -- vitally invested in all the most corrupt soon to become the most thieving, ruling oligarchs.
Not an exact equivalence, Dutch Mike, unless we count all the Russian techies now serving Putin's schemes to spread hate and division in the U.S., along with the U.S.'s own social media billionaires also long doing that.
Phil, you can add the corporate media to your list as well.
Under the category of "too little too late" -- The NY Times, WSJ, WAPO and many others, they are condemning Trump/Musk.
We can fight back by buying local and goods made or grown locally.
We can drive consumer spending down, which is 70% of US GDP, by buying from farmer's markets and even grown our own.
By my son's experience (he's a chef), Gary, huge numbers of U.S. chefs are savvy this way.
They know many customers appreciate menus informing them of buying local, of menus also stressing seasonal ingredients.
I am putting in a much larger garden, and mostly vegetables this year.
We rely on fresh produce quite a bit.
Same here, Miselle.
Ally, my arthritis doesn't agree with bending, so most of what I grow is in containers. Planters can be expensive, so we use some 5 gallon buckets which are cheap from Home Depot or such, but even better, a larger fast food franchise sells their pickle buckets the same size for $2. We drill holes for drainage.
Filling them with soil can be expensive. A few years back, I saw a hack that suggested putting sticks in the bottom. Lots of sticks around here in the spring, and it works well.
I have grown bush beans, tomatoes, lettuce, green peppers, cucumbers out of these. I even have grown personal sized melons ("sugar cubes") out of them as long as I trellis them and support the melons till they are ripe. Two years ago, I found out that green peppers are perennials. I brought the bucket inside and with the help of a grow lamp, kept it alive. This is spring #3 for it, and it is covered in blossoms. :-D
There are plenty of youtubes that show how to regrow produce out of the stems (romaine works grows well in a shallow water dish. We don't get a full salad out of them, but enough to put on sandwiches). I confess to normally getting small tomato plants, but any of the above I've grown from seed.
We have had berry bushes for years and planted more last fall. Those won't produce this year, but will in the next. I ordered 25 strawberry bare roots from Burpee. They are growing in pots right now.
You probably know a lot of the above already. I offer it as suggestions to those who've never gardened. If they have only a balcony with sun (even partial sun for the lettuces) they can at least grow something. Growing is good for the soul anyhow.
I know there are gardeners on here and if they can add anything I haven't thought of, I hope they will. We might be miles and miles apart, but we are a community and can support each other.
BTW, I don't have the space to do this, but years ago I knew a couple who LOVED to garden. They took pleasure in the exercise itself. They grew way more than they could use, so they would deliver produce to neighbors. If anyone can manage to do this, you could really help people out, especially those struggling financially.
Gary, I am sorry but it is a real disservice to include the NYT with WaPo and WSJ. The NYT has been staunchly on the side of good journalism in their newsroom and mostly center left politics on their editorial pages throughout the Trump presidencies with some right wing editorials but not many. They have been much fairer and balanced in their coverage which is their job while both of the other two pubs were clearly moving towards supporting Trump in many ways. The NYT has not caved to the right wing MAGA many other papers have and if you actually read it every day as I do (both in print and online) you would know ib speak the truth. They are not perfect but they are not led by Bezos or Murdoch or others of the oligarchy either. They continue to be led by the same family which has led the paper for decades and does the best job in this country at providing fair unbiased news.
The minions from the Chicago School of Milton Friedman, also did this in South America. Disaster capitalism at is best.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_therapy_(economics)
bc
Close enough. Money is complicit with evil intent.
Thanks for the clarification, Phil! It's the old "earth and humans are just resources"-thinking all over again.
Bill Browder's book is a good book that tells a great vulture story
Exactly. They hope to cash in on the ensuing disaster.
I see pitchforks and torches coming for the monster. Kamala warned everyone and they refused to believe her.
It has become high time for the pitchforks and burning torches - and burning pitchforks, too.
My fear is that is EXACTLY what they want! Trump declares martial law to "contain the violence."
Exactly the plan. Putin is pulling the strings but it’s chump’s revenge tour, and muskrat’s ego balloon. Glee for all three
They're like the cartoon villains from the old Batman series...
You nailed it, Dutch Mike. And drooling real estate agents in towns of all sizes (some are caring individuals doing good work, but too many are saccharine-friendly opportunists).
This is the plan that Milton Friedman implemented in Argentina and the Russia following the collapse of the USSR. Worked out so well.
Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein is the game plan. Where is she in all these message boards?
Read Sarah Kendzior's work. (Hidden in Plain Sight and They Knew) Eye opening. Explains how we got here. She predicted the whole thing a decade ago.
Corporations will buy the bankrupt farms, too. Our food supply will become even more corporatized for profit.
Yep, as I said: it's their end game. They want to control everything and profit off of every last aspect of your life. Next thing you know, they will tax the air you breathe.
Dutch. I have thought of this plan as well! 🤬👿
My husband suggested this several years ago. All the Gar’s use the politicians to get the control they want, and then the politicians will be gone along with the country.
No, no, no Putin didn't do it. It was the too rapid transition to capitalistic economy. Putin is still very popular, bc he restored the economy , and it's doing very well now despite the sanctions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_therapy_(economics)
bc
The Russian interest rate is 21% and they are having trouble recruiting for the army. The economy is half the size of Canada's. They are not doing so well, and won't unless Trump helps them out. Call your representatives today. Ask them to support Ukraine. Keep the heat on.
I'd just like to say, bravo to the federal Judges for holding the fort right now. So important to celebrate small wins in such dark days. If you haven't read it, I urge you to read Robert Reich's very hopeful substack post from Jan 2nd:
"The only real firewall against the Trump regime"
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/see-you-in-court
I have practiced in U.S. District Court, Northern California Division. Yesterday's reinstatement of fired (NOT) covers federal workers across many Agencies, the VA, Interior, Agriculture, Energy, Defense & U.S. Treasury & and IRS Agents.
Do you want your refund? Be very pleased that Judge Alsup has the case.
The detailed ruling was ordered by the very experienced WILLIAM H. ALSUP. Case No. 25-cv-01780-WHA. Judge Alsup's Order stops 'OPM' from giving any "guidance" on federal worker's jobs.
These workers are real people like reinstated KATHERINE STEELE; Katherine is again a U.S. Forest Service Employee! Judge Alsup has ordered a full compliance report due next Thursday, 6 days from now.
The only federal Agency out of work is "OPM" whose actions have been declared "illegal" with no authority.
Counsel in the Northern District nicknamed Judge Alsup, "Wild Bill", yes Wild Bill Alsup. Wild Bill is Musk-OPM's worst nightmare.
Will trump comply? And if he does, where will the rehired workers report for work? They have already moved offices, the infrastructure for most of the agencies no longer exist. I don't believe trump will comply with the court orders, and he will slow walk this through the courts like he did with his criminal trials. The chaos will continue at the same fast pace, with more damage to the country that may be impossible to repair.
Rachel Maddow had a brief excerpt on this. Sending people to rehab centers, a closed Subway, and some other unoccupied building for "office space".
Yes, I loved that Rachel Maddow also read Judge Alsup's verbatim comments from the Bench during the hearing.
That's the Judge Alsup I know, all counsel know -- very well.
I just bet...
Would replacing Trump with Vance make a positive difference? I'm skeptical.
No. He is the target to assume the office; Part of the plan.
D4N, I find one shining light, I think--I doubt that the MAGA love them some Vance like they do Trump. "Tennessee Brando" has alluded to that in the past, but I can't find exactly which of his YouTube clips says that.
However, you make a good point. IMHO, Trump can be manipulated by stroking his ego and he's stubborn. I think Vance is motivated by wanting to be more than he is, and he will do whatever he is told to do.
Heaven help us all! Our only saving grace is to get rid of the lot in Trumps world.
Trump is a cult leader. Vance doesn't have the same "charisma" to pull it off - he's a wet fish. Same with junior. If we cut the head off the snake, will his hold on members of Congress disappear and will they then wake up?
I totally agree with you. Romney and McCain couldn't beat Obama and Trump won in 2016 by Hillary taking the rust belt states for granted.
I am thinking and hoping that same thing!
The whole god damned GOP is the tip of the iceberg.
Jane Mayer’s book, Dark Money & others about 10 years ago documented the through- line of American fascist mafia state oligopolists (FMSO) who had continued doing business with the Nazi war machine industrialists up to, and beyond the termination of legal authority to do so. They and their offspring became the major funders of the John Birch Society and burgeoning maze of think tanks & lobbying firms & new radical right wing ideological breeding labs in U.S. universities in addition to The University of Chicago. This matrix of Robber Barron ideologues are the funders of the psychological warfare - population conditioning machine that has dumbed down and cultified what became MAGA. <> Musk proudly identifies as Dark Gothic MAGA, a bizarre techbro $Billionaire death cult philosophically led by Curtis Yarvin: They publicize their intent to gain global oligopolist control of natural resources, weed out redundant populations, and destroy as much of earth’s ecology as necessary while doing it. They will always have the cash for private islands, security, and health care. Their goal is fascist mafia state hegemony. They’re proud to have officially aligned with Putin. <> Massively reaching out to Musk-Trump-Vance voters starting to stumble out of the cognitive dissonance of realizing they’ve been conned, is good and necessary work to help boycott the FMSO back to the dark id fringes of society and begin to build new, more eco-friendly & humanist based paradigms for more durable & sustainable democracy. I listed some references in my substack post yesterday.
Jane Mayer really nailed it. I still have nightmares about the history that she revealed.
They're not nightmares, L B.
It's broad daylight. And by ogres, ghouls, and living dead graduated with highest test scores from many of the "best" U.S. schools.
I know. The scariest part is how they have attacked and infected many of the "best" schools. Their greed and inhumanity knows no bounds.
Follow the money.
There is a sh*tload of money there to follow, all in the hands of a few dozen crooks.
Although after this week's Dow crash, maybe not quite as much.
Damn, is muskrat down to a trillion
They were probably the biggest sellers Jon.
Vance could be worse. Enough people power might slow them down.
And next in line in the smarmy Johnson. And then, it gets even worse.
Vance is getting booed and chased out everywhere he goes. He will not be able to replace the demagogue. He would get the title, but he will not ever have the power.
No they all need to go
No. Thiel is Vance's master, and the gateway to the full implementation of Project 2025.
Yet all the pieces are connecting sooner or later.
Betsy, Trump has a cult following. Vance DOES NOT.
True, but the cult doesn't have the money. The Project 2025 people do, and they are the ones who know how to manipulate, mostly through fear and lies, anyone who strays.
It would be much worse Betsy.
Hell NO
not at all.
Absolutely not!
No, all created project 2025 are the brains behind this takeover. I would love to know if they admire the fascist state that he existed in Germany and that is their goal?
Victor Orban has been a model for Project 2025.
What did Trump mean by “—we have a lot of our favorite players cruising around the coast, and we have to be careful.” when speaking about Greenland?
I can only imagine his favorite players are Russia and China.
Yes, that’s his scare tactic to try and take over Greenland but never give them a vote in the country that's ruling them.
Really. You would think anyone with a 5th grade education reading trumps rambling about water would realize this guy has gone off the deep end.
When he first starting ranting about the water in California, I told my husband, "I think he thinks all the water in the entire world just runs south. Like, all the way to Antartica."
I am willing to bet if you questioned MAGA on the street, they'd believe that to be true as well.
Republicans will NEVER admit this. EVER. They will gaslight us into eternity. Watch some of the recent townhalls with Republican Representatives.
Oh, you mean just like the Democrats responsibly and patriotically admitted that Joe Biden was losing it and needed to go....oh wait...." he runs rings around me " - " he is in top form, nothing wrong with him at all " --lies, lies, lies.
They waited so long to admit it that we got stuck with Kamala Harris, THE most incompetent, inarticulate and achievement-deficient candidate in history . She could not articulate any sensible and credible policy, she had no reasonable achievements especially her 4 years as VP, and she just nattered on about how she "loves" the American people, clearly trying to poach Trump's massive possession of the truly patriotic voters.
Attention, Democrats - if you ever want to convince the electorate that you are both honest and have America's best interests at heart, you are going to have to at least admit you blew it, apologize to all the faithful democrats you betrayed, and ask them to trust you again. I certainly won't. I do not believe you actually love this country.
I just read Senator Shumer’s opinion on why he is going to vote for the “Dirty” CR from the House. If the Senate approves that CR, it is going to be the last vote that the Senate takes on the budget until September of 2025. The Democrats need to kill the House CR, shut the government down and make the House pass the bill that the Senate passed in February.
I called Schumer's office twice yesterday imploring him not to vote yes on the CR -- literally begging him to vote no. Ditto Gillibrand - though I doubt she'd vote for it. It's time for Schumer to ride off into the sunset.
I emailed Schumer this morning. Not sure it will do any good.
I distrust Schumer.
As Senate Majority Leader, he could have called the vote on Trump's disqualification under the Constitution's Article 14, Section Three.
The convicted criminal could never have gotten the 2/3 which the Constitution requires to lift disqualification for any public office. Yet Schumer just sat back and left free the rapist, Putin asset, insurrectionist.
Phil its just not true. Please get over this. It reeks off ignorance. Believe me if there was any legal ground to stand on the Democrats would have used it. You and your allies on this issue simply are reading it wrong.
There has NEVER been an adjudication of Trump as an insurrectionist and that had to happen FIRST by either a court of law or an impeachment. And forget about the Colorado decision, that was overturned by the Supreme Court.
You can whine about it all you want but it's water under the bridge. It wasn't going to happen then and it certainly isn't going to happen now.
Looks like a pretty lousy system you've got there.
Its democracy at its ugliest but so far, it's still democracy.
You must live somewhere else.
Why do you have to respond to everything with a personal insult? You could have left off that last sentence and maybe be taken seriously.
Hmmm, Sharon, I did not read his reply as a “personal insult” at all (but that’s just my read, I’m not in his head!), just a statement of supposition based on what your words imply. And, out of genuine curiosity, based on what you wrote, do you not live in the USA?
I apologize but as Barbara suggested it was NOT intended as an insult, just a comment. And I do not end everything with personal insults! I don't criticize your rhetoric or others here which seriously insult many but mostly go unchallenged because it seems that if your insults are pointed at the "right (wing)" people, that is okay even if it is really not okay.
But enough said. Again I apologize if you misunderstood the intent which was solely to elicit information, not to insult.
Jon: unfortunately, you are 100% correct.
Lol Veronica, there is nothing I like better than being "unfortunately 100% correct"!
I do appreciate the way you "poke" at us now and then. Reality.
I really do try to do it respectfully but I am not perfect and I have made mistakes for which I apologize. I do wish more people would try to be a little bit more balanced here. We are theoretically mostly on the same side and I fear this is the kind of problem we as a group have, i.e. not being willing to compromise to get to a sound consensus.
The extreme court only said that Colorado couldn’t take him off the ballot, never said he wasn’t an insurrectionist.
I read that verdict in its entirety and the basis was the same. A single state Supreme court's verdict had no control in national elections which to me makes perfect sense. If state courts could control national elections we would have more chaos than we already have.
The only decision that would permit an adjudication as an insurrectionist would be that of a federal court. And I would repeat my original thesis, Trump has never been adjudged an insurrectionist by any federal court and thus, regardless of the truth of what he is (he IS one), he legally is not and thus is still permitted to serve as the POTUS.
This failure, by the way, is clearly for me on the hands of Merrick Garland and therefore Joe Biden for not acting promptly to prosecute Trump for his crimes during Jan6. Had they not dragged their heels in getting Jack Smith appointed special prosecutor we might not be in this mess.
They gave him immunity. That action spoke volumes.
Is your opinion the only one you don’t consider whining? Do better. Make a point without the insults.
I agree! I feel betrayed by Schumer.
I am sorry you feel this way. I think he is doing all he can.
Peace in our time...
(America in) pieces in our time.
There won’t be a budget for the next fiscal year either. Republicans are so incompetent they can’t even write a budget but they want Democrats to vote for all their cuts.
The CR is a booby trap designed to further the Economic Extinction Event that is progressing with the terrifying speed.
WHY DO YOU THINK THAT THE MAGA/REPUBLICAN BUDGET HAWKS SO CHEERFULLY WENT ALONG - WITH OUT SO MUCH AS A PEEP — TO APPROVE IT IN THE HOUSE?!?
The oxymoronic “each day … is not a calendar day… “ clause tucked into its 90+ pages doesn’t just green light Tr-mp’s tariff insanity.
It makes Tr-mp’s Emergency Declaration a Congressionally Sanctioned Emergency (CSE) — until the end of the 119th Congressional session in September 2025.
What powers does the presidency gain under a CSE?!? Here is a (AI-generated) breakdown of SOME of the 136 statutorily available powers to the president:
* Military and National Security:
* Military Construction: Authorizing military construction projects not otherwise authorized by law, using existing defense appropriations.
* Military Personnel: Drafting retired Coast Guard officers.
* Defense Stockpiles: Drawing down equipment from national defense stockpiles.
* Communications: Shutting down or taking over radio stations, and potentially wire communications facilities in a threat of war.
* Chemical and Biological Weapons: Suspending laws regulating chemical and biological weapons, including the ban on human testing.
* Detailing Troops: Detailing U.S. troops to foreign countries.
* Economic and Financial:
* Freezing Assets: Freezing assets or blocking financial transactions in which a foreign national has an interest.
* Financial Transactions: Blocking financial transactions that may harm national security.
* Public Health and Safety:
* Clean Air Act: Suspending Clean Air Act implementation plans or excess emissions penalties upon petition of a state governor.
* Public Health: Suspending laws related to public health.
* Land Use and Resources:
* Land Use: Suspending laws related to land use.
* Other:
* Suspending Laws: Suspending various laws, including those related to chemical and biological weapons testing.
* Grounding Aircraft: Grounding non-military aircraft.
* Drawdown of Defense Articles: Directing the drawdown of defense articles from Department of Defense stocks for providing military, economic, peacekeeping, antiterrorism, and/or non-proliferation assistance to foreign countries and international organizations.
Can we ditch Shumer…
It also stipulates that Trum-p’s Emergency Declaration stays in place until Congress adjourns in September. This makes it a “ congressionally sanctioned emergency” giving Tr-mp sweeping powers over domestic, financial and military operations.
What we are experiencing now is the full flower of market fundamentalism. It was there when Reagan famously said, “government is the problem.” Even Adam Smith acknowledged that markets are not always the most efficient way to distribute goods and services. What many people don’t understand is how private industry “taxes” them. I worked for big pharma for three years before I couldn’t stand the stench anymore. The waste is incredible. Huge exotic corporate events that cost millions, company cars with unlimited personal miles and a corporate credit card to pay for gas, lavish expense accounts and travel expenses, and so on. Then, promote wildly more expensive drugs with marginally better clinical benefits than cheap generics, and incentivize physicians with “conference attendance” in Hawaii to write scripts for it out the wazoo. The consumer pays the price as much as for big government, perhaps more. Big pharma pleas that without these high prices they can’t do the kind of R&D they need to do. So, why are their drugs so much cheaper abroad? Why do US consumers have to bear the brunt of the costs alone? We know the reason. Big pharma is in bed with the Republicans and are on the big pharma teet while the rest of us pay for it. Also, why haven’t we seen a new class of antibiotics in over 50 years but have had God knows how many new antidepressants? Because antibiotics don’t pay. You take them for 5, 7, 10, 14, 21 days at the most and you’re done. You often take antidepressants for life. Not that we don’t need antidepressants, but under a public health model, the government would have the freedom to pursue research based on the public good instead of profits. So, taxpayers get their tax bills, cuss the government, vote for lower taxes that amount to next month’s rent while billionaires buy yachts with their savings. At the same time, public services that benefit regular people but billionaires don’t need get starved for money and cut to the bone. The rich say it’s all about meritocracy while hiding that the whole system is built on plutocracy.
Thank you for sharing, Michael….glad you got out with your wits about you! Sounds like you are the kind of person who wants to make a living and not make a killing! In the last decade I, for the first time, came up against the big pharma issue in the USA. A medication I began taking intermittently is proprietary in USA, as the patent does not expire here until 2029 (I got pissed when I found out the costs & started researching it after first being able to acquire it initially in CA for a reasonable co-pay—that did not last and the price skyrocketed). My most recent research is that a 21-day course costs about $3000. The exact same named-drug for 21-day course, across the border in Canada is $600. WTF??? Outside the USA, a generic of the same med is available…but not in the USA because of the proprietary patent mentioned above….the generic, from a Canadian pharmacy for the same 21-days is $200. This is SO wrong…I’d heard horror stories, but this was my first time “walking in the footsteps of others”.
I hear your pain on this one. I am Type 2 diabetic and have been on metformin for years at around $20-30/ month. My doctor wanted me to start Jardiance but like your comment, Barbara, it is still "on patent" and cost $2000 for one month. Fortunately Bidens price reduction efforts on drugs put it I n the list which brought it down to about $600 for a month. But in Social Security is still too much monthly.
It isn't the worst decision to stop taking it but it isn't the best either. I certainly wish I didn't have to make health care decisions based on how much money I make or have. And my case is just the tip of the ice berg. Many people have much worse situations to deal with.
This year there’s a cap of $2000 for meds under Medicare…thanks to Biden….but I hear Trump will end that.
Here’s the thing about that cap; you have to pay it up front, all at once. I had a medication I used to get for $95 a month on my plan. I went to pick it up in January and my copay was 50% of the cost or $1,000. The pharmacist said many people had $1,500 or more copays. Last year I never had $2,000 out of pocket on meds even when I hit the donut hole. The insurance company was so kind and said I could go on a payment plan and pay that $2,000 out monthly. I applied for an exception and was denied so switched to a slightly less effective drug for $42 copay. One is tier 3, the other not formulary. Almost identical drugs but the expensive one comes in a higher dose.
My disabled adult son is on the payment plan. How can they deny your request for the payment plan. I thought that was available to all Medicare recipients on a prescription plan? It just sounded so simple when it was announced. But it’s going to go away after this year under trump.My son is on some very expensive medications
They didn’t deny my payment plan. My point was I will pay $2,000 now even if under the old method I would only have paid $1,500 or if this medication would have been a one-time thing and I would have never hit the donut hole.
💔 hoping it works out for the best, Deborah, the constant stress thrumming in our bodies over the current admin’s practices is health degrading…mentally and physically. Hang in there….as must we all.
Good lord, big pharma is evil, and repubs protect them with all their power
Just think of the world we could be living in. Builders were ahead for awhile, jackasses kicking down the barn are ahead now. Way faster than entropy…
Michael, my situation perfectly illustrates your post in the starkest of terms. I am kept alive because of a drug that the drug company retails for $24,000 A MONTH but actually probably costs pennies to manufacture, as it has been out on the market for 15-20 years and they have been able to prevent generics from being offered are in the USA. But they did deals with major insurance groups (like large companies' in-house policies and those underwritten by universities) to offer the drug to patients for a 0 co-pay and, until the $2,000 maximum cap on medication for Medicare patients, also offered it for "free" to those of us on Medicare who met their financial requirements. They changed those requirements when the Medicare cap began, which dumped around 40% of patients like myself off their free "patient assistance" program. But the real kicker is this. They created a "Foundation"--a nonprofit--through which the patient assistance and zero co-pay systems are run. And that gives them a tax write-off as a CHARITABLE DONATION. If you want to see what a real kleptocracy is, all you have to do is look at the Pharma industry . . .
The richest country in the world and a disgraceful and inhumane medical system for its citizens. And we keep electing those who make it this way. It’s astonishing.
Annex Greenland? Doesn’t that actually mean “take another country’s sovereign territory by force”? Let’s use the correct words.
Where will the regime attack first? Canada? Greenland? Haven’t heard much about Panama lately but I doubt they have forgotten about it.
Yes Panama! He is sending our military to take over the Canal! ( per tonight on The Rachel Maddow Show)
Article today from an English language news magazine in Panama:
https://newsroompanama.com/2025/03/13/trump-white-house-has-asked-u-s-military-to-develop-options-for-the-panama-canal-officials-say/
I JUST saw that. So, yeah, the overlords have not forgotten about that unhinged and illegal cluster-f**K. Will the military obey clearly unlawful orders? I am betting they will. The harder question is what happens when Muskrump orders them to fire on American citizens on American soil.
I was 23 years old when 4 student protestors were shot and killed at Kent State University in 1970. Oh yeah. I have no doubt they could do it again.
Panama here. NO we have not forgotten about it. We’re a tiny country with no military. It’s terrifying.
It is terrifying and horrific. I am so sorry that our insane dictator wanna be is doing this!
Thank you Karen. I’m not a Panamanian but many in my family are. I was born in Atlanta in 1947 and I have family roots going back over 100 years before the American Revolution. We moved to Panama in 1954 and we’re still here. It’s home. My dad was a paratrooper in the Pacific in WWII and I’m glad he’s no longer here to witness the destruction of the country he so bravely fought for and his friends died for.
💔
The Putin move to annex another country. The Felon wants to prove he is stronger than his puppet master.
I am SOO sorry.... We won't ever stop trying to fix this.
They have not. If the US begins wholesale conquest we really could have WW III on our hands. Who benefits from that?
We surely don’t.
Proof that he is certifiable
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/13/trump-pentagon-panama-canal
This is insane. Every single article I read about Trump wanting to “take over” the Panama Canal mentions Panama’s military. We do NOT have a military. After a 20 year military dictatorship and the invasion of Panama on December 20th 1989 we have not had an army.
Wikipedia:
On February 10, 1990, the government of then President Guillermo Endara abolished Panama's military and reformed the security apparatus by creating the Panamanian Public Forces. Panama is the second country in Latin America (the other being Costa Rica) to abolish its standing army.
I completely understand. It feels like there are no certainties anymore that are based on common sense.
Many are at a point where our investment portfolios are sinking. How much more can we take from the insanity? Every day is worse and what gets me even more angry is Schumer ready to capitulate to Trump. I’m really so frustrated and angry. Sorry for the rant
I sympathize but very few investment portfolios should be in THAT much trouble at least for now. The stock market is down but only 10%, which is still NOTHING like the big crash of the 20s or even more recent down turns. Unless you were actively trading your portfolio and made some very bad trades and assuming most if not all of your money is in money markets or even cap funds, you certainly shouldn't be thinking about suicide yet. We are still a long way from that point.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't be worried. But it doesn't yet seem to be a catastrophe.
Not yet.
Per HCR: “The blame for the falling market in the United States today can be laid squarely at the feet of the new presidential administration.”
Yes, but magats will never place the blame where it belongs. They are lost in reverie. But not dead, unfortunately.
Rant on.
Ditto
Everything Trump touches dies.
😢😢😢💔💔💔
Um, Steve, now only if he’d, um, touch himself! Ok, brain bleach needed 🤮. Maybe have lots & lots of hamberders and gallons of Diet Pepsi instead…. The guy is truly Dipsh*t Donny Demento!!!! Is he high on delusions/illusions of grandeur or just grandly, bigly, stupid? Does he think of this stuff himself & others placate him & encourage it, or are others feeding him these ideas. It is amazing to me that he actually DOES NOT KNOW how things work….too lazy to learn, or too stupid to retain it, or too ignorant to understand….really is a huge puzzle to me & I don’t like to give him any room in my head, but he keeps kicking down my barriers.
All of the above. AI has given him a flock of new words that he catches like butterflies, by grabbing them in his hands, not using a net. Their meaning is either blurred or destroyed. Old, clumsy, vain, cruel, and very ignorant.
He's managed his whole life by having a whole lot of money and making up whatever crap he thinks will serve him. Why bother trying to get it right?
He has “advisors” with the same mindset.
Toadies for Trump
Trump hates the world and hates himself. That’s really all any of us needs to know.
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,"—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
Some truth in that, I'd say.
Read Mathew Fox' TRUMP & THE MAGA MOVEMENT AS ANTI-CHRIST A HANDBOOK FOR THE 2024 ELECTION Copyright © 2024 Matthew Fox.
Thanks for this recommendation🐈⬛
Just bought it.
The MO of all mobsters and their fellow besuited disaster capitalist hedgefund travellers. They laugh at the suffering and death they knowingly cause as the profits roll in on the waves of innocent’s blood.
There are no innocent bystanders in a democracy.
Ivanka didn't die, Steve.
She just married Jared, who married Mohammed bin Salman.
I would bet than Ivana didn’t just die either.
She is dead inside. She has no soul.
I am sure she was sexually abused her whole life.
Stop saying one man! It’s not just Trump. So far every single Republican is complicit, and many are giddy about it
Trump is a symptom, not the disease.
What hurts the most isn't that we have an obvious psychopath as president, it's that we have a legislative majority party that is quite OK with this situation. In fact. they vigorously defend and support his destructive behavior.
How did so many crazy people get to be in charge?
See Powell memo, Ralph.
Plus all its implementing far-right foundations (viz Jane Mayer's "Dark Money").
Or until we have a selective service that demands that every citizen of the Republic serves we will continue to be fucked.
https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/meet-the-economist-behind-the-one-percents-stealth-takeover-of-america#.W9rzX2OljII.facebook
Mary Pat-Thanks so much for sharing this article-so many insights and truths about how we got here and where the current regime wants us to go.
This post is a gift, MaryPat! I shared it on FB. THANKS
Thanks, Phil.
Link to the powell memo?
Just enter the name in any search engine. You'll get the full 28-page document.
No one, Ralph, has written a good history of how that memo soon engendered the Heritage Foundation, an expanded Hoover Institution, and ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council). Their first order of business through the 1970s was to kill humanities from all American education, K-12 and "higher." Also, reducing public funding for public colleges and universities, which meant killing tenure, which meant turning free and open atmospheres into fear-ridden, silo-set specializations, which meant more intense neutering of all standardized tests and corporate packaged textbooks.
See Diane Ravitch on this last, "The Language Police."
Once the schools were effectively dead, the far-right foundations proliferated as -- thanks to mass offshoring, and the killing of U.S. working classes -- the billionaire class grew, and they further grew the wealth gap.
Believe Ballas' directions for accessing the Powell Memorandum, and also when he says a good history of the impact of the Powell Memorandum has yet to be written. The absence of any solid such exposition, however, allows the kind of simplistic linear 'explanations' of the memo's journey and impact on America's political and educational history which Ballas periodically advances in his posts here. The threads are just way more complicated than his off-the-cuff assertions could justify about sequence and causality of the consequences he attributes to Powell. (BTW, the Powell Memorandum is 34 pages, not 28.) Readers take heed.
Long time coming, I am old, been on the horizon all my adult life, eighties was when I felt the threat.
Forwarding Democracy in the era of you and me
Democracy doesn’t erode overnight—it crumbles when we stop paying attention. From attacks on voting rights to corporate capture of government, the threats are real, but so is our power to act. Let’s expose these dangers, demand accountability, and take action to protect our future—because democracy only survives if we demand it. #StayEngaged
Here are seven areas we need to live together as one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty, and justice for All:
Defend Democracy and the Rule of Law
• Stop Executive Overreach: Oppose efforts to bypass Congress and erode constitutional checks and balances.
• Protect Judicial Independence: Ensure courts remain impartial and free from political pressure.
• Safeguard Election Integrity: Fight voter suppression, protect oversight, and expand access to voting.
• Demand Government Transparency: Reject secrecy, hold leaders accountable, and preserve public oversight.
Strengthen Public Services and Good Governance
• Protect Essential Federal Agencies: Stop the dismantling of institutions that provide education, disaster response, and humanitarian aid.
• Keep Expertise in Government: Oppose the purge of experienced civil servants and the rise of political loyalists in key roles.
• Defend Public Health and Safety: Prevent defunding of agencies that protect healthcare, disaster preparedness, and public welfare.
Build a Strong and Fair Economy
• Ensure Economic Stability: Push back against mass layoffs and funding cuts that threaten workers and industries.
• Defend Social Security and Medicaid: Stop policies that put seniors and low-income families at risk.
• Reduce Corporate Control Over Government: End billionaire influence in policymaking and prioritize the public good over private profit.
Advance Civil Rights and Social Justice
• Stop the Rollback of Civil Rights Protections: Strengthen anti-discrimination laws in workplaces and education.
• Protect Immigrant Rights and Human Dignity: Oppose inhumane policies like family separations and mass deportations.
• Defend Marginalized Communities: Stand up for LGBTQ+ rights, racial justice, and social equality.
Bolster National Security and Global Leadership
• Strengthen National Defense Responsibly: Ensure security agencies are funded and equipped to protect the nation.
• Restore Smart Foreign Policy: Repair relationships with allies and counteract harmful global power shifts.
Protect the Environment and Combat Climate Change
• Resist Environmental Deregulation: Stop policies that increase pollution and weaken climate protections.
• Advance Sustainability: Support policies that prioritize clean energy, conservation, and public health.
Secure Free and Fair Elections
• End Big Money in Politics: Push for campaign finance reform to curb the influence of special interests.
• Expand Voting Rights and Security: Support laws that ensure election integrity and prevent voter suppression.
Totally agree with your points, Bern, but for me the question is how, exactly (or even a ballpark idea) do we get from “here” to “there”? The only armor and steed I have to fight democracy’s demise is my voice and my vote, both of which I will use as long as I able (my fear is that one or both will be impeded).
Getting from here to there is both a great question and deep question. Essentially, your suggestion that all you have is your voice and vote betrays the limits you’ve set as you. You are not anything so limited. It makes sense that the task seems so daunting given the conception of your self as just a thing among other things.
Now the problem with giving a satisfying answer is that the answer will not satisfy the will to know that asks. See, not satisfying is it? We want a truth that we can use and the truth can’t be used, for anything! Very annoying isn’t it?
Coming from a different direction, it turns out there’s no place to go. This is probably more annoying than the previous “answer.”
Yet another way to say it is that you are the answer!
Still with me? Look, Barbara, obviously the circumstances need to be moved around. I’m going out of my way to not give answers and say how to do that as that will deny you the opportunity to generate your own answers which will be far more powerful than anything I could come up with for you. And further, any answers, and there are endless possibilities, ends the inquiry. It is in the ongoing authentic inquiry where possibility keeps endless emerging. The pull is to come up with an or the answer and stop thinking. Don’t stop! Ever!
See what inspires you, what lifts you up, what makes life an adventure worth getting up for and give yourself to it completely. Let what lights you up own your life. Surrender to your Self! Or not ;)
Sorry to say but this is mostly sophistic BS. Barbara is asking a concrete question because all you did in your first post was make a bunch of obvious philosophical points which we can all agree on but which require huge Investments of time, money and possibly blood to make happen.
This could become a war, a REAL HONEST TO GOD GUN SHOOTING WAR with people across this country dying for their principals (and that means people on BOTH sides because believe it or not THOSE folks think THEY are right too).
You think I am being too alarmist? Tell that to the almost a million people who died during the Civil War. And that was long before we had an military with jets, tanks, machine guns and oh yeah nuclear weapons.
It is GREAT to put up ideas to think about but it is really counterproductive to not have at least some concrete things to back it up with.
"I'm not giving you the answer because YOU are the answer. " That is the most hypocritical bull sh*t I've seen posted here and you really should be ashamed that's all you can say. If you don't have answers, that's fine, I certainly don't, but I also don't go around suggesting that I do and then like Lucy holding the football, pull it out when Charlie Brown is about to kick it.
I do share your concerns about Trumpism turning into a hostile war among citizens.
Sounded an awful lot like ESTspeak to me...
Got a whiff of that vibe myself, Ally. A couple of good points, tho’, among the “motivation-speak”.
Thank you, you put it much more succinctly than I did. As Barbara noted there were good things in there but in the end it really didn't offer any answers at all.
Well, Jon, my full name is Bern Shanfield, my father was Bill, my mother Bessie, and first wife Beth, so BS comes with the territory…
Sure, a catastrophic event is possible but the great preponderance probability is that life will go on at this petty pace it has been at forever.
Here the thing, as long as we’re gesturing which is actions taken out of hopelessness and frustration, we’re going through the motions and we are damn good at going through the motions and looking good while we do it.
I’m asking you to get down underneath yourself, underneath what you believe or hold as strong convictions to look at the principles that determine what you can believe, what’s alright to believe, what’s even real.
We live in an unrecognized box and what we seek isn’t in the box. The acceptable thoughts in the box do not include the truth. Thinking outside the box isn’t understandable in the box.
I know thinking out of the box is an old hat of an idea. Still, each age, each day even, we have to reinvent ourselves, re-inspire ourselves.
Shaming me or others is cheap and revealing your own need to bootstrap yourself back into the game.
I get your commitment, your heart, your love even in engaging here and now with me.
I also get what it takes to keep getting up again and again after so many failures. It’s not Lucy. Stop blaming the girls. Stop blaming at all and have space for your humanity when you do you’ll have space for others to have their humanity as well and see no reason to blame.
My upside down porch flag billowing in the coastal area where I live opened conversation yesterday when two electricians came to replace a GFCI breaker. We don’t see eye to eye on everything, but we quickly agreed that MUSKTRUMP$$$ is not the answer. Open conversations between rational caring people in our neighborhoods is a good starting point.
If you keep doing the right things, the right things happen.
Your ". . . you are the answer," Bern, goes to the heart of Hannah Arendt.
Who got it from Immanuel Kant.
A series of good debts I got from Lyndsey Stonebridge’s recent book, “We are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt’s Lessons in Love and Disobedience.”
Your message is 20 or 30 years too late I’m afraid. These assholes have been degrading all those great points you’ve mentioned for several decades. We’ve got stage 4 cancer now.
Have your next of kin tell me where your funeral is and I’ll send flowers.
Seriously, the hard thing to get is that those assholes are us. As you find space for your humanity for your self, you naturally will extend it for others.
And look, I’m not some kind of saint who’s got it all together and figured out and smiling and sanguine all the time. It’s daily self remembrance, every single day, every single morning. The climb never ends. At best it’s being exhilarated by the climb or at least starting with appreciation for the opportunity.
I think it’s time for something else.. but that’s just me.. Why does the right wing always get away with shit kickin’?
They don’t. There never has been nor will be free lunches. They pay with the most precious thing there is, their aliveness. Their experience of love, health, happiness, and full self expression.
There is no satisfaction in merely going through the motions even if you arrange to make those motions successful or comfortable.
Does Musk or Trump look happy to you? Do you think you can buy or force love?
They destroy with glee. The only time I have seen them happy.
Don’t collapse glee with happiness. Glee is a manic state of excited mind. It’s superficial, very much on the obvious surface. Happiness comes from a far deeper place, a place where inspiration emerges.
Democracy isn’t a spectator sport, you have to actually participate.
Yes, indeed. First difficulty: demanding anything. Of whom?
You. ;) The power to make things happen isn’t out there. Demanding of others usually isn’t an option. Making a genuine request which means they are as free to decline as accept is all we have with others.
This is where the idea of enrollment comes into play. As what you are fully committed to becomes clearer to you, and you more fully allow your own expression of that commitment, so to will the opportunities for its fulfillment show up.
Start the conversation. Read LFAA. Make and read comments. This is the way I want to live. This is the way I want to die. This was not an option before LFAA.
LFAA?
Letters
From
An
American
Dr Heather Cox Richardson
Yup.
Ahh, thank you. Yes, I’ve been reading her writings daily for years. Her honor inspires me to remember myself. I’m reminded of the quote “When I don’t know who I am I serve you. When I know who I am I am you.” Or the ending of the Shaw quote:
“Life is no "brief candle" for me.
It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment,
and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”
All by tomorrow. W/Dickie was the prep for chump. It started the ball rolling for repubs to abandon the pretense of real elections.
Yesterday preferably. If we take care of today, tomorrow will take care of itself.
Trump and his lackeys can lie till hell freezes over that all the damage to the economy “will be worth it in the end.” To quote John Maynard Keynes. “In the end, we’re all dead.”
What happens to the people who lose their homes, farms, livelihoods, and lives in the interim?
And similar to my comment about the stock market, I don't think we are at financial Armageddon... yet. I am sure there are people who have lost a lot but compared to what the people in LA and North Carolina lost to fire and flood, we are not near a financial disaster.
But I don't know how long the dam will hold.
They become stats, Sandra.
Many of our best novelists, memoirists, essayists, biographers, and historians see them as people in touching, apt, context-enlightening books.
But American schools assign no full books, not when the max students can do anymore is the short-passage pabulum necessary for testing's thrall to abstracted categories, reduction of life to more categories, and simpleton linear causalities.
The billionaires love these latter "skills." So amenable to monetizing the world, killing democracies.
When I was in junior high, high school, college and law school, we were expected to read, and strange person that I am, I still read, and understand what’s going on. Unfortunately, it leads to disaster.
I hope, Kathy, like “good trouble”, it is “good disaster”.
They become serfs for the overlord class to exploit.
Kai… I share your same sentiment. I ran out of words to describe my disgust when the J6ers were pardoned
Tonight is a total eclipse of the moon called a Blood Full Moon. How appropriate
Those are so cool to see.
"The water, stored in two reservoirs operated by the army corps of engineers, is a vital source for many farms and ranches in the state’s sprawling and productive San Joaquin valley during the driest times of the year. It will be especially important in the coming months as the region braces for another brutally hot summer with sparse supplies.
The reservoirs are also among the few the US president can control directly.
Staged to give weight to Trump’s widely debunked claims that flows could have helped Los Angeles during last month’s devastating firestorm and to show that he holds some power over California’s water, he ordered the army corps to flood the channels. Less than an hour of notice was reportedly given to water authorities down-river who rushed to prepare for the unexpected release, which threatened to inundate nearby communities.
The move is just the latest in a series of misinformed attempts Trump has made to wade into California’s water wars, adding new challenges and conflicts over the state’s essential and increasingly scarce water resources. But in what now appears to be just a political stunt, Trump has struck some of his strongest supporters." https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/11/california-water-trump
Such a moron. Northern California water releases.... really ? To say nothing of the danger involved with unscheduled releases.
Was in the San Joaquin Valley last summer and there were an endless number of Trump signs. With luck some of them washed away.
The understanding of water issues in the intermountain and western states is largely not understood. The great source of the the Colorado River and it's tributaries, the allocation of it has been contentious from the get go 120 years ago, to say the least. To purposely waste several thousand acre feet of it surely has to leave a bad taste in the mouth for most concerned.
Especially in California; The state is so huge. Northern Ca. water releases mean nothing for southern California, including L.A. I read a volume on it and still could learn more.
It is a HUGE deal! From many perspectives- Historical, economical, political. sociological etc.
King Toot is such an idiot and seems incapable of learning…his utterances are so moronic that my eyes are getting a lifetime of exercise from rolling in my head when I hear him speak.
lol
"President Donald Trump and his staff insist that the pain he is inflicting on Americans will pay off in long-term economic development, but ..."
"These tax cuts will pay for themselves!"
- Ronald Reagan, 1981
- GW Bush, 2001
- GW Bush, 2003
- Donald Trump, 2017
Meanwhile, deficits soared under all 3 of these presidents while income inequality exploded. And still, millions of Americans believe we need "tax relief" and are gung ho over more tax cuts. Like the Covid sufferers in 2020 who believed the disease was liberal fiction as it stole their last breaths, so today millions more are cheering on this clown as he yanks the financial rug out from under them. While they die of treatable diseases because there is no more Medicaid and starve because their SNAP benefits ended, dt, em and their ilk will enjoy major increases in their net worth.
Because $334 billion is just not enough to get by on these days.
Thank you
Elon Musk is opening himself to a whole lot of lawsuits. He does not have a vote of Congress to undertake his chain-saw escapades. His minions are his employees and work directly under his control. I have only heard or read that Trump has said to Musk that he should get out all the waste in the federal government. I neither heard nor read any more detailed instructions than that. Musk’s actions are illegal, and many can be shown to be criminal. He is endangering the viability of our Nation and by restricting the funds; medically trained staff are prevented from administrating life-saving care to thousands of people and has resulted in the deaths of enumerable humans.
At some point, Musk will be stopped and his defense will be, that he only did what President Trump told him to do. And, he will have no evidence to show that he was acting under Presidential orders. Moreover, Nuremberg established that undertaking criminal acts under orders does not absolve you from the guilt. Musk will soon learn the fact that everyone who works for Trump eventually gets shoved under the bus. And Musk will soon learn that he is ripe for lawsuits: he has a contorted understanding of US law, is highly arrogant and, most importantly, has lots of money. His victims will go after the money.
He could face personal liability as he has no capacity as a public official. At the very least, we should end his contracts with the government. I suspect he may have breached clauses in them that restrict his ability to endorse or fund political candidates.
Not til his money stops flowing..
Paul, from your lips to God’s ears!
There is a lot going wrong but Sen. Bernie Sanders' rallies throughout the Midwest are going strong.
He is drawing crowds of 10,000. His message is largely economic and attacks the oligarchy while a huge proportion of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and live lives of fear and worry about adequate food and housing and health care.
Maybe his economic message, which also attacks the corruption of big money in our elections is why the press and many Democratic pundits are ignoring Sanders. As far as I have been able to see, both the NYT and Washington Post have not covered what he is saying and doing!
He and Nancy Pelosi joined forces and led a rally protesting Medicaid cuts. They aren't regular allies, but these savvy, patriotic legislators are providing the best leadership for opposition to Trump's oligarchic rule.
Where is the press? Where is the Democrat's official and pundit leadership?
And here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/03/13/dems-feel-bern-again/
Thanks. I queried "Sanders rallies 2025" and did not get a link to this.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/14/us/politics/democrats-town-halls-republicans.html?searchResultPosition=2
FYI: NYT covering just that issue.
Thanks. I queried "Sanders rallies 2025" and did not get a link to this. Nothing on what Bernie is saying. Article focused on defeating GOP reps, fine and good, but no bigger message on what Democrats are offering. A weak, narrow article, sadly.
Way past time