The double standards, incompetence and corruption in the administration is 😤 Thank you Professor for keeping us informed so then we can speak up. Be LOUD! 💔🤍💙
Use/share this spreadsheet (bit.ly/Goodtrouble) to contact members of Congress, the Cabinet and news organizations. Call. Write. Email. Protest. Unrelentingly.
Reach out (beyond your own) to as many in the Senate and House as you can. All of this is bigger than “I only represent my constituents” issues.
Yes, 5calls is amazing. I used it for a while and it’s listed at the top of my sheet along with other resources - Card Campaign, Action Network, ResistBot, Indivisible, and other how to take action sites. But I wanted to be able call beyond my state quicker than changing the state each time, as well as email after my kids went to bed. All of the information on my sheet is on government sites, but not all in one place so I put it in one place to make it easier.
Unbelievable that the most vile person ever to be t elected to the highest position is there now.
Please write your democratic governors asking them to mobilize but not deploy the national guard. This will prevent the administration from deploying if at elections. Two orders cannot be given to any national guard. You can be sure Trump will try any method to disrupt the elections. Now is the time to act.
You know if we had a parliamentary system there would be a vote of no confidence and he'd be out. Alas, we have the worst system ever devised for situations like this.
Stephanie, yes, but we don't which I have explained to many over the years. I know suggestions for what to do comes from frustration, but our system does not allow those solutions. And yes, right now, I wish we had a parliamentary system. We do have a way to get rid of president, but Rs in Congress have refused to vote him out during the two impeachments. I think this letter shows how much goes on under the table.
To put it in the vernacular, the Republicans in Congress are yellow bellied cowards. They are without character. I suppose that it is the case that cowards, by definition, have no character.
Regarding the Gong Show, I worked with the mother (Lynn Barry) of what I considered the most effective hook person/bouncer for the contestants that didn’t want to leave the stage and seemed a real threat to the judges that gonged them.
He was by no means threatening looking, I think he was one of the three unknowns that played in the “Broken Combs” elementary school age band with their neighbors the Van Halen brothers, but on the Gong Show, he was a master at de-escalation. As an assistant to Dick Clark’s wife, what I remember most was his helping Dick Clark’s wife pick Christmas presents for the stars and crews of the 19 productions they were running at the time. Wikipedia and Google AI filled in 2 of the 1985 productions as the “Live Aid Concert” and “Dick Clark’s New Tear’s Rockin’ Eve 1985”
Our company had a fair number of former intelligence service veterans who I think were hired for their security clearance’s (easy to maintain without breaks after they left such services). Though she was the reserved silent type with others, she and I ended up sharing a bit if there was an office birthday celebration where we were casually in the same place, without working.
She once mentioned being detained in Austria as a suspected spy, in what seemed the late 40s to early 50s, before she married.
In another reluctant fall back to Google AI when no other information could be found, I searched for “AUSTRIA FROM THE LATE 40S EARLY 50S WITH RUSSIAN AND US DIPLOMATS AND SPIES”
All I got out of an uncle who had been in the Air Force Security Service was that Vienna was a very unpleasant place to serve back then.
Constant wars had much to do with ending the ancient Roman Empire. Yes there were other factors, but wars were the biggest factor. Our nation attacks and commits wars about every 10 years. We keep electing idiots to lead. Trump now - the Peace President. Before him, W Bush not one but 2 wars. His daddy Herbert Walker was adamant about invading Iraq. LBJ could have gone down as a great progressive president except for Vietnam. Of course Nixon messaged the North Vietnamese to e d the Paris Peace talks just so he could be elected just like Trump ended legislation over immigration so he could be elected in 2024. None of them have the interest of the republic. Clinton’s move to bomb former Yugoslavia was one necessary move to end a growing European aggression. Trump has no interest to support Ukraine in its fight and neither did Biden who restricted use of arms in fighting the Russians.
Unfortunately President Biden was too slow to give Ukrainian troops what they needed. But nonetheless the Ukrainians have been incredibly heroic in holding off the Russians in this war.
Do you think that men, endowed with a super abundance of testosterone, are more prone to violence? Or are men or people impotent in the struggle against evil, or is the power of evil more impotent in the struggle against men? Can evil ever be conquered? Human history seems to be a battle of good struggling to overcome evil. So we have to resort to "artificial" remedies like peace treaties, United Nations type entities, NATOs in order to try to put a cap on violence, war, destruction, etc. I'm just trying to make some sense of world events.
Stephanie, my husband and I are wondering if the high price of gas will put a stop to some of the roaring down the street and racing at all hours of the night in our area. This weekend I could hear it going on to our west, so maybe not yet.
What worked for me was taking a picture of their license plates.
If and when I could talk to them and they asked why, I'd explain that it was just in case there was an accident later. They always asked if I was going to send the picture to the police, but I told them my preference was to send it to their insurance company first, they would be a lot more interested than the police.
In my case, 61 years ago, of excessive acceleration habits with my 39 Chevy with a 64 GTO 389 4-speed, an insurance investigator came out to look at the car, innocently asking if it originally came with a V8 and if it was a stock engine. I assured him they came with a 4-barrel carburetor, so he seemed satisfied. Though I was getting late to pick up my mother, I waited a while for him to get well past where I would have to turn off, before I left. When I did leave and just topped the nearest high point, I saw him on the side of the road standing beside the car as I flew by. He was nodding and writing something down. I think my insurance bill would have been $2,500 if I had tried to renew it in Massachusetts in 1965. As it was I was soon on my way to Texas where I had it stored for 8 months before saving enough to get it back on the road. I never got a ticket in that car though I was stopped 26 times by police that just seemed to want to check it out.
We hear the same muffler-free cars roaring up and down the Beltway. Our police department is woefully underfunded, so it has to prioritize. But these knuckleheads are disposed to irresponsible behavior as entertainment - without any regard to consequences. The reality of their world is stunted and narrow.
I wish I had a dem governor. Instead I’ve got a bootlicking repub and three identical congresspeople, including Marsha Blackburn, who echoes her hero’s words that TSA not getting paid is Dems’ fault. Over and over.
I'm especially sorry about your 'bag of hairspray' congresswoman - I'm still disgusted by her stunt at Jackson's SCOTUS hearing - but keep calling your elected officials! Give them hell repeatedly for those of us in blue states who feel like our votes don't make a big enough impact and our phone calls to our elected officials are often just preaching to the choir. A special shout out to everyone in red states who make their voices heard these days!
Unfortunately, Mary Jo, these state and local leaders have relinquished their responsibility, manipulate truth, ignore the pain and suffering of their citizens or the degradation of the environment. What does it say about our culture that cruelty is so easy to implement, glorifying violence - ICE and war.....and the slavish support of our dictator in chief.
‘Good, I’m glad he’s dead.’ Says a knuckle dragging, low intelligence, completely graceless individual. If only the same could be said about the aforementioned graceless individual. Are we sure the devil isn’t missing one of his minions?
If a governor mobilizes its guard, a president most certainly cannot remobilize the same guard. I could be mistaken but I don’t think so. I will pose this question to our state library this week.
Might it be an idea if as well as writing to our reps, we choose ONE person to write to on ONE specific day?
If everyone who disapproves of what trump is doing wrote to say, Johnson, on March 28th (stamped paper letters, not emails or faxes,) there would be such a mountain of post that his office would be flooded - and the newspapers and TV would report it.
It would certainly give the trump admin a clue about how many people in the US are REALLY ticked off about all the chaos not just looking at figures from various disparate states and dismissing them.
I believe we did that. Letters take too long as they are each scanned for drugs. Postcards work much better. I think i remember piles and piles of post cards. Does my memory serve me?
It sounds like a good idea, however having worked in legislators offices they pay no attention to emails, letters, or phone calls from people outside their district or state.
It's a reality, that emailing, calling and writing to legislators from outside your district or state is satisfying but unproductive use of your resources.
How about choosing Mike Johnson. We can email him and write only in the subject line: "RESIGN TODAY". The emails won't be opened, but if he gets 1 million emails in one or two days with that in the subject line, they'll get the message.
That’s why I made a calendar on the spreadsheet (tab 3) listing which states to focus on certain days of each month. I’m not sure if anyone follows it but I do 🤣
It sounds like a good idea, however having worked in legislators offices they pay no attention to emails, letters, or phone calls from people outside their district or state.
It's a reality, that emailing, calling and writing to legislators from outside your district or state is satisfying but unproductive use of your resources.
I have my congresspeople as contacts in my phone so I can regularly phone their offices...and I do. But we've watched as Republicans and some Dems still absolutely refuse to take a stand against FOTUS. It's occurring to me that the real difference will only come when we hit them in their wallets and pocketbooks (here in Michigan we'd say "wallets and purses!") We have to expand on consumer disruption and one of the primary targets should be Fox News via a coordinated boycott of their advertisers and those who are airing Fox News in their businesses.
I doubt that many of the people who read HCR's articles daily ever turn FOX news on! I once tried it, to be able to see if I might find a shred of truth, or decency in the delivery of the news; and I was not just disappointed but scared of some of the things being spoken of and said on public TV! I wonder sometimes if they indeed believe what they say, or if they have zero integrity to be able to spew such inaccuracies.
I tried watching them idiots. They are like recycling toilet paper in a heap behind the flush tank. Gives me the reflex. You know, that gaggery feeling. Reminds me of my childhood on the Montana plains in the Powder River country where we sometimes got a bad case of the worms. One day I was feeling funny and got the urge to squat under a sagebrush’s privacy. You should have seen that wiggling mass of Fox News. Woulda made you gag and throw up too. My mom always said the fastest way to a cure was to toss it out both ends at once. I hope this helps one to understand Fox better. I can paraphrase their theater. You get a shitty deal that makes you puke.
Though I rarely watch TV, I spend a lot of time in my car, usually with MSNow on the radio. As they were replaying a previous interview I switched to CNN. There I was hearing a discussion of “how funny 47 is” in his comments to the Japanese Prime Minister, and in his comments disparaging someone dieting. I rarely tune to CNN anymore but was struck with the seeming “obeying in advance”, I suppose the looming takeover is already taking effect.
Last time I watched Fak News was through a reflection of the TV on a window in a restaurant and I had to do it that way because if I would have looked directly at the TV I would have been blinded because I didn't have a cross to shield me. That's how bad that channel is. 😊
I had a patient whose husband, for 2 12-hour shifts of mine, never turned it off. It was nauseating to watch so many blatant lies. I did not even notice the commercials and struggled to keep my mouth shut, failing a couple of times. Sadly, that echo chamber is strong with regular viewers.
MJ. I see you're a paid subscriber of a few months, so WELCOME to the forum! 👋🏼👋🏼I believe it would have been before you signed on (perhaps you were reading "free" then) but there has been lengthy discussions of general strikes here, especially after the Kimmel situation. Basically, not a lot of support. 😣
I think a nationwide general strike WOULD work, but there was too much quibbling. There are those who didn't want to hurt local businesses (I get that. Look at the TSA.) Others suggested that people will "still purchase before or after that day" and I understand that as well. My argument that a one day general strike, where NOBODY SHOPS ANYWHERE is the same as a NO KINGS day.
No buy days are reasonable. I am afraid that many who call for nationwide strikes are those who would not suffer from losing income, loss of a job, or inability to feed the family. Many here on this community are awesome folks, but retired, and well off. I personally cannot strike as i care for elderly, poor, ill people in a rural hospital. If i don’t show, i am responsible for abandoning patients. When folks describe a lack of appetite for strike, sometimes it sounds as if people lack willpower. It’s deeper than that.
I have been saying this for a long time and do keep asking why people are not in mass withholding federal taxes. Women in history have shown that not paying taxes or consumer boycotts do work…especially British women. At one point British women fighting to end slave trade organized the first consumer boycott and refused to buy sugar. Women are amazing when they put their minds to it.
Please keep calling and writing ! 📲💻✍️. My MAGAs are definitely feeling the 🔥.They keep
ramping up their appearances on news shows making nonsensical statements that only get worse as the insanity continues. It’s actually embarrassing to watch.We The People must keep up the pressure!
I think she was the sole Senator who spoke publicly against the Twofer Hate-Democratic Voters/Hate Transfolk SAVE bill (thankfully set to die in the Senate, even stripped of its obsession with high school girls locker rooms).
Murkowski and Collins did a "tag team" maneuver on the OBBBA. Collin's vote allowed the bill to come to the entire Senate for debate (of which there was none because the Republicans were told by Trump not to allow debate) and then Murkowski pretended she was pressured into voting for it.
They are both as worthless as their 51 other colleagues.
Murkowski has been excellent on the dangers of the SAVE act. Demonstrating in great detail the harms to Alaska's voters. As a demonstration of its harms to all of us.
Murkowski Speaks Out Against SAVE Act on Senate Floor
Texas Rep. Chip Roy goes nuclear on lawmakers: “At some point, people will look at this body and say maybe we should get rid of all 435 members of the House and all 100 members of the Senate and start over because Congress is literally failing the American people.”
Tillis my Senator. He sent me a form letter on SAVE. Said he was a co-sponsor. Thinks mail ballots should go. He wants to vote YES, he writes, but sadly he has his hands tied by the filibuster. It was a strange contortion of a letter. But don’t for a minute trust this guy.
Yesterday, reporters asked him what he thought of Trump's telling the world he was glad Mueller is dead. 'Well, I find it sad that our level of discourse has reached this level,' he said, or something equally pathetic.
It's YOUR party, YOUR president. YOU voted and supported this abomination. What do YOU have to say for YOUR actions, Senator? Still searching for your lost soul even AFTER announcing your retirement?
Wendy, I'm not a fan of his by any means, but right now he is voting in ways that help democracy more often than just about any Republican except Massie. So I'm keeping on top of him, including writing thank you letters when he does something I approve of.
Murkowski has been excellent on the dangers of the SAVE act. Demonstrating in great detail the harms to Alaska's voters. As a demonstration of its harms to all of us.
Murkowski Speaks Out Against SAVE Act on Senate Floor
Uh huh. Until she changes her mind at the last minute. Remember that many of the "fervent" speeches on the House or Senate floor are performative politics. They know they are on camera. The real deal is how are they voting, how much PAC money controls them and how much stocks they own.
I think it must have been a year or so ago, before "Belle" took over her husband's YouTube channel: "Beau" used to say "don't listen to what they SAY, WATCH how they vote."
America is currently being run like a casino buffet at 2 a.m., loud, sticky, and somehow on fire. The president launches an attack on Iran, acts shocked that closing the Strait of Hormuz might affect oil, then lifts sanctions so Iran can make billions cleaning up the mess he created. It is less grand a strategy than a raccoon knocking over the trash can and then billing the neighborhood for pest control.
Meanwhile, Homeland Security has apparently been rebranded from a federal agency into a LinkedIn side hustle for cronies, contract chasers, and Corey Lewandowski, who seems to have treated the department like a Dollar Tree version of The Godfather. Classified briefings, contract steering, private prison intrigue, badge-swiping workarounds, this administration really looked at public corruption and thought, let’s make it tackier.
Then there’s the strongman cosplay. ICE gets waved around like a personal goon squad, airport chaos becomes a political hostage situation, and voting rights are tossed into the ransom note for good measure. Because nothing says “healthy republic” like threatening to gum up democracy unless everyone agrees to your latest fever dream.
And in case the tone was too subtle, Trump publicly celebrated Robert Mueller’s death, because apparently, presidential decorum now means posting like a divorced uncle who got trapped inside a malfunctioning comment section. The whole thing is not government. It is a national humiliation parade with nuclear vibes.
“A distracted people cannot organize. Keep them arguing, keep them entertained, keep them reacting and they will never have time to build the power that threatens you.” Malcolm X
"Though it defies consensus, between 1900 and 2006, campaigns of nonviolent resistance were more than twice as effective as their violent counterparts. Attracting impressive support from citizens that helps separate regimes from their main sources of power, these campaigns have produced remarkable results, even in the contexts of Iran, the Palestinian Territories, the Philippines, and Burma.
Combining statistical analysis with case studies of these specific countries and territories, Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan detail the factors enabling such campaigns to succeed-and, at times, causing them to fail. They find that nonviolent resistance presents fewer obstacles to moral and physical involvement, information and education, and participator commitment. Higher levels of participation then contribute to enhanced resilience...
Well, with this action, I guess Trump shows that rounding up the "Illegals" isn't that important, eh? Methinks a lot of those goons just love them some playing computer games in real life--will they be as happy standing all day as they are driving around in big black SUVs? Ah...there's probably some who are just going love legally groping females as much as "legally" shooting humans.
Write letters! They MUST be opened and handled by staff and be logged. No self- respecting wanting-to-get-reelected office holder does otherwise.
With the mail … including physical petitions you an impact every senator and representative.
Jammed phone lines mean no one gets through. Including constituents with real problems such as social security or Medicaid eligibility of a minor.
Many e-mails are automatically bounced back for that very reason, so that persons with access to government services problems can reach the official.
If there are town halls then get off your butt and go to those. It may be inconvenient, but YOU are the one who is mad about a problem each and every one of us has with the ENTIRE government. Particularly with President Metamucilini.
We absolutely need these protests, and we need people to show up massively.
But how will we ever defeat fascism and its vital need for lies, if we ourselves lie?
No one in the GOP today, not even Trump, wants to turn the US from a republic into a monarchy.
And for centuries already, ALL modern, Western monarchies are constitutional democracies.
The opposite of democracy is NOT monarchism, it's FASCISM.
Democracy = the constitutional separation and independence of the three branches of government (legislative (Congress), judiciary (the courts) and executive (executing/implementing the bills Congress passes, namely the White House))
Fascism = the subordination of the legislative and judiciary branches to the executive branch, so that both merely implement what the executive branch dictates them to do.
It's FASCISM that the GOP wants, not monarchy.
Saudi Arabia is a fascist monarchy, as are China and Russia. The Netherlands, Denmark, the UK etc. are democratic monarchies.
EUWDTB, I share your frustration with the "No Kings" protest branding. It is misguided and inaccurate, but "it has a nice ring to it." Nevertheless, this is America, where if it's not commercially viable, it doesn't fly.
You can be correct all day, every day, but if your correctness can't be easily marketed, you may as well save your breath to cool your soup.
It's best to just support the intent of the movement rather than kibitz about the branding.
One Judge, has done more than kibitz including matters to celebrate like the following court decision which puts real reports back inside the Pentagon when their 'truth-to-power' work product is critically important:
**********
Per PBS:
"Court Ruling: Judge Paul Friedman ruled the [trump-hegseth policy was "viewpoint-discriminatory" and lacked due process, favoring a lawsuit by The New York Times.
Access Dispute: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth argued the restrictions were "common sense" to prevent security leaks, not to censor, while critics argued they were designed to stifle unfavorable coverage.
Impact: The policy caused a mass exodus of traditional reporters, resulting in a new, mostly pro-Trump, and ideological media presence in the building.
Current Status: While the judge ordered the reinstatement of credentials, the Pentagon plans to appeal the decision.
Still, I think it points to the very heart of what is wrong with American culture today.
As experts of fascism has shown, before fascists can win democratic elections, the culture ITSELF has to shift, both on the left and right, and for instance begin to accept lying/falsehoods MUCH more.
I think this is a perfect illustration of this fact.
Marj, my mom used to say that all the time. She was smart as a whip. Even as a repressed evangelical, she accomplished a lot in her 92 years. Her last official paid occupation was teaching "new math" to First- and Second-Graders until she retired at age 83.
When I was 9 or 10, Mom and I were in the kitchen having a "discussion." She was winning. In exasperation, I shouted, "You don't love me! I'm adopted!" and wheeled out of the room. Without missing a beat, she called out, "You're not adopted. We never would've picked you!"
Right now, there are over 3,000 registered sites. People are urged to register even if it is 2-3 people. Even more important is for people to stay safe and know their rights. Go to the link Bryan posted and read up on everything.
Cannot emphasize enough. I was once a Congressional intern whose job it was to open incoming letters and answer them. Every letter -- always answered, no exceptions -- I think still the rule for all 435 + 100....
As I've stated elsewhere today, I'm working on a lifelong dream of becoming a published writer. (Writing the novels is easy; getting an agent is another thing!) I have admired your prose. You have talent.
I left this above after another comment, but worth repeating -
My first round of emails from the contact me links had a lot bounce back saying I wasn't a constituent so it either didn't get sent or basically wouldn't be read. So I changed the way I sent messages. I use one of their own in state addresses (listed on my spreadsheet to help with this) on the address line because technically it doesn't say "my" address. I also don't want to misrepresent myself any more than that, so in my messages I typically put (at the bottom) that while I'm not a constituent, I am reaching out because (insert name) does represent me on the (insert committee that fits the topic my message is about).
Another thing I do is call after hours. I don't leave my name or address/zip code so my voice doesn't go towards a count, but the more they hear from us, the better.
I also send faxes using faxzero.com (5 free/day). I don't send a lot of letters, but when I do I put the same “while I’m not a constituent” blurb I do in my emails.
It sounds like a good idea, however having worked in legislators offices they pay no attention to emails, letters, or phone calls from people outside their district or state.
It's a reality, that emailing, calling and writing to legislators from outside your district or state is satisfying but unproductive use of your resources.
It sounds like a good idea, however having worked in legislators offices they pay no attention to emails, letters, or phone calls from people outside their district or state.
It's a reality, that emailing, calling and writing to legislators from outside your district or state is satisfying but unproductive use of your resources.
The forces behind the Trump regime have engineered the fastest decent into autocracy in modern history. We all need to be fully aware of what we are protesting at No Kings on Saturday. Given the onslaught of attacks on our rights, freedoms and institutions it is hard to keep track. The report below tracks many dimensions of functioning democracies and ranks countries on them.
The destruction of America's democracy in the context of the erosion of democracies and the rise of autocracies worldwide is documented in this report. It is not just happening here.
Trump is a criminal President. He was in his first term, now he's perfecting it. He, along with Israel has been committing war crimes one after another and will not stop.
I take issue with Heather over her statement that," Iran continues to target the United States, its allies, and world oil supplies". Iran has not "targeted", it is responding in kind to the escalation of actions by the its attackers. If Trump doesn't go TACO on his threat to destroy the power grid in Iran, then Iran has promised that it will respond and destroy oil facilities and desalinization plants in Gulf countries, which will cause the death of thousands of workers in those countries. All this to keep 2 criminal leaders out of court.
None of this was necessary; Iran posed no threat to the USA or Israel. Iran is one of the 3 annoying countries that objects to Israel's past 70-80 years of ethnic cleansing and now genocide.
Our Indivisible group has some outstanding artists who make their own signs. Some people aren’t artists but their words on signs are incredible. I love my people!
SCOTUS is hearing arguments today in on counting late arriving mail-in ballots. A decision could be announced before the midterms.
Four Republican-led states have recently changed their laws to bar the counting of late‑arriving mail ballots are Georgia, Iowa, North Carolina, and Ohio. Each has shifted its deadline so that mailed ballots must now be received by Election Day (or by poll‑closing time) to be counted in federal races, eliminating or sharply curtailing prior post‑Election‑Day grace periods.
Add this to to the USPS changing that the postmark date no longer is the date you mailed something. It is now the date that mail is "first processed" which can be days after you dropped your ballot or income tax forms in a mail box. It does not provide proof that your ballot should be counted or that your taxes were filed by the April 15th deadline unless you mailed them days before the due dates.
The SAVE America Act is currently being debated in the Senate with no resolution in sight. The vote to debate the bill was 51 to 48 with Lisa Murkowski as the only Republican to cross the aisle and vote with Democrats. Trump is continuing to pressure Senate Republicans to pass the act which would require either a carve out to suspend the filibuster rule which requires 60 votes, not just a 60% majority of those voting. Please be sure to let your members of Congress know that you want them to support mail-in voting.
Other Senate floor business can go on while the SAVE America Act is pending, but only if the chamber agrees to set the bill aside (typically by unanimous consent) or shifts to other business by motion; otherwise it remains the “pending business” and controls the floor. Agreeing to a motion (such as a motion to proceed to other business), which itself may be debatable and therefore subject to delay.
In the current “marathon debate” posture on the SAVE America Act, Republicans are explicitly trying to keep the bill continuously before the Senate to maximize pressure and media focus, which makes such unanimous‑consent detours less likely unless both party leaders see an interest in handling time‑sensitive items (e.g., key nominations, expiring funding).
So, in procedural terms, nothing in the rules forces the Senate to do nothing else while the SAVE America Act is pending; it’s a strategic choice by leadership and the conference whether to keep it on the floor nonstop or to intermittently step away to handle other floor business.
The Senate could ping pong back and forth between debating the DHS funding bill and SAVE America. Republicans have rejected a Democratic proposal to fund TSA and other DHS agencies, and just continue the debate related to ICE and CBP.
Trump is postponing strikes on Iranian power plants for 5 days pending progress in talks over the last two days.
News got a quick pop in the SP500 pre-market trade--it had broken below the key 200 day moving average on Friday and below key support from November. The jump is starting to fade, but there was high volume for pre-market on the news. It will be interesting to see if it lasts past the market makers clearing orders by 10 AM.
It might be a good day to put writing to your members of Congress about investigating insider trading in the Trump administration on you to do list for after the midterms.
It dropped because Iran stated no such talks ever happened! Trump and cronies lied to get the market rate up. It didn’t last because of what Iran said. The fools think they’re playing us!
In my state(CA), you cannot contact a Representative unless they represent your district. So, how do I contact other Congresspeople that don’t represent my district or my state?
My first round of emails from the contact me links had a lot bounce back saying I wasn't a constituent so it either didn't get sent or basically wouldn't be read. So I changed the way I sent messages. I use one of their own in state addresses (listed on my spreadsheet to help with this) on the address line because technically it doesn't say "my" address. I also don't want to misrepresent myself any more than that, so in my messages I typically put (at the bottom) that while I'm not a constituent, I am reaching out because (insert name) does represent me on the (insert committee that fits the topic my message is about).
Another thing I do is call after hours. I don't leave my name or address/zip code so my voice doesn't go towards a count, but the more they hear from us, the better.
I also send faxes using faxzero.com (5 free/day). I don't send a lot of letters, but when I do I put the same “while I’m not a constituent” blurb I do in my emails.
I live in a very blue state so contacting my 2 senators and house rep didn’t seem like it was enough. Unprecedented times call for something different than normal, so for me that’s been reaching out to as many Republicans in Congress that I can - repeatedly.
Last fall, I called Maxwell Frost’s office one evening to thank him for his work on Oversight. I said I was not a constituent. I got a call back the next day from a staffer, who asked for my name bc they wanted to tell him about the call.
Oh interesting! I don’t get calls back…I wonder if they’ve changed part of their routine because they’re so swamped. Granted I do leave my name typically in voicemails so I’m not sure
Been getting those emails from legislators you never heard of asking for money.
ever wonder how they git your address?
Call one and complain and see what happens.
It sounds like a good idea, however having worked in legislators offices they pay no attention to emails, letters, or phone calls from people outside their district or state complaing.
It's a reality, that emailing, calling and writing to legislators from outside your district or state is satisfying but unproductive use of your resources.
Sorry, but I won’t stop thanking those who are doing the work my reps won’t. Everyone likes to hear they’re doing a good job, and they know they are being favorably compared to their R slackers.
Simple. You write or call whoever you goddamn please. It is YOUR first amendment right. Regardless of how a person is elected or where the constituency is located that person votes for or against legislation which affects everyone
I live in MIchigan, but in addition to my senators and my *useless" Congressman Tom Barrett, I regularly contact Speaker Johnson, Congressmen Scalise and Jeffries, and Senators Thune, Schumer, Durbin. I rarely get through but I've left messages.
It sounds like a good idea, however having worked in legislators offices they pay no attention to emails, letters, or phone calls from people outside their district or state.
It's a reality, that emailing, calling and writing to legislators from outside your district or state is satisfying but unproductive use of your resources.
"Sitting beside Trump, the prime minister of Japan, Sanae Takaichi, appeared taken aback."
She literally looked as though her eyes were about to pop right out of her head. Yet she kept her hands folded in her lap, like a delicate, untouched napkin, the way you would expect a master of nonverbal communication to look and act -- full of poise, class, grace -- attributes of true character our wretched, 3-year-old, demented psychotic will never know a thing about.
Prime Minister Takaichi of Japan is 65 years old, has a bachelor's degree in business administration and her political training is from the Matsushita Institute of Government and Management (a premier leadership academy), but also through a U.S. Fellowship which allowed her to work in Washington with Representative Patricia Schroeder of Colorado. To relax she is a Heavy Metal drummer, rides a Motorcycle and Scuba Dives. Yes, she is also “full of poise, class, grace”, but there is no doubt she could kick Trump’s stupid ass both physically and mentally. "I am woman, hear me roar..."
Every woman he encounters is smarter than him. It’s why he has such distain for women. He’s not a ladies man. He’s an insecure idiot.
I so wish someone in a leadership position would just turn to him and say, “What the hell are you talking about? You make ZERO sense. You are an unserious fool.”
James Vander Poel, they were all around…but each generation has these POVs, which tend to obscure ‘the there there’. I do not know your age of course, but am assuming you may be over 60?
Women like her were all around us. We just never saw them because so many were repressed by, ... "tradition", aka society in a rut. She reminds me of a Chicana I studied with during undergrad. She was offered a full rife to a prestigious law school. She confided in me that her father stopped talking to her because he was upset that she was breaking tradition. He felt that at here age she should be thinking only about finding a husband to take care of her and having children. She accepted the offer of a "lifetime."
I read that yesterday, but couldn't bring myself to tell anyone about it. I have a cousin who graduated from the Academy in the late '60s, and I'll bet he's not too happy to see this news. I'm losing my respect for the Air Force.
It's not the Air Force, it's worse: it's the Damned country. As I learn more about what we have done, consistently, in the past to other countries, I am amazed at how tolerant citizens of those countries have been to us. Vietnam, for instance, you can do there and be treated like any other traveler. I was all over Vietnam for a month and never, as an American, felt uncomfortable.
Thanks for posting that article. Scary stuff. This obsession with "removing DEI elements from the admissions process", and everywhere else in government, is so nonsensical. Every time I read that how they will not let up on it I fear they will what to remove the Constitution from the National Archives because it includes the words "We the People", which, when you think about it, it is another way of saying DEI. But then again they are not smart enough to figure that out.
This additional poem has likely be posted here more than once, but when we're overwhelmed by the evil of the present time, the long view can provide a little (temporary) relief.
Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
Wonderful choice, Sue! I'm sure there's someone who could produce an Ozymandias statue, appropriately labelled Donald J Trump (he likes to see his name) and the pungent 2-line quotation, and lie it down where it can be seen by everyone going past the quondam White House.
Thank you, Rebecca! I was in Egypt last fall and visited Abu Simbel. The four statues of Ramses II, each representing stages of his life from child to old man, were both impressive and horrifying. And they all kinda looked the same: bland half-smiling face and rigid sitting posture. It was also fascinating to learn the entire complex, the massive rock-cut temple and the statues, were moved in 1968 to higher ground to keep it from being submerged by Lake Nasser after construction of the Aswan High Dam. Quite the engineering feat! Glad I went then, not this year.
When I was about 9, my white-haired Grannie in England (the one who admired Eleanor Roosevelt) sent to me in Australia her beautiful miniature boxed set (leather-bound, vellum, gold leaf) of The Complete Poetical Works of Sir Walter Scott. She marked a few she particularly wanted me to know. The Lay of the Last Minstrel was the first one I read. "This is my own, my native land" stuck to me like my skin - I didn't ask to come to Australia, and I wept each New Year's Eve because it was another year that I was away from my own, my native land.
I cry not for Corey, nor not a tear for GEO. Why did the latter refuse the former’s reported corrupt quid pro quo? A wild guess: It had nothing to do with all the right reasons like virtue, ethics, and legality.
This was almost a carbon copy of his insulting remarks to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz at their Oval Office press gaggle last June when he told him that 'D-Day was not a pleasant day for you' and joked about Germany re-arming.
Well, with Melania preferring to keep at least one state between herself and Donald, technically he is currently probably a non-fucking imbecile. (And Stormy Daniels and other women will no longer touch him with a 10-foot pole.)
Which goes a long way to explain Little Donald’s rage and violence!
Another poster said yesterday he thought Donald was a closet case. I responded..."speaking unofficially on behalf of the other team, you can keep him. We're just not that interested..."
Well, Trump is a pedophile, and hardly in-the-closet
(Specifically, Donald is a hebephile and an ephebophile, but those psychiatric distinctions are generally not made in the news media nor in common discourse.) His disturbing criminal proclivities are well documented – and increasingly so as more and more of the Trump–Epstein Files are released and additional evidence and testimony revealed.
There needs to be a long discussion and dialogue about gender in our country. There is a lot of disinformation and ignorance and fear.
There has always been fluidity in gender throughout human civilization with both heterosexual and LGBQT plus themes and people in mythology and cultures.
The knowledge and or openness comes and goes. The creative group has always been fluid more than not and I would wonder about fluidity being part of us but we just have not be allowed to see it .
So many famous people possibly had open or severer lives . J Edgar Hoover, Oscar Wilde, Roger Casement, Gertrude Stein, Adrianne Rich, Audre Lorde to name a few recent folk. Boston marriages were common and then not. There was a huge terrible so called Lavender scare during McCarthyism in the State Department.
Lots and lots and layers of silences in every system from the Vatican to board rooms to the military( to even my family and other families ) which were so supportive because any military person knows while in the foxholes no one mostly is not an atheist and no one cares what gender your peer aligns with as long as you trust them in guarding your back. Gender choice or preference or isness out the window as it should be all the time. Human is human.
It gets more complex when sex abuse is involved and again much misinformation and ignorance. Since sex abuse is a tool used for power and control the sex is not the point. But sex can be pleasurable even when forced so it can so confusing to survivors if same sex abuse. It would take a book to explain all the details .
Our current president is and has been an offender in a variety of ways. And who knows his actual identification? Only an assessment by an experienced evaluator could possibly find out. And that should be confidential.
All of his the speculation and just the horrific lines of actions we have begun to learn about old old evils that hopefully if nothing ends clear the way for a non patriarchal, no gender basis infrastructure and systems and community life.
Add to that his insults about Robert Mueller! ANYONE who disagrees with him on ANYTHING is belittled, berated, and suffers his wrath. Ever since he came down that elevator, I feel like we are stuck in a scene from, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest!”
He isn’t just classless. He’s a dangerous personality. When Bob Mueller dies…an actual hero and person who SERVED his country valiantly and for his entire life died, Trump said he was glad because he couldn’t hurt innocent people.
And the dipshits who follow Trump like the devil worship believe that Bob Mueller hurt innocent people. Because they are fucking ignorant, they don’t understand how Bob Muller kept THEM and their families safe for decades. How he prosecuted organized crime which targeted THEIR children with drugs and enticed their daughters into prostitution, maybe even broke a cousin’s leg over a gambling debt. Trump PARDONED a known drug trafficker for MONEY. Bob Mueller, under his leadership, thwarted terrorist attacks by foreign and MANT domestic terrorists who would have blown up their business. But, hey, let’s thank TRUMP. not the person who did his best to PROTECT our country, not rob or extort it. Not drive it into the ground. Do these people think they’ll thrive under a dictatorship? Maybe, they are that deluded to think their job at Wal Mart will get them into the “inner circle” at Mar A Lago.
People get baffled by mob violence….How could that happen? We could read reports from over the years how fraternities, sororities, any group of kids, girls and boys could gang up on one person. A group of five guys beating one guy whose on the ground and they continue to kick and stomp on his head. A group of five of girls harassing a single girl to kill herself, tormenting her with social pariah. And you see the parents go….how could you have participated in this? Why didn’t you walk away or stop it?
Look where we are at. Any entire maga mob from TOP down celebrating the death of a hero because he had the audacity to follow the law and do his job which is to investigate threats to out pr country. A whole party going after .0001% of the population. Weak kids…KIDS are being used as political fodder. The majority of whom have never met a trans person in real life. But let’s rally up a mob to hate and harass them. Somalis minding TNEIR own business…not so fast…MAGA needs a new enemy. Even though the leader of MAGA has stolen more money from this country than any robbery team, gangster or even MADAOFF combined.
And what do kids usually say….they were just copying what they saw.
Trumps is a fucking decrepit. He’s a scumbag. A thief, a LIAR. A bully. A misogynist. A know nothing. A traitor to country and friend. And he’s fucking HORRIBLE at his job. Hands down in one year…either the best asset to our enemies or the dumbest fuck to ever stumble into the office. He is bankrupting us in treasure and spirit. Every single thing he and his thugs have got TNEIR hands on has gone to shit and it’s only been 14 months. Not one single thing in American lives has improved. Literally nothing.
Even our precious celebration of 250 years of democracy will be a funeral instead of a birth of more promise. An MMA fight on the WH lawn. Could we be any MORE classless. A prostitute for a First Lady (nobody thinks that’s what is in Epstein files?), a cabinet more concerned about hair gel than American lives, ZERO promise of a future for our kids.
Now ICE already hurting people in airports. Been to an airport lately? Lots of kids. Lots of tired passengers who walk around a bit dazed and confused…now going to be shot dead if they don’t follow some masked goose stepping moron who will be “glad they’re dead”. How many ICE surrounded Renee Good and Alex Pretti before they were murdered? A small mob and what did her murdered say over her dead body? Called her a bitch.
Just like his dear leader….”just following orders”.
Your second paragraph, Marcus. What do you do with a cadre of people that (in my case) I worked with who are not idiots and should know better STILL believe the garbage they are fed from their propaganda streams?
He also didn’t have a joke about market manipulation. We will NEVER get the truth about this war or anything else. Those students in Iran in 1979 were part of a coalition with so many others that didn’t want to be led by a corrupt Shah. But once the Ayatollah saw the power he had, he immediately ceased it. It is impossible not to see the American people as the next Iranians.
I felt taken aback just watching it, and then felt dread hearing those boorish words come out Donold’s sphincter of a mouth. Probably people just can’t believe what a tactless, brutish wretch Donold is until he starts uttering his indecent remarks and babbling on about his MAGAfascist thoughts and rhetoric.
Donold is way beyond embarrassing at this point: he’s a bloody liability, has been radioactive for a long time now, and anyone that had any sense would have jettisoned him overboard on the deranged ship of state that is the Trump regime, by now.
Lynn, the short answer is "no." The slightly longer answer is that we are stuck with them until they are up for re-election. The only way a legislator can be removed from office prior to the end of their elected term is through "expulsion" by a 2/3 majority of their colleagues in the chamber, a virtual impossibility.
Yes! What is unfathomable to me, and others surely, is that polls keep showing about 30% of U.S. still supports this admin...No matter how awful its Potus and its dept heads. Yes, there may always be bigots and ignorant, uneducated people but the members of the US Congress and Senate still supporting??? What's their excuse???
It was distressing to hear that Sanae Takaichi was roundly criticized at home for not verbally responding to Trump. Possibly people who have not watched the evil clown show that is a Trump press conference don’t realize that her restrained reaction was the only way to defuse his attention seeking remarks. Otherwise he would have geared up and who knows where that would have gone.
If she would have stood up to him he would probably bombed Japan, that's how fragile his ego is. I just wish he'd get laughed at and called out when he lies which of course is every time he opens his "...spincter of a mouth.", as horhai says.
Vivian, if you don't follow Jeff Tiedrich, I heartily recommend that you do so. He refers to Donald's facial orifice as his "rancid anus mouth."
On March 31, 2020, he suggested that a Pulitzer Prize should be awarded to the first "worthless scribbler" who stood up and asked Donald, "What the fuck is wrong with you?" He began counting the days that no one in the press asked the question. We are at Day 1,817.
Like many other physicians I am watching the progressive deterioration of this man’s function with tremendous anxiety.
An individual exhibiting such erratic behavior might well be brought in by a relative wondering about guardianship or at least taking away their car keys. The notion that these shifting and unpredictable, disconnected and unfiltered impulses are permitted to determine the day to day well-being of the present and future world is madness itself.
That there are those in his circle who daily deny and hide what must be even more apparent to them in his day to day functioning is absolutely criminal. It’s a crime for an individual impaired by alcohol to drive a car and those enabling such behavior - and certainly those encouraging it - would be deemed equally responsible for the injuries to others that resulted.
Look at what he has brought about in three weeks. And he is now threatening - with a deadline - to destroy the entire energy infrastructure of a country of 90 million people???? Who will stop him?
Dr. Cohen, re - "Look at what he has brought about in three weeks. And he is now threatening - with a deadline - to destroy the entire energy infrastructure of a country of 90 million people???? Who will stop him?" - the answer is that the U.S. military is supposed to refuse to commit war crimes. Supposed to.
Mike, I don't know if you're being sarcastic or not. I don't believe trump is suffering from dementia. I believe he is just pure evil. his ridiculous remarks are just red meat for his not going anywhere base who will follow him into hell if asked. I've listened to some of his speeches, but prefer reading them and, while gobbledygook and tortured English language, they don't seem like dementia, they seem more like the rantings of an uneducated egotistical psychopath which cannot be cured through medication.
We let trump off the hook when we blame his behavior on dementia. People suffering dementia have deteriorating cognitive problems caused by a degenerative brain disease. trump is just an evil man who is a master of manipulation.
What I find so difficult to understand is that 40% of those polled have no problem supporting this vile, vindictive, selfish man and refuse to acknowledge to themselves that trump cares nothing for them, he only cares about enriching himself. I never knew that such a large portion of our country could be so gullible and evil as he. This doesn't bode well for democracy. We must show up to vote in masses so large we can't be ignored or gerrymandered out of attempting to save our country before it's totally destroyed.
I agree. It's not dementia. It's his sociopathic malignant narcissism , arrested development that makes him tick. Request from a Canadian and likely the world...PLEASE, PLEASE ,for the love of humanity VOTE in numbers too big too fuck with demand impeachment, indictment.
Sharon, I believe he is physically and mentally ill and evil. And I also am finding it almost impossible to forgive family and friends who I know voted for him
Helen, I agree with you. Blaming this psychopathy and narcissism on dementia excuses his behavior which both calculating and cunning. Supposedly there is therapy available for those who suffer psychopathy and /or narcissism. They tend to not seek therapy because in their narcissistic state they believe everyone loves them. My husband had a coworker who suffered from both. He believed everyone loved him when in reality he was loathed by his coworkers, bosses and former friends. He never sought therapy believing there was nothing wrong with him. He, like trump, was also a bullied, neglected child.
Luckily none of my immediate family voted for or supports trump but some of my friends do. It is very hard to forgive them even if we miss their friendship dearly. I have one longtime friend of almost 40 years and my husband has a longtime friend of over 50 years that we still associate with but I have cut many others from my life. My friend is a one issue voter- abortion-, as is her husband. It's so sad how many friendships trump has destroyed, especially knowing that he cares nothing for them, it's all a cruel manipulation of the gullible. The only one he cares about is himself. I keep waiting for them to come to this realization, but so far they're still standing by him. I don't know what will release them from their cultish devotion. Maybe his death? At least one can hope.
I’m not an expert on dementia, or evil. I just hate what this bastard is doing. If there’s a diagnosis.. fine .. there’s the reason… either way.. evil or crazy.. I hate the people who put him in power. Until my dying day I will.
I appreciate your anger but while there is also a strong psychiatric dimension to his behavior, we are also seeing what presents as something powerfully consistent with an organic deterioration. This matters and certainly does not “get him off the hook”. I’m not writing from a moral viewpoint but rather a medical one.
So how do you explain his behavior from adulthood on? he's always been a sociopath. Dementia just seems a handy excuse to explain the sociopathy he's always had. Maybe it's worsening but that could be due to the fact that he's in love with power and now has the ability to wield it so destructively, further feeding his sociopathy and narcissism.
Sharon, when dementia sets in you often see a kind of collapse of functions around the essence of the personality issues of the individual.
You’re correct that Trump has evidenced sociopathy and a kind of narcissistic panic which has driven his behavior throughout his adult years, amplified by relationships with people like Roy Cohn and Jeffrey Epstein.
But the type of decline we’re seeing - completely confusing names and places and unable to track where he is and why he’s there - the complete disorganization of his speech. This is not symptomatic of his other personality issues but is of organic decline. This is important because his confusion only renders him more dangerous, as its progressive. It also means that the intensity of his emotional reactions are even less checked.
Dementia, mental illness or just cunning manipulation. Realistically none of it even matters. he won't be impeached nor will the 25th amendment be used to get us out of this hellscape. We won't be done with him until he dies or leaves office in 2029 if the sycophantic "supreme" court doesn't find a way to do an end run around the 22nd amendment. I wouldn't put it past them.
Sharon, even though I share your revulsion, I don't agree with your appraisal and I wonder if you have direct experience with dementia.
First, it's necessary to understand that Donald was born with a learning disability that was not addressed by his parents, who left the care of their children up to the domestic help.
A study of Donald's speech and vocabulary over the years corroborates the learning disability. Donald has always used a particular set of favorite words and phrases, augmented by a limited vocabulary. Speech experts have noted a significant decline in Donald's vocabulary over the past decade. But those pet words and phrases continue to be repeated like treading on a well-worn path.
Other cognition experts are noting definite symptoms of cognitive decline, such as speech aphasia (the inability to pronounce familiar words), confusion, memory lapses, abrupt mood swings, etc. that are more extreme than common "senior moments."
Donald's parents never awarded him a moral compass, and he has lived his entire life without one. But that problem is now exacerbated by his recognizable cognitive decline.
My mother suffered dementia and I worked with the elderly, several suffered dementia but none were evil.
Many are born with learning difficulties. They don't become sociopaths if they have proper nourishment by their parents. Our son was diagnosed with several learning disabilities, including suspicion of dyslexia , since it's both more prevalent in males and those who are left handed plus ADHD. He is one of the most compassionate people I know. I have three autistic grandchildren. All are sweet and compassionate. Our son's wife was also diagnosed with a learning disability. She also is sweet and compassionate.
My husband worked with a narcissist who was also a sociopath. he was also bullied by his father. Other children are bullied but don't remain bullies throughout their lives or develop into socio/psychopaths. Many grow up to be wonderful, caring adults in spite of it. Our daughter's childhood friend is one.
Dementia is just being used as a deceitful way to excuse trump's disgusting behavior. he has been this way for literally decades. Has he had dementia since his young adult days? What excused his disgusting behavior then?
Sharon, I'm sorry that you've had first-hand experience with dementia, as have I. You should know, then, that cognitive decline presents differently in every patient. In fact, that's why it has been difficult to track and treat.
My mom was sharp-witted but sweet-natured all of her life, but when dementia took over her life, certain circumstances would trigger her and she would become loud and combative, to the point that she had to be restrained. She was a different person.
I strongly disagree with your assertion that "dementia is just being used as a deceitful way to excuse Trump's disgusting behavior." At least, nobody in this forum is excusing him with that. We simply observe that he is presenting with symptoms of dementia.
Indeed, Donald has had numerous personality disorders, psychopathy and sociopathy. I avoid the word, "evil" because that carries a religious connotation which clouds dispassionate evaluation.
In Donald's case, he can be – and is – both sociopathic and demented.
The definition of evil is not only rooted in religion. Per Oxford Dictionary- adjective- meaning profoundly immoral and wicked.
I just don't see it in the speeches and quotes I've seen. As for slurred speech it sounds more like the after effects of a stroke. How much of his "dementia" is deliberate red meat to his base just to make the "woke libs" cry as we focus on that? he's very calculating and manipulative.
My mom was 97 plus when she died and although she was suffering dementia her speech was perfect as were the several clients I dealt with suffering dementia.
Sorry, this just sounds like excusing him because "he knows not what he does." Sorry, I hold him fully accountable for his actions.
I’m with ya sister… problem is the sycophants around him are in it for the power and/or money and they aren’t going to let us do the right thing. But… it seems like some folks are getting are exhibiting a bit of morality and decency lately… we can only wait.
One day soon, an angry, sleepless, demented old man will wander into the White House briefing room clad only in his Depends, and pretend to make love to a flagpole once he sees the astonished reporters all going [click, click, click]....
Imagine how Karoline Spokesbarbie's gonna 'splain THAT one to us.
ICTT, I figure Donald has so many minders positioned throughout the White House, that delicious scene will never take place. When he wanders out of the royal bed chamber wearing only his paunch and mushroom, some kindly Secret Service agent will gently steer him back to his boudoir and summon a royal dresser to make the necessary repairs.
My husband just read with his latest Iran announcement at 7:00 am this morning, aka stock manipulation, stock market players once again made a boatload of money. Why isn't he in jail for not just insider trading but actually manipulating the market? I think back to poor "I'm not a witch" Christine O'Donnell who faced possible jail for using some of her campaign money on a pizza party to thank her campaign workers and voters. I think the amount was a few thousand dollars. If I remember correctly, Sam Altman(?) is serving a jail-term of over one hundred years for crypto scams, yet trump and his family have scammed people out of billions and not a sound from the republican sycophants in office. Now they're looking to ease crypto oversight and guess who will profit greatly? trump and his evil spawn.
Sorry, wrong Sam. Sam Bankman-Fried. It's so hard to keep track of all the crooks.
"Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison on March 28, 2024, for stealing at least $8 billion from customers of his failed crypto exchange, FTX. While the 31-year-old, first-time offender faced a maximum penalty of over 100 years, the final sentence was significantly lower than prosecutors' recommendation of 40–50 years."
His parents are seeking a pardon from trump according to yesterday's news. I wonder how much money will grease trump's hands to buy his pardon.
He’s really losing it. Walls are closing in, and Corey! Much more than Kristi’s boy toy! Giving direction to spend $$$, take enforcement actions, and having to piggy back on her ID to get in the building. Even 47 admired his grift. The corruption is a sewage tide everywhere you look.
‘Piggy backing’ into a building is strictly forbidden and is included in the yearly refresher of security training required of anyone with a clearance. If they do not have clearance then they have no business inside restricted buildings!
It's not a question of "if", but "when" they are going to do it. "Oh? You're refusing to show your passport? You must be a leftist terrorist and traitor, then! BAM!"
You have been that for long, Ally. You're not a cis white angry male, so you have contributed to "the destruction of America", as the MAGAts would say... :/
"Follow the money" is advice that has yet to be wrong even once. Keep following the dark money trails....the Lewandowski trail, the Jared trail, the daily violation of the Emoluments Clause trail, the DOGE-Musk trail, the no-bid ICE contract trail, the GOP billionaire tax-break-gravy-train trail, the "Peace Board" trail, the Russia-Iran oil kickback trail, the Epstein money-laundering trail.
trump "announced" on "truth" social at approx. 7:20 this morning that he and Iranian negotiators have come to terms on a cease fire. The stock market in Europe immediately jumped over 2%. When Iranian officials tell us they have negotiated nothing the stock market will collapse. In the meantime he and his cronies are making boat loads of money by buying low and selling high. If this was any other elected official (s)he would be in jail already. But trump is allowed to skate. Maybe an investigation into all elected republicans is warranted since none are doing a thing to stop his corruption. Follow the money indeed.
The daily recital of this regime's illegal, slimy, ill conceived and cruel actions would or will take something like a Nuremberg style series of trials to confront. When and if we take back our country. It's breathtaking.
Nothing in our history suggested we’d have a convicted felon, rapist, pedophile, and grifter extraordinaire as President either. This entire band of thugs and thieves must be held accountable and whatever assets haven’t been squandered must be returned to the US Treasury.
A just goal. Not gonna happen. The 77 million louts who put Trump in office have been there the whole time but the establishment leaders who were running the political parties wouldn’t give them what they always wanted. They took it for themselves when they found their man, a thug with an “intellect” and temperment matching their own. Reagan seduced the white working class, and finally they took control. The louts throwing spitballs when the teacher wasn’t looking are now in charge and will stay in charge until someone throws them out. Violently or with a credible threat of violence. Who would be capable of that? The military brass have shown themselves to be disloyal to the Constitution. They’re a pack of pirates now. They are not on our side, so we have no mechanism for applying the necessary force.
Exactly! we will have either venture capitalist Sam Altman or more likely Peter Thiel's 'Palantir' AI-enabled population surveillance and control 'governance', plus the Ellison's sole-source-feed MSM & Zuckerberg and Musk's misinfotainment attention triopolies, and Tim Cook's (China's?) vertically-integrated behavior info vacuum & mininfotainment delivery surveillance devices (iphones...), that matter most - much more than JD Vance's Hill Billy Elegy VC wannabe 'leadership', once T is removed.
But it may be better than having T for nearly 3 more years - and both D's & R's may agree on this.
I think it is useful to distinguish between Israel and the Likud regime, just as I distinguish between America and the MAGA government. I actually think these casual conceptual distinctions matter. Solidarity around what Lincoln called "the common right of humanity" is the ultimate cure to divide and conquer, and that involves opposing injustice wherever it appears, whomever is the victim. Excesses and abuses of power always tries to frame its victims as less than fully human; slavery, misogyny, homophobia, conquest and the carnage of wars. I agree that Netanyahu's war on a whole people was and is a war crime, and it was madness for the Democratic party to put forward a morally dishonest response. Friends don't help friends commit war crimes.
As for voting for Harris, we sorely need to identify more comprehensively competent and ethically robust candidates, not just fish around for those with greatest current celebrity. It's like we prize TV ratings over demonstrable fitness; and yet, on election day, when the real world available choice was this or that, Harris was so, so the wisest choice over abstention, let alone a vote for plunder.
The Likud regime has managed to get 90% approval from Jewish Israelis for the genocide and now the war on Iran. MAGA seems to be at least partially in confusion over their choice and they are only 30% of the voters.
As far as We identifying a better candidate for our countries values, I don't think We get to choose. Wasn't Bernie the choice of most Dems? But, he didn't fit into what the party, being controlled by Deep State forces, chose. Is it even possible to have a candidate that AIPAC (Israel First)doesn't support?
Israel? Isn't that a country that we used to refer to as Palestine, now with an equal number of Jews to Palestinians? But, the only population that counts and has rights, even rights to use bomb shelters during alerts are Jews. Palestinians: "Not For You".
I'm sure she knew that she had to give assurance to the Israel Firsters, that, Yes, she would continue the Biden billions for ethnic cleansing.
I don't have any idea how many picked up on that remark; it was just campaign "promises/B.S."..but the campaign also would not let Palestinian Americans anywhere near the podium.
...in the meantime, over there in the open air concentration camp: 2k bombs dropping every day.
Investigative reporting is meaningful only when it results in indictments. When there is no indictment forthcoming -- that is, when a regime is so Evil it has in effect legalized all crime -- investigative reporting is reduced to naught but a public wallowing in misery. And since legalized crime is now the condition of the failed United States, that is why such reporting is meaningless -- because there is absolutely nothing to suggest the perpe-traitrors of the crime-wave regime will {ever} face trial.
He's courageous and vulnerable. He started Defiance.org and the current action/news is at https://www.defiance.news/. I heard him speak about his family's struggles when they were defending themselves against the barrage of attacks they got, but when he became defiant, it turned transformative and empowering.
The worst thing this country (presumably when it’s led again by Democrats) can do is sweep all this shit under the rug in the name of “reconciliation.” The deep criminality of this president and all of his accomplices needs to be put on full ugly display. And justice needs to be meted out severely in the name of all those whose lives have ruined or ended by their cruelty. I suspect many of them will flee or put a bullet through their own skulls before facing accountability. That only underscores their cowardice. Either way, truth is coming for them.
Indeed. Nuremberg 2.0 and more. Trump may be protected by the Extreme Court, but he won't be protected from the ICC...or the Civil lawsuits that will bankrupt him and his whole vile family.
There's certainly abundant immaturity and incompetence, but I find the favors to Iran and Russia pushing toward the bounds of treason. I realize that term is often used inappropriately and carelessly, but don't know what could come much closer than basically funneling money toward those literally engaged in deadly actions against us.
How many here ever really believed that Epstein died of suicide? The dysfunctional cameras outside his cell? The "staffing problem"? The shredding of files on site? Give me a break.
Whether by omission (here, buddy, do the right thing. There's sheets in your cell, and no one is watching) or commission (manual asphyxiation), that in custody death is a homicide.
It's those first 2 letters of Trump's name that form the words treason and traitor, and that's exactly what Donold is...his entire existence has been self-serving and a life of grifting and graft, double-dealing perfidy and duplicity...
He was able to bamboozle too many Americans with his tirades and still mesmerizes the stupid MAGA movement. But he's always been a corrupt, treasonous bastard and that's what makes it so ironic and almost too hard to believe...Even after all this, they still believe Donold is making America great again when he's openly destroying everything great about this nation and selling us all down the river while he and his spawn make a bajillion dollars off of it.
It speaks volumes that the only reason Trump hasn't technically committed treason is because the US has an incredibly weak definition of treason because its founders were in fact traitors themselves to the nation of thier birth.
If I'm not mistaken, should the US buy Iranian oil, that would fall under "giving aid and comfort to the enemy" clause in the definition of treason according to the Constitution. I could be wrong, but I do no see how buying oil from a country we're calling the enemy, and currently bombing too boot, would not qualify as aid and comfort. Certainly aid.
And he'd finally going completely unhinged. And yet here we all sit while the entire Guardians Of Pedophiles party sits on its hands too cowardly to act in the best interest of the United States, and instead is more concerned with maintaining power at all costs.
I honestly don't recognize this country any longer. And I just don't see how so many could be fooled by one man so effectively.
I think that Regan removed solar panels from the White House once Carter left and he was Pres -- could that be it? If my memory serves Regan also uttered something along the lines of: "you've seen one tree, you've seen them all"
Because they wanted to be? They go to a church once a week to be told what to think and who to be and you are surprised they embrace the same direction the other six days a week from the talking heads on Fox News? They get directions from pedophiles on Sunday, why not on monday?
Not only that, allowing Russia to profit, while acknowledging that they are helping Iran target our assets. This is flagrant. Conveniently it hurts Ukraine as well, which is always the side hustle with Trump. Some Constitutional interpreters make a distinguishing requirement for a written declaration of war to meet the standard of treason, but the spirit of the intent is clear.
And the Democratic party will be rounded up by ICE starting tomorrow, making the power grab complete: the US will be a one-party “democracy” like Russia.
The Queens real estate mob boss sundowning as president bullies like a fourth grader, talks like a third grader, has the impulse control of a second grader and the hands of a first grader. His presidency is elementary, dear Watson. Planning is hard. Chaos is easy
I'm guessing/hoping they have given him fake codes (probably written in crayon) to fool him into thinking he actually has the codes ... the real ones have to be safely stored far away from his tiny hands.
It should be patently clear to everyone with a functioning brain that we have a psychopath in the WH who is cornered like a rat since he started this illegal war and he will take all of us down with him. I have never felt so sick in my 59 years on this planet. He is beyond unhinged, an absolute threat to the entire world. I will never, never as long as I live, understand why the Republicans are letting him destroy us and now other countries. Fear? Greed? I cannot imagine wanting my career so much and my money that I would become a traitor to not only the country but to the good and decent human beings living here. Also we do not need to be murdering innocent Iranians but here we are. Dear God, what a nightmare.
Easy. They are about to get what they have wanted for so long - minority power. Dems on the run, no PO, no social safety nets, education according to Putin, and money to burn. All with God on their side. Puke, but they are within a hair of getting it and no outlier will stop them. They will stop at nothing.
That’s pretty well putting it in the crosshairs. On our watch we will never succumb to the ignomy of “it.”
Over the Scaffold and through the woods to Donny Johnny’s house we go. We’ll huff and we’ll puff and we won’t bother to bluff when we plant him below. Yes Lin I’m calling for the death penalty via the scaffold deary. The one with the sanction of 12-13. Biblical in its origins code in its sanctions. Oh Donny Boy the sheep the sheep they are calling…12 jurors one death penalty not 3-7-77. “It,” is fitting that be His last supper. Now I must go literally and pick up my burden of shoveling load after load of Trump into the manure spreader. Let the grass grow Marching blade by blade into April’s Oregon opulence springing hope anew. Let the Walls and the Knapps and the McKenzies sheep peacefully graze that grass on Pacific Ocean hills as flowers crowd in to bless Minnesota’s Renee and Alex. Let the breakers break across to the Atlantic shores as if holding hands once again. Let us see our flag that waves the history of us all. Our flag.
Oh. Crap. I fell asleep in my rocker again. I damn well better hurry up and do those dishes before Ma wakes up. Then I’ll go shovel. Whew, that was close! Pretti Good save, lucky they woke me up early.
I’ve believed for some time that the only way out of this is the way no one wants to get to. And they haven’t proven me wrong yet. They will keep pushing until someone snaps, and then it’s Katy bar the door. 400+ million guns and a sociopathic fascist regime is not a good mix.
Guns and sociopathic bears habitually come to their angle of repose. I have guns. I have been attacked 13 times by sociopathic grizzly bears. I have never shot one. I am alive because I had guns not because I shot the bears. I’m entirely happy to be alive. One may condemn me for shooting a black bear in the midst of our sheep. He had killed twelve that night as I shot him killing the 13 th. After the war I tendered my m-60 machine gun, my m-16, my AK-47, my m-80 grenade launcher, my white phosphorus hand grenades and my bayonet and quit killing people altogether. Since the war I have been stabbed twice and shot at on three occasions. No reprisals on my part I granted mercy. Mercy is far better to sleep with.
I know. For a while I taught college. I’m pretty aware how the K-12 system failed most Americans. Also I’ve just noticed so many Americans are not curious people. I’m won’t generalize and say all Americans of course, but I see so many who don’t read, or travel, or are interested in other cultures, or history…it boggles the mind. There is the arrogance too, of a society brainwashed to accept nothing yet think we are the greatest country in the world. People don’t want to face the reality of what America has done to other countries for decades.
I don’t know which questions you’re referring to but hey, if I’m curious about something I ask. If I look stupid, so be it. I’ll always ask questions if I don’t understand something, etc. Thanks for the comment! 😊
Who was shredding documents in the wake of Epstein's death? Why were they shredding them? Why didn't FBI/DOJ investigate that immediately? They should have investigated and closed on it within a year or two. We the People should not be left with all these unanswered questions.
Let’s assume Epstein was killed, i e. it was NOT a suicide. The folks that did that (or ordered it) are very very very wealthy and could pay these folks to do gather up what needed to be shredded and hand it over to the inmates to do the shredding. Remember, the folks hanging around Epstein are not very nice but very wealthy people and they have a lot of evil stuff to hide.
Because most city jails are centralized and attached to their courthouses so that while a victim, I mean detainee, is being arraigned, processed, charged, cataloged, and so forth they can be violate that persons civil rights in a single location without allowing them easy access to counsel, and creating a situation of fear and oppression, I mean without endangering the public. It also allows them easier control over the narrative.
The FBI and DOJ doesn't maintain facilities that specialize in this except of course for ICE detention. Which again should tell you everything you need to know about the priorities of the FBI and the DOJ.
As for why they put him into a NEW YORK facility long term, knowing the access that Trump and the Feds would have in that facility, well you'd have to be stupid to believe that was anything but deliberate. Its much the same as why Trump was able to shop for the judge who would be responsible for prosecuting him, which literally never happens to anyone else ever.
Wandyrer, I am a retired cop and worked my first 18 months with the Sheriff's Office in our corrections division. My city has a population of about 175K, neighboring largest city is about 60K, unincorporated urban population of roughly 50K while the county is nearly 4600 square miles. Jail was not adjacent to the courthouse, and we would occasionally house federal prisoners (usually during their trials, or extended transports). Our documentation protocols were set, especially with suicidal inmates.
I am appalled at what I have seen and heard regarding the situation with Epstein at Rikers. It is my belief that his death is either an act of omission (by facilitating a suicide) or commission (by physically asphyxiating him).
I suspect Bill Barr is keeping many secrets of his own. His father brought an unqualified, young Epstein in to teach at the exclusive academy where he was dean. Prisons and Corrections do fall under the purview of the AG, so he certainly wielded power there to control the crime scene.
"He tends to be naive about how things can happen,” Leon Panetta told Smith. “If he says it and keeps saying it, there’s always a hope that what he says will come true. But that’s what kids do. It’s not what presidents do.”
Trump's seriously impaired judgement and decision making isn't caused by naivety, it's caused by his severe narcissism. His narcissism causes him to be sufficiently out of touch with reality that he should not be in a position where he makes life and death decisions. I don't think VP Vance or any cabinet members will use the 25th amendment to remove him. The GOP-controlled House and Senate will not impeach him. As a nation we must find a solution for removing an impaired president, one who suffers from dementia, or narcissistic personality disorder, or any other incapacitating mental or physical problem.
Agree Judy. Problem is all the “quick” remedies (25, impeachment, Congress, Supreme Court) have failed. So the only systemic solution left is to vote in the mid terms and elect a big enough majority to overcome filibusters and override vetoes. Outside the system is what, rebellion?
Sure… massive public protests (one’s coming up next Saturday). Problem with that apparently, he gets so ticked off about that he starts doing stupid things like tearing down the East wing of the White House. He’s already saying that all Democrats are leftist terrorists… he’s just warming up to do something extra stupid.
Not a lawyer, but I'm holding out for '25', given the remarkable self-interest that most oligarchs demonstrate. It may not be a long term improvement to have Vance/Thiel at the helm. However, it may slow immediate global conflict. Vance will be a different critter when T is gone (- rather, he'll be a different billionaire's critter).
Rebellion worked for our forefathers, and there is no world where a vetoproof majority can be elected in the United States, even assuming it were allowed to be by this administration, which you can rest assured it will not be allowed to be.
He's always been a malignant narcissist with bad judgement and sadistic tendencies, but the only hope now is that the Democrats take back majorities in Congress in November so that Donold will finally be reined in somehow or maybe even removed. But it's still so far off, he has to be stopped from causing further damage right now not in another 8 months.
Tonight's essay depicts a leaky dam with so many holes in it, you can't begin to plug them. Crystal clear why Republicans cannot afford free elections next November. Not a single one of them is clean from criminal corruption. We have to assume what we know about now is just the tip of a very deep iceberg.
On Thursday he defended his failure to inform allies and partners about his February 28 attack on Iran by telling a Japanese reporter he wanted the element of surprise. “Who knows better about surprise than Japan? Why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor, OK?”
In the rankings of America’s presidents, James Buchanan has usually ranked last. The current incumbent will, in all likelihood, assume that position, if he has not already done so. The irony is that, Buchanan was, on the criteria of experience and political background, one of the most qualified persons ever to be elected to that office, in complete contrast to his rival for the title of worst president ever. With that in mind, a few weeks before the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln, Buchanan’s successor, Horace Greeley described the soon to be outgoing president as follows:
“In these, the stormy times of the Republic, he expires a driveler, and only not a show because nobody cares to see him. Tried and wanting; trusted and faithless; sworn and forsworn; old without veneration; unfortunate without pity; his task unperformed; his duty undone; his name a by-word; his existence a reproach, and his reputation a stench, he counts the hours, and awaits the day which will see him, to the joy of the good, for the last time totter down the steps of the White House, to crawl into night and darkness, and there vainly to beg of the Muse of History, which can ill spare such an example, immunity from being remembered”: New-York Daily Tribune, Vol. XX, No. 6,186, 21 February 1861, 4.
"Lewandowski told George Zoley, the head of the giant private prison company GEO Group, that he expected to be paid for steering contracts to GEO Group. Zoley said he declined initially but later offered to put Lewandowski on retainer with a consulting fee."
Vanguard and Blackrock are the biggest shareholders of GEO Group and Core Civic. Check this interactive map and how to call Vanguard and Blackrock to stop investing in private ICE prisons.
Private ICE prisons where Epstein Class billionaires profit from pregnant girls being denied healthcare: Follow the money
The double standards, incompetence and corruption in the administration is 😤 Thank you Professor for keeping us informed so then we can speak up. Be LOUD! 💔🤍💙
Use/share this spreadsheet (bit.ly/Goodtrouble) to contact members of Congress, the Cabinet and news organizations. Call. Write. Email. Protest. Unrelentingly.
Reach out (beyond your own) to as many in the Senate and House as you can. All of this is bigger than “I only represent my constituents” issues.
Comments/reactions help keep this bumped ✊
You can also use the Five Calls app which has some helpful example scripts to use for several issues.
Yes, 5calls is amazing. I used it for a while and it’s listed at the top of my sheet along with other resources - Card Campaign, Action Network, ResistBot, Indivisible, and other how to take action sites. But I wanted to be able call beyond my state quicker than changing the state each time, as well as email after my kids went to bed. All of the information on my sheet is on government sites, but not all in one place so I put it in one place to make it easier.
Unbelievable that the most vile person ever to be t elected to the highest position is there now.
Please write your democratic governors asking them to mobilize but not deploy the national guard. This will prevent the administration from deploying if at elections. Two orders cannot be given to any national guard. You can be sure Trump will try any method to disrupt the elections. Now is the time to act.
You know if we had a parliamentary system there would be a vote of no confidence and he'd be out. Alas, we have the worst system ever devised for situations like this.
Stephanie, yes, but we don't which I have explained to many over the years. I know suggestions for what to do comes from frustration, but our system does not allow those solutions. And yes, right now, I wish we had a parliamentary system. We do have a way to get rid of president, but Rs in Congress have refused to vote him out during the two impeachments. I think this letter shows how much goes on under the table.
To put it in the vernacular, the Republicans in Congress are yellow bellied cowards. They are without character. I suppose that it is the case that cowards, by definition, have no character.
Only if.
Thank you, Stephanie.
Machismo has taken over America - from monster trucks to wars of choice to presidential hubris - did I leave anything out???
The Trump regime is now in full Gong Show 2.0 mode.
Your's is a new name to me here, Thomas. 👋🏼WELCOME and thanks for becoming a paid subscriber. Our community is growing and I am grateful for that.
Thanks for a little levity. I was about to cry....
Regarding the Gong Show, I worked with the mother (Lynn Barry) of what I considered the most effective hook person/bouncer for the contestants that didn’t want to leave the stage and seemed a real threat to the judges that gonged them.
He was by no means threatening looking, I think he was one of the three unknowns that played in the “Broken Combs” elementary school age band with their neighbors the Van Halen brothers, but on the Gong Show, he was a master at de-escalation. As an assistant to Dick Clark’s wife, what I remember most was his helping Dick Clark’s wife pick Christmas presents for the stars and crews of the 19 productions they were running at the time. Wikipedia and Google AI filled in 2 of the 1985 productions as the “Live Aid Concert” and “Dick Clark’s New Tear’s Rockin’ Eve 1985”
Lynn Barry, College Professor but part time illustrator at the aerospace company I was a Senior Tech Writer at back in 1985, as I knew her, beyond that shown at https://www.sgvtribune.com/obituaries/caroline-w-barry-pasadena-ca/
Our company had a fair number of former intelligence service veterans who I think were hired for their security clearance’s (easy to maintain without breaks after they left such services). Though she was the reserved silent type with others, she and I ended up sharing a bit if there was an office birthday celebration where we were casually in the same place, without working.
She once mentioned being detained in Austria as a suspected spy, in what seemed the late 40s to early 50s, before she married.
In another reluctant fall back to Google AI when no other information could be found, I searched for “AUSTRIA FROM THE LATE 40S EARLY 50S WITH RUSSIAN AND US DIPLOMATS AND SPIES”
All I got out of an uncle who had been in the Air Force Security Service was that Vienna was a very unpleasant place to serve back then.
We have to accept the fact that this country is being led by a bunch of drunk frat boys and Congress is allowing it....
The Republicans in Congress are allowing it.
Don’t forget cage fighting matches on the White House lawn.
Another reason we need a ballroom.
Is he recruiting Markwayne Mullin for that fight (if he doesn't get approved by the whole Senate as DHS Secretary?
Constant wars had much to do with ending the ancient Roman Empire. Yes there were other factors, but wars were the biggest factor. Our nation attacks and commits wars about every 10 years. We keep electing idiots to lead. Trump now - the Peace President. Before him, W Bush not one but 2 wars. His daddy Herbert Walker was adamant about invading Iraq. LBJ could have gone down as a great progressive president except for Vietnam. Of course Nixon messaged the North Vietnamese to e d the Paris Peace talks just so he could be elected just like Trump ended legislation over immigration so he could be elected in 2024. None of them have the interest of the republic. Clinton’s move to bomb former Yugoslavia was one necessary move to end a growing European aggression. Trump has no interest to support Ukraine in its fight and neither did Biden who restricted use of arms in fighting the Russians.
Unfortunately President Biden was too slow to give Ukrainian troops what they needed. But nonetheless the Ukrainians have been incredibly heroic in holding off the Russians in this war.
Do you think that men, endowed with a super abundance of testosterone, are more prone to violence? Or are men or people impotent in the struggle against evil, or is the power of evil more impotent in the struggle against men? Can evil ever be conquered? Human history seems to be a battle of good struggling to overcome evil. So we have to resort to "artificial" remedies like peace treaties, United Nations type entities, NATOs in order to try to put a cap on violence, war, destruction, etc. I'm just trying to make some sense of world events.
Evil.
wicked, depraved, villainous, malevolent, immoral, nefarious, corrupt, venal, calamitous - the Thesaurus has a bunch of 'em....
Stephanie, my husband and I are wondering if the high price of gas will put a stop to some of the roaring down the street and racing at all hours of the night in our area. This weekend I could hear it going on to our west, so maybe not yet.
What worked for me was taking a picture of their license plates.
If and when I could talk to them and they asked why, I'd explain that it was just in case there was an accident later. They always asked if I was going to send the picture to the police, but I told them my preference was to send it to their insurance company first, they would be a lot more interested than the police.
In my case, 61 years ago, of excessive acceleration habits with my 39 Chevy with a 64 GTO 389 4-speed, an insurance investigator came out to look at the car, innocently asking if it originally came with a V8 and if it was a stock engine. I assured him they came with a 4-barrel carburetor, so he seemed satisfied. Though I was getting late to pick up my mother, I waited a while for him to get well past where I would have to turn off, before I left. When I did leave and just topped the nearest high point, I saw him on the side of the road standing beside the car as I flew by. He was nodding and writing something down. I think my insurance bill would have been $2,500 if I had tried to renew it in Massachusetts in 1965. As it was I was soon on my way to Texas where I had it stored for 8 months before saving enough to get it back on the road. I never got a ticket in that car though I was stopped 26 times by police that just seemed to want to check it out.
We hear the same muffler-free cars roaring up and down the Beltway. Our police department is woefully underfunded, so it has to prioritize. But these knuckleheads are disposed to irresponsible behavior as entertainment - without any regard to consequences. The reality of their world is stunted and narrow.
I wish I had a dem governor. Instead I’ve got a bootlicking repub and three identical congresspeople, including Marsha Blackburn, who echoes her hero’s words that TSA not getting paid is Dems’ fault. Over and over.
I'm especially sorry about your 'bag of hairspray' congresswoman - I'm still disgusted by her stunt at Jackson's SCOTUS hearing - but keep calling your elected officials! Give them hell repeatedly for those of us in blue states who feel like our votes don't make a big enough impact and our phone calls to our elected officials are often just preaching to the choir. A special shout out to everyone in red states who make their voices heard these days!
Unfortunately, Mary Jo, these state and local leaders have relinquished their responsibility, manipulate truth, ignore the pain and suffering of their citizens or the degradation of the environment. What does it say about our culture that cruelty is so easy to implement, glorifying violence - ICE and war.....and the slavish support of our dictator in chief.
Thanks. She’s running for governor. <sigh>
That is what Tim Walz did during "Metro Surge", and the Minnesota Guard served coffee and cookies to the rally goers!
Good idea.
‘Good, I’m glad he’s dead.’ Says a knuckle dragging, low intelligence, completely graceless individual. If only the same could be said about the aforementioned graceless individual. Are we sure the devil isn’t missing one of his minions?
Happy Monday, folks!
"If only the same could be said about the aforementioned graceless individual."
We live in hope, Jan. 👍
Sounds like a move that could backfire.
Where does it say "will prevent" deploying ??
Wouldn't this make it easier ??
If a governor mobilizes its guard, a president most certainly cannot remobilize the same guard. I could be mistaken but I don’t think so. I will pose this question to our state library this week.
Might it be an idea if as well as writing to our reps, we choose ONE person to write to on ONE specific day?
If everyone who disapproves of what trump is doing wrote to say, Johnson, on March 28th (stamped paper letters, not emails or faxes,) there would be such a mountain of post that his office would be flooded - and the newspapers and TV would report it.
It would certainly give the trump admin a clue about how many people in the US are REALLY ticked off about all the chaos not just looking at figures from various disparate states and dismissing them.
I believe we did that. Letters take too long as they are each scanned for drugs. Postcards work much better. I think i remember piles and piles of post cards. Does my memory serve me?
Well, even 100,000 postcards would cause chaos if they went to just the one person, all on the same day!
Does any of it work? I suppose it does. I will be out on Saturday.
Not really.
It sounds like a good idea, however having worked in legislators offices they pay no attention to emails, letters, or phone calls from people outside their district or state.
It's a reality, that emailing, calling and writing to legislators from outside your district or state is satisfying but unproductive use of your resources.
Better to keep at it with your reps and senators.
How about choosing Mike Johnson. We can email him and write only in the subject line: "RESIGN TODAY". The emails won't be opened, but if he gets 1 million emails in one or two days with that in the subject line, they'll get the message.
That’s why I made a calendar on the spreadsheet (tab 3) listing which states to focus on certain days of each month. I’m not sure if anyone follows it but I do 🤣
It sounds like a good idea, however having worked in legislators offices they pay no attention to emails, letters, or phone calls from people outside their district or state.
It's a reality, that emailing, calling and writing to legislators from outside your district or state is satisfying but unproductive use of your resources.
Better to keep at it with your reps and senators.
It is what it is.
Gary read my reply to Leigh. Nothing wrong with a little lie.
I have my congresspeople as contacts in my phone so I can regularly phone their offices...and I do. But we've watched as Republicans and some Dems still absolutely refuse to take a stand against FOTUS. It's occurring to me that the real difference will only come when we hit them in their wallets and pocketbooks (here in Michigan we'd say "wallets and purses!") We have to expand on consumer disruption and one of the primary targets should be Fox News via a coordinated boycott of their advertisers and those who are airing Fox News in their businesses.
I doubt that many of the people who read HCR's articles daily ever turn FOX news on! I once tried it, to be able to see if I might find a shred of truth, or decency in the delivery of the news; and I was not just disappointed but scared of some of the things being spoken of and said on public TV! I wonder sometimes if they indeed believe what they say, or if they have zero integrity to be able to spew such inaccuracies.
FOX is State run media. Now we have CBS, CNN, NBC etc going down the same path. Support independent media
OMG! I have, maybe twice, for 2 minutes; it's like tuning into 1984...
An, jes look at them short skirts on them wimen.
You made me laugh, although it is actually scary.
I tried watching them idiots. They are like recycling toilet paper in a heap behind the flush tank. Gives me the reflex. You know, that gaggery feeling. Reminds me of my childhood on the Montana plains in the Powder River country where we sometimes got a bad case of the worms. One day I was feeling funny and got the urge to squat under a sagebrush’s privacy. You should have seen that wiggling mass of Fox News. Woulda made you gag and throw up too. My mom always said the fastest way to a cure was to toss it out both ends at once. I hope this helps one to understand Fox better. I can paraphrase their theater. You get a shitty deal that makes you puke.
Pat, that is an EPIC description of Fox News. Epic, I tell you.
Though I rarely watch TV, I spend a lot of time in my car, usually with MSNow on the radio. As they were replaying a previous interview I switched to CNN. There I was hearing a discussion of “how funny 47 is” in his comments to the Japanese Prime Minister, and in his comments disparaging someone dieting. I rarely tune to CNN anymore but was struck with the seeming “obeying in advance”, I suppose the looming takeover is already taking effect.
Funny?! Geez, CNN has gone way downhill.
Last time I watched Fak News was through a reflection of the TV on a window in a restaurant and I had to do it that way because if I would have looked directly at the TV I would have been blinded because I didn't have a cross to shield me. That's how bad that channel is. 😊
I had a patient whose husband, for 2 12-hour shifts of mine, never turned it off. It was nauseating to watch so many blatant lies. I did not even notice the commercials and struggled to keep my mouth shut, failing a couple of times. Sadly, that echo chamber is strong with regular viewers.
Sorry you had to go through that! I can imagine the stress it can cause.
MJ. I see you're a paid subscriber of a few months, so WELCOME to the forum! 👋🏼👋🏼I believe it would have been before you signed on (perhaps you were reading "free" then) but there has been lengthy discussions of general strikes here, especially after the Kimmel situation. Basically, not a lot of support. 😣
I think a nationwide general strike WOULD work, but there was too much quibbling. There are those who didn't want to hurt local businesses (I get that. Look at the TSA.) Others suggested that people will "still purchase before or after that day" and I understand that as well. My argument that a one day general strike, where NOBODY SHOPS ANYWHERE is the same as a NO KINGS day.
No buy days are reasonable. I am afraid that many who call for nationwide strikes are those who would not suffer from losing income, loss of a job, or inability to feed the family. Many here on this community are awesome folks, but retired, and well off. I personally cannot strike as i care for elderly, poor, ill people in a rural hospital. If i don’t show, i am responsible for abandoning patients. When folks describe a lack of appetite for strike, sometimes it sounds as if people lack willpower. It’s deeper than that.
I have been saying this for a long time and do keep asking why people are not in mass withholding federal taxes. Women in history have shown that not paying taxes or consumer boycotts do work…especially British women. At one point British women fighting to end slave trade organized the first consumer boycott and refused to buy sugar. Women are amazing when they put their minds to it.
Organization is a huge problem.
Thank you Megan for your thorough research
Megan is a ⭐️ !
Please keep calling and writing ! 📲💻✍️. My MAGAs are definitely feeling the 🔥.They keep
ramping up their appearances on news shows making nonsensical statements that only get worse as the insanity continues. It’s actually embarrassing to watch.We The People must keep up the pressure!
Thank YOU for being aware and active!
Thanks, Megan! I am writing Thom Tillis a LOT. Murkowski is almost always disappointing but she's worth a shot.
I think she was the sole Senator who spoke publicly against the Twofer Hate-Democratic Voters/Hate Transfolk SAVE bill (thankfully set to die in the Senate, even stripped of its obsession with high school girls locker rooms).
Murkowski and Collins did a "tag team" maneuver on the OBBBA. Collin's vote allowed the bill to come to the entire Senate for debate (of which there was none because the Republicans were told by Trump not to allow debate) and then Murkowski pretended she was pressured into voting for it.
They are both as worthless as their 51 other colleagues.
Murkowski has been excellent on the dangers of the SAVE act. Demonstrating in great detail the harms to Alaska's voters. As a demonstration of its harms to all of us.
Murkowski Speaks Out Against SAVE Act on Senate Floor
.https://youtu.be/qxtIgp38EMs?si=l2jszm9rvB_mVbDd.
I bet she ends up voting for it though. She is as taco as POTUS.
Texas Rep. Chip Roy goes nuclear on lawmakers: “At some point, people will look at this body and say maybe we should get rid of all 435 members of the House and all 100 members of the Senate and start over because Congress is literally failing the American people.”
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/lisa_murkowski/300075#:~:text=These%20Ads)-,Sen.%20Lisa%20Murkowski,-Senator%20for%20Alaska
To me, the real desperation of the mango is seen when he throws in "NO MEN IN WOMEN'S SPORTS" onto totally unrelated topics.
It's the last "glub!" of a man drowning.
Could he sink faster?
Yes. She did.
Tillis my Senator. He sent me a form letter on SAVE. Said he was a co-sponsor. Thinks mail ballots should go. He wants to vote YES, he writes, but sadly he has his hands tied by the filibuster. It was a strange contortion of a letter. But don’t for a minute trust this guy.
Yesterday, reporters asked him what he thought of Trump's telling the world he was glad Mueller is dead. 'Well, I find it sad that our level of discourse has reached this level,' he said, or something equally pathetic.
It's YOUR party, YOUR president. YOU voted and supported this abomination. What do YOU have to say for YOUR actions, Senator? Still searching for your lost soul even AFTER announcing your retirement?
Wendy, I'm not a fan of his by any means, but right now he is voting in ways that help democracy more often than just about any Republican except Massie. So I'm keeping on top of him, including writing thank you letters when he does something I approve of.
Murkowski has been excellent on the dangers of the SAVE act. Demonstrating in great detail the harms to Alaska's voters. As a demonstration of its harms to all of us.
Murkowski Speaks Out Against SAVE Act on Senate Floor
.https://youtu.be/qxtIgp38EMs?si=l2jszm9rvB_mVbDd.
Uh huh. Until she changes her mind at the last minute. Remember that many of the "fervent" speeches on the House or Senate floor are performative politics. They know they are on camera. The real deal is how are they voting, how much PAC money controls them and how much stocks they own.
What's Murkowski's voting record?
I think it must have been a year or so ago, before "Belle" took over her husband's YouTube channel: "Beau" used to say "don't listen to what they SAY, WATCH how they vote."
Barbara, that's what I'm afraid of with Murkowski, but I would love her to to prove me wrong!
She doesn’t waffle as often as Susan Collins, it seems out of late.
America is currently being run like a casino buffet at 2 a.m., loud, sticky, and somehow on fire. The president launches an attack on Iran, acts shocked that closing the Strait of Hormuz might affect oil, then lifts sanctions so Iran can make billions cleaning up the mess he created. It is less grand a strategy than a raccoon knocking over the trash can and then billing the neighborhood for pest control.
Meanwhile, Homeland Security has apparently been rebranded from a federal agency into a LinkedIn side hustle for cronies, contract chasers, and Corey Lewandowski, who seems to have treated the department like a Dollar Tree version of The Godfather. Classified briefings, contract steering, private prison intrigue, badge-swiping workarounds, this administration really looked at public corruption and thought, let’s make it tackier.
Then there’s the strongman cosplay. ICE gets waved around like a personal goon squad, airport chaos becomes a political hostage situation, and voting rights are tossed into the ransom note for good measure. Because nothing says “healthy republic” like threatening to gum up democracy unless everyone agrees to your latest fever dream.
And in case the tone was too subtle, Trump publicly celebrated Robert Mueller’s death, because apparently, presidential decorum now means posting like a divorced uncle who got trapped inside a malfunctioning comment section. The whole thing is not government. It is a national humiliation parade with nuclear vibes.
“A distracted people cannot organize. Keep them arguing, keep them entertained, keep them reacting and they will never have time to build the power that threatens you.” Malcolm X
NO KINGS MARCH 28
Great quote... Protest matters... Timothy Snyder and Robert Reich have great posts on why we need to protest on March 28..
Why Civil Resistance Works
https://www.ericachenoweth.com/research/wcrw#:~:text=Teaching-,Why%20Civil%20Resistance%20Works,-Erica%20Chenoweth%20and
"Though it defies consensus, between 1900 and 2006, campaigns of nonviolent resistance were more than twice as effective as their violent counterparts. Attracting impressive support from citizens that helps separate regimes from their main sources of power, these campaigns have produced remarkable results, even in the contexts of Iran, the Palestinian Territories, the Philippines, and Burma.
Combining statistical analysis with case studies of these specific countries and territories, Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan detail the factors enabling such campaigns to succeed-and, at times, causing them to fail. They find that nonviolent resistance presents fewer obstacles to moral and physical involvement, information and education, and participator commitment. Higher levels of participation then contribute to enhanced resilience...
Well, with this action, I guess Trump shows that rounding up the "Illegals" isn't that important, eh? Methinks a lot of those goons just love them some playing computer games in real life--will they be as happy standing all day as they are driving around in big black SUVs? Ah...there's probably some who are just going love legally groping females as much as "legally" shooting humans.
Hmmm.....
At least Michael we can live trap the raccoon and set it adrift in someone else’s neighborhood. Are there raccoons in Moscow…Russia that is?
Write letters! They MUST be opened and handled by staff and be logged. No self- respecting wanting-to-get-reelected office holder does otherwise.
With the mail … including physical petitions you an impact every senator and representative.
Jammed phone lines mean no one gets through. Including constituents with real problems such as social security or Medicaid eligibility of a minor.
Many e-mails are automatically bounced back for that very reason, so that persons with access to government services problems can reach the official.
If there are town halls then get off your butt and go to those. It may be inconvenient, but YOU are the one who is mad about a problem each and every one of us has with the ENTIRE government. Particularly with President Metamucilini.
Next Saturday, 3/28/26 is only 6 days -- No Kings Day!
No Kings Day #1 --5 million gathered across the national in all states.
No Kings Day #2 --7 million showed up.
So how many will attend next Saturday's No Kings Day?
3000 events are scheduled on 3/28/26 for “Good Trouble”
Check www.nokings.org for locations across the Nation.
No Kings Ever!
We absolutely need these protests, and we need people to show up massively.
But how will we ever defeat fascism and its vital need for lies, if we ourselves lie?
No one in the GOP today, not even Trump, wants to turn the US from a republic into a monarchy.
And for centuries already, ALL modern, Western monarchies are constitutional democracies.
The opposite of democracy is NOT monarchism, it's FASCISM.
Democracy = the constitutional separation and independence of the three branches of government (legislative (Congress), judiciary (the courts) and executive (executing/implementing the bills Congress passes, namely the White House))
Fascism = the subordination of the legislative and judiciary branches to the executive branch, so that both merely implement what the executive branch dictates them to do.
It's FASCISM that the GOP wants, not monarchy.
Saudi Arabia is a fascist monarchy, as are China and Russia. The Netherlands, Denmark, the UK etc. are democratic monarchies.
EUWDTB, I share your frustration with the "No Kings" protest branding. It is misguided and inaccurate, but "it has a nice ring to it." Nevertheless, this is America, where if it's not commercially viable, it doesn't fly.
You can be correct all day, every day, but if your correctness can't be easily marketed, you may as well save your breath to cool your soup.
It's best to just support the intent of the movement rather than kibitz about the branding.
Agree Dale.
One Judge, has done more than kibitz including matters to celebrate like the following court decision which puts real reports back inside the Pentagon when their 'truth-to-power' work product is critically important:
**********
Per PBS:
"Court Ruling: Judge Paul Friedman ruled the [trump-hegseth policy was "viewpoint-discriminatory" and lacked due process, favoring a lawsuit by The New York Times.
Access Dispute: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth argued the restrictions were "common sense" to prevent security leaks, not to censor, while critics argued they were designed to stifle unfavorable coverage.
Impact: The policy caused a mass exodus of traditional reporters, resulting in a new, mostly pro-Trump, and ideological media presence in the building.
Current Status: While the judge ordered the reinstatement of credentials, the Pentagon plans to appeal the decision.
******************************************************
UPDATE:
Per the Attorney, THEODORE J. BOTROUS, Jr. who represented the Plaintiffs, Judge Freidman ordered the restoration of Press credentials "immediately".
The ruling applies ALL real journalist not just the Plaintiffs. Good job Ted!
Yes, that makes a lot of sense.
Still, I think it points to the very heart of what is wrong with American culture today.
As experts of fascism has shown, before fascists can win democratic elections, the culture ITSELF has to shift, both on the left and right, and for instance begin to accept lying/falsehoods MUCH more.
I think this is a perfect illustration of this fact.
"save your breath to cool your soup". Never heard that! HA-HA!
Marj, my mom used to say that all the time. She was smart as a whip. Even as a repressed evangelical, she accomplished a lot in her 92 years. Her last official paid occupation was teaching "new math" to First- and Second-Graders until she retired at age 83.
When I was 9 or 10, Mom and I were in the kitchen having a "discussion." She was winning. In exasperation, I shouted, "You don't love me! I'm adopted!" and wheeled out of the room. Without missing a beat, she called out, "You're not adopted. We never would've picked you!"
Right now, there are over 3,000 registered sites. People are urged to register even if it is 2-3 people. Even more important is for people to stay safe and know their rights. Go to the link Bryan posted and read up on everything.
Thanks for this concise call to action. Shared!
Cannot emphasize enough. I was once a Congressional intern whose job it was to open incoming letters and answer them. Every letter -- always answered, no exceptions -- I think still the rule for all 435 + 100....
ICTT, you just exemplified what I love about this forum: you added your own personal experience. (And, you're an excellent writer as well.)
Thanks for the kind words.
As I've stated elsewhere today, I'm working on a lifelong dream of becoming a published writer. (Writing the novels is easy; getting an agent is another thing!) I have admired your prose. You have talent.
How about publishing it yourself? I heard some writers are doing just that these days.
President Metamucilini? That's a first! Thank you!
You can leave messages on the DC phone lines. Constituents are usually redirected to local offices for constituent services.
And many in Congress have their email set up so that only those with addresses in their state can get through.
I left this above after another comment, but worth repeating -
My first round of emails from the contact me links had a lot bounce back saying I wasn't a constituent so it either didn't get sent or basically wouldn't be read. So I changed the way I sent messages. I use one of their own in state addresses (listed on my spreadsheet to help with this) on the address line because technically it doesn't say "my" address. I also don't want to misrepresent myself any more than that, so in my messages I typically put (at the bottom) that while I'm not a constituent, I am reaching out because (insert name) does represent me on the (insert committee that fits the topic my message is about).
Another thing I do is call after hours. I don't leave my name or address/zip code so my voice doesn't go towards a count, but the more they hear from us, the better.
I also send faxes using faxzero.com (5 free/day). I don't send a lot of letters, but when I do I put the same “while I’m not a constituent” blurb I do in my emails.
It sounds like a good idea, however having worked in legislators offices they pay no attention to emails, letters, or phone calls from people outside their district or state.
It's a reality, that emailing, calling and writing to legislators from outside your district or state is satisfying but unproductive use of your resources.
Better to keep at it with your reps and senators.
It sounds like a good idea, however having worked in legislators offices they pay no attention to emails, letters, or phone calls from people outside their district or state.
It's a reality, that emailing, calling and writing to legislators from outside your district or state is satisfying but unproductive use of your resources.
Better to keep at it with your reps and senators.
Thanks, Megan!
Much appreciated!
You’re welcome! Thanks for speaking up right now!
Sorry I've been MIA--just coming up for air after completing a huge project!
I echo what MLMinET said! We do what we can while we also live our day to day lives.
Life must go on … no apologies necessary.
With a little luck you can find another huge project Joanne!
The forces behind the Trump regime have engineered the fastest decent into autocracy in modern history. We all need to be fully aware of what we are protesting at No Kings on Saturday. Given the onslaught of attacks on our rights, freedoms and institutions it is hard to keep track. The report below tracks many dimensions of functioning democracies and ranks countries on them.
The destruction of America's democracy in the context of the erosion of democracies and the rise of autocracies worldwide is documented in this report. It is not just happening here.
https://v-dem.net/documents/75/V-Dem_Institute_Democracy_Report_2026_lowres.pdf
Trump is a criminal President. He was in his first term, now he's perfecting it. He, along with Israel has been committing war crimes one after another and will not stop.
I take issue with Heather over her statement that," Iran continues to target the United States, its allies, and world oil supplies". Iran has not "targeted", it is responding in kind to the escalation of actions by the its attackers. If Trump doesn't go TACO on his threat to destroy the power grid in Iran, then Iran has promised that it will respond and destroy oil facilities and desalinization plants in Gulf countries, which will cause the death of thousands of workers in those countries. All this to keep 2 criminal leaders out of court.
None of this was necessary; Iran posed no threat to the USA or Israel. Iran is one of the 3 annoying countries that objects to Israel's past 70-80 years of ethnic cleansing and now genocide.
Trump using his presidency to right every wrong he perceives done to him.
James McMullan No Kings posters to download for free and with artist's permission
Steve Brodner
.https://stevebrodner.substack.com/p/james-mcmullan-posters?publication_id=247331&utm_campaign=email-post-title&r=dvsxz&utm_medium=email.
Our Indivisible group has some outstanding artists who make their own signs. Some people aren’t artists but their words on signs are incredible. I love my people!
The Mad King is weak, scared, out of ideas, and his dementia is starting to gallop.
He's not going to get better. This can't end well.
Feels like it can’t end, period.
SCOTUS is hearing arguments today in on counting late arriving mail-in ballots. A decision could be announced before the midterms.
Four Republican-led states have recently changed their laws to bar the counting of late‑arriving mail ballots are Georgia, Iowa, North Carolina, and Ohio. Each has shifted its deadline so that mailed ballots must now be received by Election Day (or by poll‑closing time) to be counted in federal races, eliminating or sharply curtailing prior post‑Election‑Day grace periods.
Add this to to the USPS changing that the postmark date no longer is the date you mailed something. It is now the date that mail is "first processed" which can be days after you dropped your ballot or income tax forms in a mail box. It does not provide proof that your ballot should be counted or that your taxes were filed by the April 15th deadline unless you mailed them days before the due dates.
The SAVE America Act is currently being debated in the Senate with no resolution in sight. The vote to debate the bill was 51 to 48 with Lisa Murkowski as the only Republican to cross the aisle and vote with Democrats. Trump is continuing to pressure Senate Republicans to pass the act which would require either a carve out to suspend the filibuster rule which requires 60 votes, not just a 60% majority of those voting. Please be sure to let your members of Congress know that you want them to support mail-in voting.
Other Senate floor business can go on while the SAVE America Act is pending, but only if the chamber agrees to set the bill aside (typically by unanimous consent) or shifts to other business by motion; otherwise it remains the “pending business” and controls the floor. Agreeing to a motion (such as a motion to proceed to other business), which itself may be debatable and therefore subject to delay.
In the current “marathon debate” posture on the SAVE America Act, Republicans are explicitly trying to keep the bill continuously before the Senate to maximize pressure and media focus, which makes such unanimous‑consent detours less likely unless both party leaders see an interest in handling time‑sensitive items (e.g., key nominations, expiring funding).
So, in procedural terms, nothing in the rules forces the Senate to do nothing else while the SAVE America Act is pending; it’s a strategic choice by leadership and the conference whether to keep it on the floor nonstop or to intermittently step away to handle other floor business.
The Senate could ping pong back and forth between debating the DHS funding bill and SAVE America. Republicans have rejected a Democratic proposal to fund TSA and other DHS agencies, and just continue the debate related to ICE and CBP.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-tackles-dispute-mail-ballots-ahead-november-elections-rcna263748
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/supreme-court-will-decide-whether-states-can-count-late-arriving-mail-ballots-a-trump-target-ahead-of-midterms
The enemy is relentless. When you kill a rattlesnake, even though one severs the head the body writhes into the next day.
BREAKING 7:37 AM
Trump is postponing strikes on Iranian power plants for 5 days pending progress in talks over the last two days.
News got a quick pop in the SP500 pre-market trade--it had broken below the key 200 day moving average on Friday and below key support from November. The jump is starting to fade, but there was high volume for pre-market on the news. It will be interesting to see if it lasts past the market makers clearing orders by 10 AM.
It might be a good day to put writing to your members of Congress about investigating insider trading in the Trump administration on you to do list for after the midterms.
It dropped because Iran stated no such talks ever happened! Trump and cronies lied to get the market rate up. It didn’t last because of what Iran said. The fools think they’re playing us!
Megan, you are my hero.
Thank you so very much.
"Carry on my wayward daughter." :-)
Love your actions.
In my state(CA), you cannot contact a Representative unless they represent your district. So, how do I contact other Congresspeople that don’t represent my district or my state?
My first round of emails from the contact me links had a lot bounce back saying I wasn't a constituent so it either didn't get sent or basically wouldn't be read. So I changed the way I sent messages. I use one of their own in state addresses (listed on my spreadsheet to help with this) on the address line because technically it doesn't say "my" address. I also don't want to misrepresent myself any more than that, so in my messages I typically put (at the bottom) that while I'm not a constituent, I am reaching out because (insert name) does represent me on the (insert committee that fits the topic my message is about).
Another thing I do is call after hours. I don't leave my name or address/zip code so my voice doesn't go towards a count, but the more they hear from us, the better.
I also send faxes using faxzero.com (5 free/day). I don't send a lot of letters, but when I do I put the same “while I’m not a constituent” blurb I do in my emails.
Clever and honest… that’s the way to be. Thank you.
Wow, this is next level!
I live in a very blue state so contacting my 2 senators and house rep didn’t seem like it was enough. Unprecedented times call for something different than normal, so for me that’s been reaching out to as many Republicans in Congress that I can - repeatedly.
Last fall, I called Maxwell Frost’s office one evening to thank him for his work on Oversight. I said I was not a constituent. I got a call back the next day from a staffer, who asked for my name bc they wanted to tell him about the call.
Oh interesting! I don’t get calls back…I wonder if they’ve changed part of their routine because they’re so swamped. Granted I do leave my name typically in voicemails so I’m not sure
I think it was a one off tbh. Also, the staffer sounded kind of young..,
Sure, because they'll hit you up for a donation.
Been getting those emails from legislators you never heard of asking for money.
ever wonder how they git your address?
Call one and complain and see what happens.
It sounds like a good idea, however having worked in legislators offices they pay no attention to emails, letters, or phone calls from people outside their district or state complaing.
It's a reality, that emailing, calling and writing to legislators from outside your district or state is satisfying but unproductive use of your resources.
Better to keep at it with your reps and senators.
Sorry, but I won’t stop thanking those who are doing the work my reps won’t. Everyone likes to hear they’re doing a good job, and they know they are being favorably compared to their R slackers.
Simple. You write or call whoever you goddamn please. It is YOUR first amendment right. Regardless of how a person is elected or where the constituency is located that person votes for or against legislation which affects everyone
I live in MIchigan, but in addition to my senators and my *useless" Congressman Tom Barrett, I regularly contact Speaker Johnson, Congressmen Scalise and Jeffries, and Senators Thune, Schumer, Durbin. I rarely get through but I've left messages.
As a former Michigander, I love your image and moniker of the Mitten!
It sounds like a good idea, however having worked in legislators offices they pay no attention to emails, letters, or phone calls from people outside their district or state.
It's a reality, that emailing, calling and writing to legislators from outside your district or state is satisfying but unproductive use of your resources.
Better to keep at it with your reps and senators.
I wish our “representative “ Bill Huizenga even did that! Megan Rothery!
Your bit.ly link took me to Goodreads and a book called "Goodtrouble". Does the link need to be updated?
Thanks for checking, you have to make sure you capitalize the G. It’s case sensitive
"Sitting beside Trump, the prime minister of Japan, Sanae Takaichi, appeared taken aback."
She literally looked as though her eyes were about to pop right out of her head. Yet she kept her hands folded in her lap, like a delicate, untouched napkin, the way you would expect a master of nonverbal communication to look and act -- full of poise, class, grace -- attributes of true character our wretched, 3-year-old, demented psychotic will never know a thing about.
Prime Minister Takaichi of Japan is 65 years old, has a bachelor's degree in business administration and her political training is from the Matsushita Institute of Government and Management (a premier leadership academy), but also through a U.S. Fellowship which allowed her to work in Washington with Representative Patricia Schroeder of Colorado. To relax she is a Heavy Metal drummer, rides a Motorcycle and Scuba Dives. Yes, she is also “full of poise, class, grace”, but there is no doubt she could kick Trump’s stupid ass both physically and mentally. "I am woman, hear me roar..."
She is also Japan’s first female prime minister. Imagine what intelligence, will power, and political skill that involves!
Every woman he encounters is smarter than him. It’s why he has such distain for women. He’s not a ladies man. He’s an insecure idiot.
I so wish someone in a leadership position would just turn to him and say, “What the hell are you talking about? You make ZERO sense. You are an unserious fool.”
I never doubted that for a second.
Didn't know that about her. She's kick-ass! 💓
She rides? My kind of lady. Wow.
Heavy metal drummer too!🥁
Drummers hold up half the sky.
Oh yes, as do women…
Seems women drummers might hold up more than half
Yeah. She is known for riding a Kawasaki Z400GP motorcycle.
https://www.facebook.com/japandailydotjp/photos/sanae-takaichi-the-rocker-who-became-prime-ministerbefore-leading-japan-prime-mi/1301231748713143/
RIGHT ON!!!
I am smitten. Where were women like that when I was in my youth...
James Vander Poel, they were all around…but each generation has these POVs, which tend to obscure ‘the there there’. I do not know your age of course, but am assuming you may be over 60?
Women like her were all around us. We just never saw them because so many were repressed by, ... "tradition", aka society in a rut. She reminds me of a Chicana I studied with during undergrad. She was offered a full rife to a prestigious law school. She confided in me that her father stopped talking to her because he was upset that she was breaking tradition. He felt that at here age she should be thinking only about finding a husband to take care of her and having children. She accepted the offer of a "lifetime."
On The Other Hand. Back Here in The USA:
AIR FORCE ACADEMY PREPARES IDEOLOGICAL OVERHAUL, with ERIKA KIRK
https://theintercept.com/2026/03/19/air-force-academy-charlie-erika-kirk/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=The%20Intercept%20Newsletter
Our guys need to hear about how Jesus loves those who serve and die.
I read that yesterday, but couldn't bring myself to tell anyone about it. I have a cousin who graduated from the Academy in the late '60s, and I'll bet he's not too happy to see this news. I'm losing my respect for the Air Force.
It's not the Air Force, it's worse: it's the Damned country. As I learn more about what we have done, consistently, in the past to other countries, I am amazed at how tolerant citizens of those countries have been to us. Vietnam, for instance, you can do there and be treated like any other traveler. I was all over Vietnam for a month and never, as an American, felt uncomfortable.
Thanks for posting that article. Scary stuff. This obsession with "removing DEI elements from the admissions process", and everywhere else in government, is so nonsensical. Every time I read that how they will not let up on it I fear they will what to remove the Constitution from the National Archives because it includes the words "We the People", which, when you think about it, it is another way of saying DEI. But then again they are not smart enough to figure that out.
WOW!! I did not know this...I love this woman!
Wow!
Patriot
Sir Walter Scott
The Lay of the Last Minstrel
Canto VI
Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd,
As home his footsteps he hath turn'd,
From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no Minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonor'd, and unsung.
This additional poem has likely be posted here more than once, but when we're overwhelmed by the evil of the present time, the long view can provide a little (temporary) relief.
Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Wonderful choice, Sue! I'm sure there's someone who could produce an Ozymandias statue, appropriately labelled Donald J Trump (he likes to see his name) and the pungent 2-line quotation, and lie it down where it can be seen by everyone going past the quondam White House.
I keep dreaming of it!
Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Truth through poetry. One of my faves.
Speaking of Ozymandias, check this out. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2026/mar/02/ancient-egypt-ramses-and-the-pharaohs-gold-exhibition-battersea-power-station
Thank you, Rebecca! I was in Egypt last fall and visited Abu Simbel. The four statues of Ramses II, each representing stages of his life from child to old man, were both impressive and horrifying. And they all kinda looked the same: bland half-smiling face and rigid sitting posture. It was also fascinating to learn the entire complex, the massive rock-cut temple and the statues, were moved in 1968 to higher ground to keep it from being submerged by Lake Nasser after construction of the Aswan High Dam. Quite the engineering feat! Glad I went then, not this year.
When I was about 9, my white-haired Grannie in England (the one who admired Eleanor Roosevelt) sent to me in Australia her beautiful miniature boxed set (leather-bound, vellum, gold leaf) of The Complete Poetical Works of Sir Walter Scott. She marked a few she particularly wanted me to know. The Lay of the Last Minstrel was the first one I read. "This is my own, my native land" stuck to me like my skin - I didn't ask to come to Australia, and I wept each New Year's Eve because it was another year that I was away from my own, my native land.
"No one mourns the wicked." just popped into my head- again.
I cry not for Corey, nor not a tear for GEO. Why did the latter refuse the former’s reported corrupt quid pro quo? A wild guess: It had nothing to do with all the right reasons like virtue, ethics, and legality.
I say that a lot. In fact that is almost certainly the tag line on my post the day The Grump meets his maker.
Soon, please!
Soon, please…
This was almost a carbon copy of his insulting remarks to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz at their Oval Office press gaggle last June when he told him that 'D-Day was not a pleasant day for you' and joked about Germany re-arming.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-germany-merz-visit-d-day-anniversary-nazis-b2764628.html
Yes, that's right. Cl(ass) all the way with this one.... What a fucking imbecile.
Well, with Melania preferring to keep at least one state between herself and Donald, technically he is currently probably a non-fucking imbecile. (And Stormy Daniels and other women will no longer touch him with a 10-foot pole.)
Which goes a long way to explain Little Donald’s rage and violence!
Another poster said yesterday he thought Donald was a closet case. I responded..."speaking unofficially on behalf of the other team, you can keep him. We're just not that interested..."
Well, Trump is a pedophile, and hardly in-the-closet
(Specifically, Donald is a hebephile and an ephebophile, but those psychiatric distinctions are generally not made in the news media nor in common discourse.) His disturbing criminal proclivities are well documented – and increasingly so as more and more of the Trump–Epstein Files are released and additional evidence and testimony revealed.
No Way He's Gay. No Effen Way!
Then why, Judith, at his public rallies is he always imitating jerking off two guys simultaneously?
And his love of the Village People's song, "YMCA"?
Well said, brother!!
There needs to be a long discussion and dialogue about gender in our country. There is a lot of disinformation and ignorance and fear.
There has always been fluidity in gender throughout human civilization with both heterosexual and LGBQT plus themes and people in mythology and cultures.
The knowledge and or openness comes and goes. The creative group has always been fluid more than not and I would wonder about fluidity being part of us but we just have not be allowed to see it .
So many famous people possibly had open or severer lives . J Edgar Hoover, Oscar Wilde, Roger Casement, Gertrude Stein, Adrianne Rich, Audre Lorde to name a few recent folk. Boston marriages were common and then not. There was a huge terrible so called Lavender scare during McCarthyism in the State Department.
Lots and lots and layers of silences in every system from the Vatican to board rooms to the military( to even my family and other families ) which were so supportive because any military person knows while in the foxholes no one mostly is not an atheist and no one cares what gender your peer aligns with as long as you trust them in guarding your back. Gender choice or preference or isness out the window as it should be all the time. Human is human.
It gets more complex when sex abuse is involved and again much misinformation and ignorance. Since sex abuse is a tool used for power and control the sex is not the point. But sex can be pleasurable even when forced so it can so confusing to survivors if same sex abuse. It would take a book to explain all the details .
Our current president is and has been an offender in a variety of ways. And who knows his actual identification? Only an assessment by an experienced evaluator could possibly find out. And that should be confidential.
All of his the speculation and just the horrific lines of actions we have begun to learn about old old evils that hopefully if nothing ends clear the way for a non patriarchal, no gender basis infrastructure and systems and community life.
There's always Alina habba, Ivanka, noem, Bondi, and of course Leavitt. They knew the price for getting the jobs they got with thier "qualifications".
Left out Putin stooge Gabbard.
Add to that his insults about Robert Mueller! ANYONE who disagrees with him on ANYTHING is belittled, berated, and suffers his wrath. Ever since he came down that elevator, I feel like we are stuck in a scene from, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest!”
He isn’t just classless. He’s a dangerous personality. When Bob Mueller dies…an actual hero and person who SERVED his country valiantly and for his entire life died, Trump said he was glad because he couldn’t hurt innocent people.
And the dipshits who follow Trump like the devil worship believe that Bob Mueller hurt innocent people. Because they are fucking ignorant, they don’t understand how Bob Muller kept THEM and their families safe for decades. How he prosecuted organized crime which targeted THEIR children with drugs and enticed their daughters into prostitution, maybe even broke a cousin’s leg over a gambling debt. Trump PARDONED a known drug trafficker for MONEY. Bob Mueller, under his leadership, thwarted terrorist attacks by foreign and MANT domestic terrorists who would have blown up their business. But, hey, let’s thank TRUMP. not the person who did his best to PROTECT our country, not rob or extort it. Not drive it into the ground. Do these people think they’ll thrive under a dictatorship? Maybe, they are that deluded to think their job at Wal Mart will get them into the “inner circle” at Mar A Lago.
People get baffled by mob violence….How could that happen? We could read reports from over the years how fraternities, sororities, any group of kids, girls and boys could gang up on one person. A group of five guys beating one guy whose on the ground and they continue to kick and stomp on his head. A group of five of girls harassing a single girl to kill herself, tormenting her with social pariah. And you see the parents go….how could you have participated in this? Why didn’t you walk away or stop it?
Look where we are at. Any entire maga mob from TOP down celebrating the death of a hero because he had the audacity to follow the law and do his job which is to investigate threats to out pr country. A whole party going after .0001% of the population. Weak kids…KIDS are being used as political fodder. The majority of whom have never met a trans person in real life. But let’s rally up a mob to hate and harass them. Somalis minding TNEIR own business…not so fast…MAGA needs a new enemy. Even though the leader of MAGA has stolen more money from this country than any robbery team, gangster or even MADAOFF combined.
And what do kids usually say….they were just copying what they saw.
Trumps is a fucking decrepit. He’s a scumbag. A thief, a LIAR. A bully. A misogynist. A know nothing. A traitor to country and friend. And he’s fucking HORRIBLE at his job. Hands down in one year…either the best asset to our enemies or the dumbest fuck to ever stumble into the office. He is bankrupting us in treasure and spirit. Every single thing he and his thugs have got TNEIR hands on has gone to shit and it’s only been 14 months. Not one single thing in American lives has improved. Literally nothing.
Even our precious celebration of 250 years of democracy will be a funeral instead of a birth of more promise. An MMA fight on the WH lawn. Could we be any MORE classless. A prostitute for a First Lady (nobody thinks that’s what is in Epstein files?), a cabinet more concerned about hair gel than American lives, ZERO promise of a future for our kids.
Now ICE already hurting people in airports. Been to an airport lately? Lots of kids. Lots of tired passengers who walk around a bit dazed and confused…now going to be shot dead if they don’t follow some masked goose stepping moron who will be “glad they’re dead”. How many ICE surrounded Renee Good and Alex Pretti before they were murdered? A small mob and what did her murdered say over her dead body? Called her a bitch.
Just like his dear leader….”just following orders”.
Your second paragraph, Marcus. What do you do with a cadre of people that (in my case) I worked with who are not idiots and should know better STILL believe the garbage they are fed from their propaganda streams?
And John Cleese had never heard of Trump when he wrote the "Don't talk about the War" episode of Fawlty Towers. It's not funny any more.
He also didn’t have a joke about market manipulation. We will NEVER get the truth about this war or anything else. Those students in Iran in 1979 were part of a coalition with so many others that didn’t want to be led by a corrupt Shah. But once the Ayatollah saw the power he had, he immediately ceased it. It is impossible not to see the American people as the next Iranians.
Ignorance is strength, y'know.
I felt taken aback just watching it, and then felt dread hearing those boorish words come out Donold’s sphincter of a mouth. Probably people just can’t believe what a tactless, brutish wretch Donold is until he starts uttering his indecent remarks and babbling on about his MAGAfascist thoughts and rhetoric.
Donold is way beyond embarrassing at this point: he’s a bloody liability, has been radioactive for a long time now, and anyone that had any sense would have jettisoned him overboard on the deranged ship of state that is the Trump regime, by now.
Can Congress critters be impeached for not doing their jobs to impeach him or invoke the 25th amendment?
Lynn, the short answer is "no." The slightly longer answer is that we are stuck with them until they are up for re-election. The only way a legislator can be removed from office prior to the end of their elected term is through "expulsion" by a 2/3 majority of their colleagues in the chamber, a virtual impossibility.
https://www.thoughtco.com/can-members-of-congress-be-recalled-3368240
Let’s go for it! Lindsey G first
Lynn, I'm afraid Ms. Lindsey has too many butties in the GOP closet to hope for any success of that mission.
Yes! What is unfathomable to me, and others surely, is that polls keep showing about 30% of U.S. still supports this admin...No matter how awful its Potus and its dept heads. Yes, there may always be bigots and ignorant, uneducated people but the members of the US Congress and Senate still supporting??? What's their excuse???
It was distressing to hear that Sanae Takaichi was roundly criticized at home for not verbally responding to Trump. Possibly people who have not watched the evil clown show that is a Trump press conference don’t realize that her restrained reaction was the only way to defuse his attention seeking remarks. Otherwise he would have geared up and who knows where that would have gone.
Isn’t she the person who gently brought him back after he wandered cluelessly around a room, looking lost in space?
If she would have stood up to him he would probably bombed Japan, that's how fragile his ego is. I just wish he'd get laughed at and called out when he lies which of course is every time he opens his "...spincter of a mouth.", as horhai says.
Vivian, if you don't follow Jeff Tiedrich, I heartily recommend that you do so. He refers to Donald's facial orifice as his "rancid anus mouth."
On March 31, 2020, he suggested that a Pulitzer Prize should be awarded to the first "worthless scribbler" who stood up and asked Donald, "What the fuck is wrong with you?" He began counting the days that no one in the press asked the question. We are at Day 1,817.
https://www.jefftiedrich.com
Or "anus under his nose" as TC says.
There has never been anything presidential about DJT.
Yes, and what I would want to be known for as president is associating myself with a "day that will live in infamy". ~FDR
Like many other physicians I am watching the progressive deterioration of this man’s function with tremendous anxiety.
An individual exhibiting such erratic behavior might well be brought in by a relative wondering about guardianship or at least taking away their car keys. The notion that these shifting and unpredictable, disconnected and unfiltered impulses are permitted to determine the day to day well-being of the present and future world is madness itself.
That there are those in his circle who daily deny and hide what must be even more apparent to them in his day to day functioning is absolutely criminal. It’s a crime for an individual impaired by alcohol to drive a car and those enabling such behavior - and certainly those encouraging it - would be deemed equally responsible for the injuries to others that resulted.
Look at what he has brought about in three weeks. And he is now threatening - with a deadline - to destroy the entire energy infrastructure of a country of 90 million people???? Who will stop him?
THIS IS MADNESS.
Dr. Cohen, re - "Look at what he has brought about in three weeks. And he is now threatening - with a deadline - to destroy the entire energy infrastructure of a country of 90 million people???? Who will stop him?" - the answer is that the U.S. military is supposed to refuse to commit war crimes. Supposed to.
No , no doctor, he seems well enough, to me.. right as rain..
JFC, I will never forgive the people who voted for this.
Mike, I don't know if you're being sarcastic or not. I don't believe trump is suffering from dementia. I believe he is just pure evil. his ridiculous remarks are just red meat for his not going anywhere base who will follow him into hell if asked. I've listened to some of his speeches, but prefer reading them and, while gobbledygook and tortured English language, they don't seem like dementia, they seem more like the rantings of an uneducated egotistical psychopath which cannot be cured through medication.
We let trump off the hook when we blame his behavior on dementia. People suffering dementia have deteriorating cognitive problems caused by a degenerative brain disease. trump is just an evil man who is a master of manipulation.
What I find so difficult to understand is that 40% of those polled have no problem supporting this vile, vindictive, selfish man and refuse to acknowledge to themselves that trump cares nothing for them, he only cares about enriching himself. I never knew that such a large portion of our country could be so gullible and evil as he. This doesn't bode well for democracy. We must show up to vote in masses so large we can't be ignored or gerrymandered out of attempting to save our country before it's totally destroyed.
I agree. It's not dementia. It's his sociopathic malignant narcissism , arrested development that makes him tick. Request from a Canadian and likely the world...PLEASE, PLEASE ,for the love of humanity VOTE in numbers too big too fuck with demand impeachment, indictment.
Sharon, I believe he is physically and mentally ill and evil. And I also am finding it almost impossible to forgive family and friends who I know voted for him
Helen, I agree with you. Blaming this psychopathy and narcissism on dementia excuses his behavior which both calculating and cunning. Supposedly there is therapy available for those who suffer psychopathy and /or narcissism. They tend to not seek therapy because in their narcissistic state they believe everyone loves them. My husband had a coworker who suffered from both. He believed everyone loved him when in reality he was loathed by his coworkers, bosses and former friends. He never sought therapy believing there was nothing wrong with him. He, like trump, was also a bullied, neglected child.
Luckily none of my immediate family voted for or supports trump but some of my friends do. It is very hard to forgive them even if we miss their friendship dearly. I have one longtime friend of almost 40 years and my husband has a longtime friend of over 50 years that we still associate with but I have cut many others from my life. My friend is a one issue voter- abortion-, as is her husband. It's so sad how many friendships trump has destroyed, especially knowing that he cares nothing for them, it's all a cruel manipulation of the gullible. The only one he cares about is himself. I keep waiting for them to come to this realization, but so far they're still standing by him. I don't know what will release them from their cultish devotion. Maybe his death? At least one can hope.
I’m not an expert on dementia, or evil. I just hate what this bastard is doing. If there’s a diagnosis.. fine .. there’s the reason… either way.. evil or crazy.. I hate the people who put him in power. Until my dying day I will.
I appreciate your anger but while there is also a strong psychiatric dimension to his behavior, we are also seeing what presents as something powerfully consistent with an organic deterioration. This matters and certainly does not “get him off the hook”. I’m not writing from a moral viewpoint but rather a medical one.
So how do you explain his behavior from adulthood on? he's always been a sociopath. Dementia just seems a handy excuse to explain the sociopathy he's always had. Maybe it's worsening but that could be due to the fact that he's in love with power and now has the ability to wield it so destructively, further feeding his sociopathy and narcissism.
Sharon, when dementia sets in you often see a kind of collapse of functions around the essence of the personality issues of the individual.
You’re correct that Trump has evidenced sociopathy and a kind of narcissistic panic which has driven his behavior throughout his adult years, amplified by relationships with people like Roy Cohn and Jeffrey Epstein.
But the type of decline we’re seeing - completely confusing names and places and unable to track where he is and why he’s there - the complete disorganization of his speech. This is not symptomatic of his other personality issues but is of organic decline. This is important because his confusion only renders him more dangerous, as its progressive. It also means that the intensity of his emotional reactions are even less checked.
Dementia, mental illness or just cunning manipulation. Realistically none of it even matters. he won't be impeached nor will the 25th amendment be used to get us out of this hellscape. We won't be done with him until he dies or leaves office in 2029 if the sycophantic "supreme" court doesn't find a way to do an end run around the 22nd amendment. I wouldn't put it past them.
Sharon, even though I share your revulsion, I don't agree with your appraisal and I wonder if you have direct experience with dementia.
First, it's necessary to understand that Donald was born with a learning disability that was not addressed by his parents, who left the care of their children up to the domestic help.
A study of Donald's speech and vocabulary over the years corroborates the learning disability. Donald has always used a particular set of favorite words and phrases, augmented by a limited vocabulary. Speech experts have noted a significant decline in Donald's vocabulary over the past decade. But those pet words and phrases continue to be repeated like treading on a well-worn path.
Other cognition experts are noting definite symptoms of cognitive decline, such as speech aphasia (the inability to pronounce familiar words), confusion, memory lapses, abrupt mood swings, etc. that are more extreme than common "senior moments."
Donald's parents never awarded him a moral compass, and he has lived his entire life without one. But that problem is now exacerbated by his recognizable cognitive decline.
My mother suffered dementia and I worked with the elderly, several suffered dementia but none were evil.
Many are born with learning difficulties. They don't become sociopaths if they have proper nourishment by their parents. Our son was diagnosed with several learning disabilities, including suspicion of dyslexia , since it's both more prevalent in males and those who are left handed plus ADHD. He is one of the most compassionate people I know. I have three autistic grandchildren. All are sweet and compassionate. Our son's wife was also diagnosed with a learning disability. She also is sweet and compassionate.
My husband worked with a narcissist who was also a sociopath. he was also bullied by his father. Other children are bullied but don't remain bullies throughout their lives or develop into socio/psychopaths. Many grow up to be wonderful, caring adults in spite of it. Our daughter's childhood friend is one.
Dementia is just being used as a deceitful way to excuse trump's disgusting behavior. he has been this way for literally decades. Has he had dementia since his young adult days? What excused his disgusting behavior then?
Sharon, I'm sorry that you've had first-hand experience with dementia, as have I. You should know, then, that cognitive decline presents differently in every patient. In fact, that's why it has been difficult to track and treat.
My mom was sharp-witted but sweet-natured all of her life, but when dementia took over her life, certain circumstances would trigger her and she would become loud and combative, to the point that she had to be restrained. She was a different person.
I strongly disagree with your assertion that "dementia is just being used as a deceitful way to excuse Trump's disgusting behavior." At least, nobody in this forum is excusing him with that. We simply observe that he is presenting with symptoms of dementia.
Indeed, Donald has had numerous personality disorders, psychopathy and sociopathy. I avoid the word, "evil" because that carries a religious connotation which clouds dispassionate evaluation.
In Donald's case, he can be – and is – both sociopathic and demented.
The definition of evil is not only rooted in religion. Per Oxford Dictionary- adjective- meaning profoundly immoral and wicked.
I just don't see it in the speeches and quotes I've seen. As for slurred speech it sounds more like the after effects of a stroke. How much of his "dementia" is deliberate red meat to his base just to make the "woke libs" cry as we focus on that? he's very calculating and manipulative.
My mom was 97 plus when she died and although she was suffering dementia her speech was perfect as were the several clients I dealt with suffering dementia.
Sorry, this just sounds like excusing him because "he knows not what he does." Sorry, I hold him fully accountable for his actions.
You and me both, Brother.
I’m with ya sister… problem is the sycophants around him are in it for the power and/or money and they aren’t going to let us do the right thing. But… it seems like some folks are getting are exhibiting a bit of morality and decency lately… we can only wait.
The political equivalent of Weekend with Bernie.
One day soon, an angry, sleepless, demented old man will wander into the White House briefing room clad only in his Depends, and pretend to make love to a flagpole once he sees the astonished reporters all going [click, click, click]....
Imagine how Karoline Spokesbarbie's gonna 'splain THAT one to us.
ICTT, I figure Donald has so many minders positioned throughout the White House, that delicious scene will never take place. When he wanders out of the royal bed chamber wearing only his paunch and mushroom, some kindly Secret Service agent will gently steer him back to his boudoir and summon a royal dresser to make the necessary repairs.
Agree. Surely Vance & Thiel are studying the 25th amendment?
- ret. cdc epidemiologist & preventive medicine specialist, MD MPH MS, FACPM
And he’s already quietly strangled the energy infrastructure of Cuba.
The deranged, malicious rants he DOES post make me wonder about what he thinks but FORGETS to post.
My husband just read with his latest Iran announcement at 7:00 am this morning, aka stock manipulation, stock market players once again made a boatload of money. Why isn't he in jail for not just insider trading but actually manipulating the market? I think back to poor "I'm not a witch" Christine O'Donnell who faced possible jail for using some of her campaign money on a pizza party to thank her campaign workers and voters. I think the amount was a few thousand dollars. If I remember correctly, Sam Altman(?) is serving a jail-term of over one hundred years for crypto scams, yet trump and his family have scammed people out of billions and not a sound from the republican sycophants in office. Now they're looking to ease crypto oversight and guess who will profit greatly? trump and his evil spawn.
No Sam Altman isn’t in jail. And thanks to SCOTUS it’s close to impossible to charge a sitting president.
Sorry, wrong Sam. Sam Bankman-Fried. It's so hard to keep track of all the crooks.
"Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison on March 28, 2024, for stealing at least $8 billion from customers of his failed crypto exchange, FTX. While the 31-year-old, first-time offender faced a maximum penalty of over 100 years, the final sentence was significantly lower than prosecutors' recommendation of 40–50 years."
His parents are seeking a pardon from trump according to yesterday's news. I wonder how much money will grease trump's hands to buy his pardon.
True, and conviction with an impeachment will never happen. I guess we'll just have to wait for Mother Nature to intervene, the sooner the better.
He’s really losing it. Walls are closing in, and Corey! Much more than Kristi’s boy toy! Giving direction to spend $$$, take enforcement actions, and having to piggy back on her ID to get in the building. Even 47 admired his grift. The corruption is a sewage tide everywhere you look.
Reading the National Security Brief! Good Lord! 🤷🏼♀️
Well, I believe Trump was recently offering up those National Security briefs to anyone who made a big donation to him.
Think he isn't stock piling ($$$) classified documents.
A big 'donation' in the Mara Lago throne room, where he kept secrets, you say?
Well, trump doesn’t read it.
‘Piggy backing’ into a building is strictly forbidden and is included in the yearly refresher of security training required of anyone with a clearance. If they do not have clearance then they have no business inside restricted buildings!
Get ready for ICE to start rounding up Democratic representatives….
Waiting for ICE to shoot and kill someone in an airport!
Ice will shut down airports. There are MANY immigrants who work in customer service who need to go through TSA to get in. This is a disaster.
It's not a question of "if", but "when" they are going to do it. "Oh? You're refusing to show your passport? You must be a leftist terrorist and traitor, then! BAM!"
I'm surprised its taken this long frankly.
Me too, honestly. You would think that the Orange Goblin King, mad with power, would have started executing his political enemies on day one...
Guess I am now part of a group that is a threat to our government.
You have been that for long, Ally. You're not a cis white angry male, so you have contributed to "the destruction of America", as the MAGAts would say... :/
Success!!!
"Follow the money" is advice that has yet to be wrong even once. Keep following the dark money trails....the Lewandowski trail, the Jared trail, the daily violation of the Emoluments Clause trail, the DOGE-Musk trail, the no-bid ICE contract trail, the GOP billionaire tax-break-gravy-train trail, the "Peace Board" trail, the Russia-Iran oil kickback trail, the Epstein money-laundering trail.
So many💰💰💰 trails, so little time...
All lead to epic corruption.
trump "announced" on "truth" social at approx. 7:20 this morning that he and Iranian negotiators have come to terms on a cease fire. The stock market in Europe immediately jumped over 2%. When Iranian officials tell us they have negotiated nothing the stock market will collapse. In the meantime he and his cronies are making boat loads of money by buying low and selling high. If this was any other elected official (s)he would be in jail already. But trump is allowed to skate. Maybe an investigation into all elected republicans is warranted since none are doing a thing to stop his corruption. Follow the money indeed.
Put on your sturdiest hiking boots…
Are you ready, boots?
The daily recital of this regime's illegal, slimy, ill conceived and cruel actions would or will take something like a Nuremberg style series of trials to confront. When and if we take back our country. It's breathtaking.
We for sure need these trials, but nothing in our history suggests that we’ll ever get them.
Nothing in our history suggested we’d have a convicted felon, rapist, pedophile, and grifter extraordinaire as President either. This entire band of thugs and thieves must be held accountable and whatever assets haven’t been squandered must be returned to the US Treasury.
A just goal. Not gonna happen. The 77 million louts who put Trump in office have been there the whole time but the establishment leaders who were running the political parties wouldn’t give them what they always wanted. They took it for themselves when they found their man, a thug with an “intellect” and temperment matching their own. Reagan seduced the white working class, and finally they took control. The louts throwing spitballs when the teacher wasn’t looking are now in charge and will stay in charge until someone throws them out. Violently or with a credible threat of violence. Who would be capable of that? The military brass have shown themselves to be disloyal to the Constitution. They’re a pack of pirates now. They are not on our side, so we have no mechanism for applying the necessary force.
I think the R's will bring him down well before Nov.
He's goring their ox, now.
It's possible; but pay more attention to the plutocrats behind the curtain. That's what turned "The Party of Lincoln" into the anti-republic party.
He's doing Wall St pump & dump or scare & scoop about 1 news cycle out of 3.
Hope they can track all the insiders that gained on the Wall St today!!
(And post midterms, lock them up until the ill-got gains have been wrung out of them or been worked off at hard labor!)
Exactly! we will have either venture capitalist Sam Altman or more likely Peter Thiel's 'Palantir' AI-enabled population surveillance and control 'governance', plus the Ellison's sole-source-feed MSM & Zuckerberg and Musk's misinfotainment attention triopolies, and Tim Cook's (China's?) vertically-integrated behavior info vacuum & mininfotainment delivery surveillance devices (iphones...), that matter most - much more than JD Vance's Hill Billy Elegy VC wannabe 'leadership', once T is removed.
But it may be better than having T for nearly 3 more years - and both D's & R's may agree on this.
What ox of theirs is he goring?
The mid-term MAGA&R election success rate. & Yes 'goring', not gouging! ;)
I blame the Democrats also. That woman, to whom I donated 1K, (Yeah! another shot at a female President!) And voted for.
Then I heard her: PLEDGE, Her Support for Israel. I wanted to claw that vote right back.
Some think she lost because of Gaza. If so, that's what it should be.
I think it is useful to distinguish between Israel and the Likud regime, just as I distinguish between America and the MAGA government. I actually think these casual conceptual distinctions matter. Solidarity around what Lincoln called "the common right of humanity" is the ultimate cure to divide and conquer, and that involves opposing injustice wherever it appears, whomever is the victim. Excesses and abuses of power always tries to frame its victims as less than fully human; slavery, misogyny, homophobia, conquest and the carnage of wars. I agree that Netanyahu's war on a whole people was and is a war crime, and it was madness for the Democratic party to put forward a morally dishonest response. Friends don't help friends commit war crimes.
As for voting for Harris, we sorely need to identify more comprehensively competent and ethically robust candidates, not just fish around for those with greatest current celebrity. It's like we prize TV ratings over demonstrable fitness; and yet, on election day, when the real world available choice was this or that, Harris was so, so the wisest choice over abstention, let alone a vote for plunder.
The Likud regime has managed to get 90% approval from Jewish Israelis for the genocide and now the war on Iran. MAGA seems to be at least partially in confusion over their choice and they are only 30% of the voters.
As far as We identifying a better candidate for our countries values, I don't think We get to choose. Wasn't Bernie the choice of most Dems? But, he didn't fit into what the party, being controlled by Deep State forces, chose. Is it even possible to have a candidate that AIPAC (Israel First)doesn't support?
Israel? Isn't that a country that we used to refer to as Palestine, now with an equal number of Jews to Palestinians? But, the only population that counts and has rights, even rights to use bomb shelters during alerts are Jews. Palestinians: "Not For You".
That statement had nothing to do with her losing the election. Probably boosted her vote count, if anything.
I'm sure she knew that she had to give assurance to the Israel Firsters, that, Yes, she would continue the Biden billions for ethnic cleansing.
I don't have any idea how many picked up on that remark; it was just campaign "promises/B.S."..but the campaign also would not let Palestinian Americans anywhere near the podium.
...in the meantime, over there in the open air concentration camp: 2k bombs dropping every day.
Another fine product of the obsessional "love of money".
Investigative reporting is meaningful only when it results in indictments. When there is no indictment forthcoming -- that is, when a regime is so Evil it has in effect legalized all crime -- investigative reporting is reduced to naught but a public wallowing in misery. And since legalized crime is now the condition of the failed United States, that is why such reporting is meaningless -- because there is absolutely nothing to suggest the perpe-traitrors of the crime-wave regime will {ever} face trial.
You know who faces trials? In this regime, it ain't the leaders...it's the whistle blowers.
Remember "Anonymous" who was published in the NY Times Oct.5, 2018,"I am part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration. "
Miles Taylor, who also wrote the book: "Anonymous"
Trump is now accusing him of treason.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0D-9_BZisH4
He's courageous and vulnerable. He started Defiance.org and the current action/news is at https://www.defiance.news/. I heard him speak about his family's struggles when they were defending themselves against the barrage of attacks they got, but when he became defiant, it turned transformative and empowering.
The interview is great. Terrific American and wife and their child.
Tough going....friends are "giving him space" for their own survival.
Prob. dangerous to stand near him at Starbucks.
Another place to donate is:
https://endpresidentialrevenge.org/#about
For that Susan, we need a Democratic party with a spine and not by the book.
We have to stop this collective suicide forever, once and for all.
Depends on the book. For sure it will take as much as it takes.
The worst thing this country (presumably when it’s led again by Democrats) can do is sweep all this shit under the rug in the name of “reconciliation.” The deep criminality of this president and all of his accomplices needs to be put on full ugly display. And justice needs to be meted out severely in the name of all those whose lives have ruined or ended by their cruelty. I suspect many of them will flee or put a bullet through their own skulls before facing accountability. That only underscores their cowardice. Either way, truth is coming for them.
Indeed. Nuremberg 2.0 and more. Trump may be protected by the Extreme Court, but he won't be protected from the ICC...or the Civil lawsuits that will bankrupt him and his whole vile family.
There's certainly abundant immaturity and incompetence, but I find the favors to Iran and Russia pushing toward the bounds of treason. I realize that term is often used inappropriately and carelessly, but don't know what could come much closer than basically funneling money toward those literally engaged in deadly actions against us.
The majic word is EPSTEIN.
H.Res.1119 - Impeaching Pamela Bondi, Attorney General of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-resolution/1119/cosponsors
How many here ever really believed that Epstein died of suicide? The dysfunctional cameras outside his cell? The "staffing problem"? The shredding of files on site? Give me a break.
Whether by omission (here, buddy, do the right thing. There's sheets in your cell, and no one is watching) or commission (manual asphyxiation), that in custody death is a homicide.
I think it now IS treason. He is already in that territory. I'm angry as hell at all repugs in D.C. We must rise up mightily on Saturday and Be. Loud.
It's those first 2 letters of Trump's name that form the words treason and traitor, and that's exactly what Donold is...his entire existence has been self-serving and a life of grifting and graft, double-dealing perfidy and duplicity...
He was able to bamboozle too many Americans with his tirades and still mesmerizes the stupid MAGA movement. But he's always been a corrupt, treasonous bastard and that's what makes it so ironic and almost too hard to believe...Even after all this, they still believe Donold is making America great again when he's openly destroying everything great about this nation and selling us all down the river while he and his spawn make a bajillion dollars off of it.
It speaks volumes that the only reason Trump hasn't technically committed treason is because the US has an incredibly weak definition of treason because its founders were in fact traitors themselves to the nation of thier birth.
Interesting take on that!
Surely the sociopath will save us all !!!
If I'm not mistaken, should the US buy Iranian oil, that would fall under "giving aid and comfort to the enemy" clause in the definition of treason according to the Constitution. I could be wrong, but I do no see how buying oil from a country we're calling the enemy, and currently bombing too boot, would not qualify as aid and comfort. Certainly aid.
And he'd finally going completely unhinged. And yet here we all sit while the entire Guardians Of Pedophiles party sits on its hands too cowardly to act in the best interest of the United States, and instead is more concerned with maintaining power at all costs.
I honestly don't recognize this country any longer. And I just don't see how so many could be fooled by one man so effectively.
I'll say what everyone already knows and that is the cabinet and Republicans in DC could start turning this situation around today.
Voters need to remember on 11/3 who sold them out.
This is why the plan is to gerrymander, suppress the vote and rig the count. Someone confident they can win doesn't do that.
Can you remember which president terminated all the green energy investments halfway through implementation?
So very long ago. May have repressed it.
I think that Regan removed solar panels from the White House once Carter left and he was Pres -- could that be it? If my memory serves Regan also uttered something along the lines of: "you've seen one tree, you've seen them all"
Well done - I'd repressed that one, too!
(Named my 2nd son Jimmy 👍)
The more recent, more destructive one I 'repressed', was done by executive order...
Rhetorical?
B^)
Because they wanted to be? They go to a church once a week to be told what to think and who to be and you are surprised they embrace the same direction the other six days a week from the talking heads on Fox News? They get directions from pedophiles on Sunday, why not on monday?
Directly or indirectly we are "buying" Iranian oil, while bombing their country. It's what His Imprudentness calls "The Art of the Deal".
Not only that, allowing Russia to profit, while acknowledging that they are helping Iran target our assets. This is flagrant. Conveniently it hurts Ukraine as well, which is always the side hustle with Trump. Some Constitutional interpreters make a distinguishing requirement for a written declaration of war to meet the standard of treason, but the spirit of the intent is clear.
And the Democratic party will be rounded up by ICE starting tomorrow, making the power grab complete: the US will be a one-party “democracy” like Russia.
Because he’s a liar and the people felt desperate.
The Queens real estate mob boss sundowning as president bullies like a fourth grader, talks like a third grader, has the impulse control of a second grader and the hands of a first grader. His presidency is elementary, dear Watson. Planning is hard. Chaos is easy
And this is the guy with the nuclear codes…
I'm guessing/hoping they have given him fake codes (probably written in crayon) to fool him into thinking he actually has the codes ... the real ones have to be safely stored far away from his tiny hands.
I wish I believed anyone was thinking that strategically.
It should be patently clear to everyone with a functioning brain that we have a psychopath in the WH who is cornered like a rat since he started this illegal war and he will take all of us down with him. I have never felt so sick in my 59 years on this planet. He is beyond unhinged, an absolute threat to the entire world. I will never, never as long as I live, understand why the Republicans are letting him destroy us and now other countries. Fear? Greed? I cannot imagine wanting my career so much and my money that I would become a traitor to not only the country but to the good and decent human beings living here. Also we do not need to be murdering innocent Iranians but here we are. Dear God, what a nightmare.
Easy. They are about to get what they have wanted for so long - minority power. Dems on the run, no PO, no social safety nets, education according to Putin, and money to burn. All with God on their side. Puke, but they are within a hair of getting it and no outlier will stop them. They will stop at nothing.
That’s pretty well putting it in the crosshairs. On our watch we will never succumb to the ignomy of “it.”
Over the Scaffold and through the woods to Donny Johnny’s house we go. We’ll huff and we’ll puff and we won’t bother to bluff when we plant him below. Yes Lin I’m calling for the death penalty via the scaffold deary. The one with the sanction of 12-13. Biblical in its origins code in its sanctions. Oh Donny Boy the sheep the sheep they are calling…12 jurors one death penalty not 3-7-77. “It,” is fitting that be His last supper. Now I must go literally and pick up my burden of shoveling load after load of Trump into the manure spreader. Let the grass grow Marching blade by blade into April’s Oregon opulence springing hope anew. Let the Walls and the Knapps and the McKenzies sheep peacefully graze that grass on Pacific Ocean hills as flowers crowd in to bless Minnesota’s Renee and Alex. Let the breakers break across to the Atlantic shores as if holding hands once again. Let us see our flag that waves the history of us all. Our flag.
Oh. Crap. I fell asleep in my rocker again. I damn well better hurry up and do those dishes before Ma wakes up. Then I’ll go shovel. Whew, that was close! Pretti Good save, lucky they woke me up early.
I’ve believed for some time that the only way out of this is the way no one wants to get to. And they haven’t proven me wrong yet. They will keep pushing until someone snaps, and then it’s Katy bar the door. 400+ million guns and a sociopathic fascist regime is not a good mix.
Guns and sociopathic bears habitually come to their angle of repose. I have guns. I have been attacked 13 times by sociopathic grizzly bears. I have never shot one. I am alive because I had guns not because I shot the bears. I’m entirely happy to be alive. One may condemn me for shooting a black bear in the midst of our sheep. He had killed twelve that night as I shot him killing the 13 th. After the war I tendered my m-60 machine gun, my m-16, my AK-47, my m-80 grenade launcher, my white phosphorus hand grenades and my bayonet and quit killing people altogether. Since the war I have been stabbed twice and shot at on three occasions. No reprisals on my part I granted mercy. Mercy is far better to sleep with.
Curious, Denise, the Qs you ask.
Americans got educated in a country with schools forced to abandon students reading whole novels, memoirs, and histories.
Instead: morally vapid, humanly neutered testing.
I know. For a while I taught college. I’m pretty aware how the K-12 system failed most Americans. Also I’ve just noticed so many Americans are not curious people. I’m won’t generalize and say all Americans of course, but I see so many who don’t read, or travel, or are interested in other cultures, or history…it boggles the mind. There is the arrogance too, of a society brainwashed to accept nothing yet think we are the greatest country in the world. People don’t want to face the reality of what America has done to other countries for decades.
I don’t know which questions you’re referring to but hey, if I’m curious about something I ask. If I look stupid, so be it. I’ll always ask questions if I don’t understand something, etc. Thanks for the comment! 😊
Who was shredding documents in the wake of Epstein's death? Why were they shredding them? Why didn't FBI/DOJ investigate that immediately? They should have investigated and closed on it within a year or two. We the People should not be left with all these unanswered questions.
Let’s assume Epstein was killed, i e. it was NOT a suicide. The folks that did that (or ordered it) are very very very wealthy and could pay these folks to do gather up what needed to be shredded and hand it over to the inmates to do the shredding. Remember, the folks hanging around Epstein are not very nice but very wealthy people and they have a lot of evil stuff to hide.
Official coverup was Epstein's evil superpower. The evil that men do lives after them, and apparently, around them.
Why didnt FBI DOJ investigate immediately? Why would they investigate themselves? Or leave around evidence of thier activities?
The FBI reported to Bill Barr.
I had to look it up to be sure Epstein was in a NYC prison when he died and not a Florida prison. This makes it even more curious.
I have no idea why, if he was in federal custody, why he wasn't in a federal facility. It stinks to high heaven.
Because most city jails are centralized and attached to their courthouses so that while a victim, I mean detainee, is being arraigned, processed, charged, cataloged, and so forth they can be violate that persons civil rights in a single location without allowing them easy access to counsel, and creating a situation of fear and oppression, I mean without endangering the public. It also allows them easier control over the narrative.
The FBI and DOJ doesn't maintain facilities that specialize in this except of course for ICE detention. Which again should tell you everything you need to know about the priorities of the FBI and the DOJ.
As for why they put him into a NEW YORK facility long term, knowing the access that Trump and the Feds would have in that facility, well you'd have to be stupid to believe that was anything but deliberate. Its much the same as why Trump was able to shop for the judge who would be responsible for prosecuting him, which literally never happens to anyone else ever.
Wandyrer, I am a retired cop and worked my first 18 months with the Sheriff's Office in our corrections division. My city has a population of about 175K, neighboring largest city is about 60K, unincorporated urban population of roughly 50K while the county is nearly 4600 square miles. Jail was not adjacent to the courthouse, and we would occasionally house federal prisoners (usually during their trials, or extended transports). Our documentation protocols were set, especially with suicidal inmates.
I am appalled at what I have seen and heard regarding the situation with Epstein at Rikers. It is my belief that his death is either an act of omission (by facilitating a suicide) or commission (by physically asphyxiating him).
I suspect Bill Barr is keeping many secrets of his own. His father brought an unqualified, young Epstein in to teach at the exclusive academy where he was dean. Prisons and Corrections do fall under the purview of the AG, so he certainly wielded power there to control the crime scene.
"He tends to be naive about how things can happen,” Leon Panetta told Smith. “If he says it and keeps saying it, there’s always a hope that what he says will come true. But that’s what kids do. It’s not what presidents do.”
Trump's seriously impaired judgement and decision making isn't caused by naivety, it's caused by his severe narcissism. His narcissism causes him to be sufficiently out of touch with reality that he should not be in a position where he makes life and death decisions. I don't think VP Vance or any cabinet members will use the 25th amendment to remove him. The GOP-controlled House and Senate will not impeach him. As a nation we must find a solution for removing an impaired president, one who suffers from dementia, or narcissistic personality disorder, or any other incapacitating mental or physical problem.
Agree Judy. Problem is all the “quick” remedies (25, impeachment, Congress, Supreme Court) have failed. So the only systemic solution left is to vote in the mid terms and elect a big enough majority to overcome filibusters and override vetoes. Outside the system is what, rebellion?
Sure… massive public protests (one’s coming up next Saturday). Problem with that apparently, he gets so ticked off about that he starts doing stupid things like tearing down the East wing of the White House. He’s already saying that all Democrats are leftist terrorists… he’s just warming up to do something extra stupid.
Not a lawyer, but I'm holding out for '25', given the remarkable self-interest that most oligarchs demonstrate. It may not be a long term improvement to have Vance/Thiel at the helm. However, it may slow immediate global conflict. Vance will be a different critter when T is gone (- rather, he'll be a different billionaire's critter).
Rebellion worked for our forefathers, and there is no world where a vetoproof majority can be elected in the United States, even assuming it were allowed to be by this administration, which you can rest assured it will not be allowed to be.
He's always been a malignant narcissist with bad judgement and sadistic tendencies, but the only hope now is that the Democrats take back majorities in Congress in November so that Donold will finally be reined in somehow or maybe even removed. But it's still so far off, he has to be stopped from causing further damage right now not in another 8 months.
Stiffen the spines of Senate Democrats to vote a loud HELL NO to more money for war. Bring troops home.
Tonight's essay depicts a leaky dam with so many holes in it, you can't begin to plug them. Crystal clear why Republicans cannot afford free elections next November. Not a single one of them is clean from criminal corruption. We have to assume what we know about now is just the tip of a very deep iceberg.
On Thursday he defended his failure to inform allies and partners about his February 28 attack on Iran by telling a Japanese reporter he wanted the element of surprise. “Who knows better about surprise than Japan? Why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor, OK?”
A day that lives in infamy.
So was the day Donald was born. I actually worked at that hospital for a stint. Chilling, I know.
A date that will live in idiocy...
https://sylvestercat.substack.com/p/how-to-win-friends-and-influence
Cited by a president already living in infamy.
Bigly.
Pearl Harbor occurred 5 years before the felon was born.
So that’s why he missed the warning call from Japan…
In the rankings of America’s presidents, James Buchanan has usually ranked last. The current incumbent will, in all likelihood, assume that position, if he has not already done so. The irony is that, Buchanan was, on the criteria of experience and political background, one of the most qualified persons ever to be elected to that office, in complete contrast to his rival for the title of worst president ever. With that in mind, a few weeks before the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln, Buchanan’s successor, Horace Greeley described the soon to be outgoing president as follows:
“In these, the stormy times of the Republic, he expires a driveler, and only not a show because nobody cares to see him. Tried and wanting; trusted and faithless; sworn and forsworn; old without veneration; unfortunate without pity; his task unperformed; his duty undone; his name a by-word; his existence a reproach, and his reputation a stench, he counts the hours, and awaits the day which will see him, to the joy of the good, for the last time totter down the steps of the White House, to crawl into night and darkness, and there vainly to beg of the Muse of History, which can ill spare such an example, immunity from being remembered”: New-York Daily Tribune, Vol. XX, No. 6,186, 21 February 1861, 4.
Somebody better read that passage out loud in its entirety at Dump's impeachment trial next spring....if there's a God.
"Lewandowski told George Zoley, the head of the giant private prison company GEO Group, that he expected to be paid for steering contracts to GEO Group. Zoley said he declined initially but later offered to put Lewandowski on retainer with a consulting fee."
Vanguard and Blackrock are the biggest shareholders of GEO Group and Core Civic. Check this interactive map and how to call Vanguard and Blackrock to stop investing in private ICE prisons.
Private ICE prisons where Epstein Class billionaires profit from pregnant girls being denied healthcare: Follow the money
https://thedemlabs.org/2026/03/22/investigation-epstein-class-prisons-ice-detention-profits/