So Trump is bored with Iran? He starts a war that he is unlikely to win, that affects the world, that is going to raise prices at home, maybe cause a recession, and kill US soldiers—and he's bored? He is an amoral/immoral (if you can be both, he is) man with the wisdom and attention span of a two-year-old, and my kids at 2 were a lot nicer people than he is at 79!
An emperor already bored with his own criminal atrocities? Think of Trump as Trumpigula -- the most dangerously devout emulator of the infinite Evil perpetrated by Caligula.
Trump is not crazy or in the throes of dementia. Trump is the same as he was at 4 years old. . a whiny, short attention-span, nasty little boy. I have seen kids just like him and the parents who give in to get some relief. Those parents are American Leaders today.
(Susan of six months here, have I, the self-annointed Walmart greeter of this forum, welcomed you yet? So many new people here, it warms my 💗. BTW, many Susans have I known in my life and they are so good that I confess to a prejudice to assuming they are all good.)
I agree -- only a bit -- but a bit more than we'd like. But I'll go a bit further: there is no substance - not even a bit - to trump's neurotic (some say psychotic) tirades and the endless repetition of slogans - because he can't remember the one he used one minute ago - The assault is on our senses - visual and aural. The devastation by trump is a so wide and the reconstruction will be a bit staggering. (Did I overuse the word "bit"?)
I posit that the reconstruction will be glorious. Difficult but by definition it will be moving forward. Every day after trump is gone will be a positive day.
Wish bored were the word I felt about Trump. Instead I am exhausted by the worry engendered from his policies and how it affects the lives of my friends and family. Several have lost jobs with children going to university. The cost of everything is hiring and that is not luxuries but necessities, as heat is in Chicago on the coldest days of winter.
I know that Americans all over the world are going to protest. You can see that there are a lot of American expats around the world by the number of No Kings rallies that are being held. We are all in solidarity with our family and friends in the USA.
We need to defeat Trump who is part of the Trump/Netanyahu duo. We will get out there on Saturday and show them how unpopular Trump and his regime is. Here is a list of No Kings, No Tyrants, No Dictators, which are NO ICE and NO WAR protests from around the world that you can sign up for. Please share with family and friends inside and outside the US.
Germany had 9 on Thursday, then on Friday morning I learned that there are 2 more, one in Göttingen for whom I don't have a sign up link and one in Freiburg, which is listed on https://tacker.fr/node/17645
So, now there are 11 documented No Kings rallies in Germany, which is the largest number of rallies in any country outside of the US, even though Germany does not have a lot of Americans, and many of those from the military are stationed in Iran right now.
We can stand with this military wife too against what this regime is doing.
These are crazy times and right now the US is having a net immigration loss. Go figure why more people are moving away from the USA than are moving to the USA. Wherever you are, please stand up and be counted at a No Kings rally today.
What makes this moment frightening is not incompetence alone. Democracies have survived foolish leaders, bungled decisions, and public embarrassment before. The deeper danger begins when incompetence stops costing power and starts feeding it.
That is the threshold we are approaching.
When chaos creates confusion, oversight weakens. When institutions break down, leaders claim they alone can restore order. When laws become inconvenient, crisis becomes the excuse to ignore them. At that point, failure is no longer just failure. It becomes method.
That is how rule by whim enters public life.
Rule by whim means government no longer operates through stable law, shared standards, or constitutional restraint. It operates through impulse, grievance, favoritism, and raw executive appetite. The public is no longer governed by rules that apply evenly. It is governed by whatever those in power decide they can get away with today.
That is worse than incompetence. Incompetence can be corrected. Rule by whim corrodes the very machinery of correction. It weakens oversight, sidelines Congress, blurs legal limits, and trains the public to live with instability as though it were normal.
That normalization is the real threat.
The scariest part is not that those in charge seem unable to govern. It is that they may be discovering chaos serves them better than competence ever could. Once disorder becomes useful to power, democracy is no longer merely failing.
This comment so deserves to be at the very top of the list, rather than crammed into the middle somewhere. It goes to the very heart of the “system” we have let grow by default over many years — and will not change until we understand where it originates.
At their core, our problems are institutional, rather than personal. Cultism and chaos-deliverers thrive in the dry-rot of institutional decay. Without digging out the rot, we will not succeed in getting rid of its manifestations.
Great comments are often buried by the shear number of those commenting just after the Letters are dropped. To quote Fogelberg, “swimming straight up under water, desperately racing for air”
It seems that a snowball effect is at play. Good comments early in the sequence get seen and liked more often because the initial “likes” keep them at the top. Exposure
Dave, I try to get through as many as I can, but I can rarely get to the end of them all. In a way, this is a good problem to have, as to me it means there are SO MANY like minded people out there.
Every now and then, someone mentions the troll whom I've blocked, so I don't count him.
He'll be missed like a carbuncle on your ass. Always a relief not to see him around. But there are others who arguably come tiresomely close here, and they're not even goofy MAGAzoid types.
Worst for the cynicism you cite, Michael: our techie billionaires.
They were the ones closest to criminal Donald at his inauguration. Not a single one of them has any humane literacy. All established themselves as predators only. They'll most easily ally with the world's worst murderers, arms dealers, drug pushers, U.S. underage girl traffickers, and Russian and east European young model hopefuls -- our internationally dominant and closely-connected Epstein-Trump classes.
I still wonder if Stephen Miller isn't the sickest of them all -- his dedication is so twisted, I wonder if he ever sleeps. Maybe we are living in his externalized dreams, and odd as it sounds, he seems to have a kind of integrity by which I mean coherence, lacking doubt about his own humanity, just pure and full steam ahead. That must be why Trump trusts him.
He's learned, Joan, testing's key lesson: we not-billionaires question nothing.
That is, defer to dehumanized abstractions. White male supremacy works for Putin as it does for criminal Donald. As it works for all whom Putin and Donald have lined up in abject submission, as the billionaire testers pretty much everywhere around the world have those U.S.-style tests lined up to enforce rule only by our most humanly vacant.
What you're describing, Phil, is cancer. What steps are we to take in order to rehabilitate the organism into a healthy state? That, in my view, is the ultimate question.
Joan, I agree. His self hatred is so deep and equally dangerous that it so far has not been clearly identified. It reminds me of the exploration of the black holes 🕳️. How to accurately describe them? What’s more evil or dangerous than evil and dangerous?
Joan, I know many here are atheists, but I am a believer, and I honestly think that Miller just might be the anti-Christ. I was in conversation with a very devote Catholic yesterday, and she agreed with me.
Yeah, there are plenty of bad seeds in the world, but Miller's antics seemed designed to strip the humanity away from weak souls; he seems to want us to HATE everyone, worship greed, etc. I'm more of a New Testament woman, and not a real good Biblical scholar, but often when I see what this administration inflicts upon people, Jesus's words ring in my head. Trump is a greedy narcissist, no doubt, but someone, no SOMETHING, is whispering in his ear and using him as a puppet.
I had a coworker whose husband was very devote Greek Orthodox gentleman. During her perimenopause, if she acted outrageous (to him) he actually once ran for his font of holy water and sprinkled her! My musing is: hmmm.....what would happen if everywhere he went, people started sprinkling blessed water upon him? Wouldn't that be interesting? I would find it very funny if it became a thing he couldn't shake, kind of like Vance and the couches!
I so wish someone would write a biography about him Jpan. I can't imagine what the home he grew up in was like. Although I have read he is a lone wolf in his family/
I haven't read it, but here you go: Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man (2020) is a memoir by Mary L. Trump, a clinical psychologist and Donald Trump’s niece. It portrays him as a narcissistic, damaged individual shaped by a dysfunctional family and a harsh father, claiming his childhood created a "sociopath".
This is the intent of the heritage foundation's project 2026. They announced what they intended to do, which is exactly what you have described. trump was the perfect vehicle to execute that horrendous project...greedy, selfish, stupid, and easy to manipulate. Hollowing out is exactly what the goal is, leaving a needy populace out there with no say so in the matter.
This is why it is imperative every American takes to the streets in mass numbers, and peacefully show we won't accept it. And get to the polls in the same mass numbers to vote. And boycott the companies who go along. And vote out the enablers from their temporary seats in Congress. And see to it those we voted for assume their rightfully elected positions in January of 2027.
We use our voice and vote, we bring the chaos to a halt, and we start the course correction America so desperately needs.
The incompetence is selective. They've proven themselves quite adept at self-enrichment, diverting public funds to themselves and their cronies, and creating opportunities for themselves to profit off of their connections, their domestic violations and their warmaking abroad. It's in the billions, when you look at the Trump family as a whole.
But let's not forget how we got "rule by whim," as personified by Trump. It didn't happen overnight, and the incompetence didn't come out of nowhere. We can debate where it started, but I focus on the civil rights advances of the mid-1960s, when white Southern Democrats flooded into the Republican Party (which I refuse to call "the GOP" because it isn't), and the backlash against women's rights in general, notably Roe v. Wade (1973). It culminated in the backsliding of the Reagan administration, which we haven't really begun to escape from.
As the country became ever more diverse, the Republican Party has became ever whiter and less democratic. Note that the Republican-dominated Supreme Court handed down the Citizens United decision in 2010, the same year as the infamous Tea Party election, which consolidated the far right's hold on the Republican Party. Yes, that election was a reaction against the election of our first Black president, but the roots of Citizens United go back much further: Big Money and the wealthy in general don't like being messed with by "we the people." Think the now-famous Powell memo of 1971 and, long before that, the rabid corporate opposition to the New Deal.
There's more to it than that, of course, but this is what we're up against. The challenge is very like what President Lincoln spoke of in the Gettysburg Address (1863): whether a nation "dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal . . . can long endure." Opposition to that proposition was well under way barely a decade after the Civil War ended. It's never gone away, and it's in the saddle again. What the Trump II has demonstrated so clearly is how very much damage can be, and is being, done in resisting that proposition.
Susanna: and don't leave out Newt Gingrich and Rush Lumbaugh whose snarling, growling, snapping and spitting out vitriol incited this momentum you describe.
Absolutely! I'm a fan of Dana Milbank's THE DESTRUCTIONISTS: The Twenty-Five-Year Crack-up of the Republican Party (Doubleday, 2022). He traces the "crack-up" to Gingrich and what I call the Contract *on* America in 1994, but he gives a nod to Reagan et al. The rise of cable and the fragmentation of the national audience was happening around the same time and IMO played an important role, which the Republicans have capitalized on, dare I say, brilliantly.
Opposition to the premise that all men are created equal has existed forever. White European colonizers considered themselves to be better than the native people. America began as a get rich quick scheme for wealthy aristocrats.
JennSH-The colonizers get rich scheme depends on keeping people divided so we won’t be able to challenge the system that bestows them with power. The laws and customs they established and manipulated were based on propaganda about skin color and gender.
We’ll never overcome inequality unless and until we stop allowing ourselves to be manipulated by wealthy people who think they are entitled to own and rule over “we the people”.
European colonizers did consider themselves better than the native peoples on this continent and everywhere else they showed up, e.g., India, China, and all of Africa. But your claim that "America began as a get rich quick scheme for wealthy aristocrats" misses the mark on several counts. Columbus, his peers, and their royal backers may have thought they were going to "get rich quick," but their successors who settled North America in the 17th century had a variety of motives -- getting rich quick wasn't a major motive in, e.g., Massachusetts Bay or what became Pennsylvania -- and their backers weren't all "wealthy aristocrats" by any means. By the 17th century, the merchant class was funding many (most?) of these ventures.
Excellent analysis. It's related to the observation by Hannah Arendt that one sees from time to time, that constant government lying does not ultimately persuade the public of the lies, but it persuades them that there is no truth - at which point the government can do anything it likes.
Bingo! This is all on the conservative leadership. They are allowing this chaos and what they used to accuse the liberals of doing (which they did not) they are doing on steroids.
Actually the scariest part is that fully one third of Americans still support all this madness.
Anyone with any understanding of the purposes of our founding or the nature of the journey we’ve made since 1789 would never have voted for Donald Trump in 2016, let alone anytime after January 6th.
That means that a substantial number of us either do not understand how the government is supposed to work or they actively wish to alter it to some far more autocratic.
We would never have reached this point were that not the case. We may rail at Trump, his cohort of sycophants, liars, ejection deniers, barn- burners, cranks, Christian Nationalist, and nihilists, but they would be there were it not that so many of us were willing to put them there even after their intent was clear.
That is the deeper crisis. Authoritarians only rise this far when enough people either misunderstand democracy, stop valuing it, or see cruelty and domination as acceptable tradeoffs. Trump is not just a cause, he is also a symptom, revealing how fragile civic understanding and moral commitment have become in American life.
I am soooo sick of the chaos. Every damn day that Trump has been in office, including his entire failed first term. He has no knowledge of how our government works, but he thinks he knows a better way.
Actually during former President Obama’s time my late husband and I were so concerned he would be killed. And before that the issue of former President Bush. My husband was so depressed after the Florida voting ballot issue. And I got blamed because I did not vote for Al Gore but Ralph Nader. Later on he said it’s okay your vote didn’t count abd change the tide. Al Gore was line a stick figure back then. I would have gladly voted for him after he came out with his Inconvenient Truth film. He was a changed man.
So it’s been a long time. And as a MSW Clinton’s legislation at times problematic and that was when Newt Grinch came to be. I still can’t imagine him handing access to the Vatican because if his wife. But then yes informatively because of Leonard Leo and others yes I can imagine. It’s been like forever you know.
Michael, there is a tendency in this community and in the world at large to blame (or credit) Donald for the chaos, not that you've done so in your comment. I often feel compelled to remind everyone that while Donald may rightly be blamed for plenty, he isn't the source of the chaos we are experiencing. He is the face, the brand, the emblem.
Fifty-some years ago, my first job was that of an office boy at the U.S. headquarters of a German engineering company. Among my duties was emptying the ashtrays and wastebaskets in all the executive offices after everyone had gone home. One evening, the Executive V.P. was working late when I arrived at his office. He motioned me in and I emptied his wastebasket into the rolling canvas bin. When I returned, he said, "Come with me."
We walked down the corridor past a few doors, then he pointed into an office and asked, "What do you see?"
The desk and credenza were in utter disarray with stacks of papers piled everywhere, with machinery parts buried under some papers. Reluctantly, I answered honestly, "A mess."
Mr. Brennan replied, "Exactly. His mind looks just like this. When you have an office in the future, never leave it this way."
Donald's mind has always been a mess. According to his niece, he was literally born that way.
Donald's messy mind, vanity and greed made him the ideal figurehead to be exploited by shadowy figures who've long had in mind to reshape the United States into a theocracy. The theocrats were joined by Vladimir, whose Kremlin had been watching, then grooming Donald as an asset for years. More recently our home-grown technocrats saw Donald as the perfect puppet.
Donald is chaotic, but he's not the author of the chaos. He's the autopen that signs off on the chaos created by his handlers.
Chaos, but sadism too. A deep, abiding need to belittle, humiliate and lash out. Not just to divert attention from his own inner poverty, but to hurt others, smash things, break that which is whole. Those drawn to him must share some, if not all of those same attributes.
Well, yes, ICTT, sadism certainly is a chapter in most of those walking encyclopedias of psychopathy. But for many, I think it's just an extra-cost option they chose to include. Except for the "true believers." For the devout christofascists. cruelty is a feature, not a bug. They prefer the jealous, petty Jehovah of the Old Testament, who spent his days smiting all the infidels who didn't bow, scrape and worship him.
But mainly, it's money and power. If grabbing it causes a little pain, that's just icing on the cake.
Standing ovation!!! Democracy, liberty, honest government are hard work. But they have been ignored and now we have an atmosphere where anyone has the right to do as s/he pleases, rather than embracing the opportunity to do as one should.
Exactly. Freedom was never meant to mean impulse without responsibility. Democratic liberty depends on self-restraint, truthfulness, and a willingness to act for the common good. When duty collapses into personal license, institutions weaken, trust erodes, and opportunists step in to exploit the vacuum.
I had expected that by 3/28, it would at least be spring-like on the Cape, but temps are going to stay in the low 30s today. However, I'm going to layer up, so that I can show up at the closest of what are now five No Kings locations across the Cape and circulate nomination petitions for a wonderful friend who is running for state rep.
It is supposed to be cold and rainy. We will still be out there in warm waterproof clothing in Bremen, which is in Northern Germany. The Hamburg one is later in the day, so they might have dry weather for theirs. One of our Indivisible Bremen members is also the leader of Hamburg and Northern Germany Democrats Abroad so she is going to attend both Demos with a train ride in between them. Germany now has No Kings. Demos in 11 cities today. Here is Jen from Indivisible in Canada talking about the number of No Kings Demos in countries outside of the USA, which I understand has 3300 listed.
The German people know—and learned the hard way—what horrors a megalomaniac leader can perpetrate, and it seems we Americans are getting an object lesson that I wish neither we nor the world would have to learn. There's no Democrats Abroad group near my tiny island, but I'll be cheering online. Onward, all!
Remember the people of Minnesota who had to endure the murders of two American citizens for protesting the cold blooded murders of two American citizens. They protested for weeks in below zero weather.
I can endure the cold and rainy weather for a couple of hours to protest against the dotard who started an extremely expensive and deadly war with Iran.
To be sure, GJ, the war with Iran was and is wholly unnecessary. We have our nation attacking Iran on the basis of terrorism related accusations, and yet, this administration's cabinet and sycophant's leaders haven't a clue of how to come clean regarding the terrorist mindset in which Trump and his lacky sycophants support by failing repeatedly to bring the Epstein Files to the forefront. That Trump and Epstein have inflicted a pedophilic terror network, has matriculated from accusations, to what is clearly now recognized as reality. It's horrendously bad enough that the nation's acknowledged leader and supposed leader of the free world who garnered 77 million people who voted for this carnival barker and Charleton can wield such power for so long. It's come, now, to this point: the public at large must now lead the nation. If anyone cannot be at a No King's rally, then we are obligated, for the sake of this nation, to write letters to the editor in our local newspaper and newspapers beyond our community borders. It's a tough grind; however, regardless of what anyone may think of our media today, they are still printing, and thousands of letters written on a daily basis cannot be fully blocked. The news industry is still honor bound to publish the public's disdain regarding this "presidency."
Well... when you haven't a large agenda that day, why not start a war. He loves and craves attention; he enjoys the power of his dark vision and he's making up for a long life of failures and phobias and terrorizing us for it.
Bett, we were also cold in Brewster, standing on Main Street, in front of First Parish. Ours was the smallest rally of the five that I know of on the Cape--maybe 150 people--but it didn't even get onto the big map, so that was a pretty good showing. And lots of honking as cars drove by. : ) It'll be interesting to see what the stats were for the other local rallies, and then for the national and international ones.
We're going to a No Kings in Montpellier France today. There also are NO Kings demonstrations in Paris, Marseille, Nice, Uzes and many other French cities.
Barney, I am now home from ours, which was cold and rainy but had good energy. Have a great time at your rally. I think it is on my list, but maybe not.
I don't disagree with having the No Kings Rallies - but I do wonder about their effectiveness. In fact, if every single person with a vote stood up and shouted through a bullhorn "We hate you. trump! Shut up and go away!" would the situation change? We know Congress is not going to impeach him again. There's a VERY faint chance that they might invoke the 25th - especially if he has a stroke and they can't do a "Bernie's" on him. But that would still leave behind the gang of loonies who have proved themselves incompetent and corrupt. The American people have been left with this ship of fools - and there doesn't seem any way to rid themselves of it for another three years.
LE, Protests work. I have a life of protesting. It started when I was 3. I have joined in making changes for the better in the USA, and here in Germany. There are ways, but my energy is going into the rally we are running here in Bremen, Germany. There are No Kings rallies on 6 continents. Standing up is a visible show of support for all of those fighting the good fight on the streets, in the courts, in the classrooms and in the media. It shows we appreciate them and we have their backs. It also shows the world that we do not side with this president.
You bet they work. And they are working now. Look at what is happening in Congress. They haven't been able to pass anything for months. And now Thune and Trump's little Johnson aren't communicating with each other.
If all was quiet around the country and the world, they would feel free to do what they want.
When we protest, people vote when they are polled and they vote by giving money to candidates.
Hundreds of Democratic candidates and politicians will be at the protests but the Republicans will be cowering in their homes. That alone is a win as far as I'm concerned.
It's about the solidarity too. Knowing that there are others out there united against this fascist regime and such unAmerican anti-constitutionalism. A diverse mix of neighbors and strangers that don't want wars on a whim and gestapo thug ICE & Border Patrols savagely detaining and beating people or killing them for protesting such brutal acts in American cities.
Timothy Snyder has posted a very appropriate video just for this moment and a response for those who wonder about the effectiveness of protest. It's a first amendment right and we need as many people that want to keep this republic out there with us tomorrow. Show Trump and the regime that the power of the people is greater than the people in 'power'...
How about “we hate you because you fight against everything we stand for”?
Cory Booker has just written a book about it, and Pete Buttigieg has been criss-crossing the country talking about it — we must articulate what we stand for, not merely what we’re against. It’s the only way to break through the miasma we find ourselves in. I hope in coming days we find the inner discipline to do just that.
I so agree with this. We need not only a vision for the future, but coherent plans for every aspect of it, just as Elizabeth Warren had when she was running for Prez. I'd love to hear our candidates say, "We have a plan for that." Without comprehensive plans to realize the vision, the vision is just a dream.
ICTT, your point can't be stressed enough, yet I'm not seeing any evidence that Democratic leadership understands this.
The reason Donald's Second Act has been so "successful" is that a very detailed, comprehensive blueprint was fully formed and ready for deployment, actually before Day One.
Donald and his handlers have been going down the list, executing each directive (and inconvenient Americans), ticking off the boxes, one by one.
Project 2025 was ready to go at least a year in advance. What do Democrats have? Not even a thought of a concept of a plan.
I would like to see candidates talking about Constitutional amendments to strengthen our democracy, including campaign financing, gerrymandering, Senate rules requiring a super majority for appointing Federal Judges and Supreme Court Justices. The government has always been designed to favor the most wealthy people and business over every day citizens. If the government didn't cater to these entities more than the people, we wouldn't have the federal deficits and national debt we have today. Corporations would be regulated to protect our people and economy. The wealthy has always had too much control over our lives, a government of the people, by the people, and for the people is how the people have power over these greedy people who have power over every other aspect of our lives.
MysticShadow, your appraisal of the U.S. Government is accurate, but should not be surprising. Those revered "Founding Fathers" were all male members of the "landed gentry." What could we expect but a patriarchal system that protects and promotes the wealthy?
I truly believe they had good intentions, but were subject to the same human frailty we all must deal with: the difficulty in seeing the world through someone else's eyes. The inferiority of women and persons of color was a universally accepted "fact." So the declaration that "all MEN are created equal" meant exactly that, and seemed entirely reasonable to them.
While the U.S. Constitution may be an exemplary document, it is flawed because it was composed by flawed men who frankly, could not imagine the developments that would occur in the future. They never imagined that news sounds and images could transmitted in an instant, nor that a firearm could spray hundreds of bullets in mere seconds. They never dreamed that the top court would become so corrupt that it would rule that "money is speech." They could never have fathomed that voters would actually elect a convicted felon to the presidency. So they provided no guards against those developments.
Constitutional amendments have been proposed in Congress, but they all contain "weasel words" that give the appearance of correcting our problems but don't actually do so.
Fellow commenter and lawyer, Albert Killackey, has written a model amendment that strongly addresses the constitutional weaknesses that brought us to this point. It's worth reading at UnitedWeAmend.org
Today will be assessed as the largest, most vehement and widespread demonstration in United States history. I will be there. My sign?
"WAR CRIMES can't hide SEX CRIMES".
And it will change nothing. The madman will still be worshiped. The incompetent and evil people in the WH and the Pentagon will still wreak havoc on the world. Millions will suffer. The rich will get richer.
IMO, the only way to make a difference - to get the attention of the Oligarchs, who are pulling the strings on the puppets called Republicans, is to create financial havoc. This is a battle for the soul of America. But the soul is really all about money. Bought and sold.
Want to get the attention of those causing this nonsensical and brutal mayhem? Hurt them in the wallet. That means a boycott that is more than a day. That means dumping stocks. That means shutting down the economy.
Call your financial guy and tell him to go to cash now. Don't hurt your IRAs or 401ks by extracting funds, but tell whoever is holding those accounts you want out of those investments. If the markets tumble, someone might notice.
They don't care if little school girls are bombed. They really don't. But if their hedge funds and mutual funds and whatever the Hell else funds are impacted, they might pay attention.
Because money is in charge now. Always has been. But there was always a counter balance of at least a few officials who were decent. All those people have been fired. Gone.
When we dumped tea into Boston Harbor, it was a message of financial pain to the money changers across the Atlantic. Our situation now is FAR more dire than in the 18th century. Lunatics are cooking up a world war. Millions of people are terrified. Many are dying. Many more are fleeing their homes. All for what?
Because a sexual predator in the White House doesn't want us to see the evidence. Personally? I have enough facts already. But the Orange Menace is VERY afraid of the Epstein Files. Hence, millions will suffer or die.
I will - hardly use cash but will not use it. Also - I really object to all comments raising doubts & injecting negativity into a movement in service of “reality.” Hope & perseverance is how you win. Velshi’s review was great.
Which is why I'm glad the Unions are supporting No Kings. But - only 10% of the workforce have union representation. Time for the unions to get out and start proselytising. If we want a national strike or boycott, unions could be of immeasurable help.
Fannie Sellins and Mother Jones.Joe Hill. Woody Guthrie annd The Weavers at least sang of history. Springsteen’s The Ghost of Tom Joad as well and Tracy Chapman’s work. . And issues because at ties the labor folks couldn’t see the indigenous story or completely comprehend the slavery history and ramifications. This is when A Randolph Philips comes in with his Pullman Porter Union.
Again the powers that be used the divide and conquer tool all the time. Also private armies and union busters and informants. We are still facing the consequences of this history.
Oh, Mary - you are SO right! The "bosses" really hate it when the workers get together. And it's still going on. Not only fighting unionisation in house, but actually propagandising against it (Socialism! Communism!) I wish I could remember the name of a book I read once about the aid companies gave to the Mafia to embed themselves into unions, and thus tarnish the name. If any one knows, can you let me have it.
Joe McCarthy must have been one of the most destructive forces ever used against the American working man. Unfortunately, this is NOT "history" - it's ongoing.
Quite extraordinary that Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Tom Paxton etc sang for the end of the Vietnam war - and WE are now singing the songs that were sung forty years BEFORE that! We are rapidly going backwards.
"This land is my land" - I reckon that's what they sing now at those Mar a Lago Billionaire parties. . .
Phil - my concern is that the people in power (and that is, in effect, the people with the money) have now got to the stage where nothing will make them change their actions. The protests indicate they may never be in Governmental power again, but that doesn't bother them because the money and influence base they have managed to construct mean that they will ALWAYS have the upper hand, whether they are in control of the government or not. This is not a fight for something tangible and concrete - as were the NY Factory protests or the Civil Rights campaign. This is much more slippery - sharks and piranhas swimming in Sargasso weed. Who is going to join the "No more billionaires!" protests? Because THAT is what is really needed. And America has now reached a point where to fight a successful political campaign you need - money.
Oh my the railroads! And the indigenous people who saw it all and we were all mesmerized by the newness and glory of science. We missed the trappings of control and power that were baked into the coming of the Iron Horse. I think there was a television show by that name when I was a child.
LE, it's already been proven that even some republicans can see through the lies that Trump has fully embraced. Some were brave enough to say so and lost their seats. Now, they are speaking out with all of us. All the rallies put the republicans on notice that their offensive favors to tRump, only to gain favor with a criminal, will not be accepted. This is why tRump is now cowering; his mistakes are catching up with him and will overtake him by midterms. He will not be the only loser; many of the republican House and Senate may also well lose. tRump has thrown down the gauntlet; we have to pick it up, put it on one of our fists, and strike him where it will hurt the most. We cannot let up simply because we may have doubts as to whether NO King rallies will work or not. Strength is in numbers, not doubts.
Unfortunately, the American electoral system has allowed itself to become mired in money.
Nowadays strength is in dollars, not votes. Until some sort of cap is placed upon the obscene amounts of money each candidate spends - and in depth information as to where that money comes from, America will continue to be run by billionaires. And most of them don't appear to be benign.
I see no reason not to protest and attend No Kings rallies. They are ways to show the world that there are Americans who disagree with this awful administration.
I'll wager that many people who protest are also acting in other ways to effect change
BBB - Oh, I agree, I agree, I agree! Get out there, protest, make a noise, let them know we're not dead yet. And it's a great way to build confidence, solidarity and networks.
But - don't build in hopes that are so high they are doomed to failure and despair.
Protests have changed a LOT of things - but this is NOT the Vietnam war - the enemy here is much more subtle and insidious. They are termites, gnawing through the soul of America. We need to work on our own version of "Flit."
Actually Ezra Levin from Indivisible addressed your concern. He and his wife have been around speaking in your fear. And Indivisible not perfect but at times they do a fine job. They did wonders in the first administration with the disabled world.
I think the problem is long running exhaustion and SILOS. The concept of divide and conquer has been long ongoing in our country though underground . We are isolated from each other by life and knowledge. Similar but different from India. The Great Partition of 1948 so important to know. And some amazing folks come from India . Its leader now Modi similar to our own. But whenever I feel exhausted I think of Reconstruction and how that whole era reconstituted by fear and violence and misinformation. So I think who am Is privileged white elder to complain after the long tine sufferings of others in my nation? So I move on and always compliment when I can but also give constructive criticism.
Great respect for his original, engaging portraits of America on PBS. And democracy is like brushing and flossing your teeth. Stop doing the basic tasks and watch all the sad things that start happening inside your mouth…
Actually I am kind of bored by his idiotic rants. They are so predictable in their stupidity and meanness that I just ignore them and get back to work on ending his career. Happy No Kings Day, friends!
Well, you may not like this but the other day republicans' cpac club met to determine whom they would like to run for president next time. The candidates were - Rubio, Vance!!, and Tucker Carlson!! Plus they were entertaining the thought of changing the Constitution so trump could run for a third term!!!!!!!!!!!!
The orange felon started a war pushed by Israel and Saudi Arabia for their own particular interests. Why in the hell should Americans die for Israel or Saudi Arabia?! It was Saudis who were responsible for 9/11.
epstein file diversion...isn't holding up now...he has to find a new way to divert attention now that New Mexico is unearthing horrifying events there.
Not very good strategy for a Peace Board chairman, and forget the Nobel... is there a War prize? No, wait, this is a Netanyahu/Hegseth enterprise dressed up to make a quick slide into the Trump sphere of responsibility. Yeh, Susan's summed it up.
And, in addition to the FIFA prize, there is now the "annual" America First Prize. I wonder how many times it will be awarded or if the same person can win it...
That clown show award to Trump of the America-First award feels as if we’re living in the upside-down world. Oh wait! We are! Nothing “America First” by what trump is doing
“Bored with Iran” might translate as a narcissist with dementia who finds things far too complicated to manage, and no longer fulfills his insatiable quest of titillation? Easier to continue sticking his own name on everything…
Beautiful, Berry: "his insatiable quest of titillation."
Except remember, too, criminal Donald is an automaton, a humanly-empty bundle of cravings for attention, easy criminal marks, more attention, pussy he brags of grabbing as he likes, more attention, dictators and mass murderers for whom he can roll out the red carpet and otherwise suck up to, and that constant craving for more attention.
So let's set him, or it -- that pulpy, greasy, mass of cosmeticized fat -- aside, and remember none of it happens without what used to be fine American schools, and fine, fine teachers, and what has instead been perverted into a humanities-empty zone of testing-testing-testing. All to enrich the billionaire testers, and to humiliate the plebes, the serfs, all who need constant reminders that mere people on tests can never ask any questions, may question no authorities ever, none of our cowardly elites floating the criminal Donald ever goof-balling-protecting our worst.
Heather: "The fight over funding for TSA illustrates on a micro level how lawmakers who ignore the real world to cleave to an ideology strengthen authoritarianism."
Thank you Professor, that's another cue for today's associations for "No Kings Ever".
As someone posted before, trump believes this "excursion" with Iran is some kind of video game he can shut off and leave when he tires of it. Like a toddler with an attention span of 3 minutes. It has caused irreparable damage and loss of lives, yet he's bored with it.
Meanwhile, back at the Iran Not-a-War, I asked Perplexity AI Pro to summarize what damage has been done to US installations in the Middle East since Trump said, "go". Below is what it gave me back. Below is the text from the first submission of my query. The link at the bottom has the query I used, and the response to the second identical submission about 10 minutes later, which interestingly re-wrote itself. The link also has all of the sources used to answer the query.
Many news sources are reporting that the Pentagon is putting together plans to send 10,000 more troops to the Middle East, in addition to the 2,000 marines and members of the 82nd Airborne Division. The claim is that they will give Trump more "options". Maybe Hegseth believes that if he gives Trump more "toys" to keep him occupied, he will stop being bored. Or maybe Hegseth just wants to flex his warrior ethos by putting more warfighters on the ground. Unfortunately, lives will be lost, and far too many will be put in the ground in military cemeteries.
Since 2/28/26, Iranian missile and drone attacks have caused heavy damage to multiple U.S.‑used installations across the Middle East, and the U.S. has both relocated personnel from exposed bases and surged new forces into the region.
Damage to U.S. installations (since 2/28/26)
Late Feb / early March: Iranian strikes damaged facilities linked to communications and radar at at least seven U.S. military sites around the region, including structures and radomes used to detect ballistic missiles and support long‑range communications.
Bahrain: Naval Support Activity Bahrain, home to U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, suffered “extensive damage” to warehouses, satellite dishes, and other infrastructure after several days of Iranian missile and drone attacks; dependents were ordered off the island.
March 20 reporting: A joint analysis estimated roughly 800 million dollars in damage to Middle East bases used by U.S. forces in the first two weeks of the war, including about 310 million dollars to buildings, facilities, and infrastructure at those installations.
March 27 attack on Prince Sultan Air Base (Saudi Arabia): An Iranian missile and drone strike wounded around 10–12 U.S. troops (at least two seriously) and damaged multiple KC‑135 refueling aircraft and base structures, described as one of the most significant breaches of U.S. air defenses so far.
Overall, multiple air bases and a key naval hub have seen repeated hits that degraded air defense, communications, and sortie‑generation capacity.
Troop relocation and posture changes
Relocations away from heavily hit bases: Reporting indicates Iran’s missile and drone campaign has left about 13 U.S.‑used bases in the region “nearly uninhabitable,” forcing U.S. Central Command to shift thousands of personnel to safer locations and to rely more on remote and distributed operations.
Dependents and nonessential personnel: At Bahrain, dependents have been ordered to depart, and similar drawdowns and consolidations are occurring at other vulnerable sites.
Reinforcements into theater: In parallel with relocations, the U.S. is sending additional forces—reports describe thousands of soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division and more Marines and sailors deploying to the Gulf, significantly increasing the overall U.S. presence despite damage to individual installations.
So, since 2/28/26, the trend is: severe but uneven damage to U.S.‑used bases; movement of troops and dependents out of the most exposed locations; and a simultaneous buildup of combat power elsewhere in the region.
Susan, my reaction well. Bored with it. That statement really struck me this am. He creates world wide chaos along with death and destruction and he is bored with it.
I was listening to a podcast between Charlie Sykes and Robert Rausch who have defined the government as psychotic and that psychosis has the power to destroy the world. And if he loses the midterm his psychosis will get even more dangerous!! Unless there's a decency backlash from the republicans who begin to abandon him. The problem with this pool of trumpers is that there's no lifeguard on duty.
I would agree about the nicer. I am thinking more kindergarten than 2 because there is a level of squabbling that a 2 year old does not do, but let us say on his pouty days he is like a 2-year-old. His team are like emotional perpetual mean middle schoolers. Even Susie Wiles is not really an emotional adult.
I just had someone from Iran speaking at our rally. He was wonderful. His speech was so moving and put a human face on the Iranians. The Iranians I know are all in the US. Now I know some here in Germany. I am just home from our No Kings rally and I am freezing cold. We had our rally in cold hard rain without a tent. We did have a table and a canopy over it, but we speakers were in the cold and rain. My hands froze. Now I am going to have a warm bath. It was still wonderful and I love the amazing people who helped to put it together and who came out in the cold and rain to be seen.
The truth is that trump assumed that Iran would capitulate as soon as their leaders were killed, and the bombing showed the power he can project. After all of the attacks on countries around the world on civilians in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, attacks on Nigeria to protect Christians, and the kidnapping of the head of state of a relatively weak Venezuela, he thought the Iranians would be so intimidated that they would crumble immediately. I'm sure the more competent advisors and military advised him about the likely outcome of the attack, but he dismissed them as incompetent weaklings. He believes that our NATO allies are obligated to join the war he started. The NATO agreement is defensive and applies only when an ally is attacked from outside the alliance.
As far as the DHS funding for ICE and border protection goes, the right wing is saying that the Democrats want to leave the country unprotected from immigrants, while all they need to do is require these federal agents to work within the Constitution. Why are they fighting so hard for the federal government to terrorise and murder US citizens and immigrants?
They they obviously intend to use these fascist tactics to intimidate and force the country to submit to their fascist rule.
God bless Heather for so succinctly summarizing this, it is so hard to keep this hot mess straight when we keep getting dumped upon!
Now, can someone help me with this?: I recall when this war (yes, WAR) started, there was some official who mused about Trump will get bored with it, and I believe Trump himself heard about it and said he would NOT get bored. Anyone else recall it?
I am ready with my sign and will be protesting today, even though my skeleton isn't terribly excited about walking/standing in a crowd for hours.
Sen. Thune and the GOP controlled Senate passed the bill unanimously but today Johnson kissed up to Trump per usual. He went on a tirade that it was a radical Dem scheme and that Republicans probably didn’t read the bill. It was the most ridiculous and dishonest spin I’ve ever heard from a political leader! Johnson is determined to completely abdicate any congressional responsibility on everything so that his boss, Trump, always has free rein to make war, spend and govern at his whim!
The first 20 or so comments here invariably (and predictably) have been all about Trump, as if somehow any of us needed more reasons to figure out he’s the shallowest, most incompetent, least moral, most psychiatrically impaired degenerate ever to sit in the White House.
But the inability to govern starts — and stays — with the shabby Republican majority in Congress. Make no mistake — the Senators who voted against paying TSA employees, together with their fellow batshit fascists in the House just voted *against* the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. They voted that Americans, and anyone living here, are NOT entitled to be secure “in their persons, places and things.” No probable cause? No worries! And who really needs a warrant signed by a JUDGE — not an administrative officer of ICE — anyway?
On one level, all this is about sheer incompetence, stupidity and fuckupery so thick you can cut it with a bread knife. On the other, it’s about what our Founders would have instantly denounced as “tyranny.”
Tyranny and dictatorship never reside within a single individual alone. They are social and political forces that culminate in groupthink, self-deception and cultism that debases all within their grasp. None of those wretched 208 or so pieces of nonsense in the House were ordered, doxxed, chained, bound or gagged, forced *in any way* to do what Trump told them to, to behave like braying jackasses, to violate the Fourth Amendment. Nobody ordered them to self-lobotomize or join a brain-dead, moronic cult — they did that all by themselves. The buck stops with THEM, not at the White House.
Until we lodge guilt where it belongs, we miss the true targets and keep giving them the excuses they seek to explain away their terrible choices.
No Kings is as much about the concept of Parliament as it is about Monarchy. Denounce Mad King Donald all you like, but remember the real struggle is about the Constitution’s Article I, not Article II. There’s a reason our Founders arranged the articles in the order they did.
trump is the distraction the conservative fascists needed as Grover Norquist once stated, "We don't need a conservative leader in the White House, just a President that will sign whatever legislation that a republican congress sends over." They thought they had that with GW Bush and to some extent they did, but he did rebel a little. With djt, they got it all. he is the perfect distraction for them to implement P25, which continues to spread throughout the government. trump is the distraction.
Rickey, I have often opined, and will repeat myself: Ronald Reagan was the proof of concept. G.W. Bush was the crash test dummy. Donald Trump is the production model.
“……but remember the real struggle is about the Constitution’s Article I, not Article II. There’s a reason our Founders arranged the articles in the order they did.”
Yes indeedy, but the one thing that Washington feared would undo the Republic has reared its ugly head from the beginning; partisanship, which today we suffer in the extreme. The batshit lunatic fascist right-wing is large enough and so far off the rails these days I wonder just how Congress can return to some sense of normalcy after Stinky Diapers is dead. 35% of the country will continue to keep these idiots in office until Hell freezes over, it seems.
Well said. Congress (specifically the House of Representatives) has abdicated their constitutional duties and are kneeling to their king. No other way to put it.
ICTT, there's no arguing that if Congress was doing its job as the Constitution intended, our situation ideally* would be less dire, but, as we recognize that responsibility for the dire condition of our constitutional republic is shared far beyond the Mad King, we can't forget the role of the Roberts Court in the rapid decay of our once-admired Democracy.
It has become impossible for me to accept the narrative that any of the six so-called conservatives are “originalists”, as giving the executive near complete immunity defies the framers’ clear intent to design a resilient system of checks and balances.
* it probably goes without saying that we are not living in an ideal reality where voters are presented with reliable facts and equal opportunity to evaluate candidates, and much of that blame also lies with SCOTUS for Citizens United and the erosion of voting rights.
Thank you for reminding us that without the spinelessness and active complicity of the Republican Party Trump could not continue to destroy our democracy.
The technical term is kakistocracy – government by the least-qualified or most-unprincipled individuals in our country. In other words, a government by the very worst America coughs up.
Johnson's position must be starting to get tricky. He is one the people relying on Trump to deliver a theocracy, but the longer he supports Trump's demented policies that harm ordinary voters, the further Trump will drive the religious extremists from their theocratic goal.
I can't stand that little pip squeak, Mike Johnson. Jimmy Kimmel calls him "Squeaker of the House", which I find extremely accurate! When is this crazy show going to stop??? We know the more power they give him, the more he'll take! Something has to give and soon! NO KINGS TODAY!!! Let's go out and show them what for!!! Power to The People!
Remember that politicians are NOT leaders. They look to see which way the political trends are running, and they try to go that way. The founders NEVER considered that Congress would be a rubber stamp for the executive branch.
The term unanimous is interesting in this context. As I understand it, there were not all that many voices present for the voice vote.
While all of the things being said about the ineffectiveness of Congress at the moment are valid objections, in some ways it is a good thing and reflects the founders' intent. In the Senate the minority is being respected by the arcane rules that weren't even written down until after the Civil War. While over in the House we are seeing the chaos of the rabble, which was totally expected as a part of The Great Compromise. Finding our way out and back from this mess will require arriving at a place where those with whom we strenuously disagree to the point of not even respecting them, are none-the-less being given their opportunity to be petulant and not even close to being as mature as your average two year old.
Professor Richardson -- Thanks for the play-by-play. It only provides more evidence that the current administration and the GOP are out of control. As an American living abroad, I can attest that my Japanese neighbors routinely ask me what is going on. They continue to be polite about wanting to be allies with the U.S., but after a little probing, it becomes painfully obvious that ordinary people in this country are fed up with Trump and his supporters. It's a serious breach of trust.
Funny you should say this. Even after the insults to Japan and the numerous crimes and atrocities of this regime, there are still those who want to normalize Trump. I wrote recently about how the Dodgers, and Japanese stars like Ohtani and Yamamoto need to turn down an invite to the White House. This regime isn't normal and can't be normalized.
Ping pong back and forth about passing anything that actually helps the American people 🤦♀️
Be LOUD! We deserve better 💔🤍💙
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.
Bill, I’ll be on the southern edge of the Rogue Valley with my sign, accompanied by 3 generations of my wife’s family (aunts and nieces) with the uncle (age 91) provides drop off and pick up support for us (81, 68 and gimpy, 63 and 28).
Our signs read “No Kings”, “King free since 1776” and “Antifa: Family tradition since 1942”.
The subtext of all Heather writes today is that the will of the people stirs, builds, matters.
Its corollary, that eventually even the dolt Republicans following their favorite criminal will have to acknowledge the people.
Trouble is, how mad is criminal Donald? His Iran war -- totally insane, a sop to dictator Netanyahu and his ally, mass murderer Mohammed bin Salman. Plus a kowtowing as rapist Donald always does to Putin.
But otherwise pedophile protector Donald just careens on whims of his own caprice. Totally self-absorbed, totally demanding he ever be center stage as his cultists' only entertainment forever and forever.
So close now to tomorrow's No Kings marches, and signs, and turning out across the land.
Yes, we're going to our local No Kings protest at noon and we hope everybody shows up! As Dr. Richardson says above "For years, the far right has insisted that it and only it knows how to govern because its ideology is the only legitimate way to look at the world". If we don't fight back, including No Kings Marches today, we will lose our voice. In our monthly post on OneClick2BetterWorld.substack.com December 2025: No Kings - Indivisible, we noted that No Kings "emphasizes the '3.5% rule' which is the idea that if 3.5 percent of a country’s people become involved in a movement, then significant change can be achieved". Please contact No Kings or Indivisible or MoveOn to find a No Kings protest near you. Thanks for being here!
Dr. Richardson, isnt there any mechanism whereby the Democrats and Republicans in the House who support the Senate’s bill could have brought it to the floor for a vote over the Speaker’s objection? After all, there is nothing in Article I that says only the Speaker can bring something before the body for a vote.
I would like an answer to Barbara Ginsberg’s question also. Since we already know how many billions of dollars Trump wasted by demanding far more than was necessary to fund his ICE thugs, he’s started a war that has already cost billions, and that has killed and wounded American soldiers (even WITHOUT their boots-on-the-ground status), has made deals that favor Russia and Putin instead of Ukraine and Zelenskyy and their incredibly brave and determined citizens, has told the world that he thinks Nawrocki is fabulous, shunned NATO members (who are brilliant for not assisting our loony President with opening the Straight of Hormuz!), has broken EVERY promise that he assured American citizens about lowering our cost of living, has (and is) removing the chance for health insurance to millions of Americans, demolished the People’s house for a huge, ugly ballroom, torn up the Rose Garden and replaced it with cement, renamed airports, the Kennedy Center and basically slapped his name everywhere possible, shamelessly begged for the Nobel Prize, and on and on (just like his loony, misspelled, midnight missives that end (finally) with “THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER”. How could we NOT pay attention? And don’t forget about the Epstein files which, from the little we know, are proof positive of his guilt in drugging and raping underage girls. All this is just the tip of the iceberg, and like the Titanic, is going to ruin our country. He was already a convicted criminal when he took office, at the very least he has started a war without consulting our elected officials, so WHY hasn’t he been impeached?
Yes, Democratic and Republican representatives that make up a majority of the House can indeed force a floor vote over Speaker Mike Johnson’s objection. It’s called a Discharge Petition. Unfortunately, this is not immediate but takes many weeks. I believe the minimum is 30 plus 7 days.
The discharge procedure is part of the formal, written standing House Rules. The “discharge rule” dictates when and how members can file a discharge petition, signature requirements, timing, and floor consideration.
The Hastert Rule was never a written part of the standing House Rules. It was a power flex on the part of Republicans, signifying their intention to not give a shit about bipartisanship.
At the start of every new Congress, House Rules are written by the majority party but have to be approved by a majority vote of the whole House. One of the key rules that got changed at the beginning of this Congress was to require nine sponsors from the majority party for a motion to vacate the speakership, as a opposed to one, Johnson made sure to lock in his Speakership.
The standing rules can be amended at any time by a simple majority vote of the whole House. The House can also adopt “special rules” written by the Rules Committee, which is dominated by the majority party. The "special rules" can temporarily override or add to the standing rules for consideration of specific bills.
To make things more complicated, other legislation resolutions or packages can also include provisions that change the standing rules going forward.
Standing rules in the Senate can also be changed by a simple majority vote, which is why Trump keeps demanding that Thune get rid of the filibuster rule since Republicans have a majority, and Vance can break a tie if there were a couple of Republican defections. The filibuster rule requires a 60-vote majority to end debate on anything debatable, such as bills, resolutions, and, in the past, nominations, giving the minority party considerable power. There were two rule changes to exempt executive-branch and judicial nominations from the filibuster.
Thune is refusing to do what Trump wants because he sees a future someday with Republicans in the minority. Of course, the Senate could always put the filibuster back in place after getting rid of it, or write a rule requiring 60 votes to repeal the filibuster to protect it.
The bottom line is that the Constitution gives the House and Senate the right to write their own rules on how they conduct their business, They have a major impact on what can be brought to the floor for a vote. They strongly favor the majority party, especially in situations like this one, when Republicans have a very thin majority. In some sense, the congressional rules are the least democratic part of our institutional democracy.
Thank you, Georgia, for this most detailed recap of "congressional rules." Not "democratic" at all, especially when you consider congress has always (I think) been able to vote for an increase in their own salaries.
Their salaries should be determined by the voting citizenry. That way, if they don't do the job WE elected them to do, we can terminate their paychecks.
Or tied to a reasonable multiple of the poverty level or the median income for a family of 4. Might give them a reason to actually understand what living at the poverty level is like…
And we need to have them all put their investments into blind trusts controlled by government trustees while they are in office and overseen by an inspector general.
Actually the House rules DO in fact give the Speaker HUGE control over the order of bills that are to be considered. There are some options available but they are rarely used because they require either 2/3 or 3/4 vote in support or in a couple of cases no objections (i.e., unanimity). Its why Speakership is so important and is craved by the long-term Congresscritters.
How many hardcore MAGA Republicans are in Congress? Your answer might be subjective since some of the elected Republicans are speaking up negatively about Trump, others may wish to but aren’t. That leaves the hardcore ones, many of whom appear too stupid to put together sentences grammatically. Or, they’re the ones representing the 30-something percent of voters who haven’t changed their minds even when Trump flagrantly, arrogantly, not to mention stupidly, says and does stuff entirely against government protocol. Like bombing Iran without asking. And putting Dimwit Hegseth in charge! I sound frustrated. But I’m really worried. Iran doesn’t care one whit about its citizens, and they’re going to fight down to their last firecracker. 🧨
The evidence supports the truth is that the right wing has no respect for our citizens, they only care about their own power and wealth, to hell with rest of us.
Barbara, you hit the nail on the head here. How is it that one person (elected by one district in one state) decides that TSA/FEMA/etc doesn’t get funded? Who made him king? Not the constitution. I really believe that in order to fix our democracy, we need to fix some of these “rules.” Add this to project 2029.
The real question is — who made them cut off their own balls, so to speak. The rules are indeed the focus — they must be, otherwise we lose sight of where responsibility lies.
What a wonderful question. Every comment to your question so far focuses on the exceptions, the trivial, mostly bypassing the main point. Yes, there is a Hastert rule. Yes, there are discharge petitions (used most recently to force a unanimous vote to release the Epstein files). Yes, the Constitution gives deference, etc. But they miss the gist of your question. How did we end up constructing a Congress that has managed to give such deference to a dumb, partisan hack?
In Britain, the Speaker is not permitted any partisanship whatever, and almost never votes. When Betty Boothroyd became House Speaker, she abandoned not just her seat in the House of Lords, but her Tory membership completely. She presided over Commons with an iron, but never a partisan fist. She did what a Speaker is supposed to do — keep real order and preside over real debates. She wasn’t chosen for her mealy-mouthedness and pretend-Christian wimpy personality, let alone for loyalty to any Prime Minister. She was elected for her great, big, booming voice that would rise above the fray to shout SPIT IT OUT, MAN! to one poor, ineffectual Melba toast member stuttering over his words.
Way too much “deference” and phony politeness in our own system. It conceals true debate, rather than presides over it. Small wonder it fits far too snugly with the deterioration of democracy we are now fighting against.
Heather's letter warns that democratic danger no longer lies in incompetence alone, but in the moment failure begins serving power. This commentary follows that darker threshold, where chaos stops looking accidental and starts functioning as a method of authoritarian rule...
Republicans don't want to "govern". They want to "rule". Trump is now "governing" by declaring emergencies and issuing Executive Orders. The sooner the public realizes they are being "ruled not governed" ... that their opinions DO NOT COUNT to the Republican Party... the sooner we will be at least part way out of this nightmare. Then we will still have to break up the "Wall Street Cult" as well as the "Israeli Money Cult" that the Democratic Party's members belong to. But, hey, one step at a time!
Extremism, whether Right-leaning or Left-leaning has no place in this forum.
First, according to Snopes, there is no verifiable record or evidence to support the claim that Chuck Schumer ever said, "God put me in the Senate to protect Israel,”
Second, the term "Israeli money cult" is neither standard nor recognized as a historical, religious, or political term. Most Jewish people understand it as pejorative, derogatory, and antisemitic.
This term effectively dehumanizes and stereotypes the State of Israel and Jewish people as irrational, dangerous, or operating under a secretive and malicious agenda. It ties into conspiracy theories that claim a small group (often identified as Jewish or Israeli) secretly controls world finances.
We cannot hold ourselves as standing for truth and justice when we take on just another version of the very distortions that we advocate against.
Thanks for making this point. People who act as if Israel can do no wrong are part of the problem, not the solution. The Israeli government is no longer a democracy because Netanyahu has kept his country at war to avoid being thrown out of office.
I urge you to further research the connection between Israel and the United States government. I’m not against the state of Israel, but I am against the government of Israel. This is not “extremism”. This is wanting to stop foreign influence over USA policy decisions… including going to war. The best corruption researcher I know who has reported on this is Sarah Kenzior. I hope you’ll check out her work.
To point out that accepting AIPAC campaign donations is all about the Benjamins is the reality and not the least bit anti-Semitic. The American Jewish population is only around two percent of the population.
Another good argument for public financing for all political positions.
Thank you for calling for public financing of elections. Our “freedom of speech” culture might make that hard, but we know “freedom of speech” does not give people permission to lie and yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater where there’s no fire. My dream is that all political advertising is Fact Checked by historians and other qualified “referees” so that political debates have integrity!
He did however state that “My job is to keep the left pro-Israel.”
You can climb your high horse and claim that all of us against Netanyahu are anti-semitic. blah blah blah.
We've heard it all before.
And I'm beginning not to care anymore. Continuing to pretend that Bibi is on the right side of history is just bs. He'll be in those books right next to Trump.
AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) is one of the largest lobbyists in America. They contribute money to nearly all of the GOP and 2/3 of the Dems. There is a reason that the US allowed Israel to genocide the Palestinians, attack Iran and invade Lebanon... and that reason is that AIPAC owns the US Congress.
It’s fine to challenge policy, but not fine to make up quotes to back a position or to broadly categorize an entire group using epithets like “Israeli money cult”.
These are not thoughtful, data-based arguments. They are prejudicial, dehumanizing, provocative comments, which, in the end, implement tactics that we criticize the Right for using. They take the focus off the real issues while dividing and offending those whose belief in the right of Israel to exist is threatened. While you might argue that we are overly defensive, the history of persecution of Jews over millennia suggests otherwise.
Know that I am vehemently against the deadly and inhumane policies of Netanyahu, but that is not a free pass to generalize as some of these comments have done.
“Don’t let perfection be the enemy of the good”. If you’re against Netanyahu, then we are in “violent agreement”. He needs to go. Gaza is genocide. And Kamala Harris was afraid to say that, which is one reason why she lost to Trump. If you don’t like the language I use, that’s your right. And whether the Schumer quote is real or not is irrelevant compared to his actions. That’s what counts. He’s a very weak man (who I once knew).
Again, if you agree Netanyahu should go, then please focus on that rather than holding me to your purist reasoning / language standards.
And I’ll put Sarah Kendzior’s deep research against your beliefs any time. The cult of money in politics … people worshipping sources of money no matter what the source … must end. It’s a global criminal conspiracy to destroy democracy throughout the world.
I’ve got lots to do today. Don’t believe social media gives every stranger the right to argue with me forever. So… go work to take down Netanyahu not me. End of conversation.
It took the Great Depression to get to the New Deal. You have to convince enough people that Republicans can't put their pants on one leg at a time. It's always good to have these morons do the convincing for us. Which they're doing.
Convincing the MAGA morons of it is the problem. How can anyone not see it? Even after the Republicans are so contorted by their pretzel logic and crooked that they have to screw their pants on now.
I can answer but not explain: their “information sources” are feeding them utter garbage. They take that propaganda as the gospel truth, and think that ffpotus shows strength and business acumen.
Ideology as the only true formula, ignoring almost all norms or traditions of compromise. Edmund Burke, conservative icon stated that governing by ideology spelled doom for the French Revolution. "Rage and frenzy will pull down more in half-an-hour than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up in a hundred years." –Edmund Burke, ‘Reflections on the Revolution in France’; 1790.
G-D only knows. I am worried that we may never get back to republicanism -- a governance that will finally include all people with all citizens treated with respect. These words are important, but the M.A.G.A. core seems unwilling to reconcile at all.
"We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” --President Abraham Lincoln, March 1861.
Somehow there’s always an appropriate Lincoln quote, isn’t there? I am afraid I cannot think of the MAGA people as friends—the best I can do right now is call them misguided. If they find that they can treat others with respect, I will welcome them, but otherwise we have to move on without them. There will be much work to do.
If we are headed toward a civil conflict of some sort, we need to open the doors widely for returnees from M.A.G.A.-world. Had Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri all left the Union in 1861, the civil war would have be even bloodier, if winnable at all for the right side.
“If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.” – President and General Ulysses Grant, 1875.
I would agree with you, *except *that some close friends and half my extended family had voted for Baron von Blimpoman. The M.A.G.A. base probably does not include people like my cousines who are peeling off. Interesting: the percentage of the country that is core-Trump is about the same as the percentage of the United States in the confederate states.
One of my old political science professors used to say that “crusading ideology is the bane of my existence.” The current era demonstrates why he said that in sharp relief.
Thank you for the *sub-thread, y'all. As Susan said, there is always a quote by President Lincoln for something. My favorite is one I *once read in a meme, "Do not believe everything you read on the inter-net." Seriously, the quote by President *Lincoln that I think of every day goes something like. " "Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be."
Heather, I so glad that you said "Renee Good and Alex Pretti". Everyone else says Alex 1st since he is the man. Renee was a hugh shock 'killing a white suburban woman' that happened 1st. Then 'white male gun owner (not gay)' after. Sadly, there is another young man, Ruben Ray Martinez, that everyone is forgetting to mention, 23 yo man shot by CBP agent. We're not shocked by because he was hispanic? All mentions should say "Rubin Ray Martinez, Renee Good and Alex Pretti all shot by DHS agents for no good reason." Rubin's killing was not caught on tape so maybe that's why we're not so shocked? You tell me.
I would like to ask republicans who’s side they’re on - our country’s constitution or the side of our enemies which seems to include the present occupant of the White House and I would like a yes or no answer without obfuscation- as a country loving, constitution loving, tax paying American I have the right to ask. Period.
Sadly the answer is crystal clear. Faced with a choice between democracy and power, the MAGA Republican Party is choosing power. And they will hold it until the American people hand them a humiliating defeat, and wrest power from their dirty hands, in November’s upcoming Blue Tsunami Midterm Elections!
I’m struck by the contrast of paid ice agents menacingly hanging around airports while unpaid TSA workers struggle to survive and people wait in unimaginable lines for hours for a flight that may be canceled.
And Congress is handling this by going on spring break.
I’m at a lost for words to describe how angry and disgusted that makes me feel .
The footage I've seen from airports shows ICE agents not menacing, but hanging around looking fat and happy. Who wouldn't be? They're taking big fat paychecks for doing nothing. I guess ICE knows a good grift when they see it, just like the Grifter-in-Chief.
While I know that the intent of ICE is to menace, frankly what I see is: a bunch of (almost all) men in mismatched “uniforms” wearing “tactic-cool” vests with Velcro’d patches with letters (ICE, CBP, HSI) walking or standing in groups, looking at their phones, drinking coffee and wandering around.
The roots of the 2026 DHS appropriation dispute go back to last summer, when Mike Johnson and his majority could not complete work on the annual appropriations, instead gloating over Republican dominance in shoving the Big Ugly Bill down Democrats' throats. As Fiscal Year 2026 dawned, Little Mikey sent Republican legislators home, rather than negotiate with Democrats.
Unfortunately for the little Louisiana Crawfish, his slick political judgment turned to sand, especially after his party's favorite police force (ICE) murdered two people on the streets of snowy Minneapolis. So much for your political skill, Little Mike.
I'm looking forward to January, when you hand the gavel to your most hated opposition. Your downfall is richly deserved.
So Trump is bored with Iran? He starts a war that he is unlikely to win, that affects the world, that is going to raise prices at home, maybe cause a recession, and kill US soldiers—and he's bored? He is an amoral/immoral (if you can be both, he is) man with the wisdom and attention span of a two-year-old, and my kids at 2 were a lot nicer people than he is at 79!
They were probably smarter, too..
I think so!
An emperor already bored with his own criminal atrocities? Think of Trump as Trumpigula -- the most dangerously devout emulator of the infinite Evil perpetrated by Caligula.
Perfect, Loren: "Trumpigula."
Emphasis on PIG!
I appreciate pigs. And they’re smart. Maybe a different title.
But he did bring the prices of eggs down/S
Like Mussolini made the trains run on time. (Hint: they didn’t.)
😂
Brings to mind the old "for want of a nail the kingdom was lost"
For us, will it be "for want of an egg, Democracy was lost"?
Trump is a bit nuts.
I'd have to disagree and say trump isn't a bit nuts he's TOTALLY nuts and an incompetent ass.
Trump is not crazy or in the throes of dementia. Trump is the same as he was at 4 years old. . a whiny, short attention-span, nasty little boy. I have seen kids just like him and the parents who give in to get some relief. Those parents are American Leaders today.
No, it's a dangerous mental disorder: Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
⬆️🎯👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
(Susan of six months here, have I, the self-annointed Walmart greeter of this forum, welcomed you yet? So many new people here, it warms my 💗. BTW, many Susans have I known in my life and they are so good that I confess to a prejudice to assuming they are all good.)
I agree -- only a bit -- but a bit more than we'd like. But I'll go a bit further: there is no substance - not even a bit - to trump's neurotic (some say psychotic) tirades and the endless repetition of slogans - because he can't remember the one he used one minute ago - The assault is on our senses - visual and aural. The devastation by trump is a so wide and the reconstruction will be a bit staggering. (Did I overuse the word "bit"?)
I posit that the reconstruction will be glorious. Difficult but by definition it will be moving forward. Every day after trump is gone will be a positive day.
I suggest taking out the words "a bit"
A BIT?!
A bit????? From head to toe and everything inbetween!
Wish bored were the word I felt about Trump. Instead I am exhausted by the worry engendered from his policies and how it affects the lives of my friends and family. Several have lost jobs with children going to university. The cost of everything is hiring and that is not luxuries but necessities, as heat is in Chicago on the coldest days of winter.
I know that Americans all over the world are going to protest. You can see that there are a lot of American expats around the world by the number of No Kings rallies that are being held. We are all in solidarity with our family and friends in the USA.
We need to defeat Trump who is part of the Trump/Netanyahu duo. We will get out there on Saturday and show them how unpopular Trump and his regime is. Here is a list of No Kings, No Tyrants, No Dictators, which are NO ICE and NO WAR protests from around the world that you can sign up for. Please share with family and friends inside and outside the US.
https://lindaweide.substack.com/p/no-kings-no-tyrants-no-dictators?r=f0qfn
Germany had 9 on Thursday, then on Friday morning I learned that there are 2 more, one in Göttingen for whom I don't have a sign up link and one in Freiburg, which is listed on https://tacker.fr/node/17645
So, now there are 11 documented No Kings rallies in Germany, which is the largest number of rallies in any country outside of the US, even though Germany does not have a lot of Americans, and many of those from the military are stationed in Iran right now.
We can stand with this military wife too against what this regime is doing.
https://substack.com/@parislychee/note/c-221726913?r=f0qfn&utm_source=notes-share-action&utm_medium=web
These are crazy times and right now the US is having a net immigration loss. Go figure why more people are moving away from the USA than are moving to the USA. Wherever you are, please stand up and be counted at a No Kings rally today.
What makes this moment frightening is not incompetence alone. Democracies have survived foolish leaders, bungled decisions, and public embarrassment before. The deeper danger begins when incompetence stops costing power and starts feeding it.
That is the threshold we are approaching.
When chaos creates confusion, oversight weakens. When institutions break down, leaders claim they alone can restore order. When laws become inconvenient, crisis becomes the excuse to ignore them. At that point, failure is no longer just failure. It becomes method.
That is how rule by whim enters public life.
Rule by whim means government no longer operates through stable law, shared standards, or constitutional restraint. It operates through impulse, grievance, favoritism, and raw executive appetite. The public is no longer governed by rules that apply evenly. It is governed by whatever those in power decide they can get away with today.
That is worse than incompetence. Incompetence can be corrected. Rule by whim corrodes the very machinery of correction. It weakens oversight, sidelines Congress, blurs legal limits, and trains the public to live with instability as though it were normal.
That normalization is the real threat.
The scariest part is not that those in charge seem unable to govern. It is that they may be discovering chaos serves them better than competence ever could. Once disorder becomes useful to power, democracy is no longer merely failing.
It is being hollowed out on purpose.
This comment so deserves to be at the very top of the list, rather than crammed into the middle somewhere. It goes to the very heart of the “system” we have let grow by default over many years — and will not change until we understand where it originates.
At their core, our problems are institutional, rather than personal. Cultism and chaos-deliverers thrive in the dry-rot of institutional decay. Without digging out the rot, we will not succeed in getting rid of its manifestations.
Great comments are often buried by the shear number of those commenting just after the Letters are dropped. To quote Fogelberg, “swimming straight up under water, desperately racing for air”
Replying to great comments bumps them closer to the top.
It seems that a snowball effect is at play. Good comments early in the sequence get seen and liked more often because the initial “likes” keep them at the top. Exposure
Dave, I try to get through as many as I can, but I can rarely get to the end of them all. In a way, this is a good problem to have, as to me it means there are SO MANY like minded people out there.
Every now and then, someone mentions the troll whom I've blocked, so I don't count him.
He'll be missed like a carbuncle on your ass. Always a relief not to see him around. But there are others who arguably come tiresomely close here, and they're not even goofy MAGAzoid types.
Mr He Who Shall Not Be Acknowledged?
This is why I subscribe to his substack,
— altho I sometimes feel I am over-subscribed.
Worst for the cynicism you cite, Michael: our techie billionaires.
They were the ones closest to criminal Donald at his inauguration. Not a single one of them has any humane literacy. All established themselves as predators only. They'll most easily ally with the world's worst murderers, arms dealers, drug pushers, U.S. underage girl traffickers, and Russian and east European young model hopefuls -- our internationally dominant and closely-connected Epstein-Trump classes.
Musings:
I still wonder if Stephen Miller isn't the sickest of them all -- his dedication is so twisted, I wonder if he ever sleeps. Maybe we are living in his externalized dreams, and odd as it sounds, he seems to have a kind of integrity by which I mean coherence, lacking doubt about his own humanity, just pure and full steam ahead. That must be why Trump trusts him.
Stephen Miller personifies a hate filled Nazi.
And he's Jewish! I don't get it! I wish someone could explain it to me. As I've commented above, I think he's the Anti-Christ.
He's learned, Joan, testing's key lesson: we not-billionaires question nothing.
That is, defer to dehumanized abstractions. White male supremacy works for Putin as it does for criminal Donald. As it works for all whom Putin and Donald have lined up in abject submission, as the billionaire testers pretty much everywhere around the world have those U.S.-style tests lined up to enforce rule only by our most humanly vacant.
What you're describing, Phil, is cancer. What steps are we to take in order to rehabilitate the organism into a healthy state? That, in my view, is the ultimate question.
‘Humanly vacant!’ Spot on description! Kudos, sir.
Joan, I agree. His self hatred is so deep and equally dangerous that it so far has not been clearly identified. It reminds me of the exploration of the black holes 🕳️. How to accurately describe them? What’s more evil or dangerous than evil and dangerous?
Joan, I know many here are atheists, but I am a believer, and I honestly think that Miller just might be the anti-Christ. I was in conversation with a very devote Catholic yesterday, and she agreed with me.
Yeah, there are plenty of bad seeds in the world, but Miller's antics seemed designed to strip the humanity away from weak souls; he seems to want us to HATE everyone, worship greed, etc. I'm more of a New Testament woman, and not a real good Biblical scholar, but often when I see what this administration inflicts upon people, Jesus's words ring in my head. Trump is a greedy narcissist, no doubt, but someone, no SOMETHING, is whispering in his ear and using him as a puppet.
I had a coworker whose husband was very devote Greek Orthodox gentleman. During her perimenopause, if she acted outrageous (to him) he actually once ran for his font of holy water and sprinkled her! My musing is: hmmm.....what would happen if everywhere he went, people started sprinkling blessed water upon him? Wouldn't that be interesting? I would find it very funny if it became a thing he couldn't shake, kind of like Vance and the couches!
Miselle, I'm all for novel thinking these days! The closest water I can imagine reaching him is from a sprinkler system in one of his hideouts.
Joan, He certainly looks like a ghoul who never sleeps.
I so wish someone would write a biography about him Jpan. I can't imagine what the home he grew up in was like. Although I have read he is a lone wolf in his family/
Surround him with kind Brazilian Ayahuasca guides who get him talking and record his story?
Doesn't being rich make one smart? "Fiddle on the Roof": When you’re rich, they think you really know.”
They also let you do whatever you want when you are famous.
I haven't read it, but here you go: Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man (2020) is a memoir by Mary L. Trump, a clinical psychologist and Donald Trump’s niece. It portrays him as a narcissistic, damaged individual shaped by a dysfunctional family and a harsh father, claiming his childhood created a "sociopath".
This is the intent of the heritage foundation's project 2026. They announced what they intended to do, which is exactly what you have described. trump was the perfect vehicle to execute that horrendous project...greedy, selfish, stupid, and easy to manipulate. Hollowing out is exactly what the goal is, leaving a needy populace out there with no say so in the matter.
This is why it is imperative every American takes to the streets in mass numbers, and peacefully show we won't accept it. And get to the polls in the same mass numbers to vote. And boycott the companies who go along. And vote out the enablers from their temporary seats in Congress. And see to it those we voted for assume their rightfully elected positions in January of 2027.
We use our voice and vote, we bring the chaos to a halt, and we start the course correction America so desperately needs.
It really is within our power, and it's up to us.
We're doing our part. Dave is downstairs making up all kinds of posters. I'm tired of clinging to the raft......
YES...time to respond with loudness!
Dave, you are new here! WELCOME!!👋🏼👋🏼
I like to read the small bio/thought attached to the name, and I am WITH YOU THERE, BROTHER: "over the top with frustration"!!
Hang on! We'll get there!
Way to go, Dave!
The numbers today will foreshadow the vote. This is Major League Baseball.
The incompetence is selective. They've proven themselves quite adept at self-enrichment, diverting public funds to themselves and their cronies, and creating opportunities for themselves to profit off of their connections, their domestic violations and their warmaking abroad. It's in the billions, when you look at the Trump family as a whole.
But let's not forget how we got "rule by whim," as personified by Trump. It didn't happen overnight, and the incompetence didn't come out of nowhere. We can debate where it started, but I focus on the civil rights advances of the mid-1960s, when white Southern Democrats flooded into the Republican Party (which I refuse to call "the GOP" because it isn't), and the backlash against women's rights in general, notably Roe v. Wade (1973). It culminated in the backsliding of the Reagan administration, which we haven't really begun to escape from.
As the country became ever more diverse, the Republican Party has became ever whiter and less democratic. Note that the Republican-dominated Supreme Court handed down the Citizens United decision in 2010, the same year as the infamous Tea Party election, which consolidated the far right's hold on the Republican Party. Yes, that election was a reaction against the election of our first Black president, but the roots of Citizens United go back much further: Big Money and the wealthy in general don't like being messed with by "we the people." Think the now-famous Powell memo of 1971 and, long before that, the rabid corporate opposition to the New Deal.
There's more to it than that, of course, but this is what we're up against. The challenge is very like what President Lincoln spoke of in the Gettysburg Address (1863): whether a nation "dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal . . . can long endure." Opposition to that proposition was well under way barely a decade after the Civil War ended. It's never gone away, and it's in the saddle again. What the Trump II has demonstrated so clearly is how very much damage can be, and is being, done in resisting that proposition.
Susanna: and don't leave out Newt Gingrich and Rush Lumbaugh whose snarling, growling, snapping and spitting out vitriol incited this momentum you describe.
Absolutely! I'm a fan of Dana Milbank's THE DESTRUCTIONISTS: The Twenty-Five-Year Crack-up of the Republican Party (Doubleday, 2022). He traces the "crack-up" to Gingrich and what I call the Contract *on* America in 1994, but he gives a nod to Reagan et al. The rise of cable and the fragmentation of the national audience was happening around the same time and IMO played an important role, which the Republicans have capitalized on, dare I say, brilliantly.
Ordered the book.
Opposition to the premise that all men are created equal has existed forever. White European colonizers considered themselves to be better than the native people. America began as a get rich quick scheme for wealthy aristocrats.
JennSH-The colonizers get rich scheme depends on keeping people divided so we won’t be able to challenge the system that bestows them with power. The laws and customs they established and manipulated were based on propaganda about skin color and gender.
We’ll never overcome inequality unless and until we stop allowing ourselves to be manipulated by wealthy people who think they are entitled to own and rule over “we the people”.
European colonizers did consider themselves better than the native peoples on this continent and everywhere else they showed up, e.g., India, China, and all of Africa. But your claim that "America began as a get rich quick scheme for wealthy aristocrats" misses the mark on several counts. Columbus, his peers, and their royal backers may have thought they were going to "get rich quick," but their successors who settled North America in the 17th century had a variety of motives -- getting rich quick wasn't a major motive in, e.g., Massachusetts Bay or what became Pennsylvania -- and their backers weren't all "wealthy aristocrats" by any means. By the 17th century, the merchant class was funding many (most?) of these ventures.
Excellent analysis. It's related to the observation by Hannah Arendt that one sees from time to time, that constant government lying does not ultimately persuade the public of the lies, but it persuades them that there is no truth - at which point the government can do anything it likes.
Bingo! This is all on the conservative leadership. They are allowing this chaos and what they used to accuse the liberals of doing (which they did not) they are doing on steroids.
Actually the scariest part is that fully one third of Americans still support all this madness.
Anyone with any understanding of the purposes of our founding or the nature of the journey we’ve made since 1789 would never have voted for Donald Trump in 2016, let alone anytime after January 6th.
That means that a substantial number of us either do not understand how the government is supposed to work or they actively wish to alter it to some far more autocratic.
We would never have reached this point were that not the case. We may rail at Trump, his cohort of sycophants, liars, ejection deniers, barn- burners, cranks, Christian Nationalist, and nihilists, but they would be there were it not that so many of us were willing to put them there even after their intent was clear.
That is the scariest part.
That is the deeper crisis. Authoritarians only rise this far when enough people either misunderstand democracy, stop valuing it, or see cruelty and domination as acceptable tradeoffs. Trump is not just a cause, he is also a symptom, revealing how fragile civic understanding and moral commitment have become in American life.
“It is being hollowed out on purpose.”
Intentional destruction of our government. What hubris.
I am soooo sick of the chaos. Every damn day that Trump has been in office, including his entire failed first term. He has no knowledge of how our government works, but he thinks he knows a better way.
Actually during former President Obama’s time my late husband and I were so concerned he would be killed. And before that the issue of former President Bush. My husband was so depressed after the Florida voting ballot issue. And I got blamed because I did not vote for Al Gore but Ralph Nader. Later on he said it’s okay your vote didn’t count abd change the tide. Al Gore was line a stick figure back then. I would have gladly voted for him after he came out with his Inconvenient Truth film. He was a changed man.
So it’s been a long time. And as a MSW Clinton’s legislation at times problematic and that was when Newt Grinch came to be. I still can’t imagine him handing access to the Vatican because if his wife. But then yes informatively because of Leonard Leo and others yes I can imagine. It’s been like forever you know.
This is exactly right and so well said!
Michael, you nailed it. I agree, any way to put flashing lights or something around MC's comments??
Vegetarian Supporter
Michael, there is a tendency in this community and in the world at large to blame (or credit) Donald for the chaos, not that you've done so in your comment. I often feel compelled to remind everyone that while Donald may rightly be blamed for plenty, he isn't the source of the chaos we are experiencing. He is the face, the brand, the emblem.
Fifty-some years ago, my first job was that of an office boy at the U.S. headquarters of a German engineering company. Among my duties was emptying the ashtrays and wastebaskets in all the executive offices after everyone had gone home. One evening, the Executive V.P. was working late when I arrived at his office. He motioned me in and I emptied his wastebasket into the rolling canvas bin. When I returned, he said, "Come with me."
We walked down the corridor past a few doors, then he pointed into an office and asked, "What do you see?"
The desk and credenza were in utter disarray with stacks of papers piled everywhere, with machinery parts buried under some papers. Reluctantly, I answered honestly, "A mess."
Mr. Brennan replied, "Exactly. His mind looks just like this. When you have an office in the future, never leave it this way."
Donald's mind has always been a mess. According to his niece, he was literally born that way.
Donald's messy mind, vanity and greed made him the ideal figurehead to be exploited by shadowy figures who've long had in mind to reshape the United States into a theocracy. The theocrats were joined by Vladimir, whose Kremlin had been watching, then grooming Donald as an asset for years. More recently our home-grown technocrats saw Donald as the perfect puppet.
Donald is chaotic, but he's not the author of the chaos. He's the autopen that signs off on the chaos created by his handlers.
Chaos, but sadism too. A deep, abiding need to belittle, humiliate and lash out. Not just to divert attention from his own inner poverty, but to hurt others, smash things, break that which is whole. Those drawn to him must share some, if not all of those same attributes.
Well, yes, ICTT, sadism certainly is a chapter in most of those walking encyclopedias of psychopathy. But for many, I think it's just an extra-cost option they chose to include. Except for the "true believers." For the devout christofascists. cruelty is a feature, not a bug. They prefer the jealous, petty Jehovah of the Old Testament, who spent his days smiting all the infidels who didn't bow, scrape and worship him.
But mainly, it's money and power. If grabbing it causes a little pain, that's just icing on the cake.
They are not interested in governing, only in perpetuating their wealth and power. And yes, chaos serves them better.
Thank you for stating this with such clarity. Accurate description of our current situation.
Standing ovation!!! Democracy, liberty, honest government are hard work. But they have been ignored and now we have an atmosphere where anyone has the right to do as s/he pleases, rather than embracing the opportunity to do as one should.
Exactly. Freedom was never meant to mean impulse without responsibility. Democratic liberty depends on self-restraint, truthfulness, and a willingness to act for the common good. When duty collapses into personal license, institutions weaken, trust erodes, and opportunists step in to exploit the vacuum.
I had expected that by 3/28, it would at least be spring-like on the Cape, but temps are going to stay in the low 30s today. However, I'm going to layer up, so that I can show up at the closest of what are now five No Kings locations across the Cape and circulate nomination petitions for a wonderful friend who is running for state rep.
It is supposed to be cold and rainy. We will still be out there in warm waterproof clothing in Bremen, which is in Northern Germany. The Hamburg one is later in the day, so they might have dry weather for theirs. One of our Indivisible Bremen members is also the leader of Hamburg and Northern Germany Democrats Abroad so she is going to attend both Demos with a train ride in between them. Germany now has No Kings. Demos in 11 cities today. Here is Jen from Indivisible in Canada talking about the number of No Kings Demos in countries outside of the USA, which I understand has 3300 listed.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DWZzpwnEkPa/?igsh=MTN5MHFtbTMwdXltZw==
Germany has about 120,000 Americans and 11 No Kings Demos. We stand together.
The German people know—and learned the hard way—what horrors a megalomaniac leader can perpetrate, and it seems we Americans are getting an object lesson that I wish neither we nor the world would have to learn. There's no Democrats Abroad group near my tiny island, but I'll be cheering online. Onward, all!
Remember the people of Minnesota who had to endure the murders of two American citizens for protesting the cold blooded murders of two American citizens. They protested for weeks in below zero weather.
I can endure the cold and rainy weather for a couple of hours to protest against the dotard who started an extremely expensive and deadly war with Iran.
To be sure, GJ, the war with Iran was and is wholly unnecessary. We have our nation attacking Iran on the basis of terrorism related accusations, and yet, this administration's cabinet and sycophant's leaders haven't a clue of how to come clean regarding the terrorist mindset in which Trump and his lacky sycophants support by failing repeatedly to bring the Epstein Files to the forefront. That Trump and Epstein have inflicted a pedophilic terror network, has matriculated from accusations, to what is clearly now recognized as reality. It's horrendously bad enough that the nation's acknowledged leader and supposed leader of the free world who garnered 77 million people who voted for this carnival barker and Charleton can wield such power for so long. It's come, now, to this point: the public at large must now lead the nation. If anyone cannot be at a No King's rally, then we are obligated, for the sake of this nation, to write letters to the editor in our local newspaper and newspapers beyond our community borders. It's a tough grind; however, regardless of what anyone may think of our media today, they are still printing, and thousands of letters written on a daily basis cannot be fully blocked. The news industry is still honor bound to publish the public's disdain regarding this "presidency."
Well... when you haven't a large agenda that day, why not start a war. He loves and craves attention; he enjoys the power of his dark vision and he's making up for a long life of failures and phobias and terrorizing us for it.
Also please remember the murder of the political and her husband and her dog. I can’t remember her name but her loss important like so many others.
The last big protest I attended here in Minneapolis was -20F, but today promises a balmy 50F. Planning layers and a BIG crowd.
It’s going to be the same temp in Knoxville!
Wish I could be there! Instead, will march in chilly Raleigh today.
I'm a little north of you and although chilly psyched it isn't raining or snowing!
It was freezing at the Airport circle on Cape Cod but everyone called for resistance to the toddler in the White House.
Bett, we were also cold in Brewster, standing on Main Street, in front of First Parish. Ours was the smallest rally of the five that I know of on the Cape--maybe 150 people--but it didn't even get onto the big map, so that was a pretty good showing. And lots of honking as cars drove by. : ) It'll be interesting to see what the stats were for the other local rallies, and then for the national and international ones.
We're going to a No Kings in Montpellier France today. There also are NO Kings demonstrations in Paris, Marseille, Nice, Uzes and many other French cities.
Thanks to you and all of the attendees of the protests against Donald Trump and his Fascist MAGAs around the world.
We love you and appreciate you.
Thank you, GJ Loft ME etc. I'd be out today in a tempest, earthquake, volcano eruption..........
Hear hear!!!
Barney, I am now home from ours, which was cold and rainy but had good energy. Have a great time at your rally. I think it is on my list, but maybe not.
https://lindaweide.substack.com/p/no-kings-no-tyrants-no-dictators?r=f0qfn
Merci Barney!
Wish I were there…
I don't disagree with having the No Kings Rallies - but I do wonder about their effectiveness. In fact, if every single person with a vote stood up and shouted through a bullhorn "We hate you. trump! Shut up and go away!" would the situation change? We know Congress is not going to impeach him again. There's a VERY faint chance that they might invoke the 25th - especially if he has a stroke and they can't do a "Bernie's" on him. But that would still leave behind the gang of loonies who have proved themselves incompetent and corrupt. The American people have been left with this ship of fools - and there doesn't seem any way to rid themselves of it for another three years.
And THAT is far, far too long. . .
LE, Protests work. I have a life of protesting. It started when I was 3. I have joined in making changes for the better in the USA, and here in Germany. There are ways, but my energy is going into the rally we are running here in Bremen, Germany. There are No Kings rallies on 6 continents. Standing up is a visible show of support for all of those fighting the good fight on the streets, in the courts, in the classrooms and in the media. It shows we appreciate them and we have their backs. It also shows the world that we do not side with this president.
You bet they work. And they are working now. Look at what is happening in Congress. They haven't been able to pass anything for months. And now Thune and Trump's little Johnson aren't communicating with each other.
If all was quiet around the country and the world, they would feel free to do what they want.
When we protest, people vote when they are polled and they vote by giving money to candidates.
Hundreds of Democratic candidates and politicians will be at the protests but the Republicans will be cowering in their homes. That alone is a win as far as I'm concerned.
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Agreed 💯
YES LINDA!
It's about the solidarity too. Knowing that there are others out there united against this fascist regime and such unAmerican anti-constitutionalism. A diverse mix of neighbors and strangers that don't want wars on a whim and gestapo thug ICE & Border Patrols savagely detaining and beating people or killing them for protesting such brutal acts in American cities.
Timothy Snyder has posted a very appropriate video just for this moment and a response for those who wonder about the effectiveness of protest. It's a first amendment right and we need as many people that want to keep this republic out there with us tomorrow. Show Trump and the regime that the power of the people is greater than the people in 'power'...
Timothy Snyder has this quick video to remind you why we protest! https://substack.com/home/post/p-192139370
Thanks for the Timothy Snyder Link
For sure…☮️🗽⚖️🇺🇸🇺🇦
Protests work. They are not a speedy solution
How about “we hate you because you fight against everything we stand for”?
Cory Booker has just written a book about it, and Pete Buttigieg has been criss-crossing the country talking about it — we must articulate what we stand for, not merely what we’re against. It’s the only way to break through the miasma we find ourselves in. I hope in coming days we find the inner discipline to do just that.
I so agree with this. We need not only a vision for the future, but coherent plans for every aspect of it, just as Elizabeth Warren had when she was running for Prez. I'd love to hear our candidates say, "We have a plan for that." Without comprehensive plans to realize the vision, the vision is just a dream.
Oh how I love Elizabeth Warren.
ICTT, your point can't be stressed enough, yet I'm not seeing any evidence that Democratic leadership understands this.
The reason Donald's Second Act has been so "successful" is that a very detailed, comprehensive blueprint was fully formed and ready for deployment, actually before Day One.
Donald and his handlers have been going down the list, executing each directive (and inconvenient Americans), ticking off the boxes, one by one.
Project 2025 was ready to go at least a year in advance. What do Democrats have? Not even a thought of a concept of a plan.
I would like to see candidates talking about Constitutional amendments to strengthen our democracy, including campaign financing, gerrymandering, Senate rules requiring a super majority for appointing Federal Judges and Supreme Court Justices. The government has always been designed to favor the most wealthy people and business over every day citizens. If the government didn't cater to these entities more than the people, we wouldn't have the federal deficits and national debt we have today. Corporations would be regulated to protect our people and economy. The wealthy has always had too much control over our lives, a government of the people, by the people, and for the people is how the people have power over these greedy people who have power over every other aspect of our lives.
MysticShadow, your appraisal of the U.S. Government is accurate, but should not be surprising. Those revered "Founding Fathers" were all male members of the "landed gentry." What could we expect but a patriarchal system that protects and promotes the wealthy?
I truly believe they had good intentions, but were subject to the same human frailty we all must deal with: the difficulty in seeing the world through someone else's eyes. The inferiority of women and persons of color was a universally accepted "fact." So the declaration that "all MEN are created equal" meant exactly that, and seemed entirely reasonable to them.
While the U.S. Constitution may be an exemplary document, it is flawed because it was composed by flawed men who frankly, could not imagine the developments that would occur in the future. They never imagined that news sounds and images could transmitted in an instant, nor that a firearm could spray hundreds of bullets in mere seconds. They never dreamed that the top court would become so corrupt that it would rule that "money is speech." They could never have fathomed that voters would actually elect a convicted felon to the presidency. So they provided no guards against those developments.
Constitutional amendments have been proposed in Congress, but they all contain "weasel words" that give the appearance of correcting our problems but don't actually do so.
Fellow commenter and lawyer, Albert Killackey, has written a model amendment that strongly addresses the constitutional weaknesses that brought us to this point. It's worth reading at UnitedWeAmend.org
Today will be assessed as the largest, most vehement and widespread demonstration in United States history. I will be there. My sign?
"WAR CRIMES can't hide SEX CRIMES".
And it will change nothing. The madman will still be worshiped. The incompetent and evil people in the WH and the Pentagon will still wreak havoc on the world. Millions will suffer. The rich will get richer.
IMO, the only way to make a difference - to get the attention of the Oligarchs, who are pulling the strings on the puppets called Republicans, is to create financial havoc. This is a battle for the soul of America. But the soul is really all about money. Bought and sold.
Want to get the attention of those causing this nonsensical and brutal mayhem? Hurt them in the wallet. That means a boycott that is more than a day. That means dumping stocks. That means shutting down the economy.
Call your financial guy and tell him to go to cash now. Don't hurt your IRAs or 401ks by extracting funds, but tell whoever is holding those accounts you want out of those investments. If the markets tumble, someone might notice.
They don't care if little school girls are bombed. They really don't. But if their hedge funds and mutual funds and whatever the Hell else funds are impacted, they might pay attention.
Because money is in charge now. Always has been. But there was always a counter balance of at least a few officials who were decent. All those people have been fired. Gone.
When we dumped tea into Boston Harbor, it was a message of financial pain to the money changers across the Atlantic. Our situation now is FAR more dire than in the 18th century. Lunatics are cooking up a world war. Millions of people are terrified. Many are dying. Many more are fleeing their homes. All for what?
Because a sexual predator in the White House doesn't want us to see the evidence. Personally? I have enough facts already. But the Orange Menace is VERY afraid of the Epstein Files. Hence, millions will suffer or die.
Follow the money....
Speaking of money, how many of us plan to reject the new paper bills with the mad king's graffiti "signature" on them later this year?
I was thinking of adding my own graffiti. Like writing “is a pedophile” next to the signature.
I will - hardly use cash but will not use it. Also - I really object to all comments raising doubts & injecting negativity into a movement in service of “reality.” Hope & perseverance is how you win. Velshi’s review was great.
Can I still buy a coffee with it if his name is “redacted”?
Which is why I'm glad the Unions are supporting No Kings. But - only 10% of the workforce have union representation. Time for the unions to get out and start proselytising. If we want a national strike or boycott, unions could be of immeasurable help.
Fannie Sellins and Mother Jones.Joe Hill. Woody Guthrie annd The Weavers at least sang of history. Springsteen’s The Ghost of Tom Joad as well and Tracy Chapman’s work. . And issues because at ties the labor folks couldn’t see the indigenous story or completely comprehend the slavery history and ramifications. This is when A Randolph Philips comes in with his Pullman Porter Union.
Again the powers that be used the divide and conquer tool all the time. Also private armies and union busters and informants. We are still facing the consequences of this history.
Oh, Mary - you are SO right! The "bosses" really hate it when the workers get together. And it's still going on. Not only fighting unionisation in house, but actually propagandising against it (Socialism! Communism!) I wish I could remember the name of a book I read once about the aid companies gave to the Mafia to embed themselves into unions, and thus tarnish the name. If any one knows, can you let me have it.
Joe McCarthy must have been one of the most destructive forces ever used against the American working man. Unfortunately, this is NOT "history" - it's ongoing.
Quite extraordinary that Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Tom Paxton etc sang for the end of the Vietnam war - and WE are now singing the songs that were sung forty years BEFORE that! We are rapidly going backwards.
"This land is my land" - I reckon that's what they sing now at those Mar a Lago Billionaire parties. . .
Please, Lady Emsworth, enter into your search engine:
"Ali Velshi: History has shown us what can happen when the people show up"
Phil - my concern is that the people in power (and that is, in effect, the people with the money) have now got to the stage where nothing will make them change their actions. The protests indicate they may never be in Governmental power again, but that doesn't bother them because the money and influence base they have managed to construct mean that they will ALWAYS have the upper hand, whether they are in control of the government or not. This is not a fight for something tangible and concrete - as were the NY Factory protests or the Civil Rights campaign. This is much more slippery - sharks and piranhas swimming in Sargasso weed. Who is going to join the "No more billionaires!" protests? Because THAT is what is really needed. And America has now reached a point where to fight a successful political campaign you need - money.
Preferably a billion. . .
Who is going to join the "No more billionaires!" ?
Me and my friends, for sure! Will we see you there Lady E?
Damn right.
Actually, now, Lady Emsworth, you sound more like Thoreau.
He who observed that it's not so much people riding the railroads, as the railroads riding us (then, or now).
Just looked at some wealth charts to see how things have change in the last 50 years.
Depressing.
We are going backwards, not forwards.
One thing I picked up on - in 1970 union membership was just above 20% - now it's just about 10%. Talk about "Power to the people!"
I'm glad to see that many of the Unions that still have some power left are supporting the protests. I just wish there were more of them.
Oh my the railroads! And the indigenous people who saw it all and we were all mesmerized by the newness and glory of science. We missed the trappings of control and power that were baked into the coming of the Iron Horse. I think there was a television show by that name when I was a child.
LE, it's already been proven that even some republicans can see through the lies that Trump has fully embraced. Some were brave enough to say so and lost their seats. Now, they are speaking out with all of us. All the rallies put the republicans on notice that their offensive favors to tRump, only to gain favor with a criminal, will not be accepted. This is why tRump is now cowering; his mistakes are catching up with him and will overtake him by midterms. He will not be the only loser; many of the republican House and Senate may also well lose. tRump has thrown down the gauntlet; we have to pick it up, put it on one of our fists, and strike him where it will hurt the most. We cannot let up simply because we may have doubts as to whether NO King rallies will work or not. Strength is in numbers, not doubts.
Unfortunately, the American electoral system has allowed itself to become mired in money.
Nowadays strength is in dollars, not votes. Until some sort of cap is placed upon the obscene amounts of money each candidate spends - and in depth information as to where that money comes from, America will continue to be run by billionaires. And most of them don't appear to be benign.
No! Check out recent elections in FL. Rs spent boatloads — lost….
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I see no reason not to protest and attend No Kings rallies. They are ways to show the world that there are Americans who disagree with this awful administration.
I'll wager that many people who protest are also acting in other ways to effect change
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BBB - Oh, I agree, I agree, I agree! Get out there, protest, make a noise, let them know we're not dead yet. And it's a great way to build confidence, solidarity and networks.
But - don't build in hopes that are so high they are doomed to failure and despair.
Protests have changed a LOT of things - but this is NOT the Vietnam war - the enemy here is much more subtle and insidious. They are termites, gnawing through the soul of America. We need to work on our own version of "Flit."
Lady E, Pls listen to Professors Tim Snyder and HCR talking about the effectiveness of protests.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kqslmq4oIE
Actually Ezra Levin from Indivisible addressed your concern. He and his wife have been around speaking in your fear. And Indivisible not perfect but at times they do a fine job. They did wonders in the first administration with the disabled world.
I think the problem is long running exhaustion and SILOS. The concept of divide and conquer has been long ongoing in our country though underground . We are isolated from each other by life and knowledge. Similar but different from India. The Great Partition of 1948 so important to know. And some amazing folks come from India . Its leader now Modi similar to our own. But whenever I feel exhausted I think of Reconstruction and how that whole era reconstituted by fear and violence and misinformation. So I think who am Is privileged white elder to complain after the long tine sufferings of others in my nation? So I move on and always compliment when I can but also give constructive criticism.
I learned from Baratunde Thurston, "Citizening is a verb".
Great respect for his original, engaging portraits of America on PBS. And democracy is like brushing and flossing your teeth. Stop doing the basic tasks and watch all the sad things that start happening inside your mouth…
Leaving for Dusseldorf shortly ....
Actually I am kind of bored by his idiotic rants. They are so predictable in their stupidity and meanness that I just ignore them and get back to work on ending his career. Happy No Kings Day, friends!
Well, you may not like this but the other day republicans' cpac club met to determine whom they would like to run for president next time. The candidates were - Rubio, Vance!!, and Tucker Carlson!! Plus they were entertaining the thought of changing the Constitution so trump could run for a third term!!!!!!!!!!!!
We're joining the protest in Indianapolis, IN, Linda. You bet! Thank you.
I am , am taking 4 others with me! Been to them all. VOTE AND IMPEACH THE WHOLE ADMINISTRATION OUT.
The orange felon started a war pushed by Israel and Saudi Arabia for their own particular interests. Why in the hell should Americans die for Israel or Saudi Arabia?! It was Saudis who were responsible for 9/11.
epstein file diversion...isn't holding up now...he has to find a new way to divert attention now that New Mexico is unearthing horrifying events there.
And the Epstein Sex Abuse case is in itself a diversion - from the Russia/Epstein/trump/drugs/money laundering connection.
Sex abuse is punishable by years in prison.
Treachery could end in death.
M’Lady, it should end in death.
Not very good strategy for a Peace Board chairman, and forget the Nobel... is there a War prize? No, wait, this is a Netanyahu/Hegseth enterprise dressed up to make a quick slide into the Trump sphere of responsibility. Yeh, Susan's summed it up.
And, in addition to the FIFA prize, there is now the "annual" America First Prize. I wonder how many times it will be awarded or if the same person can win it...
That clown show award to Trump of the America-First award feels as if we’re living in the upside-down world. Oh wait! We are! Nothing “America First” by what trump is doing
Deborah, upside down and inside out, definitely!
“Bored with Iran” might translate as a narcissist with dementia who finds things far too complicated to manage, and no longer fulfills his insatiable quest of titillation? Easier to continue sticking his own name on everything…
He's looking for the next dopamine hit. Cuba perhaps?
Beautiful, Berry: "his insatiable quest of titillation."
Except remember, too, criminal Donald is an automaton, a humanly-empty bundle of cravings for attention, easy criminal marks, more attention, pussy he brags of grabbing as he likes, more attention, dictators and mass murderers for whom he can roll out the red carpet and otherwise suck up to, and that constant craving for more attention.
So let's set him, or it -- that pulpy, greasy, mass of cosmeticized fat -- aside, and remember none of it happens without what used to be fine American schools, and fine, fine teachers, and what has instead been perverted into a humanities-empty zone of testing-testing-testing. All to enrich the billionaire testers, and to humiliate the plebes, the serfs, all who need constant reminders that mere people on tests can never ask any questions, may question no authorities ever, none of our cowardly elites floating the criminal Donald ever goof-balling-protecting our worst.
Spot on! So around him, plans to make more things go boom-boom.
Maybe he should start playing ACTUAL video games to get his kicks.
Heather: "The fight over funding for TSA illustrates on a micro level how lawmakers who ignore the real world to cleave to an ideology strengthen authoritarianism."
Thank you Professor, that's another cue for today's associations for "No Kings Ever".
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Per VELSHI this 2/28, Saturday AM,.
13 U.S. women & men have been killed so far.
313 injured 12 seriously
4600+ killed in Total numbers in a dozen countries, the majority in Iran & Lebanon.
No King Today nor on any Day. Fight Back!
As someone posted before, trump believes this "excursion" with Iran is some kind of video game he can shut off and leave when he tires of it. Like a toddler with an attention span of 3 minutes. It has caused irreparable damage and loss of lives, yet he's bored with it.
Meanwhile, back at the Iran Not-a-War, I asked Perplexity AI Pro to summarize what damage has been done to US installations in the Middle East since Trump said, "go". Below is what it gave me back. Below is the text from the first submission of my query. The link at the bottom has the query I used, and the response to the second identical submission about 10 minutes later, which interestingly re-wrote itself. The link also has all of the sources used to answer the query.
Many news sources are reporting that the Pentagon is putting together plans to send 10,000 more troops to the Middle East, in addition to the 2,000 marines and members of the 82nd Airborne Division. The claim is that they will give Trump more "options". Maybe Hegseth believes that if he gives Trump more "toys" to keep him occupied, he will stop being bored. Or maybe Hegseth just wants to flex his warrior ethos by putting more warfighters on the ground. Unfortunately, lives will be lost, and far too many will be put in the ground in military cemeteries.
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Since 2/28/26, Iranian missile and drone attacks have caused heavy damage to multiple U.S.‑used installations across the Middle East, and the U.S. has both relocated personnel from exposed bases and surged new forces into the region.
Damage to U.S. installations (since 2/28/26)
Late Feb / early March: Iranian strikes damaged facilities linked to communications and radar at at least seven U.S. military sites around the region, including structures and radomes used to detect ballistic missiles and support long‑range communications.
Bahrain: Naval Support Activity Bahrain, home to U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, suffered “extensive damage” to warehouses, satellite dishes, and other infrastructure after several days of Iranian missile and drone attacks; dependents were ordered off the island.
March 20 reporting: A joint analysis estimated roughly 800 million dollars in damage to Middle East bases used by U.S. forces in the first two weeks of the war, including about 310 million dollars to buildings, facilities, and infrastructure at those installations.
March 27 attack on Prince Sultan Air Base (Saudi Arabia): An Iranian missile and drone strike wounded around 10–12 U.S. troops (at least two seriously) and damaged multiple KC‑135 refueling aircraft and base structures, described as one of the most significant breaches of U.S. air defenses so far.
Overall, multiple air bases and a key naval hub have seen repeated hits that degraded air defense, communications, and sortie‑generation capacity.
Troop relocation and posture changes
Relocations away from heavily hit bases: Reporting indicates Iran’s missile and drone campaign has left about 13 U.S.‑used bases in the region “nearly uninhabitable,” forcing U.S. Central Command to shift thousands of personnel to safer locations and to rely more on remote and distributed operations.
Dependents and nonessential personnel: At Bahrain, dependents have been ordered to depart, and similar drawdowns and consolidations are occurring at other vulnerable sites.
Reinforcements into theater: In parallel with relocations, the U.S. is sending additional forces—reports describe thousands of soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division and more Marines and sailors deploying to the Gulf, significantly increasing the overall U.S. presence despite damage to individual installations.
So, since 2/28/26, the trend is: severe but uneven damage to U.S.‑used bases; movement of troops and dependents out of the most exposed locations; and a simultaneous buildup of combat power elsewhere in the region.
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/summarize-the-news-on-damage-t-Kg7YEJZ3T26ICZwbmxRWoQ
My 4 and 1 year old granddaughters are way nicer -- and with a better concept of right and wrong!
"my kids at 2 were a lot nicer people than he is at 79!"
Possibly ANY 2 year old is, at least at some time or another, and they have a valid excuse for some emotional immaturity.
Susan, my reaction well. Bored with it. That statement really struck me this am. He creates world wide chaos along with death and destruction and he is bored with it.
I was listening to a podcast between Charlie Sykes and Robert Rausch who have defined the government as psychotic and that psychosis has the power to destroy the world. And if he loses the midterm his psychosis will get even more dangerous!! Unless there's a decency backlash from the republicans who begin to abandon him. The problem with this pool of trumpers is that there's no lifeguard on duty.
I would agree about the nicer. I am thinking more kindergarten than 2 because there is a level of squabbling that a 2 year old does not do, but let us say on his pouty days he is like a 2-year-old. His team are like emotional perpetual mean middle schoolers. Even Susie Wiles is not really an emotional adult.
I just had someone from Iran speaking at our rally. He was wonderful. His speech was so moving and put a human face on the Iranians. The Iranians I know are all in the US. Now I know some here in Germany. I am just home from our No Kings rally and I am freezing cold. We had our rally in cold hard rain without a tent. We did have a table and a canopy over it, but we speakers were in the cold and rain. My hands froze. Now I am going to have a warm bath. It was still wonderful and I love the amazing people who helped to put it together and who came out in the cold and rain to be seen.
The truth is that trump assumed that Iran would capitulate as soon as their leaders were killed, and the bombing showed the power he can project. After all of the attacks on countries around the world on civilians in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, attacks on Nigeria to protect Christians, and the kidnapping of the head of state of a relatively weak Venezuela, he thought the Iranians would be so intimidated that they would crumble immediately. I'm sure the more competent advisors and military advised him about the likely outcome of the attack, but he dismissed them as incompetent weaklings. He believes that our NATO allies are obligated to join the war he started. The NATO agreement is defensive and applies only when an ally is attacked from outside the alliance.
As far as the DHS funding for ICE and border protection goes, the right wing is saying that the Democrats want to leave the country unprotected from immigrants, while all they need to do is require these federal agents to work within the Constitution. Why are they fighting so hard for the federal government to terrorise and murder US citizens and immigrants?
They they obviously intend to use these fascist tactics to intimidate and force the country to submit to their fascist rule.
God bless Heather for so succinctly summarizing this, it is so hard to keep this hot mess straight when we keep getting dumped upon!
Now, can someone help me with this?: I recall when this war (yes, WAR) started, there was some official who mused about Trump will get bored with it, and I believe Trump himself heard about it and said he would NOT get bored. Anyone else recall it?
I am ready with my sign and will be protesting today, even though my skeleton isn't terribly excited about walking/standing in a crowd for hours.
Susan, I taught two and tree year olds in Sunday School that were way more mature at their worst than he is.
Sen. Thune and the GOP controlled Senate passed the bill unanimously but today Johnson kissed up to Trump per usual. He went on a tirade that it was a radical Dem scheme and that Republicans probably didn’t read the bill. It was the most ridiculous and dishonest spin I’ve ever heard from a political leader! Johnson is determined to completely abdicate any congressional responsibility on everything so that his boss, Trump, always has free rein to make war, spend and govern at his whim!
The first 20 or so comments here invariably (and predictably) have been all about Trump, as if somehow any of us needed more reasons to figure out he’s the shallowest, most incompetent, least moral, most psychiatrically impaired degenerate ever to sit in the White House.
But the inability to govern starts — and stays — with the shabby Republican majority in Congress. Make no mistake — the Senators who voted against paying TSA employees, together with their fellow batshit fascists in the House just voted *against* the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. They voted that Americans, and anyone living here, are NOT entitled to be secure “in their persons, places and things.” No probable cause? No worries! And who really needs a warrant signed by a JUDGE — not an administrative officer of ICE — anyway?
On one level, all this is about sheer incompetence, stupidity and fuckupery so thick you can cut it with a bread knife. On the other, it’s about what our Founders would have instantly denounced as “tyranny.”
Tyranny and dictatorship never reside within a single individual alone. They are social and political forces that culminate in groupthink, self-deception and cultism that debases all within their grasp. None of those wretched 208 or so pieces of nonsense in the House were ordered, doxxed, chained, bound or gagged, forced *in any way* to do what Trump told them to, to behave like braying jackasses, to violate the Fourth Amendment. Nobody ordered them to self-lobotomize or join a brain-dead, moronic cult — they did that all by themselves. The buck stops with THEM, not at the White House.
Until we lodge guilt where it belongs, we miss the true targets and keep giving them the excuses they seek to explain away their terrible choices.
No Kings is as much about the concept of Parliament as it is about Monarchy. Denounce Mad King Donald all you like, but remember the real struggle is about the Constitution’s Article I, not Article II. There’s a reason our Founders arranged the articles in the order they did.
trump is the distraction the conservative fascists needed as Grover Norquist once stated, "We don't need a conservative leader in the White House, just a President that will sign whatever legislation that a republican congress sends over." They thought they had that with GW Bush and to some extent they did, but he did rebel a little. With djt, they got it all. he is the perfect distraction for them to implement P25, which continues to spread throughout the government. trump is the distraction.
Rickey, I have often opined, and will repeat myself: Ronald Reagan was the proof of concept. G.W. Bush was the crash test dummy. Donald Trump is the production model.
“……but remember the real struggle is about the Constitution’s Article I, not Article II. There’s a reason our Founders arranged the articles in the order they did.”
Yes indeedy, but the one thing that Washington feared would undo the Republic has reared its ugly head from the beginning; partisanship, which today we suffer in the extreme. The batshit lunatic fascist right-wing is large enough and so far off the rails these days I wonder just how Congress can return to some sense of normalcy after Stinky Diapers is dead. 35% of the country will continue to keep these idiots in office until Hell freezes over, it seems.
Well said. Congress (specifically the House of Representatives) has abdicated their constitutional duties and are kneeling to their king. No other way to put it.
Right-wingers in the Senate are just as bad as those in the House.
True patriots would defend the Constitutional democracy no matter how it affects their jobs or well-being.
ICTT, there's no arguing that if Congress was doing its job as the Constitution intended, our situation ideally* would be less dire, but, as we recognize that responsibility for the dire condition of our constitutional republic is shared far beyond the Mad King, we can't forget the role of the Roberts Court in the rapid decay of our once-admired Democracy.
It has become impossible for me to accept the narrative that any of the six so-called conservatives are “originalists”, as giving the executive near complete immunity defies the framers’ clear intent to design a resilient system of checks and balances.
* it probably goes without saying that we are not living in an ideal reality where voters are presented with reliable facts and equal opportunity to evaluate candidates, and much of that blame also lies with SCOTUS for Citizens United and the erosion of voting rights.
Thank you for reminding us that without the spinelessness and active complicity of the Republican Party Trump could not continue to destroy our democracy.
That is the point that I have been making since trump's first term.
It mystifies me why the whole right-wing is not held responsible.
They all should be seen as the true enemies of our democracy.
Remember, Johnson led the Jan. 6 uprising. He is the MAGA BS MASTER!!!!!
Did Johnson refuse to pass it — under orders from the WH -- so trump could take credit?
The trouble is that your government is beginning to look like jackasses.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/27/fbi-director-kash-patel-email-hacked-by-iran
The technical term is kakistocracy – government by the least-qualified or most-unprincipled individuals in our country. In other words, a government by the very worst America coughs up.
Beginning???
Beat me to it.
The U.S. government GOP are jackasses!
Beginning to?
Beginning? Things are well past that!
Johnson's position must be starting to get tricky. He is one the people relying on Trump to deliver a theocracy, but the longer he supports Trump's demented policies that harm ordinary voters, the further Trump will drive the religious extremists from their theocratic goal.
I can't stand that little pip squeak, Mike Johnson. Jimmy Kimmel calls him "Squeaker of the House", which I find extremely accurate! When is this crazy show going to stop??? We know the more power they give him, the more he'll take! Something has to give and soon! NO KINGS TODAY!!! Let's go out and show them what for!!! Power to The People!
Remember that politicians are NOT leaders. They look to see which way the political trends are running, and they try to go that way. The founders NEVER considered that Congress would be a rubber stamp for the executive branch.
The term unanimous is interesting in this context. As I understand it, there were not all that many voices present for the voice vote.
While all of the things being said about the ineffectiveness of Congress at the moment are valid objections, in some ways it is a good thing and reflects the founders' intent. In the Senate the minority is being respected by the arcane rules that weren't even written down until after the Civil War. While over in the House we are seeing the chaos of the rabble, which was totally expected as a part of The Great Compromise. Finding our way out and back from this mess will require arriving at a place where those with whom we strenuously disagree to the point of not even respecting them, are none-the-less being given their opportunity to be petulant and not even close to being as mature as your average two year old.
Trump gave Johnson one million dollars and said publically that he had done so.
Professor Richardson -- Thanks for the play-by-play. It only provides more evidence that the current administration and the GOP are out of control. As an American living abroad, I can attest that my Japanese neighbors routinely ask me what is going on. They continue to be polite about wanting to be allies with the U.S., but after a little probing, it becomes painfully obvious that ordinary people in this country are fed up with Trump and his supporters. It's a serious breach of trust.
Funny you should say this. Even after the insults to Japan and the numerous crimes and atrocities of this regime, there are still those who want to normalize Trump. I wrote recently about how the Dodgers, and Japanese stars like Ohtani and Yamamoto need to turn down an invite to the White House. This regime isn't normal and can't be normalized.
https://bettergracesandliberations.substack.com/p/will-the-dodgers-stand-with-their
(BTW y'all, help a struggling writer out with a sub if you can.)
-Mathew
https://bettergracesandliberations.substack.com/
We're aligned! I just reposted some of your prose along with my own suggestion. https://substack.com/@realgaijin/note/c-234505649
Ping pong back and forth about passing anything that actually helps the American people 🤦♀️
Be LOUD! We deserve better 💔🤍💙
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 ✊
Thank you, Megan. I look forward to tomorrow, No Kings, in my remote corner of the North West. Everyone promises to be there. ✊✊✊
Bill, I’ll be on the southern edge of the Rogue Valley with my sign, accompanied by 3 generations of my wife’s family (aunts and nieces) with the uncle (age 91) provides drop off and pick up support for us (81, 68 and gimpy, 63 and 28).
Our signs read “No Kings”, “King free since 1776” and “Antifa: Family tradition since 1942”.
Megan you are a bright light in the darkness -- thank you for posting this every day!
Thank you, Megan. Let’s flood mike Johnson’s phone lines, inbox’s and mailrooms to get this bill on the floor for a vote!
You are my queen, Megan. And I bet you are fabulous mommy... because what you are doing for us is also for your kiddos. :-)
The subtext of all Heather writes today is that the will of the people stirs, builds, matters.
Its corollary, that eventually even the dolt Republicans following their favorite criminal will have to acknowledge the people.
Trouble is, how mad is criminal Donald? His Iran war -- totally insane, a sop to dictator Netanyahu and his ally, mass murderer Mohammed bin Salman. Plus a kowtowing as rapist Donald always does to Putin.
But otherwise pedophile protector Donald just careens on whims of his own caprice. Totally self-absorbed, totally demanding he ever be center stage as his cultists' only entertainment forever and forever.
So close now to tomorrow's No Kings marches, and signs, and turning out across the land.
Yes, we're going to our local No Kings protest at noon and we hope everybody shows up! As Dr. Richardson says above "For years, the far right has insisted that it and only it knows how to govern because its ideology is the only legitimate way to look at the world". If we don't fight back, including No Kings Marches today, we will lose our voice. In our monthly post on OneClick2BetterWorld.substack.com December 2025: No Kings - Indivisible, we noted that No Kings "emphasizes the '3.5% rule' which is the idea that if 3.5 percent of a country’s people become involved in a movement, then significant change can be achieved". Please contact No Kings or Indivisible or MoveOn to find a No Kings protest near you. Thanks for being here!
Dr. Richardson, isnt there any mechanism whereby the Democrats and Republicans in the House who support the Senate’s bill could have brought it to the floor for a vote over the Speaker’s objection? After all, there is nothing in Article I that says only the Speaker can bring something before the body for a vote.
I would like an answer to Barbara Ginsberg’s question also. Since we already know how many billions of dollars Trump wasted by demanding far more than was necessary to fund his ICE thugs, he’s started a war that has already cost billions, and that has killed and wounded American soldiers (even WITHOUT their boots-on-the-ground status), has made deals that favor Russia and Putin instead of Ukraine and Zelenskyy and their incredibly brave and determined citizens, has told the world that he thinks Nawrocki is fabulous, shunned NATO members (who are brilliant for not assisting our loony President with opening the Straight of Hormuz!), has broken EVERY promise that he assured American citizens about lowering our cost of living, has (and is) removing the chance for health insurance to millions of Americans, demolished the People’s house for a huge, ugly ballroom, torn up the Rose Garden and replaced it with cement, renamed airports, the Kennedy Center and basically slapped his name everywhere possible, shamelessly begged for the Nobel Prize, and on and on (just like his loony, misspelled, midnight missives that end (finally) with “THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER”. How could we NOT pay attention? And don’t forget about the Epstein files which, from the little we know, are proof positive of his guilt in drugging and raping underage girls. All this is just the tip of the iceberg, and like the Titanic, is going to ruin our country. He was already a convicted criminal when he took office, at the very least he has started a war without consulting our elected officials, so WHY hasn’t he been impeached?
Or arrested? But by who?
Yes, Democratic and Republican representatives that make up a majority of the House can indeed force a floor vote over Speaker Mike Johnson’s objection. It’s called a Discharge Petition. Unfortunately, this is not immediate but takes many weeks. I believe the minimum is 30 plus 7 days.
The discharge procedure is part of the formal, written standing House Rules. The “discharge rule” dictates when and how members can file a discharge petition, signature requirements, timing, and floor consideration.
The Hastert Rule was never a written part of the standing House Rules. It was a power flex on the part of Republicans, signifying their intention to not give a shit about bipartisanship.
At the start of every new Congress, House Rules are written by the majority party but have to be approved by a majority vote of the whole House. One of the key rules that got changed at the beginning of this Congress was to require nine sponsors from the majority party for a motion to vacate the speakership, as a opposed to one, Johnson made sure to lock in his Speakership.
The standing rules can be amended at any time by a simple majority vote of the whole House. The House can also adopt “special rules” written by the Rules Committee, which is dominated by the majority party. The "special rules" can temporarily override or add to the standing rules for consideration of specific bills.
To make things more complicated, other legislation resolutions or packages can also include provisions that change the standing rules going forward.
Standing rules in the Senate can also be changed by a simple majority vote, which is why Trump keeps demanding that Thune get rid of the filibuster rule since Republicans have a majority, and Vance can break a tie if there were a couple of Republican defections. The filibuster rule requires a 60-vote majority to end debate on anything debatable, such as bills, resolutions, and, in the past, nominations, giving the minority party considerable power. There were two rule changes to exempt executive-branch and judicial nominations from the filibuster.
Thune is refusing to do what Trump wants because he sees a future someday with Republicans in the minority. Of course, the Senate could always put the filibuster back in place after getting rid of it, or write a rule requiring 60 votes to repeal the filibuster to protect it.
The bottom line is that the Constitution gives the House and Senate the right to write their own rules on how they conduct their business, They have a major impact on what can be brought to the floor for a vote. They strongly favor the majority party, especially in situations like this one, when Republicans have a very thin majority. In some sense, the congressional rules are the least democratic part of our institutional democracy.
Thank you, Georgia, for this most detailed recap of "congressional rules." Not "democratic" at all, especially when you consider congress has always (I think) been able to vote for an increase in their own salaries.
Their salaries should be determined by the voting citizenry. That way, if they don't do the job WE elected them to do, we can terminate their paychecks.
Or tied to a reasonable multiple of the poverty level or the median income for a family of 4. Might give them a reason to actually understand what living at the poverty level is like…
And we need to have them all put their investments into blind trusts controlled by government trustees while they are in office and overseen by an inspector general.
I like the way you think!
Thank You for this clarification, Georgia.
Actually the House rules DO in fact give the Speaker HUGE control over the order of bills that are to be considered. There are some options available but they are rarely used because they require either 2/3 or 3/4 vote in support or in a couple of cases no objections (i.e., unanimity). Its why Speakership is so important and is craved by the long-term Congresscritters.
How many hardcore MAGA Republicans are in Congress? Your answer might be subjective since some of the elected Republicans are speaking up negatively about Trump, others may wish to but aren’t. That leaves the hardcore ones, many of whom appear too stupid to put together sentences grammatically. Or, they’re the ones representing the 30-something percent of voters who haven’t changed their minds even when Trump flagrantly, arrogantly, not to mention stupidly, says and does stuff entirely against government protocol. Like bombing Iran without asking. And putting Dimwit Hegseth in charge! I sound frustrated. But I’m really worried. Iran doesn’t care one whit about its citizens, and they’re going to fight down to their last firecracker. 🧨
The evidence supports the truth is that the right wing has no respect for our citizens, they only care about their own power and wealth, to hell with rest of us.
Barbara, you hit the nail on the head here. How is it that one person (elected by one district in one state) decides that TSA/FEMA/etc doesn’t get funded? Who made him king? Not the constitution. I really believe that in order to fix our democracy, we need to fix some of these “rules.” Add this to project 2029.
The real question is — who made them cut off their own balls, so to speak. The rules are indeed the focus — they must be, otherwise we lose sight of where responsibility lies.
What a wonderful question. Every comment to your question so far focuses on the exceptions, the trivial, mostly bypassing the main point. Yes, there is a Hastert rule. Yes, there are discharge petitions (used most recently to force a unanimous vote to release the Epstein files). Yes, the Constitution gives deference, etc. But they miss the gist of your question. How did we end up constructing a Congress that has managed to give such deference to a dumb, partisan hack?
In Britain, the Speaker is not permitted any partisanship whatever, and almost never votes. When Betty Boothroyd became House Speaker, she abandoned not just her seat in the House of Lords, but her Tory membership completely. She presided over Commons with an iron, but never a partisan fist. She did what a Speaker is supposed to do — keep real order and preside over real debates. She wasn’t chosen for her mealy-mouthedness and pretend-Christian wimpy personality, let alone for loyalty to any Prime Minister. She was elected for her great, big, booming voice that would rise above the fray to shout SPIT IT OUT, MAN! to one poor, ineffectual Melba toast member stuttering over his words.
Way too much “deference” and phony politeness in our own system. It conceals true debate, rather than presides over it. Small wonder it fits far too snugly with the deterioration of democracy we are now fighting against.
Heather's letter warns that democratic danger no longer lies in incompetence alone, but in the moment failure begins serving power. This commentary follows that darker threshold, where chaos stops looking accidental and starts functioning as a method of authoritarian rule...
''How Democratic Failure Becomes Authoritarian Power''
How chaos stops looking accidental and starts serving the ambitions of power
https://essayx.substack.com/p/how-democratic-failure-becomes-authoritarian
There's the Hastert rule, but I'm not sure they had the numbers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hastert_rule
Help! I am still working on yesterday. ...
Oh Judith. You speak for me!
This perfectly sums up the constant tsunami of events, Judith
Republicans don't want to "govern". They want to "rule". Trump is now "governing" by declaring emergencies and issuing Executive Orders. The sooner the public realizes they are being "ruled not governed" ... that their opinions DO NOT COUNT to the Republican Party... the sooner we will be at least part way out of this nightmare. Then we will still have to break up the "Wall Street Cult" as well as the "Israeli Money Cult" that the Democratic Party's members belong to. But, hey, one step at a time!
It's rule by proclamation - rather like a monarch.
Exactly!
Or a pope, RJN.
Extremism, whether Right-leaning or Left-leaning has no place in this forum.
First, according to Snopes, there is no verifiable record or evidence to support the claim that Chuck Schumer ever said, "God put me in the Senate to protect Israel,”
Second, the term "Israeli money cult" is neither standard nor recognized as a historical, religious, or political term. Most Jewish people understand it as pejorative, derogatory, and antisemitic.
This term effectively dehumanizes and stereotypes the State of Israel and Jewish people as irrational, dangerous, or operating under a secretive and malicious agenda. It ties into conspiracy theories that claim a small group (often identified as Jewish or Israeli) secretly controls world finances.
We cannot hold ourselves as standing for truth and justice when we take on just another version of the very distortions that we advocate against.
Your last paragraph especially is correct but people can speak against the Israeli government and not be antisemitic.
Thanks for making this point. People who act as if Israel can do no wrong are part of the problem, not the solution. The Israeli government is no longer a democracy because Netanyahu has kept his country at war to avoid being thrown out of office.
I urge you to further research the connection between Israel and the United States government. I’m not against the state of Israel, but I am against the government of Israel. This is not “extremism”. This is wanting to stop foreign influence over USA policy decisions… including going to war. The best corruption researcher I know who has reported on this is Sarah Kenzior. I hope you’ll check out her work.
To point out that accepting AIPAC campaign donations is all about the Benjamins is the reality and not the least bit anti-Semitic. The American Jewish population is only around two percent of the population.
Another good argument for public financing for all political positions.
Thank you for calling for public financing of elections. Our “freedom of speech” culture might make that hard, but we know “freedom of speech” does not give people permission to lie and yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater where there’s no fire. My dream is that all political advertising is Fact Checked by historians and other qualified “referees” so that political debates have integrity!
No.. he didn't say "God" put him anywhere.
He did however state that “My job is to keep the left pro-Israel.”
You can climb your high horse and claim that all of us against Netanyahu are anti-semitic. blah blah blah.
We've heard it all before.
And I'm beginning not to care anymore. Continuing to pretend that Bibi is on the right side of history is just bs. He'll be in those books right next to Trump.
What is the Israeli money cult?
It's being financed by the Israeli PAC... like Chuck Schumer saying "God put me in the Senate to protect Israel".
AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) is one of the largest lobbyists in America. They contribute money to nearly all of the GOP and 2/3 of the Dems. There is a reason that the US allowed Israel to genocide the Palestinians, attack Iran and invade Lebanon... and that reason is that AIPAC owns the US Congress.
Check Open Secrets . org and Trackaipac . com
It’s fine to challenge policy, but not fine to make up quotes to back a position or to broadly categorize an entire group using epithets like “Israeli money cult”.
These are not thoughtful, data-based arguments. They are prejudicial, dehumanizing, provocative comments, which, in the end, implement tactics that we criticize the Right for using. They take the focus off the real issues while dividing and offending those whose belief in the right of Israel to exist is threatened. While you might argue that we are overly defensive, the history of persecution of Jews over millennia suggests otherwise.
Know that I am vehemently against the deadly and inhumane policies of Netanyahu, but that is not a free pass to generalize as some of these comments have done.
“Don’t let perfection be the enemy of the good”. If you’re against Netanyahu, then we are in “violent agreement”. He needs to go. Gaza is genocide. And Kamala Harris was afraid to say that, which is one reason why she lost to Trump. If you don’t like the language I use, that’s your right. And whether the Schumer quote is real or not is irrelevant compared to his actions. That’s what counts. He’s a very weak man (who I once knew).
Again, if you agree Netanyahu should go, then please focus on that rather than holding me to your purist reasoning / language standards.
And I’ll put Sarah Kendzior’s deep research against your beliefs any time. The cult of money in politics … people worshipping sources of money no matter what the source … must end. It’s a global criminal conspiracy to destroy democracy throughout the world.
I’ve got lots to do today. Don’t believe social media gives every stranger the right to argue with me forever. So… go work to take down Netanyahu not me. End of conversation.
It took the Great Depression to get to the New Deal. You have to convince enough people that Republicans can't put their pants on one leg at a time. It's always good to have these morons do the convincing for us. Which they're doing.
Convincing the MAGA morons of it is the problem. How can anyone not see it? Even after the Republicans are so contorted by their pretzel logic and crooked that they have to screw their pants on now.
I can answer but not explain: their “information sources” are feeding them utter garbage. They take that propaganda as the gospel truth, and think that ffpotus shows strength and business acumen.
Ideology as the only true formula, ignoring almost all norms or traditions of compromise. Edmund Burke, conservative icon stated that governing by ideology spelled doom for the French Revolution. "Rage and frenzy will pull down more in half-an-hour than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up in a hundred years." –Edmund Burke, ‘Reflections on the Revolution in France’; 1790.
And he's had over a year—how long to rebuild our country after 4 years?
G-D only knows. I am worried that we may never get back to republicanism -- a governance that will finally include all people with all citizens treated with respect. These words are important, but the M.A.G.A. core seems unwilling to reconcile at all.
"We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” --President Abraham Lincoln, March 1861.
Somehow there’s always an appropriate Lincoln quote, isn’t there? I am afraid I cannot think of the MAGA people as friends—the best I can do right now is call them misguided. If they find that they can treat others with respect, I will welcome them, but otherwise we have to move on without them. There will be much work to do.
Seriously that is very unlikely, as cultists need extensive debriefing and we have no time for such . Move on is right.
If we are headed toward a civil conflict of some sort, we need to open the doors widely for returnees from M.A.G.A.-world. Had Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri all left the Union in 1861, the civil war would have be even bloodier, if winnable at all for the right side.
“If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.” – President and General Ulysses Grant, 1875.
A big Yes!
I also use the word "misguided." MLK said, while laughing, God wants me to love my enemy. He didn't say I had to like them. (paraphrased)
We must treat MAGA individuals with respect, too, in my opinion, for many reasons. One being, there are ones who will move.
I would agree with you, *except *that some close friends and half my extended family had voted for Baron von Blimpoman. The M.A.G.A. base probably does not include people like my cousines who are peeling off. Interesting: the percentage of the country that is core-Trump is about the same as the percentage of the United States in the confederate states.
https://youtu.be/22AVWP9e6tM (2½ min.vid. from 'Glory')
AND... Have you noticed that ironically, the ones that call themselves Patriots are now the sleeziest of ALL!
Isn't that so often the case with lying hypocrites?
One of my old political science professors used to say that “crusading ideology is the bane of my existence.” The current era demonstrates why he said that in sharp relief.
Funny, my conservative political mentor, back in my angry youth, instructed me, Ideology breeds idiocy."
I love that!
Thank you, Ned. This makes me want to read "Reflections on the Revolution in France."
Great book. By the way, Edmund Burke supported the American Revolution as he would support us today.
Thank you for the *sub-thread, y'all. As Susan said, there is always a quote by President Lincoln for something. My favorite is one I *once read in a meme, "Do not believe everything you read on the inter-net." Seriously, the quote by President *Lincoln that I think of every day goes something like. " "Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be."
EDIT P.S., off to the rally here in Annapolis.
Heather, I so glad that you said "Renee Good and Alex Pretti". Everyone else says Alex 1st since he is the man. Renee was a hugh shock 'killing a white suburban woman' that happened 1st. Then 'white male gun owner (not gay)' after. Sadly, there is another young man, Ruben Ray Martinez, that everyone is forgetting to mention, 23 yo man shot by CBP agent. We're not shocked by because he was hispanic? All mentions should say "Rubin Ray Martinez, Renee Good and Alex Pretti all shot by DHS agents for no good reason." Rubin's killing was not caught on tape so maybe that's why we're not so shocked? You tell me.
Keith Porter was well; a Black man.
I would like to ask republicans who’s side they’re on - our country’s constitution or the side of our enemies which seems to include the present occupant of the White House and I would like a yes or no answer without obfuscation- as a country loving, constitution loving, tax paying American I have the right to ask. Period.
Sadly the answer is crystal clear. Faced with a choice between democracy and power, the MAGA Republican Party is choosing power. And they will hold it until the American people hand them a humiliating defeat, and wrest power from their dirty hands, in November’s upcoming Blue Tsunami Midterm Elections!
And as such, we have a right to a straight forward answer, too!
And as elected Congresscritters, they have the right to ignore you, sigh. So actually, no, you don't have a "right" to a straight-forward answer.
And even if you did, do you think they would give you one?
NO, Just like you can't call an illegitimate government legitimate you cannot call a moron a critical thinker
I’m struck by the contrast of paid ice agents menacingly hanging around airports while unpaid TSA workers struggle to survive and people wait in unimaginable lines for hours for a flight that may be canceled.
And Congress is handling this by going on spring break.
I’m at a lost for words to describe how angry and disgusted that makes me feel .
The footage I've seen from airports shows ICE agents not menacing, but hanging around looking fat and happy. Who wouldn't be? They're taking big fat paychecks for doing nothing. I guess ICE knows a good grift when they see it, just like the Grifter-in-Chief.
While I know that the intent of ICE is to menace, frankly what I see is: a bunch of (almost all) men in mismatched “uniforms” wearing “tactic-cool” vests with Velcro’d patches with letters (ICE, CBP, HSI) walking or standing in groups, looking at their phones, drinking coffee and wandering around.
No mission, no focus, no articulable purpose.
Thank you, Dr Richardson. What you do matters. More and more.
This letter didn't just sing, Heather. It was an aria.
The roots of the 2026 DHS appropriation dispute go back to last summer, when Mike Johnson and his majority could not complete work on the annual appropriations, instead gloating over Republican dominance in shoving the Big Ugly Bill down Democrats' throats. As Fiscal Year 2026 dawned, Little Mikey sent Republican legislators home, rather than negotiate with Democrats.
Unfortunately for the little Louisiana Crawfish, his slick political judgment turned to sand, especially after his party's favorite police force (ICE) murdered two people on the streets of snowy Minneapolis. So much for your political skill, Little Mike.
I'm looking forward to January, when you hand the gavel to your most hated opposition. Your downfall is richly deserved.
He always reminds me of a Smurf, with his constant smirk, an evil ugly Smurf.
As someone who generally hates using body image to demean someone, I believe that “🍊 💩’s ‘Little Johnson’ “ is fitting.
I agree; we shouldn't attack anyone's body, no matter how disgusting. I was really attacking his demeanor, a scurrying sneaky kind of person.
I was outing myself for doing something which I normally don’t do.
Uh-oh, I guess neither of us will pass the purity test... LOL