In July 2024, according to an article published today by Kirsten Grind and Megan Twohey in the New York Times, billionaire Elon Musk texted privately about his concerns that government investigations into his businesses would “take me down.” “I can’t be president,” he wrote, “but I can help Trump defeat Biden and I will.”
Musk's departure leaves a ravaged landscape, not a record of savings as he claims. Much of what he destroyed paid us ROI benefits of $7, 10, 15 on the dollar, so to claim a 'savings' of that $1 is to admit a net LOSS of $6, 9, 14. When someone much smarter than I finally crunches the numbers of net dollars LOST to the American people because of this insane caper, the amount will be staggering. And it won't begin to count the emotional, physical, moral, psychological wounds inflicted on all of us by Musk and his band of flying monkeys.
This is what you get when you crown a convicted felon and a ketamine-fried tech narcissist as your saviours: a firehose of lies, the ritual slaughter of ethics, and democracy stripped for spare parts. Truth is twisted, decency dead on arrival, and the public left dazed while billionaires loot the future. But this doesn’t end in silence. It ends when the people of this good country rise—loud, angry, and organised. The midterms aren’t just a vote. They’re an exorcism.
We should not think that we can wait till the mid-terms to wield our voice and our power; there is no guarantee in this administration that they will take place in a fair and above board way, or that they will take place at all. On June 6--stand with veterans whose sacrifices are sodomized, whose service is sneered upon. This is their day to remind us all of their oath to protect the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. On June 14--rise in righteous peaceful resistance on the day that #47 has usurped as his Day of Flattery. We have a lot to do well before the midterm elections take place. If they do.
Yes! And JUNE 14!!! Those of us paying attention NEED TO WAKE UP everyone who is either not paying attention or is “too upset by the news” and get them to join us at every protest and standout - we need to MANY AND LOUD AND PERSISTENT ‼️‼️‼️
We all need to speak up on JUNE 14! This treatment of migrants is not only cruel, inhumane and illegal. It is contrary to what made America great in the first place. Our population primarily consists of descendants of migrants, people who had the courage, determination and abilities to leave adverse conditions at home and start a new life in a distant place where, often, a different language was spoken. As a result migrants are often people with exceptional abilities and energy. They are also among the most patriotic Americans, as they are deeply grateful for the opportunities this country has offered them. The current attack on them is the exact opposite of the stated goal of "MAGA".
Then what ---- will the government impose rules where women will be forced to stay at home, get married, have a minimum of 4 children as their patriotic duty and make abortion punishable by guillotine? Decisive and extreme the new trump motto.
I’ve done volunteer work to resettle and house refugees ever since the Balkan wars. I was involved with many solo adults and families who had to flee the former Yugoslavia because they were of the “wrong” religion in their new country or had a mixed-religion marriage. I know the fear, loss and torture they had undergone; two men lived with me and my ex-husband for up to four years. Their stress, grief and the medical damage done by militias and torture were obvious on a daily basis, as were the other Yugoslav refugees in the Twin Cities. When 9/11 occurred, all - regardless of religion- were the first in their neighborhoods to fly little American flags. And they treated me and my ex with kindness and compassion. They are now American citizens, and we could learn something from them.
I just cannot imagine the reaction to this mockery of our veterans that this sham "parade" represents. I cannot fathom the depravity and hubris that a draft dodger expects lo demands from those who served bravely from someone who mocks these soldiers on a regular basis.
My family's Military service goes back to The American Revolutionary War where my distant paternal grandfather fought at Brandywine and Germantown. Trump is making a mockery of our national pride. He self-glorifies. That the Republicans genuflect before this monster makes very sad commentary about where our country is morally and emotionally. Two of my dad's brothers fought in WWII, Pacific Theater. I served in classified Intel, USAF, 1962-1966. We would have given our blood if called to do so. One of my favorite passages from Scripture is: John 15:13, "Greater love has no one than this: that someone lay down his life for his friends." It is not about self. It is about selfless. Trump has neither spine, stones nor courage to even consider self-sacrifice. He is an evil curse upon our great nation. He is cowardice on steroids.
The latest news: Jodi Ernst was asked in her home state how she felt about people dying because the government has removed medicaid: her answer "We're all going to die." Russell Voigt's response to the defunding of NIH, cancer research, Pell grants, etc. by saying "they're all garbage." How the hell do we fight back against attitudes like that?
I am DELIGHTED at this news, which will take a bit of focus away from the parade debacle. I hope Leo says something controversial to get even more mhttps://www.yahoo.com/news/pope-leo-speak-world-young-000215530.html?fr=sycsrp_catchalledia attention!
Thank you for your call. I assume you are a white person because Trump cannot be stopped unless white citizens lead. America was founded by soldiers who were white and white soldiers fought under the leadership of Lincoln. It is not racism but entitlement of leadership.
Anyone who thinks there will be ANY elections anymore in America is seriously deluded. (And I mean _real_ elections, not Putin-style side shows where there is only one possible outcome.)
DM, there are over 100,000 elections taking place in the US this year. Thousands of far-right Republicans and white Christian Nationalists have been voted out of office and many have resigned. The mid-terms will happen. For years, Democrats have pursued the national elections allowing the Republicans to strengthen their hold on local politics.
"All politics is local." Tip O'Neil. The Republicans that have held town halls are getting booed and screamed at. In 2017, we were blindsided by the tax cut bill that resulted in increasing the national debt by a staggering $7.9 trillion under Trump.
But this time, it's even worse because they are extending the cuts AND they are throwing up to 9 million people off of Medicaid.
There are lots of David Hogg's out there recruiting young Democrats and Independents. We need to support and promote our local Democrats and Independents.
I agree. I confront patients in a local clinic, and I tell every one of them the dangers we face today. I stress it to the point that leaves them scared, but not without power. There truly is power in numbers, and it will take all of us to use that power to defeat this scourge. I help them register to vote, and inform them how to obtain the necessary ID. It is especially meaningful when I point out the future their children will face if they don't act now.
Don't get me wrong, Gary, I really hope you're right! But honestly, I've yet to see it happen. Don't forget that the real lord of darkness has revealed himself: Peter Thiel. It isn't for nothing his technology is called Palantír - the seeing stones used by the Dark Lord Sauron and his puppet Saruman to watch the move of every living being. Combine that with the fact that, thanks to his DOGE shenanigans, Elon Musk has pretty much all the data on all American citizens, and you have both Sauron and Saruman in a happy ketamine-addicted narcissistic mix. "What could possibly go wrong?" Expect elections that are not done by voters, but by programmed voters. Is that against the rules? So what. Trump, Musk and Thiel have never cared for rules they didn't create themselves anyway.
We don't need negativism projected this way. Please think twice about that. We have not sunk yet. But if people think this is a lost cause, IT WILL BE!!! Do you want people to not bother to vote because it does not matter??
GJ, we just had a special election in Oregon earlier this month Our local D organization did well where all but one of the people they supported won for school boards and city councils. In Salem a levy passed for parks, the library, and the senior center much to my surprise. Nationally, Ds have also done well.
Michele, the only Democratic Party endorsed person who lost down here was an 18 year old student who lost to another Democrat who has a public administrative fiscal background for the Lane Community College board. The student had (not surprisingly) no fiscal background and had never attended LCC, while the other Democrat has served on several boards with success, and had been involved in the Women in Transition program.
I am with you there.Why would anyone think that this lawless administration( if that is what you want to call it) will allow free and fair elections to take place?They are ignoring the SCOTUS ruling in the Abrego Garcia case.They answer to no one except MAGA.The people need to take their own actions.I suggested a national strike or stay-at-home days/ weeks.
Whether going forward from this point we will have free and fair elections is definitely the issue. Trump/Miller/Musk/Noem still have support from local Republican officials and a large number of voters who are in reality KKK, i.e., white Christian nationalists. Speaker Mike Johnson is the face of this crowd. The racism is palpable. Two books: Timothy Egan, "A Fever in the Heartland," about the rise of the KKK in the Midwest in the 1920's and "How the South Won the Civil War," by Heather Cox Richardson. There is the study conducted by two Univ. of Kansas professors published in the Feb. 2018 edition of "Critical Sociology," a peer-reviewed journal entitled "The Anger Games: Who Voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 Election, and Why?" Their findings: they voted for Trump because they share his prejudices and want Trump to crush the hated and evil minorities, women's rights advocates, gay rights advocates, etc.
I know the people you describe who support Trump et al. exist; but are they in the majority? Prejudice, hatred, misogyny have always existed; but they haven't prevailed. I wonder why they prevail now, or maybe there can still be an override through protests, elections, and continuing to share the news of the awfulness that's occurring!
Richard, like you say, fair elections . The word "fair" covers it. Why have an election if it's not going to be "fair". But, the simple fact that humans are involved rightly causes concern. Hahaa.., lest we forget that Humans are the ones who created AI. I guess, in my mind at least, the word 'fair' is all-encompassing. Meaning, a "fair" election is a foregone conclusion. And, that brings me to the word "rights" when used to put some kind of legitimacy to what is tolerance or respect of one human for another human. So, let's quit throwing the word "rights" at it, it just ticks people off. Again, why? Because it implies someone has some privilege another person does not. Womens rights? Smokers rights? Gay rights? Truckers rights? As a male human being, I have the "right" to expect 'consideration' by another human being for a fellow human being. Our educational system falls short in the 'human nature' department. I think. Now, when it comes to dealing with animals, then we "humans" probably have to communicate our "rights" differently. Noem, not being a very good example.
I refuse to give up on the ‘26 election yet. If we raise enough noise, get enough people out, get our local police to join us in each precinct just in case, I still believe we could get enough Dems in power to overwhelm the traitors in Congress.
Get to work on keeping US free of Putin, the inspiration of all of this, perhaps even of Musk, although his South Africa behaved this way with Blacks and Coloreds. Racism is behind so much of this. There is always Indivisible if you need an organization. If you have a computer or other device, it’s at your fingertips.
I know what you mean.. there are *types* that love to bully, that love their authority, like Trump and his henchmen. But they are not all. People need courage and the willingness to stand up for what is right. We are being called upon now and are not used to it. We have had it easy.
For demonstrations to have any effect, they have to be enormous and - while peaceful - disrupting. Fill public places in our largest cities, block traffic, even superhighways, close factories and shopping malls, stop postal service, even screw up the internet, at least for a few days.
All this will require unified Democratic leadership and the visible participation of our cultural stars and other famous people, at least the ones not too enamoured of their own wealth.
We'll even have to renounce Amazon for a while, boycott Whole Foods, stop paying bills and taking vacations, and make miserable any non-participating elected officials.
Without this, the midterms will never happen or mean anything.
I’ve mostly renounced Amazon. I don’t “shop” and don’t really buy stuff, but last year I did more than ever—self-soothing. But I’m back on track now. Only 1 Amazon purchase since January. I’ve been so distracted by what’s going on in America it’s been hard to keep up with birthdays and anniversaries. Almost too late for one, so I gave in and did an Amazon purchase for quick turnaround. I’m done now. I wish it didn’t involve harm to hard-working employees, but so does supporting the oligarchs taking over our country!!!!!
Welcome to the club, Jan. I had already cancelled my WaPo subscription when the stink of Will Lewis's hard-right influence became too strong. But because of broad choices in every category and fast, free delivery to my rural address, I remained a pretty good Amazon Prime customer. Then Bozo killed WaPo's endorsement of Harris/Walz. I stopped ordering goods, but I kept my Prime Membership, mainly because it included Prime Video, which is a good streaming value. Coming into 2025, I began to feel guilty of hypocrisy and decided it was time to sever all connection with Bozo's businesses, so I cancelled my Amazon Prime subscription.
Amazon sent a survey asking why I cancelled. I responded, "Because Bezos is a coward who hates democracy." The survey asked what would persuade me to resubscribe. I answered, "When Bezos grows a spine."
Using information from https://www.goodsuniteus.com, I learned that Netflix's management supports Democratic candidates and has contributed zero dollars to Republicans, so I subscribed.
I've been surprised at how well I'm doing without Amazon. In fact, I have enough of everything. I'm buying only necessities, now, spending very little. I figure that I need to be careful because the Trump regime is about to do me serious financial harm.
Jan, we avoid Amazon and only purchase there when absolutely necessary which is rare. Our garden helper recently wrote a book about gardening in terms of outer and inner space. Unfortunately, Amazon has pretty much a straggle hold on this type of publishing. The book is 20 dollars; she gets eight. Since I helped edit it, I am getting a free copy from her. I was considering biting the bullet on this one and am happy I do not have to. I have an ex-student who writes romances and she loathes Amazon.
Michele, frequent commentor here and Substack writer ("That's Another Fine Mess") TCinLA posted about Amazon sales for authors a few months back.
Personally, I am struggling to get an agent to publish one of my manuscripts. I had the first one professionally edited, and the editor (long career in writing/editing) told me it is publishable. (In other words, I didn't write dreck.) It is virtually impossible to break into traditional publishing--though I keep trying. But I could self-publish through Amazon, although to do it correctly (according to the many instructional videos and seminars I've attended) I'd spend plenty of cash upfront (like thousands) and I'd likely sell 200 books.
TCinLA explained how Barnes & Noble screws over authors in terms of royalties, and why Amazon works best for him.
That being said, during pandemic, Amazon was at my house weekly. I've cut down to perhaps monthly, and only after I've exhausted every possibility for whatever I need.
I forgot the "hard-working employees" who could do their part by striking in conjunction with a great national Day of Reckoning for Trump and his followers.
Yes, please stop rewarding Amazon, they are the foot soldiers of the Trojan Horse in the white house. The financial backing of the billionaires is one of the reasons why our democracy is hijacked.
Better check with Maslow. Human "needs" have to be addressed if we're going to have some kind of tsunami effect Otherwise it'll be just another fiasco. Jim Croce' Don't mess around with Jim, comes to mind. There's a strong "wind" out there right now. That wind is very good at blowing out fires and then bloviating how a forest-fire (the Democrats, et al) was prevented along with incredible truths from Barbie BS.
Many of the Indivisible groups are planning big events on June 14. Our group in Brunswick, GA has a big event in our downtown park with lots of opportunities for our citizens to learn what this crazy administration is planning for their future and we're doing it through fun activities with hopes of bringing out lots of people.
I see only three possible remedies: the Mussolini solution; a calamitous end of the cult (as most cults end that way), or Trump escapes to Saudi Arabia, where they put him up in the same apartment that Idi Amin used when he was exiled.
I hate to be a negative nellie, but I think I'm with you. The extremes of this administration will require an extreme response. They don't care about peaceful protesting. They feel impervious to all objections. They will only care when the guillotine makes an appearance.
Janice, excellent turn of phrase; "...veterans whose sacrifices are sodomized, whose service is sneered upon."
I think my sign will say: "I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic."
It is the first stanza of the oath of office for both enlisted and officer when being sworn in.
I'd like a sign listing Bible Verses Micah 6:8, 6:12 & Matthew 7:12 to remind all what our 'job' on earth is. Wonder how many of the 'christian' zealots for T know what those verses mean...
Janice...that phrase "sacrifices are sodomized" will stay with me for a long time. I agree that we should protest and resist all the time. Yes, Day of Flattery. You have a way with words.
Strongly recommend that everyone who can, sign up and be trained to work the polls. I don’t care if it’s a Primary or mid-terms or a special election. We need to watch what is happening there like hawks.
Can mass acts of public dissention slow the mounting barbarity and the setting of new standards of inhumanity in their aim to cleanse the country of unfavorable citizens? trump et al are truly acting like unruly children, sloppy and gutless. And trump - I mean the TACO - is a bluffer, vain and boastful.
Gee, I wonder why the Democratic leadership hasn't thought of that? Could it be that they are as afraid of their constituents as are the Republicans of their voters? What fun!
We need to keep Trump a "TACO" every day. The day he decides he is will longer be a TACO is the day the American people have their eyes opened about our Prez. If he is provoked, he will probably go off the deep end. Harrah!
Even if elections were allowed to be held, I would question the results of them.With Musk and his many satellites who would know if the results were legitimate.
By the mid-terms, the Musk termites will have hollowed out the data trove that they are currently burrowing through - and will do what they like with that information to elect whoever they want.
Keep the faith LE, losing hope is exactly what these psychos want you to do. Trump is a sh*t-talking mouthpiece for a rear end. Anything can happen. People died in the trenches for our freedom. Never give up.
I'm not giving up - just gearing up. I think we are going to have a hell of a fight with the mid-terms. The rate trump's "policies" (joke. . . ) are going, that 70 million who voted GOP last time will have shrunk to about 20 old men and a mangey dog. The people will KNOW something is wrong, but not what to do about it - the leadership they will need should be getting ready NOW!
Lady, here in Oregon we have voted by mail for about 25 years. Now we have three regressives who have a measure to do away with mail voting. I read some of the posts on the thread. Most love voting this way, but those who are in the cult want people to vote in person and show ID that proves citizenship.
One argument for mail in voting (my son also lives in Oregon, and he swears by it) is that, "someone", meaning the taxpayers, will have to pay the costs of the day of election. Meaning, renting venues, recruiting and paying for election workers, machinery, advertising, etc. I'm sure all of that costs far more than mail in. For example, I got paid $175 for around 14 hours of duty. There were 9 of us and processed fewer than 300 voters. And, in a state like Oregon, where the population in the eastern 2/3 of the state is sparse, you then run the risk of not having accessible voting sites for so many, including elderly. Voter suppression, it it's anything.
I would like there to be physical places to vote along with the Mail In Ballot system in place here in WA. I know it costs $ but, I recall how great it felt to show my voter's card (could only get if you were a citizen), get an I voted sticker & greet neighbors.
True. In fact, the ever growing analyses of ElectionTruthAlliance.org show highly improbable patterns that suggest an algorithm was used in some swing state district tabulators. Surprise surprise. Warnings were issued by techs who knew their stuff but Dems were so intent on proving a peaceful transfer of power to the current traitor —and NOT imitation the election deniers of 2020, that they failed to do due diligence. They were intended to not raise red flags. But until we do some audits to determine what exactly was done, how can we rely on the formerly used systems?
To reiterate what Kazz M. wrote….don’t leave a comment in despair …add a “that’s why we must all keep writing, calling, getting up on overpasses with banners, stand outside of DEI capitulating businesses with signs, showing up at Tesla (yes…still show up…he’s NOT gone!). Not Congress or any layer of judges is going to save our Democracy. WE ARE DEMOCRACY. It is up to us and our job to save it.
Thank you Kazz McNight on calling out ketamine-fried tech delusions.
Being a prospector inside valuable Mayo Clinic medical research about 1 month ago I located three (3) Mayo Clinic studies on 'KETAMINE INFUSION THERAPY'.
This general area of medical research per Mayo is to "better understand the neurobiology of 'MAJOR DEPRESSION'" and Ketamine's "impact on brain function".
Short Abstract: Oh, it has an impact & It ain't good.
On mushrooms, I can only offer anecdotal evidence specifically on the impact PSILOCYBIN circa the 1960's. The street (that would be Haight-Ashbury) called it "I can do anything" mushrooms. Nope.
Full Disclosure: I am a JD not an MD who does not believe in magic anything.
Bryan, thanks for those insights. So true. I work in drug and alcohol education, and agree there’s some amazing research being conducted around psychedelic therapies. However these treatments are carried out by medical professionals in controlled clinical settings. Musk on the other hand is a ‘drug abuser’ who should be carted off to treatment, not running amok making ludicrous decisions that impact millions around the globe.
Kaz, I’m betting my socks (I sort of collect them:-) you’ve read Stealing Fire. I’m part way through; find it fascinating about ketamine and much more.
Of course Mut’s an abuser of Ketamine as well as of other drugs as Heather’s letter indicated.
But the sheer cruelty of his cuts as Heather noted …more akin to amputations in my heart-mind ….killing hundreds of people an hour around the world is haunting me.
Bryan, Jeff Tiedrich often replays a GIF based on the linked YouTube video, which captured Musk at a Maga-Lardo dinner, high as a kite in his own world, entertaining himself with a "spaceship" he assembled from dinner forks. This junkie was given unfettered access to "the nervous system of the U.S. Government."
Dale, thank you; I will check out JEFF TIEDRICH's medical evidence this Weekend.
I have access to world class neurologist at UCSF Medical Center who as matter of professional medical practice were & remain willing to follow & patient(s) with sometimes complex neurological symptoms then render a certified medical opinion that's spot-on & confirmed at autopsy.
I did review the 12 second video -- not much there.
Bryan, we are watching a series called Boglands which takes place in Ireland and is in Gaelic with subtitles. The main character has just found out that he drank a ketamine laced drink on the night of his mother's murder and now he wonders if he did it. In it he asks a doctor about the effects of ketamine and he was not happy to know what those were. As an aside, i think foreign script writers sometimes use what is happening here in their plots.
No I am not watching "Boglands" but, my house has heavy watchers of UK, German, Sweeden and other foreign series. The actors all seemed stage-trained. Good scripts.
The 28th Season of you-know-what is coming up in June. Emilia Fox is still in the Lead. New actors as Staff at the Center too.
Yes, we watch mostly series made elsewhere. We love the actors who are not all handsome, beautiful, or slim. What we also like is that some of them are also challenged.
I didn't know that there will be another year of Silent Witness which we enjoy and will watch.
Anecdotally, psychedelics have proven therapeutic in small doses, micro-dosing. There is some decent evidence on the value of ketamine, again in controlled small doses. Musk is not using ketamine in small doses, and he seems to be mixing it with psilocybin. Ketamine in pill form is cheap. Spravato (esketamine) is a proven, but very expensive drug for depression administered in a nasal spray. Who knows what else he may be taking. I’ve even seen 1 patient who was micro dosing LSD for bipolar disorder and it seemed to be working. Controlled clinical trials don’t exist.
I had a patient once who went into an emergency room for depression. The doctor there gave her an infusion of ketamine and relieved her chronic depression for months. That ain’t supposed to happen, but everyone reacts differently. There was one study that showed that Ecstasy was effective in treating PTSD; unfortunately, they fudged the data. I had a patient who dissolved 10 ml of LSD (That’s what he said, don’t know if you can measure LSD that way) in 10 ml of vodka and used a syringe to put 1 ml (not inject) under his tongue every 3 days and effectively treat bipolar disorder. There’s anecdotal evidence for LSD micro dosing. Before that, he put mushrooms on peanut butter sandwiches, but said prepping the powder was too time consuming. All anecdotal. Maybe there’s potential, but good luck getting research funding for that now.
I'm up at Midnight in CA opening the house windows to allow the cool air inside.
On lysergic acid, I do not know of any liquid form not even made by Sandoz ... perhaps flakes of LSD were diluted with something.
You mentioned Emergency Rooms ... don't get me started. I love ER docs & ER staff. As an ex-trial attorney I can roll out relevant facts to ER folks & watch them instantly absorb the need-to-now NOW stuff as they shift ASAP into 🙏Treatment Protocol.
My mother was the head of "Human Resources" at a teaching hospital in Northridge, CA the last 10 years of her career. She introduced many Staff friendly policies. 4 days on, 3 days off
Weekends on mixed with regular weekday work hours as needed.
I am not an MD either, but a medical technologist who assisted on hundreds of pediatric bone marrow aspiration procedures, where the child was given a mix of Ketamine and Versed. The docs would warn the parents (who were allowed to remain in the treatment room if they wished) that their child might experience some effects that would alarm the parent, but the child was safe. Very common for the kids to tell the parent they had four eyes, or several noses.
There is a grouo, the Patriotic Millionaires, that is trying to do good things, mainly through the tax system. They are good people. I am not a millionaire but I am on their email list. I strongly recommend going to Wikipedia and their website to check them out and I hope you will decide to join the Patriotic Millionaires email list. We are deluged with news of what this fascist coup is doing to America. Time to focus on ways to defeat and destroy them.
They appear drunk on power. They are rich bullies. They relish tormenting the poor, the weak, the disadvantaged. They are our neo-nazis. It is up to us to take them on, and we must do it now, before their extreme makeover ends our "American Experiment"
Dr Richardson's essay is sobrifying (i.e., a portmanteau or sobering and terrifying or horrifying, or both). Ten Presidents from President Reagan through President H.W. Bush consistently stood up to gangster régimes in Germany, Italy, the U.S.S.R., Japan, China, and Cambodia. https://poets.org/poem/september-1-1939
After the appeasements of President Obama and Trump, President Biden re-assumed that mantle against Russia. Now we have gangster régime. 'Tiz Nazi U.S.A., as Charles Mingus would say. https://youtu.be/kXAJPUpFqoA
Kazz, you wrote it! Skum’s “flying monkeys” is perfect. Just gave them a poke sending 20 more GOTV postcards to elect the 27th undersecretary of the Air Force, Democrat Gina Ortiz Jones, mayor of San Antonio, a city I lived in for six years in a purple Texas, and loved. Henry B. (Gonzales) was my congressman.
IF Trump allows us to vote. He has time to rid us of the right to vote and a Supreme Court in agreement to his orders. Even if we vote, his Gestapo will be in charge of voting places. I think the Republicans are assured of winning to continue Trump's destruction of America.
Mary, I sadly fear that in voicing your fears about voting and the coming midterms publicly, you reinforce the notion that voting isn’t worth the effort. This is precisely what we DON’T want to do! We must ALL VOTE, wherever and whenever we have the opportunity!
With his recent attack against Leonard Leo I wondered how long the Supreme Court would protect the orange 🍊 🤡. I know they allowed the removal of TPS but maybe that was already released.
And those of us who are watching this disaster in horror are suffering way less trauma than those who have lost their jobs or have been detained and torn from their homes and families.
This. I'm a former senior analyst with USAID. I used to be a part of a true global community of problem-solvers in alliance with other problem-solvers across the globe. In February, I watched younger colleagues have their careers wrecked because of some shrieking far-right lunatics here who didn't even know what USAID did, nor cared to learn. Americans who took an oath to uphold the Constitution using clandestine apps to communicate with their colleagues in host countries -- who also took the same oath -- out of fear of being tracked and surveilled. I watched from safety as their lives got upended in a few short minutes. And for what? For what?
USAID was so respected when I worked in Africa - we have to hope and believe that USA rises up against all this craziness and when it does it needs to resurrect USAID because the talent and ethics, morality and institutional memory is there right now to do that and the world would want that - do not despair- fight with all you have inside you - Gandhi’s analysis and philosophy is so relevant right now - “Be the change you want to see in the world” 🙏
Remember years ago, how on late night tv there would be requests for CARE packages? There would be starving children with huge, sad eyes?
Maybe the Dems need to start those type of videos and say THIS IS WHAT MUSK/TRUMP did....especially if they then show photos of Trump in his golf attire which doesn't hide his gut like his shoulder-padded blue suits do.
Flying Monkeys, Lying Flunkies, A small price to pay, To out of jail stay, On the road to more loot, With the help of a nasal toot....let's give them all the boot!
Musk has done his old trick once again: come in, make exaggerated claims shouting with a lot of bravado, slash and burn without really knowing the matter at hand, take the money from the hype (and the data), and then exit stage left before the shit really hits the fan, with the barn burning and leaving other people to clean up the mess.
Elizabeth, the sad truth—the horrendously sad and frightening truth—is that what we [and by we, I’m referring not just to we as Americans, but also those who’ve kind of evied America, Americans and our way of life] have lost so much of that cannot be measured in dollars and cents…how can one measure respect, faith, dependability, reliability, safety, security, trust, etc.? Yes, those “emotional, physical, moral, psychological wounds inflicted on all of us” which includes long-term irreversible harm on the American body politic that extends way beyond our shores!
This all started even long before the days of the “birther movement”—questioning Obama’s citizenship rights—and even before that. I question why is it that Democrats seem afraid to discuss, take credit for or to brag about—not just their beliefs, but the good programs and policies that Democrats have created that many Americans believe in and rely upon? We’ve created a generation of American’s who believe that it is okay to lie and to be dishonest…what does that/this say about our future—and we have AI (artificial intelligence) to deal with—wow, it’s not going to be easy!
Today, with our access—easy acceess—to information actually at our finger-tip, we should be much more smarter, as or on a whole, than at any other time in our history—but look at our system of and the formation our three branches of government; how impressive we should be and feel that our nation’s “founding fathers” were so wise with what they began and created about 250 years ago, [and which can be periodically amended by “we, the people”] which shows that they were a heck of a lot smarter and wiser than many today—and certainly a lot more so than many of our current governmental and political leaders and/or office holders!
Jim, as a lifelong Democrat and the product of Democrats going back several generations; having grown up and lived most of my life in Democrat-controlled (for the most part) states, I can safely say that Dem pols are for the most part the laziest people alive in the world today. They use the excuse that the Democratic Party is a "big tent" to justify their non-action. They rail against anyone who actually gets off their fat, entitled, and largely white male arses to demand that Dems do something. They start talking about FDR--only 90 years ago--when people talk about how moribund and intellectually bankrupt the party is. They are embedded in their political positions through the usual avenues of looking-the-other-way, grift, and torpor. And people still vote for them. Even when there is a better candidate--younger, more diverse, more savvy--who challenges them. The Rethuglicans and other denizens of the Ghastly Oligarchs Party have had a plan for the last 50 years. They have been methodical, determined, and intrepid. They have abandoned the old politics of martini-drinking semi-collegiality and embraced an anti-democratic, misogynist, white nationalist, christofascist program for Ammurrika because it works. It's simple. It's punchy. It speaks to the fears of old white people and young white men who find themselves increasingly irrelevant. And they have done so openly and brazenly for 50 years. And the Dems sit back, fold their arms over their giant bellies, and twiddle their thumbs say "oh my, oh my: what can we do to stop them???" To say that I am utterly disgusted by American politics is an understatement. The few (and they are very few) Dems who actually make noise are drowned out by the silence of others.
I also don’t understand the silence of Democrats, the silence of our former government officials both Republicans and Democrat. What is the world is happening?
Why do I keep thinking of Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow?
Jim, I just had a Facebook joust with a former sergeant of mine; his defense of selling off National Forest Lands was that 1: $COTUS upheld the 9th Circuit decision and that 2: it was passed by Congress in 2014. Not that it was wrong, but that it wasn't the current squatter ffpotus.
Yes, you are so right.A good portion of the American people are suffering from a form of PTSD which is the reaction from being treated psychologically cruelly since this horrible administration took over.
There are three types of people in the world. Type 1 are the people who can dish out criticism and can take it. Type 2 can dish it out but can't take it. Type 3 keep their mouths shut. Pope Donald the Infallible and every one of his supporters are Type 2. When the number of Type 1 people in America reaches a critical mass, authoritarianism dies and democracy rises from the ashes.
Musk is so insignificant to the larger plan. He was tool. He provided a service and was paid by avoiding jail and given BILLIONS I. Worldwide contracts for Space.
The people who paid him that wanted a much bigger product. Project 2025 is running the administration. Even this latest Trumo attacking Leo is a stunt to take the heat off the real players and what they want to accomplish.
Heritage has finally achieved a half century goal and is about to obtain unlimited power over the world because it will control the US.
Think about it……Trumo a mastermind of anything? He doesn’t read, he is not a serious person. He literally has dementia. He controls nothing.
And Musk is a drug addict. Yes, he’s a bright guy but the genius he has is making the government pay for his companies. It cannot be said enough….He didn’t create anything. Every company he fronts was already a “thing”. EV, already a thing. Rockets, already a thing, satellites, already a thing. He just monetized them by convincing the government not to subsidize them. Had we had a more functioning government that didn’t load every bill with dumb shit like women vaginas and Bible study in place of earth science, our government would be able to have built satellites and rockets faster. He works with NASA! He basically did a hostile takeover of things we already owned as a nation.
He’s a smart salesman to Trumps con artists salesman.
Why do we even waste our time on THEM when they are just the faces. It’s like blaming the lipstick model for the pollution the cosmetic company is causing. She just is the faces, not the one in charge.
Six of SCOTUS are there specifically because of Heritage. Countless judges around the country. Almost all of the people in Trump positions of power had a hand in writing Project 2025 which is essentially a playbook on how to take over a government WITHOUT needing to go through the voters (Congress) or the existing law (Judiciary) because they know they can’t. The voters cringe when they hear the whacked out idea. And the judges are having a hard time twisting the constitution to rule in their favor.m
June 14….avoid the DC area like the plague. Rallies should be local, focused and have a common theme. Enough with 8000 different signs. We need our own uniform, they got that red hat. Come up with a very visible sign of solidarity.
Make DC a ghost town. Make state houses state universities the focus.
Please look and learn exactly how much funding muskrat musk rec'd and continues to receive of taxpayer money for his car and spaceship companies. The world as is now, with the mad man having been in office only a handful of month, can only get worse. His holiness 'king' donny has more than three more years to destroy a nation that has until now been 250 or more years in the making. For shame, America/Republicans/MAGA cultists and voters who do not vote.
Unfortunately, this netting will be easily attacked. These are 'forgone' benefits that are hard to quantify and defend empirically. Yes, I agree with you; be ready for the cheapening know-it-allism of financial cynics, who, like Oscar Wilde, know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
In arguing for forgone benefits, please emphasize that this matter is not a financial but a moral one. Of doing the right thing as per values anterior to markets, accounting, finance (all in the service of fascism).
Yes Elizabeth, Musk and Trump are con men who have made themselves billions of dollars richer while fleecing the American public. We have no true picture of the enormous damage this truly fascist administration has done..
Heather, you keep telling us it will get worse this summer. I know you wish you were wrong. Musk acts like someone Trump would call a “bad hombre” if he weren’t white. Both Musk and Trump keep failing upward and vacuuming our money out of our pockets. And every day people around the world are harmed by their actions. I’m working hard to keep a flicker of hope alive that the majority of us will awaken our empathy and speak out against all this cruelty and theft.
Back in '70 in "socialist/PRL" Poland we used to say: "the worst the better" - meaning that the abysmal situation must be so bad, that people will not stand it anymore and will protest, rebel, oppose, put even passive resistance. I wish you reach this state of abysmal abhorrent trumpian oppression fast enough so trump voters will experience so much pain and disappointment that they themselves will rebel against their Il Duce.
Recent returnees from a vacation in Poland, were appalled by how much worse things were getting here, when their two week reprieve from the news was over.
I grew up in northeastern Pennsylvania with people who immigrated from Eastern Europe as well as from Italy and Ireland. Good loyal friends. Hard working and dedicated to democracy. Thank you for your wise words.
My worry is that there will be no “Great Awakening”. It’s too easy for middle-class whites to stay disengaged. Cut off Streaming and we might have a fighting chance. This may seem like a stupid observation, but America reacted to George Floyd’s murder because we were in Covid upheaval. Yes we still had Streaming, but everything else was completely locked down / flummoxed so we were paying attention to the World in an untypically vigilant way. Right now, “The Mirage of Regularity” is functioning like in The Matrix. Something terrible is going on, but it appears like white, middle-class life is functioning “normally”. So no “Great Awakening” is happening.
It seems that way among my friends and neighbors. "It is just too hard to read the news each day". "It upsets me too much". "I don't want to stop enjoying life just because he is in office." "I am determined to keep living my life no matter what". So I tell them I am absorbing the news for them, and keeping my eyes on what is happening so they can take care of their kids, finish their quarterly report, get their car fixed, go out for ice cream on Memorial Day, remain sane while I try to keep from going kookoo. But it all will come and bite them in the butt too, eventually, and they will join in, perhaps incredulously, and we will somehow restore what has been lost. It may take more than my lifetime (I am an elder) but we shall prevail.
I hear those same replies. And I commend you for pushing back as gracefully as you do. And I do agree that the rebuilding will take longer than my lifetime. We are at the point where “saving the old way” is not an option. Too much has been broken and stolen. We must reimagine and build from the foundation up. That’s the New War.
I am sad that my distant cousin will not listen to any regular TV news since "it's all lies". Hasn't told me where she gets her erroneous facts she quotes. Will continue to communicate so maybe I can educate some.
The bbb is the gift that keeps on giving. Cutting Medicaid hurts people in every Congressional district in the country. You may not be on Medicaid, but it's likely you have friends or relatives that are, and they may lose their access to medication and medical care.
My daughter works at a pharmacy and she says that a large percentage of people are on Medicaid. We should be picketing the major pharmacies warning people about losing their benefits, because many of them will thanks to the TACO king.
Gary, I think this may be the "bridge too far". The pain of Medicaid defunding is more than the loss of care. It's the loss of jobs. Millions of people who relied on the nursing home or hospital - not only the vulnerable and sick - the ripple effect of job loss carries over to the rest of the economy. If the fired hospital worker can't afford to buy anything, local businesses will suffer. If the nurse doesn't have a job, how does she pay the rent or buy necessities for her kids?
Medicaid is more than a social safety net for health. It is seed money for entire communities to knit together a system of interdependence. It's a big version of being a village. This is like shutting off the water to a town.
That and the continued publicity of people dying from preventable diseases will bring us painfully and slowly to the tipping point. What an awful and cruel process. And fucking stupid.
My sister in MO exists on widow’s pension and life-saving medications and healthcare through Medicaid. When sh*t hits the fan with the BBB, god knows what her fate will be.
Hey Kazz, it will impact "all of us" personally when the Masters of the DOGE-Broz Kabal start mining the DNA data bases of 23andme. Then comparing the ancestry of seemingly white Americans to find the tainted bloodlines of Troligarch Enemies.
Suddenly, we commenters on The Contrarian will find our passports and travel documents on lists at immigration checkpoints and whisked-off in zip-ties to CETOT.
Sounds like another dystopian terror novel? Just wait...
Well, if TACO Man declares martial law, we will all be locked down with curfews and a bunch of other restrictions. Maybe that will wake up the upper-middle class who so hate to be inconvenienced.
I recently read a column by Mona Charen expressing her fears of traveling abroad and not being allowed back into the USA due to some petty bureaucratic error or due to her criticism of Trump and his thugs. I share her “ paranoia .”I am somewhat fearful about peacefully protesting knowing that the thug in charge will use “ law enforcement “ and our own military to arrest and deport us to a foreign country for profit prison in a totalitarian country where I can not speak their language.
"My worry is that there will be no “Great Awakening”. It’s too easy for middle-class whites to stay disengaged." Yours is a honest statement. Undocumented immigrants and MEDICAID dependents do not amount to a political force to stop Trump, IMO.
At Mike Flood's (R-NE1) someone posed the rhetorical question, "Why do we even have a Congress?"
Exactly. Trump's little Johnson has absolutely nothing in the "big beautiful bill" (bbb) that the TACO king hasn't blessed. This bill is all about extending tax cuts for the TACO king and the major donors.
Adding over $4 trillion in debt is not conservative. The top .1% will receive an average tax benefit of $390,000 a year. This is all being done for the Oligarchs and lots of Republican voters are pissed off.
Linda, your statement of them "vacuuming our money our of our pockets" is SO TRUE.
On this fine forum, I've read (and participated in) many debates. With the exception of a few, most here add value and points of view that enrich. One debate I've read of many times is that "Democrats can't message". This might be true, or it might be something people just fall back on. I can't say. I haven't heard any suggestions of HOW Democrats could better message, so if anyone has ideas, let's have at it!
In the meantime, here's my thoughts on messages.
#1--The talk of saving democracy was lost on the uniformed voter. (I know as I have sisters I kept trying to inform and they hadn't heard or didn't care about what I told them.)
#2--We can debate this, but sadly, articulate and intelligent people are viewed as "elitist". At least, that's what I seemed to have heard. (I already know what you're going to say, Phil, and I agree with you!) A few months ago, I heard clips of great speeches from Tim Walz, and he spoke plainly. We need more of that.
#3--the Democrats needs their own Joe Rogan. While I love Brian Tyler Cohen, and he has a huge following, I could see he could turn off the MAGA. I noticed after the election, he went from wearing suits, to wearing tshirts/sweatshirts. I love "Belle" but again, hate to say it but females turn off some male voters. I love the Meidas touch network, and think Ben Meisalas is excellent, but he can be snarky and sarcastic (which I do enjoy, I confess!). So, my suggestion is Tennessee Brando. His following has escalated in the last few months. He walks the talk, and has a lot of MAGA watch him. I'd like to see his platform grow.
#4--It seems like talking statistics and data is too "math" for many and they glaze over. (Not me, as a retired lab tech, SHOW ME THE GRAPHS AND DATA!!!!!!!!!!) So, let's push the simple things--after all, I believe the price of eggs alone got people to vote Trump. It seems eggs, eggs, eggs were everywhere.
So, here's my suggestion for the message:
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.
It can apply to many aspects of Trump. Primarily for me, my thought is "do these billionaire have 'a number' and what is it?" What I mean is, everyone seems to have an internal concept of the amount of wealth they need to have to feel secure. Content. Safe. For many, it is to have assests of $1M.
What is "enough" for the billionaire? If they reach ONE BILLION, it is enough? Ten? A couple hundred billion? What's enough? (I know I've said this before, and it's been discussed there is never enough for some.)
If a Billionaire pays a much higher tax rate, does his/her lifestyle change?
I see comments that state billionaires pay about 40-50% of the tax refenue collected. Okay. Still--does their lifestyle change? Personally, I'd rather subsidize a POSSIBLE social safety net cheat, than KNOWINGLY subsidize a Billionaire!
"ENOUGH IS ENOUGH" can also apply to the DOGE slash and burn. Enough random firings. Enough pardoning criminals convicted by TRUMP'S own DOJ! Enough grifting. Enough TWEEETS for #$s! sake!!
There is much talk about possible 2028 POTUS candidates. As much as I wish for a female, I think the Dems would be insane to put one up FOR NOW. And Buttigieg would have been my candidate before--intelligent, well spoken, calm but forceful, AND a Vet--but I think the entire focus on him would be his sexual orientation. :-(
I think we need to check these boxes--white male, middle aged (no 70+ y/o) I want someone smart, but they MUST be able to deliver speeches that anyone with a low-reading level comprehension can follow. They must deliver clear messages that paint pictures in the voters minds. If they HAVE to use data, I'd love to see Katie Porter-style white boards. If they can explain it to a 6th grader, it's clear enough.
The most important thing is GET A DEMOCRAT in. As Brando says, we aren't going to find a candidate that is perfect for all of us, so let's support the one we agree with 80% of the time, so we don't get one we DISAGREE with 100% of the time. And we need to start building possible candidates NOW. Trump continued to run for Biden's entire term. Right now, it's unclear WHO would run from the GOP in 2028. (let's assume there will be elections, okay?)
We have an advantage right now.
Apologies for the lenght of this. I'm interested in your ideas on messaging, and also on possible candidates. Thanks all.
I have often said ,we have a minimum wage that is inadequate to live on.
1)A Wage Act would limit the lowest and highest threshold necessary for people to live comfortably.
2)Ranked choice voting should be ubiquitous. 3)Elections should be limited to a campaign season of X number of days.
4) Presidents should be elected by popular vote. The Electoral College should be abolished.
5)Voting should be conducted over a period adequate to provide every person the chance to vote.
6)Money is not speech. Citizens United should be overturned. All money used to influence voting should be attributed to the influencer and their affiliations revealed publicly.
7) Voter representation should be expanded to create greater parity between rural and urban areas.
8) Verifiable, open, auditable, paper ballots should be standardized and required in every precinct.
Enough for now. I've gone on too long! I liked your pos and way of thinking.
Since November 2024, Linda, it has been guaranteed that things will get much, much worse this summer and beyond. It’s beginning to appear SCOTUS is leaning toward support of the notion of a unitary presidency.
This, despite all the pledges to support stare decisis.
Man, we definitely have the best Supreme Court that money can buy, don't we? The problem is, it was all right-wing money. And "Justices" Thomas and Alito, both of whom are so crooked they could hide in the shadow of a corkscrew, never met a bribe they didn't like.
I just don’t understand what happened to turn their hearts into nothing but a black void. There is just nothing there of the compassion for others that was at the core of Jesus’ teachings.
You make a good point. In my experience, recently reinforced by a colleague I've known and thought highly of for ten years until recently, there is no hypocrite like a Christian hypocrite.
Jerry Falwell was one of the founders of “If God loves you, you can be rich. And if he doesn’t, you will be poor.” The immorality has been coming for a long, long time. Those who truly follow Christ’s teachings are few and far between.
Elon Musk’s path of destruction has had, and will continue to have, horrific consequences but for his blowing up USAID and the ensuing deaths/HIV infections he should rot in hell forever. And may he take Stephen Miller with him, since he is already taking Mrs. Miller. High as a kite in the White House today? Someone should open a CPS investigation on behalf of the child he drags everywhere with him.
Well….. my shadow self does wonder if success is what I am hoping for…I think there is more likelihood that Stephen Miller will claw his way back from the underworld than return from outer or inner space and i don’t fancy taking that chance. That said, I am so appalled at Trump’s comments about Biden’s cancer that I am going to devote my day to trying not to wish harm on these lost souls in the Regime.
It's the whole Orwellian shtick. The perpetrators claim grievous victimhood and the victims blamed for their persecution. You don't need any devil where their is malignant sociopathy.
Thank you for the excellent article, professor Richardson. Your analysis presents a concise, relatable view that leads to this conclusion: Americans didn’t even come close to voting for Musk or his enactment of such abuses of his power. We’re left with enormous uncertainty about the safety of our life’s data and how it can be weaponized against us, and whether it’s even remotely possible to undo.
The impact of his devastation inflicted on the American people is generational. Once “We the People” feel the abuse of power that Trump’s installation of Musk enabled, we’ll have first-hand pain and misery as a result down to the last one of us, regardless of party or creed or skin color. His mission was to get his grubby little hands on our data. Once that was over, he didn’t - and doesn’t - give a damn about saving money. It was all about enriching his fortune.
Your summary is eerily prophetic. It’s also not causing visceral pain… yet. When it does, I hope the backlash runs this sewer circus out of town and prompts the enactment of legislation that tightens down presidential power so far, future presidents will have to ask permission of the American voters to kill a fly in the Oval Office. (Edited to remove a more profane analogy.). Thanks for this piece - we’re out here reading carefully and we will remember it.
Musk's messages, quoted in the first two paragraphs, are alarming. What, exactly, was the "anomaly in the matrix" unleashed during the election? Is this an admission that he did, indeed, use his computer and communication systems to mess with the election?
Jane, musk did just that. I heard trump say that very thing… musk is a genius with computers. Look what he did in Pennsylvania. That’s not a word for word quote, but trump was talking about winning all the swing states….
Trump has let it slip several times that Musk rigged the election. Now we have further proof. And still nothing will be done. The Dems were so worried about looking like the GOP that they walked away without any recounts even though it was painfully obvious to everyone that there was no way all of the swing states went his way while they elected Dems into every other office in the same states. We need someone in Congress to do more than just write strongly worded letters and stand in front of a camera and shout about what all of us already know. We need action. But at the end of the day they are all beholden to the same owners and eat from the same trough. SCOTUS is especially corrupt and allowing all of this to happen. Even when they somehow commit an act of following the constitution it does nothing to change what Trump and Vance and Miller and Musk and Noem and Rubio and all the other cast of characters continue to do to destroy our country and our democracy and our standing with global allies. We will never recover from this. What country will ever take us seriously if they know that every four years whatever good was done can be undone in a few short months of a new administration? I have no faith that we will have free and fair mid-term elections if we even make it to that point. I sit at work and think to myself “what is any of this for?” And half of my family laughs and says “stop being dramatic none of this affects you.” It sucks to be empathetic.
"...they will be quite surprised. 'Laser' for the sky' " I can only hope that someone is getting back to those journalists that have done their homework, pointing out election interference by lasers, directed by elon...
Interesting to me, at least, is Katie (nee Waldman) Miller earned her BA from the University of Florida where I'd have hoped she learned some ethics along the lines of my mother-in-law's friend and neighbor Mickie Edwardson, who "...came to Gainesville in 1956 as the first woman faculty member in the College of Journalism at UF. In 1962 Mickie went to Guatemala to work for the United States Information Service and help establish that nation's first educational television network. Mickie became the first woman at UF to be named Distinguished Service Professor in 1985. After retiring from UF in 1994 she began work on a biography of James Lawrence Fly, F.C.C. commissioner and A.C.L.U.. director. Several of her articles on Mr. Fly were published in scholarly journals and at the time of her death she was working to complete his biography..." from https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/102238185/mickie-edwardson
I didn't know her that well, but was always more impressed every time I learned something new about her, and connections to journalism, and Public media. She was a true pioneer, that seemed to inspire many more positively than Katie Waldman (who stole newspapers with her opponent's story on the front page).
As a fan of the TVA, limitations on warrant-less wire taps, the ACLU, and honest agent administration of agencies that can provide huge and effective infrastructure that no private entity can ,or would want to, CPB (PBS, NPR), etc, I'm suggesting others more up to it, start looking into https://prabook.com/web/james_lawrence.fly/1072793#google_vignette
To me, he did his best to keep the government agencies from too much prying into people's data without due cause, and would have been appalled at what the Bush 43 administration tried to do with warrant-less wire taps, as the most recent excesses he tried to fight, much less the total grab and exposure of everyone's data to bad actors including i Russia.
And stop the ultra-wealthy from just buying elections, appointments, and legislation. Isn't that about as UNdemocatic as you can get?
What might our society look like today had we not allowed big money to so fully warp the public will and the common good? "Musk invested about $290 million in the 2024 election...". Many people use every cent they can muster just to survive. Billionaires would not be putting that kinds of money into politics if they were not getting something back.
"Yesterday the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit paused that ruling until at least June 9, when both parties will have submitted legal arguments about whether the stay should remain in place as the government appeals the ruling that the tariffs are illegal."
We'll see if SCOTUS has the kahunas to uphold the law saying the tariffs are illegal.
Donald has their kahunas in jars with labels scribbled in Sharpie, sitting on a shelf mounted above the gold-plated toilet in his faux-Rococo bathroom at Maga-Lardo.
I suspect we'll be seeing a lot of "TACO King" signs at the protests. Hopefully, at his little military parade put on with our dime.
Trump has stolen at least $200 million in personal benefits from us. And Musk even more. Not to mention selling access to Trump to get pardons and favors, especially from foreigners.
Re protesting…it may well be that it will be this or another mass protest where Trumpf will use instigators (can you say Proud Boys/J6ers?) to start physical trouble so he can claim RIOT and declare an emergency and martial law. The suggestion I saw suggested is that people immediately sit down, be as quiet and non-confrontational as possible to deny claims that the crowd started the trouble. It sounds paranoid to even think this way but, considering who is in power (or a least pulling the strings) and what their ultimate goals are, this is right in the playbook. I hate all this crap!
Use this spreadsheet as a resource to call/email/write members of Congress, the Cabinet and news organizations. Reach out to your own reps, as well as those in other states on a specific committee important to a topic you’re sharing. Use your voice and make some “good trouble.”
Just when it looked like things were getting a little better, it’s worse than I could ever have imagined. I was somewhat relieved that musk was leaving DC, but to hear that he’s billions of dollars richer and has mountains of data on American citizens, is scaring the you-know-what out of me. At 78 years of age, it’s all wearing me down, with even the meager optimism I did have, is nearly gone. The evilness rampant in our country is making my heart hurt…
MAGAs made Ronald Reagan's words come, true half a century later. "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'"
Well this makes 2 scary things I have read tonightJoyce Vance5 questions being the other. My heart goes out to these people that came to our country wanting a safe place to live and a better life. What do they get if any color but white they get treated like $hit by this present administration..
An entire gangster presidency with no focus other than graft, greed, extortion, racketeering, blackmail, identity theft, forced abduction, corruption, chaos, confusion, cruelty, and of course — raging incompetence. A raging clusterfuck of the latter, with the President and all his wormtongues constantly yelling at every judge and honest cop in the country, Jimmy Cagney-style: “come and get me, ya dirty screw!”
Not a day passes that doesn’t fill me with shame for America, for its self-inflicted wounds, indifference to life and suffering, with great fear that next year they’ll figure out some bizarre way of cancelling, negating, or finagling elections to ensure the agony and the sadism continue unabated, no matter the disgust people have for them.
This isn’t draining the swamp—it’s restocking it with predators. What we’re witnessing isn’t reform—it’s revenge. By gutting civil service protections, the goal isn’t efficiency, it’s loyalty.
Paul, I check my email inboxes just before going to bed, but I intentionally leave Heather's Letter unopened. I learned that reading her letters at that late hour causes me to be sleepless for most or all of the night. I can't cope with the shitscape we find ourselves in while suffering from sleep deprivation.
Musk's departure leaves a ravaged landscape, not a record of savings as he claims. Much of what he destroyed paid us ROI benefits of $7, 10, 15 on the dollar, so to claim a 'savings' of that $1 is to admit a net LOSS of $6, 9, 14. When someone much smarter than I finally crunches the numbers of net dollars LOST to the American people because of this insane caper, the amount will be staggering. And it won't begin to count the emotional, physical, moral, psychological wounds inflicted on all of us by Musk and his band of flying monkeys.
Elizabeth Ervin
This is what you get when you crown a convicted felon and a ketamine-fried tech narcissist as your saviours: a firehose of lies, the ritual slaughter of ethics, and democracy stripped for spare parts. Truth is twisted, decency dead on arrival, and the public left dazed while billionaires loot the future. But this doesn’t end in silence. It ends when the people of this good country rise—loud, angry, and organised. The midterms aren’t just a vote. They’re an exorcism.
We should not think that we can wait till the mid-terms to wield our voice and our power; there is no guarantee in this administration that they will take place in a fair and above board way, or that they will take place at all. On June 6--stand with veterans whose sacrifices are sodomized, whose service is sneered upon. This is their day to remind us all of their oath to protect the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. On June 14--rise in righteous peaceful resistance on the day that #47 has usurped as his Day of Flattery. We have a lot to do well before the midterm elections take place. If they do.
Yes! And JUNE 14!!! Those of us paying attention NEED TO WAKE UP everyone who is either not paying attention or is “too upset by the news” and get them to join us at every protest and standout - we need to MANY AND LOUD AND PERSISTENT ‼️‼️‼️
We all need to speak up on JUNE 14! This treatment of migrants is not only cruel, inhumane and illegal. It is contrary to what made America great in the first place. Our population primarily consists of descendants of migrants, people who had the courage, determination and abilities to leave adverse conditions at home and start a new life in a distant place where, often, a different language was spoken. As a result migrants are often people with exceptional abilities and energy. They are also among the most patriotic Americans, as they are deeply grateful for the opportunities this country has offered them. The current attack on them is the exact opposite of the stated goal of "MAGA".
"Aux armes, citoyens! Formez vox bataillons." A line from the Marseillaise which should be sung with gusto....
"aux armes" - oh, please no......we must not resort to violence to solve this horrific situation - please, please, please......
Then what ---- will the government impose rules where women will be forced to stay at home, get married, have a minimum of 4 children as their patriotic duty and make abortion punishable by guillotine? Decisive and extreme the new trump motto.
I’ve done volunteer work to resettle and house refugees ever since the Balkan wars. I was involved with many solo adults and families who had to flee the former Yugoslavia because they were of the “wrong” religion in their new country or had a mixed-religion marriage. I know the fear, loss and torture they had undergone; two men lived with me and my ex-husband for up to four years. Their stress, grief and the medical damage done by militias and torture were obvious on a daily basis, as were the other Yugoslav refugees in the Twin Cities. When 9/11 occurred, all - regardless of religion- were the first in their neighborhoods to fly little American flags. And they treated me and my ex with kindness and compassion. They are now American citizens, and we could learn something from them.
As a Veteran my outrage and anger over the "parade" have no measure.
I just cannot imagine the reaction to this mockery of our veterans that this sham "parade" represents. I cannot fathom the depravity and hubris that a draft dodger expects lo demands from those who served bravely from someone who mocks these soldiers on a regular basis.
My family's Military service goes back to The American Revolutionary War where my distant paternal grandfather fought at Brandywine and Germantown. Trump is making a mockery of our national pride. He self-glorifies. That the Republicans genuflect before this monster makes very sad commentary about where our country is morally and emotionally. Two of my dad's brothers fought in WWII, Pacific Theater. I served in classified Intel, USAF, 1962-1966. We would have given our blood if called to do so. One of my favorite passages from Scripture is: John 15:13, "Greater love has no one than this: that someone lay down his life for his friends." It is not about self. It is about selfless. Trump has neither spine, stones nor courage to even consider self-sacrifice. He is an evil curse upon our great nation. He is cowardice on steroids.
I wish I could do more with my anti Trump songs but organizers don’t let in anyone they haven’t already approved. Frustrating.
The latest news: Jodi Ernst was asked in her home state how she felt about people dying because the government has removed medicaid: her answer "We're all going to die." Russell Voigt's response to the defunding of NIH, cancer research, Pell grants, etc. by saying "they're all garbage." How the hell do we fight back against attitudes like that?
I cannot find this Voigt quote. Can you cite it?
Bill, it’s probably because they can’t learn them fast enough. Dont be discouraged, please
I am DELIGHTED at this news, which will take a bit of focus away from the parade debacle. I hope Leo says something controversial to get even more mhttps://www.yahoo.com/news/pope-leo-speak-world-young-000215530.html?fr=sycsrp_catchalledia attention!
Thank you for your call. I assume you are a white person because Trump cannot be stopped unless white citizens lead. America was founded by soldiers who were white and white soldiers fought under the leadership of Lincoln. It is not racism but entitlement of leadership.
Anyone who thinks there will be ANY elections anymore in America is seriously deluded. (And I mean _real_ elections, not Putin-style side shows where there is only one possible outcome.)
DM, there are over 100,000 elections taking place in the US this year. Thousands of far-right Republicans and white Christian Nationalists have been voted out of office and many have resigned. The mid-terms will happen. For years, Democrats have pursued the national elections allowing the Republicans to strengthen their hold on local politics.
"All politics is local." Tip O'Neil. The Republicans that have held town halls are getting booed and screamed at. In 2017, we were blindsided by the tax cut bill that resulted in increasing the national debt by a staggering $7.9 trillion under Trump.
But this time, it's even worse because they are extending the cuts AND they are throwing up to 9 million people off of Medicaid.
There are lots of David Hogg's out there recruiting young Democrats and Independents. We need to support and promote our local Democrats and Independents.
I agree. I confront patients in a local clinic, and I tell every one of them the dangers we face today. I stress it to the point that leaves them scared, but not without power. There truly is power in numbers, and it will take all of us to use that power to defeat this scourge. I help them register to vote, and inform them how to obtain the necessary ID. It is especially meaningful when I point out the future their children will face if they don't act now.
Don't get me wrong, Gary, I really hope you're right! But honestly, I've yet to see it happen. Don't forget that the real lord of darkness has revealed himself: Peter Thiel. It isn't for nothing his technology is called Palantír - the seeing stones used by the Dark Lord Sauron and his puppet Saruman to watch the move of every living being. Combine that with the fact that, thanks to his DOGE shenanigans, Elon Musk has pretty much all the data on all American citizens, and you have both Sauron and Saruman in a happy ketamine-addicted narcissistic mix. "What could possibly go wrong?" Expect elections that are not done by voters, but by programmed voters. Is that against the rules? So what. Trump, Musk and Thiel have never cared for rules they didn't create themselves anyway.
Trump is really shouldn't be trash talking Leonard Leo.
We don't need negativism projected this way. Please think twice about that. We have not sunk yet. But if people think this is a lost cause, IT WILL BE!!! Do you want people to not bother to vote because it does not matter??
D. M. Thai is my nightmare.
GJ, we just had a special election in Oregon earlier this month Our local D organization did well where all but one of the people they supported won for school boards and city councils. In Salem a levy passed for parks, the library, and the senior center much to my surprise. Nationally, Ds have also done well.
Michele, the only Democratic Party endorsed person who lost down here was an 18 year old student who lost to another Democrat who has a public administrative fiscal background for the Lane Community College board. The student had (not surprisingly) no fiscal background and had never attended LCC, while the other Democrat has served on several boards with success, and had been involved in the Women in Transition program.
Agree 100%
I am with you there.Why would anyone think that this lawless administration( if that is what you want to call it) will allow free and fair elections to take place?They are ignoring the SCOTUS ruling in the Abrego Garcia case.They answer to no one except MAGA.The people need to take their own actions.I suggested a national strike or stay-at-home days/ weeks.
Whether going forward from this point we will have free and fair elections is definitely the issue. Trump/Miller/Musk/Noem still have support from local Republican officials and a large number of voters who are in reality KKK, i.e., white Christian nationalists. Speaker Mike Johnson is the face of this crowd. The racism is palpable. Two books: Timothy Egan, "A Fever in the Heartland," about the rise of the KKK in the Midwest in the 1920's and "How the South Won the Civil War," by Heather Cox Richardson. There is the study conducted by two Univ. of Kansas professors published in the Feb. 2018 edition of "Critical Sociology," a peer-reviewed journal entitled "The Anger Games: Who Voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 Election, and Why?" Their findings: they voted for Trump because they share his prejudices and want Trump to crush the hated and evil minorities, women's rights advocates, gay rights advocates, etc.
I know the people you describe who support Trump et al. exist; but are they in the majority? Prejudice, hatred, misogyny have always existed; but they haven't prevailed. I wonder why they prevail now, or maybe there can still be an override through protests, elections, and continuing to share the news of the awfulness that's occurring!
Richard, like you say, fair elections . The word "fair" covers it. Why have an election if it's not going to be "fair". But, the simple fact that humans are involved rightly causes concern. Hahaa.., lest we forget that Humans are the ones who created AI. I guess, in my mind at least, the word 'fair' is all-encompassing. Meaning, a "fair" election is a foregone conclusion. And, that brings me to the word "rights" when used to put some kind of legitimacy to what is tolerance or respect of one human for another human. So, let's quit throwing the word "rights" at it, it just ticks people off. Again, why? Because it implies someone has some privilege another person does not. Womens rights? Smokers rights? Gay rights? Truckers rights? As a male human being, I have the "right" to expect 'consideration' by another human being for a fellow human being. Our educational system falls short in the 'human nature' department. I think. Now, when it comes to dealing with animals, then we "humans" probably have to communicate our "rights" differently. Noem, not being a very good example.
Not just women’s and gay’s advocates. Women and gays, too.
Exactly. If a law or court ruling or even Constitution doesn't fit them, they simply ignore it.
I refuse to give up on the ‘26 election yet. If we raise enough noise, get enough people out, get our local police to join us in each precinct just in case, I still believe we could get enough Dems in power to overwhelm the traitors in Congress.
Don't give up... people are too quick to go hopeless and negative, to get discouraged. Then we do lose.
Get to work on keeping US free of Putin, the inspiration of all of this, perhaps even of Musk, although his South Africa behaved this way with Blacks and Coloreds. Racism is behind so much of this. There is always Indivisible if you need an organization. If you have a computer or other device, it’s at your fingertips.
You give the "local police" too much credit.
I know what you mean.. there are *types* that love to bully, that love their authority, like Trump and his henchmen. But they are not all. People need courage and the willingness to stand up for what is right. We are being called upon now and are not used to it. We have had it easy.
For demonstrations to have any effect, they have to be enormous and - while peaceful - disrupting. Fill public places in our largest cities, block traffic, even superhighways, close factories and shopping malls, stop postal service, even screw up the internet, at least for a few days.
All this will require unified Democratic leadership and the visible participation of our cultural stars and other famous people, at least the ones not too enamoured of their own wealth.
We'll even have to renounce Amazon for a while, boycott Whole Foods, stop paying bills and taking vacations, and make miserable any non-participating elected officials.
Without this, the midterms will never happen or mean anything.
“For demonstrations to have any effect, they have to be enormous and - while peaceful - disrupting.”
CHICAGO (WLS) -- “Tickets go on sale on Friday for the Rate Field celebration where Pope Leo XIV will greet Chicago for the first time.
The citywide celebration will be held on Saturday, June 14 at the home of the Chicago White Sox.
Pope Leo XIV will offer a special video message to the young people of the world, which will be broadcast first from the event, the archdiocese said.”
https://abc7chicago.com/post/pope-leo-xiv-mass-rate-field-tickets-sale-soon-event-home-white-sox-june-14-broadcast-robert-prevost/16589359/
Charging to attend. Typical RCC.
I’ve mostly renounced Amazon. I don’t “shop” and don’t really buy stuff, but last year I did more than ever—self-soothing. But I’m back on track now. Only 1 Amazon purchase since January. I’ve been so distracted by what’s going on in America it’s been hard to keep up with birthdays and anniversaries. Almost too late for one, so I gave in and did an Amazon purchase for quick turnaround. I’m done now. I wish it didn’t involve harm to hard-working employees, but so does supporting the oligarchs taking over our country!!!!!
Welcome to the club, Jan. I had already cancelled my WaPo subscription when the stink of Will Lewis's hard-right influence became too strong. But because of broad choices in every category and fast, free delivery to my rural address, I remained a pretty good Amazon Prime customer. Then Bozo killed WaPo's endorsement of Harris/Walz. I stopped ordering goods, but I kept my Prime Membership, mainly because it included Prime Video, which is a good streaming value. Coming into 2025, I began to feel guilty of hypocrisy and decided it was time to sever all connection with Bozo's businesses, so I cancelled my Amazon Prime subscription.
Amazon sent a survey asking why I cancelled. I responded, "Because Bezos is a coward who hates democracy." The survey asked what would persuade me to resubscribe. I answered, "When Bezos grows a spine."
Using information from https://www.goodsuniteus.com, I learned that Netflix's management supports Democratic candidates and has contributed zero dollars to Republicans, so I subscribed.
I've been surprised at how well I'm doing without Amazon. In fact, I have enough of everything. I'm buying only necessities, now, spending very little. I figure that I need to be careful because the Trump regime is about to do me serious financial harm.
Jan, we avoid Amazon and only purchase there when absolutely necessary which is rare. Our garden helper recently wrote a book about gardening in terms of outer and inner space. Unfortunately, Amazon has pretty much a straggle hold on this type of publishing. The book is 20 dollars; she gets eight. Since I helped edit it, I am getting a free copy from her. I was considering biting the bullet on this one and am happy I do not have to. I have an ex-student who writes romances and she loathes Amazon.
Michele, our friend from Portugal has written quite an extensive SciFi series mostly sold through Amazon. She hates it.
Michele, frequent commentor here and Substack writer ("That's Another Fine Mess") TCinLA posted about Amazon sales for authors a few months back.
Personally, I am struggling to get an agent to publish one of my manuscripts. I had the first one professionally edited, and the editor (long career in writing/editing) told me it is publishable. (In other words, I didn't write dreck.) It is virtually impossible to break into traditional publishing--though I keep trying. But I could self-publish through Amazon, although to do it correctly (according to the many instructional videos and seminars I've attended) I'd spend plenty of cash upfront (like thousands) and I'd likely sell 200 books.
TCinLA explained how Barnes & Noble screws over authors in terms of royalties, and why Amazon works best for him.
That being said, during pandemic, Amazon was at my house weekly. I've cut down to perhaps monthly, and only after I've exhausted every possibility for whatever I need.
Check out bookshop.org they could be a place to find things without amazon.
Good for you, Jan.
I forgot the "hard-working employees" who could do their part by striking in conjunction with a great national Day of Reckoning for Trump and his followers.
Yes, please stop rewarding Amazon, they are the foot soldiers of the Trojan Horse in the white house. The financial backing of the billionaires is one of the reasons why our democracy is hijacked.
Better check with Maslow. Human "needs" have to be addressed if we're going to have some kind of tsunami effect Otherwise it'll be just another fiasco. Jim Croce' Don't mess around with Jim, comes to mind. There's a strong "wind" out there right now. That wind is very good at blowing out fires and then bloviating how a forest-fire (the Democrats, et al) was prevented along with incredible truths from Barbie BS.
Many of the Indivisible groups are planning big events on June 14. Our group in Brunswick, GA has a big event in our downtown park with lots of opportunities for our citizens to learn what this crazy administration is planning for their future and we're doing it through fun activities with hopes of bringing out lots of people.
I see only three possible remedies: the Mussolini solution; a calamitous end of the cult (as most cults end that way), or Trump escapes to Saudi Arabia, where they put him up in the same apartment that Idi Amin used when he was exiled.
I hate to be a negative nellie, but I think I'm with you. The extremes of this administration will require an extreme response. They don't care about peaceful protesting. They feel impervious to all objections. They will only care when the guillotine makes an appearance.
And their head is on the block....
Janice, excellent turn of phrase; "...veterans whose sacrifices are sodomized, whose service is sneered upon."
I think my sign will say: "I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic."
It is the first stanza of the oath of office for both enlisted and officer when being sworn in.
I'd like a sign listing Bible Verses Micah 6:8, 6:12 & Matthew 7:12 to remind all what our 'job' on earth is. Wonder how many of the 'christian' zealots for T know what those verses mean...
Agree completely, Janice.
But to see the Supreme Court’s compliance is beyond heartbreaking and terrifying. Not the first time with this court, either.
Janice...that phrase "sacrifices are sodomized" will stay with me for a long time. I agree that we should protest and resist all the time. Yes, Day of Flattery. You have a way with words.
Strongly recommend that everyone who can, sign up and be trained to work the polls. I don’t care if it’s a Primary or mid-terms or a special election. We need to watch what is happening there like hawks.
Yes!
Can mass acts of public dissention slow the mounting barbarity and the setting of new standards of inhumanity in their aim to cleanse the country of unfavorable citizens? trump et al are truly acting like unruly children, sloppy and gutless. And trump - I mean the TACO - is a bluffer, vain and boastful.
Janice. AMEN. TACO needs to GO to El Salvador NOW
TACO is what I think the trains should be named, not tRump as some FL politician wants.
Gee, I wonder why the Democratic leadership hasn't thought of that? Could it be that they are as afraid of their constituents as are the Republicans of their voters? What fun!
We need to keep Trump a "TACO" every day. The day he decides he is will longer be a TACO is the day the American people have their eyes opened about our Prez. If he is provoked, he will probably go off the deep end. Harrah!
Even if elections were allowed to be held, I would question the results of them.With Musk and his many satellites who would know if the results were legitimate.
By the mid-terms, the Musk termites will have hollowed out the data trove that they are currently burrowing through - and will do what they like with that information to elect whoever they want.
Keep the faith LE, losing hope is exactly what these psychos want you to do. Trump is a sh*t-talking mouthpiece for a rear end. Anything can happen. People died in the trenches for our freedom. Never give up.
I'm not giving up - just gearing up. I think we are going to have a hell of a fight with the mid-terms. The rate trump's "policies" (joke. . . ) are going, that 70 million who voted GOP last time will have shrunk to about 20 old men and a mangey dog. The people will KNOW something is wrong, but not what to do about it - the leadership they will need should be getting ready NOW!
Lady, here in Oregon we have voted by mail for about 25 years. Now we have three regressives who have a measure to do away with mail voting. I read some of the posts on the thread. Most love voting this way, but those who are in the cult want people to vote in person and show ID that proves citizenship.
One argument for mail in voting (my son also lives in Oregon, and he swears by it) is that, "someone", meaning the taxpayers, will have to pay the costs of the day of election. Meaning, renting venues, recruiting and paying for election workers, machinery, advertising, etc. I'm sure all of that costs far more than mail in. For example, I got paid $175 for around 14 hours of duty. There were 9 of us and processed fewer than 300 voters. And, in a state like Oregon, where the population in the eastern 2/3 of the state is sparse, you then run the risk of not having accessible voting sites for so many, including elderly. Voter suppression, it it's anything.
I would like there to be physical places to vote along with the Mail In Ballot system in place here in WA. I know it costs $ but, I recall how great it felt to show my voter's card (could only get if you were a citizen), get an I voted sticker & greet neighbors.
Don't forget that Oregon Sheriff she sees 👀everything ...
"From The Back Row". : ---)
Kazz, a fellow reader here has termed that aspect of ffpotus as "Anus Mouth".
Musk termites is such an appropriate description.
True. In fact, the ever growing analyses of ElectionTruthAlliance.org show highly improbable patterns that suggest an algorithm was used in some swing state district tabulators. Surprise surprise. Warnings were issued by techs who knew their stuff but Dems were so intent on proving a peaceful transfer of power to the current traitor —and NOT imitation the election deniers of 2020, that they failed to do due diligence. They were intended to not raise red flags. But until we do some audits to determine what exactly was done, how can we rely on the formerly used systems?
To reiterate what Kazz M. wrote….don’t leave a comment in despair …add a “that’s why we must all keep writing, calling, getting up on overpasses with banners, stand outside of DEI capitulating businesses with signs, showing up at Tesla (yes…still show up…he’s NOT gone!). Not Congress or any layer of judges is going to save our Democracy. WE ARE DEMOCRACY. It is up to us and our job to save it.
Thank you Kazz McNight on calling out ketamine-fried tech delusions.
Being a prospector inside valuable Mayo Clinic medical research about 1 month ago I located three (3) Mayo Clinic studies on 'KETAMINE INFUSION THERAPY'.
This general area of medical research per Mayo is to "better understand the neurobiology of 'MAJOR DEPRESSION'" and Ketamine's "impact on brain function".
Short Abstract: Oh, it has an impact & It ain't good.
On mushrooms, I can only offer anecdotal evidence specifically on the impact PSILOCYBIN circa the 1960's. The street (that would be Haight-Ashbury) called it "I can do anything" mushrooms. Nope.
Full Disclosure: I am a JD not an MD who does not believe in magic anything.
Bryan, thanks for those insights. So true. I work in drug and alcohol education, and agree there’s some amazing research being conducted around psychedelic therapies. However these treatments are carried out by medical professionals in controlled clinical settings. Musk on the other hand is a ‘drug abuser’ who should be carted off to treatment, not running amok making ludicrous decisions that impact millions around the globe.
Hoping he will self-destruct via his drug abuse …
Kaz, I’m betting my socks (I sort of collect them:-) you’ve read Stealing Fire. I’m part way through; find it fascinating about ketamine and much more.
Of course Mut’s an abuser of Ketamine as well as of other drugs as Heather’s letter indicated.
But the sheer cruelty of his cuts as Heather noted …more akin to amputations in my heart-mind ….killing hundreds of people an hour around the world is haunting me.
Kazz McNight, we need to get you more Readers.
Substack Inc is a San Francisco neighbor.
I can ask Substack Inc. for Tech info about modifying their platform tools.
Bryan, yes: Ketamine is a horse tranquilizer so you can imagine what it does to a human who weighs a fraction of what a horse does . . .
Well, the bladder is pretty close to a horse's ass isn't it?
Bryan, Jeff Tiedrich often replays a GIF based on the linked YouTube video, which captured Musk at a Maga-Lardo dinner, high as a kite in his own world, entertaining himself with a "spaceship" he assembled from dinner forks. This junkie was given unfettered access to "the nervous system of the U.S. Government."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0I08VRaG1Jk
Dale, thank you; I will check out JEFF TIEDRICH's medical evidence this Weekend.
I have access to world class neurologist at UCSF Medical Center who as matter of professional medical practice were & remain willing to follow & patient(s) with sometimes complex neurological symptoms then render a certified medical opinion that's spot-on & confirmed at autopsy.
I did review the 12 second video -- not much there.
Bryan, we are watching a series called Boglands which takes place in Ireland and is in Gaelic with subtitles. The main character has just found out that he drank a ketamine laced drink on the night of his mother's murder and now he wonders if he did it. In it he asks a doctor about the effects of ketamine and he was not happy to know what those were. As an aside, i think foreign script writers sometimes use what is happening here in their plots.
No I am not watching "Boglands" but, my house has heavy watchers of UK, German, Sweeden and other foreign series. The actors all seemed stage-trained. Good scripts.
The 28th Season of you-know-what is coming up in June. Emilia Fox is still in the Lead. New actors as Staff at the Center too.
Yes, we watch mostly series made elsewhere. We love the actors who are not all handsome, beautiful, or slim. What we also like is that some of them are also challenged.
I didn't know that there will be another year of Silent Witness which we enjoy and will watch.
Silent Witness Season 28 was released in the UK on 1/7/25 but, held back from the usa Market until this month, June 2025.
No certain of release date.
I will check out Bogland; I did spend a Summer on Dingle Peninsula decades ago where the kids spoke Gaelic in the Summer. Nabobs around.
Anecdotally, psychedelics have proven therapeutic in small doses, micro-dosing. There is some decent evidence on the value of ketamine, again in controlled small doses. Musk is not using ketamine in small doses, and he seems to be mixing it with psilocybin. Ketamine in pill form is cheap. Spravato (esketamine) is a proven, but very expensive drug for depression administered in a nasal spray. Who knows what else he may be taking. I’ve even seen 1 patient who was micro dosing LSD for bipolar disorder and it seemed to be working. Controlled clinical trials don’t exist.
Kim your comments are medically & scientifically very useful.
I did raise the issue of "what else" over at The Contrarian in the form of "adulterated" ketamine whether downers, uppers or sideways.
I had a patient once who went into an emergency room for depression. The doctor there gave her an infusion of ketamine and relieved her chronic depression for months. That ain’t supposed to happen, but everyone reacts differently. There was one study that showed that Ecstasy was effective in treating PTSD; unfortunately, they fudged the data. I had a patient who dissolved 10 ml of LSD (That’s what he said, don’t know if you can measure LSD that way) in 10 ml of vodka and used a syringe to put 1 ml (not inject) under his tongue every 3 days and effectively treat bipolar disorder. There’s anecdotal evidence for LSD micro dosing. Before that, he put mushrooms on peanut butter sandwiches, but said prepping the powder was too time consuming. All anecdotal. Maybe there’s potential, but good luck getting research funding for that now.
I'm up at Midnight in CA opening the house windows to allow the cool air inside.
On lysergic acid, I do not know of any liquid form not even made by Sandoz ... perhaps flakes of LSD were diluted with something.
You mentioned Emergency Rooms ... don't get me started. I love ER docs & ER staff. As an ex-trial attorney I can roll out relevant facts to ER folks & watch them instantly absorb the need-to-now NOW stuff as they shift ASAP into 🙏Treatment Protocol.
My mother was the head of "Human Resources" at a teaching hospital in Northridge, CA the last 10 years of her career. She introduced many Staff friendly policies. 4 days on, 3 days off
Weekends on mixed with regular weekday work hours as needed.
I am not an MD either, but a medical technologist who assisted on hundreds of pediatric bone marrow aspiration procedures, where the child was given a mix of Ketamine and Versed. The docs would warn the parents (who were allowed to remain in the treatment room if they wished) that their child might experience some effects that would alarm the parent, but the child was safe. Very common for the kids to tell the parent they had four eyes, or several noses.
well said
Excellent summary
There is a grouo, the Patriotic Millionaires, that is trying to do good things, mainly through the tax system. They are good people. I am not a millionaire but I am on their email list. I strongly recommend going to Wikipedia and their website to check them out and I hope you will decide to join the Patriotic Millionaires email list. We are deluged with news of what this fascist coup is doing to America. Time to focus on ways to defeat and destroy them.
They appear drunk on power. They are rich bullies. They relish tormenting the poor, the weak, the disadvantaged. They are our neo-nazis. It is up to us to take them on, and we must do it now, before their extreme makeover ends our "American Experiment"
June 14th rise up!
Can we survive until the midterms….will the election at all be fair and not fixed?
I cannot imagine a free and fait election. In fact I continue to be surprised he hasn't done national protests through force of violence.
I hope hope hope I am wrong wrong wrong.
100% correct
Dr Richardson's essay is sobrifying (i.e., a portmanteau or sobering and terrifying or horrifying, or both). Ten Presidents from President Reagan through President H.W. Bush consistently stood up to gangster régimes in Germany, Italy, the U.S.S.R., Japan, China, and Cambodia. https://poets.org/poem/september-1-1939
After the appeasements of President Obama and Trump, President Biden re-assumed that mantle against Russia. Now we have gangster régime. 'Tiz Nazi U.S.A., as Charles Mingus would say. https://youtu.be/kXAJPUpFqoA
Amen!
Kazz, you wrote it! Skum’s “flying monkeys” is perfect. Just gave them a poke sending 20 more GOTV postcards to elect the 27th undersecretary of the Air Force, Democrat Gina Ortiz Jones, mayor of San Antonio, a city I lived in for six years in a purple Texas, and loved. Henry B. (Gonzales) was my congressman.
Jazz. So perfectly stated👍
IF Trump allows us to vote. He has time to rid us of the right to vote and a Supreme Court in agreement to his orders. Even if we vote, his Gestapo will be in charge of voting places. I think the Republicans are assured of winning to continue Trump's destruction of America.
Mary, I sadly fear that in voicing your fears about voting and the coming midterms publicly, you reinforce the notion that voting isn’t worth the effort. This is precisely what we DON’T want to do! We must ALL VOTE, wherever and whenever we have the opportunity!
With his recent attack against Leonard Leo I wondered how long the Supreme Court would protect the orange 🍊 🤡. I know they allowed the removal of TPS but maybe that was already released.
Amen Kazz!
And those of us who are watching this disaster in horror are suffering way less trauma than those who have lost their jobs or have been detained and torn from their homes and families.
This. I'm a former senior analyst with USAID. I used to be a part of a true global community of problem-solvers in alliance with other problem-solvers across the globe. In February, I watched younger colleagues have their careers wrecked because of some shrieking far-right lunatics here who didn't even know what USAID did, nor cared to learn. Americans who took an oath to uphold the Constitution using clandestine apps to communicate with their colleagues in host countries -- who also took the same oath -- out of fear of being tracked and surveilled. I watched from safety as their lives got upended in a few short minutes. And for what? For what?
USAID was so respected when I worked in Africa - we have to hope and believe that USA rises up against all this craziness and when it does it needs to resurrect USAID because the talent and ethics, morality and institutional memory is there right now to do that and the world would want that - do not despair- fight with all you have inside you - Gandhi’s analysis and philosophy is so relevant right now - “Be the change you want to see in the world” 🙏
I’m horrified about what has happened to USAID and the genocide that is effectively happening
Remember years ago, how on late night tv there would be requests for CARE packages? There would be starving children with huge, sad eyes?
Maybe the Dems need to start those type of videos and say THIS IS WHAT MUSK/TRUMP did....especially if they then show photos of Trump in his golf attire which doesn't hide his gut like his shoulder-padded blue suits do.
Very good idea Miselle! A picture's worth a thousand words.
Danielle. True😩😢
@ Elizabeth Ervin. You're right. Accirding to Google, Musks's net worth is
$ 429.4 billion, which may not be enough to cover his litigation exposure for the damage he's caused.
If only.....
Maybe chump will give him some of the free legal work that has been promised by blackmailed law firms.
No, but it’s a start.
Flying Monkeys, Lying Flunkies, A small price to pay, To out of jail stay, On the road to more loot, With the help of a nasal toot....let's give them all the boot!
👍
Musk has done his old trick once again: come in, make exaggerated claims shouting with a lot of bravado, slash and burn without really knowing the matter at hand, take the money from the hype (and the data), and then exit stage left before the shit really hits the fan, with the barn burning and leaving other people to clean up the mess.
It’s always the same shit with E-L-O-N.
Elizabeth, the sad truth—the horrendously sad and frightening truth—is that what we [and by we, I’m referring not just to we as Americans, but also those who’ve kind of evied America, Americans and our way of life] have lost so much of that cannot be measured in dollars and cents…how can one measure respect, faith, dependability, reliability, safety, security, trust, etc.? Yes, those “emotional, physical, moral, psychological wounds inflicted on all of us” which includes long-term irreversible harm on the American body politic that extends way beyond our shores!
This all started even long before the days of the “birther movement”—questioning Obama’s citizenship rights—and even before that. I question why is it that Democrats seem afraid to discuss, take credit for or to brag about—not just their beliefs, but the good programs and policies that Democrats have created that many Americans believe in and rely upon? We’ve created a generation of American’s who believe that it is okay to lie and to be dishonest…what does that/this say about our future—and we have AI (artificial intelligence) to deal with—wow, it’s not going to be easy!
Today, with our access—easy acceess—to information actually at our finger-tip, we should be much more smarter, as or on a whole, than at any other time in our history—but look at our system of and the formation our three branches of government; how impressive we should be and feel that our nation’s “founding fathers” were so wise with what they began and created about 250 years ago, [and which can be periodically amended by “we, the people”] which shows that they were a heck of a lot smarter and wiser than many today—and certainly a lot more so than many of our current governmental and political leaders and/or office holders!
Jim, as a lifelong Democrat and the product of Democrats going back several generations; having grown up and lived most of my life in Democrat-controlled (for the most part) states, I can safely say that Dem pols are for the most part the laziest people alive in the world today. They use the excuse that the Democratic Party is a "big tent" to justify their non-action. They rail against anyone who actually gets off their fat, entitled, and largely white male arses to demand that Dems do something. They start talking about FDR--only 90 years ago--when people talk about how moribund and intellectually bankrupt the party is. They are embedded in their political positions through the usual avenues of looking-the-other-way, grift, and torpor. And people still vote for them. Even when there is a better candidate--younger, more diverse, more savvy--who challenges them. The Rethuglicans and other denizens of the Ghastly Oligarchs Party have had a plan for the last 50 years. They have been methodical, determined, and intrepid. They have abandoned the old politics of martini-drinking semi-collegiality and embraced an anti-democratic, misogynist, white nationalist, christofascist program for Ammurrika because it works. It's simple. It's punchy. It speaks to the fears of old white people and young white men who find themselves increasingly irrelevant. And they have done so openly and brazenly for 50 years. And the Dems sit back, fold their arms over their giant bellies, and twiddle their thumbs say "oh my, oh my: what can we do to stop them???" To say that I am utterly disgusted by American politics is an understatement. The few (and they are very few) Dems who actually make noise are drowned out by the silence of others.
very, very sad but I have to agree that this is true.....with the exception of a few courageous public servants.
I also don’t understand the silence of Democrats, the silence of our former government officials both Republicans and Democrat. What is the world is happening?
Why do I keep thinking of Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow?
Jim, I just had a Facebook joust with a former sergeant of mine; his defense of selling off National Forest Lands was that 1: $COTUS upheld the 9th Circuit decision and that 2: it was passed by Congress in 2014. Not that it was wrong, but that it wasn't the current squatter ffpotus.
It's sad that many find it hard to distinguish what is right and what is wrong no matter when a decision was made!
Yes, you are so right.A good portion of the American people are suffering from a form of PTSD which is the reaction from being treated psychologically cruelly since this horrible administration took over.
There are three types of people in the world. Type 1 are the people who can dish out criticism and can take it. Type 2 can dish it out but can't take it. Type 3 keep their mouths shut. Pope Donald the Infallible and every one of his supporters are Type 2. When the number of Type 1 people in America reaches a critical mass, authoritarianism dies and democracy rises from the ashes.
There in lies the problem: There are just way too many of the Type 3's among us!!!!
Musk is so insignificant to the larger plan. He was tool. He provided a service and was paid by avoiding jail and given BILLIONS I. Worldwide contracts for Space.
The people who paid him that wanted a much bigger product. Project 2025 is running the administration. Even this latest Trumo attacking Leo is a stunt to take the heat off the real players and what they want to accomplish.
Heritage has finally achieved a half century goal and is about to obtain unlimited power over the world because it will control the US.
Think about it……Trumo a mastermind of anything? He doesn’t read, he is not a serious person. He literally has dementia. He controls nothing.
And Musk is a drug addict. Yes, he’s a bright guy but the genius he has is making the government pay for his companies. It cannot be said enough….He didn’t create anything. Every company he fronts was already a “thing”. EV, already a thing. Rockets, already a thing, satellites, already a thing. He just monetized them by convincing the government not to subsidize them. Had we had a more functioning government that didn’t load every bill with dumb shit like women vaginas and Bible study in place of earth science, our government would be able to have built satellites and rockets faster. He works with NASA! He basically did a hostile takeover of things we already owned as a nation.
He’s a smart salesman to Trumps con artists salesman.
Why do we even waste our time on THEM when they are just the faces. It’s like blaming the lipstick model for the pollution the cosmetic company is causing. She just is the faces, not the one in charge.
Six of SCOTUS are there specifically because of Heritage. Countless judges around the country. Almost all of the people in Trump positions of power had a hand in writing Project 2025 which is essentially a playbook on how to take over a government WITHOUT needing to go through the voters (Congress) or the existing law (Judiciary) because they know they can’t. The voters cringe when they hear the whacked out idea. And the judges are having a hard time twisting the constitution to rule in their favor.m
June 14….avoid the DC area like the plague. Rallies should be local, focused and have a common theme. Enough with 8000 different signs. We need our own uniform, they got that red hat. Come up with a very visible sign of solidarity.
Make DC a ghost town. Make state houses state universities the focus.
Absolutely!
Biggest boondoggle yet, worse than his Mar’s “snafu.”
Please look and learn exactly how much funding muskrat musk rec'd and continues to receive of taxpayer money for his car and spaceship companies. The world as is now, with the mad man having been in office only a handful of month, can only get worse. His holiness 'king' donny has more than three more years to destroy a nation that has until now been 250 or more years in the making. For shame, America/Republicans/MAGA cultists and voters who do not vote.
Unfortunately, this netting will be easily attacked. These are 'forgone' benefits that are hard to quantify and defend empirically. Yes, I agree with you; be ready for the cheapening know-it-allism of financial cynics, who, like Oscar Wilde, know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
In arguing for forgone benefits, please emphasize that this matter is not a financial but a moral one. Of doing the right thing as per values anterior to markets, accounting, finance (all in the service of fascism).
Where does Muskox keep his magic viewing ball?
Well said!
Yes Elizabeth, Musk and Trump are con men who have made themselves billions of dollars richer while fleecing the American public. We have no true picture of the enormous damage this truly fascist administration has done..
Heather, you keep telling us it will get worse this summer. I know you wish you were wrong. Musk acts like someone Trump would call a “bad hombre” if he weren’t white. Both Musk and Trump keep failing upward and vacuuming our money out of our pockets. And every day people around the world are harmed by their actions. I’m working hard to keep a flicker of hope alive that the majority of us will awaken our empathy and speak out against all this cruelty and theft.
Back in '70 in "socialist/PRL" Poland we used to say: "the worst the better" - meaning that the abysmal situation must be so bad, that people will not stand it anymore and will protest, rebel, oppose, put even passive resistance. I wish you reach this state of abysmal abhorrent trumpian oppression fast enough so trump voters will experience so much pain and disappointment that they themselves will rebel against their Il Duce.
From Poland with love.
Recent returnees from a vacation in Poland, were appalled by how much worse things were getting here, when their two week reprieve from the news was over.
Solidarity! It started in Gdandsk!
I grew up in northeastern Pennsylvania with people who immigrated from Eastern Europe as well as from Italy and Ireland. Good loyal friends. Hard working and dedicated to democracy. Thank you for your wise words.
My worry is that there will be no “Great Awakening”. It’s too easy for middle-class whites to stay disengaged. Cut off Streaming and we might have a fighting chance. This may seem like a stupid observation, but America reacted to George Floyd’s murder because we were in Covid upheaval. Yes we still had Streaming, but everything else was completely locked down / flummoxed so we were paying attention to the World in an untypically vigilant way. Right now, “The Mirage of Regularity” is functioning like in The Matrix. Something terrible is going on, but it appears like white, middle-class life is functioning “normally”. So no “Great Awakening” is happening.
It seems that way among my friends and neighbors. "It is just too hard to read the news each day". "It upsets me too much". "I don't want to stop enjoying life just because he is in office." "I am determined to keep living my life no matter what". So I tell them I am absorbing the news for them, and keeping my eyes on what is happening so they can take care of their kids, finish their quarterly report, get their car fixed, go out for ice cream on Memorial Day, remain sane while I try to keep from going kookoo. But it all will come and bite them in the butt too, eventually, and they will join in, perhaps incredulously, and we will somehow restore what has been lost. It may take more than my lifetime (I am an elder) but we shall prevail.
I hear those same replies. And I commend you for pushing back as gracefully as you do. And I do agree that the rebuilding will take longer than my lifetime. We are at the point where “saving the old way” is not an option. Too much has been broken and stolen. We must reimagine and build from the foundation up. That’s the New War.
I am sad that my distant cousin will not listen to any regular TV news since "it's all lies". Hasn't told me where she gets her erroneous facts she quotes. Will continue to communicate so maybe I can educate some.
Yep, people tend to be complacent unless it impacts them personally.
The bbb is the gift that keeps on giving. Cutting Medicaid hurts people in every Congressional district in the country. You may not be on Medicaid, but it's likely you have friends or relatives that are, and they may lose their access to medication and medical care.
My daughter works at a pharmacy and she says that a large percentage of people are on Medicaid. We should be picketing the major pharmacies warning people about losing their benefits, because many of them will thanks to the TACO king.
Gary, I think this may be the "bridge too far". The pain of Medicaid defunding is more than the loss of care. It's the loss of jobs. Millions of people who relied on the nursing home or hospital - not only the vulnerable and sick - the ripple effect of job loss carries over to the rest of the economy. If the fired hospital worker can't afford to buy anything, local businesses will suffer. If the nurse doesn't have a job, how does she pay the rent or buy necessities for her kids?
Medicaid is more than a social safety net for health. It is seed money for entire communities to knit together a system of interdependence. It's a big version of being a village. This is like shutting off the water to a town.
That and the continued publicity of people dying from preventable diseases will bring us painfully and slowly to the tipping point. What an awful and cruel process. And fucking stupid.
My sister in MO exists on widow’s pension and life-saving medications and healthcare through Medicaid. When sh*t hits the fan with the BBB, god knows what her fate will be.
Hey Kazz, it will impact "all of us" personally when the Masters of the DOGE-Broz Kabal start mining the DNA data bases of 23andme. Then comparing the ancestry of seemingly white Americans to find the tainted bloodlines of Troligarch Enemies.
Suddenly, we commenters on The Contrarian will find our passports and travel documents on lists at immigration checkpoints and whisked-off in zip-ties to CETOT.
Sounds like another dystopian terror novel? Just wait...
Kinda like the stepford wives, handmaids tale and The Blob all rolled into one
Agree, unfortunately
Well, if TACO Man declares martial law, we will all be locked down with curfews and a bunch of other restrictions. Maybe that will wake up the upper-middle class who so hate to be inconvenienced.
I recently read a column by Mona Charen expressing her fears of traveling abroad and not being allowed back into the USA due to some petty bureaucratic error or due to her criticism of Trump and his thugs. I share her “ paranoia .”I am somewhat fearful about peacefully protesting knowing that the thug in charge will use “ law enforcement “ and our own military to arrest and deport us to a foreign country for profit prison in a totalitarian country where I can not speak their language.
I agree with this observation
"My worry is that there will be no “Great Awakening”. It’s too easy for middle-class whites to stay disengaged." Yours is a honest statement. Undocumented immigrants and MEDICAID dependents do not amount to a political force to stop Trump, IMO.
At Mike Flood's (R-NE1) someone posed the rhetorical question, "Why do we even have a Congress?"
Exactly. Trump's little Johnson has absolutely nothing in the "big beautiful bill" (bbb) that the TACO king hasn't blessed. This bill is all about extending tax cuts for the TACO king and the major donors.
Adding over $4 trillion in debt is not conservative. The top .1% will receive an average tax benefit of $390,000 a year. This is all being done for the Oligarchs and lots of Republican voters are pissed off.
Linda, your statement of them "vacuuming our money our of our pockets" is SO TRUE.
On this fine forum, I've read (and participated in) many debates. With the exception of a few, most here add value and points of view that enrich. One debate I've read of many times is that "Democrats can't message". This might be true, or it might be something people just fall back on. I can't say. I haven't heard any suggestions of HOW Democrats could better message, so if anyone has ideas, let's have at it!
In the meantime, here's my thoughts on messages.
#1--The talk of saving democracy was lost on the uniformed voter. (I know as I have sisters I kept trying to inform and they hadn't heard or didn't care about what I told them.)
#2--We can debate this, but sadly, articulate and intelligent people are viewed as "elitist". At least, that's what I seemed to have heard. (I already know what you're going to say, Phil, and I agree with you!) A few months ago, I heard clips of great speeches from Tim Walz, and he spoke plainly. We need more of that.
#3--the Democrats needs their own Joe Rogan. While I love Brian Tyler Cohen, and he has a huge following, I could see he could turn off the MAGA. I noticed after the election, he went from wearing suits, to wearing tshirts/sweatshirts. I love "Belle" but again, hate to say it but females turn off some male voters. I love the Meidas touch network, and think Ben Meisalas is excellent, but he can be snarky and sarcastic (which I do enjoy, I confess!). So, my suggestion is Tennessee Brando. His following has escalated in the last few months. He walks the talk, and has a lot of MAGA watch him. I'd like to see his platform grow.
#4--It seems like talking statistics and data is too "math" for many and they glaze over. (Not me, as a retired lab tech, SHOW ME THE GRAPHS AND DATA!!!!!!!!!!) So, let's push the simple things--after all, I believe the price of eggs alone got people to vote Trump. It seems eggs, eggs, eggs were everywhere.
So, here's my suggestion for the message:
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.
It can apply to many aspects of Trump. Primarily for me, my thought is "do these billionaire have 'a number' and what is it?" What I mean is, everyone seems to have an internal concept of the amount of wealth they need to have to feel secure. Content. Safe. For many, it is to have assests of $1M.
What is "enough" for the billionaire? If they reach ONE BILLION, it is enough? Ten? A couple hundred billion? What's enough? (I know I've said this before, and it's been discussed there is never enough for some.)
If a Billionaire pays a much higher tax rate, does his/her lifestyle change?
I see comments that state billionaires pay about 40-50% of the tax refenue collected. Okay. Still--does their lifestyle change? Personally, I'd rather subsidize a POSSIBLE social safety net cheat, than KNOWINGLY subsidize a Billionaire!
"ENOUGH IS ENOUGH" can also apply to the DOGE slash and burn. Enough random firings. Enough pardoning criminals convicted by TRUMP'S own DOJ! Enough grifting. Enough TWEEETS for #$s! sake!!
There is much talk about possible 2028 POTUS candidates. As much as I wish for a female, I think the Dems would be insane to put one up FOR NOW. And Buttigieg would have been my candidate before--intelligent, well spoken, calm but forceful, AND a Vet--but I think the entire focus on him would be his sexual orientation. :-(
I think we need to check these boxes--white male, middle aged (no 70+ y/o) I want someone smart, but they MUST be able to deliver speeches that anyone with a low-reading level comprehension can follow. They must deliver clear messages that paint pictures in the voters minds. If they HAVE to use data, I'd love to see Katie Porter-style white boards. If they can explain it to a 6th grader, it's clear enough.
The most important thing is GET A DEMOCRAT in. As Brando says, we aren't going to find a candidate that is perfect for all of us, so let's support the one we agree with 80% of the time, so we don't get one we DISAGREE with 100% of the time. And we need to start building possible candidates NOW. Trump continued to run for Biden's entire term. Right now, it's unclear WHO would run from the GOP in 2028. (let's assume there will be elections, okay?)
We have an advantage right now.
Apologies for the lenght of this. I'm interested in your ideas on messaging, and also on possible candidates. Thanks all.
Miselle,
I have often said ,we have a minimum wage that is inadequate to live on.
1)A Wage Act would limit the lowest and highest threshold necessary for people to live comfortably.
2)Ranked choice voting should be ubiquitous. 3)Elections should be limited to a campaign season of X number of days.
4) Presidents should be elected by popular vote. The Electoral College should be abolished.
5)Voting should be conducted over a period adequate to provide every person the chance to vote.
6)Money is not speech. Citizens United should be overturned. All money used to influence voting should be attributed to the influencer and their affiliations revealed publicly.
7) Voter representation should be expanded to create greater parity between rural and urban areas.
8) Verifiable, open, auditable, paper ballots should be standardized and required in every precinct.
Enough for now. I've gone on too long! I liked your pos and way of thinking.
Since November 2024, Linda, it has been guaranteed that things will get much, much worse this summer and beyond. It’s beginning to appear SCOTUS is leaning toward support of the notion of a unitary presidency.
This, despite all the pledges to support stare decisis.
TACO Don's is located at 8647 Bone Spurs Plaza, between The Money Laundry and The House of Lies, right down the street from the Theater of the Absurd.
Ha!
And his threat …“and he would no longer be “Mr. NICE GUY!”???
He’s NEVER been Mr. Nice Guy😂
Good one!
Certainally not “Ripleys believe it or not”…..
🤣🤣🤣
Made me laugh today. Thank you!
Man, we definitely have the best Supreme Court that money can buy, don't we? The problem is, it was all right-wing money. And "Justices" Thomas and Alito, both of whom are so crooked they could hide in the shadow of a corkscrew, never met a bribe they didn't like.
And not just SCOTUS is being bought by right-wing dark money. Control of Michigan is in the DeVos crosshairs: https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-government/devos-family-pledges-millions-taps-ronna-mcdaniel-help-gop-win-michigan
This literally makes me nauseous 🤢 🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢
I just don’t understand what happened to turn their hearts into nothing but a black void. There is just nothing there of the compassion for others that was at the core of Jesus’ teachings.
Religion definitely plays a part in this. We are not a majority-Catholic country, yet we have a majority-Catholic SCOTUS.
In name only, Joel, not in their actions.
Hi, Anne Marie
You make a good point. In my experience, recently reinforced by a colleague I've known and thought highly of for ten years until recently, there is no hypocrite like a Christian hypocrite.
Cheers.
Jerry Falwell was one of the founders of “If God loves you, you can be rich. And if he doesn’t, you will be poor.” The immorality has been coming for a long, long time. Those who truly follow Christ’s teachings are few and far between.
Prosperity Gospel at its most perniciously crafted grift.
G R E E D
For Thomas and Gorsuch, surely. As for Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and Coney Barrett, I think it's something more or different.
Elon Musk’s path of destruction has had, and will continue to have, horrific consequences but for his blowing up USAID and the ensuing deaths/HIV infections he should rot in hell forever. And may he take Stephen Miller with him, since he is already taking Mrs. Miller. High as a kite in the White House today? Someone should open a CPS investigation on behalf of the child he drags everywhere with him.
I imagine a space x rocket trip towards Mars with the whole crew aboard
Assuming it got into space.
Well….. my shadow self does wonder if success is what I am hoping for…I think there is more likelihood that Stephen Miller will claw his way back from the underworld than return from outer or inner space and i don’t fancy taking that chance. That said, I am so appalled at Trump’s comments about Biden’s cancer that I am going to devote my day to trying not to wish harm on these lost souls in the Regime.
I'd stand by their convictions.
It would be OK if it didn’t 🥺
Or perhaps has a mishap on the way. Why saddle Martians with our trash.
To the Universe; and beyond.
I believe it’s “To infinity and beyond” I loved Toy Story!!
Good thinking
And he cries that we don’t show him any empathy! This from a narcissist who is incapable of compassion or empathy!
It's the whole Orwellian shtick. The perpetrators claim grievous victimhood and the victims blamed for their persecution. You don't need any devil where their is malignant sociopathy.
Didn't Elon say that "the problem with our system is too much empathy."?
The one who hit him in the eye? or was it...er...?
Thank you for the excellent article, professor Richardson. Your analysis presents a concise, relatable view that leads to this conclusion: Americans didn’t even come close to voting for Musk or his enactment of such abuses of his power. We’re left with enormous uncertainty about the safety of our life’s data and how it can be weaponized against us, and whether it’s even remotely possible to undo.
The impact of his devastation inflicted on the American people is generational. Once “We the People” feel the abuse of power that Trump’s installation of Musk enabled, we’ll have first-hand pain and misery as a result down to the last one of us, regardless of party or creed or skin color. His mission was to get his grubby little hands on our data. Once that was over, he didn’t - and doesn’t - give a damn about saving money. It was all about enriching his fortune.
Your summary is eerily prophetic. It’s also not causing visceral pain… yet. When it does, I hope the backlash runs this sewer circus out of town and prompts the enactment of legislation that tightens down presidential power so far, future presidents will have to ask permission of the American voters to kill a fly in the Oval Office. (Edited to remove a more profane analogy.). Thanks for this piece - we’re out here reading carefully and we will remember it.
Musk's messages, quoted in the first two paragraphs, are alarming. What, exactly, was the "anomaly in the matrix" unleashed during the election? Is this an admission that he did, indeed, use his computer and communication systems to mess with the election?
Jane, musk did just that. I heard trump say that very thing… musk is a genius with computers. Look what he did in Pennsylvania. That’s not a word for word quote, but trump was talking about winning all the swing states….
See Smart Elections lawsuit advancing in NY court: https://open.substack.com/pub/smartelections/p/2024-presidential-and-senate-results?r=x4w9d&utm_medium=ios
I remember Trump saying that and also that no serious questions were raised about it, never understanding why!
Trump has let it slip several times that Musk rigged the election. Now we have further proof. And still nothing will be done. The Dems were so worried about looking like the GOP that they walked away without any recounts even though it was painfully obvious to everyone that there was no way all of the swing states went his way while they elected Dems into every other office in the same states. We need someone in Congress to do more than just write strongly worded letters and stand in front of a camera and shout about what all of us already know. We need action. But at the end of the day they are all beholden to the same owners and eat from the same trough. SCOTUS is especially corrupt and allowing all of this to happen. Even when they somehow commit an act of following the constitution it does nothing to change what Trump and Vance and Miller and Musk and Noem and Rubio and all the other cast of characters continue to do to destroy our country and our democracy and our standing with global allies. We will never recover from this. What country will ever take us seriously if they know that every four years whatever good was done can be undone in a few short months of a new administration? I have no faith that we will have free and fair mid-term elections if we even make it to that point. I sit at work and think to myself “what is any of this for?” And half of my family laughs and says “stop being dramatic none of this affects you.” It sucks to be empathetic.
"And half of my family laughs and says “stop being dramatic none of this affects you.” It sucks to be empathetic."
Donna, give each of them who say this a copy of Niemöller's poem - "First they came".......
"...they will be quite surprised. 'Laser' for the sky' " I can only hope that someone is getting back to those journalists that have done their homework, pointing out election interference by lasers, directed by elon...
Maybe this is the space laser MTG had talked about...
And no one is lasier than Trump.
Yes.
Unfortunately, Trump's advanced dementia will prevent us from learning too much about what really happened in 2024.
I hope the rumors are true and Musk is having an affair with Stephen Miller's wife. What would anyone see in Miller besides $$$$s and power?
I have not heard about this rumor. I've wondered if Musk has "male problems" as he seems to conceive most of his spawn by artificial insemination.
Interesting to me, at least, is Katie (nee Waldman) Miller earned her BA from the University of Florida where I'd have hoped she learned some ethics along the lines of my mother-in-law's friend and neighbor Mickie Edwardson, who "...came to Gainesville in 1956 as the first woman faculty member in the College of Journalism at UF. In 1962 Mickie went to Guatemala to work for the United States Information Service and help establish that nation's first educational television network. Mickie became the first woman at UF to be named Distinguished Service Professor in 1985. After retiring from UF in 1994 she began work on a biography of James Lawrence Fly, F.C.C. commissioner and A.C.L.U.. director. Several of her articles on Mr. Fly were published in scholarly journals and at the time of her death she was working to complete his biography..." from https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/102238185/mickie-edwardson
I haven't searched for the Biography yet but did find an article she wrote that describes a bit of his opposition to wire tapping (to me, far beyond national security needs, by dishonest agents) at https://web.archive.org/web/20090814131215/http://spybusters.com/History_1939-54_Fly.html
I didn't know her that well, but was always more impressed every time I learned something new about her, and connections to journalism, and Public media. She was a true pioneer, that seemed to inspire many more positively than Katie Waldman (who stole newspapers with her opponent's story on the front page).
As a fan of the TVA, limitations on warrant-less wire taps, the ACLU, and honest agent administration of agencies that can provide huge and effective infrastructure that no private entity can ,or would want to, CPB (PBS, NPR), etc, I'm suggesting others more up to it, start looking into https://prabook.com/web/james_lawrence.fly/1072793#google_vignette
To me, he did his best to keep the government agencies from too much prying into people's data without due cause, and would have been appalled at what the Bush 43 administration tried to do with warrant-less wire taps, as the most recent excesses he tried to fight, much less the total grab and exposure of everyone's data to bad actors including i Russia.
Hoping this lawsuit by Smart Elections will provide the evidence that Musk indeed is the source of the anomalies in the election: https://open.substack.com/pub/smartelections/p/2024-presidential-and-senate-results?r=x4w9d&utm_medium=ios
Yes.
EXACTLY what I'm worried about for the midterms.
Oy vey!
Resist, protest!
Down with tyranny and oligarchy!
And stop the ultra-wealthy from just buying elections, appointments, and legislation. Isn't that about as UNdemocatic as you can get?
What might our society look like today had we not allowed big money to so fully warp the public will and the common good? "Musk invested about $290 million in the 2024 election...". Many people use every cent they can muster just to survive. Billionaires would not be putting that kinds of money into politics if they were not getting something back.
"Yesterday the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit paused that ruling until at least June 9, when both parties will have submitted legal arguments about whether the stay should remain in place as the government appeals the ruling that the tariffs are illegal."
We'll see if SCOTUS has the kahunas to uphold the law saying the tariffs are illegal.
My guess is no.
Donald has their kahunas in jars with labels scribbled in Sharpie, sitting on a shelf mounted above the gold-plated toilet in his faux-Rococo bathroom at Maga-Lardo.
Dale, excellent!
Remember June 14 is PROTEST day. Find the nearest Protest and GO and make yourself seen. This is important - WE the PEOPLE must support democracy.
JUNE 6th is PROTEST to Support Veterans…JUNE 14 is PROTEST to resist No Kings
We need to keep broadcasting the chaos, destruction and spending the GOP is promoting of our taxes. Today is only the 129th day of this hot mess.
If you need ideas or slogans for Protest or Resistance messaging…subscribe to
Trump Tyranny Tracker: Day 129
OLGA LAUTMAN | MAY 30 2025
https://open.substack.com/pub/trumptyrannytracker/p/trump-tyranny-tracker-day-129?r=kxzps&utm_medium=ios
I posted a message on Facebook for transparency to the public about “Trump Denies Full Hurricane Relief to North Carolina, Reversing Biden Policy”
Get yourself a chicken costume to wear if you're going to DC to protest. Or wherever you're protesting.
Hail to the Cluck.
I suspect we'll be seeing a lot of "TACO King" signs at the protests. Hopefully, at his little military parade put on with our dime.
Trump has stolen at least $200 million in personal benefits from us. And Musk even more. Not to mention selling access to Trump to get pardons and favors, especially from foreigners.
Re protesting…it may well be that it will be this or another mass protest where Trumpf will use instigators (can you say Proud Boys/J6ers?) to start physical trouble so he can claim RIOT and declare an emergency and martial law. The suggestion I saw suggested is that people immediately sit down, be as quiet and non-confrontational as possible to deny claims that the crowd started the trouble. It sounds paranoid to even think this way but, considering who is in power (or a least pulling the strings) and what their ultimate goals are, this is right in the playbook. I hate all this crap!
I think it’s vital that people demonstrating have their minds prepared for a response to this.
Huckmag.com: How to stay safe whilst resisting the far right
Sarah Longwell @ The Bulwark suggested a day or two ago that citizens do a Tianemen (sp) Square action during the military parade in DC.
Thank you Professor Richardson!
And my normal comment -
Use this spreadsheet as a resource to call/email/write members of Congress, the Cabinet and news organizations. Reach out to your own reps, as well as those in other states on a specific committee important to a topic you’re sharing. Use your voice and make some “good trouble.”
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13lYafj0P-6owAJcH-5_xcpcRvMUZI7rkBPW-Ma9e7hw/edit?usp=drivesdk
Thank you Megan - sharing this again. What an invaluable resource!
Just when it looked like things were getting a little better, it’s worse than I could ever have imagined. I was somewhat relieved that musk was leaving DC, but to hear that he’s billions of dollars richer and has mountains of data on American citizens, is scaring the you-know-what out of me. At 78 years of age, it’s all wearing me down, with even the meager optimism I did have, is nearly gone. The evilness rampant in our country is making my heart hurt…
The federal government IS the "domestic enemy within."
MAGAs made Ronald Reagan's words come, true half a century later. "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'"
Made true by Reagan’s 40 year war on us all…. Betcha Peggy Noonan came up with that line.
Well this makes 2 scary things I have read tonightJoyce Vance5 questions being the other. My heart goes out to these people that came to our country wanting a safe place to live and a better life. What do they get if any color but white they get treated like $hit by this present administration..
I sent Joyce Vance's 5 questions to 10 friends and family members who don't subscribe (yet).
I concur! Hair on fire 🔥!
An entire gangster presidency with no focus other than graft, greed, extortion, racketeering, blackmail, identity theft, forced abduction, corruption, chaos, confusion, cruelty, and of course — raging incompetence. A raging clusterfuck of the latter, with the President and all his wormtongues constantly yelling at every judge and honest cop in the country, Jimmy Cagney-style: “come and get me, ya dirty screw!”
Not a day passes that doesn’t fill me with shame for America, for its self-inflicted wounds, indifference to life and suffering, with great fear that next year they’ll figure out some bizarre way of cancelling, negating, or finagling elections to ensure the agony and the sadism continue unabated, no matter the disgust people have for them.
This isn’t draining the swamp—it’s restocking it with predators. What we’re witnessing isn’t reform—it’s revenge. By gutting civil service protections, the goal isn’t efficiency, it’s loyalty.
Here's my cartoon take on: "Government for Sale" https://forgottenfiles.substack.com/p/government-for-sale
I should have waited until the morning to have read that update... but thanks anyway.
Paul, I check my email inboxes just before going to bed, but I intentionally leave Heather's Letter unopened. I learned that reading her letters at that late hour causes me to be sleepless for most or all of the night. I can't cope with the shitscape we find ourselves in while suffering from sleep deprivation.
Same boat here, Paul. I'm just back to read the comments. Gawdawful information today.