That “screw worm” seems appropriate for the cattle ranchers who voted for Trump.
Trump and his minions shoot first and then the questions come. Whether it is tearing down a section of the White House without oversight or rescinding congressional approved spending.
The Republican cowards in Congress just comply or say they know nothing about what is happening.
America First seems to be based on a very fluid foundation. Give money to Argentina while far too many Americans lose jobs, lose healthcare insurance, and lose access to food.
Phil, I believe it’s critically important to underscore, had the $20 billion to Argentina been directed to ensure healthcare premium increases don’t go up for 22 million Americans, we could settle the shutdown.
It is painfully clear to anyone paying attention that trump intends to destroy this country and anyone in it to become some all wealthy, all powerful ruler of the world. The sooner he is gone, the sooner we can focus on removing the criminal cabal he has placed in positions of power who are doing his bidding. Until then, it is imperative to protect our elections and get massive numbers out to vote to get the R's out of congress. That at least would slow the damage.
Let us pray and do everything possible to preserve our vote. They got elected by rigging the election and they will do it again. Rigging? Yes, voter suppression. The SC has dismantled civil rights.
No, the election was not rigged, and repeating the accusation will just provide cover for the next Republican allegation that an election they lost was stolen.
If hackers can cause shutdowns and data breaches to banks, local governments, colleges, insurance brokers, etc., what would lead you to think that they can't access election systems? Elections software is updated via computers connected, if only briefly, to the web, or flash drives, that are easily corrupted.
They are counting on Democrats to have a knee-jerk aversion to the thought of election hacking because Trump falsely accused Democrats of doing it. But the bottom line is that it can be done.
Remember above all else: every Trump accusation amounts to an admission.
Kwaipoh, you said it very well. Of course hacking was part of the Trump-Musk election strategy, just in case the lies in Republican ads, gerrymandering, and other voter suppression didn't work. Together, they still only got less than 50% of the vote, not a mandate to destroy our democracy no matter what Dementia-Donald says.
In Knox County, computers are NOT connected to the internet and votes are recorded on an installed, locked flash drive that is removed when the device is returned to the election commission later than evening. Make sure your information about election integrity is accurate before you proclaim it.
I appreciate the way Heather continues to mention the Epstein file, a very vulnerable point for Trump. My No Kings Day sign read, "RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILE! IMPEACH THE PEDOPHILE!"
Jon, I agree about 2024. It's far more likely that it will be "rigged" for 2026 and beyond, with gerrymandering, the threat of armed forces of whatever stripe patrolling voting locations, etc. And who knows what else they have in store for 2028?
Sorry Jon, but I disagree with you. Too many weird election results occurred, and mostly in the swing states, and at nearly the same level. (There may have been some messing with red state elections in 2022 to practice since no one checks the red state votes assuming they will vote Republican, perhaps Texas and Florida.) That similarity in percentages seems an awful lot like digital interference, masterminded by Musk and help from the computer guys he employs. He had help in the states because there are enough folks who love their Baby Donnie that they could easily have been the intermediaries for the tech interference. Trump even thanked Musk for winning the election, and on the Sunday before election day. I want to see every single precinct, district, and state do serious reviews of the equipment and find ways to block any potential interference with the tallying machines in particular. I get it that racism and misogyny are huge in this country, but that, along with the tech fraud gave Repubs just enough votes to win everything so they could do their damage to our nation.
Though it might be fair to charge them with trying, more than once and ongoing, to rig elections, while projecting their own corrupt intent onto others in order to fool their cultists.
Joe, they don't care if they have cover, because they have already succeeded in convincing A large swath of the American Public that they lost before because of rigging. Please don't be naive that they would hesitate to use it again! These Republicans have no bottom to their vileness!
point well taken but rigged is a trigger hope people pay attention to the process. however what you are revealing is that too many Americans have been seduced that a strong and secured America is better than what seems like a sputtering democracy.
I've written it before and I'll write it again - I am hearing I am reading that the democrats are not outraged enough - where is their outrage at the video of King trump dumping feces on protesters; where is the outrage at trump destroying the east wing of the WH; where is the outrage at the millions being spent on Noem's jets; where is the outrage that trump et al are murdering Venezuelans without due process or evidence??? Jamie keeps sending me message how the constitution is being compromised!!!!! That's all!!!!??? Maybe the dems in your state are better at messaging, but the overall impression is that most dems are not....
Respectfully, I'm not sure what you mean by not being outraged enough.
Democratic Party leaders speak out each and every day, they file lawsuits, they lead and encourage protests, they make pleas on social media like You Tube, they create content, they appear on television to make their case every chance they get.
Get out there and have press conferences every day on the steps of congress, call out the supreme criminals for aiding the destruction of the law, talk about little johnson not swearing in the congress woman elect. I agree more pointing out what is going on so the folks who are not political junkies hear...many are still unaware of what's going on. And don't forget the epstein files
Excellent! Democrats need to get out there with younger Democrats who are able to talk to people about how their lives are affected. Send young Democrats to red states where hospital closures, loss of food programs will really hurt people very soon.
EXACTLY EXACTLY EXACTLY EXACTLY EXACTLY EXACTLY EXACTLY MAKE NOISE!!!!!
The average, regular American citizen should be ASKED 'Why is trump giving Argentina billions of dollars?' 'Why is trump planning to give himself hundreds of millions of tax payer dollars?'
You can bet your sweet patoot FOX won't be asking their listeners these questions.
Respectfully, the dems are outraged and screaming. The MSM is not reporting. Do you have a suggestion how the dems that are doing the screaming may be heard?
You are correct that more needs to be done, but right now mainstream media is not going to do it. Press conferences? Do you think mainstream media will cover press conferences from democrats who are trying to tell the truth about the current situation? And many people are “ still unaware” because legacy media has not been accurately covering what is going on since Biden. They are either beholden to trump (Bezos) or “obeying in advance” out of fear. There are many legitimate truth tellers out there (HCR, The Contrarian, Civil Discourse, Paul Krugman…)but one has to look for them, subscribe (some for free), and make an effort to educate oneself. I try to do my small part by sharing articles from The Guardian or Reuters, as well as from substack accounts mentioned above to people I know who are not paying attention or unaware. But most of them are unaware because they feel powerless and deliberately put their heads in the sand, or don’t care because they haven’t been directly affected, yet. How do you make people like that pay attention and resist the horror? I found the recent images ( on Bluesky) of the East Wing demolition to be a good wake-up shocker for some people, though.
When they go low we go high. No, fight fire with fire. Showing up is not good enough, encouraging is not good enough. Demonize the fake videos on Fox. You think that Schumer and Hakeem were really going to convince trump of anything, would actually work out a compromise? Where is their outrage at the treatment Zelensky received the other day? They need to respond immediately to these events - with real emotion. (This is not merely my opinion Many respected journalists on several podcasts continue to criticize the dems for weak messaging.)
We don't always go high anymore.. but as low as they go? They go lower. And then what do you have? What do you suggest other than messaging- in our channels? What do you suggest more than outrage at every thing every day- which there is. And Isn't this dependent on the mainstream media? What do you do about the NYTimes that did not even feature the 8 million +/- protesting on Saturday; they put it in minor headlines below the fold! What do you do about FOX? Whose outrage are you asking for?
Agreed we are outraged and supporting every cause we can. Repeating the outrage at 20 billion going to Argentina so Bessent can help his friends when the 20 billion would pay for our health care subsidies. Election of both a House and Senate to counter his hand on the Funds and threaten the Scotus with Impeachment proceedings as well. We're royally pissed off!
Respectfully, being pissed off doesn't get results.
It's an emotional state that leads to rash, poorly reasoned, and often counterproductive decisions.
We may want to consider controlling our emotions, making deliberative decisions, weighing the possibility of unintended consequences and acting with precision.
As a wise master once observed, "...anger leads leads to hate, hate leads to suffering." ~Yoda
They need to assemble a news network with the attractiveness and bombast of the most successful one, wrap themselves in every sort of invective and slander salacious enough to make every head snap in airports across the nation and hold true to the highest American values.
We hear complaints that the "press" isn't reporting on the news.
I am reminded of Diane Rehm's retort when callers would, "Why isn't the press reporting on this?" and she would respond, "Well how did you learn about it?"
It was always from the press.
BTW, the do have a news network with the bombast of FOX NEWS... they call itr MSNBC.
the problem gary is that not all americans have access to the information you have and many have been seduced by an unbalanced information thread the FFC not doing its job why???
We're all outraged. The key is how to focus that outrage in a meaningful and effective way.
We can stomp our feet, scream and hold our breath until our faces turn blue but does that lead us to victory?
we can't get everything we want the way we want it. If we're to win, to retrieve what's left of our republic we have to get behind our leadership and put our personal grievances aside.
This complaint Stephanie is why Democrats have such a low approval. People want the Democrats to fix it already...
This is a moment for the people to rise up. Many are so used to expecting things to work for them one way or another-- and are not aware that democracy means participation.
What you cite above belong on a list of offenses that should go into articles of impeachment. Outrage after outrage gets what. The BIG PICTURE is that the country is being taken over by REPUBLICANS. Those who are still calling themselves Republicans... in the Congress both houses, in the Supreme Court. What are they all up to? Where are they going? We are 340 million! That is MY outrage...and Democrats cannot fix it unless we VOTE for them and stop blaming them. You go to war with the soldiers you have!!
My book club is currently reading Kathrine Stewart's, "Money, Lies and God" and it is really giving us a good background on the right wing network that built up what has come to fruition now under Trump. we are only on part 2, but so far I highly recommend the book. That book and "Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism" by George Monbiot and Peter Hutchinson really lay out who are the money organizations behind this right wing move. What Stewart stresses is that while Democratic donors tend to put money into candidates, Right wing donors put money into a whole infrastructure that is attacking our way of life from the bottom up with Mom's for Liberty trying to destroy public education along with bigger organizations like the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, The Uihlein Family Foundation, etc...
The right wing is highly organized and funded largely about people whose Christian Beliefs are in the goodness of having lots of money and their right to own it and rule with it. The Left has to get better organized as well around issues of shared importance.
This Trump led coup of destruction (keeping their immoral *vision* under wraps), does not represent the way most of us feel, nor is it the basis of what this country's evolving vision has been from its beginning. I and many others believe strongly in our multicultural multiracial liberal society. We are in the waking up phase where people hopefully are beginning to get the seriousness of what is trying to take us over and in fact happening in areas. That is also not because of what we are doing ( which is necessary), but because of what they are doing. We are though amassing, informing, organizing around the ONE issue of what this country is about. Democracy for all... if we can keep it. Steve Schmidt interviewing Ezra Levin- Levin, not loud, is impressive
So besides what we do and must do- the more THEY reveal themselves for who they are and what they want, the more people wake up. But we cannot wait for this only.
The photos of the White House being torn down are so symbolic and meaningful perhaps more than we might think at first. Keep the photos up!
I am reading the beginning ( sample) of Joyce Vance's new book "Giving up is Unforgivable" So far it's very good, simple talk. I am going to go for it. I hope it helps.
My comment is that despair is a killer. This is a battle to be enjoined with some within our side... hopelessness. The hope and solidarity engendered by the protests was an immense antidote. We need the masses. We need the strong belief amongst us that we can save our democracy- we must. It's existential. It's not about grocery prices, immigrants etc.. all of the above. It's about the ground we stand on. And it matters to the world. I think we are making headway on that. And Trump & their Syncos are helping us daily with serious outrages. This has to wash over us and not knock us down. We need to pick ourselves up and help others to. (They help me.)
Yes. I scrolled through the above conversation quickly, visually grabbing just a sentence here and there, because I find all the braying about "weak and useless Democrats" tiresome.
Republicans in general and Trump in particular have mastered the art of directing public outrage at the wrong targets, thereby neutralizing the outrage.
Leaders in the Democratic Party can speak on the steps of capitols, hold the floor in Congress, post on social media, march with protesters and do all the other things they are doing, but if Corporate Media ignores them, we have a tree-falling-in-the-forest-with-nobody-hearing situation.
Where we are is the result of a perfect storm of adverse factors, but a leading factor – perhaps THE leading factor – is the greedy, craven behavior of the owners of Corporate Media. They gave us Trump in the first place. He would have been an incompetent, muddling real estate developer known only to New Yorkers if NBC hadn't colluded with Mark Burnett to turn Donald into a fake tycoon and make him a national celebrity.
Corporate Media amplified every absurd claim made by Donald because his antics attracted attention, which increased audience share, which justified rising advertising fees, which increased revenues, which put money in the oligarchs' pockets.
Aside from Trump's rise, Corporate Media has been friendly with the GOP because Republicans have always been cozy with the captains of business, guaranteeing them protection from tax liability.
So if we want to be mad at somebody, we should be mad at Corporate Media. How do we show our anger? We stop buying shit from their advertisers. We cease being obedient consumers and start living like survivors. Because that's where we are.
Absolutely! The Media Moguls are doing this to our country. The Oligarchs created our situation, beginning with Ronald Reagan and using Dark Money to control the minds of young "conservatives" with financial bonuses. Money has no morals, no beliefs, nothing but short-lived power. We must keep fighting back against those who value their egos over caring for humanity and what we used to believe was our country.
Ally, yes I see lots of effort by our Congressional delegation. The Reps are home working on all sorts of problems and attending protests as are the governor and the mayor of Portland. Wyden has been and is following the money around Epstein. They all post on Facebook and of course, get the bots and trolls. Locally, we have a mayor who does not seem to understand that she has to follow the rules and lately several people have told her off to her face and asked for her resignation. The Marion County Commissioners are all Rs and now have some silly suit going over sanctuary laws.
well the news certainly got to you as it should be getting to everyone.... Not outraged enough?? Maybe this is getting through. Up to Democrats? to care about this country?
Imagine one outrage after another DAILY. Some people OUT HERE turn away because it's too much. That means ALL of us, not just Democrats. You mean Democrats in Congress, basically in solidarity, who are in the midst of a shutdown? Who are not in power?? Jamie is one of the ones working hard at getting *everyone* outraged. That is what has to happen. The focus is and should be on protesting and voting- getting the votes through. Everyone should be messaging!
Stephanie, Heather mentioned my senator, Jeff Merkeley at the end of the letter. And I disagree that Ds are not outraged. Unfortunately, there is only so much they can do when in the minority in both houses. Our state AG is busy filing lawsuits over the troops and has joined other states in lawsuits. Our D reps often speak out at various events. Since little johnson is keeping the House out of session, they are here doing what they can including trying to help some who have been grabbed off the streets Wyden is following the money in the Epstein case.
Well, at least you have Dems in your state. Imagine what it is like here in red Ohio with a do-nothing Republicon rep in Congress (Dave Joyce) and similar do-nothing Republicon senators (former used car salesman Bernie Moreno appointed Jon Husted.). Well, Husted did notify us of his telephone townhall yesterday in which he invited participants to describe how they are being hurt by the continuing shutdown. Husted has the power to help the end of the shutdown, but he is chosing to see 4 million Americans lose healthcare and 24 million Americans face skyrocketing healthcare premiums.
They cater to the maga morons while driving one voting block after another away with careless abandon as if votes don't matter any longer. They've all but lost the votes of our Latin American citizens and any marginalized group for that matter while their leader tells them the fix is in.
Although he lies for a living, he may very well be telling his demented truth about that. Given numerous indicators like the Doge raid on our info, rampant gerrymandering, the potential for intimidation at the polls, and Trump flat out vowing to his fools that they'll no longer need to vote, it's entirely possible they at least believe the fix is in. So there's that come 2026.
It’s the Cabal— the ones listed to fund the Ballroom— who are the puppet masters behind Trump. They are happy to have the rampant chaos and distraction, not to mention the loyal remaining MAGA cult followers, that the Trump brand provides as cover for their insidious destruction and co-opting of our systems. These are the devils he betrayed this Nation for in order to keep himself out of prison. https://youtu.be/5RpPTRcz1no?si=-4b9cwusaib_X1Pn
when will our wealthy realize that they are stronger when america is strong by a more balanced economic spread the ideas promoted by the new deal and theodore roosevelt back to our future
Trump is just the public face of the horror story that brought us so much that is destroying our country. The Federalist Society--their vetted judges and 'originalism' and the 'Big Question?'. Then the insane folks that created project 2025--their view of dictator/Neo-fascist government run by a Unitary Executive for the rich and by the rich...and they love the whole idea of corruption in the Trump clan!
Donny- is no longer in control as his three brain cells have flown the coup!
Of course we should focus on the leading minions, particular "Spittle Stephen Miller." Face it, any time I see his picture the name "Rectal Polyp" jumps out...he is the WormTongue of hate and fear in Donny's Ear. He foments the overreach and loves the violence!
But please remember the 'Shitting on America' AI video, and ask "who created and posted this?" It was not Donny at his computer typing...so who? We know why!
maga mike needs help on many duties. On ,10/21 at 5:38 PDT NBC News reported maga boy is openly extorting GRIJALVA's swearing in for the Dems return & their SNAP killing budget.
Arizona AG Mayes has filed the AZ lawsuit against the U.S. House of Representatives itself through the House Clerk & more importantly the House SGT at ARMS to give the Court the tools needed to declare a judicial remedy for Andelita's constituents.
It is a currency swap; only increments from currency changes actually change hands. Twenty billion dollars IS NOT going to Argentina. The swap is a slick way to peg the flagging peso to the dollar since that amount equals sixty per cent of the primary money supply (i.e., cash and cash equivalents).
Hi Ned. The following is from Paul Krugman's article which Heather refers to. There is risk to the strategy if Argentinas economy tanks.
"Now, even though the US is currently buying pesos, Argentina is supposed to repay the “swap line” borrowing with dollars at the current exchange rate, so US taxpayers won’t lose from a devaluation. But where will the dollars come from? Realistically, taxpayer money is definitely at risk."
I recommend subscribing to Paul Krugman's Substack--for his posts AND for his conversations with other people as they partner to understand more and better together.
I most emphatically applaud Ms. Lederman's suggestion. Paul Krugman is to economics as our blessed hostess is to history. He does a superb job of making economics understandable and therefore vitally relevant even to those of us who -- like my dyslexic, therefore mathophobic self -- have hitherto avoided economics as if it were the proverbial plague.
Thank you, but no thank you, *Loren. *For *whatever *reason, *I *find *that *Dr *Krugman *lacks *a *spark. I do not have it all figured out, but what I am hearing is a statement of the obvious dressed up as some expert opinion.
This whole concept of tax-payor risk is vastly over-blown since it attends to every transaction, even straight foreign aid, involving resources going to another country. I have not read that column, but I have a fairly strong sense that Dr Krugman is, once again, missing the larger questions, as he often does. Of course. there is tax-payor risk.
What else is new? Foreign aid of any kind entails tax-payor risk since the outcome is not certain.
For example, before 9-11, the U.S. gave the equivalent (in today's dollars) *of something like two hundred billion dollars to Afghanistan in humanitarian aid. In retrospect, that seems like a tax-payor risk gone bad. That should not negate the decency of humanitarian aid. The real transfer gone bad in Afghanistan was failing to restore the humanitarian and development aid after the U.S.S.R. exited.
What you, Dr Krugman, et al. need to focus on is WHY this transaction is occurring. The other comments in this thread about crony capitalism and protecting an undesirable régime are far more relevant than the twenty billion dollars (i.e., < 2% of the Argentine G.D.P. or <0.1% of the U.S> G.D.P.).
The other problem -- I certainly hope that Dr Krugman spoke to this point -- remains transparency. Appropriate committees in both houses of Congress should require that the documents be shown to them, so we know what the obvious -- the risk to tax-payors -- really is. Yes, this could be a disguised credit default swap, *as *Dave *Dalton *has *pointed *out *elsewhere. It has the effect, if not the status, of a treaty.
These are incremental payments; they likely will not be made in cash, and the U.S. might waive moneys owed and label it as foreign aid. The U.S. may hedge the transaction with a symmetrical transaction to offset changes.
That would be expensive but would not look like money going to Argentina.
China has been executing something similar with Brazil, perhaps with others, for years. I do not know the details of the transactions and how they settle each payment period. A good way to start carving into the dollar as the global currency.
It's why private lenders will also need risky guarantees from the US to be persuaded to step in as the professor has noted.
What is happening in Argentina shows what might happen in the US if Project 2025 is allowed to proceed unchecked. That's why Trump has to prop up this basket-case South American economy.
If I have argued that *there *is *no *risk *to *tax-*payers, I did not intend to. I am saying that the risk is not twenty billion dollars, at least for now. Argentina pegged the peso to the dollar thirty years ago in a more transparent manner. It worked.
Argentina has a lot of *wealth embedded in her. Should she stabilize the economy, *the *currency, and attract F.D.I., this move could work. Twenty billion dollars may well go*to B.A., but in a non-transparent manner, either through forgiving the payments; 'depositing' them and never collecting; or, under-taking an expensive hedge which does not show Argentina as a beneficiary of U.S. aid.
Trump, as a career money-launderer, understands this,
Argentina is South America's 'sick man'. They are the IMF's largest debtor and their record of loan repayments is atrocious. This is not Trump's first intervention in Argentina. In 2018, the IMF handed Buenos Aires a record $57bn – but cut it off when its then president, Mauricio Macri, a Trump family friend, was not re-elected. Milei's shock therapy has offered no reasonable prospects of stabilising the economy. He could instead, like Chile, tax dollar export windfalls and save the greenbacks in a sovereign wealth fund. His austerity plan insteads threatens industrialisation in the country.
First things first: thank you for the information. Unfortunately, I do not subscribe to the 'Wall Street Journal'. 😥
I was in B.A. briefly during the Menem Miracle of convertibility between the peso and dollar; it was a heady time in 1994. I can not recall if the exchange was one peso to one dollar. ✈️
That approach created longer term problems, though I do not know whether late crisis was due to faulty execution of policies, corruption, convertibility, or some combination of factors.😳
The direct dollarization, plus lessons learned from Argentina, seem to have created a sustainable dollarization of the two economies. Let us hope they succeed, particularly El Salvador with immense suffering.🤞🏼
Russell your point about 2025 is a good one, and conjures up conservative 'originator' Edmund Burke in his criticism of the French Revolution. It was a régime based on an ideology free from reality. People (e.g., Dr Jacob Needleman) argue that the United States -- yes, Mr Burke supported the American Revolution -- was founded upon an idea, not an ideology. That is true. The difference between the U.S. and France was that latter's ideology was independent of the traditions and culture of France while the former's idea was firmly grounded in common law and British tradition.
The 1789 revolution was a rejection of the traditions and culture of France because those 'traditions' had left the people impoverished and starving. It was a true revolution unlike your pallid American version which has now left you deep in the shit of an arbitrary government. The revolutionary psyche of the French has apparently outlasted your myth of American exceptionalism.
Well, I love you, too. In the case of France, Mr Burke argued that the monarchy had been making reforms prior to 1789, perhaps not fast enough. Once the Bastille was overtaken, the monarchy continued to seek reforms.
Only more than three years later did the first republic appear. Starting with the murder of the royal family in its first year, the first republic descended into chaos, a blood-drunk anarchy.
The régime proved so much worse than status quo ante that it gave way to dictatorship. That true revolution, like that of 1917 in Russia, led to a reign of terror, followed by dictatorship and a series of failed republics.
The American revolution led to an ineffective confederation that quickly morphed into the only republic the United States has sustained. So, the score stands:
France: five republics, the current being sixty-seven years running.
The United States, two republics with the current one running for two hundred, thirty-six years.
Both France and the U.S. face challenges right now. One faces the paralysis of a parliamentary system with unstable coalitions. The other faces a dash toward dictatorship. Structural rigidities in the U.S.G., together with an alienated or apathetic populace, have rendered the country unready to stanch the bleeding out of democracy from a dash toward dictatorship.
I made no mention of American Exceptionalism. I do not believe in it, in the form that is often propagated: one based on military and economic power. American Exceptionalism, why the Republic has been attractive to new citizens, has to do with rights, the rule of law, freedom to innovate, and openness of opportunity. We can still preserve that battered exceptionalism . . . maybe.
That may be true.? It’s not my area of expertise. But I have heard it explained exactly as Professor Richardson did—Bailing out Argentina is actually a way for Scott Bessent’s billionaire friends to recoup the investments they stand to lose from betting on the success of the financial policies of ultra right wing Milei. They will get their money back out and Argentina will almost certainly continue to fail at an even greater pace without those investments.
I have to believe that is their major corrupt interest, to protect their chosen investors/sponsors that see higher profits in overseas investments no matter the impact on our own economy, and our own farmers and other producers.
Yes, that is their major concern. Trump and company know that the farm vote is theirs, and if farms fail, their corporate donors will go in and scoop up that land at bargain prices.
Once the corruption corrodes the conscience sufficiently, psychopathy becomes 'smart' and victimization becomes the fruit of 'weakness'. Calvinism in its original doctrine was bad enough; this perverse Calvinism is gratuitously cruel.
EDIT P.S., very little of that give-away, perhaps or likely, will be invested here. Why not return to the tax régime of the mid-twentieth century and use the proceeds directly to invest in the American society?
The far more important point here is what Dr Richardson has pointed out repeatedly. In the era of tax cuts, fifty-one trillion dollars went to the financial élite and, what Dr Richardson also likely knows, national debt went *from under one trillion dollars to thirty-eight trillion over the same stretch.
So, not only have these tax cuts hurt the middle class, they have screwed generations to come.
Now that may be the case with sh*t in sheep's clothing; that is scarey.
EDIT P.S., as I explain elsewhere -- and I will return to credit you, Dave -- yours may be the most important point. We have no visibility about the devil in the details of this contract.
There is nothing preventing a default swap from being embedded under miscellaneous provision on the template agreement or, as is likely to occur here, a long-form confirmation is used and attached to the template.
You and others are hitting the important questions: why and what are the details. Unfortunately, Congressional oversight will likely not occur or be stifled and we will never see those details. The risk here is less monetary than it is a moral hazard.
I saw a comment that they are buttering up Argentina in case the felon child rapist and his regime needs to find a safe haven when this shit show is over...
Trump would never go to Argentina. Dubai would be my guess for his exile location. It has so much oil, so many golden things, so many tall buildings, and so many obscenely rich people.
"I believe it’s critically important to underscore," I can use your starting sentence to state that Japan, the country America taught democracy, has just elected a woman priminister in the history of the country. 71% approval rate. We all knew that Trump was the instigator of Jan 6 and a habitual lier. It was clear that he is not fit to be president. Yet, many voted for him. Why? I claim because they look down on a woman to lead the country and racists. This culture is against the Constitution and borrowing Lincooln's second inaugural, an offence to Almighty. We are finally seeing His punishment to wake up. I pray to Him to save our country.
I think we are at $40 billion to Argentina. And we are probably going to be squeezed to bail out farmers, as happened in term one. But the insidious TechBro and p2025 puppeteers behind the Trump distractions are all about a feudal system of elites and peons where factory farms make more sense anyway. And the gutting of medical care is the first step to ‘eliminating’ the weak/ill/elderly ‘nonproductive’ among us…
you would think!! id like more information about the treaty we should be operating under THE ORGANIZATION OF AMERICAN STATES who knows anything about this answers here to shelling fishing boats financing governments that bend the knee to american government
Not only are we learning what it is to survive in the gleefully sadistic grasp of boastfully ecogenocidal tyranny, which too many of us -- women, Blacks, First Nations folks, other peoples of color, sexual minorities, disabled persons -- already knew. We are now beginning to be schooled in something even the most oppressed of our lot probably never imagined could happen: how to survive in a failed state.
Ukrainian historian Serhiy Plokhy has written two books on exactly this topic. One addresses the consequences of the failed Soviet Union, and the other was about the potential of the United States to become a failed state. Dr. Plokhy published both books at least a decade before Donald Trump decided to run for public office.
At the end of WWII many Nazis fled to Argentina once the defeat of Germany was imminent. With all the recent young Republican Nazi texts and rumblings, the obvious fascist ideology and Trump regime cruelty and lawlessness, is it any wonder that they're bailing out an old Nazi hideaway.
They were known as ratlines, systems of escape routes used by German Nazis and other fascists to flee Europe from 1945 onwards in the aftermath of World War II. These escape routes mainly led toward havens in South America – particularly Argentina, which reportedly coordinated with the Nazis – in addition to Brazil, Chile, and Paraguay.
Nazis fled to Argentina due to a combination of factors, including a sympathetic government under President Juan Perón that actively recruited them for their skills, a pre-existing large German community to blend into, and the use of "ratlines," which were escape routes that offered a safe haven far from Europe. Perón saw value in the scientific, military, and administrative expertise that Nazis possessed, and he also had financial motives, such as laundering Nazi money.
Joseph Mengele and Adolph Eichmann were known to have escaped to Argentina. Maybe Trump and his fascist regime will have to flee there eventually too for their crimes against humanity and causing so much suffering and damage to our country.
What a refreshing thought, deporting Trump, Vance, and especially Russell Vought to an Argentina cut off from laundered money from anywhere in the world.
I wouldn't really wish it upon any country but the thought of concentrating them in just one hell hole they were willing to condemn so many others to seems tempting schadenfreude.
The secrets of Russell Vought's background such as his role in Phil Gramm's Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, effectively gutting the principles in the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act (not updating it to an effective modern version), were new to me, but highlighted the types of mistakes I think budget hawks made with rather severe consequences, particularly the 2008 Financial Crisis). Some of what I wrote about to my brother back in 2015:
This article is a timely (Dec 7) review of what I think may lead to another financial "Pearl Harbor."
Back in July, 2012 Sandy Weill, "THE" major force behind repealing Glass-Stegall (separation of Investment and commercial banks), changed his mind (leaving the host of the show rather flabbergasted, a seemingly trying to lecture the guy that merged Citibank (where Yves learned her craft at the upper ranks) and Travelers into Citigroup on the "benefits" of such combinations). John Reed, the other half of the merger, retired soon after the merger, as he told Bill Moyers, unable to understand how his income could quintuple to, I think $15 million, for basically doing the same work he had always done in trying to do responsible banking.
I am glad you brought up the affinity between Argentina, Peron and the Nazis. You may also have mentioned that the Vatican also facilitated the escape route.
To follow that analogy to its logical conclusion, the Nazi leaders are held accountable in the most consequential of ways. Would that we could do so as well.
We can, and hopefully we will. The Supreme Court decision that protects the president was wrongly conceived. If we get control of the DOJ Trump and many in his administration should be indicted for fraud, corruption, and extortion, along with illegal executions, and over 50 unconstitutional acts.
I went to the Dominican Republic in the 80's. Down the road from where I was staying it was reported an old nazi had a house on the beach. He hated the Black people who served him and treated them very badly. Well one night a bunch of Black men went in there a hacked him to pieces with machetes...Seems like he got what he deserved.
But will they still vote Republican on November 4th through November 3rd, 2026 is the bigger question?
The South is lost to the Dems with their WCNs and their gerrymandering. But, perhaps a handful of northern states can be turned from the dark side.
The oligarchs control most of the major media outlets. As was pointed out yesterday 136 newspapers across the US have folded in the last year and many more of them will be closing.
Heather's voice is getting louder as are many of the other Substack, YouTube and BlueSky outlets.
Even Fox News is becoming less relevant as people continue to cancel their cable subscriptions.
So loud I read a hit piece on her the other day. I was wondering how they managed to make it sound like every letter she wrote was made up propaganda. I think they said they read 150 which is not even 5% of what she’s written and how cherry picked their remarks were. I bet they read way more to find things to misrepresent.
Their first paragraph clearly tells how terrified they are of her reach to real readers, not bots and trolls.
Perhaps one in 25 ranchers will consider voting with democrats. Oh and by the way that will probably be just the wives who hold positions of local school boards and teaching jobs. They are extremely concerned that liberals not invade the purity of their communities. Liberals are anathema to their perceived purity. Their hands are outstretched for government dollars like clam necks at low tide. They have been recipients of government subsidies for nearly 100 years. The one shining good has been the absolute good of uncle Sam’s partnership as stewards in preserving the grass that is their absolute economy. Preserving the grassland preserves open space that all Americans can view at least from a distance. Their political indoctrination is along the lines of Rush Limbaugh’s all government is evil except when with outstretched hands they grasp economic remuneration from sources they otherwise describe as foolish. They deserve theirs as much as those goddamned welfare Queens. But you know they are as John Wayne as the murals on their kitchen walls attest. That is both the beauty and the bitterness of the cow business. Eat beef.
Jon Tester was a farmer, ma’am. And a “good” one. Montana has a propensity to keep a Democrat seemingly to help like a counterbalance in a diesel tractor maintain a balance lest they elect too many skunks of the other variety. We well remember our beloved Mike and Maureen Mansfield. The other one was that sheep man from Helena, Max Baucus. Now go ahead and count up the intervening republicans.
But please do not for a moment suppose those ranching and farming MAGATs have suddenly been cured of their definitive Christonazi hatred for women, Blacks, First Nations folks, other peoples of color, sexual minorities and disabled persons. I know their violently bigoted ilk from my years in the South and the rural Pacific Northwest, and believe me when I say their hatefulness will not (ever) diminish. Nor will their infernal quest for a nation so shaped. All that has changed is the politician they adored and thus gleefully endorsed as the lynch-mob Führer of what they assumed would be their own new Auschwitz Nation has shown that his moral imbecility is so Ted-Bundy-malignant, he cares not who suffers collateral damage from his ecogenocidal sadism; the only restraint that modifies his apocalyptic fanaticism is that his billionaire puppet-masters never be amongst its victims.
Thus do not be deceived; there is never such a thing as a MAGAT change-of-heart. Christonazis are by definition incurable; they merely refocus their MAGAT hatefulness in directions mandated by their MAGAT greed.
Many of these ranchers are very wealthy...they voted for this. They just thought only Black and Brown people and LGBTQ folks and poor whites would suffer - not them...
Yes, Phil ... and more often than not, fall victim to their own bad decisions. For an example of how this works, watch the TV series, The Ranch, on Netflix, a sitcom-turned-drama produced by Ashton Kutcher. Mustachioed Sam Elliott plays the stubborn patriarch of a struggling Colorado ranch. He invokes Ronald Reagan's and John Wayne's names in reverent tones and hates government, Democrats, Hilary Clinton and people in general. He is the consummate MAGA believer. His ranching business is constantly beset by one disaster after another, yet he believes that none are his fault.
What a rubbish comment, pathetic. Them speaking out now is just a pathetic attempt to evade responsibility. They are responsible and should pay, that is not harming them it is letting them know who accountability works, shirk it now and they will feel free to do it all again.
Unfortunately it is the consumer who really pays. Farmers consistently get bailouts and the small ones lose their farms to massive foreign conglomerates. Prices go up.
I agree, Vickie. Sometimes I fall into the same vindictive, wish-(fill in the blank)-would fail. The maga, too, are joyfully hoping that my blue state, dems, liberals, et al will fail. I do not want to perpetuate a culture of hate or vindictiveness against the opposing team. Everyone wants to be respected and listened to. Sometimes it's just the right thing to do - to wish that all humanity survives the trump years.
They're not the only ones getting 'screwormed'. Trump ponders about his case against the DoJ and that "it’s awfully strange to make a decision where I’m paying myself".
Not that strange really. David Kirkpatrick of the New Yorker in August undertook a meticulous analysis of Trump's self-enrichment projects whilst in office (The Number: How Much is Trump Profiting Off the Presidency?). He calculated that Trump had made around $3.4bn using the presidency.
Since then, of course, we've seen a Trump meme coin; TrumpRX, a website scam purporting to sell certain medications at discounted prices; the Trump Gold Card; and a Trump fighter jet. His family is cashing in as well. El Pais reports that even his granddaughter Kai Trump, 18, has started selling sweatshirts with her initials for $130, promoted with photos taken in the White House gardens.
I've just seen a report in Wired that there's a new legal filing that alleges that Barron's mom, Melania, is involved in an elaborate memecoin fraud (she promoted the coin in January.
Forbes has reported that Barron's net worth is around $150m so he's not selling homemade lemonade. Like the rest of those grifters, he's investing in cryptocurrencies. Vanity Fair reported recently that he shut down an entire floor of Trump Tower for a date, causing havoc for other residents.
The Forbes article says that he holds 2.3 billion tokens which could be resold for $525m.
The whole family is cashing in. Don Jnr is worth $500m. Eric's worth has risen from $40m to $750m. Ivanka is said to have $100m and her hubby Jared is a billionaire.
Anyone paying attention knows that its crisis time in America. Our Republican members of Congress are worthless. Congress appears to be the last defense against the Fascist Presidency and Supreme Court. How to get some of them to become "Rand Pauls?" Daily demonstrations at their local offices?
And in front of their homes as well and in their small towns. Senators Grassley and Ernst are both from rural areas of Iowa as are several other Republican Senators. Their sheriff's departments will likely fuck up and arrest people in which case they can sue for false arrest. That's what has happened in several counties and towns around the country forcing many towns into dire financial situations. Southwest Harbor, ME paid out a large settlement because Leonard Leo told the Southwest Harbor police to arrest him.
It's finally starting to filter in here in Red Oklahoma. At least one of our local news stations announced the drying up of SNAP here on November 1, which affects a lot more rural white folks than people of color. Even our hardcore Republican senators are beginning to squawk about it openly.
I get it that you’re playing with words, and word play is a special comfort these days, BUT: the vindictive sentiment of your first sentence is inappropriate period, AND the invasive parasitic screwworm is a source of devastating injury and secondary infection to animals and humans (both physical and financial) that is “appropriate” for NO cattle or rancher — or any other mammal. Here is information complete with disturbing photos:
It almost surely wasn't in Maine (though the article mentions warmer climate likely contributing to an outbreak in Texas), but does make me think more about the impacts on domestic animals (including economic impact) and wildlife especially in North America. the most recent ecosystem threat I found out about came in Episode 229 from the Sampson Boat Co Youtube series on rebuilding and sailing the Tally Ho. They stopped at Moss Landing to check on the progress made on rebuilding the Western Fly, a research ship once leased by John Steinbeck, by a group that includes a group of young scientists trying to combat the plague that is destroying Sunflower Starfish that had been keeping the Sea Urchins that are so damaging to the Kelp Forests that are such essential habitats for marine animals.
My 79 year old CRS memory problems lost many of the details I wished I could remember when talking to our town council candidate, oyster and kelp farmer and advocate, Ken Sparta, but he was very much aware of the West coast problems I tried to describe and told me our East coast problems with the Kelp loss is from the dramatic warming of the Gulf of Maine (faster than 99% of the ocean).
We need honest and capable people watching these things and responding appropriately, not deniers of everything that counters their wishful thinking.
remember, they voted based on what media was influencing them all americans can be and are being victimized. did we really vote to tear down the whitehouse to be replaced with some golden palace
We are paying attention,and yes, we are more than outraged! Felon47 and his handlers (I refuse to call them enablers or minions) are tearing down our democracy, and the demolition of the East Wing is the perfect metaphor.
Yes! President Screw Worm is a great name! And it's about time for framers, those who are not actually agriculture mega-donors, to begin to think about American values, fairness, justice, regulations, food security...and that they get a pretty good deal with USDA grants, support for their loans, and a whole host of other benefits from our tax dollars...we play they should play fair!
It doesn’t look like it. All the advisory commissions, architects associations — even the National Register of Historic Places — are all advisory bodies.
What they can do is condemn it publicly. There’s nothing to stop them — or anyone in Congress or anywhere else for that matter — from calling it a tacky piece of showmanshit dreamt up by a vulgar asshole who thinks he’s the reincarnation of Louis XIV. They can decry the destruction of the Rose Garden as a filthy abomination and deliberate desecration of something beautiful in order to make way for something straight out of The Beverly Hillbillies, filled with paste, gaudiness, wretchedly bad taste — something only an unrestrained child megalomaniac would do — a tinkertoy tale of horror and desecration.
That they can do. There’s nothing stopping any of them from doing so. Why they keep silent in the face of such abnormal, psychotic behavior that damages all of us is beyond me.
Your second paragraph is a masterpiece of invective. I wish I had written it. I also wonder why none of the "advisory bodies" has come forward at least to comment on this desecration. Maybe some of our Democratic congress-critters or senators could just go out to the site and say, "Stop this right now!" and force the destruction crew to force them out of the way.
I wonder that the District of Columbia couldn't bring some kind of injunction to block this whole scheme. I can't rebuild a rotting front porch or replace windows without a permit!
In the grand scheme of horrible things Trump and his cabal of oligarchs are doing, this is just a diversion. We can always tear down the gold encrusted crap they are building. In fact, maybe the next President can run their administration from somewhere other than the cesspool that DC has become.
Does the President's residence really need to be in DC?
When ( not if! ) this monstrosity is torn down, the funds required should be taken from the trump family. As well as the funds required to put the entire White House back to it’s Intended grandeur.
The District doesn't own federal property. The whole city is a myriad of federally-owned and local land. An island in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue can be owned and administered by GSA, while the adjoining sidewalk is District-owned. The federal government collects taxes from Washingtonians without even a vote in Congress. DC police must provide protection for federal vehicles but DC has no say-so over either Congress or the White House, much less how the federal government spends federal monies or how private funds get donated to federal projects.
Welcome to the world where many of us have watched our neighborhoods and communities being destroyed by “ development “ by the real estate developer complex. Noise pollution, light pollution, traffic congestion. And our solution? Well let’s put them in charge of our democracy and make one of them who is a selfish loser our president.
I fail to understand -/ what is it you suggest “the Democratic opposition” should do? I’ve never figured out this particular whine. I can do arithmetic, too. In 2024, one-third of us voted for a sane person. One-third voted for a psychotic megalomaniac. One-third chose not to vote, for whatever reason. The Senate stands at 53 Republicans; the House, a scant majority, but enough. The states? Because hardly anyone pays close attention to state government, legislatures are mostly presided over by lunatic Republicans intent on burning books and putting trans-witches on trial -- in addition to bowing and scraping at the order to gerrymander national House seats.
Your anger is better focused on the one-third too disinterested, disinclined — to give much of a damn about their own country. We continue to have some of the lowest voting rates of any industrialized democracy in the world. There seems to be a connection between that and the outcome we face today.
Agree completely. But at the same time, I think a physical display of opposition, such as the one I suggested above, performative though it might be, might wake some people up.
So what would you recommend the Democrats do Christopher?
The late Tip O'Neal is credited with saying, "all politics is local." (The phrase is actually traced back to 1932).
What are you or your fellow Democrats doing locally?
In ME, the Democrats are stepping up as they are in dozens of other states. Look at the legislation CA has passed as well as the lawsuits they have filed trying to stop the Orange Menace and his Fascist administration.
Just because, "we the people" have ceded the power of the Federal Government to the Republicans doesn't mean they control all levels of government.
What Democrats are up against - one thing, anyway, is a group led by a former TV host who is very good at performative theater. Trump, et. al.'s aim is not to make sense, it is to keep negative emotions high. They do this in highly sociopathic ways, something we "normies" just can't match. Nor should we. We can, however, put on shows of our own - some with a cast of millions, some involving horrible shutdowns to highlight what the Right is really up to. We have most of Hollywood on our side, why aren't we using them to highlight just ho fragile this government really is?
I was 13 when I heard these stirring words spoken live. Remember the opening? "We observe today not a victory of party but a celebration of freedom." How far we have fallen in six decades...Not only in the decline of our institutions but also in the quality of our political rhetoric. I suppose we can expect nothing better, having elected Der Scheissmeister to the nation's highest office.
What we can do is report on who is funding the WH "renovations(?)".
Follow the oligarch's money and who is supporting his ridiculous projects.
Meanwhile Trump and the entire Republican Party are using hunger as a weapon.
Fortunately, the food banks and other charitable organizations across the country are working hard to reduce the food insecurity Trump and the entire Republican Party are causing. They are ALL complicit and too cowardly to face their constituents.
The National Register of Historic Places just sent a "letter" asking for an explanation because according to the law, the White House cannot be altered without plans being filed and approved by them, which of course, the Felon and his minions didn't do. I'd also like to say, ICTT, that the model is not Louis XIV but rather King George IV--formerly the Prince Regent when daddy George III was in his nutty phase--whose decor in his "masterpiece" Buckingham Palace is so over the top gaudy that it beggars description (and makes Versailles look restrained). And we all know that the Felon envies the British royal family. Also, George IV was partial to having sex with "low class" women, he was massively obese, he had no cultural aesthetic at all, and he relied on toadies who cynically flattered him while doing everything they could to enrich themselves. Unlike Louis XIV, who in his youth promoted the invention of ballet and development of opera in France, built Royal Academies for both science and music and dance, and became a real prude once he married his second wife, who was very strict. So Louis evolved. George did not. QED.
How informative. Thanks for the primer on George IV. He was the son of a mentally ill man suffering from porphyria and delusions. Yet another parallel between Fred and the vile Donald. Because our British cousins never had their Declaration of independence moment, Junior Sat on the throne for about 60 years. Clearly, Donald would love it if he could too.
Isn’t there something illegal about accepting “gifts” from people, countries, corporations, etc. to fund the building of this monstrous ballroom? And, already, we know the construction is affecting the structure of the White House. Where is the oversight, approval, permission to build that ordinary householders have to abide by. AND he is not the owner. WE are!
Is there anyone who can stop him from murdering innocent fisherman? Is there anyone who can stop ICE in his name from ruining the lives of people, many of them poor, some of them US citizens? Is there anyone who can stop him from ending government sponsored projects that employ tens of thousands of people? Is there anyone who can stop him from ending environmental safeguards? Is there anyone who one who can stop him from damaging the world wide economy? Is there anyone who could stop him from representing Putin so that more innocent people are killed in Ukraine? Is there anyone who can stop him from allowing the genocide of Palestinians to continue?
The company doing the demolition is Aceco LLC, located in Silver Spring, Maryland.
"If you want to let ACECO know what you think about their lead role in destroying the White House, the company’s CEO is Rob Wilson and he can be reached via email at rwilson@acecoworld.com. The company’s general email is info@acecoworld.com and its general phone number is 301-588-0707."
Bulldozing everything and everyone. Mob boss does whatever he wants - who's going to stop him? Just think we have a maniac in the WH who has at his disposal the US treasury to spend at his will and military at his beck and call and nuclear weapons. Is there anything wrong with this picture? A kid in a candy store.
Well, God knows he wasn’t inspired by any skylights he saw in Paris. Perhaps by its latrines, but not by its skylights. Those pee-pee tapes were real, of course, even if we’ll never get to see them in the light of day.
Trump has the dictator’s taste for tacky gilt and mirrors everywhere. It reminds me of the decor in Saddam Hussein’s various palaces he built all over Iraq.
All of this seems to show Jefferson was imperfect, as we all are. The difference between trump and (I'd like to hope) most other people is that trump has absolutely no redeeming qualities. Not even one. Evil seems to be the only thing he's made of. He will destroy America and it's people if given the time and opportunity.
And he had several children with his enslaved mistress, Sally Hemings. Sally Hemings was the half sister to Jefferson’s wife, Martha Wayles Jefferson. John Wayles and his wife Martha Eppes Wayles had one surviving daughter, Martha, who married Thomas Jefferson. John Wayles fathered Sally Hemings on Betty Hemings, whom he took as his mistress after his third wife died. Sally was was her sister’s lady’s maid. Sally became Jefferson’s mistress after Martha Jefferson’s death and extracted a promise from Jefferson she would return to live enslaved in Virginia as long as he freed their children. He did this. DNA testing showed Sally Hemings’s children had the Jefferson Y DNA. Lucian Truscott IV is a descendant of Jefferson through his mother’s family and tried unsuccessfully to get the Jefferson descendants association to acknowledge Sally Hemings’s descendants as Jefferson’s descendants.
All of what you say is true, yet he was also the man who supported the French Revolution even after it had deteriorated into bloody chaos. He was the man who engineered the election of 1800, one of the nastiest in our history, including using the same kind of negative attacks so common today, especially against Washington about whom his media myrmidons previewed the Republican attacks on Joe Biden’s lack of mental acuity. In doing so, he and Monroe initiated the first iteration of our often destructive binary political party system in spite of his (and other Founder’s ) oft declared aversion to ‘factionalism’.
His views on blacks were supremely bigoted.
He was an avowed advocate of minimal Federal administrative power, but once in the presidency was hardly averse to using that power to achieve his own political ends.
His revolutionary ideology would have had us constantly reinventing ourselves, regularly shedding the ‘blood of patriots’ to nourish the tree of liberty.
He was undoubtedly a brilliant man, not unlike Ben Franklin in his interest in so many areas, and his prose sings, but I have always seen him as an exemplar of our inherently contradictory nature. Indeed, his crowning irony lay in the full name of his political party - the Democratic Republicans.
AR, your post reads as if were written by a Jefferson apologist. Just look at these shiney baubles and downplay or better simply ignore the ugliness we want to sweep under the rug for the sake of appearances.
The republicans have certainly gone a long way from being apoplectic when President Obama wore a tan suit. Their orange leader’s destroying our democracy, la dee da-ing while government employees suffer due to the shutdown, trashing the White House oh so much damage and republicans twiddle their thumbs. Just sickening
Well, when I asked the question of my MAGAt cohort of retired cops what they thought of the AI video of "King Trump" dropping shit on America, they replied "It's just a joke. He's just trolling you libs."
I don't know that either, Ellen. These were (I once thought) honorable men. I do not think that any longer.
The destruction of the White House is sickening beyond words. It is NOT Trump's house. It is the house of the American people. All I could think when I saw videos yesterday was that he has destroyed a piece of our history that we cannot ever recover. It makes me profoundly sad. Not to mention very angry.
I was furious when he destroyed the Rose Garden to put in a tacky patio with umbrellas that looked like they were on-sale from Target -- but actually taking bulldozers to the White House??? I could not believe my eyes. And then came his $230 million shake-down. We are in crazy town.
The $230 million shakedown number is uncomfortably close to the estimate for the Big Ugly Throne Room. Coincidence, or are We The Taxpayers actually paying for this monstrosity?
Trump’s obscene physical and moral destruction of the White House and office of the Presidency are an all too direct metaphor for a dog pissing on a fire hydrant.
Trump is literally marking what he claims to be his territory. His recent AI video of him flying over and carpet bombing, with an apparently never ending supply of his feces, peacefully protesting American citizens exercising their first amendment rights to redress the government for grieviences.
It is shamefully revealing of a virtual literal truth of what he is doing to our constitutional democracy.
It's all so wrong, everything Trump and the regime is doing to our Nation is appalling and unbearable. The demolition of the White House is symbolically devastating and psychologically triggering, a psy-ops because it does seem like an image from the 9/11 attacks. Wrecking the White House, transforming into something that doesn't even make sense, just to put up another massive vanity project of Donold's is unacceptable and we're just expected to watch it happen. This should have been stopped before it even got to this point but it seems like nothing can stop Donold except possibly the Grim Reaper's scythe(and may that be very soon).
This is just an observation, and what I attribute it to may not be it's cause. I've notice that more and more or us are simply referring to Trump as Trump. I think this is because we are growing less and less afraid of him and his lackeys.
Steve, I rarely use that "T-word." One of Donald's long-time goals has been for his last name to become a household word. For all intents and purposes, he has achieved that goal, but I refuse to comply.
Betrump is an old word infused, or should I say stained, with new meaning.
“AI Overview
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) entry for the verb "betrump" indicates it means to deceive or cheat [or elude.]. The OED's earliest evidence of its use is from before 1522 in a translation by Gavin Douglas, a Scottish bishop and poet. “
It’s impossible for any sane person to get their head around this 3-year-old’s definition of good and bad, right and wrong — “low-rated” (whatever that even means) and “unpopular.”
It’s not just that it’s the phrasing of a despot (popular is whatever I say it is), it’s the reasoning of a child psychotic. We have never before been ruled by a psychotic, by someone who exhibits daily behavior of a hungry wolf — a creature seemingly raised without any human contact whatever — the true opposite of ‘it takes a village.’
And this psychotic has more power than anyone ever has, not just here, but anywhere. The real mystery still lies in how he’s been able to enlist so many ghouls to do his bidding for him — to lie, cheat and deceive for him, do his gaslighting and wash his diapers for him for free, smirk on cue when he orders them to smirk, play havoc with government when he orders them to do so, kill at his command.
Long after this piece of deranged, damaged filth has left this world, this will be the one question future historians will spend the rest of their lives grappling with.
Yes, that’s the simple explanation, but not the one that explains the deep, mass psychosis they’ve gotten so many millions to accept for as long as he’s been around. He’s always been the most obvious of frauds — a phony, carnival-barking fake. That much has been true for 40 years. How is it possible for people not to have seen that all along?
None of this would be possible without the Tee-Vee.
Television "programming" doesn't refer to broadcast content anymore.
What's being programmed are the viewers themselves.
They are told what to believe, they are told what to hate, they are told what to purchase, what to value.
Those in the Cult have become MAGA zombies, programmed every day by Faux and Newsmax and ONN to live a counter-reality that's 180-degrees opposite of what is actually happening.
Disconnected from nature, disconnected from neighbors, living in an artificial, electric paradigm of circus clowns and acrobats, all engineered for one purpose: to prevent critical thinking and the ability to discern fantasy from facts.
How many of you have visited MAGA relatives' homes and noticed their Tee-Vee is on all the time, with Faux propaganda babbling away every waking moment? Even to an empty den or living room?
They are addicted to it. They must have it to maintain the hypnosis.
I think they do see it. But as long as the Millers, Bessents, Bondis, Zuckerbergs, Thiels, Voughts, et al. can get the wealth and power they want, they're more than happy to let Trump run amok.
I think that you would’ve had to be someone who followed local news in New York to see what a con artist he became. I don’t have much faith that many citizens are really paying attention to the daily trampling of everything by this administration ,or they are tuned in to Faux News without changing the channel. Referring to his demand of $230 million, which he will “give to charity” that’s a typical con. I fear that he will bankrupt this country,ballooning the debt even further…and he doesn’t care.
ITCC, I think the mass psychosis is due to trumpian shamelessness: you can say and do whatever you want. It doesn't matter how hurtful it is to others, how vapid, how incorrect, how self-aggrandizing because the main thing is to be free from the constraints not only of compassion but of reason.
I think that desire is deep in the human psyche. It says, "I want what I want, and I don't want anybody who thinks they're better than me [sic] to tell me what to do." In some circles, it's called sin. In other circles, it's a stage of life we call childhood. 'Seems to me that is a reason it makes so much sense to many of us to refer to Trump with words that call him a baby.
If there really is a devil, then Satan is alive and well, maybe not well but here none the less amongst us and ruling us along with his disciples of destruction and retribution. We just need a cross and a wooden stake, at least for Stephen Miller.
Trump says: Media outlets paid him settlements because “what they did was wrong."
Wrong. Media outlets paid Trump to get him off their backs. What they did do wrong: Compromise with Trump.
Trump says: "It’s awfully strange to make a decision where I’m paying myself."
Wrong. He does it all the time. We must make sure he doesn't slide into a position like that. Bad luck that he's president of the United States.
Trump says: "Did you ever have one of those cases where you have to decide how much you’re paying yourself in damages? But I was damaged very greatly . . .”
Wrong. Trump thinks that expecting him to obey the law and the Constitution "damages him very greatly." There will be no end of the payoffs he demands from us from here on in.
Got to get him out. Hint: He'll want a payoff for that, too.
Of course but really no way to accomplish that. Not until the next presidential election in 2028. Impeachment even if possible would fail in the senate. And nothing short of death can remove him otherwise. Sadly we elected him and as we all need to learn elections have consequences.
Hello Jon... Things will get better, perhaps, IFF there are Elections in 2026, and 2028... Then only if the DNC Democrats, and Principled Republicans, if they exist, push them through... Else, Divine Intervention is all we have...
Is this $230 million that the current president wants the U.S. taxpayers to give to him, a detailed amount? For example, is it the sum of legal costs incurred. If so, did the current president actually pay legal costs or did another party pay them, such as the RNC?
This is a good reason for non-MAGA Americans to withhold paying their taxes. I believe it’s already been discussed in California. Another kind of boycott.
So, we can afford billions of dollars to prop up Argentina's economy and additional money to buy Kristi Noem 2 private planes and to compensate Trump for Justice Department probes into his own illegal activity. However, we cannot afford the money needed to help people with food insecurity through the SNAP program. When those tax credits expire on New Years Eve, millions of people will struggle to afford health insurance and others will lose it entirely. America first? Seriously?
Thanks for writing Emily. Apparently, Trump and other Republicans worry about the national debt only when Democrats want to spend taxpayer's money on things our people actually need. Created in the wake of the 1930's depression, many of those government services have become our social safety net: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, disaster relief, Veteran's benefits, etc. Then, all of a sudden, we have to "tighten our belts." In 2026, voters will have to decide if they want to continue to provide luxury lives for Trump, his enablers and the oligarchs who support them or whether to take care of their , families, friends and neighbors instead.
Heather's remarks today emphasize the black hole we all inhabit.
One can gauge this better if one has read Sarah Kendzior's "Hiding in Plain Sight" -- on how the Trump & others' poisons have already destroyed most of our institutions. When I say "others," I go to Sarah: they are the organized criminals, the corrupted governments, and the corporate players who feed the corruption.
This is a blackness, our black hole.
But in my trip to California I also found some new books on Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli. In particular one where authors Michael Leader and Jake Cunningham quote Miyazaki scholar Susan Napier, who quoted one of his films for what she called "the most beautiful line Miyazaki ever wrote." It was, "Life is the light that shines in the darkness."
Darkness has descended on America, the world. But we may take a lesson from artists and those who follow them.
Thank you for sharing this, Phil. Let us be the Miyazakian light shining in the MAGA darkness, staying alive and keeping hope alive, if only to piss them all off.
The light, too, James, comes from those of us who want to live, be alive as people.
And the condition of doing that makes us reciprocally alert to, alive to, and acknowledging of others, others also not at all willing to go into that darkness.
Even though we're mortal, and we know some of the conditions of mortality. In us. In others.
I read Hiding in Plain Sight as well as They Knew, and The View from Flyover Country. I learned of Sarah by subscribing to Gaslit Nation. She's brilliant and has an interesting perspective.
Paving the Rose Garden seemed a good metaphor for the Trump Presidency but destroying the East Wing of the White House is the perfect visual one. Giving billions to Argentina while cutting healthcare access and food assistance to Americans to partially balance the budget seems bad even without stiffing American farmers on Argentine soybean sales and beef buys. Paying yourself out of the public treasury is beyond corruption. The Congress is missing in action and we have taxation without representation. It’s no good to impeach Trump, we’ve already done it. It’s no good to convict him, he’s a 34 time felon. It’s impossible to shame him, he has paid off multiple accusations including the ones he still owes on. He’s threatened by the Epstein files which seems like their release must involve incurring actual physical violence as nothing else appears to frighten him. All members of the House are up for reelection. Vote Blue.
And the MAGAts won't say a word about the destruction of the East Wing. All they want is more ICE raids and more deportations of people they consider inferior. Anything T**** does is fine with them as long as he keeps funding ICE. They don't care if SNAP recipients starve this winter.
Last Sunday, I parted company with a brother and sister as they shouted at me about immigrants, wanting more ICE raids. To them, an undocumented immigrant is a burden and they want them all gone. Foaming-at-the-mouth MAGA. Voted for him in all three elections. Voted against my grandchildren's future. Now my sworn enemies. No quarter asked or given.
I don’t recommend breaking contact with family members. Do something together that you both enjoy. Then try to find something that is common ground like the price of groceries or how defunding the Affordable Care Act/Medicaid/mental healthcare/etc will raise the healthcare premiums and costs for everyone. Avoid getting into an “us vs them” emotion/fear/anger/etc. provoking vibe that makes rational discussion difficult. Find out what it is about immigrants that enrages them. If they are correct, agree with them. If the facts are incorrect, try to steer them to the valid information.
Heather discussed the history of undocumented laborers in one of her newsletters (I can’t remember which one.). Apparently they crossed the southern border freely to work in the harvests every year and then returned to their families across the border in the south. But in the 1980’s the Reagan Administration decided to closely monitor the southern border. This drastically curtailed the movement of the workers across the border because they were afraid that once they were in the US they wouldn’t be able to return to their families in their home country. The economic impact of having migrant laborers who work doing manual jobs under harsh conditions for significantly lower pay than demanded by American workers and who pay taxes, etc. is significant.
This is a country of immigrants. My maternal ancestors immigrated from Germany in the 1850’s to Wisconsin and my paternal ancestors immigrated from Scotland in the 1700’s to Georgia.
What does immigration do for our country? Here is a small sample of individuals who immigrated to the US and are not native born:
Alexander Hamilton, Albert Einstein, Thomas Paine, Jaime Escalante, Nikola Tesla, Isaac Asimov, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Gloria Estefan, Irving Berlin, Henry Kissinger, Charlie Chaplin, George W. Romney, Elaine Chao, Madeline Albright, Yo-yo Ma, Lionel Messi, Bono, Jose Andres, Salma Hayek, William Penn, Alexander Graham Bell, Greta Garbo, Elizabeth Taylor, Andrew Carnegie, Natalie Portman, John Sununu, James McHenry, Moses McKissack, etc.
And; 757 Medal of Honor Recipients and 40% of US Nobel Prize winners.
What millions of new immigrants coming to this country first saw as they entered NYC harbor was the Statue of Liberty, a gift from our Revolutionary War ally, France. It contains a plaque with a famous poem that embodies the spirit of our constitutional democracy - for freedom, for “We the People”, for empathy.
The New Colossus
BY EMMA LAZARUS
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, (a reference to the Colossus of Rhodes)
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
Our father was an immigrant. Our mother's parents were immigrants. They've not had hard lives, and are well off in their retirement. They watched too much Fox, as did our mother. As I told her in one of our last conversations, "Mom, you voted against my grandchildren." I doubt I will ever forgive her. Or them. Since we are geographically distanced, I have little desire to have any more contact with them. I have enough stupid, evil, racist people to deal with already.
When people say to me that I should try to reconcile and see the MAGA view from those of my relatives that hold it, I say no as their bigoted, uneducated view and those who believed the stupidity of the eating of dogs and cats are not people I would like to spend my time with. If it were merely differences in budget priorities etc like old school politics used to be, that would be different but in this MAGA world, their beliefs are disgusting and most of them have 5th grade reading levels. No thanks!
To forgive is not to forget or to agree. Tacit acceptance that you agree to disagree can bring peace. Holding anger in your heart especially against a close family member (your mother) is a significant emotional burden to carry for posterity. I hope you eventually find peace with the situation and wish you well in your life.
Thanks, Fred. When I think on it, I'm not angry with them, just disappointed. Sorely disappointed. I may not get to forgiveness, I just hope they can recover their lost humanity.
Fred, as a hostage negotiator, one of our sayings was "you cannot reason with unreasonable people." A second rule from hostage negotiations is "You cannot negotiate with terrorists". James has described his family as belonging to both camps; unreasonable, and holding our country hostage.
I don’t go by hostage negotiation doctrinaire procedures. I go by what I learned in my education in psychology (including abnormal psychology), in psychiatry, in continuing medical education, in helping my child (along with a child psychiatrist) to overcome the ACEs he experienced with his mentally ill mother, in working with a Ph.D. clinical psychologist to help patients in a medical clinic, etc..
In the last election over 70 million people voted for Trump. Do you think they are all “unreasonable people”?
No, not all of them. Where did I say that it was an absolute? "James has described his family as belonging to both camps, unreasonable and holding our country hostage." A person can obviously have more options with a family member to take the time to reason with them, to provide them other information, and to (for instance) wear them down.
Keep in mind, too, that any time law enforcement is responding to a crisis/hostage incident, it is in a high risk situation.
Just FYI, my wife is a Clinical Psychologist; I have a better understanding than most of the nuances of intervention.
If your wife is a practicing clinical psychologist then she should be able to explain to you the psychological characteristics of a malignant narcissistic personality disorder and how the charming ones can sense what is emotionally important to people and use it to manipulate them. They are also mendacious, defensive and blame scapegoats for perceived problems. The misled people are not violent hostage takers involved in high risk, crisis situations with law enforcement. They are people who have been deceived/conned and are usually immersed in information sources that reinforce their fears, anger, prejudices, etc.. They may seem inherently “unreasonable” but this is because they have been primed to have their emotions triggered by issues rather than thinking rationally about them.
Fred, there is a reason why, at least in the law enforcement world, "hostage" negotiators have been renamed "crisis negotiators" and operate with a different set of protocols for each type of situation. As I initially alluded to, I have a more informed knowledge base than most cops do which is not to say that I am in any way, shape, or form an expert.
I also know that changing somebody's fundamental belief about something is a long, involved process. I have a good friend who was totally against same sex marriage. Through a motorcycle touring group, he got to meet two same sex couples (me and another rider). He was always friendly and personable. About three years into our friendship, he and I went on an "errand" (delivering some paperwork over to the coast; about a 3 hour round trip.) As was our custom on "errands in order to ride to eat" excursions, we went to a great seafood restaurant, right on the marina.
During our lunch conversation, he told me that he realized his opposition to same sex marriage had been based on his overall opposition to marriage privilege (he was a 12 year unmarried enlisted man; As an E6, he had to live in a barracks while E2's who were married could live off base. It was based on his belief that marriage in and of itself should not grant privilege that excluded single people. He remains a solid friend, even as his politics are nearly completely opposite mine.
When I say "you cannot reason with unreasonable people" in reference to my former work cohort (who I have no interest in maintaining any kind of relationship with). They match your last two sentences to a "T". They have taken their "information sources" that feed their anger and prejudices as gospel and any opposing stance as "uneducated". I am not going to spend what time I have left on this planet trying to change their way of believing (ain't gonna call it thinking).
Using and consenting to the “us versus them” dynamic is validating the divisiveness that Trump and his MAGA toadies are using to gain power over and subjugate us. Try reading “Prisoners of Hate” by Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry, Aaron Beck, M.D., the father of cognitive behavioral therapy.
This is far too serious to look for an olive branch. I won’t waste one minute on a person who is ok with FORCING OTHER HUMANS BY THREAT AND ENDANGERMENT. Since when did it become acceptable to hurt a child….let alone adults? Those that are ok with this don’t deserve “family.”
I’m just waiting for the tweet to President Macron that France can get the tiara, necklaces and brooches belonging to the Empress Eugénie back from the Louvre for $250 million — $350 million if he wants them still intact. No questions asked.
Day twenty-one of the Great Trump Shutdown, and the former Rose Garden has been rebranded the “Rose Garden Club,” complete with plastic tablecloths, patriotic bunting, and the faint odor of authoritarian decay. Trump hosted lunch there for every Republican senator except Rand Paul, who was punished for believing in math.
Trump crowed that the shutdown was saving money by “cutting Democrat programs,” apparently unaware that the executive branch can’t actually cancel congressional appropriations. His budget chief, Russell “Darth Vader” Vought, was on hand, gleefully swinging his metaphorical lightsaber through the federal workforce. SNAP benefits are set to run dry, but Trump called that “intermittent fasting for freedom.”
Speaker Mike Johnson, meanwhile, has locked the House like a haunted escape room. He refuses to swear in a duly elected Democrat because she might restore balance to the galaxy. Arizona sued, accusing him of holding democracy hostage, to which Johnson replied, “Absurd.” Which, to be fair, is his brand.
In foreign affairs, Trump bailed out Argentina to rescue his friends’ bad bets and maybe score a discount on steak. He called it “an amazing deal, folks,” because nothing says America First like buying beef from another collapsing economy.
The administration also found $172 million to buy new private jets for Homeland Security, proving that even in a shutdown, there’s always money for the ruling class to flee the wreckage...
Consider this excerpt from America's Stricken Democracy: Trump's Thought Police Hit Their Stride published by The Spiegel in Germany, addressing the question of the reluctance of the public to actively resist. The parallels between our two nations are not exact, but the ‘’Dual State’’ idea is haunting.
The Dual State
One answer may be found in a book that first appeared in America 84 years ago called "The Dual State.” It was written by the German-Jewish labor rights activist Ernst Fraenkel, who left Germany in 1938 and spent the rest of his life wrestling with the question as to why it was so easy to transform Germany from a democracy into a dictatorship.
Following the Nazi power grab, Fraenkel argued, a "normative state” continued to exist in Germany for quite some time, within which the established legal order still applied for the vast majority of citizens, private property was protected, and companies could continue operating with no hindrance in order to keep the capitalist economy up and running.
In parallel, however, a "prerogative state” developed, a state of "unlimited arbitrariness and violence” wielded against certain people and institutions, who were gradually stripped of their essential rights. The majority was able to convince themselves for an extended period that they would remain untouched by the excesses of state violence. Until the prerogative state ultimately pushed aside the normative state.
"Today, we are witnessing the birth of a new dual state,” writes Chicago-based law professor Aziz Huq in an article that appeared several months ago in the Atlantic. It should not be assumed, Huq writes, that it will follow the same path as Germany once did – "but it is striking how Donald Trump’s executive orders reject some basic tenets of American constitutionalism.”
The U.S. economy, Huq writes, remains largely intact and the judiciary continues to function normally, aside from political cases. Most people can ignore the establishment of a prerogative state because it simply has no effect on their lives. "They can turn away while dissidents and scapegoats lose their political liberty. But once the prerogative state is built (…) it can swallow anyone.”
So far, that’s been largely true. But very soon, the combined effects of an increasingly jittery economy, a prolonged government shutdown, dramatically escalating prices for food, essentials and particularly for healthcare — are going to undo that stability. Some would argue that moment has already arrived.
It won’t quite follow what happened in Germany, though it’s already close enough to terrify. I suspect we’re in for an extended period of real chaos, inflation and degradation. It shouldn’t make anybody happy but perhaps the combination of everything is what’s needed to wake millions out of their stupor. I don’t know what else will.
But I expect we both know, or know of, those whose personal situations insulate them from the current degradation of services and intimidation by the State. It is difficult to wake people who can convince themselves that their insulation from the worst of it is not only selfish, but temporary - a reluctance to resist that could continue until they are powerless to resist.
On a personal note, I live in an old building in Germany, one that withstood both wars. At times, when I go to the basement to fetch something, where little has been done to the space since the early 1900s, I feel (or imagine) the terror of those who once lived in this house, whose neighbors were taken away in the dead of night. That haunting, for lack of a better word, informs my concerns and views today.
None of us know with certainty, how the current situation will play out. But we know enough to resist the direction, methods and ethos of the current administration.
It appears to me that Trump and the Republicans may be perfectly happy to continue to rule by fiat with the government "shut down" indefinitely. Trump funds by diktat those elements of the government that he can use to punish his opponents and cement his dictatorship, while continuing his destruction of the government that actually serves the people. And Mikey Johnson gets to keep that Ms. Grijalva and her annoying signature on the Epstein discharge petition out of office.
Or Portland’s own, my go-to source for books and information about them, which is Powell’s City of Books, America’s largest independent bookseller. We don’t just dress up as frogs or unicorns.
“The unforgettable memoir by the late Virginia Roberts Giuffre, the woman who dared to take on Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell
The world knows Virginia Roberts Giuffre as Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell's most outspoken victim: the woman whose decision to speak out helped send both serial abusers to prison, whose photograph with Prince Andrew catalyzed his fall from grace. But her story has never been told in full, in her own words - until now.
In April 2025, Giuffre took her own life. She left behind a memoir written in the years preceding her death and stated unequivocally that she wanted it published. Nobody's Girl is the riveting and powerful story of an ordinary girl who would grow up to confront extraordinary adversity.
Here, Giuffre offers an unsparing and definitive account of her time with Epstein and Maxwell, who trafficked her and others to numerous prominent men. She also details the molestation she suffered as a child, as well as her daring escape from Epstein and Maxwell's grasp at nineteen. Giuffre remade her life from scratch and summoned the courage to not only hold her abusers to account but also advocate for other victims. The pages of Nobody's Girl preserve her voice - and her legacy - forever.
Nobody's Girl is an astonishing affirmation of Giuffre's unshakable will - first, to claw her way out of victimhood, and then to shine light on wrongdoing and fight for a safer, fairer world. Equal parts intimate and fierce, it is a remarkable narrative of fortitude in the face of depravity and despair.”
Unfortunately the book reviews I’ve seen say it recounts the author’s horrific experiences of her childhood and of being entangled in Jeffrey Epstein’s human trafficking, rapes and pedophilia, but doesn’t implicate (name names) of anyone other than Epstein and Maxwell.
We need to have the full Epstein files released including all the video, digital and other files/information that was collected from his multiple residences that include the recordings of the video cameras he had mounted in his multiple bedrooms and massage table rooms where the sexual assaults were allegedly committed, etc..
I wonder if now that Virginia is gone, could her co-author reveal the names of the “clients” she hesitated to name, especially the powerful politician who nearly beat her to death.
I recall reading some Congress people and Senators have offered to read out loud for all to hear the list of names on the floors of the House and Senate . Read them into the Congressional Record, where anyone can later learn who they are. They are protected legally by the Speech and Debate Clause of the Constitution.
The names, which I expect to include prominent politicians of both parties as well as many well known businesspeople and other famous people to appear on the lists, which I think we can safely conclude will before too long become public.
That “screw worm” seems appropriate for the cattle ranchers who voted for Trump.
Trump and his minions shoot first and then the questions come. Whether it is tearing down a section of the White House without oversight or rescinding congressional approved spending.
The Republican cowards in Congress just comply or say they know nothing about what is happening.
America First seems to be based on a very fluid foundation. Give money to Argentina while far too many Americans lose jobs, lose healthcare insurance, and lose access to food.
Anyone paying attention should be outraged.
Phil, I believe it’s critically important to underscore, had the $20 billion to Argentina been directed to ensure healthcare premium increases don’t go up for 22 million Americans, we could settle the shutdown.
It is painfully clear to anyone paying attention that trump intends to destroy this country and anyone in it to become some all wealthy, all powerful ruler of the world. The sooner he is gone, the sooner we can focus on removing the criminal cabal he has placed in positions of power who are doing his bidding. Until then, it is imperative to protect our elections and get massive numbers out to vote to get the R's out of congress. That at least would slow the damage.
Let us pray and do everything possible to preserve our vote. They got elected by rigging the election and they will do it again. Rigging? Yes, voter suppression. The SC has dismantled civil rights.
No, the election was not rigged, and repeating the accusation will just provide cover for the next Republican allegation that an election they lost was stolen.
If hackers can cause shutdowns and data breaches to banks, local governments, colleges, insurance brokers, etc., what would lead you to think that they can't access election systems? Elections software is updated via computers connected, if only briefly, to the web, or flash drives, that are easily corrupted.
They are counting on Democrats to have a knee-jerk aversion to the thought of election hacking because Trump falsely accused Democrats of doing it. But the bottom line is that it can be done.
Remember above all else: every Trump accusation amounts to an admission.
Kwaipoh, you said it very well. Of course hacking was part of the Trump-Musk election strategy, just in case the lies in Republican ads, gerrymandering, and other voter suppression didn't work. Together, they still only got less than 50% of the vote, not a mandate to destroy our democracy no matter what Dementia-Donald says.
In Knox County, computers are NOT connected to the internet and votes are recorded on an installed, locked flash drive that is removed when the device is returned to the election commission later than evening. Make sure your information about election integrity is accurate before you proclaim it.
I appreciate the way Heather continues to mention the Epstein file, a very vulnerable point for Trump. My No Kings Day sign read, "RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILE! IMPEACH THE PEDOPHILE!"
Jon, I agree about 2024. It's far more likely that it will be "rigged" for 2026 and beyond, with gerrymandering, the threat of armed forces of whatever stripe patrolling voting locations, etc. And who knows what else they have in store for 2028?
Sorry Jon, but I disagree with you. Too many weird election results occurred, and mostly in the swing states, and at nearly the same level. (There may have been some messing with red state elections in 2022 to practice since no one checks the red state votes assuming they will vote Republican, perhaps Texas and Florida.) That similarity in percentages seems an awful lot like digital interference, masterminded by Musk and help from the computer guys he employs. He had help in the states because there are enough folks who love their Baby Donnie that they could easily have been the intermediaries for the tech interference. Trump even thanked Musk for winning the election, and on the Sunday before election day. I want to see every single precinct, district, and state do serious reviews of the equipment and find ways to block any potential interference with the tallying machines in particular. I get it that racism and misogyny are huge in this country, but that, along with the tech fraud gave Repubs just enough votes to win everything so they could do their damage to our nation.
they'll say it anyhow
being "riggeg' also includes voter suppresion and gerrymandering
Though it might be fair to charge them with trying, more than once and ongoing, to rig elections, while projecting their own corrupt intent onto others in order to fool their cultists.
Joe, they don't care if they have cover, because they have already succeeded in convincing A large swath of the American Public that they lost before because of rigging. Please don't be naive that they would hesitate to use it again! These Republicans have no bottom to their vileness!
Jon, there was vast voter suppression; was it enough to have made a difference? Hard to say.
I beg to differ. There is ample evidence of manipulation.
Start here:
https://open.substack.com/pub/thiswillhold/p/she-won-they-didnt-just-change-the?r=2lgce&utm_medium=ios
point well taken but rigged is a trigger hope people pay attention to the process. however what you are revealing is that too many Americans have been seduced that a strong and secured America is better than what seems like a sputtering democracy.
They will do that anyway.
we have to do more than pray. we need to get overwhelmingly informed about the election policies in our county our cities our state.
He is doing the bidding of the shrewd cruel persistent criminal cabal led by Russell Vought and Stephen Miller
Indiscnminately murdering Venezuelans, Colombians and Ecuadorians, placing us on a war "footing,"and stealing our national treasury via extortion.
Obviously, not mentioned above, Putin's whore, undermining our treaties, elevating totalitazarian dictators.
putin and netanyahu STARTED a WAR to stay IN power and OUT of PRISON!!!
trump IS doing the SAME THING NOW!!!!
His oil tycoons will back him up, because they want to rape Venezuelan oil!
Also busy extorting the academic community with his "compact."
I've written it before and I'll write it again - I am hearing I am reading that the democrats are not outraged enough - where is their outrage at the video of King trump dumping feces on protesters; where is the outrage at trump destroying the east wing of the WH; where is the outrage at the millions being spent on Noem's jets; where is the outrage that trump et al are murdering Venezuelans without due process or evidence??? Jamie keeps sending me message how the constitution is being compromised!!!!! That's all!!!!??? Maybe the dems in your state are better at messaging, but the overall impression is that most dems are not....
Respectfully, I'm not sure what you mean by not being outraged enough.
Democratic Party leaders speak out each and every day, they file lawsuits, they lead and encourage protests, they make pleas on social media like You Tube, they create content, they appear on television to make their case every chance they get.
We saw on No Kings Day their support for change.
What more do you suggest they do?
Get out there and have press conferences every day on the steps of congress, call out the supreme criminals for aiding the destruction of the law, talk about little johnson not swearing in the congress woman elect. I agree more pointing out what is going on so the folks who are not political junkies hear...many are still unaware of what's going on. And don't forget the epstein files
Excellent! Democrats need to get out there with younger Democrats who are able to talk to people about how their lives are affected. Send young Democrats to red states where hospital closures, loss of food programs will really hurt people very soon.
EXACTLY EXACTLY EXACTLY EXACTLY EXACTLY EXACTLY EXACTLY MAKE NOISE!!!!!
The average, regular American citizen should be ASKED 'Why is trump giving Argentina billions of dollars?' 'Why is trump planning to give himself hundreds of millions of tax payer dollars?'
You can bet your sweet patoot FOX won't be asking their listeners these questions.
Respectfully, the dems are outraged and screaming. The MSM is not reporting. Do you have a suggestion how the dems that are doing the screaming may be heard?
But they do have regular press conferences saying how outraged they are Even FOX News reports on them.
The challenge is that by doing it too often it loses its value.
After the 100th press conference its not news anymore. And its not at all clear they are changing any minds.
But they do have regular press conferences saying how outraged they are Even FOX News reports on them.
The challenge is that by doing it too often it loses its value.
After the 100th press conference its not news anymore. And its not at all clear they are changing any minds.
You are correct that more needs to be done, but right now mainstream media is not going to do it. Press conferences? Do you think mainstream media will cover press conferences from democrats who are trying to tell the truth about the current situation? And many people are “ still unaware” because legacy media has not been accurately covering what is going on since Biden. They are either beholden to trump (Bezos) or “obeying in advance” out of fear. There are many legitimate truth tellers out there (HCR, The Contrarian, Civil Discourse, Paul Krugman…)but one has to look for them, subscribe (some for free), and make an effort to educate oneself. I try to do my small part by sharing articles from The Guardian or Reuters, as well as from substack accounts mentioned above to people I know who are not paying attention or unaware. But most of them are unaware because they feel powerless and deliberately put their heads in the sand, or don’t care because they haven’t been directly affected, yet. How do you make people like that pay attention and resist the horror? I found the recent images ( on Bluesky) of the East Wing demolition to be a good wake-up shocker for some people, though.
When they go low we go high. No, fight fire with fire. Showing up is not good enough, encouraging is not good enough. Demonize the fake videos on Fox. You think that Schumer and Hakeem were really going to convince trump of anything, would actually work out a compromise? Where is their outrage at the treatment Zelensky received the other day? They need to respond immediately to these events - with real emotion. (This is not merely my opinion Many respected journalists on several podcasts continue to criticize the dems for weak messaging.)
We don't always go high anymore.. but as low as they go? They go lower. And then what do you have? What do you suggest other than messaging- in our channels? What do you suggest more than outrage at every thing every day- which there is. And Isn't this dependent on the mainstream media? What do you do about the NYTimes that did not even feature the 8 million +/- protesting on Saturday; they put it in minor headlines below the fold! What do you do about FOX? Whose outrage are you asking for?
A former CBS expert I heard speak said it’s that their network for information dissemination is more circumscribed than that their messaging is poor.
Agreed we are outraged and supporting every cause we can. Repeating the outrage at 20 billion going to Argentina so Bessent can help his friends when the 20 billion would pay for our health care subsidies. Election of both a House and Senate to counter his hand on the Funds and threaten the Scotus with Impeachment proceedings as well. We're royally pissed off!
Respectfully, being pissed off doesn't get results.
It's an emotional state that leads to rash, poorly reasoned, and often counterproductive decisions.
We may want to consider controlling our emotions, making deliberative decisions, weighing the possibility of unintended consequences and acting with precision.
As a wise master once observed, "...anger leads leads to hate, hate leads to suffering." ~Yoda
No outrage among the GOP?
Only acquiescence.
The Bots!
There's outrage at the GOP. Listen to Speaker Johnson. He's outraged that the Democrats are playing politics with the shut down.
YUMD
They need to assemble a news network with the attractiveness and bombast of the most successful one, wrap themselves in every sort of invective and slander salacious enough to make every head snap in airports across the nation and hold true to the highest American values.
This is what is curious.
We hear complaints that the "press" isn't reporting on the news.
I am reminded of Diane Rehm's retort when callers would, "Why isn't the press reporting on this?" and she would respond, "Well how did you learn about it?"
It was always from the press.
BTW, the do have a news network with the bombast of FOX NEWS... they call itr MSNBC.
TV as we boomers knew it is dying off.
the problem gary is that not all americans have access to the information you have and many have been seduced by an unbalanced information thread the FFC not doing its job why???
Respectfully disagree.
What news sources are not available to Americans?
Is HCR restricted in some fashion?
It's not that news sources aren't available to the vast majority; it's more that people choose their poison.
"A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.' ~S&G
I think the reason the FCC isn't doing it's job is because they have no authority over most news sources today.
Podcasts (this one included), streamed news sources, cable stations are beyond the reach of the FCC.
Stephanie is outraged that they aren't raising the roof. That they are being too genteel in their condemnation!
We're all outraged. The key is how to focus that outrage in a meaningful and effective way.
We can stomp our feet, scream and hold our breath until our faces turn blue but does that lead us to victory?
we can't get everything we want the way we want it. If we're to win, to retrieve what's left of our republic we have to get behind our leadership and put our personal grievances aside.
It's not about us; it's about us.
This complaint Stephanie is why Democrats have such a low approval. People want the Democrats to fix it already...
This is a moment for the people to rise up. Many are so used to expecting things to work for them one way or another-- and are not aware that democracy means participation.
What you cite above belong on a list of offenses that should go into articles of impeachment. Outrage after outrage gets what. The BIG PICTURE is that the country is being taken over by REPUBLICANS. Those who are still calling themselves Republicans... in the Congress both houses, in the Supreme Court. What are they all up to? Where are they going? We are 340 million! That is MY outrage...and Democrats cannot fix it unless we VOTE for them and stop blaming them. You go to war with the soldiers you have!!
My book club is currently reading Kathrine Stewart's, "Money, Lies and God" and it is really giving us a good background on the right wing network that built up what has come to fruition now under Trump. we are only on part 2, but so far I highly recommend the book. That book and "Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism" by George Monbiot and Peter Hutchinson really lay out who are the money organizations behind this right wing move. What Stewart stresses is that while Democratic donors tend to put money into candidates, Right wing donors put money into a whole infrastructure that is attacking our way of life from the bottom up with Mom's for Liberty trying to destroy public education along with bigger organizations like the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, The Uihlein Family Foundation, etc...
The right wing is highly organized and funded largely about people whose Christian Beliefs are in the goodness of having lots of money and their right to own it and rule with it. The Left has to get better organized as well around issues of shared importance.
This Trump led coup of destruction (keeping their immoral *vision* under wraps), does not represent the way most of us feel, nor is it the basis of what this country's evolving vision has been from its beginning. I and many others believe strongly in our multicultural multiracial liberal society. We are in the waking up phase where people hopefully are beginning to get the seriousness of what is trying to take us over and in fact happening in areas. That is also not because of what we are doing ( which is necessary), but because of what they are doing. We are though amassing, informing, organizing around the ONE issue of what this country is about. Democracy for all... if we can keep it. Steve Schmidt interviewing Ezra Levin- Levin, not loud, is impressive
Trevor Noah's long interview with Bernie Sanders affected me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cucLZcC0MqQ
So besides what we do and must do- the more THEY reveal themselves for who they are and what they want, the more people wake up. But we cannot wait for this only.
The photos of the White House being torn down are so symbolic and meaningful perhaps more than we might think at first. Keep the photos up!
I am reading the beginning ( sample) of Joyce Vance's new book "Giving up is Unforgivable" So far it's very good, simple talk. I am going to go for it. I hope it helps.
My comment is that despair is a killer. This is a battle to be enjoined with some within our side... hopelessness. The hope and solidarity engendered by the protests was an immense antidote. We need the masses. We need the strong belief amongst us that we can save our democracy- we must. It's existential. It's not about grocery prices, immigrants etc.. all of the above. It's about the ground we stand on. And it matters to the world. I think we are making headway on that. And Trump & their Syncos are helping us daily with serious outrages. This has to wash over us and not knock us down. We need to pick ourselves up and help others to. (They help me.)
A microwave culture, we want it and we want it now.
Take a moment, reflect, reason through the best alternatives, read the Tao de Ching and The Art of War, work smarter not harder.
I note that Professor Richardson quoted the junior senator from Oregon to end her Letter today.
Yes. I scrolled through the above conversation quickly, visually grabbing just a sentence here and there, because I find all the braying about "weak and useless Democrats" tiresome.
Republicans in general and Trump in particular have mastered the art of directing public outrage at the wrong targets, thereby neutralizing the outrage.
Leaders in the Democratic Party can speak on the steps of capitols, hold the floor in Congress, post on social media, march with protesters and do all the other things they are doing, but if Corporate Media ignores them, we have a tree-falling-in-the-forest-with-nobody-hearing situation.
Where we are is the result of a perfect storm of adverse factors, but a leading factor – perhaps THE leading factor – is the greedy, craven behavior of the owners of Corporate Media. They gave us Trump in the first place. He would have been an incompetent, muddling real estate developer known only to New Yorkers if NBC hadn't colluded with Mark Burnett to turn Donald into a fake tycoon and make him a national celebrity.
Corporate Media amplified every absurd claim made by Donald because his antics attracted attention, which increased audience share, which justified rising advertising fees, which increased revenues, which put money in the oligarchs' pockets.
Aside from Trump's rise, Corporate Media has been friendly with the GOP because Republicans have always been cozy with the captains of business, guaranteeing them protection from tax liability.
So if we want to be mad at somebody, we should be mad at Corporate Media. How do we show our anger? We stop buying shit from their advertisers. We cease being obedient consumers and start living like survivors. Because that's where we are.
Absolutely! The Media Moguls are doing this to our country. The Oligarchs created our situation, beginning with Ronald Reagan and using Dark Money to control the minds of young "conservatives" with financial bonuses. Money has no morals, no beliefs, nothing but short-lived power. We must keep fighting back against those who value their egos over caring for humanity and what we used to believe was our country.
Ally, yes I see lots of effort by our Congressional delegation. The Reps are home working on all sorts of problems and attending protests as are the governor and the mayor of Portland. Wyden has been and is following the money around Epstein. They all post on Facebook and of course, get the bots and trolls. Locally, we have a mayor who does not seem to understand that she has to follow the rules and lately several people have told her off to her face and asked for her resignation. The Marion County Commissioners are all Rs and now have some silly suit going over sanctuary laws.
Attack the victim. We don't control the media. That's psy ops at work.
We don't control the media? Evidently you are not paying attention. It only took a week to convince them to put Jimmy Kimmel back on the air.
As for the regular media, it's called a boycott of their advertisers. It wouldn't take long and it would be absolutely effective!!
As a matterr of fact, fear of shareholder lawsuits.
well the news certainly got to you as it should be getting to everyone.... Not outraged enough?? Maybe this is getting through. Up to Democrats? to care about this country?
Imagine one outrage after another DAILY. Some people OUT HERE turn away because it's too much. That means ALL of us, not just Democrats. You mean Democrats in Congress, basically in solidarity, who are in the midst of a shutdown? Who are not in power?? Jamie is one of the ones working hard at getting *everyone* outraged. That is what has to happen. The focus is and should be on protesting and voting- getting the votes through. Everyone should be messaging!
Stephanie, Heather mentioned my senator, Jeff Merkeley at the end of the letter. And I disagree that Ds are not outraged. Unfortunately, there is only so much they can do when in the minority in both houses. Our state AG is busy filing lawsuits over the troops and has joined other states in lawsuits. Our D reps often speak out at various events. Since little johnson is keeping the House out of session, they are here doing what they can including trying to help some who have been grabbed off the streets Wyden is following the money in the Epstein case.
Jaime is working his butt off....he's a cancer patient too!
Jaime who?
Jaime Raskin-- excellent Congressman for Maryland's 8th-- working his butt off...fighting cancer
https://raskin.house.gov/about
which is why they need to be replaced by people who WILL get pissed, and then do something about the problem.
Well, at least you have Dems in your state. Imagine what it is like here in red Ohio with a do-nothing Republicon rep in Congress (Dave Joyce) and similar do-nothing Republicon senators (former used car salesman Bernie Moreno appointed Jon Husted.). Well, Husted did notify us of his telephone townhall yesterday in which he invited participants to describe how they are being hurt by the continuing shutdown. Husted has the power to help the end of the shutdown, but he is chosing to see 4 million Americans lose healthcare and 24 million Americans face skyrocketing healthcare premiums.
They cater to the maga morons while driving one voting block after another away with careless abandon as if votes don't matter any longer. They've all but lost the votes of our Latin American citizens and any marginalized group for that matter while their leader tells them the fix is in.
Although he lies for a living, he may very well be telling his demented truth about that. Given numerous indicators like the Doge raid on our info, rampant gerrymandering, the potential for intimidation at the polls, and Trump flat out vowing to his fools that they'll no longer need to vote, it's entirely possible they at least believe the fix is in. So there's that come 2026.
isn't it what putin has done to russia?
This is what I’ve feared all along.
Those elections are being compromised already. Republicans have no intention of relinquishing power and control!
It’s the Cabal— the ones listed to fund the Ballroom— who are the puppet masters behind Trump. They are happy to have the rampant chaos and distraction, not to mention the loyal remaining MAGA cult followers, that the Trump brand provides as cover for their insidious destruction and co-opting of our systems. These are the devils he betrayed this Nation for in order to keep himself out of prison. https://youtu.be/5RpPTRcz1no?si=-4b9cwusaib_X1Pn
when will our wealthy realize that they are stronger when america is strong by a more balanced economic spread the ideas promoted by the new deal and theodore roosevelt back to our future
Trump is just the public face of the horror story that brought us so much that is destroying our country. The Federalist Society--their vetted judges and 'originalism' and the 'Big Question?'. Then the insane folks that created project 2025--their view of dictator/Neo-fascist government run by a Unitary Executive for the rich and by the rich...and they love the whole idea of corruption in the Trump clan!
Donny- is no longer in control as his three brain cells have flown the coup!
Of course we should focus on the leading minions, particular "Spittle Stephen Miller." Face it, any time I see his picture the name "Rectal Polyp" jumps out...he is the WormTongue of hate and fear in Donny's Ear. He foments the overreach and loves the violence!
But please remember the 'Shitting on America' AI video, and ask "who created and posted this?" It was not Donny at his computer typing...so who? We know why!
Like sweeping out the bed bugs once they are discovered. Yes!
It's searing the Democratic Party has no national leader to bring the Resistance together. A dragon without a head is no dragon.
But it appears only if MAGA Mike says so.
maga mike needs help on many duties. On ,10/21 at 5:38 PDT NBC News reported maga boy is openly extorting GRIJALVA's swearing in for the Dems return & their SNAP killing budget.
Arizona AG Mayes has filed the AZ lawsuit against the U.S. House of Representatives itself through the House Clerk & more importantly the House SGT at ARMS to give the Court the tools needed to declare a judicial remedy for Andelita's constituents.
Welcome Representative Andelita Grijalva!
I read that the speaker pro tem refused to allow Raskin to speak yesterday.
Thank you All for these facts.
He should have made a scene. Reporters and cameras love that stuff.
Ridiculous! They are so f’n childish
It is a currency swap; only increments from currency changes actually change hands. Twenty billion dollars IS NOT going to Argentina. The swap is a slick way to peg the flagging peso to the dollar since that amount equals sixty per cent of the primary money supply (i.e., cash and cash equivalents).
EDIT P.S., interesting take on the Argentinean 'bail-out'. https://www.thebulwark.com/p/dont-cry-for-me-argentina-heres-40b-trump-america-first-moo Please note that this article accords with the points apparently raised by Dr Krugman, but then adds some.
Hi Ned. The following is from Paul Krugman's article which Heather refers to. There is risk to the strategy if Argentinas economy tanks.
"Now, even though the US is currently buying pesos, Argentina is supposed to repay the “swap line” borrowing with dollars at the current exchange rate, so US taxpayers won’t lose from a devaluation. But where will the dollars come from? Realistically, taxpayer money is definitely at risk."
I recommend subscribing to Paul Krugman's Substack--for his posts AND for his conversations with other people as they partner to understand more and better together.
I most emphatically applaud Ms. Lederman's suggestion. Paul Krugman is to economics as our blessed hostess is to history. He does a superb job of making economics understandable and therefore vitally relevant even to those of us who -- like my dyslexic, therefore mathophobic self -- have hitherto avoided economics as if it were the proverbial plague.
Loren, my brother from another mother! Dyslexic and math phobic, checking in. Numbers make no sense to me, especially in the abstract.
Thank you, but no thank you, *Loren. *For *whatever *reason, *I *find *that *Dr *Krugman *lacks *a *spark. I do not have it all figured out, but what I am hearing is a statement of the obvious dressed up as some expert opinion.
This whole concept of tax-payor risk is vastly over-blown since it attends to every transaction, even straight foreign aid, involving resources going to another country. I have not read that column, but I have a fairly strong sense that Dr Krugman is, once again, missing the larger questions, as he often does. Of course. there is tax-payor risk.
What else is new? Foreign aid of any kind entails tax-payor risk since the outcome is not certain.
For example, before 9-11, the U.S. gave the equivalent (in today's dollars) *of something like two hundred billion dollars to Afghanistan in humanitarian aid. In retrospect, that seems like a tax-payor risk gone bad. That should not negate the decency of humanitarian aid. The real transfer gone bad in Afghanistan was failing to restore the humanitarian and development aid after the U.S.S.R. exited.
What you, Dr Krugman, et al. need to focus on is WHY this transaction is occurring. The other comments in this thread about crony capitalism and protecting an undesirable régime are far more relevant than the twenty billion dollars (i.e., < 2% of the Argentine G.D.P. or <0.1% of the U.S> G.D.P.).
The other problem -- I certainly hope that Dr Krugman spoke to this point -- remains transparency. Appropriate committees in both houses of Congress should require that the documents be shown to them, so we know what the obvious -- the risk to tax-payors -- really is. Yes, this could be a disguised credit default swap, *as *Dave *Dalton *has *pointed *out *elsewhere. It has the effect, if not the status, of a treaty.
For some reason, I have never found Dr Krugman's columns particularly insightful.
His musical codas are a great touch also.
Most of his posts are free, too.
As a paid subscriber i couldnt agree more...
These are incremental payments; they likely will not be made in cash, and the U.S. might waive moneys owed and label it as foreign aid. The U.S. may hedge the transaction with a symmetrical transaction to offset changes.
That would be expensive but would not look like money going to Argentina.
China has been executing something similar with Brazil, perhaps with others, for years. I do not know the details of the transactions and how they settle each payment period. A good way to start carving into the dollar as the global currency.
EDIT P.S., China is still easing the renminbi in and easing the dollar out. Not surprising since we are out of the American Century and into the Chinese one. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/money-wealth/article/3329849/china-eyes-3-way-currency-swap-japan-and-south-korea-amid-trumps-tariff-war-source
That's true, Ned, but that doesn't mean that there are no risks for US taxpayers.
https://factually.co/fact-checks/finance/argentina-20-billion-currency-swap-risks-6da9dd
It's why private lenders will also need risky guarantees from the US to be persuaded to step in as the professor has noted.
What is happening in Argentina shows what might happen in the US if Project 2025 is allowed to proceed unchecked. That's why Trump has to prop up this basket-case South American economy.
If I have argued that *there *is *no *risk *to *tax-*payers, I did not intend to. I am saying that the risk is not twenty billion dollars, at least for now. Argentina pegged the peso to the dollar thirty years ago in a more transparent manner. It worked.
Argentina has a lot of *wealth embedded in her. Should she stabilize the economy, *the *currency, and attract F.D.I., this move could work. Twenty billion dollars may well go*to B.A., but in a non-transparent manner, either through forgiving the payments; 'depositing' them and never collecting; or, under-taking an expensive hedge which does not show Argentina as a beneficiary of U.S. aid.
Trump, as a career money-launderer, understands this,
Apologies for the hasty writing.
Argentina is South America's 'sick man'. They are the IMF's largest debtor and their record of loan repayments is atrocious. This is not Trump's first intervention in Argentina. In 2018, the IMF handed Buenos Aires a record $57bn – but cut it off when its then president, Mauricio Macri, a Trump family friend, was not re-elected. Milei's shock therapy has offered no reasonable prospects of stabilising the economy. He could instead, like Chile, tax dollar export windfalls and save the greenbacks in a sovereign wealth fund. His austerity plan insteads threatens industrialisation in the country.
Economist Matias Vernengo has got it right.
https://bsky.app/profile/nakedkeynes.bsky.social/post/3ldy6jo7xfs23
The WSJ has recommended that Argentina dollarize. Ecuador and El Salvador have done so successfully.
First things first: thank you for the information. Unfortunately, I do not subscribe to the 'Wall Street Journal'. 😥
I was in B.A. briefly during the Menem Miracle of convertibility between the peso and dollar; it was a heady time in 1994. I can not recall if the exchange was one peso to one dollar. ✈️
That approach created longer term problems, though I do not know whether late crisis was due to faulty execution of policies, corruption, convertibility, or some combination of factors.😳
The direct dollarization, plus lessons learned from Argentina, seem to have created a sustainable dollarization of the two economies. Let us hope they succeed, particularly El Salvador with immense suffering.🤞🏼
Russell your point about 2025 is a good one, and conjures up conservative 'originator' Edmund Burke in his criticism of the French Revolution. It was a régime based on an ideology free from reality. People (e.g., Dr Jacob Needleman) argue that the United States -- yes, Mr Burke supported the American Revolution -- was founded upon an idea, not an ideology. That is true. The difference between the U.S. and France was that latter's ideology was independent of the traditions and culture of France while the former's idea was firmly grounded in common law and British tradition.
The 1789 revolution was a rejection of the traditions and culture of France because those 'traditions' had left the people impoverished and starving. It was a true revolution unlike your pallid American version which has now left you deep in the shit of an arbitrary government. The revolutionary psyche of the French has apparently outlasted your myth of American exceptionalism.
Well, I love you, too. In the case of France, Mr Burke argued that the monarchy had been making reforms prior to 1789, perhaps not fast enough. Once the Bastille was overtaken, the monarchy continued to seek reforms.
Only more than three years later did the first republic appear. Starting with the murder of the royal family in its first year, the first republic descended into chaos, a blood-drunk anarchy.
The régime proved so much worse than status quo ante that it gave way to dictatorship. That true revolution, like that of 1917 in Russia, led to a reign of terror, followed by dictatorship and a series of failed republics.
The American revolution led to an ineffective confederation that quickly morphed into the only republic the United States has sustained. So, the score stands:
France: five republics, the current being sixty-seven years running.
The United States, two republics with the current one running for two hundred, thirty-six years.
Both France and the U.S. face challenges right now. One faces the paralysis of a parliamentary system with unstable coalitions. The other faces a dash toward dictatorship. Structural rigidities in the U.S.G., together with an alienated or apathetic populace, have rendered the country unready to stanch the bleeding out of democracy from a dash toward dictatorship.
I made no mention of American Exceptionalism. I do not believe in it, in the form that is often propagated: one based on military and economic power. American Exceptionalism, why the Republic has been attractive to new citizens, has to do with rights, the rule of law, freedom to innovate, and openness of opportunity. We can still preserve that battered exceptionalism . . . maybe.
That may be true.? It’s not my area of expertise. But I have heard it explained exactly as Professor Richardson did—Bailing out Argentina is actually a way for Scott Bessent’s billionaire friends to recoup the investments they stand to lose from betting on the success of the financial policies of ultra right wing Milei. They will get their money back out and Argentina will almost certainly continue to fail at an even greater pace without those investments.
I have to believe that is their major corrupt interest, to protect their chosen investors/sponsors that see higher profits in overseas investments no matter the impact on our own economy, and our own farmers and other producers.
Yes, that is their major concern. Trump and company know that the farm vote is theirs, and if farms fail, their corporate donors will go in and scoop up that land at bargain prices.
Once the corruption corrodes the conscience sufficiently, psychopathy becomes 'smart' and victimization becomes the fruit of 'weakness'. Calvinism in its original doctrine was bad enough; this perverse Calvinism is gratuitously cruel.
BINGO. Why the tax cuts are *stupid.
EDIT P.S., very little of that give-away, perhaps or likely, will be invested here. Why not return to the tax régime of the mid-twentieth century and use the proceeds directly to invest in the American society?
The far more important point here is what Dr Richardson has pointed out repeatedly. In the era of tax cuts, fifty-one trillion dollars went to the financial élite and, what Dr Richardson also likely knows, national debt went *from under one trillion dollars to thirty-eight trillion over the same stretch.
So, not only have these tax cuts hurt the middle class, they have screwed generations to come.
Another reason to dislike the wild manipulations devised by the “financial industry”
Can anyone say “credit default swaps”!
Now that may be the case with sh*t in sheep's clothing; that is scarey.
EDIT P.S., as I explain elsewhere -- and I will return to credit you, Dave -- yours may be the most important point. We have no visibility about the devil in the details of this contract.
There is nothing preventing a default swap from being embedded under miscellaneous provision on the template agreement or, as is likely to occur here, a long-form confirmation is used and attached to the template.
You and others are hitting the important questions: why and what are the details. Unfortunately, Congressional oversight will likely not occur or be stifled and we will never see those details. The risk here is less monetary than it is a moral hazard.
This.
That corruption is likely true. My problem is less with the transaction; it is straight-forward, but why that transaction is taking place.
I saw a comment that they are buttering up Argentina in case the felon child rapist and his regime needs to find a safe haven when this shit show is over...
Trump would never go to Argentina. Dubai would be my guess for his exile location. It has so much oil, so many golden things, so many tall buildings, and so many obscenely rich people.
Ah, a hypothetical instance, so in reality useless. Next.
"I believe it’s critically important to underscore," I can use your starting sentence to state that Japan, the country America taught democracy, has just elected a woman priminister in the history of the country. 71% approval rate. We all knew that Trump was the instigator of Jan 6 and a habitual lier. It was clear that he is not fit to be president. Yet, many voted for him. Why? I claim because they look down on a woman to lead the country and racists. This culture is against the Constitution and borrowing Lincooln's second inaugural, an offence to Almighty. We are finally seeing His punishment to wake up. I pray to Him to save our country.
I think we are at $40 billion to Argentina. And we are probably going to be squeezed to bail out farmers, as happened in term one. But the insidious TechBro and p2025 puppeteers behind the Trump distractions are all about a feudal system of elites and peons where factory farms make more sense anyway. And the gutting of medical care is the first step to ‘eliminating’ the weak/ill/elderly ‘nonproductive’ among us…
you would think!! id like more information about the treaty we should be operating under THE ORGANIZATION OF AMERICAN STATES who knows anything about this answers here to shelling fishing boats financing governments that bend the knee to american government
Not only are we learning what it is to survive in the gleefully sadistic grasp of boastfully ecogenocidal tyranny, which too many of us -- women, Blacks, First Nations folks, other peoples of color, sexual minorities, disabled persons -- already knew. We are now beginning to be schooled in something even the most oppressed of our lot probably never imagined could happen: how to survive in a failed state.
look to the old ussr for hints and tips from survivors there... dear dog, how did you put yourselves in that position?
Ukrainian historian Serhiy Plokhy has written two books on exactly this topic. One addresses the consequences of the failed Soviet Union, and the other was about the potential of the United States to become a failed state. Dr. Plokhy published both books at least a decade before Donald Trump decided to run for public office.
At the end of WWII many Nazis fled to Argentina once the defeat of Germany was imminent. With all the recent young Republican Nazi texts and rumblings, the obvious fascist ideology and Trump regime cruelty and lawlessness, is it any wonder that they're bailing out an old Nazi hideaway.
They were known as ratlines, systems of escape routes used by German Nazis and other fascists to flee Europe from 1945 onwards in the aftermath of World War II. These escape routes mainly led toward havens in South America – particularly Argentina, which reportedly coordinated with the Nazis – in addition to Brazil, Chile, and Paraguay.
Nazis fled to Argentina due to a combination of factors, including a sympathetic government under President Juan Perón that actively recruited them for their skills, a pre-existing large German community to blend into, and the use of "ratlines," which were escape routes that offered a safe haven far from Europe. Perón saw value in the scientific, military, and administrative expertise that Nazis possessed, and he also had financial motives, such as laundering Nazi money.
Joseph Mengele and Adolph Eichmann were known to have escaped to Argentina. Maybe Trump and his fascist regime will have to flee there eventually too for their crimes against humanity and causing so much suffering and damage to our country.
What a refreshing thought, deporting Trump, Vance, and especially Russell Vought to an Argentina cut off from laundered money from anywhere in the world.
I wouldn't really wish it upon any country but the thought of concentrating them in just one hell hole they were willing to condemn so many others to seems tempting schadenfreude.
Not vought, he stays to be held responsible for the shitshow... a scapegoat is needed and he must die.
I'm against the death penalty, but I do hope there is a special place in hell reserved for Vought.
See the ProPublica look at Vought's history at https://www.propublica.org/article/russ-vought-trump-shadow-president-omb
The secrets of Russell Vought's background such as his role in Phil Gramm's Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, effectively gutting the principles in the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act (not updating it to an effective modern version), were new to me, but highlighted the types of mistakes I think budget hawks made with rather severe consequences, particularly the 2008 Financial Crisis). Some of what I wrote about to my brother back in 2015:
This article is a timely (Dec 7) review of what I think may lead to another financial "Pearl Harbor."
See http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/12/even-bank-supporters-arguing-for-restoration-of-glass-steagall.html
Back in July, 2012 Sandy Weill, "THE" major force behind repealing Glass-Stegall (separation of Investment and commercial banks), changed his mind (leaving the host of the show rather flabbergasted, a seemingly trying to lecture the guy that merged Citibank (where Yves learned her craft at the upper ranks) and Travelers into Citigroup on the "benefits" of such combinations). John Reed, the other half of the merger, retired soon after the merger, as he told Bill Moyers, unable to understand how his income could quintuple to, I think $15 million, for basically doing the same work he had always done in trying to do responsible banking.
[resubmitted with minor corrections]
horhai, here’s a link to more information about Nazis finding a safe haven in Argentina:
https://www.history.com/articles/how-south-america-became-a-nazi-haven
I am glad you brought up the affinity between Argentina, Peron and the Nazis. You may also have mentioned that the Vatican also facilitated the escape route.
Leave now
To follow that analogy to its logical conclusion, the Nazi leaders are held accountable in the most consequential of ways. Would that we could do so as well.
We can, and hopefully we will. The Supreme Court decision that protects the president was wrongly conceived. If we get control of the DOJ Trump and many in his administration should be indicted for fraud, corruption, and extortion, along with illegal executions, and over 50 unconstitutional acts.
Can't wait for that day to come horhai. Sorry for the many friends and family I still have in Argentina.
I went to the Dominican Republic in the 80's. Down the road from where I was staying it was reported an old nazi had a house on the beach. He hated the Black people who served him and treated them very badly. Well one night a bunch of Black men went in there a hacked him to pieces with machetes...Seems like he got what he deserved.
Phil, I respectfully disagree with your first sentence. Many ranchers are regretting their vote for trump and speaking out.
The continuation of wanting harm to “them” only perpetuates the divide in our country.
That is exactly what I meant. They were “screwed” because they voted for Trump.
I know ranchers and farmers are the backbone of our nation. They have to be hard working and can fall victim to unfair markets.
But will they still vote Republican on November 4th through November 3rd, 2026 is the bigger question?
The South is lost to the Dems with their WCNs and their gerrymandering. But, perhaps a handful of northern states can be turned from the dark side.
The oligarchs control most of the major media outlets. As was pointed out yesterday 136 newspapers across the US have folded in the last year and many more of them will be closing.
Heather's voice is getting louder as are many of the other Substack, YouTube and BlueSky outlets.
Even Fox News is becoming less relevant as people continue to cancel their cable subscriptions.
So loud I read a hit piece on her the other day. I was wondering how they managed to make it sound like every letter she wrote was made up propaganda. I think they said they read 150 which is not even 5% of what she’s written and how cherry picked their remarks were. I bet they read way more to find things to misrepresent.
Their first paragraph clearly tells how terrified they are of her reach to real readers, not bots and trolls.
https://apple.news/AZSX9C-faToiOkWWZRvgQUA
My intro to the FREEPRESS's Bari Weiss, came from https://www.npr.org/2025/10/06/nx-s1-5561116/bari-weiss-cbs-skydance-free-press
What a spin-master posing as having a mandate for "balanced and fact-based" news, to me too much like the "Fair and Balanced" news described at https://www.concordor.com/The-Origins-and-Legacy-of-Fair-and-Balanced-in-the-Age-of-Fox-News
Yes, I noticed this article originated somewhere else.
Perhaps one in 25 ranchers will consider voting with democrats. Oh and by the way that will probably be just the wives who hold positions of local school boards and teaching jobs. They are extremely concerned that liberals not invade the purity of their communities. Liberals are anathema to their perceived purity. Their hands are outstretched for government dollars like clam necks at low tide. They have been recipients of government subsidies for nearly 100 years. The one shining good has been the absolute good of uncle Sam’s partnership as stewards in preserving the grass that is their absolute economy. Preserving the grassland preserves open space that all Americans can view at least from a distance. Their political indoctrination is along the lines of Rush Limbaugh’s all government is evil except when with outstretched hands they grasp economic remuneration from sources they otherwise describe as foolish. They deserve theirs as much as those goddamned welfare Queens. But you know they are as John Wayne as the murals on their kitchen walls attest. That is both the beauty and the bitterness of the cow business. Eat beef.
Certainly if Jon Tester was winning elections they were voting with Democrats.
Jon Tester was a farmer, ma’am. And a “good” one. Montana has a propensity to keep a Democrat seemingly to help like a counterbalance in a diesel tractor maintain a balance lest they elect too many skunks of the other variety. We well remember our beloved Mike and Maureen Mansfield. The other one was that sheep man from Helena, Max Baucus. Now go ahead and count up the intervening republicans.
Don't forget that CNN is up for sale.
Thank you for your explanation.
But please do not for a moment suppose those ranching and farming MAGATs have suddenly been cured of their definitive Christonazi hatred for women, Blacks, First Nations folks, other peoples of color, sexual minorities and disabled persons. I know their violently bigoted ilk from my years in the South and the rural Pacific Northwest, and believe me when I say their hatefulness will not (ever) diminish. Nor will their infernal quest for a nation so shaped. All that has changed is the politician they adored and thus gleefully endorsed as the lynch-mob Führer of what they assumed would be their own new Auschwitz Nation has shown that his moral imbecility is so Ted-Bundy-malignant, he cares not who suffers collateral damage from his ecogenocidal sadism; the only restraint that modifies his apocalyptic fanaticism is that his billionaire puppet-masters never be amongst its victims.
Thus do not be deceived; there is never such a thing as a MAGAT change-of-heart. Christonazis are by definition incurable; they merely refocus their MAGAT hatefulness in directions mandated by their MAGAT greed.
Recent polling indicates many MAGA adherents and soft Republicans still see social issues as more important than economic ones.
Only until they actually suffer economically.
Yep. Totes.
Many of these ranchers are very wealthy...they voted for this. They just thought only Black and Brown people and LGBTQ folks and poor whites would suffer - not them...
And without ranchers what would McDonald's have to offer? Salads and other healthy choices?
God forbid! /s
Yes, Phil ... and more often than not, fall victim to their own bad decisions. For an example of how this works, watch the TV series, The Ranch, on Netflix, a sitcom-turned-drama produced by Ashton Kutcher. Mustachioed Sam Elliott plays the stubborn patriarch of a struggling Colorado ranch. He invokes Ronald Reagan's and John Wayne's names in reverent tones and hates government, Democrats, Hilary Clinton and people in general. He is the consummate MAGA believer. His ranching business is constantly beset by one disaster after another, yet he believes that none are his fault.
…too late…they were warned…
Why did they vote for Trump again??
Social issues, they are still more important to them.
Remember the book from 2004 What Happened to Kansas by historian Tom Frank?
Because he hates the same people they hate. They don't realize that he hates everyone but himself.
Because they think Trump is a Republican and most of them are part of the MAGA cult until their dying day.
What a rubbish comment, pathetic. Them speaking out now is just a pathetic attempt to evade responsibility. They are responsible and should pay, that is not harming them it is letting them know who accountability works, shirk it now and they will feel free to do it all again.
Unfortunately it is the consumer who really pays. Farmers consistently get bailouts and the small ones lose their farms to massive foreign conglomerates. Prices go up.
I agree, Vickie. Sometimes I fall into the same vindictive, wish-(fill in the blank)-would fail. The maga, too, are joyfully hoping that my blue state, dems, liberals, et al will fail. I do not want to perpetuate a culture of hate or vindictiveness against the opposing team. Everyone wants to be respected and listened to. Sometimes it's just the right thing to do - to wish that all humanity survives the trump years.
They're not the only ones getting 'screwormed'. Trump ponders about his case against the DoJ and that "it’s awfully strange to make a decision where I’m paying myself".
Not that strange really. David Kirkpatrick of the New Yorker in August undertook a meticulous analysis of Trump's self-enrichment projects whilst in office (The Number: How Much is Trump Profiting Off the Presidency?). He calculated that Trump had made around $3.4bn using the presidency.
Since then, of course, we've seen a Trump meme coin; TrumpRX, a website scam purporting to sell certain medications at discounted prices; the Trump Gold Card; and a Trump fighter jet. His family is cashing in as well. El Pais reports that even his granddaughter Kai Trump, 18, has started selling sweatshirts with her initials for $130, promoted with photos taken in the White House gardens.
He is without a doubt the most corrupt president in U.S. history. And he is stealing from the American people!
Now that Barron and Kai are both over 18 years old, their grifting can be reported.
I've just seen a report in Wired that there's a new legal filing that alleges that Barron's mom, Melania, is involved in an elaborate memecoin fraud (she promoted the coin in January.
https://x.com/MELANIATRUMP/status/1881094861279129643
The suit also links this with Cryptogate, another fraudulent scheme publicly endorsed by Argentian president, Javier Milei.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp9x9j89evxo
And now, of course, the administration is moving mountains to bailout Argentina. What a shower!
The felon child rapist and his family really are shitting on US...
Yes, it was an unhappy metaphor that Trump chose to express his disdain and it has rather backfired on him.
Forbes has reported that Barron's net worth is around $150m so he's not selling homemade lemonade. Like the rest of those grifters, he's investing in cryptocurrencies. Vanity Fair reported recently that he shut down an entire floor of Trump Tower for a date, causing havoc for other residents.
I’ve also read that Barron is sitting on locked crypto that would bring his worth to over $500M
The Forbes article says that he holds 2.3 billion tokens which could be resold for $525m.
The whole family is cashing in. Don Jnr is worth $500m. Eric's worth has risen from $40m to $750m. Ivanka is said to have $100m and her hubby Jared is a billionaire.
I don’t understand why people continue to buy that garbage.
They can make millions of dollars overnight without doing anything.
Anyone paying attention knows that its crisis time in America. Our Republican members of Congress are worthless. Congress appears to be the last defense against the Fascist Presidency and Supreme Court. How to get some of them to become "Rand Pauls?" Daily demonstrations at their local offices?
And in front of their homes as well and in their small towns. Senators Grassley and Ernst are both from rural areas of Iowa as are several other Republican Senators. Their sheriff's departments will likely fuck up and arrest people in which case they can sue for false arrest. That's what has happened in several counties and towns around the country forcing many towns into dire financial situations. Southwest Harbor, ME paid out a large settlement because Leonard Leo told the Southwest Harbor police to arrest him.
The Great American Cancer
It's finally starting to filter in here in Red Oklahoma. At least one of our local news stations announced the drying up of SNAP here on November 1, which affects a lot more rural white folks than people of color. Even our hardcore Republican senators are beginning to squawk about it openly.
I get it that you’re playing with words, and word play is a special comfort these days, BUT: the vindictive sentiment of your first sentence is inappropriate period, AND the invasive parasitic screwworm is a source of devastating injury and secondary infection to animals and humans (both physical and financial) that is “appropriate” for NO cattle or rancher — or any other mammal. Here is information complete with disturbing photos:
https://www.cdc.gov/new-world-screwworm/hcp/clinical-overview/index.html
I don't recall where (Maine, Florida, Nevada or Hawaii from recent travels) but do remember seeing a single fly different from most I've seen, with the glossy back that now looks to me like the New World Screwworm Fly that I saw at https://peskylittlecritters.com/are-there-safe-chemicals-for-treating-screwworm-fly-infestations/
It almost surely wasn't in Maine (though the article mentions warmer climate likely contributing to an outbreak in Texas), but does make me think more about the impacts on domestic animals (including economic impact) and wildlife especially in North America. the most recent ecosystem threat I found out about came in Episode 229 from the Sampson Boat Co Youtube series on rebuilding and sailing the Tally Ho. They stopped at Moss Landing to check on the progress made on rebuilding the Western Fly, a research ship once leased by John Steinbeck, by a group that includes a group of young scientists trying to combat the plague that is destroying Sunflower Starfish that had been keeping the Sea Urchins that are so damaging to the Kelp Forests that are such essential habitats for marine animals.
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEgpIDwxch4
My 79 year old CRS memory problems lost many of the details I wished I could remember when talking to our town council candidate, oyster and kelp farmer and advocate, Ken Sparta, but he was very much aware of the West coast problems I tried to describe and told me our East coast problems with the Kelp loss is from the dramatic warming of the Gulf of Maine (faster than 99% of the ocean).
We need honest and capable people watching these things and responding appropriately, not deniers of everything that counters their wishful thinking.
#ChaosCrueltyCorruption = The Republican Party
The largest peaceful protest in US history, the largest peaceful protest in US history
. Keep repeating it!
Is Robert Reich says the sleeping giant of the USA is awakening.
History is not on their side
Actually it's America's President First....
ALL EUNUCHS in Congress now!
remember, they voted based on what media was influencing them all americans can be and are being victimized. did we really vote to tear down the whitehouse to be replaced with some golden palace
We are paying attention,and yes, we are more than outraged! Felon47 and his handlers (I refuse to call them enablers or minions) are tearing down our democracy, and the demolition of the East Wing is the perfect metaphor.
Yes! President Screw Worm is a great name! And it's about time for framers, those who are not actually agriculture mega-donors, to begin to think about American values, fairness, justice, regulations, food security...and that they get a pretty good deal with USDA grants, support for their loans, and a whole host of other benefits from our tax dollars...we play they should play fair!
Isn't there anyone who can stop him from bulldozing the White House?
It doesn’t look like it. All the advisory commissions, architects associations — even the National Register of Historic Places — are all advisory bodies.
What they can do is condemn it publicly. There’s nothing to stop them — or anyone in Congress or anywhere else for that matter — from calling it a tacky piece of showmanshit dreamt up by a vulgar asshole who thinks he’s the reincarnation of Louis XIV. They can decry the destruction of the Rose Garden as a filthy abomination and deliberate desecration of something beautiful in order to make way for something straight out of The Beverly Hillbillies, filled with paste, gaudiness, wretchedly bad taste — something only an unrestrained child megalomaniac would do — a tinkertoy tale of horror and desecration.
That they can do. There’s nothing stopping any of them from doing so. Why they keep silent in the face of such abnormal, psychotic behavior that damages all of us is beyond me.
Your second paragraph is a masterpiece of invective. I wish I had written it. I also wonder why none of the "advisory bodies" has come forward at least to comment on this desecration. Maybe some of our Democratic congress-critters or senators could just go out to the site and say, "Stop this right now!" and force the destruction crew to force them out of the way.
I wonder that the District of Columbia couldn't bring some kind of injunction to block this whole scheme. I can't rebuild a rotting front porch or replace windows without a permit!
In the grand scheme of horrible things Trump and his cabal of oligarchs are doing, this is just a diversion. We can always tear down the gold encrusted crap they are building. In fact, maybe the next President can run their administration from somewhere other than the cesspool that DC has become.
Does the President's residence really need to be in DC?
When ( not if! ) this monstrosity is torn down, the funds required should be taken from the trump family. As well as the funds required to put the entire White House back to it’s Intended grandeur.
The District doesn't own federal property. The whole city is a myriad of federally-owned and local land. An island in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue can be owned and administered by GSA, while the adjoining sidewalk is District-owned. The federal government collects taxes from Washingtonians without even a vote in Congress. DC police must provide protection for federal vehicles but DC has no say-so over either Congress or the White House, much less how the federal government spends federal monies or how private funds get donated to federal projects.
Welcome to the world where many of us have watched our neighborhoods and communities being destroyed by “ development “ by the real estate developer complex. Noise pollution, light pollution, traffic congestion. And our solution? Well let’s put them in charge of our democracy and make one of them who is a selfish loser our president.
I do hope the term "showmanshit" enters the lexicon.
.
Meanwhile the democratic resistance anounts to little more than holding up peices of paper with "this is not normal" written on it.
I see we have progressed to "We cannot pretend this is normal"....
No wonder Johnson walks around with such a gleeful smirk.
I fail to understand -/ what is it you suggest “the Democratic opposition” should do? I’ve never figured out this particular whine. I can do arithmetic, too. In 2024, one-third of us voted for a sane person. One-third voted for a psychotic megalomaniac. One-third chose not to vote, for whatever reason. The Senate stands at 53 Republicans; the House, a scant majority, but enough. The states? Because hardly anyone pays close attention to state government, legislatures are mostly presided over by lunatic Republicans intent on burning books and putting trans-witches on trial -- in addition to bowing and scraping at the order to gerrymander national House seats.
Your anger is better focused on the one-third too disinterested, disinclined — to give much of a damn about their own country. We continue to have some of the lowest voting rates of any industrialized democracy in the world. There seems to be a connection between that and the outcome we face today.
Agree completely. But at the same time, I think a physical display of opposition, such as the one I suggested above, performative though it might be, might wake some people up.
Also poor literacy rates.
Thanks Ronald reagan
Absolutely…. yes (come to this)… it's all about education. That's why they're putting the boot in there too.
October 18th hopefully helped sway voters, we need another.
So what would you recommend the Democrats do Christopher?
The late Tip O'Neal is credited with saying, "all politics is local." (The phrase is actually traced back to 1932).
What are you or your fellow Democrats doing locally?
In ME, the Democrats are stepping up as they are in dozens of other states. Look at the legislation CA has passed as well as the lawsuits they have filed trying to stop the Orange Menace and his Fascist administration.
Just because, "we the people" have ceded the power of the Federal Government to the Republicans doesn't mean they control all levels of government.
What Democrats are up against - one thing, anyway, is a group led by a former TV host who is very good at performative theater. Trump, et. al.'s aim is not to make sense, it is to keep negative emotions high. They do this in highly sociopathic ways, something we "normies" just can't match. Nor should we. We can, however, put on shows of our own - some with a cast of millions, some involving horrible shutdowns to highlight what the Right is really up to. We have most of Hollywood on our side, why aren't we using them to highlight just ho fragile this government really is?
Hello ICTT... I suspect that they are afraid of the MAGA Zombies with Guns... Remember Melissa Hortman... Pray for Divine Intervention...
We’re gonna have to do a lot more than just pray, though I’m not knocking prayer in the least.
Hello ICTT... Calling for Prayer is PC on an Open Substack...
I was 13 when I heard these stirring words spoken live. Remember the opening? "We observe today not a victory of party but a celebration of freedom." How far we have fallen in six decades...Not only in the decline of our institutions but also in the quality of our political rhetoric. I suppose we can expect nothing better, having elected Der Scheissmeister to the nation's highest office.
Clots and prayers.
I found two new words today: showmanshit and misogynoir. Thank you.
What we can do is report on who is funding the WH "renovations(?)".
Follow the oligarch's money and who is supporting his ridiculous projects.
Meanwhile Trump and the entire Republican Party are using hunger as a weapon.
Fortunately, the food banks and other charitable organizations across the country are working hard to reduce the food insecurity Trump and the entire Republican Party are causing. They are ALL complicit and too cowardly to face their constituents.
The National Register of Historic Places just sent a "letter" asking for an explanation because according to the law, the White House cannot be altered without plans being filed and approved by them, which of course, the Felon and his minions didn't do. I'd also like to say, ICTT, that the model is not Louis XIV but rather King George IV--formerly the Prince Regent when daddy George III was in his nutty phase--whose decor in his "masterpiece" Buckingham Palace is so over the top gaudy that it beggars description (and makes Versailles look restrained). And we all know that the Felon envies the British royal family. Also, George IV was partial to having sex with "low class" women, he was massively obese, he had no cultural aesthetic at all, and he relied on toadies who cynically flattered him while doing everything they could to enrich themselves. Unlike Louis XIV, who in his youth promoted the invention of ballet and development of opera in France, built Royal Academies for both science and music and dance, and became a real prude once he married his second wife, who was very strict. So Louis evolved. George did not. QED.
How informative. Thanks for the primer on George IV. He was the son of a mentally ill man suffering from porphyria and delusions. Yet another parallel between Fred and the vile Donald. Because our British cousins never had their Declaration of independence moment, Junior Sat on the throne for about 60 years. Clearly, Donald would love it if he could too.
What's going to happen when he wants to build his Arc de Trump? He's got floor plans already.
Guy moves into your house.
You charge him no rent.
This is what he does to it.
You say: “It’s not your house, you can’t do that!”
His answer: “I didn’t charge you to do it.”
Isn’t there something illegal about accepting “gifts” from people, countries, corporations, etc. to fund the building of this monstrous ballroom? And, already, we know the construction is affecting the structure of the White House. Where is the oversight, approval, permission to build that ordinary householders have to abide by. AND he is not the owner. WE are!
Of course it is illegal! Most of his actions are illegal! But the mainstream media rarely calls it out. He is stealing from us.
The problem is that no one will prosecute him for it as the government is under his thumb.
Is there anyone who can stop him from murdering innocent fisherman? Is there anyone who can stop ICE in his name from ruining the lives of people, many of them poor, some of them US citizens? Is there anyone who can stop him from ending government sponsored projects that employ tens of thousands of people? Is there anyone who can stop him from ending environmental safeguards? Is there anyone who one who can stop him from damaging the world wide economy? Is there anyone who could stop him from representing Putin so that more innocent people are killed in Ukraine? Is there anyone who can stop him from allowing the genocide of Palestinians to continue?
I could go on.
We can, but it will take a while
The company doing the demolition is Aceco LLC, located in Silver Spring, Maryland.
"If you want to let ACECO know what you think about their lead role in destroying the White House, the company’s CEO is Rob Wilson and he can be reached via email at rwilson@acecoworld.com. The company’s general email is info@acecoworld.com and its general phone number is 301-588-0707."
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/10/21/2349741/-Silver-Spring-company-demolishing-White-House-wing-faces-online-firestorm?pm_campaign=trending&pm_source=sidebar&pm_medium=web
Bulldozing everything and everyone. Mob boss does whatever he wants - who's going to stop him? Just think we have a maniac in the WH who has at his disposal the US treasury to spend at his will and military at his beck and call and nuclear weapons. Is there anything wrong with this picture? A kid in a candy store.
It's sickening.
Hell, we can’t seem to stop him from bulldozing the Constitution or the rule of law.
The capitulated Congress.
But, no one's flying the plane.
WE THE PEOPLE can stop him! Get up, stand up! Protest, boycott, revolt! Civil disobedience and the will to fight our asses off!
Well, Congressional Republicans have the authority, but there you have it!
At this point? Even if there was, it’s too late. He’s destroyed the East Wing.
A
Well, God knows he wasn’t inspired by any skylights he saw in Paris. Perhaps by its latrines, but not by its skylights. Those pee-pee tapes were real, of course, even if we’ll never get to see them in the light of day.
Trump has the dictator’s taste for tacky gilt and mirrors everywhere. It reminds me of the decor in Saddam Hussein’s various palaces he built all over Iraq.
Trump and Saddam Hussein have a lot in common.
Yes, they shared narcissism and sociopathy.
I believe Jefferson was a very mixed character, a silver tongued devil if you will.
On the one hand, he was a consummate wordsmith, he being the chief author of the Declaration of Independence, for example.
On the flip side he was a slave owner and even his children begotten on his property Sally Hemings were his legal property to do with as he pleased.
He lived well beyond his means and died deeply in debt. How metaphorically perfect for one of the nations so called “Founding Fathers.”
I was going to mention that Jefferson was heavily in debt when he died, but you beat me to it.
All of this seems to show Jefferson was imperfect, as we all are. The difference between trump and (I'd like to hope) most other people is that trump has absolutely no redeeming qualities. Not even one. Evil seems to be the only thing he's made of. He will destroy America and it's people if given the time and opportunity.
And he had several children with his enslaved mistress, Sally Hemings. Sally Hemings was the half sister to Jefferson’s wife, Martha Wayles Jefferson. John Wayles and his wife Martha Eppes Wayles had one surviving daughter, Martha, who married Thomas Jefferson. John Wayles fathered Sally Hemings on Betty Hemings, whom he took as his mistress after his third wife died. Sally was was her sister’s lady’s maid. Sally became Jefferson’s mistress after Martha Jefferson’s death and extracted a promise from Jefferson she would return to live enslaved in Virginia as long as he freed their children. He did this. DNA testing showed Sally Hemings’s children had the Jefferson Y DNA. Lucian Truscott IV is a descendant of Jefferson through his mother’s family and tried unsuccessfully to get the Jefferson descendants association to acknowledge Sally Hemings’s descendants as Jefferson’s descendants.
All of what you say is true, yet he was also the man who supported the French Revolution even after it had deteriorated into bloody chaos. He was the man who engineered the election of 1800, one of the nastiest in our history, including using the same kind of negative attacks so common today, especially against Washington about whom his media myrmidons previewed the Republican attacks on Joe Biden’s lack of mental acuity. In doing so, he and Monroe initiated the first iteration of our often destructive binary political party system in spite of his (and other Founder’s ) oft declared aversion to ‘factionalism’.
His views on blacks were supremely bigoted.
He was an avowed advocate of minimal Federal administrative power, but once in the presidency was hardly averse to using that power to achieve his own political ends.
His revolutionary ideology would have had us constantly reinventing ourselves, regularly shedding the ‘blood of patriots’ to nourish the tree of liberty.
He was undoubtedly a brilliant man, not unlike Ben Franklin in his interest in so many areas, and his prose sings, but I have always seen him as an exemplar of our inherently contradictory nature. Indeed, his crowning irony lay in the full name of his political party - the Democratic Republicans.
AR, your post reads as if were written by a Jefferson apologist. Just look at these shiney baubles and downplay or better simply ignore the ugliness we want to sweep under the rug for the sake of appearances.
Sort of America-right-or-wrong writ small.
The republicans have certainly gone a long way from being apoplectic when President Obama wore a tan suit. Their orange leader’s destroying our democracy, la dee da-ing while government employees suffer due to the shutdown, trashing the White House oh so much damage and republicans twiddle their thumbs. Just sickening
I don't know how these people can live with themselves.
Well, when I asked the question of my MAGAt cohort of retired cops what they thought of the AI video of "King Trump" dropping shit on America, they replied "It's just a joke. He's just trolling you libs."
I don't know that either, Ellen. These were (I once thought) honorable men. I do not think that any longer.
It's a cult. Can you imagine what they would have done if Biden had done something like that?!
Ironically, “parasitic screwworm” is a perfect description of tRump
It is indeed!
Yes!
“The demolition of the East Wing of the White House continued today.”
Trump pulls off what Al-Qaeda couldn’t on 9/11/01 - the destruction of the WH.
Looking at the pictures of the demolition is giving me ptsd.
The destruction of the White House is sickening beyond words. It is NOT Trump's house. It is the house of the American people. All I could think when I saw videos yesterday was that he has destroyed a piece of our history that we cannot ever recover. It makes me profoundly sad. Not to mention very angry.
I was furious when he destroyed the Rose Garden to put in a tacky patio with umbrellas that looked like they were on-sale from Target -- but actually taking bulldozers to the White House??? I could not believe my eyes. And then came his $230 million shake-down. We are in crazy town.
The $230 million shakedown number is uncomfortably close to the estimate for the Big Ugly Throne Room. Coincidence, or are We The Taxpayers actually paying for this monstrosity?
I suspect we will pay - in one way or another.
More than one, I am afraid.
Trump’s obscene physical and moral destruction of the White House and office of the Presidency are an all too direct metaphor for a dog pissing on a fire hydrant.
Trump is literally marking what he claims to be his territory. His recent AI video of him flying over and carpet bombing, with an apparently never ending supply of his feces, peacefully protesting American citizens exercising their first amendment rights to redress the government for grieviences.
It is shamefully revealing of a virtual literal truth of what he is doing to our constitutional democracy.
It's all so wrong, everything Trump and the regime is doing to our Nation is appalling and unbearable. The demolition of the White House is symbolically devastating and psychologically triggering, a psy-ops because it does seem like an image from the 9/11 attacks. Wrecking the White House, transforming into something that doesn't even make sense, just to put up another massive vanity project of Donold's is unacceptable and we're just expected to watch it happen. This should have been stopped before it even got to this point but it seems like nothing can stop Donold except possibly the Grim Reaper's scythe(and may that be very soon).
…and MAGA laughs at our outrage and begs the regime for more destruction.
This is just an observation, and what I attribute it to may not be it's cause. I've notice that more and more or us are simply referring to Trump as Trump. I think this is because we are growing less and less afraid of him and his lackeys.
I've noticed that more and more people are also not capitalizing the T in trump.
tRump is a popular variation as well, emphasizing his many anus like characterological attributes.
I like using ffpotus. Lower case, and it reflects "first felon president of the US"
And I call him what he is and what he has been convicted of. The felon-rapist.
Steve, I rarely use that "T-word." One of Donald's long-time goals has been for his last name to become a household word. For all intents and purposes, he has achieved that goal, but I refuse to comply.
Betrump is an old word infused, or should I say stained, with new meaning.
“AI Overview
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) entry for the verb "betrump" indicates it means to deceive or cheat [or elude.]. The OED's earliest evidence of its use is from before 1522 in a translation by Gavin Douglas, a Scottish bishop and poet. “
It’s impossible for any sane person to get their head around this 3-year-old’s definition of good and bad, right and wrong — “low-rated” (whatever that even means) and “unpopular.”
It’s not just that it’s the phrasing of a despot (popular is whatever I say it is), it’s the reasoning of a child psychotic. We have never before been ruled by a psychotic, by someone who exhibits daily behavior of a hungry wolf — a creature seemingly raised without any human contact whatever — the true opposite of ‘it takes a village.’
And this psychotic has more power than anyone ever has, not just here, but anywhere. The real mystery still lies in how he’s been able to enlist so many ghouls to do his bidding for him — to lie, cheat and deceive for him, do his gaslighting and wash his diapers for him for free, smirk on cue when he orders them to smirk, play havoc with government when he orders them to do so, kill at his command.
Long after this piece of deranged, damaged filth has left this world, this will be the one question future historians will spend the rest of their lives grappling with.
Because Trump is just a puppet for those “ghouls,” who are true believers in Project 2025.
Yes, that’s the simple explanation, but not the one that explains the deep, mass psychosis they’ve gotten so many millions to accept for as long as he’s been around. He’s always been the most obvious of frauds — a phony, carnival-barking fake. That much has been true for 40 years. How is it possible for people not to have seen that all along?
None of this would be possible without the Tee-Vee.
Television "programming" doesn't refer to broadcast content anymore.
What's being programmed are the viewers themselves.
They are told what to believe, they are told what to hate, they are told what to purchase, what to value.
Those in the Cult have become MAGA zombies, programmed every day by Faux and Newsmax and ONN to live a counter-reality that's 180-degrees opposite of what is actually happening.
Disconnected from nature, disconnected from neighbors, living in an artificial, electric paradigm of circus clowns and acrobats, all engineered for one purpose: to prevent critical thinking and the ability to discern fantasy from facts.
How many of you have visited MAGA relatives' homes and noticed their Tee-Vee is on all the time, with Faux propaganda babbling away every waking moment? Even to an empty den or living room?
They are addicted to it. They must have it to maintain the hypnosis.
True-and I think, to a person, all of us Letters From An American subscribers have never been able to wrap our heads around!
I think they do see it. But as long as the Millers, Bessents, Bondis, Zuckerbergs, Thiels, Voughts, et al. can get the wealth and power they want, they're more than happy to let Trump run amok.
I think that you would’ve had to be someone who followed local news in New York to see what a con artist he became. I don’t have much faith that many citizens are really paying attention to the daily trampling of everything by this administration ,or they are tuned in to Faux News without changing the channel. Referring to his demand of $230 million, which he will “give to charity” that’s a typical con. I fear that he will bankrupt this country,ballooning the debt even further…and he doesn’t care.
A lot of football fans know about his destruction of the USFL.
ITCC, I think the mass psychosis is due to trumpian shamelessness: you can say and do whatever you want. It doesn't matter how hurtful it is to others, how vapid, how incorrect, how self-aggrandizing because the main thing is to be free from the constraints not only of compassion but of reason.
I think that desire is deep in the human psyche. It says, "I want what I want, and I don't want anybody who thinks they're better than me [sic] to tell me what to do." In some circles, it's called sin. In other circles, it's a stage of life we call childhood. 'Seems to me that is a reason it makes so much sense to many of us to refer to Trump with words that call him a baby.
He has a history of bulling, lying and getting his way by cheating for most of his life.
It won’t stop until…
I'm eagerly awaiting whatever it is Apache told us the Native elders "saw" coming in October.
Dr Bandy Lee offers insight into his pathology. Damaged during the anal stage, filled with rage, he appeals to others so damaged.
If there really is a devil, then Satan is alive and well, maybe not well but here none the less amongst us and ruling us along with his disciples of destruction and retribution. We just need a cross and a wooden stake, at least for Stephen Miller.
Trump says: Media outlets paid him settlements because “what they did was wrong."
Wrong. Media outlets paid Trump to get him off their backs. What they did do wrong: Compromise with Trump.
Trump says: "It’s awfully strange to make a decision where I’m paying myself."
Wrong. He does it all the time. We must make sure he doesn't slide into a position like that. Bad luck that he's president of the United States.
Trump says: "Did you ever have one of those cases where you have to decide how much you’re paying yourself in damages? But I was damaged very greatly . . .”
Wrong. Trump thinks that expecting him to obey the law and the Constitution "damages him very greatly." There will be no end of the payoffs he demands from us from here on in.
Got to get him out. Hint: He'll want a payoff for that, too.
Of course but really no way to accomplish that. Not until the next presidential election in 2028. Impeachment even if possible would fail in the senate. And nothing short of death can remove him otherwise. Sadly we elected him and as we all need to learn elections have consequences.
Hello Jon... Things will get better, perhaps, IFF there are Elections in 2026, and 2028... Then only if the DNC Democrats, and Principled Republicans, if they exist, push them through... Else, Divine Intervention is all we have...
Apache-note your use of the word “if”. Fair elections are in the hands of the SC as Republicans do all they can to tip the scales.
They have come to the conclusion, they can only win if they cheat 🫤
Hello Kari... DJT is Feral... DJT will do anything to Stay In Power...
Is this $230 million that the current president wants the U.S. taxpayers to give to him, a detailed amount? For example, is it the sum of legal costs incurred. If so, did the current president actually pay legal costs or did another party pay them, such as the RNC?
Not only did the Republican Party pay his expenses he fund raised on them for years from his donors. He is triple dipping here if not more.
He just likes to flex his web of corruption.
Thank you, JLG.
This is a good reason for non-MAGA Americans to withhold paying their taxes. I believe it’s already been discussed in California. Another kind of boycott.
So, we can afford billions of dollars to prop up Argentina's economy and additional money to buy Kristi Noem 2 private planes and to compensate Trump for Justice Department probes into his own illegal activity. However, we cannot afford the money needed to help people with food insecurity through the SNAP program. When those tax credits expire on New Years Eve, millions of people will struggle to afford health insurance and others will lose it entirely. America first? Seriously?
How can the regime spend money as if the Treasury were bottomless?
As Mary Trump has said, Donald regards the U.S. treasury as his own personal piggy bank.
Thanks for writing Emily. Apparently, Trump and other Republicans worry about the national debt only when Democrats want to spend taxpayer's money on things our people actually need. Created in the wake of the 1930's depression, many of those government services have become our social safety net: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, disaster relief, Veteran's benefits, etc. Then, all of a sudden, we have to "tighten our belts." In 2026, voters will have to decide if they want to continue to provide luxury lives for Trump, his enablers and the oligarchs who support them or whether to take care of their , families, friends and neighbors instead.
Heather's remarks today emphasize the black hole we all inhabit.
One can gauge this better if one has read Sarah Kendzior's "Hiding in Plain Sight" -- on how the Trump & others' poisons have already destroyed most of our institutions. When I say "others," I go to Sarah: they are the organized criminals, the corrupted governments, and the corporate players who feed the corruption.
This is a blackness, our black hole.
But in my trip to California I also found some new books on Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli. In particular one where authors Michael Leader and Jake Cunningham quote Miyazaki scholar Susan Napier, who quoted one of his films for what she called "the most beautiful line Miyazaki ever wrote." It was, "Life is the light that shines in the darkness."
Darkness has descended on America, the world. But we may take a lesson from artists and those who follow them.
Thank you for sharing this, Phil. Let us be the Miyazakian light shining in the MAGA darkness, staying alive and keeping hope alive, if only to piss them all off.
Leonard Cohen: "There is a crack in everything. That's where the light gets in."
The light, too, James, comes from those of us who want to live, be alive as people.
And the condition of doing that makes us reciprocally alert to, alive to, and acknowledging of others, others also not at all willing to go into that darkness.
Even though we're mortal, and we know some of the conditions of mortality. In us. In others.
There is a Japanese proverb that says, “Be a light in your corner of the world.”
I read Hiding in Plain Sight as well as They Knew, and The View from Flyover Country. I learned of Sarah by subscribing to Gaslit Nation. She's brilliant and has an interesting perspective.
Paving the Rose Garden seemed a good metaphor for the Trump Presidency but destroying the East Wing of the White House is the perfect visual one. Giving billions to Argentina while cutting healthcare access and food assistance to Americans to partially balance the budget seems bad even without stiffing American farmers on Argentine soybean sales and beef buys. Paying yourself out of the public treasury is beyond corruption. The Congress is missing in action and we have taxation without representation. It’s no good to impeach Trump, we’ve already done it. It’s no good to convict him, he’s a 34 time felon. It’s impossible to shame him, he has paid off multiple accusations including the ones he still owes on. He’s threatened by the Epstein files which seems like their release must involve incurring actual physical violence as nothing else appears to frighten him. All members of the House are up for reelection. Vote Blue.
And the MAGAts won't say a word about the destruction of the East Wing. All they want is more ICE raids and more deportations of people they consider inferior. Anything T**** does is fine with them as long as he keeps funding ICE. They don't care if SNAP recipients starve this winter.
Last Sunday, I parted company with a brother and sister as they shouted at me about immigrants, wanting more ICE raids. To them, an undocumented immigrant is a burden and they want them all gone. Foaming-at-the-mouth MAGA. Voted for him in all three elections. Voted against my grandchildren's future. Now my sworn enemies. No quarter asked or given.
I don’t recommend breaking contact with family members. Do something together that you both enjoy. Then try to find something that is common ground like the price of groceries or how defunding the Affordable Care Act/Medicaid/mental healthcare/etc will raise the healthcare premiums and costs for everyone. Avoid getting into an “us vs them” emotion/fear/anger/etc. provoking vibe that makes rational discussion difficult. Find out what it is about immigrants that enrages them. If they are correct, agree with them. If the facts are incorrect, try to steer them to the valid information.
Heather discussed the history of undocumented laborers in one of her newsletters (I can’t remember which one.). Apparently they crossed the southern border freely to work in the harvests every year and then returned to their families across the border in the south. But in the 1980’s the Reagan Administration decided to closely monitor the southern border. This drastically curtailed the movement of the workers across the border because they were afraid that once they were in the US they wouldn’t be able to return to their families in their home country. The economic impact of having migrant laborers who work doing manual jobs under harsh conditions for significantly lower pay than demanded by American workers and who pay taxes, etc. is significant.
This is a country of immigrants. My maternal ancestors immigrated from Germany in the 1850’s to Wisconsin and my paternal ancestors immigrated from Scotland in the 1700’s to Georgia.
What does immigration do for our country? Here is a small sample of individuals who immigrated to the US and are not native born:
Alexander Hamilton, Albert Einstein, Thomas Paine, Jaime Escalante, Nikola Tesla, Isaac Asimov, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Gloria Estefan, Irving Berlin, Henry Kissinger, Charlie Chaplin, George W. Romney, Elaine Chao, Madeline Albright, Yo-yo Ma, Lionel Messi, Bono, Jose Andres, Salma Hayek, William Penn, Alexander Graham Bell, Greta Garbo, Elizabeth Taylor, Andrew Carnegie, Natalie Portman, John Sununu, James McHenry, Moses McKissack, etc.
And; 757 Medal of Honor Recipients and 40% of US Nobel Prize winners.
What millions of new immigrants coming to this country first saw as they entered NYC harbor was the Statue of Liberty, a gift from our Revolutionary War ally, France. It contains a plaque with a famous poem that embodies the spirit of our constitutional democracy - for freedom, for “We the People”, for empathy.
The New Colossus
BY EMMA LAZARUS
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, (a reference to the Colossus of Rhodes)
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Our father was an immigrant. Our mother's parents were immigrants. They've not had hard lives, and are well off in their retirement. They watched too much Fox, as did our mother. As I told her in one of our last conversations, "Mom, you voted against my grandchildren." I doubt I will ever forgive her. Or them. Since we are geographically distanced, I have little desire to have any more contact with them. I have enough stupid, evil, racist people to deal with already.
When people say to me that I should try to reconcile and see the MAGA view from those of my relatives that hold it, I say no as their bigoted, uneducated view and those who believed the stupidity of the eating of dogs and cats are not people I would like to spend my time with. If it were merely differences in budget priorities etc like old school politics used to be, that would be different but in this MAGA world, their beliefs are disgusting and most of them have 5th grade reading levels. No thanks!
To forgive is not to forget or to agree. Tacit acceptance that you agree to disagree can bring peace. Holding anger in your heart especially against a close family member (your mother) is a significant emotional burden to carry for posterity. I hope you eventually find peace with the situation and wish you well in your life.
Thanks, Fred. When I think on it, I'm not angry with them, just disappointed. Sorely disappointed. I may not get to forgiveness, I just hope they can recover their lost humanity.
Fred, as a hostage negotiator, one of our sayings was "you cannot reason with unreasonable people." A second rule from hostage negotiations is "You cannot negotiate with terrorists". James has described his family as belonging to both camps; unreasonable, and holding our country hostage.
I don’t go by hostage negotiation doctrinaire procedures. I go by what I learned in my education in psychology (including abnormal psychology), in psychiatry, in continuing medical education, in helping my child (along with a child psychiatrist) to overcome the ACEs he experienced with his mentally ill mother, in working with a Ph.D. clinical psychologist to help patients in a medical clinic, etc..
In the last election over 70 million people voted for Trump. Do you think they are all “unreasonable people”?
No, not all of them. Where did I say that it was an absolute? "James has described his family as belonging to both camps, unreasonable and holding our country hostage." A person can obviously have more options with a family member to take the time to reason with them, to provide them other information, and to (for instance) wear them down.
Keep in mind, too, that any time law enforcement is responding to a crisis/hostage incident, it is in a high risk situation.
Just FYI, my wife is a Clinical Psychologist; I have a better understanding than most of the nuances of intervention.
If your wife is a practicing clinical psychologist then she should be able to explain to you the psychological characteristics of a malignant narcissistic personality disorder and how the charming ones can sense what is emotionally important to people and use it to manipulate them. They are also mendacious, defensive and blame scapegoats for perceived problems. The misled people are not violent hostage takers involved in high risk, crisis situations with law enforcement. They are people who have been deceived/conned and are usually immersed in information sources that reinforce their fears, anger, prejudices, etc.. They may seem inherently “unreasonable” but this is because they have been primed to have their emotions triggered by issues rather than thinking rationally about them.
Fred, there is a reason why, at least in the law enforcement world, "hostage" negotiators have been renamed "crisis negotiators" and operate with a different set of protocols for each type of situation. As I initially alluded to, I have a more informed knowledge base than most cops do which is not to say that I am in any way, shape, or form an expert.
I also know that changing somebody's fundamental belief about something is a long, involved process. I have a good friend who was totally against same sex marriage. Through a motorcycle touring group, he got to meet two same sex couples (me and another rider). He was always friendly and personable. About three years into our friendship, he and I went on an "errand" (delivering some paperwork over to the coast; about a 3 hour round trip.) As was our custom on "errands in order to ride to eat" excursions, we went to a great seafood restaurant, right on the marina.
During our lunch conversation, he told me that he realized his opposition to same sex marriage had been based on his overall opposition to marriage privilege (he was a 12 year unmarried enlisted man; As an E6, he had to live in a barracks while E2's who were married could live off base. It was based on his belief that marriage in and of itself should not grant privilege that excluded single people. He remains a solid friend, even as his politics are nearly completely opposite mine.
When I say "you cannot reason with unreasonable people" in reference to my former work cohort (who I have no interest in maintaining any kind of relationship with). They match your last two sentences to a "T". They have taken their "information sources" that feed their anger and prejudices as gospel and any opposing stance as "uneducated". I am not going to spend what time I have left on this planet trying to change their way of believing (ain't gonna call it thinking).
I’m sure your “advice” isn’t particularly useful at this point. Why do you feel the need to give it?
Using and consenting to the “us versus them” dynamic is validating the divisiveness that Trump and his MAGA toadies are using to gain power over and subjugate us. Try reading “Prisoners of Hate” by Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry, Aaron Beck, M.D., the father of cognitive behavioral therapy.
This is far too serious to look for an olive branch. I won’t waste one minute on a person who is ok with FORCING OTHER HUMANS BY THREAT AND ENDANGERMENT. Since when did it become acceptable to hurt a child….let alone adults? Those that are ok with this don’t deserve “family.”
They deserve to be ostracized.
Very sad. Some people are very myopic.
I’m sure MAGA will say he’s entitled to the $230M.
He already has.
I’m just waiting for the tweet to President Macron that France can get the tiara, necklaces and brooches belonging to the Empress Eugénie back from the Louvre for $250 million — $350 million if he wants them still intact. No questions asked.
Funny, but the Louvre heist was way too clever for Trump or his minions to have had anything to do with it.
“The Rose Garden Hunger Games”
Day twenty-one of the Great Trump Shutdown, and the former Rose Garden has been rebranded the “Rose Garden Club,” complete with plastic tablecloths, patriotic bunting, and the faint odor of authoritarian decay. Trump hosted lunch there for every Republican senator except Rand Paul, who was punished for believing in math.
Trump crowed that the shutdown was saving money by “cutting Democrat programs,” apparently unaware that the executive branch can’t actually cancel congressional appropriations. His budget chief, Russell “Darth Vader” Vought, was on hand, gleefully swinging his metaphorical lightsaber through the federal workforce. SNAP benefits are set to run dry, but Trump called that “intermittent fasting for freedom.”
Speaker Mike Johnson, meanwhile, has locked the House like a haunted escape room. He refuses to swear in a duly elected Democrat because she might restore balance to the galaxy. Arizona sued, accusing him of holding democracy hostage, to which Johnson replied, “Absurd.” Which, to be fair, is his brand.
In foreign affairs, Trump bailed out Argentina to rescue his friends’ bad bets and maybe score a discount on steak. He called it “an amazing deal, folks,” because nothing says America First like buying beef from another collapsing economy.
The administration also found $172 million to buy new private jets for Homeland Security, proving that even in a shutdown, there’s always money for the ruling class to flee the wreckage...
https://essayx.substack.com/p/the-rose-garden-hunger-games
Consider this excerpt from America's Stricken Democracy: Trump's Thought Police Hit Their Stride published by The Spiegel in Germany, addressing the question of the reluctance of the public to actively resist. The parallels between our two nations are not exact, but the ‘’Dual State’’ idea is haunting.
The Dual State
One answer may be found in a book that first appeared in America 84 years ago called "The Dual State.” It was written by the German-Jewish labor rights activist Ernst Fraenkel, who left Germany in 1938 and spent the rest of his life wrestling with the question as to why it was so easy to transform Germany from a democracy into a dictatorship.
Following the Nazi power grab, Fraenkel argued, a "normative state” continued to exist in Germany for quite some time, within which the established legal order still applied for the vast majority of citizens, private property was protected, and companies could continue operating with no hindrance in order to keep the capitalist economy up and running.
In parallel, however, a "prerogative state” developed, a state of "unlimited arbitrariness and violence” wielded against certain people and institutions, who were gradually stripped of their essential rights. The majority was able to convince themselves for an extended period that they would remain untouched by the excesses of state violence. Until the prerogative state ultimately pushed aside the normative state.
"Today, we are witnessing the birth of a new dual state,” writes Chicago-based law professor Aziz Huq in an article that appeared several months ago in the Atlantic. It should not be assumed, Huq writes, that it will follow the same path as Germany once did – "but it is striking how Donald Trump’s executive orders reject some basic tenets of American constitutionalism.”
The U.S. economy, Huq writes, remains largely intact and the judiciary continues to function normally, aside from political cases. Most people can ignore the establishment of a prerogative state because it simply has no effect on their lives. "They can turn away while dissidents and scapegoats lose their political liberty. But once the prerogative state is built (…) it can swallow anyone.”
https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/americas-teetering-democracy-trumps-thought-police-hit-their-stride-a-f8766dd3-d95b-4e75-88fc-92085866210e?sara_ref=re-xx-cp-sh
So far, that’s been largely true. But very soon, the combined effects of an increasingly jittery economy, a prolonged government shutdown, dramatically escalating prices for food, essentials and particularly for healthcare — are going to undo that stability. Some would argue that moment has already arrived.
It won’t quite follow what happened in Germany, though it’s already close enough to terrify. I suspect we’re in for an extended period of real chaos, inflation and degradation. It shouldn’t make anybody happy but perhaps the combination of everything is what’s needed to wake millions out of their stupor. I don’t know what else will.
Thanks, R Dooley.
This calls to mind the "First They Came..." poem https://hmd.org.uk/resource/first-they-came-by-pastor-martin-niemoller/.
I believe it is important that we urge people to speak out, even if the issue of the day does not directly affect them.
Agreed.
But I expect we both know, or know of, those whose personal situations insulate them from the current degradation of services and intimidation by the State. It is difficult to wake people who can convince themselves that their insulation from the worst of it is not only selfish, but temporary - a reluctance to resist that could continue until they are powerless to resist.
On a personal note, I live in an old building in Germany, one that withstood both wars. At times, when I go to the basement to fetch something, where little has been done to the space since the early 1900s, I feel (or imagine) the terror of those who once lived in this house, whose neighbors were taken away in the dead of night. That haunting, for lack of a better word, informs my concerns and views today.
None of us know with certainty, how the current situation will play out. But we know enough to resist the direction, methods and ethos of the current administration.
Importantly, and thankfully, we are many.
Yes. We are many. Thank you RDooley for your comments today.
Salud!
🗽💜
Well said, R. Thank you.
Another appropriate poetic commentary is Percy B Shelly, in Ozymandias.
“ I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart.[d] Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
No thing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
— Percy Shelley, "Ozymandias"”
Good morning, Lynell. I would say, "especially important" to speak out when not affected!
Morning, Ally...Agree wholeheartedly!
Nobody is “not affected” when this increasingly authoritarian government is involved in any way.
It appears to me that Trump and the Republicans may be perfectly happy to continue to rule by fiat with the government "shut down" indefinitely. Trump funds by diktat those elements of the government that he can use to punish his opponents and cement his dictatorship, while continuing his destruction of the government that actually serves the people. And Mikey Johnson gets to keep that Ms. Grijalva and her annoying signature on the Epstein discharge petition out of office.
By the way, Nobody's Girl, Virginia Giuffre's account of the abuse she suffered under Epstein and his "clients" was published yesterday. https://www.amazon.com/Nobodys-Girl-Surviving-Fighting-Justice-ebook/dp/B0FLHXDQHM/
But don’t buy it from Amazon! There are better alternatives such as on Bookshop.org or The Guardian.
Or Portland’s own, my go-to source for books and information about them, which is Powell’s City of Books, America’s largest independent bookseller. We don’t just dress up as frogs or unicorns.
“The unforgettable memoir by the late Virginia Roberts Giuffre, the woman who dared to take on Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell
The world knows Virginia Roberts Giuffre as Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell's most outspoken victim: the woman whose decision to speak out helped send both serial abusers to prison, whose photograph with Prince Andrew catalyzed his fall from grace. But her story has never been told in full, in her own words - until now.
In April 2025, Giuffre took her own life. She left behind a memoir written in the years preceding her death and stated unequivocally that she wanted it published. Nobody's Girl is the riveting and powerful story of an ordinary girl who would grow up to confront extraordinary adversity.
Here, Giuffre offers an unsparing and definitive account of her time with Epstein and Maxwell, who trafficked her and others to numerous prominent men. She also details the molestation she suffered as a child, as well as her daring escape from Epstein and Maxwell's grasp at nineteen. Giuffre remade her life from scratch and summoned the courage to not only hold her abusers to account but also advocate for other victims. The pages of Nobody's Girl preserve her voice - and her legacy - forever.
Nobody's Girl is an astonishing affirmation of Giuffre's unshakable will - first, to claw her way out of victimhood, and then to shine light on wrongdoing and fight for a safer, fairer world. Equal parts intimate and fierce, it is a remarkable narrative of fortitude in the face of depravity and despair.”
https://www.powells.com/book/nobodys-girl-a-memoir-of-surviving-abuse-fighting-for-justice-9780593493120
Unfortunately the book reviews I’ve seen say it recounts the author’s horrific experiences of her childhood and of being entangled in Jeffrey Epstein’s human trafficking, rapes and pedophilia, but doesn’t implicate (name names) of anyone other than Epstein and Maxwell.
We need to have the full Epstein files released including all the video, digital and other files/information that was collected from his multiple residences that include the recordings of the video cameras he had mounted in his multiple bedrooms and massage table rooms where the sexual assaults were allegedly committed, etc..
I wonder if now that Virginia is gone, could her co-author reveal the names of the “clients” she hesitated to name, especially the powerful politician who nearly beat her to death.
The brave victims who spoke out recently at the Capital said they were working on compiling a list of names.
I suspect no publisher would touch it. Too much power and money would prevent it.
I recall reading some Congress people and Senators have offered to read out loud for all to hear the list of names on the floors of the House and Senate . Read them into the Congressional Record, where anyone can later learn who they are. They are protected legally by the Speech and Debate Clause of the Constitution.
The names, which I expect to include prominent politicians of both parties as well as many well known businesspeople and other famous people to appear on the lists, which I think we can safely conclude will before too long become public.
Infographics on Argentina and Venezuela to illustrate Heather's post.
Explore the White House in 3D as Trump demolishes the East Wing to add a tacky ballroom
https://thedemlabs.org/2025/10/21/explore-the-white-house-in-3d-as-trump-demolishes-east-wing-add-tacky-ballroom/
Why should Americans pay $20 billion to bailout Argentinian dictator who failed with Trump-like policies? Follow the money!
https://thedemlabs.org/2025/10/05/bessent-trump-20-billion-bailout-milei-in-argentina/
Could Venezuela be America's next Vietnam? How many Americans may die fighting there?
https://thedemlabs.org/2025/10/21/venezuela-is-america-next-vietnam-trump-illegal-war/