Sadly we seem to NOT learn the lessons of history. The mistake ushered in by Harding and Hoover is looming again. For the same reason. Robber barons. And we all learned the history of WW2 in school, but have not been able to prevent the advent of fascism here in the United States in the 21st century. But this is worse. In 1932 there was an election, as free and fair as any in this country. FDR won and there was a smooth transition of power.
Can any of us be sure that 2028 will bring a real election at all?
They have managed to combine the elite arrogance of the 1920s with the authoritarianism of 1930s Europe. How can we find our way back to sanity?
And what makes this an even harder return to sanity is that the major media has been taken over by the corporation. Even my hometown newspaper The Hartford Courant billed as the longest continuing newspaper in the nation. Attempts were made a few years ago to buy it back local but the corporate interests outbid the locals. New CBS is slipping to the oligarchs. Has already.
AhBill, but THIS is now the media! I think it's a little fascinating that the big national giants are increasingly irrelevant while the important voices are abundant. I had no idea I follow 17 substacks. Maybe more.
Very important point, Jen. While it's frustrating that mainstream/corporate media isn't calling out the cruel, illegal actions of this administration or covering the massive No Kings rallies, people are increasingly looking to alternative sources of news. This is especially true of young people. Yes, it has its risks, but if the Democratic Party can get its act together, it can take advantage of the shift.
My message to young people (and old people, and everyone in between):
Start with a principle and no method, and the principle is useless, but then a helpful method quickly emerges. Adam Smith started with The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), and his helpful method, documented in The Wealth of Nations (1776), quickly emerged.
Start with a helpful method, forget the principle, and the method quickly becomes harmful. Because people who identified as capitalists forgot the principle, the method became increasingly harmful as it quickly drifted away from real capitalism.
In other words, the symptoms are always the same, and so is the cure.
Hoover's economic fiasco should have put the lie to what later became Supply Side Economics. It is unsustainable--a quick steal for a few wealthy that sucks the base of consumption out of the economy. Here we go again. FDR did not create a welfare state--programs of public support pump wealth into our economy at about a 1.5x return on investment. We are headed for another crash, which will only be fixed when we return to Demand Side Economics, which saved us from destruction the last time.
"Supply Side Economics ... is unsustainable. Demand Side Economics (has) a 1.5x return on investment." —Michael Roehr's head
"Moral Sentiment is the founding principle of real capitalism, and capitalism absent morality is CAPINO (capitalism in name only)." —James Carey's heart
"I truly believe, only when head and heart work in harmony can we attain our true human potential." —Jane Goodall
I was thinking about the resources available these days compared to my early career, as far as information is concerned. I could have looked for an academic program in anthropology that combined medicinal chemistry. Might have had a completely different career. So I hope thsat this generation who grew up with all this info knows how to find facts.
The adults have to go back to basics and teach our children the facts instead of ceding this responsibility to schools, games, the Internet, AI. We have to make sure we tell our stories to them. Each one teach one ... or teach 20.
Social Media is great for reinforcing our already held beliefs. But we are preaching to the choir… on both sides of the political spectrum. All in all, it is contributing to the divide that is tearing the country apart.
A media that speaks to everyone,rather than just whichever outlet makes us feel righteous is what is needed. And I say this while acknowledging that it seems the rightwing is unable or unwilling to hear anything that might shake their belief in the policies described in HCR’s post today. We can talk endlessly about the woeful ignorance of rightwing voters, but that solves nothing. They are just as sure that they are right, and it is we who are deluded.
I fear that it may take another depression to convince those on the right that their misplaced belief that the oligarchs. know best how to run the country and that their inclusion in prosperity is just around the corner. We have been here before. Too bad that the people who really need to read Heather’s wisdom and scholarship will never read or hear it. They are too wrapped up in being RIGHT all the time.
Predation, prolific repetitive destructive behaviors which may seem repetitive to us, are a historical constant. Predators are never going away. Fox News. Sly sneaky predator. Trump regime prehistorically dangerous predation. Putin killing his rivals. Predation. It’s a behavior characteristic of human survival. I’m not saying it’s not repeating history, it’s omnipotently present, not ever going away. Tell me a time when predators will cease to eat. We are all prey and we must give up the notion that will have a cure. We have to see it catch it render it harmless. It is no secret which dark forces are swarming out of control again. Our moment is to contain as soon as possible. We have chosen the law as our arbiter in this society. Let us shock the world asking Asia to detain the head of the snake until he can be remanded to our custody. No bail. Let us exercise our emergency powers. Since he is a military man now I think an argument to incarcerate would be best served in Leavenworth. That should separate him from civilian justice imposed by the Supreme Court and place him in military custody who’s own body of justice should suffice.
So true BUT! how many millions are still getting the corporate washing of the news from the big 3 morning shows, and network outlets??? Trumps demented behavior after landing in the far east was labeled funny!
The revolutionaries were not getting their news from London, but from the people like Ben Franklin and Thomas Paine running tiny local presses. Comparing the London News with the newsbills from New York of Philadelphia is a fascinating contrast in journalism.
Elizabeth, this is what confounds me. I have a dear friend who I met in college. She got a degree in what was called "Computer Science" back then, and went on to have a very successful career in a multi-national company. She and I had a network of close friends, a few of which are people of color. Nearly all of us were first generation college students. Her career took her all over the world. She has a close friend who is gay. She supports women's rights. And she has basically financially supported several family members, one of whom went on disability in their early 20s (over 40 years ago) She is bright, funny, talented---and a Trump voter. Seriously, WTF?!
Having known her 50 years, I was astounded when she turned sort of "MAGA-lite" but one of her family members lives with her and watches FOX 24/7. I think this is why.
I hope and pray she sees the light, and I will not stop being her friend any more than I would to someone who developed an opioid addiction after a major surgery. I'd want to BE THERE to help them recover. But I'll admit, it's really painful to experience.
We received unsolicited mail today from Hillsdale College, MI.
OMG- pure MAGA trash. They must be sending these to every homeowner in the US. One blurb starts, "Trump fulfilled his promise to secure the border within the first 100 days of his second term".
HOW DARE THEY SEND THAT TRASH!
Ah well - I returned their stamped envelope empty except for a message saying, ' NO KINGS '
I think her relative does. She's somewhat disabled and sits in front of the tv all day long. I think she gets some sort of vibe by getting riled up. My friend says she "likes one or two of the people" but dislikes the rest.
Magas who feast on Fox and newsmax are hopeless creatures! The very people whom the founding fathers feared would elect an unfit person to office! The electoral college was suppose to prevent this!!!
Elizabeth, I do wonder about that Fox fixation. I have accidentally tuned into it and am appalled at the callous dismissal of good people and promotion of folks who are so self-absorbed they lie with conviction and the interviewers didn't check the obvious BS. If I found that in the times I have accidentally tuned in, what is it like for those who listen/watch every hour of the day? It has to rot one's brain.
American media has succumbed to GOP corruption. Note, after his visit to the White House, the CEO of CNN has instructed his news broadcasters not to report anymore on the East Wing desecration.
I like yours best today, Annabel, for how your first and last sentences pair up.
First, we're evidently not learning "the lessons of history." Last, "How can we find our way back to sanity?" With, in the middle, how we've "not been able to prevent the advent of fascism here in the United States."
Yes, quantum challenge we inhabit.
Can fellow commenters cite the sorts of schooling we need to face what we face? Schooling not just for our young, but for public officials perhaps lacking their own necessary resources, too?
Hello Phil... I'm a Firm Believer of Universal Public Service in the Building of Public Works... People should get together in order to Learn from each other... Call it the School of Tangible Works...
Virtual is useful and powerful but tangible is the larger context. It is where and how we live. Some things can only be learned "hands on". Some things can only be shared person to person. I experience, therefore I am.
I listened to a podcast that interviewed Jane Fonda. She is constantly interacting with the people of her communities going door to door even as AOC did when she first won election.
"You never learn when you are talking." Although this isn't entirely true, I think it seems to be mostly true. We beat that statement to death in a 10th grade English class taught by a priest turned teacher.
I think this is why we rarely learn anything from politicians, because they only talk and rarely listen.
The evolution that led our political system was such that it cut out the smaller man/women from ever having the power to contribute. The interpretation of our Constitution for ages told us that women couldn’t vote. Literally half of our population was relegated to the vast wasteland of our national discussion. This evolution is what needs to change. It is why the “minor” political parties have been relegated to bottom tier functions.
We can tell who's listening by how often they refer to points made by others.
Most politicians, would-be pundits, and exclusively silo-set professors have fairly-crippled imaginations, thanks to schools that reliably serve only the "values" of testing. Which means no values at all.
I think there is a mode of listening to one's self, even while in process, with a willingness to self-question. I think the ability to formulate and pursue open curiosity is our ultimate engine for learning. To be or not to be...? Inward debate examines our own assumptions; which can be barriers as well as stepping stones to useful conclusions. Ideally, the scientific method builds that in; degrees of confidence over done-and-settled; always a work in progress. Except for the affections of animals (such as ourselves) reality is indifferent to our fate, and can and does crush us in a variety of ways. Yet, it can also be incredibly nourishing to our hour upon the stage. We improve our odds of the latter by attentively "listening" to what nature can tell us about what is real, and by responding appropriately, just as the increasing frequency of extreme weather events is like to be a useful lesson if we are inclined to take it.
Even believing this, I am aware of spending far too much time replaying habitual thoughts and behaviors, especially in quarrels. It's only human, right? Yet the weird thing is that being open to doubt is ultimately the same as open to learn, as we evaluate the negation of a belief, as well as the belief itself. Perhaps "Bigfoot" really does roam Northwest forests, but so far my confidence that they do so is vanishingly small.
And, deprived of certainly, we are obliged to act, to make micro-decisions in every moment about what is true and what is worthwhile; sometimes even life changing decisions on the basis of an educated guess, while keeping our capacity to question open. Edwin land, who invented polaroid and "instant" image cameras reported to have said that sometime a new idea is letting go of the old one. Usually we build on what we "know"; but ideally with a fresh perspective.
Nice J L. "....sometimes a new idea is letting go of the old one. Change is hard for almost all of us and letting go of an old idea is a major part of the process.
Phil Balla, remembering shop courses, mostly for boys, but there could be an occasional girl. My father built a plywood skiff for fishing. As he had no sons, I was his shop assistant. Learned about wood and carpentry requirements. Sadly the other two skiffs planned were not built because of WWII. The neighbor and friend who would have had them both went off to war.
I was at a loss for words after reading Phil’s comment Apache, and then I read your comment and thought of course getting people to work together is a great unifier. I have no idea what the politics were of any of the people I served with in VN, but I was willing to risk my life to protect them. If we could get anything close to that camaraderie in our diverse society, it would be a unifying bond that would solve a lot of problems. It would not have to be only on an individual level, but companies instead of endlessly chasing profits could work with other companies to help solve our underlying problems. Everyone would benefit, we could be collectively building a better boat as we float on these turbulent seas. If you saw that your neighbor needed help, would you not lend a hand if you were able? Of course you would, that same attitude, instead of “I’ve got mine, pull up the ladder boys, let’s go get lunch, never mind the rest of them in the water”, is what will really make America great and begin to fulfill the promise’s our founders created.
As I've outlined before, when Covid hit one of my neighbors in Fernandina Beach started a food drive. Almost everyone in the neighborhood brought food to her house. Within a couple of days, she had 2 SUV loads of food to bring to the local food bank as well as several checks.
The greatest American sin is anyone in the US starving to death or even going hungry. And Trump is using starvation as a weapon.
Dick Montagne, having sung in choirs and choruses from age 10-63 and remembering the school assemblies during WWII when we sang for an hour, been an endless volunteer and had frequent recitals for my piano students (to encourage them to practice), I can vouch for group activity as a great maker of bonds.
Apache, yes! Let's get the truth out wherever and whenever we can and make sure that what we are presenting is the truth or as close to it as we can, at all times.
Yesterday after a dozen of us that are on the planning and appeals board attended a half day training session on how to do our jobs. The training was via Zoom and was hosted by the Maine Municipal Association (MMA). Over 70 towns across the state were represented on the call. MMA also provide other training courses throughout the year.
I'm sure that Maine is not unique in offering training for the various volunteer boards required to run every community across the country.
"If it bleeds it leads" even in small towns so you rarely hear about the countless hours that average citizens volunteer to help their communities.
I’m at a summit of the Red Cross Disaster Action Team for Minnesota and the Dakotas trying to figure out how best to help people at times of need. There are a lot of people trying to do what we can for our fellow citizens. Can’t imagine how difficult things were in the 30’s and how much needed to change to pull things around.Hope it doesn’t take a war to set things straight.
It takes a village for sure. People across the country are watching out for each other, but you'd never know it if you only listen to the corporate media.
cameron, right now I see lots of locals here in Oregon also trying to figure out how to help those who will lose benefits in a few days. One person on Nextdoor was blaming our D Senators (misspelled both their names) for the problems with SNAP, etc. Much to my surprise, it did not go over well and most people pointed to Rs as the problem. And local news is featuring the upcoming problems and those trying to find solutions. The problem we are fighting this time is internal and I do hope there is not a war in our streets.
Is it choice? Habit? Substack is an entity rarely read in this state but by the few . Volunteers run most emergency efforts . Our state is blood red. It is about to get bit hard and will rise angry ..after the barn burns down. Die hard naysayers won’t change , repeat what Fox says, and when the shelves are bare blame the Democrats, just as predicted. I.E. “it’s the Dems fault for the shutdown..” 70% voted for the Con, listened to the lies.
When will they ever learn?
It’s the same scenario ,lived with this reality since the late 60’s part of a small bunch back-to-the-landers seeing it happen all over again, same story. Let’s hope to pull it off again, teach truth’s hard facts, repair the damage, close the loopholes so obvious.
The phrase ‘cleanup on isle 2026’ and enough gains in 2024 to stop the bleeding ( us dry)..🤞🏼
Your story reminded me of the missionary in Africa who was lamenting that he only had one parishioner at his service. Well, the one parishioner was a young David Livingstone the great Scottish explorer, missionary and martyr.
You never know who your one act of kindness will affect.
As a 'schooling' I'd recommend reading a book called Less is More by Jason Hickel. Available as an ebook for $5 or so. It is an astounding read and actually proposes a way out of the mess that we have got ourselves into. The only glimmer of hope as far as I can see.
Hint: It's about how to move wealth and therefore power down from the top, back to the people who generate it in the first place.
My friend who is in an Indivisible group in Massachusetts sent me info about a planned "economic blackout" planned for November 25th to Dec 2nd. It is supposedly nationwide.
I have not heard or seen anything about this anywhere else.
That is my plan for the somewhat obligatory gifts to nearby neighbors (some of whom are MAGA). I'm giving them a card that says I donated in their name!!
We have been donating to Ukraine instead of giving each other unneeded gifts at Christmas for the last few years. It looks like we will need to add food for the hungry to our giving.
Two of my three adult children subscribe to that idea. They value experiences more than "things". Sadly, the third one married a person who doesn't believe in putting off any purchase, and not taking care of what they already have--and I'm talking about MAJOR purchases. Thus, I fear how badly they could be in debt. It is a subject I brought up five years ago and was soundly rejected. My phone rings from collection agencies all the time. 😣
Great question/invitation! Today, Cornell professor Pamela Karimi is doing a Zoom about zero-waste living and circular systems with some pioneering activists /ecologists at 10:a.m. Eastern time. About it:
"Dear all,
Just a quick note to let you know that tomorrow from 10–11 a.m. we will host Hilda Maingay and Earle Barnhart of the New Alchemy Institute / Green Center Inc.
Students are asked to develop a proposal that adapts this model for the desert, drawing inspiration from their work in ecological design & circular systems:
Please join us online via Zoom at the following link:
Pamela Karimi is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: Hilda Maingay & Earle Barnhart
Time: Oct 29, 2025 10:00 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Phil and I both live in Japan. Watching tRump and the new prime minister walking hand in hand is completely nauseating. Prime Minister Takaichi told Trump she’ll nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize. Donald Trump just gave an absolutely embarrassing and unhinged speech in front of the US military in Japan. pic.x.com/YggpMyMamA It’s very revealing in a most tragic way how hungry the majority of people are for power and money at the expense of common people. How can we overcome the cult mentality?
NYTimes: “Well, guys, today, President Trump was in Tokyo, where he attended a meeting and ate lunch with the new prime minister of Japan. The prime minister said it was her first time seeing someone dip their sushi in ketchup.” — JIMMY FALLON “The prime minister gifted Trump a golf bag, a golden putter and told him that she had nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize. Trump was like, ‘I think I found my soul mate.’” — JIMMY FALLON “Japan is trying to get on Trump’s good side to escape his, you know, his random tariff spree. So they gave him a couple gifts for America’s upcoming 250th birthday: some fireworks and 250 cherry trees, or, as it will be known in history books, ‘How Eric Trump started the D.C. wildfires.” — STEPHEN COLBERT
It’s like the religious hypocrites spewing religious nonsense. The educated morons spew Ayn Rand, and Fox crap non stop. Chump being educated is the biggest scam ever to hit our shores. He is the most ignorant of our idiots, having tried hard to remain so. Sadly, many follow his lead.
Phil, as for the schools, there are ways teachers can present honest history, even if the powers that be don't like it. Slide it in when discussing whatever the anti-truth curriculum provides. Say, "others more fairly say . . . " then put in the truth. Let students know in subtle ways that many people now think that students shouldn't be given the truth and that if they can't get it in school, find it wherever they can and think it through before accepting it as truth. It is clearly harder, but it is a kind of resistance all our students and teachers need to learn.
I have recently met a new friend getting doctorate in philosophy! Yes, philosophy. We are getting together for a visit to just chat. I owned up to being required to take 16 units of philosophy in college & to not understanding most of it but as I have "grown up" I see the importance of philosophy in life. I'm anxious to suggest to her that I consider philosophy the psychology of the masses, for isn't that the case? Take a large group of individuals with the same outlook on life & study it. Treat the group as an individual & analyze it.
No, I'm not implying that we take 6 year olds & try to teach them Socrates or Plato, what I'm saying is drill down to the root of the problem in general if possible & then come up with a variety of solutions. Schooling is number one on the list, but what curriculum? How to we determine what we teach our children? Do we follow a religious teaching? If so, which one? What economic formula do we use to set up an economy that is fair for as many as possible.
Maybe we need to take a thought from Star Trek:
"The needs of the many over the needs of the one or the few."
The Star Trek reference to Vulcan philosophy is a nod to J.S. Mill's Utilitarianism. Arising in the late 19th century, it favors democracy as the political system to provide the best outcome for the most people.
If the concern is preventing authoritarian drift, the essential schooling is civic literacy, not ideology. That means understanding how institutions work, who controls what, and how power is exercised in practice. Most Americans learn almost nothing about the structure of governance beyond slogans. The result is a public that reacts emotionally instead of strategically.
For public officials, the missing piece is systems training: how feedback loops, incentives, and administrative machinery actually function. Officials who do not understand the system they manage become dependent on lobbyists, consultants, or partisan messaging.
The schooling required is not moral instruction. It is structural competence. Once people can see the machinery, they are harder to manipulate.
There will be an election. America will vote again. Not only will there be an election but it will encompass the road not taken yet, as the changes necessary to support the well being of every man woman and child will finally be ushered into code. This time we the people will become forever all of us. Get your tickets now for the dance of the new century. This is your heads up not your teats up. What happens when the bullies beat the shit out of your friends. There is an unequal and opposite explosion of rectitude. A magnificent retribution coming to small towns and large towns igniting a spirit of reformation building like magma surging to the surface.
I hope with all my heart that you’re correct. However the Democratic Party polls lower than Trump, which is terrifying. I wish I knew if we needed more AOC’s, Bernie’s, Mamdani’s, or more tough guys who want to reconstitute and improve on the social safety net and give back more power to workers, but also want to impose their version of morality on everybody, or some combination of these. I don’t think we can win just by saying, however truthfully, "Trump is horrible."
We absolutely need to support state governors who are aggressively asserting states' rights to keep their own zones fascist-free, and who will be the leadership when orange Hitler keels over. They DO NOT have a replacement - this is a cult of personality.
Another Newsom-led action: California and 20 other states are suing the rump administration over what they say is the federal government's unlawful refusal to fund SNAP benefits due to the nearly month-long federal government shutdown.
Earlier this week, the US Department of Agriculture stated on its website that federal food aid will not go out on Nov. 1.
Gov. Newsom said California is fast-tracking $80 million in state funds to stabilize food bank food distribution and offset delays in federal CalFresh benefits.
Hello Alexandra... "They DO NOT have a replacement - this is a cult of personality."... Good Observation... Same as for the Nazis in Germany... Germany is still atoning for its brief Period of Madness... Did you see DJT's Military Speech Today?...
Absolutely, JL = but I think right now it's crucial to shine a strong light on the freaks who are right now in Cabinet positions (or right behind them like Peter Thiel) and running the government FOR the predator. Even MAGA isn't going to throw a lot of weight behind some of these losers currently in charge (Vance and Miller, particularly slimy).
If that stat is accurate than I begin today a tad despondent because the sum of Trump's actions should make that stat 80%. Trump is Trump, my greatest disappointment is the American voter.
We got us some top notch sure enough brilliant people out there slinging Pom poms. Now what we don’t have is enough conditioned athletes. That’s you and me and all our lazy pals. Remember what that gal said? Well of coarse you don’t. Let me remind you that the largest portion of the United States govmint is us, buddy. Us. We govern ourselves sending our mouthpieces to D.C. This team of us dumbells needs to get up grow some backbone and support our team. You can write your own scholarship whether it be academic or athletic. There are no free lunches. It’s a pack yer own deal now. I am getting tired of eating horse cock samwitches and I want some tasty chocolate pudding added to the menu. I think it’s gonna be a good dance. I vote for a jitterbug.
I recommend listening to the callers on Progress Radio (Sirius/XM 127) as well as the hosts. John Fugelsang, Dean Obadallah, Thom Hartmann, Michaelangelo, Zerlina, Stephanie Miller especially. Most of them also have Substacks, but many of the callers and guests offer solutions as well as the complaints. You can't expect to learn much from the corporate media about what is going on except for whatever the fuck Trump is saying or doing.
Isn't that why we are all here reading or listening the professor?
"Trump is horrible" does not pack much punch, but perhaps stark comparisons to other creeps, as well as heroes, in history will, provided we package it effectively.
And what is the story, the real-world experience, of some of the specific victims of these sociopaths? What do we need to do to viscerally illustrate the suffering borne by victims of this regime's abuses? Those arrested for no probable or provable crime? Those deprived of needed food, assistance, or treatment while the regime pursues it's aristocratic golden balls?
What, for heavens sake, would be the decent thing to do? What makes a genuine hero a hero? And a jerk a jerk? Which specific behaviors sustain our "sacred honor"?
Remember back to when Joan Baez sang the words they wont have their names when they ride the big airplane. All they will be called will be just deportees. Your words have caught that echo JL. I agree we need to amplify.
I think the key to winning the voters is to drop all the divisive morality issues and focus on those issues we have in common. Focus on the economics of corporate ruled capitalism and inequality (not the complaints of small groups of people who are oppressed by the ideology of other small groups of people, however valid and important those issues are). Bernie and AOC are getting huge crowds and energy with that message.
I don't know where you live but there are elections happening virtually EVERY DAY across the US and the world. We have two propositions on our ballot, one of which was paid for by the Fascist Republican Party which would take away absentee voting and further restrict voting across the state.
If it passes our purple state will likely become red. Maine had the highest voter participation rate in the country and it's because we've been able to keep the fucking MAGAs out of our elections.
So yes, there will be an election Pat tens of thousands of them in the next 12 months.
I’m excited every time I hear a Dem win and always add to that news ..”keep their feet to the fire” we all need to pay attention more . I encourage Substack introduction, share often, send via email to others, offer the gifts when possible. Thank you for your own considerable and consistent effort 🫶
It’s deep if not ‘blood red’ but I love them all anyway, they’re my neighbors.
My son and his family used to live near there. I never felt unsafe walking in those neighborhoods or parks. Never dreamed that the enemy would be the U.S. government.
This is an abomination! What the hell is Midwest Blitz? Where the hell do these people think they are? In some Afghan hellhole?
I would sue Bovino, Homan, Trump, and every one of those officers.
They’d also be in jail.
Trump can give this guy the $230 million he thinks he deserves because FBI came into Mar a Lago to get the classified documents he said he didn’t have with a lawful subpoena.
Franklin Delano’s genetics are imbued into the genetics of the modern day Democratic Party. His DNA and fingerprints far outran his wheelchair. He is like Jimmie and Rosalyn, a little bit of their magnificent hearts in each and every one of us regardless of party. Make me a list of those who now swim in deep water on our behalf and read it back to us. It’s a crazy good long list and growing. People are losing their fear of swimming in shark water. Irrigation season is over in my latitude of deep red Idaho but I still carry my pitchfork. We grew from 30 to 300 souls this summer. My county has more than 8300 people now. I figure the timid democrats still in the closet could reach 50% by the time this ice age quits flourishing.
There will absolutely be an election. But will it be free? Will it be fair? Will we be able to trust the reported results? Dictatorships such as Russia and Hungary hold elections, but somehow the ruling class always wins with 95-99% of the “votes” when evidence on the ground makes it clear there is widespread opposition to it. How do we prevent the midterms and 2028 from becoming the same kind of performative charade? Elections fall to states to administer, so it will be very much incumbent on them to have the right safeguards in place. We have a big test coming up in VA, NJ, and NYC in a few days. I hope these electoral systems are up for the challenge.
Annabel, although the road forward certainly looks more than rocky right now, we cannot give up. Over 8 million of us turned out on October 18th and that is just the beginning. There isn’t any one person who will “save” us from the evil within. We must be the driving force to save ourselves, our families, our towns, our counties, our states and our country.
No, you can't be sure that 2028 will bring a real election. In fact, you and I can't be sure of anything -- not even life itself -- but why hold that out as a marker of doom and gloom as if to say 'go no farther'? I don't get it.
I think you missed the more subtle undercurrent of why this was being posted. I think its author is trying to show all of us that a New Deal may well follow in the footsteps of this current debacle, if basic patterns in our past are a prologue -- as they often are -- to the future. That should make us all pause and take stock, how will this actually be done? How will we manage to pull it off?
Before 2028, perfect or deeply flawed, 2026 looms. Actually, in 4 days time, TENS of thousands of local and regional elections for 2025 are taking place all over the country -- from school boards to state court judges, to the twin races for Governor of Virginia and New Jersey. In off-year elections, Republicans tend to vote, while Democrats tend to brood and stay home. How about starting a different trend right now? How about less brooding and more voting and poll-watching?
There's a ton of work to do, including the all-too-overlooked one of volunteering to serve as an election monitor, which are greatly needed. People voting right now need our encouragement and support far more than our doom and gloom.
I reiterate my idea that those in the states where Rs intend to send supposed DOJ monitors volunteer to walk with voters who may be intimidated by the presence of feds—or whatever they send out. When the voter gets to the check in area of the polling place, turn around and accompany the next person.
We have the formula for what to do to fix the economy: a new NEW DEAL.
What's fair? Frances Perkins, FDR's Secretary of Labor and the person responsible for our having Social Security hit the nail on the head in terms of what government's purpose or function should be: "The people are what matter to government, and a government should aim to facilitate the means by which all the people under its jurisdiction can access the best possible life." Sound familiar? It should. Excerpted from Matthew 25: 34-46: 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ So, what about our "Christian" Republican politicians who voted for Trump's "One Big, Beautiful Bill" that takes food, shelter, health care and more from "the least of these" and hands trillions of dollars to the ultra-wealthy? Here it is: 45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’ 46 “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
Without a new NEW DEAL, and because of the $40 trillion debt that the federal govt. incurred giving massive tax breaks to the wealthy, unless Republicans are voted out of office starting right now, Americans in their 30's, 40's and 50's probably won't get Social Security and Medicare. Taking back that money through taxation of the wealthy is absolutely essential.
And, advice to Sanders and Mamdani: You are Socialists. You are Pragmatic Capitalists. Neither of you advocates for government ownership or control of the means of production. Frances Perkins got it right.
Hello Annabel... "They have managed to combine the elite arrogance of the 1920s with the authoritarianism of 1930s Europe."... Elon Musk, who backs the AfD in Germany, this week has demanded a Trillion$ Pay Package from Tesla's Board of Directors.... Why?... Is Too Much Ketamine involved?....
And many of us question why there are even billionaires in the US. Generational wealth creates trustifarians like the do nothing Walton gang and many others. Rarely, do any of the children become valued and contributing members of society unless propping up bon-bon sales is of some value.
In her column about the suspension of SNAP benefits in The Contrarian this morning, Jennifer Rubin asked, parenthetically, "Any tech bros want to pay for food for starving children?" Why accumulate billions of dollars more than any person could ever want or need? I don't understand the greed of these people. A few have established philanthropic organizations and contribute to worthwhile causes, but then you have the Elon Musks of the world, who have no interest in anything other than acquiring greater wealth and power. Think of how much they could do by donating to food banks, homeless shelters, and social service organizations. Imagine...
Ellen, I commented about this a day or two ago. The comment didn't get much attention, probably because it was buried in Substack's comment indents.
There are many illustrations I could use, but I'll settle on sharks. They are built in such a way that they must keep moving or they'll "suffocate" and die. Billionaires are the same, except this is a mentality, not a physicality.
To my knowledge, the U.S. is the only nation on the planet that was founded as a capitalist society. Unlike every other nation or culture, where commerce is a means to achieve other ends, commerce IS our core value in the U.S. Everything else is built around promoting and protecting commerce.
The only objective of capitalism is GROWTH. Enough is never enough. A venture must keep expanding its revenue to survive, or so it is believed. A company must keep expanding its product line to generate more revenue. When it has saturated its market or run out of ideas, it must acquire other companies, because it must keep growing or die.
This mindset of "MORE, MORE MORE!" becomes that of the oligarchs who run these corporations. Too much is never enough, and they can't even tell you why.
Forewarned is forearmed, of should be, since this is a story no observant and rational person would not want to see replayed. Once again, I urge a focus on the money that has been allowed to weigh on the scales of justice. Those whose monomaniacal focus on expanding a personal empire decries and despoils the common weal as an unwelcome competitor. "As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master." That's the recipe for liberty and justice for all. That and firm belief that not all ways of accumulating money are equally respectable and some things should never, ever be for sale.
All true, Annabel. But I would also like to point out that what significantly brought the USA out of the Great Depression was our expansion of the military-industrial complex, first through the Lend-Lease program and then in our actual participation in WW2. A lot of economic historians point out that US growth would have moved much more slowly without all that war machine manufacturing. And the US economy is still addicted to this kind of strategy for keeping the economy booming. It's what drove the post-war boom as well as Reagan's post-recession economy (all his little nasty wars in Central America). Other economists and historians have posited that the USA is addicted to war machines to shore up our way of life and that unless we can come up with other strategies to replace it, we will continue to promote wars--either overtly or covertly--to the detriment of the rest of the world.
Linda, ever since the first Venezuelan fishing boat was blown up, I have been suspicious that the Trump Regime is trying to start a war in order to revive an economy that is collapsing because of Donald's hare-brained economic tinkering.
I believe I recall the U.S. getting into a war with an oil-pumping country in the Middle East. Something about invisible "weapons of mass destruction."
Now, Donnie wants to start a war with another oil-sitter-onner, this time, over invisible "drug runners."
''When the rich ran the country, prosperity was promised for all, until the bill came due and only the poor were left to pay it.''
In the beginning, the Market created Prosperity and saw that it was good. Then the Market created Lobbyists, and they said it was even better. Soon, the rich were building golden yachts while the poor were told to pull themselves up by flip-flop straps.
Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, Patron Saint of the One Percent, declared that cutting taxes on millionaires would somehow help the milkman. The milkman, unfortunately, couldn’t afford milk. Meanwhile, Herbert Hoover stood at the pulpit preaching, “The fundamentals are sound!” as the entire economy burst into flames behind him.
Investors danced on ticker tape like it was confetti until the music stopped on October 29, 1929, and someone finally noticed there were no chairs. Stocks plunged, jobs vanished, and America’s “normalcy” turned out to mean sleeping in a box while Mellon reminded everyone that suffering “builds character.”
Then along came Roosevelt, offering a “New Deal,” which was just common sense disguised as revolution: feed people, give them jobs, regulate the crooks. The rich called it socialism, but everyone else called it breakfast.
Moral of the story? Whenever someone says the rich should rule because they “understand business,” check your wallet—and maybe your house—before they understand it right out from under you... https://essayx.substack.com/p/the-gospel-of-the-free-market
Your question cuts deep. History’s patterns are repeating, but awareness is also widening. I also see this as a moment of potential transformation if we can channel our concern into cooperation. Strengthening local economies, rebuilding trust in our communities, nurturing education that cultivates empathy, these are quiet but lasting ways forward. The antidote to authoritarianism may begin simply with how we choose to care for one another.
You and Heather have forced me to face a harsh reality which I was clearly made aware of through the news.
My grandchildren are reaching college age. Each one works hard in school. Each one has great parents. I have been saving to help with their college education...and now THIS!!!!
How selfish and horrible the greed and arrogance of the few that they would selfishly steal from the lives and hopes and dreams of regular hardworking, sacrificial Americans who have planned and saved for their children's (or grandchildren's) education.
Everyone must vote and pray that our vote will be protected!!!!
This is worse, Annabel! Technology is useful for good AND FOR EVIL!
Stop reciting day after day all the negatives and start DOING something other than bemoaning! What are each of us doing to channel the elections going forward? Heather is pointing out the comparison of the current overloaded stock market with what? .AI investment bubble likely to burst. AND because of it companies laying off real people from jobs. Together with Trump's spending like a drunken sailor on things like the ballroom and planes for Noem. Start support of every election of any non GOP candidates anywhere!
Annabel Ascher, we have first to focus on all the state elections, runoffs, being certain of enough Democratic wins to assure the election of 2026. Then we can focus on 2028.
Between the shift from the highs of the Progressive Era to the Bacchanalian selfish hedonism of the 1920s, the calm and progressive 1990s shifting to the “war on terror” Republican spending on the wealthy in the Aughts, and this 180 we did from Presidents Obama and Biden to this authoritarian regime, I see a pattern. Whenever we start adhering to the principles of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, we Americans get bored and give power back to the wealthy Republicans. When they screw things up completely, Democrats have to come in and fix the economy, infrastructure, and so forth. It’s maddening that people don’t see this pattern.
I understand feeling that way. But, everything is cyclic and there are iterations in advancements, also unfortunately in steps back. Some of us actually do learn lessons from history, and with each iteration in either direction I see increasing numbers of people who are learning from history.
I’ve been reading LFAA from the second month she started writing it, and have subscribed from the first day here on Substack. Dr. Richardson has, from time to time, liked posts here, but not often. She does more often on Facebook. Having it be the first or second post is a question of timing - I think she reads them rarely, but when she does, it’s the comments that come up soon after she posts.
When I was reading LFAA on Facebook, in the early days when there were fewer of us, she commented on one of my posts. That made my day, and I obviously haven’t forgotten it!
My sisters read the LFAA on Facebook instead of Substack and she has actually commented on more than one of her comments. But, I don't know the timeframe of when that was and I am not on Facebook.
I don’t like it. Reminds me of the heavy handedness of that jerk, what’s his name humble or bumble er Hubble that’s it. There was this priest and this drunk at the bar when a horse walked in……
His Machiavellian tendencies and my own personality conflict. He does do what you say for many. That is good. You are good. 👍 we’ll keep him. For me that means cautiously.
Just--I didn't think Heather read the comment section. Perhaps just early on at a few. In reading for several years now, I've NEVER seen her "like" a comment!
Not off topic but, a tangent for sure; HCR: " the horrors of WWI & the Spanish flu that followed". My understanding is that the "Ft Dix Flu" followed the American soldiers "over there" to East Coast ports then sailed to Euro ports & then into the trenches of both sides.
Anybody have a cite to substantively revised history of "Spanish Flu" & WWI?
I'm just an admissible fact based trial attorney guy.
Counselor, I will ask my friend who had a grandmother who survived the "Spanish" Flu in either Arkansas or Oklahoma. She (friend, not grandmother) posted some historical information about that very thing. I'll ask.
Her “Politics Chat” video for today is especially interesting. And she goes over that her newsletters go over the facts of what is happening but her videos like “Politics Chat” also mention what “We the People” can do about it. She said that this week she will be doing a number of interviews with “people of interest”. So watch for them. As always, kudos to Heather, our star in the night sky.
To all climate fanatics/ lunatics. A former protagonist becomes a realist. Looks like AOC was wrong. DUH!!! I’M SO EXCITED BECAUSE NOW I KNOW …..WE ….WILL….SURVIVE….lmfffao
Not that she hasn’t been wrong on most things. And that’s just a little aside.
It appears we might have to wait 500 years to see if Florida will be underwater lololol.
Don’t sell your waterfront property quite yet. Omg. 😳
What happened to Heather's FB page? Her once photo of the Lincoln Memorial, with the accompanying choices of videos, posts, and the like, are gone. Though, I am still able to hear her chats on FB.
She has been doing umpteen podcasts with everyone, lately, Lynell. I think today was with Joyce Vance which was excellent and she recently did one with Gavin Newsom. I think Joyce posted it in her newsletter “Civil Discourse”. Let me know if you read her stuff or not. I will try and forward it to you. I can’t answer your question about FB because I dropped everything Zuck owns like a hot potato about 7 months ago.
Marlene, Heather posted this warning on her official FB page yesterday (the one with the blue check mark):
“Folks: Just a reminder that this is the ONLY official Heather Cox Richardson page. There are a bunch of groups with my name on them out there— some have more than 100K followers— but I have nothing to do with them. At least one is a MAGA site that is feeding people misinformation.
Please be alert... and if you belong to those groups and they feed right-wing crap, please call it out.
Do me a favor explain to me what right wing crap is I’d love to hear this one because I’ve been laughing all day already reading some of these posts, but that would really make me crack up hysterically
Timothy Snyder is an American historian, a chaired university professor of history who has spent his long career (long before Donald Trump appeared) studying fascism and the history of Central and Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union and the Holocaust. He has published about 6 books on these topics including the bestselling “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From The Twentieth Century” 2017 (ISBN 978-0-8041-9011-4). He is an internationally known and highly respected expert on authoritarianism and fascism. He is a frequently invited lecturer. You can Google his resume:
Exerpt from “On Tyranny”: “The Founding Fathers tried to protect us from the threat they knew, the tyranny that overcame ancient democracy. Today, our political order faces new threats, not unlike the totalitarianism of the twentieth century. We are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.” - from “On Tyranny”.
The first caveats in “On Tyranny”: 1. Do not obey in advance; 2. Defend institutions; 3. Beware the one-party rule; 4. Take responsibility for the face of the world; 5. Remember professional ethics; 6. Be wary of paramilitaries; 7. Be reflective if you must be armed; 8. Stand out; 9. Be kind to our language; 10. Believe in truth;……..20. Be as courageous as you can.”
Here is a partial list of other distinguished university professors and experts on authoritarianism and fascism and some of their published books on these topics subject. They all agree with Timothy Snyder.
Jason Stanley: “How Fascism Works” and “Erasing History”
Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt: “How Democracies Die” and “Tyranny of the Minority”
Anne Applebaum (Pulitzer Prize winning historian): “Autocracy Inc.” and “Twilight of Democracy”
Ruth Ben-Ghiat: “Strongmen - Mussolini to the Present”
World Mental Health Coalition, “The More Dangerous Case Of Donald Trump”, 40 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Warn Anew, edited by Bandy Lee, MD, MDIV, 2024, ISBN 979-8-9900533-7-3.
“Prisoners Of Hate, The Cognitive Basis Of Anger, Hostility, And Violence”, Aaron T. Beck, M.D., Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry, father of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, 1999, ISBN 0-06-019377-8.
“Without Conscience, The Disturbing World Of The Psychopaths Among Us”, Robert D. Hare, Ph.D., 1999, ISBN-10: 1-57230-451-0.
“The Big Cheat, How Donald Trump Fleeced America and Enriched Himself and His Family”, David Cay Johnston, (Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist and Professor at Syracuse University College of Law), 2021, ISBN 978-1-9821-7803-1.
I have seen some lost souls. Yours are not. You were not a lost soul. You’ve actually sold your soul to the devil because you are lost not your soul, but your entirety. In my opinion you are so demented and so you reconcile depressed and hateful that nothing will help you and this is gonna last for a while so you better get some medication.
Agree about FB, Marlene. I go there just to listen to Heather's chats because, for me, they are the only ones to publish them in real time. She definitely has a soft spot for FB users as that was her first foray, I believe.
But, yes, I have been roaming the internet to find her elsewhere to catch whatever I might have missed. Thanks for the mention of Newsom with Joyce. Oy, I can't remember if I saw that one or not! Will check it out.
Morning Lynell! Heather is also live on YouTube, which is usually live before FB catches up. I subscribe there, it’s free, and get a notification when she’s live.
I can only imagine what her calendar looks like. And her day job is professor at Boston College. This is just one of her many other undertakings.
Keep in mind that almost every time Heather does a podcast with someone she is not only teaching but she is learning as well. And we are the beneficiaries.
Meta, Facebook instagram WhatsApp stocks. He is a world class jack ass but Facebook is an all American family gathering. I too tossed him but my wife wants the connection to her family. Facebook is a by the shorthairs deal.
And how is that work out for you Marilyn anything change? Try the real world go outside and tell me what of Trump’s policies has affected you negatively?
And their lies the rub you hate the man more than you hate the policies which is really sick. It just shows you how stuck in the mud you are.
Actually, Fred, it’s not even right wing anymore. It’s pretty much centrist for those were the brain and a sense of what’s actually happening on the ground not what happened historically
Senator Elissa Slotkin (MI) is a former CIA employee and Iraq war veteran. In the US Senate she is a member of the Armed Services Committee, the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, the Veteran’s Affairs Committee, etc. and Ranking Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee’s Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee. A day ago she gave a short address to a meeting at the Brookings Institution’s Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy and Technology that is very important to and would benefit all Americans to hear. These are all admonitions that Heather has mentioned but Senator Slotkin puts it all together in a logical framework from the perspective of a US Senator who is experiencing the involved individuals, behavior and actions first hand.
Morning, Lynell. Sometimes those chats are hard to chase down. I usually find them on Youtube; she's migrating over there due to the cloning and use of her name and images on FB by "other actors".
Morning, Ally! That's what I saw ("other actors") when I last searched for her page on FB. I was able to watch her chat, verifying it was her by seeing the blue checkmark.
GloryB, Sharon, how'd you do that?! When I used your link, it worked, I now see the Lincoln Memorial. It shows that I'm "following." Not sure why I'm not able to get it anymore. I'll have to investigate.
Well… Facebook is quirky as hell so I have no idea! She did mention in a Facebook post that there are several bogus accounts out there, and if you encounter want to report it. At any rate, glad I could get you to the right place!
By the way, when you call me a troll, have you noticed that the same losers are here day after day after day with the same sad story with a box of tissues next to them. You people are so self depressive. It’s really pathetic. Go get a life get out of here go invest in the stock market go outside and play. Go to a movie not that there’s any good ones. Go talk to somebody on the other side of the line and see how happy they are and maybe you can then understand why.
Yeah, so if you don’t get enough depressed here, Fred, you can go there and start taking pills to get out of your depression when the rest of the country is loving life, enjoying it, enjoying the sunlight, enjoying basking in the resurgence of America and you’re here in the pit of darkness commiserating with the rest of the losers
Thanks Rick. But those dancing frogs, dinosaurs, unicorns, hippos, bald eagles, etc. peacefully and festively dancing at the NoKings Day rallies didn’t look depressed to me. 7-8 million of them. The losers appear to be MAGA voters in rural areas and red states who are losing their Medicaid and rural hospitals and/or seeing their health insurance premiums double and their grocery bills go up. I thought Trump was going to lower prices “on day one”?
The House Oversight Committee voted to advance resolutions holding former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in contempt of Congress yesterday. The move pushes the measures to the full House for a vote as soon as Monday, Feb. 2.
The Clintons have for months rebuffed a subpoena to answer questions related to their interactions with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Their lawyer argues the subpoena is illegal and does not serve a legislative purpose. The Clintons have instead offered to submit written statements, and this week proposed the committee's chair, Rep. James Comer (R, KY-1), interview Bill Clinton and his staff in New York. If the House votes to hold the Clintons in contempt, it could pave the way for a Justice Department indictment.
Bill Clinton has been documented taking four international trips on Epstein’s Boeing 727 jet in 2002 and 2003. Stops on those trips included Bangkok, Brunei, Rwanda, Russia, and China.
And in related news, Gavin Newson was named Realtor of the year in Nevada, Idaho, Arizona, Texas, Florida, and the Carolinas. Thanks to Gavin’s Nightmare a 1 million people have moved to these states.
By the way, 2+2+5 immediate flop should tell you everything you need to know because this was an analysis of the Biden administration not that you saw that at all unfortunately but that's exactly what it was other than it had it in inception under Obama. God forbid you didn't bow and genuflect. This was Biden's story personified only had he held it together mentally for more than a year and a half which he did not.
It's amazing how you can take something so clear and distorted it so readily to make it fit your narrative. Actually very sickening but it accurately portrays the mindset of the 7 million idiots who went out on the road twice with a no king's protest. When in fact, we don't have a king in fact, if we had a king they chop off your head for protesting having a king, but that didn't happen. Did it there Mr. Cox
Unfortunately, you are caught in a tidal wave of hate and gullibility not two of the finest traits of a human being
In the meantime, Trump is now the coleader of the free world voluntarily with words and deeds not by force oooooops
If your party doesn't wake up real quick, you're gonna end up like communist Russia in New York and it's gonna die a quicker death because it's surrounded by liberty and that's what we have now unbridled liberty
Well, Fred aren’t you lost? They were out there because they were depressed. They were out there because they were protesting and they don’t even know what the hell they’re protesting because they can’t even illicit the specific negative policies that are affecting their lives and I’ve asked 63 times and I’ve gotten zero answers. They’re protesting they can’t get hate Trump out of their system and there’s nothing that I can do about it. They have to do it themselves.
Well, nobody is losing their Medicaid yet. Nobody is losing their Medicaid yet. Nobody has seen. I think one rural Hospital has closed and they close and open all the time but all your imaginative disasters have not occurred every single one of them that you projected has not happened so keep being negative. That’s very very purposeful
On the other hand, Trump has done nothing but tried to reduce prices and gas prices have gone down in half egg prices are down 60% while $400 billion from foreign countries has poured into this country and yet inflation has stayed tame less than half of what it was during Biden, so if you want to see miracles, go to a circus or to a Magician This guy has been kicking ass since he took Office and he’s doing it all over the world so stop your hate. Stop your negativity. Stop your delirium and start getting behind this president and our country.
Hello! Please look in the mirror. The derrière he is kicking is yours and other MAGA cultists. You are not a billionaire getting tax cuts. You need to google the meaning of the words: con artist, demagogue, grifter, cult, fascism, etc.. And then rethink what has happened to your train of thought. You are fulfilling PT Barnum’s dictum. Escape the cult before you become a victim like the members of Jim Jones’s “People’s Temple in Jonestown.
And by the way, if not for Joe Biden‘s open borders, we would not be in half of the problems that we have now but the good news is in only what is it nine months he has removed or have have read ourselves of over 2 1/2 million of the illegals.
Not bad for only nine months lots of work to do gotta get rid of all these future voters that Biden planned on
I can’t even begin to describe how lost you are in life. First of all, I’m not a mega cultist and how do you know how much money I make?
And you need to Google the word reality what any historian has ever written at any point in time has no bearing on anything currently happening and you ought to get that through your stubborn living in the past head. Every time I hear someone say history repeats itself I go that’s a little redundant. Don’t you think because history continues to repeat itself and will continue to repeat itself until we are both fossil fuel.
The problem that you have is, you’re actually taking some historian wrote whatever number of years ago and tries to make it Jermaine to today when the only thing Jermaine to today is. Are you ready? Today
And Fred, you don’t even realize it yet, but many of the people here are already victims of the peoples temple in Jonestown. The people who are not are the people who voted for Trump who are free and happy and looking forward to tomorrow while every single human being waste aid is unhappy, pissed angry intolerant, hateful, and almost any other negative adjective or adverb I can think of
And you’re not even much of a mind reader either what a surprise that is
It’s people like you that I actually feel sorry for that are still living in the past and you’ll never leave the past but the past has passed you by Paypal it’s over for you mentally if you still continue to think the way you do have at enjoy yourself you’re gonna be miserable until Trump leaves Office and maybe even beyond then because he could actually pass the torch to Vance in year four without a vote and then advance is doing a good job and the economy and everything is doing well. guess what? Eight more years of republican leadership and that’s all you give a shit about you. Don’t care about right you don’t care about wrong. You don’t care about anything other than political affiliation and you’ve made that perfectly clear. Either way could care less I care about policies and the effect on people regardless of which party they came from and that’s why I happen to like Bill Clinton a lot.
Enjoy your life in your misery if you knew me you’d trade places in a heartbeat but you can’t
Sometimes you appear to exhibit flight of ideas/tangentiality and pressured speech/writing. These are signs of mental illness. Please consider seeing a qualified therapist to help you with addressing your anger and these issues.
By the way, I just reread the first couple lines of your post and I hate to say this because I am as happy as possibly could be in my entire life and I’m well into my senior years and I look for tomorrow and I can’t wait for the sunrise while you wallow in your squalor and here’s the funniest thing of all this is the most ironic thing you’re gonna
Oh, and I’m one more happy note if your party doesn’t open the government then millions of Americans will be impacted and will put the blame squarely on the nose of the Democrats for not opening the government. Snap that you were complaining about losing before you’re gonna lose because you’re stubborn hating party is gonna do it and I’m gonna sit here and laugh my ass off because they’re gonna be the ones that get the blame and get the hanging. And soon they will have no choice, but to open it up because it’s gonna be widely advertise as to who’s stopping the money from being paid and stopping the military from being paid and stopping the police from being paid. And all those people are gonna know who is at fault no matter how much the Democrats scream and Chuck Schumer Cowtows to your radical left socialists.
Now it's a Mellon descendant bankrolling Trump and his goons and "donating" dollars to pay members of the military during the government shutdown. This is seen by many as early steps to privatizing the US military to serve Trump and his allies.
Another curious connection... According to leaked flight logs from Jeffrey Epstein's private jet, the name "Paul Mellon" appears on the list. Paul Mellon is the father of Timothy Mellon who made these military donations.
I’ve long thought that the FBI files on Epstein go far beyond pedophilia. Robert Maxwell, Epstein and their moneyed cronies moved a lot of money around in probably not so legal ways. Remember the Palm Beach property sales.
I suspect that a major reason Speaker Johnson is so adverse to allowing all if the Epstein papers to be released is that a number of very wealthy Republican donors’ names will be on that list as well.
Yeah, how come George Clooney didn’t donate LMFAO. Let’s see if we can get this clear folks. John Kennedy is dead. Bobby Kennedy is dead. Martin Luther King is dead and you’re worried about Jeffrey Epstein. Yikes. You’re like to cling on in a capt Kirk sequel
We were given another reminder yesterday that Trump is no Julius Caesar. All the night-time shows were tickled by the way he wandered aimlessly away from Japanese PM Sanae Takaichi while inspecting troops and then had to be escorted by her around the room. Later, on Air Force One, he told boasted to reporters about his high IQ and those 'cognitive tests' that they keep making him take (nobody's told him yet that they're not IQ tests) and criticised Texas Representative Jasmine Crockett and New York Representative Alexandra Ocasio Cortez for having low IQs.
He's a national humiliation. It's interesting that yesterday House Republican published their Biden autopen report while ignoring the increasingly alarming mental deterioration of their own leader.
I agree, Russell, he's declining rapidly, and spreading videos and news that show it is critical. So is exposing freaks who are REALLY running this horror show: Stephen Miller, Russell Vought, Peter Thiel. Because MAGA isn't going to step up to support any of them. They're a one-leader cult.
The really terrifying thought is that there's no one leading the government at all when Trump goes AWOL, exactly what the Republicans claimed about the end of the Biden presidency even though Biden did have the good sense to surround himself with capable people and not incompetent sycophants.
The problem for the Republicans is that they had a good opportunity in 2021 to try to envisage a future for the party without Trump but they didn't and now he's back again.
Those excavators tearing down the White House east wing are leading.
The ICE terror squads destroying American communities are leading.
The personal vengeance lawyers in the DOJ are leading.
The tariffs besetting the American people with inflation are leading.
The cover-up of his role in the rape of many, many underage girls is leading.
The successful extortion of so many elite sectors of U.S. life is leading.
The allying with fellow criminals Putin, Netanyahu, Milei, Sisi, Erdogan, Mohammed bin Salman, and Bukele is leading.
It's all negative, vicious, hate-&-anger driven -- and it all features the main criminal in the White House as permanently AWOL, never close to doing anything positive for anyone other than his fellow cynical billionaires.
Those things you describe are happening and they're all authorised by Trump to some extent or another and he is unquestionably the leader but these increasingly frequent lapses that he has shows that while there are plenty of people behind the elephant trying to clean up the mess it's making, there's no one in front telling it where to go.
Does Trump have an economic policy not connected to his delusional belief that the whole world has been taking advantage of America and to his pursuit of self-enrichment? As far as I can tell he has no infrastructure policy except to allow fossil fuel companies to continue their activities free from regulation; the same pretty much for tech companies and their data centres; and of course building a whopping great ballroom. Does he have a health policy other than undermining the current policies? Does he have a foreign policy aside from his boastful claims of ending wars, his continued diplomatic failures in Ukraine and Gaza, and his provocations against allies and the Venezuelan government? He certainly has an immigration policy, but it consists solely of mass deportation of undocumented migrants and self-harming restrictions on visas.
I agree, his is a politics of resentment, grievance and retribution but none of it amounts to a policy with clear objects and this indicates an absence of genuine political leadership. And so his administration just muddles along subject to his capricious impulses which come thick and fast as his efforts to exert power founder in the courts. He promised to Make America Great Again, but for the life of me I cannot see how anything they've done so far is remotely likely to achieve that end.
Russell, I'm sure if WE'RE discussing who's going to lead the government when the predator keels over — which could be today if that video you linked is an indicator! — then Newsom, Pritzker, Hochul, AOC, Crockett and so many more are making contingency plans.
Democratic bunfights never seem to serve the party well. I don't think that it's helping that Kamala Harris has made it clear that she intends to run again while publishing shit about her time in office. I agree that there are some outstanding Democratic leaders right now (especially compared with the poor fare offered by Republicans) so they should choose one now as the presumptive nominee and allow that person to direct the party. At the moment, they seem rudderless and lacking a hopeful vision of what the country might look like under a future Democratic government and Congress. I suspect that it's not going to be enough simply to rely on Trump's increasingly erratic behaviour and hoping that people will be repulsed - because so far they haven't been in any way helpful to the Democratic party.
I personally think that Mertyl Streep gets it right in this short clip.
I continue to find it astounding that MSM is totally missing in action when it comes to honest reporting on what they are witnessing. They are so obedient to the idea of not giving any smidgen of offense to his incredibly fragile ego, that they have abandoned their duty to the nation to tell the truth of what they see. That is something our founders never envisioned, coming from an era of robust reporting in the media of their day. We can’t fault them for not having the foresight that 250 years have brought, any more than we can’t foresee what the world will be like in another 250 years. In the end truth telling is what gives us a fighting chance to make wise decisions day to day, sadly that’s missing and we are worse off because of it.
I would love to see a 'test-off' between him / Crockett & AOC. And speaking of being an embarrassment -- he did his awful dance again when being welcomed to Malaysia (?). Total Cringe.
An MRI is part of the dementia work up checking for normal pressure hydrocephalus. Interesting that they released the information that he had an MRI recently but not what body part or the results.
Do you want to see a real leader go watch JD Vance talking right now to TPUS USA and answering every question they ask not ducking and driving like John Pierre or any democrat today
JD Vance just did such a stellar job at the TPA. I think if he ran for president today against Trump, he would win. You guys are in big effing trouble.
The Republicans are talking about substance and the Democrats are talking about ballrooms which I've said 100×1012 years from now when new presidents are using that ballroom to invite distinguished guest from other countries you guys are gonna be proud of it but now you're just haters
If I were you and thank God, I’m not I’d be worried more about Joe Biden for the last three years and you could’ve given a shit. You let him sit here and run our country into the ground open our borders and kill our economy in the process and all Trump is doing is trying to revive it and he’s doing a pretty damn good job especially if you’re in the market Pay attention pal you’re in the wrong venue right here. This is the venue of the depressed.
I've read that Trump has also used an autopen (and it's not open to doubt that he doesn't really know what he's doing) but he does like to sign things. When I first saw one of those signing ceremonies that he likes during his first term I thought for moment 'is he drawing on it?'.
You're not gonna like what you see and do you think Joe Biden was actually competent to be president the last two years of administration if you do then you're a sucker you're a sap. Why the hell do you think they kicked them off the ticket and put the clown in instead. She wasted $2 billion of donors money and only three months
Trump has pardoned about 1,600 so far this year, including the Jan. 6 mob. Do you think he personally signed all of those pardons? Incidentally, by signing those pardons he relieved them of the need to make restitution payments and pay fines to American taxpayers and their other victims.
Hey Mary, have you heard Trump say he’s pardoning all those people Biden couldn’t even speak at the end of his term. Biden was a walking vegetable. And yet they had him run and they had him run again. Can you believe the stupidity of these people you think you could fool the people like that. If Trump wasn’t doing major, major ation deals around the world and here in the states bringing in right now about $400 billion of additional income into the United States through trade. There might be a cause for concern about his mental capacity but right now he’s one of the sharpest people on the planet he just met with the leader of the opposition and came out with a fair deal for both parties not to mention he is now revered all over the world and called daddy by the EU
But if you have some reason to think or some facts to indicate that he is anything but competent, I’d like to hear them
If you hold on just shortly, you’ll be able to talk about that when the new ballroom is built and see president after president after president and the future use that ballroom to entertain the world and it’s gonna be wonderful but because Trump built it there’s something wrong. The funny thing is five other presidents have remodeled or revamp the White House including Obama, who spent $400,000 of taxpayer money to do so. I have a lot more to say, but there’s a lot of people who need help here so if you have a follow up, please let me know but I’ll leave you with this one. Thought you could be number 66 on the list. Give me a list of five of Trump’s policies that are negatively affecting your life on a daily basis and be specific been nice knowing you.
To be honest, I don't know. My understanding is that Fetterman is voting with the Republicans so that would rule him out. And in case it has escaped your notice, you have elected a foul-mouthed, racist, misogynistic criminal fraudster as your president so you really haven't been setting the bar very high for political leadership.
What I do not understand is the fear and ignorance of socialism that is prevalent in your country. It's so ridiculous that you've allowed Trump to use the term 'socialism' in a derogatory sense and interchangeably with 'Marxism', and 'communism' as though they were all the same. The low levels of political literacy are quite stunning.
Your government is subsidising US companies (especially in the fossil fuel sector); buying shares in Intel and US Steel; demanding revenue from Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices; and browbeating big law firms to work for the government. Your entire welfare system is a form of socialism. One could argue that Trump's tariff policy is a rejection of free market capitalism.
Rand Paul has commented on Twitter/X:
"If socialism is government owning the means of production, wouldn't the government owning part of Intel be a step toward socialism?"
He added: “Today it’s Intel, tomorrow it could be any industry.”
It would be hilarious if it wasn't so tragically stupid.
You might get more legislation being passed but would it be any good to anyone?
Capitalism is bringing production under private ownership -that's all. It isn't intended to bring people out of poverty nor does it. Your country is the most unequal country in the world and that inequality has terrible side effects (the data is all set out in meticulous detail in Kate Pickett and Rochard Wilkinson's book 'The Spirit Level'). This is because in your country capitalism has become a system for the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a very wealthy minority of people. Your welfare system and every such system isn't capitalism - it's socialism.
You surely know the stats, but let's run through them again. The top 1% of households own 30% of the country's wealth. Last year, total government revenur was around $5 trillion; and it spent $6.8 trillion. Meanwhile, US billionaires owned around $46 trillion in wealth and paid little or no tax at all. It's like the Second Estate in France (the aristocracy) during the Ancien Regime. So the US government continues to heap up debt while those people get richer.
Trump is supported by these billionaires - they support his election campaigns and they give him money. In return, he does whatever they want - it's called Project 2025. He's a convicted fraudster who uses the presidency to make money. The New Yorker's David Kirkpatrick recently calculated that he had earned $3.4bn while he was president and his grifting goes on and on. What other president have you had that has hawked golden watches, golden guitars, golden sneakers and all the other crap he finds time to sell?
You say he's not a misogynist. He's raped one woman (E. Jean Carroll) and his association with notorious paedophile Jeffrey Epstein is more evidence of his licentiousness. The evidence of his misogyny is voluminous.
Massie introduced a bill in the House to abolish the Federal Reserve Board and regional banks and hand over authority to the Treasury which would be fucking bonkers.
Rand Paul is an anti-vaxxer and a climate denialist - another bonkers politician like his father.
Tony, he's gonna be your orange Julius for another 3 1/2 years and this country is gonna be screaming success by then then what are you gonna say? Just stay in your hate depression. That's all you are is a bunch of depressed human beings. I feel sorry for you.
Well guess what pal you’re living under the realm of Orange Julius for the next 3 1/2 years so get out of this depressing negative environment and start living your life to the fullest because that’s what all Americans who love America are doing, not sitting here in a corner facing the wall instead of facing the facts as I’ve just described them above
Yeah, that's what's gonna happen. Laura you people are so demented and so sick living in your dementia and your depression. You're just a circle jerk of depressed human beings and you're better off being ostracized by yourself so you can think clearly.
But the best part is this starting Saturday 40 million. People are gonna go hungry and ultimately no matter what they say. This is gonna be blamed on the Democrats not opening the government. I personally don't care. I wouldn't be complaining at all. If I republican I'd let the public figure it out itself. Don't push the Democrats to open it. Don't say a damn thing just tell the public hey we want to feed you. The Democrats won't let us.
Do you know if there's already 2 1/2 million illegal immigrants that have been sent out of this country did you know that? Do you know how much money we saved by doing that for the American people?
What privatized army you mean Merrick Garland and his hooded amigos.
What country do you live in these days? This is America and we’re winning all over the world including Home but Heather is taking you down the road of depression. Get out get out wherever you are and start living your life happily
Trump addressing troops aboard USS George Washington in Yokosuka, Japan all but told them that he would eventually need to order them to invade US cities.
“We have cities that are troubled, we can’t have cities that are troubled. And we’re sending in our National Guard, and if we need more than the National Guard, we’ll send more than the National Guard, because we’re going to have safe cities.”
It was a reprise of his speech to military leaders in Quantico where he suggested that they use US cities as "training grounds" (he didn't elaborate for what).
Will the doctors need to sign a loyalty oath to keep practicing? Will the teachers have to sign a loyalty oath to keep their teaching credentials? Will we have to sign a loyalty oath to receive our social security benefits? Will us veterans have to sign a loyalty oath to keep getting our VA health care? Just asking.
Other than more than the 80 million who originally voted for him and another 25 million more now that everything is turning up roses, the economy, the lack of inflation the market, which has made billions of dollars almost a half $1 trillion he’s brought into this country in the way of Tariffs which have not caused the inflation that everybody including the idiot Paul Krugman thought would happen
Paul Krugman is not really an economist. He’s just an anti-republican in sheep’s clothing.
$130 million won’t cover a fraction of the $192 billion payroll. It’s a stunt.
On the other hand, the fact that these folks are willing to cough up more than $100 million lets us know how much money they stand to make from this presidency. They’d rather do that, than pay their fair share. It’s a giant grift, kleptocracy on a huge scale.
I liked that connection too. Money illegitimately acquired handed down to descendants who are inept and have no idea what to do with such great wealth. And the people who have hysterics about being able to transfer that wealth further down the lineage. I don't think it advantages the kids.
OK, Lori, the mouthpiece how much do you want to bet that the military never becomes privatized in your lifetime? Got some cash you wanna throw in the garbage
And I just responded and of course the response went somewhere else and I went. Are you an effing out of your mind? What’s your suggesting is? We don’t pay our military.? You know if we have more people like you we’d be subservient to China and Russia in a heartbeat you moron
So if I understand you correctly, and this is unbelievable, you would rather not pay our troops you effing idiot… and this is why the Democrats have the lowest approval rating in 50 years and this is why the Democrats are scattered with no agenda, except a Trump with no leader, except the communist/socialist and no other agenda, except the misguided destruction of America. Go hug an illegal criminal
Actually Lori you make a good point there is absolutely positively a definition of a legal criminal versus an illegal criminal. You might want to get that through your head. An illegal criminal is one who commits a crime in a country he’s not supposed to be in and therefore there is a pretty good chance that that crime would not have happened whatever that crime might be, would he not have been in that country illegally. So anybody who has killed raped, trafficked, drugged, or violated in any way by somebody who’s not yes supposed to be here legally has suffered because of that as has America.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
And please forgive me for misspelling your name. I’m voice texting many posts here and don’t have time to go over with directions so you’ll please have to accept my apology.
Yeah, I’ll turn it around Lori. If this were Biden and the same thing was happening and he was getting sorrows to donate to pay people so he would look so bad you’d be celebrating. This is America. We’re supposed to be the United States of America and Trump is doing everything possible to make that happen but you follow one of the most depressive individuals one of those antagonistic individuals I have seen.
It’s only making your depression worse start supporting your president seeing how he’s winning around the world, especially this past week and put a smile on your face
All I do is tell the truth you can deal with it or not and if you’re from Oregon well, sorry to hear that. Why do you think east Oregon wants to remove itself from the Portland area? Why do you think that might be? And that’s not satire my dear. You what you don’t understand is the people outside of Oregon look at Oregon like the wacko capital of the left coast besides California
Great letter, history repeating itself over and over again. The GOP makes a mess, the Democrats clean it up, never changes. On another note isn’t destroying Public work a crime?
Destroying the East Wing is a federal crime because it does not belong to the President, but rather the people of the United States.
Christopher, Donald has increased his crime rate to about one-a-day. But who is going to bring him to justice? His personal lawyer, Pam Blondi? His personal law enforcement officer, Kash Patel? Why would they bother when his personal court has decreed that anything Donald does while in office is not a crime?
Interesting report about the UN’s statement about the International Criminal Court’s taking on Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. There was a statement (plea?) that anyone could bring charges there when the UN was stalemated as it so often is. I hope I read this correctly, but it sounded very like a hint that any person or state could charge Trump and his cohorts in the ICC with war crimes, bypassing the pathetic SCOTUS who thought they had insulated this mad man from any consequences of his crimes.
Thanks for sharing that, Linda. The next question is, is there a member-of-ICC nation that would be willing to take that step? I nominate Canada or Greenland.
Oh! I think maybe Ukraine would be happy to get in on that, but after the speech that the German Minister (of Defence? not sure) gave to a group of European officials in response to JD Vance’s tone deaf and insulting speech, There is probably any number of the EU states that would be glad to see Trump et al in the Hague.
Forgot about Ukraine. After that little extortion attempt a few years ago and the recent "Gold Oval" ambush, Volodymyr would probably get a nice little bump of schadenfreude from recommending a trip to the Hague for Donny.
Remains to be seen. If we dump enough of the Republinuts out of the House who have been protecting the Felon, it may scare enough of the remaining ones into acting like sane adults for a change. If Donnie loses his yes men, and Hakeem Jeffries is Speaker instead of that toad who calls himself Speaker now, he is going to be constrained from the most egregious of his evil impulses. The trip to The Hague will have to come after he leaves……….IF he is still above ground at that point. There are others who might be charged however, and the threat of that possibility should be brought to their attention daily.
Yeah, tell me the last time that happened? Are you trying to tell me or actually trying to sell me that Biden’s administration was successful. Well if you’re communist, China or Russia, you’d be the running joke.
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out - because l am not a Jew.
Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak for me”
- prominent German pastor Martin Niemoeller, WWII Concentration Camp internee, quoted in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, on the National Mall.
With every post you become more pathetic I had a long post during my short flight in Hawaii
Each time you refer to a link or history, you confirm my worst fears and hopes for you
I've been to Washington DC at least a dozen times and happen to be Jewish
And I've lived the writings that you portray here not just in theory like you but an actual life. I've been to 119 countries and 49 of the 50 most notable sites on the planet and all 50 states that's called practical application not theory like you attempt to practice with your sayings and historical and psychological references which mean absolutely nothing. I got a glimpse of your next post and I will respond to it as soon as we unload from the plane.
And at that point, this is probably one of the last conversations we have because I find anything you offer worthless in today's world especially the fact that the Republicans under Donald Trump are in total control and will continue to be for quite a while in fact, maybe even the next 15 years. And if not, Don will have done enough to last that long by the time he's through.
Hello am sharing an idea that I hope many of you may share with me in doing. Not everyone watches MSNBC or reads hcr so the idea is to call prominent democratic leaders and encourage them to organize daily press conferences on what the democratic message is and countering the lies and corruption of the Trump regime
I am calling at night to avoid the need to identify my location outside of their state. We need to message for all the people.
I'm dying to know: what is the democratic message?
Just for yucks here's my version: "Republicans are protecting pedophiles, starving children and leaving you unprotected against a medical emergency. What else do you need to know?"
The Democratic message tells the truth of the shutdown, who is responsible, the facts of what is at stake for healthcare, the avoidance of the Epstein files by Johnson. The Democrats lay out what is occurring in the DOJ, Hegseth's military mess, the murders on the high seas. We will win on facts stated over and over and over. And that includes us.
We need to start calling out their plans on elections right now.
Barbara, we have to repeat our message over and over and over till redundancy. We need to talk to everyone over and over. We have to wake up a whole nation and we are running out of time.
This is exactly the point that Paul Krugman made earlier today. It's that simple. Dems need to shout that from the rooftops of every building available to them. But I'm sure, at this point, they still don't get it.
I am not counting on Democratic "leadership" to do anything. This has been brewing for decades. They knew this. They watched Newt Gingrich, the Tea Party, the Heritage Foundation, Christian Nationalism, trump, Russian influence, and the growth of MAGA (to name a tiny piece of this mess) and did essentially nothing.
This is on us. We find new and vibrant leaders, we vote like crazy on November 4 and we keep protesting.
They are almost as complicit in the decline of our country as the radical right. Both parties have been subservient to their corporate overlords, but the Dems favored some social issues that the Right rejected. They ended up losing their base in the process.
"Social issues"? What a catch phrase. The work accomplished by the Biden Administration will be remembered as historic in scope of change for the good--Infrastructure Bill, Child Care Tax Credit, CHIPS, and many, many, many more all designed to benefit every single section of America. Already under Biden the blue-collar workers were seeing huge increases in good paying jobs as factories were opening, and the Infrastructure Bill was opening up all kinds of skilled labor positions.
What happened?
Ignorance happened.
The corporate complicit media refused to report on the Biden Administration's work choosing instead to focus on you-know-who. The corporate media owned by oligarchs had a great interest in seeing the Republicans win. The Biden Administration was seriously derelict in communication about their accomplishments, Biden was interview adverse and Americans apathetic.
Americans did not know what they were voting for. They were fed a toxic stew of lies, disinformation and fear mongering courtesy of the right-wing groups and the politicians. Americans today know more about their sports team than how a Democracy is supposed to work.
In the end those "social issues" were miscast as evil when in fact they would have changed the world of the people who voted for Republicans. Now they will pay severely.
I could not agree with you more. Except that I think you give a significant portion of the voting public a pass. Based on my own observation, there are a lot of people who did know what they were voting for, and voted for it anyway, because their hatred and tribal identity was more important to them than their own well-being or that of their country. As long as Those People were going to be hurt hard, it didn’t matter to them that they would also be hurt. It was not just ignorance or the toxic spew they lapped up from their favored propaganda outlets.
And you’re right about the Biden Administration on all counts, both good and bad, as you note so eloquently in your comment. They did a lot of really good things that would really have helped our country, and bored people to death while doing it.
Paul Krugman doesn’t make any points. He makes mistakes and misjudgments and he just made a big one talking about the tariffs because every indication is the opposite of what he says what a surprise the problem with people like Truman is their only theoretical, they never touch the actual action or activity themselves. They talk about it. They write about it. They theorize about it, but they never actually immerse themselves in it to see reality. Poor guy.
They still don't have one. CNN yesterday found that recent polls show that the approval rating of Republicans in Congress have risen (even amongst Independents) since the shutdown started while the Democrats' approval rating has stalled. Is this only a failure of messaging or a sign of some wider malaise within the only realistic political opposition to Trump? It appears that John Thune and Mike Johnson believe that they are winning the shutdown even as misery upon misery is heaped on Americans with $15bn being lost every week according to Trump's own Council of Economic Advisers.
How is this happening? The cost of beef, bananas and coffee has soared since Trump introduced his tariffs. At least some Republican Senators have moved against him in relation to the vindictive tariffs imposed on Brazil for jailing Bolsonaro.
The Democrats need a stick of dynamite up their arses for this. If they don't get their act together soon they will fail at the midterms and then everyone is in trouble.
It’s happening because large swaths of this country are stupid. They’ll never believe the fascist dictator is really a fascist dictator. The feckless wimps aka as the Democratic Party couldn’t fight their way out of a wet paper bag with instructions, so the stupid millions aren’t getting the counter-narrative. Between the Congress, high court, corporate media and the useless “opposition” party, the deck is stacked against us. We’re literally on our own in this.
I think the 'No Kings' protests were a real sign of hope, but only if the Democratic party finds a way to capitalise on this feeling of frustration and anger in much of the country. The shutdown only works for the Democrats if they can convince people that the president is unconcerned about the harm being caused to families - he's instructed congressional Republicans not to negotiate on health issues, he's swanned off on a foreign trip just when SNAP funding runs out and he's building a fucking great ballroom while Americans are struggling to pay their mortgages and rents and put food on the table. I mean how hard can it be to make the case?
It truly is hard to believe. We are living through (the lucky ones who still have health care insurance!) an authoritarian takeover of our country and some are totally oblivious. This enrages me.
It also depends on what health insurance you have. John Oliver's 'Last Week Tonight' show exposed the Medicare Advantage scam as well as the deficiencies of the Medicare system.
Daniel, do you honestly believe that that's the only or principal reason for the Democrats' failure to make up ground on the Republicans? The 'No Kings' marches and the polls indicate that people are repulsed by many of Trump's actions but this isn't benefiting the Democratic party.
We stole the election? Are you actually one of the idiots absolute utter idiots that believe that Joe Biden who had no accomplishments his entire congressional life got 13 more million votes than Obama the God? And they stole the election.?
Yikes no wonder you hang out here. You should recognize Danielle that you’re in a room with a bunch of depressed human beings not know what else to do with themselves rather than go outside and see reality as it is.
This country is kicking ass once again everywhere around the world but you sit here in this dark, secluded room facing the wall box of tissue by your side in a self deprecating manner
No one is going to help you but yourself get the hell out of here and go live your life with a smile on your face. You have another three years to do so without Cohen continuing to be constantly in a depressed state. Life is a do it to yourself, Danielle.
Karine Jean-Pierre, the former White House press secretary, gave an interview to the New Yorker's Isaac Chotiner a couple of days ago (Why Biden’s White House Press Secretary Is Leaving the Democratic Party) in which she fiercely defends the record of the Biden administration. I agree with you, however she has also announced that she's leaving the Democratic party for what she believes was the betrayal of Joe Biden.
Why Jeff are you upside down? Maybe you haven’t heard the news lately. The Democrats have decided to keep the government closed and who are those pedophiles that you’re talking about? Would love to hear this story this is gonna be good. I need some humor being in this particular discussion nothing much but a a group of depressed adults, not knowing what to do with themselves. Medication might certainly help.
Nancy I wrote to and called Greg Cesar a while ago who is head of the Congressional Progressive caucus and told him to do just that. He is the one who should lead in this, not the milk toasts supposedly speaking for House and senate. I suggest everyone call him. Jessica
Thanks Jessica for info - here’s correct spelling to Greg Casar’s (last name) and link to info…
✅ Greg Casar is the Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), a leadership position he was elected to in December 2024. As Chair, he leads the caucus of nearly 100 Democratic members of Congress, advocating for progressive policies such as fighting economic inequality, advancing civil liberties, and prioritizing working people.
The new leadership will begin their terms on Jan. 3, 2025.
“The Members of the Progressive Caucus know how to fight billionaires, grifters, and Republican frauds in Congress. Our caucus will make sure the Democratic Party stands up to corporate interests for working people,” said Chair-Elect Greg Casar (D-Texas). The Democratic Party must directly take on Trump, and it’ll be CPC Members boldly leading the way and putting working people first.”
Casar, a former labor organizer, believes that the future of the Democratic Party is dependent on winning back the votes of workers across the country — across race, geography, and ideology — while not letting injustice and oppression go unchecked. Democrats must be able to both hold a political majority and defend all people’s rights.”
✅ Casar will lead the CPC alongside Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) as Deputy Chair and Jesús “Chuy” García (D-Ill.) as Whip.
Jessica, I am reading this during my first cuppa. I read your last 6 words in your very good post, but stumbled for a minute as to why you wanted me to call him Jessica. Then there was a molecule of caffeine that kicked in and saw the period at the end of him, and that you were signing your post. Sigh. Guess I need another cup of coffee.
I’m with you. Posted this last night on Ron Filipkowski’s daily bulletin;
“Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) was asked by Semafor whether the statement from the govt employees union asking them to vote for the CR changed his mind: “I get it that you guys have to write new stories every day, but it’s the same story every single day. The story is they refuse to negotiate. The story is Trump isn’t here. The story is House Republicans haven’t shown up for work in a month and a half.”
Bullshit. Total bullshit.
The story is you aren’t telling the story. You’re letting the lying fascists tell the story. The story is that this is a fascist regime, run by a dictator. The story is the fascists are in control of the government, not the Democrats. The story is that that sniveling lying little weasel Mike Johnson is responsible for the House not being in session, not the Democrats. The story is the fascists have shut down the government, not the Democrats, because the dictator doesn’t want Epstein to come out. The story is that the fascists, not the Democrats, have fired or furloughed federal workers without pay, are keeping the military on duty without pay, have suspended SNAP benefits to 40 million American citizens, and the fascists lie every minute of the day telling the stupid American people that the Democrats are to blame for all of this. The story is that the Democrats are letting the fascists win every single day because they are not telling the story to the American people. Quit fucking around, get off your asses, get together, construct the narrative and tell the damned story, every single day, day after day. For God’s sakes, just do it.
When the Democrats in Congress get off their arrogant high horse, stop playing victim and actually stand up with a cohesive message this will go on and on.
There are actually videos of Democratic Congresspeople playing hide and seek looking for Republicans in the Capitol.
Pay attention to NYC. Mamdani challenged the DP and with his grassroots support mobilized by DSA shocked the Democratic machine guys to their core. The media didn’t tell you this: at his rally we’re not only Bernie and AOc but the 3 most powerful people in state government in Albany. Yes the governor the legislative chairs who used to run things with Cuomo saw the writing on the wall and kissed the ring. Because they know damn well that Social democracy as it exists in all of Europe is not that radical, that people have the basics and the wealthy & corporations do pay taxes. What they didn’t believe in was the power of the people and democracy.
MSNBC is dead so is CNN Fox News has higher audience ratings than MSNBC and CNN combined. So you you should try to catch up with the news that MSNBC is changing its name because people have left and drove over 50% of its audience is gone as well as CNN who’s trying to be spun off as well you guys are really slow. maybe that’s why you study history so hard so you could sit there in history while time passes you buy.
I added a calendar on my spreadsheet so we can target our calls/letters/emails/faxes to flood offices in an organized manner.
Use/share this spreadsheet (bit.ly/Nokings) as a resource to call/email/write members of Congress, the Cabinet and news organizations. Call. Write. Email. Protest. Unrelentingly. We deserve better ❤️🩹🤍💙
Reach out (beyond your own) to as many in the Senate and House as you can. All of this is bigger than “I only represent my constituents” issues.
I keep posting. According to Congressman Eric Swalwell (D-CA) Trumpepstein may cause an "Epstein bomb" causing over 100 Republican members to "jailbreak" from Trump.
Often (not always), a technological change provides a key force leading to a major disruption in the economy. Recent examples have tended to be related to the internet. In the 1920s, it was the humble tractor. As tractor sales grew, for the the first time ever, the horse population of the United States started falling. Also, the number of humans needed to maintain agricultural production started falling as well. The rural bottom tier of the economy was left out of the roaring 20's. If that wasn't bad enough, needless deep plowing on the south central Great Plains setup the conditions for the dust bowl after the depression was well under way, exacerbating an already bad situation.
Deep plowing and its implications were technical details well beyond the understanding of not just non-farmers, but even most people who thought of themselves as experts in the agricultural industry in the 1920s. To me, this sounds identical to the current situation with respect to network technologies.
Touché Craig. The Dust Bowl wantonly savaged the farming community. Rural bank failures exacerbated economic woes. You are the first to bring up the environmental face of the Great Depression. Operational loans today are compiled from multiple banks by producers who must borrow millions each spring to afford fuel seed and fertilizer loans. More than one producer in the Golden Triangle in north central Montana must borrow more than 3 million dollars to get wheat planted. Those are old figures related to the 1980’s when last I lived in Great Falls.
Just a couple days ago Pat, I was chatting with someone here in Snohomish County, WA who is from North Dakota. They told the same story about their family farm and the enormity of the economic risk they take every year. One thing they really don't need is a bunch of ill-informed amateurs in DC tinkering with tariffs.
As to the enormity I have friends who will put in 50 sections of wheat and run 5000 cows on the unplantable coulees considered waste land in Browning and Cut Bank. My grandmothers family put together a very complicated loan package for their 150 sections near Glendive. Jake ( my grandmother) always maintained they were just poor dirt farmers. I don’t think D.C. folks care much what happens out in the wheat lands these days. They are certainly running a fools errand.
Anyone want to guess how many maga voters & supporters even know this history? My guess is not many. Just like many don’t know the nuclear arms race that started after WW2. Same people that are obvious to the fact that by February of ‘26, 3 nuclear power governments will have no negotiated arms agreement. This isn’t history rhyming or repeating. It’s circling the drain.
Thank you for this link, Russell. It's a most damning fact, or set of facts.
The existence of criminal Donald on the public stage so prominently so long should occasion public officials real soul-searching as to why so many let American schooling sink so pitifully as it has -- to riddance of civics and humanities, to deference to the commercial vulgarities of billionaires only, and to their favorite tool, testing.
I agree, Phil, although Trump seems to like those 'cognitive tests' even though they're the same ones every time he's asked to do them. Ignorance is bliss.
Even though the name, Donald Trump, did not appear in tonight's letter, he looms over the American economy like the second coming of Herbert Hoover.
Soon Americans will lose their health insurance and start to go hungry. It will be hard to blame the Democrats when the Republicans control all three branches of the federal government. The torches and pitchforks will come out soon.
Apropos of your comment, Joel, is a recent political satire YouTube vid about ‘Rump’s new ballroom….it’s AI, but is well done and packs a punch I think: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbebXrdT8EY
This video makes it seem as though it's going to be the red-hat-wearing MAGA who, after deep suffering due to Donald, finally rise in anger at his opulent ballroom, his priorities only for comforting the comfortable.
And yet the polls continue to show that they are blaming Democrats equally for the shutdown, something that didn't happen in 2018, the last time they confronted a Trump administration on healthcare issues.
Such is the power of the right-wing media echo chamber/noise machine. There's also the fact that right-wingers are not particularly thoughtful or intellectually curious. I believe John Stuart Mill was correct when he stated: "Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative."
I think he was referring to the British Conservative party. He had called them "the stupid party" in his book 'Considerations on Representative Government'. There followed an exchange in the House of Commons with Sir John Pakington who objected to that description. Mill said:
"I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it. Suppose any party, in addition to whatever share it may possess of the ability of the community, has nearly the whole of its stupidity, that party must, by the law of its constitution, be the stupidest party; and I do not see why honorable gentlemen should see that position at all offensive to them, for it ensures their being always an extremely powerful party. I know that I am liable to a retort, and an obvious one enough; and as I do not wish to allow any honorable gentleman the credit of making it, I make it myself. It may be said that if stupidity has a tendency to Conservatism, sciolism, or half-knowledge, has a tendency to Liberalism. Something might be said for that, but it is not at all so clear as the other. There is an uncertainty about sciolists; we cannot count upon them; and therefore they are a less dangerous class. But there is so much dense, solid force in sheer stupidity, that any body of able men with that force pressing behind them may ensure victory in many a struggle, and many a victory the Conservative party has gained through that power”.
Lord knows what he would make of MAGA, but I concede he might indeed feel that the same point applied to the current Republican party which has become a magnet for some extraordinarily stupid people.
He was indeed referring to the Conservative Party in Britain, but it seems to be apt, so I used it. If I use it in future, I will provide the context you have noted.
As for MAGA, it is beyond anything I have encountered in my 73 years on the planet. When I talk to a MAGAt, I feel as though I am speaking to someone who doesn't have different principles, but who lives in a different reality. Cheers.
I agree, Joel. It's a mirror world, as Naomi Klein has observed following her unhappy experience of being confused with Naomi Wolf (in her book 'Doppelganger: A Trip Into The Mirror World'). Trump himself creates his own reality on Truth Social and it seeps into the real world day after day.
So you have polls showing that the majority of Americans seem to be repulsed by the policies of the Trump administration and yet they don't seem to repose much trust in the Democratic party and they're the only realistic political opposition to Trump.
I get what you’re saying but I’ve abandoned CNN. They seem to be hedging their bets. Plus it seems they may be about to be sold, to Paramount I think, along with Warner Bros. Discovery. I’ll have to find the article.
I think it's just speculation at the moment (I saw reports in the Hollywood Reporter and Newsweek). However, MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell told his viewers exactly what he thinks of CNN.
My view is that CNN continues to provide excellent news coverage - like today's coverage of that monster storm in the Atlantic. I still scan the New York Times although I can't abide either David Brooks or Brett Stephen. Much the same goes for the Washington Post - they did an interesting analysis today of DHS videos promoting the mass deportation scheme which found that they were using footage that was months old or recorded thousands of miles away.
I guess CNN is as it has ever been. Repetitive coverage. Thank gawd for them @9/11. I still have both newspaper digital subscriptions, despite mental trauma! I don’t watch much cable news but my husband uses it as background music. I stay on the porch lol. On a 3 hour car round trip I listened to Sirius 127 today. Good stuff.
40,000,000 people going hungry next week because SNAP funding is being withheld may be the tipping point towards massive popular violence and repressive government responses. Empty stomachs don’t wait for future elections to satisfy immediate hunger.
José Andrés has brought World Central Kitchen to DC to cook free meals for the hungry there. The hungry, who used to be government workers, and who, until recently, could afford to buy food. Are we now a third world country?
You mean country in which most of the wealth is in the hands of a few families, while most of the nation lives in poverty and chaos? Seems like we've been heading there.
SNAP benefits - 6.25 a day the government is withholding from people, some the working poor, many the elderly and children. This is well beyond criminal.
Sadly, I donated to a food bank Sat and about out of funds. Seems we are expected to watch the Cretins steal the treasury and take over what the government has done. Won’t work for long…
My mother’s father worked in a CCC camp. He had a wife and kids and it was their lifeline. “Them that’s got the gold makes the rules and THATS the Golden Rule “. Unfortunately.
Life saving the CCC workers sent their wages home to families. To this day we are the recipients of painstaking labor in creating a network of roads trails and bridges throughout the intermountain west. The museum in Salmon Idaho put together a display from pictures taken and catalogued by the USFS here locally. They also reached out to families whose relatives were in the program in order to add their experiences to the historical record.
When you and your wife come through Salmon we’ll tour the display my wife who volunteers at the museum has assembled. You will love that museum. We can put you up and have potato soup for supper. We will take a short drift boat ride and you must bring that tuba.
In 1929, crypto didn't exist. Neither did X. Neither did legalized sports betting. As I watch the stock market go up and up and up, as tariffs get increased and decreased and increased again, the current situation seems so untethered from reality that it's hard to imagine what kinds of shocks will have to hit us before we can once again start to become an inclusive country.
Sadly we seem to NOT learn the lessons of history. The mistake ushered in by Harding and Hoover is looming again. For the same reason. Robber barons. And we all learned the history of WW2 in school, but have not been able to prevent the advent of fascism here in the United States in the 21st century. But this is worse. In 1932 there was an election, as free and fair as any in this country. FDR won and there was a smooth transition of power.
Can any of us be sure that 2028 will bring a real election at all?
They have managed to combine the elite arrogance of the 1920s with the authoritarianism of 1930s Europe. How can we find our way back to sanity?
And what makes this an even harder return to sanity is that the major media has been taken over by the corporation. Even my hometown newspaper The Hartford Courant billed as the longest continuing newspaper in the nation. Attempts were made a few years ago to buy it back local but the corporate interests outbid the locals. New CBS is slipping to the oligarchs. Has already.
AhBill, but THIS is now the media! I think it's a little fascinating that the big national giants are increasingly irrelevant while the important voices are abundant. I had no idea I follow 17 substacks. Maybe more.
Corporate media is dying, but THIS is brilliant.
And the Meidas network is giving fox a run
Very important point, Jen. While it's frustrating that mainstream/corporate media isn't calling out the cruel, illegal actions of this administration or covering the massive No Kings rallies, people are increasingly looking to alternative sources of news. This is especially true of young people. Yes, it has its risks, but if the Democratic Party can get its act together, it can take advantage of the shift.
My message to young people (and old people, and everyone in between):
Start with a principle and no method, and the principle is useless, but then a helpful method quickly emerges. Adam Smith started with The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), and his helpful method, documented in The Wealth of Nations (1776), quickly emerged.
Start with a helpful method, forget the principle, and the method quickly becomes harmful. Because people who identified as capitalists forgot the principle, the method became increasingly harmful as it quickly drifted away from real capitalism.
In other words, the symptoms are always the same, and so is the cure.
Hoover's economic fiasco should have put the lie to what later became Supply Side Economics. It is unsustainable--a quick steal for a few wealthy that sucks the base of consumption out of the economy. Here we go again. FDR did not create a welfare state--programs of public support pump wealth into our economy at about a 1.5x return on investment. We are headed for another crash, which will only be fixed when we return to Demand Side Economics, which saved us from destruction the last time.
"Supply Side Economics ... is unsustainable. Demand Side Economics (has) a 1.5x return on investment." —Michael Roehr's head
"Moral Sentiment is the founding principle of real capitalism, and capitalism absent morality is CAPINO (capitalism in name only)." —James Carey's heart
"I truly believe, only when head and heart work in harmony can we attain our true human potential." —Jane Goodall
I was thinking about the resources available these days compared to my early career, as far as information is concerned. I could have looked for an academic program in anthropology that combined medicinal chemistry. Might have had a completely different career. So I hope thsat this generation who grew up with all this info knows how to find facts.
The adults have to go back to basics and teach our children the facts instead of ceding this responsibility to schools, games, the Internet, AI. We have to make sure we tell our stories to them. Each one teach one ... or teach 20.
Social Media is great for reinforcing our already held beliefs. But we are preaching to the choir… on both sides of the political spectrum. All in all, it is contributing to the divide that is tearing the country apart.
A media that speaks to everyone,rather than just whichever outlet makes us feel righteous is what is needed. And I say this while acknowledging that it seems the rightwing is unable or unwilling to hear anything that might shake their belief in the policies described in HCR’s post today. We can talk endlessly about the woeful ignorance of rightwing voters, but that solves nothing. They are just as sure that they are right, and it is we who are deluded.
I fear that it may take another depression to convince those on the right that their misplaced belief that the oligarchs. know best how to run the country and that their inclusion in prosperity is just around the corner. We have been here before. Too bad that the people who really need to read Heather’s wisdom and scholarship will never read or hear it. They are too wrapped up in being RIGHT all the time.
The AI bubble is building up.
Predation, prolific repetitive destructive behaviors which may seem repetitive to us, are a historical constant. Predators are never going away. Fox News. Sly sneaky predator. Trump regime prehistorically dangerous predation. Putin killing his rivals. Predation. It’s a behavior characteristic of human survival. I’m not saying it’s not repeating history, it’s omnipotently present, not ever going away. Tell me a time when predators will cease to eat. We are all prey and we must give up the notion that will have a cure. We have to see it catch it render it harmless. It is no secret which dark forces are swarming out of control again. Our moment is to contain as soon as possible. We have chosen the law as our arbiter in this society. Let us shock the world asking Asia to detain the head of the snake until he can be remanded to our custody. No bail. Let us exercise our emergency powers. Since he is a military man now I think an argument to incarcerate would be best served in Leavenworth. That should separate him from civilian justice imposed by the Supreme Court and place him in military custody who’s own body of justice should suffice.
So true BUT! how many millions are still getting the corporate washing of the news from the big 3 morning shows, and network outlets??? Trumps demented behavior after landing in the far east was labeled funny!
I fear that fox plays non stop in our military bases
Embarrassing to nth degree.
send Meidas money -- even a little
Paying for each outlet is prohibitive at some point.
And exclusive.
True.
The revolutionaries were not getting their news from London, but from the people like Ben Franklin and Thomas Paine running tiny local presses. Comparing the London News with the newsbills from New York of Philadelphia is a fascinating contrast in journalism.
So sad about the media, Bill,...especially since so many only listen and watch "Fox News" 24-7.
Elizabeth, this is what confounds me. I have a dear friend who I met in college. She got a degree in what was called "Computer Science" back then, and went on to have a very successful career in a multi-national company. She and I had a network of close friends, a few of which are people of color. Nearly all of us were first generation college students. Her career took her all over the world. She has a close friend who is gay. She supports women's rights. And she has basically financially supported several family members, one of whom went on disability in their early 20s (over 40 years ago) She is bright, funny, talented---and a Trump voter. Seriously, WTF?!
Having known her 50 years, I was astounded when she turned sort of "MAGA-lite" but one of her family members lives with her and watches FOX 24/7. I think this is why.
I hope and pray she sees the light, and I will not stop being her friend any more than I would to someone who developed an opioid addiction after a major surgery. I'd want to BE THERE to help them recover. But I'll admit, it's really painful to experience.
We received unsolicited mail today from Hillsdale College, MI.
OMG- pure MAGA trash. They must be sending these to every homeowner in the US. One blurb starts, "Trump fulfilled his promise to secure the border within the first 100 days of his second term".
HOW DARE THEY SEND THAT TRASH!
Ah well - I returned their stamped envelope empty except for a message saying, ' NO KINGS '
I would highly recommend the short film " The Brainwashing of my Father" it's on YouTube. This didn't start with Fox, but they have perfected it.
Yup.
Fox 24/7- they must enjoy it as entertainment, not news. Get a life, people.
I think her relative does. She's somewhat disabled and sits in front of the tv all day long. I think she gets some sort of vibe by getting riled up. My friend says she "likes one or two of the people" but dislikes the rest.
Good news for her, Trump is trying to end social security for the disabled. I hope she can get a job and pull herself up by her bootstraps!
PBS Newshour is also reliable and trustworthy. Convert those Fox and Newsmax viewers to PBS. Even if it's one show at a time and NPR.
Need a device that from within my coat pocket I can push one button, the device finds every TV in the area, and determines how to convert it to PBS.
Or everytime they select FoxNews it selects some other random news channel.
Or goes to a fake Faux News that is actually real news channel that looks like Fox News.
Would be fun to visit bars and nursing homes.
/s
Sadly, converting a Fauxnooz viewer to PBS is rarely possible.
The propagandizing has convinced them that ONLY Faux tells the TRUTH and any other media is an instrument of the devil.
The mental malware from which cults are built. Induced psychosis.
Magas who feast on Fox and newsmax are hopeless creatures! The very people whom the founding fathers feared would elect an unfit person to office! The electoral college was suppose to prevent this!!!
Elizabeth, I do wonder about that Fox fixation. I have accidentally tuned into it and am appalled at the callous dismissal of good people and promotion of folks who are so self-absorbed they lie with conviction and the interviewers didn't check the obvious BS. If I found that in the times I have accidentally tuned in, what is it like for those who listen/watch every hour of the day? It has to rot one's brain.
Plus - its not "news" its entertainment and mainly opinion!
Brain rot is right.
Welcome to Corptocracy....
American media has succumbed to GOP corruption. Note, after his visit to the White House, the CEO of CNN has instructed his news broadcasters not to report anymore on the East Wing desecration.
🤬
CBS was once a media powerhouse. Now it’s a national disgrace. The day Colbert is removed will be the day I begin a personal boycott of CBS.
Our small Indiana has lost its daily newspaper. It is no longer printed in our Indiana town but in Kentucky!
I like yours best today, Annabel, for how your first and last sentences pair up.
First, we're evidently not learning "the lessons of history." Last, "How can we find our way back to sanity?" With, in the middle, how we've "not been able to prevent the advent of fascism here in the United States."
Yes, quantum challenge we inhabit.
Can fellow commenters cite the sorts of schooling we need to face what we face? Schooling not just for our young, but for public officials perhaps lacking their own necessary resources, too?
Hello Phil... I'm a Firm Believer of Universal Public Service in the Building of Public Works... People should get together in order to Learn from each other... Call it the School of Tangible Works...
Virtual is useful and powerful but tangible is the larger context. It is where and how we live. Some things can only be learned "hands on". Some things can only be shared person to person. I experience, therefore I am.
Learning for life J L.
I listened to a podcast that interviewed Jane Fonda. She is constantly interacting with the people of her communities going door to door even as AOC did when she first won election.
"You never learn when you are talking." Although this isn't entirely true, I think it seems to be mostly true. We beat that statement to death in a 10th grade English class taught by a priest turned teacher.
I think this is why we rarely learn anything from politicians, because they only talk and rarely listen.
The evolution that led our political system was such that it cut out the smaller man/women from ever having the power to contribute. The interpretation of our Constitution for ages told us that women couldn’t vote. Literally half of our population was relegated to the vast wasteland of our national discussion. This evolution is what needs to change. It is why the “minor” political parties have been relegated to bottom tier functions.
"Make Love, Not War" Ried.
Most Democratic women politicians are problem solvers like AOC.
Of course, there are exceptions......
Nice point, GJ.
We can tell who's listening by how often they refer to points made by others.
Most politicians, would-be pundits, and exclusively silo-set professors have fairly-crippled imaginations, thanks to schools that reliably serve only the "values" of testing. Which means no values at all.
I think Bernie listens quite a bit.
I think there is a mode of listening to one's self, even while in process, with a willingness to self-question. I think the ability to formulate and pursue open curiosity is our ultimate engine for learning. To be or not to be...? Inward debate examines our own assumptions; which can be barriers as well as stepping stones to useful conclusions. Ideally, the scientific method builds that in; degrees of confidence over done-and-settled; always a work in progress. Except for the affections of animals (such as ourselves) reality is indifferent to our fate, and can and does crush us in a variety of ways. Yet, it can also be incredibly nourishing to our hour upon the stage. We improve our odds of the latter by attentively "listening" to what nature can tell us about what is real, and by responding appropriately, just as the increasing frequency of extreme weather events is like to be a useful lesson if we are inclined to take it.
Even believing this, I am aware of spending far too much time replaying habitual thoughts and behaviors, especially in quarrels. It's only human, right? Yet the weird thing is that being open to doubt is ultimately the same as open to learn, as we evaluate the negation of a belief, as well as the belief itself. Perhaps "Bigfoot" really does roam Northwest forests, but so far my confidence that they do so is vanishingly small.
And, deprived of certainly, we are obliged to act, to make micro-decisions in every moment about what is true and what is worthwhile; sometimes even life changing decisions on the basis of an educated guess, while keeping our capacity to question open. Edwin land, who invented polaroid and "instant" image cameras reported to have said that sometime a new idea is letting go of the old one. Usually we build on what we "know"; but ideally with a fresh perspective.
Nice J L. "....sometimes a new idea is letting go of the old one. Change is hard for almost all of us and letting go of an old idea is a major part of the process.
I Love it. The School of Tangible Works...we need that.
Phil Balla, remembering shop courses, mostly for boys, but there could be an occasional girl. My father built a plywood skiff for fishing. As he had no sons, I was his shop assistant. Learned about wood and carpentry requirements. Sadly the other two skiffs planned were not built because of WWII. The neighbor and friend who would have had them both went off to war.
I was at a loss for words after reading Phil’s comment Apache, and then I read your comment and thought of course getting people to work together is a great unifier. I have no idea what the politics were of any of the people I served with in VN, but I was willing to risk my life to protect them. If we could get anything close to that camaraderie in our diverse society, it would be a unifying bond that would solve a lot of problems. It would not have to be only on an individual level, but companies instead of endlessly chasing profits could work with other companies to help solve our underlying problems. Everyone would benefit, we could be collectively building a better boat as we float on these turbulent seas. If you saw that your neighbor needed help, would you not lend a hand if you were able? Of course you would, that same attitude, instead of “I’ve got mine, pull up the ladder boys, let’s go get lunch, never mind the rest of them in the water”, is what will really make America great and begin to fulfill the promise’s our founders created.
Dick, I read your comment and thought about how Johnson is literally willing to let people starve. This clip from Belle of the Ranch should go viral!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yv1yu_NVIM4
As I've outlined before, when Covid hit one of my neighbors in Fernandina Beach started a food drive. Almost everyone in the neighborhood brought food to her house. Within a couple of days, she had 2 SUV loads of food to bring to the local food bank as well as several checks.
The greatest American sin is anyone in the US starving to death or even going hungry. And Trump is using starvation as a weapon.
I tend to think it is Miller and Vought doing the starving....and MAGA Mike as well.
Trump is too far cognitively gone to really understand what is happening. IMO
Dick Montagne, having sung in choirs and choruses from age 10-63 and remembering the school assemblies during WWII when we sang for an hour, been an endless volunteer and had frequent recitals for my piano students (to encourage them to practice), I can vouch for group activity as a great maker of bonds.
Apache, yes! Let's get the truth out wherever and whenever we can and make sure that what we are presenting is the truth or as close to it as we can, at all times.
Phil, thanks for the segue.
Yesterday after a dozen of us that are on the planning and appeals board attended a half day training session on how to do our jobs. The training was via Zoom and was hosted by the Maine Municipal Association (MMA). Over 70 towns across the state were represented on the call. MMA also provide other training courses throughout the year.
I'm sure that Maine is not unique in offering training for the various volunteer boards required to run every community across the country.
"If it bleeds it leads" even in small towns so you rarely hear about the countless hours that average citizens volunteer to help their communities.
I’m at a summit of the Red Cross Disaster Action Team for Minnesota and the Dakotas trying to figure out how best to help people at times of need. There are a lot of people trying to do what we can for our fellow citizens. Can’t imagine how difficult things were in the 30’s and how much needed to change to pull things around.Hope it doesn’t take a war to set things straight.
Thank you for your humanitarian efforts.
It takes a village for sure. People across the country are watching out for each other, but you'd never know it if you only listen to the corporate media.
cameron, right now I see lots of locals here in Oregon also trying to figure out how to help those who will lose benefits in a few days. One person on Nextdoor was blaming our D Senators (misspelled both their names) for the problems with SNAP, etc. Much to my surprise, it did not go over well and most people pointed to Rs as the problem. And local news is featuring the upcoming problems and those trying to find solutions. The problem we are fighting this time is internal and I do hope there is not a war in our streets.
Share this video with them if you can!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yv1yu_NVIM4
Is it choice? Habit? Substack is an entity rarely read in this state but by the few . Volunteers run most emergency efforts . Our state is blood red. It is about to get bit hard and will rise angry ..after the barn burns down. Die hard naysayers won’t change , repeat what Fox says, and when the shelves are bare blame the Democrats, just as predicted. I.E. “it’s the Dems fault for the shutdown..” 70% voted for the Con, listened to the lies.
When will they ever learn?
It’s the same scenario ,lived with this reality since the late 60’s part of a small bunch back-to-the-landers seeing it happen all over again, same story. Let’s hope to pull it off again, teach truth’s hard facts, repair the damage, close the loopholes so obvious.
The phrase ‘cleanup on isle 2026’ and enough gains in 2024 to stop the bleeding ( us dry)..🤞🏼
Your story reminded me of the missionary in Africa who was lamenting that he only had one parishioner at his service. Well, the one parishioner was a young David Livingstone the great Scottish explorer, missionary and martyr.
You never know who your one act of kindness will affect.
As a 'schooling' I'd recommend reading a book called Less is More by Jason Hickel. Available as an ebook for $5 or so. It is an astounding read and actually proposes a way out of the mess that we have got ourselves into. The only glimmer of hope as far as I can see.
Hint: It's about how to move wealth and therefore power down from the top, back to the people who generate it in the first place.
Stop buying all the crap they peddle, stop paying for all the useless streaming services and save your money. That will help.
My friend who is in an Indivisible group in Massachusetts sent me info about a planned "economic blackout" planned for November 25th to Dec 2nd. It is supposedly nationwide.
I have not heard or seen anything about this anywhere else.
It would be perfect to do for Black Friday. I’m going to give to food banks instead of buying more junk for Christmas presents
That is my plan for the somewhat obligatory gifts to nearby neighbors (some of whom are MAGA). I'm giving them a card that says I donated in their name!!
We have been donating to Ukraine instead of giving each other unneeded gifts at Christmas for the last few years. It looks like we will need to add food for the hungry to our giving.
I also recommend "Goliath's Curse" by Luke Kemp. I am finding much hope between the lines.
Two of my three adult children subscribe to that idea. They value experiences more than "things". Sadly, the third one married a person who doesn't believe in putting off any purchase, and not taking care of what they already have--and I'm talking about MAJOR purchases. Thus, I fear how badly they could be in debt. It is a subject I brought up five years ago and was soundly rejected. My phone rings from collection agencies all the time. 😣
Great question/invitation! Today, Cornell professor Pamela Karimi is doing a Zoom about zero-waste living and circular systems with some pioneering activists /ecologists at 10:a.m. Eastern time. About it:
"Dear all,
Just a quick note to let you know that tomorrow from 10–11 a.m. we will host Hilda Maingay and Earle Barnhart of the New Alchemy Institute / Green Center Inc.
Students are asked to develop a proposal that adapts this model for the desert, drawing inspiration from their work in ecological design & circular systems:
Please join us online via Zoom at the following link:
Pamela Karimi is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: Hilda Maingay & Earle Barnhart
Time: Oct 29, 2025 10:00 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://cornell.zoom.us/j/93445339185?pwd=am1N2KZ16bpFGzY8zHwQ7L8a9FYQUi.1
Meeting ID: 934 4533 9185
Passcode: 814973"
No one said not to share this info, and no one said I could either; my Good Trouble for today.
Phil and I both live in Japan. Watching tRump and the new prime minister walking hand in hand is completely nauseating. Prime Minister Takaichi told Trump she’ll nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize. Donald Trump just gave an absolutely embarrassing and unhinged speech in front of the US military in Japan. pic.x.com/YggpMyMamA It’s very revealing in a most tragic way how hungry the majority of people are for power and money at the expense of common people. How can we overcome the cult mentality?
NYTimes: “Well, guys, today, President Trump was in Tokyo, where he attended a meeting and ate lunch with the new prime minister of Japan. The prime minister said it was her first time seeing someone dip their sushi in ketchup.” — JIMMY FALLON “The prime minister gifted Trump a golf bag, a golden putter and told him that she had nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize. Trump was like, ‘I think I found my soul mate.’” — JIMMY FALLON “Japan is trying to get on Trump’s good side to escape his, you know, his random tariff spree. So they gave him a couple gifts for America’s upcoming 250th birthday: some fireworks and 250 cherry trees, or, as it will be known in history books, ‘How Eric Trump started the D.C. wildfires.” — STEPHEN COLBERT
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/29/arts/television/stephen-colbert-trump-mri.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
It’s like the religious hypocrites spewing religious nonsense. The educated morons spew Ayn Rand, and Fox crap non stop. Chump being educated is the biggest scam ever to hit our shores. He is the most ignorant of our idiots, having tried hard to remain so. Sadly, many follow his lead.
Phil, as for the schools, there are ways teachers can present honest history, even if the powers that be don't like it. Slide it in when discussing whatever the anti-truth curriculum provides. Say, "others more fairly say . . . " then put in the truth. Let students know in subtle ways that many people now think that students shouldn't be given the truth and that if they can't get it in school, find it wherever they can and think it through before accepting it as truth. It is clearly harder, but it is a kind of resistance all our students and teachers need to learn.
I have recently met a new friend getting doctorate in philosophy! Yes, philosophy. We are getting together for a visit to just chat. I owned up to being required to take 16 units of philosophy in college & to not understanding most of it but as I have "grown up" I see the importance of philosophy in life. I'm anxious to suggest to her that I consider philosophy the psychology of the masses, for isn't that the case? Take a large group of individuals with the same outlook on life & study it. Treat the group as an individual & analyze it.
No, I'm not implying that we take 6 year olds & try to teach them Socrates or Plato, what I'm saying is drill down to the root of the problem in general if possible & then come up with a variety of solutions. Schooling is number one on the list, but what curriculum? How to we determine what we teach our children? Do we follow a religious teaching? If so, which one? What economic formula do we use to set up an economy that is fair for as many as possible.
Maybe we need to take a thought from Star Trek:
"The needs of the many over the needs of the one or the few."
The Star Trek reference to Vulcan philosophy is a nod to J.S. Mill's Utilitarianism. Arising in the late 19th century, it favors democracy as the political system to provide the best outcome for the most people.
If the concern is preventing authoritarian drift, the essential schooling is civic literacy, not ideology. That means understanding how institutions work, who controls what, and how power is exercised in practice. Most Americans learn almost nothing about the structure of governance beyond slogans. The result is a public that reacts emotionally instead of strategically.
For public officials, the missing piece is systems training: how feedback loops, incentives, and administrative machinery actually function. Officials who do not understand the system they manage become dependent on lobbyists, consultants, or partisan messaging.
The schooling required is not moral instruction. It is structural competence. Once people can see the machinery, they are harder to manipulate.
There will be an election. America will vote again. Not only will there be an election but it will encompass the road not taken yet, as the changes necessary to support the well being of every man woman and child will finally be ushered into code. This time we the people will become forever all of us. Get your tickets now for the dance of the new century. This is your heads up not your teats up. What happens when the bullies beat the shit out of your friends. There is an unequal and opposite explosion of rectitude. A magnificent retribution coming to small towns and large towns igniting a spirit of reformation building like magma surging to the surface.
I hope with all my heart that you’re correct. However the Democratic Party polls lower than Trump, which is terrifying. I wish I knew if we needed more AOC’s, Bernie’s, Mamdani’s, or more tough guys who want to reconstitute and improve on the social safety net and give back more power to workers, but also want to impose their version of morality on everybody, or some combination of these. I don’t think we can win just by saying, however truthfully, "Trump is horrible."
Pilgrim, you left out Newsom and Pritzker, who are openly defying the clown regime and providing alternative government, like the West Coast Health Alliance: https://www.gov.ca.gov/2025/09/03/california-oregon-and-washington-to-launch-new-west-coast-health-alliance-to-uphold-scientific-integrity-in-public-health-as-trump-destroys-cdcs-credibility/
We absolutely need to support state governors who are aggressively asserting states' rights to keep their own zones fascist-free, and who will be the leadership when orange Hitler keels over. They DO NOT have a replacement - this is a cult of personality.
Another Newsom-led action: California and 20 other states are suing the rump administration over what they say is the federal government's unlawful refusal to fund SNAP benefits due to the nearly month-long federal government shutdown.
Earlier this week, the US Department of Agriculture stated on its website that federal food aid will not go out on Nov. 1.
Gov. Newsom said California is fast-tracking $80 million in state funds to stabilize food bank food distribution and offset delays in federal CalFresh benefits.
https://www.ktvu.com/news/california-20-other-states-sue-trump-over-refusal-fund-snap-benefits?utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=trueanthem&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwY2xjawNuubxleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETBBaWxEandwOEZPcEFIWlEzAR4aJ5M_Ql4fGyc-zF3GWh2q6EBUkV5bWkWRCJCRoLKzml-KDXvjbrG64tfVFg_aem_6sqc15UCZzfuWsc8C9NaEg
Hello Alexandra... "They DO NOT have a replacement - this is a cult of personality."... Good Observation... Same as for the Nazis in Germany... Germany is still atoning for its brief Period of Madness... Did you see DJT's Military Speech Today?...
Apache, yes! I don't know what Faux is showing to avoid the plain conclusion that this man is demented.
But don't lose sight of the king-maker behind the curtain who have worked on setting up this coronation for decades.
Absolutely, JL = but I think right now it's crucial to shine a strong light on the freaks who are right now in Cabinet positions (or right behind them like Peter Thiel) and running the government FOR the predator. Even MAGA isn't going to throw a lot of weight behind some of these losers currently in charge (Vance and Miller, particularly slimy).
Adding Vought to this list. The profile of him in The New Yorker was chilling, to say the least.
These are exactly the same type of freaks that Heather talks about that ran the gummint from 1921 - 1932.
Curtis Yarvin is another tecno freak to watch out for.
Not true right now. I just heard a report that in generic ballot Democrats are up 9 points to M AGA. Keep hope alive!
If that stat is accurate than I begin today a tad despondent because the sum of Trump's actions should make that stat 80%. Trump is Trump, my greatest disappointment is the American voter.
We got us some top notch sure enough brilliant people out there slinging Pom poms. Now what we don’t have is enough conditioned athletes. That’s you and me and all our lazy pals. Remember what that gal said? Well of coarse you don’t. Let me remind you that the largest portion of the United States govmint is us, buddy. Us. We govern ourselves sending our mouthpieces to D.C. This team of us dumbells needs to get up grow some backbone and support our team. You can write your own scholarship whether it be academic or athletic. There are no free lunches. It’s a pack yer own deal now. I am getting tired of eating horse cock samwitches and I want some tasty chocolate pudding added to the menu. I think it’s gonna be a good dance. I vote for a jitterbug.
I recommend listening to the callers on Progress Radio (Sirius/XM 127) as well as the hosts. John Fugelsang, Dean Obadallah, Thom Hartmann, Michaelangelo, Zerlina, Stephanie Miller especially. Most of them also have Substacks, but many of the callers and guests offer solutions as well as the complaints. You can't expect to learn much from the corporate media about what is going on except for whatever the fuck Trump is saying or doing.
Isn't that why we are all here reading or listening the professor?
"Trump is horrible" does not pack much punch, but perhaps stark comparisons to other creeps, as well as heroes, in history will, provided we package it effectively.
And what is the story, the real-world experience, of some of the specific victims of these sociopaths? What do we need to do to viscerally illustrate the suffering borne by victims of this regime's abuses? Those arrested for no probable or provable crime? Those deprived of needed food, assistance, or treatment while the regime pursues it's aristocratic golden balls?
What, for heavens sake, would be the decent thing to do? What makes a genuine hero a hero? And a jerk a jerk? Which specific behaviors sustain our "sacred honor"?
Remember back to when Joan Baez sang the words they wont have their names when they ride the big airplane. All they will be called will be just deportees. Your words have caught that echo JL. I agree we need to amplify.
That song came to mind in recent months.
I think the key to winning the voters is to drop all the divisive morality issues and focus on those issues we have in common. Focus on the economics of corporate ruled capitalism and inequality (not the complaints of small groups of people who are oppressed by the ideology of other small groups of people, however valid and important those issues are). Bernie and AOC are getting huge crowds and energy with that message.
A reference for comment made below about polling. https://ballotpedia.org/Ballotpedia%27s_Polling_Index:_Generic_congressional_vote
Pat, "there will be an election."
I don't know where you live but there are elections happening virtually EVERY DAY across the US and the world. We have two propositions on our ballot, one of which was paid for by the Fascist Republican Party which would take away absentee voting and further restrict voting across the state.
If it passes our purple state will likely become red. Maine had the highest voter participation rate in the country and it's because we've been able to keep the fucking MAGAs out of our elections.
So yes, there will be an election Pat tens of thousands of them in the next 12 months.
I’m excited every time I hear a Dem win and always add to that news ..”keep their feet to the fire” we all need to pay attention more . I encourage Substack introduction, share often, send via email to others, offer the gifts when possible. Thank you for your own considerable and consistent effort 🫶
It’s deep if not ‘blood red’ but I love them all anyway, they’re my neighbors.
Same Patricia. I'm surrounded by MAGAs. I love them as well.
As Jesus said on the cross, " Lord, forgive them for they know not what they do."
They are in a cult and there's nothing I can do or say to change that.
Pat, I always love your optimism and I share your thoughts.
This is not our "better angels". Not even close:
https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/us-citizen-assaulted-border-patrol-chicago-halloween-parade-b2853988.html
They are the bullies. They compel us to wipe them off the face of the earth.
My son and his family used to live near there. I never felt unsafe walking in those neighborhoods or parks. Never dreamed that the enemy would be the U.S. government.
This is an abomination! What the hell is Midwest Blitz? Where the hell do these people think they are? In some Afghan hellhole?
I would sue Bovino, Homan, Trump, and every one of those officers.
They’d also be in jail.
Trump can give this guy the $230 million he thinks he deserves because FBI came into Mar a Lago to get the classified documents he said he didn’t have with a lawful subpoena.
Well,we need an FDR,and I am not sure who that is at this point.
Franklin Delano’s genetics are imbued into the genetics of the modern day Democratic Party. His DNA and fingerprints far outran his wheelchair. He is like Jimmie and Rosalyn, a little bit of their magnificent hearts in each and every one of us regardless of party. Make me a list of those who now swim in deep water on our behalf and read it back to us. It’s a crazy good long list and growing. People are losing their fear of swimming in shark water. Irrigation season is over in my latitude of deep red Idaho but I still carry my pitchfork. We grew from 30 to 300 souls this summer. My county has more than 8300 people now. I figure the timid democrats still in the closet could reach 50% by the time this ice age quits flourishing.
There will absolutely be an election. But will it be free? Will it be fair? Will we be able to trust the reported results? Dictatorships such as Russia and Hungary hold elections, but somehow the ruling class always wins with 95-99% of the “votes” when evidence on the ground makes it clear there is widespread opposition to it. How do we prevent the midterms and 2028 from becoming the same kind of performative charade? Elections fall to states to administer, so it will be very much incumbent on them to have the right safeguards in place. We have a big test coming up in VA, NJ, and NYC in a few days. I hope these electoral systems are up for the challenge.
And pay for your ticket with your earnings from doing your best to help make this happen!
Thanks, from another Pat 😉
You said IT Pat Cole. Keep saying it, I will write this with tiny brush hairs and tie it into a scroll I will unfurl as needed.
I have an affinity for magma and liked reading “Timefulness: Hoe Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World” by Marcia Bjornerud.
Annabel, although the road forward certainly looks more than rocky right now, we cannot give up. Over 8 million of us turned out on October 18th and that is just the beginning. There isn’t any one person who will “save” us from the evil within. We must be the driving force to save ourselves, our families, our towns, our counties, our states and our country.
No, you can't be sure that 2028 will bring a real election. In fact, you and I can't be sure of anything -- not even life itself -- but why hold that out as a marker of doom and gloom as if to say 'go no farther'? I don't get it.
I think you missed the more subtle undercurrent of why this was being posted. I think its author is trying to show all of us that a New Deal may well follow in the footsteps of this current debacle, if basic patterns in our past are a prologue -- as they often are -- to the future. That should make us all pause and take stock, how will this actually be done? How will we manage to pull it off?
Before 2028, perfect or deeply flawed, 2026 looms. Actually, in 4 days time, TENS of thousands of local and regional elections for 2025 are taking place all over the country -- from school boards to state court judges, to the twin races for Governor of Virginia and New Jersey. In off-year elections, Republicans tend to vote, while Democrats tend to brood and stay home. How about starting a different trend right now? How about less brooding and more voting and poll-watching?
There's a ton of work to do, including the all-too-overlooked one of volunteering to serve as an election monitor, which are greatly needed. People voting right now need our encouragement and support far more than our doom and gloom.
I reiterate my idea that those in the states where Rs intend to send supposed DOJ monitors volunteer to walk with voters who may be intimidated by the presence of feds—or whatever they send out. When the voter gets to the check in area of the polling place, turn around and accompany the next person.
Here in New York, it's all local elections this year, but they matter just as much!
Absolutely.
Do you think it's possible that AOC or Mamdani becomes a future FDR?
I am looking forward to Mamdani being the best mayor of New York he can be.
Mamdani cannot be president, he wasn’t born in the US.
You're right--Uganda! OK I'll take AOC....
We have the formula for what to do to fix the economy: a new NEW DEAL.
What's fair? Frances Perkins, FDR's Secretary of Labor and the person responsible for our having Social Security hit the nail on the head in terms of what government's purpose or function should be: "The people are what matter to government, and a government should aim to facilitate the means by which all the people under its jurisdiction can access the best possible life." Sound familiar? It should. Excerpted from Matthew 25: 34-46: 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ So, what about our "Christian" Republican politicians who voted for Trump's "One Big, Beautiful Bill" that takes food, shelter, health care and more from "the least of these" and hands trillions of dollars to the ultra-wealthy? Here it is: 45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’ 46 “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
Without a new NEW DEAL, and because of the $40 trillion debt that the federal govt. incurred giving massive tax breaks to the wealthy, unless Republicans are voted out of office starting right now, Americans in their 30's, 40's and 50's probably won't get Social Security and Medicare. Taking back that money through taxation of the wealthy is absolutely essential.
And, advice to Sanders and Mamdani: You are Socialists. You are Pragmatic Capitalists. Neither of you advocates for government ownership or control of the means of production. Frances Perkins got it right.
Hello Annabel... "They have managed to combine the elite arrogance of the 1920s with the authoritarianism of 1930s Europe."... Elon Musk, who backs the AfD in Germany, this week has demanded a Trillion$ Pay Package from Tesla's Board of Directors.... Why?... Is Too Much Ketamine involved?....
And many of us question why there are even billionaires in the US. Generational wealth creates trustifarians like the do nothing Walton gang and many others. Rarely, do any of the children become valued and contributing members of society unless propping up bon-bon sales is of some value.
In her column about the suspension of SNAP benefits in The Contrarian this morning, Jennifer Rubin asked, parenthetically, "Any tech bros want to pay for food for starving children?" Why accumulate billions of dollars more than any person could ever want or need? I don't understand the greed of these people. A few have established philanthropic organizations and contribute to worthwhile causes, but then you have the Elon Musks of the world, who have no interest in anything other than acquiring greater wealth and power. Think of how much they could do by donating to food banks, homeless shelters, and social service organizations. Imagine...
Yeah, I know... it'll never happen.
Ellen, I commented about this a day or two ago. The comment didn't get much attention, probably because it was buried in Substack's comment indents.
There are many illustrations I could use, but I'll settle on sharks. They are built in such a way that they must keep moving or they'll "suffocate" and die. Billionaires are the same, except this is a mentality, not a physicality.
To my knowledge, the U.S. is the only nation on the planet that was founded as a capitalist society. Unlike every other nation or culture, where commerce is a means to achieve other ends, commerce IS our core value in the U.S. Everything else is built around promoting and protecting commerce.
The only objective of capitalism is GROWTH. Enough is never enough. A venture must keep expanding its revenue to survive, or so it is believed. A company must keep expanding its product line to generate more revenue. When it has saturated its market or run out of ideas, it must acquire other companies, because it must keep growing or die.
This mindset of "MORE, MORE MORE!" becomes that of the oligarchs who run these corporations. Too much is never enough, and they can't even tell you why.
That "grow or die" mentality is killing Planet Earth.
Another feature of oligarch mentality is, "Future? Screw the future! All I care about is having more today than him over there."
If there isn't a statue of Mackenzie Scott, who has given away over $19 billion to over 2000 charitable organizations, there should be.
Forewarned is forearmed, of should be, since this is a story no observant and rational person would not want to see replayed. Once again, I urge a focus on the money that has been allowed to weigh on the scales of justice. Those whose monomaniacal focus on expanding a personal empire decries and despoils the common weal as an unwelcome competitor. "As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master." That's the recipe for liberty and justice for all. That and firm belief that not all ways of accumulating money are equally respectable and some things should never, ever be for sale.
All true, Annabel. But I would also like to point out that what significantly brought the USA out of the Great Depression was our expansion of the military-industrial complex, first through the Lend-Lease program and then in our actual participation in WW2. A lot of economic historians point out that US growth would have moved much more slowly without all that war machine manufacturing. And the US economy is still addicted to this kind of strategy for keeping the economy booming. It's what drove the post-war boom as well as Reagan's post-recession economy (all his little nasty wars in Central America). Other economists and historians have posited that the USA is addicted to war machines to shore up our way of life and that unless we can come up with other strategies to replace it, we will continue to promote wars--either overtly or covertly--to the detriment of the rest of the world.
Linda, ever since the first Venezuelan fishing boat was blown up, I have been suspicious that the Trump Regime is trying to start a war in order to revive an economy that is collapsing because of Donald's hare-brained economic tinkering.
Venezuela has the largest oil reserves of any country in the world. And no one loves fossil fuels more than Trump.
What's that expression about history rhyming?
I believe I recall the U.S. getting into a war with an oil-pumping country in the Middle East. Something about invisible "weapons of mass destruction."
Now, Donnie wants to start a war with another oil-sitter-onner, this time, over invisible "drug runners."
😯Dale, I didn't think of that, and it makes perfect sense! And a LOT of money could be made for a chosen few who supply the troops!
Absolutely, the revenues generated for the military contractors is just the proverbial icing on the shitty cake.
The Gospel of the Free Market
''When the rich ran the country, prosperity was promised for all, until the bill came due and only the poor were left to pay it.''
In the beginning, the Market created Prosperity and saw that it was good. Then the Market created Lobbyists, and they said it was even better. Soon, the rich were building golden yachts while the poor were told to pull themselves up by flip-flop straps.
Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, Patron Saint of the One Percent, declared that cutting taxes on millionaires would somehow help the milkman. The milkman, unfortunately, couldn’t afford milk. Meanwhile, Herbert Hoover stood at the pulpit preaching, “The fundamentals are sound!” as the entire economy burst into flames behind him.
Investors danced on ticker tape like it was confetti until the music stopped on October 29, 1929, and someone finally noticed there were no chairs. Stocks plunged, jobs vanished, and America’s “normalcy” turned out to mean sleeping in a box while Mellon reminded everyone that suffering “builds character.”
Then along came Roosevelt, offering a “New Deal,” which was just common sense disguised as revolution: feed people, give them jobs, regulate the crooks. The rich called it socialism, but everyone else called it breakfast.
Moral of the story? Whenever someone says the rich should rule because they “understand business,” check your wallet—and maybe your house—before they understand it right out from under you... https://essayx.substack.com/p/the-gospel-of-the-free-market
Your question cuts deep. History’s patterns are repeating, but awareness is also widening. I also see this as a moment of potential transformation if we can channel our concern into cooperation. Strengthening local economies, rebuilding trust in our communities, nurturing education that cultivates empathy, these are quiet but lasting ways forward. The antidote to authoritarianism may begin simply with how we choose to care for one another.
Annabel Ascher,
You and Heather have forced me to face a harsh reality which I was clearly made aware of through the news.
My grandchildren are reaching college age. Each one works hard in school. Each one has great parents. I have been saving to help with their college education...and now THIS!!!!
How selfish and horrible the greed and arrogance of the few that they would selfishly steal from the lives and hopes and dreams of regular hardworking, sacrificial Americans who have planned and saved for their children's (or grandchildren's) education.
Everyone must vote and pray that our vote will be protected!!!!
This is worse, Annabel! Technology is useful for good AND FOR EVIL!
Stop reciting day after day all the negatives and start DOING something other than bemoaning! What are each of us doing to channel the elections going forward? Heather is pointing out the comparison of the current overloaded stock market with what? .AI investment bubble likely to burst. AND because of it companies laying off real people from jobs. Together with Trump's spending like a drunken sailor on things like the ballroom and planes for Noem. Start support of every election of any non GOP candidates anywhere!
Annabel Ascher, we have first to focus on all the state elections, runoffs, being certain of enough Democratic wins to assure the election of 2026. Then we can focus on 2028.
Between the shift from the highs of the Progressive Era to the Bacchanalian selfish hedonism of the 1920s, the calm and progressive 1990s shifting to the “war on terror” Republican spending on the wealthy in the Aughts, and this 180 we did from Presidents Obama and Biden to this authoritarian regime, I see a pattern. Whenever we start adhering to the principles of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, we Americans get bored and give power back to the wealthy Republicans. When they screw things up completely, Democrats have to come in and fix the economy, infrastructure, and so forth. It’s maddening that people don’t see this pattern.
We do Krista, we see it, remember that predators have to feast again and again. They must.
I understand feeling that way. But, everything is cyclic and there are iterations in advancements, also unfortunately in steps back. Some of us actually do learn lessons from history, and with each iteration in either direction I see increasing numbers of people who are learning from history.
There's a tone to this Letter, an edge. It's due.
I don't see a different tone in this Letter at all. Dr. Richardson is simply recounting a history that parallels today.
This is weird. I have never, ever seen Dr. Richardson "like" comments. And only the first 2.
I’ve been reading LFAA from the second month she started writing it, and have subscribed from the first day here on Substack. Dr. Richardson has, from time to time, liked posts here, but not often. She does more often on Facebook. Having it be the first or second post is a question of timing - I think she reads them rarely, but when she does, it’s the comments that come up soon after she posts.
When I was reading LFAA on Facebook, in the early days when there were fewer of us, she commented on one of my posts. That made my day, and I obviously haven’t forgotten it!
My sisters read the LFAA on Facebook instead of Substack and she has actually commented on more than one of her comments. But, I don't know the timeframe of when that was and I am not on Facebook.
I don’t like it. Reminds me of the heavy handedness of that jerk, what’s his name humble or bumble er Hubble that’s it. There was this priest and this drunk at the bar when a horse walked in……
Hubble is a treasure. You are not.
He owes me 50 bucks. (Chuckle!) yup you got me I am a not-head, not a thief.
Fair. I find Hubble a sensible source of info. He is not HCR or JV, but I still find him worth the money. We all have our part...
His Machiavellian tendencies and my own personality conflict. He does do what you say for many. That is good. You are good. 👍 we’ll keep him. For me that means cautiously.
Just--I didn't think Heather read the comment section. Perhaps just early on at a few. In reading for several years now, I've NEVER seen her "like" a comment!
That's quite telling that she chose your comment!
Concur.
Definitely an edge JAAD.
Not off topic but, a tangent for sure; HCR: " the horrors of WWI & the Spanish flu that followed". My understanding is that the "Ft Dix Flu" followed the American soldiers "over there" to East Coast ports then sailed to Euro ports & then into the trenches of both sides.
Anybody have a cite to substantively revised history of "Spanish Flu" & WWI?
I'm just an admissible fact based trial attorney guy.
Counselor, I will ask my friend who had a grandmother who survived the "Spanish" Flu in either Arkansas or Oklahoma. She (friend, not grandmother) posted some historical information about that very thing. I'll ask.
Thank you Sheriff.
Most of you probably already know, but for those who don’t: Heather has a website on YouTube where links to a trove of her videos are posted.
https://www.youtube.com/@heathercoxrichardson
Her “Politics Chat” video for today is especially interesting. And she goes over that her newsletters go over the facts of what is happening but her videos like “Politics Chat” also mention what “We the People” can do about it. She said that this week she will be doing a number of interviews with “people of interest”. So watch for them. As always, kudos to Heather, our star in the night sky.
Here you go Freddy something more to chew on
Well, what’s up with Bill Gates. He finally has seen the light and woken up and faced reality
https://www.foxnews.com/video/6384242706112
To all climate fanatics/ lunatics. A former protagonist becomes a realist. Looks like AOC was wrong. DUH!!! I’M SO EXCITED BECAUSE NOW I KNOW …..WE ….WILL….SURVIVE….lmfffao
Not that she hasn’t been wrong on most things. And that’s just a little aside.
It appears we might have to wait 500 years to see if Florida will be underwater lololol.
Don’t sell your waterfront property quite yet. Omg. 😳
What happened to Heather's FB page? Her once photo of the Lincoln Memorial, with the accompanying choices of videos, posts, and the like, are gone. Though, I am still able to hear her chats on FB.
She has been doing umpteen podcasts with everyone, lately, Lynell. I think today was with Joyce Vance which was excellent and she recently did one with Gavin Newsom. I think Joyce posted it in her newsletter “Civil Discourse”. Let me know if you read her stuff or not. I will try and forward it to you. I can’t answer your question about FB because I dropped everything Zuck owns like a hot potato about 7 months ago.
Marlene, Heather posted this warning on her official FB page yesterday (the one with the blue check mark):
“Folks: Just a reminder that this is the ONLY official Heather Cox Richardson page. There are a bunch of groups with my name on them out there— some have more than 100K followers— but I have nothing to do with them. At least one is a MAGA site that is feeding people misinformation.
Please be alert... and if you belong to those groups and they feed right-wing crap, please call it out.
Thanks!
H.”
Oh if we only had 100,000 people as informative, humble and passionate as Heather!
Hey Kari, thanks for the alert but I dropped FB long ago. I strictly get Heather’s stuff through Substack.
Do me a favor explain to me what right wing crap is I’d love to hear this one because I’ve been laughing all day already reading some of these posts, but that would really make me crack up hysterically
OK, Rick. Try laughing at this:
Timothy Snyder is an American historian, a chaired university professor of history who has spent his long career (long before Donald Trump appeared) studying fascism and the history of Central and Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union and the Holocaust. He has published about 6 books on these topics including the bestselling “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From The Twentieth Century” 2017 (ISBN 978-0-8041-9011-4). He is an internationally known and highly respected expert on authoritarianism and fascism. He is a frequently invited lecturer. You can Google his resume:
https://open.substack.com/pub/snyder/p/trumps-civil-war?r=1d2cea&utm_medium=ios
Or follow his Substack. This one is on Trump manufacturing “panic” in order to manipulate the public into having an emotional reaction rather than a rational on based on facts: https://open.substack.com/pub/snyder/p/the-truth-about-panics?r=1d2cea&utm_medium=ios
Exerpt from “On Tyranny”: “The Founding Fathers tried to protect us from the threat they knew, the tyranny that overcame ancient democracy. Today, our political order faces new threats, not unlike the totalitarianism of the twentieth century. We are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.” - from “On Tyranny”.
Also:
“History has repeatedly shown, there is little that threatens individual liberty or facilitates tyranny more than the unchecked ability of a country’s leader to turn the military inward against the people.” https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/unpacking-trumps-order-authorizing-domestic-deployment-military
The first caveats in “On Tyranny”: 1. Do not obey in advance; 2. Defend institutions; 3. Beware the one-party rule; 4. Take responsibility for the face of the world; 5. Remember professional ethics; 6. Be wary of paramilitaries; 7. Be reflective if you must be armed; 8. Stand out; 9. Be kind to our language; 10. Believe in truth;……..20. Be as courageous as you can.”
Here is a partial list of other distinguished university professors and experts on authoritarianism and fascism and some of their published books on these topics subject. They all agree with Timothy Snyder.
Jason Stanley: “How Fascism Works” and “Erasing History”
Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt: “How Democracies Die” and “Tyranny of the Minority”
Anne Applebaum (Pulitzer Prize winning historian): “Autocracy Inc.” and “Twilight of Democracy”
Ruth Ben-Ghiat: “Strongmen - Mussolini to the Present”
Heather Cox Richardson: “Democracy Awakening” (her seventh book)
Federico Finchelstein: “The Wannabe Fascists”
Erica Frantz, Andrea Kendall-Taylor, Joseph Wright: “The Origins of Elected Strongmen”
Alexsandar Matovski: “Popular Dictatorships”
Hannah Arendt, “The Origins of Totalitarianism”
Madeline Albright, “Fascism: A Warning”
Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman: “Spin Dictators”
Jacob Heilbronn: “America Last: The Right’s Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators”
Gene Sharp, “From Dictatorship to Democracy - A Conceptual Framework for Liberation”, 2002, 2003, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012.
etc.,etc..
There is also this:
The new documentary film “Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5” by director Raul Peck.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBfHby9uq7c
World Mental Health Coalition, “The More Dangerous Case Of Donald Trump”, 40 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Warn Anew, edited by Bandy Lee, MD, MDIV, 2024, ISBN 979-8-9900533-7-3.
“Prisoners Of Hate, The Cognitive Basis Of Anger, Hostility, And Violence”, Aaron T. Beck, M.D., Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry, father of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, 1999, ISBN 0-06-019377-8.
“Without Conscience, The Disturbing World Of The Psychopaths Among Us”, Robert D. Hare, Ph.D., 1999, ISBN-10: 1-57230-451-0.
“The Big Cheat, How Donald Trump Fleeced America and Enriched Himself and His Family”, David Cay Johnston, (Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist and Professor at Syracuse University College of Law), 2021, ISBN 978-1-9821-7803-1.
Did Fox News cover any of this?
Tim Walz bragging about making it easier to get into the daycare business in his own words
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/tim-walz-bragged-about-childcare-business-in-minnesota-during-2024-vp-debate-before-massive-fraud-scandal-came-to-light/ar-AA1Te44F
I have seen some lost souls. Yours are not. You were not a lost soul. You’ve actually sold your soul to the devil because you are lost not your soul, but your entirety. In my opinion you are so demented and so you reconcile depressed and hateful that nothing will help you and this is gonna last for a while so you better get some medication.
Dr. Richardson has reported "problems" with her FB. She mentions using more than one platform. We are living in interesting times.
Which translates to Zuckerberg is messing with her account.
Yes, as to Zuckerberg.
There are numerous "fake sites" using her name and photographs.
Ugh
Agree about FB, Marlene. I go there just to listen to Heather's chats because, for me, they are the only ones to publish them in real time. She definitely has a soft spot for FB users as that was her first foray, I believe.
But, yes, I have been roaming the internet to find her elsewhere to catch whatever I might have missed. Thanks for the mention of Newsom with Joyce. Oy, I can't remember if I saw that one or not! Will check it out.
Morning Lynell! Heather is also live on YouTube, which is usually live before FB catches up. I subscribe there, it’s free, and get a notification when she’s live.
Thanks, Gail! I'll give that a try.
Oh yeah…I forgot about YouTube!
I can only imagine what her calendar looks like. And her day job is professor at Boston College. This is just one of her many other undertakings.
Keep in mind that almost every time Heather does a podcast with someone she is not only teaching but she is learning as well. And we are the beneficiaries.
251 billion=#3$. Metastasized to thump.
Where is that mutha getting all of that money? Robbing our coffers? His pals?
Meta, Facebook instagram WhatsApp stocks. He is a world class jack ass but Facebook is an all American family gathering. I too tossed him but my wife wants the connection to her family. Facebook is a by the shorthairs deal.
Yeah, I got rid of Fb long ago.
Tim Walz bragging about making it easier to get into the daycare business in his own words
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/tim-walz-bragged-about-childcare-business-in-minnesota-during-2024-vp-debate-before-massive-fraud-scandal-came-to-light/ar-AA1Te44F
And how is that work out for you Marilyn anything change? Try the real world go outside and tell me what of Trump’s policies has affected you negatively?
And their lies the rub you hate the man more than you hate the policies which is really sick. It just shows you how stuck in the mud you are.
Who is paying you to post this ultra right wing propaganda. Have you gotten a check from “Cozy Bear” recently?
Actually, Fred, it’s not even right wing anymore. It’s pretty much centrist for those were the brain and a sense of what’s actually happening on the ground not what happened historically
Senator Elissa Slotkin (MI) is a former CIA employee and Iraq war veteran. In the US Senate she is a member of the Armed Services Committee, the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, the Veteran’s Affairs Committee, etc. and Ranking Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee’s Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee. A day ago she gave a short address to a meeting at the Brookings Institution’s Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy and Technology that is very important to and would benefit all Americans to hear. These are all admonitions that Heather has mentioned but Senator Slotkin puts it all together in a logical framework from the perspective of a US Senator who is experiencing the involved individuals, behavior and actions first hand.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnUO0Plcpbo
Morning, Lynell. Sometimes those chats are hard to chase down. I usually find them on Youtube; she's migrating over there due to the cloning and use of her name and images on FB by "other actors".
Morning, Ally! That's what I saw ("other actors") when I last searched for her page on FB. I was able to watch her chat, verifying it was her by seeing the blue checkmark.
Yeah, for some reason one clone site showed up as my first search yesterday. Grrrrr.
Grrrrr back!
She said some time ago fb was doing funky things with her podcasts. She was moving over to YouTube.
I heard her say that, but I first need to figure out how to get the latest on YouTube.
Thanks, Jen!
Hi Lynell- I was able to get to Heather’s FB page.
https://www.facebook.com/share/1KHHU4Msq2/?mibextid=wwXIfr
GloryB, Sharon, how'd you do that?! When I used your link, it worked, I now see the Lincoln Memorial. It shows that I'm "following." Not sure why I'm not able to get it anymore. I'll have to investigate.
Many thanks!
Well… Facebook is quirky as hell so I have no idea! She did mention in a Facebook post that there are several bogus accounts out there, and if you encounter want to report it. At any rate, glad I could get you to the right place!
By the way, when you call me a troll, have you noticed that the same losers are here day after day after day with the same sad story with a box of tissues next to them. You people are so self depressive. It’s really pathetic. Go get a life get out of here go invest in the stock market go outside and play. Go to a movie not that there’s any good ones. Go talk to somebody on the other side of the line and see how happy they are and maybe you can then understand why.
Yes Rick. Try a movie. Here is one I think will be beneficial for you:
The new documentary film “Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5” by director Raul Peck.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBfHby9uq7c
Yeah, so if you don’t get enough depressed here, Fred, you can go there and start taking pills to get out of your depression when the rest of the country is loving life, enjoying it, enjoying the sunlight, enjoying basking in the resurgence of America and you’re here in the pit of darkness commiserating with the rest of the losers
Thanks Rick. But those dancing frogs, dinosaurs, unicorns, hippos, bald eagles, etc. peacefully and festively dancing at the NoKings Day rallies didn’t look depressed to me. 7-8 million of them. The losers appear to be MAGA voters in rural areas and red states who are losing their Medicaid and rural hospitals and/or seeing their health insurance premiums double and their grocery bills go up. I thought Trump was going to lower prices “on day one”?
Clinton Contempt Vote
The House Oversight Committee voted to advance resolutions holding former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in contempt of Congress yesterday. The move pushes the measures to the full House for a vote as soon as Monday, Feb. 2.
The Clintons have for months rebuffed a subpoena to answer questions related to their interactions with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Their lawyer argues the subpoena is illegal and does not serve a legislative purpose. The Clintons have instead offered to submit written statements, and this week proposed the committee's chair, Rep. James Comer (R, KY-1), interview Bill Clinton and his staff in New York. If the House votes to hold the Clintons in contempt, it could pave the way for a Justice Department indictment.
Bill Clinton has been documented taking four international trips on Epstein’s Boeing 727 jet in 2002 and 2003. Stops on those trips included Bangkok, Brunei, Rwanda, Russia, and China.
And in related news, Gavin Newson was named Realtor of the year in Nevada, Idaho, Arizona, Texas, Florida, and the Carolinas. Thanks to Gavin’s Nightmare a 1 million people have moved to these states.
By the way, 2+2+5 immediate flop should tell you everything you need to know because this was an analysis of the Biden administration not that you saw that at all unfortunately but that's exactly what it was other than it had it in inception under Obama. God forbid you didn't bow and genuflect. This was Biden's story personified only had he held it together mentally for more than a year and a half which he did not.
It's amazing how you can take something so clear and distorted it so readily to make it fit your narrative. Actually very sickening but it accurately portrays the mindset of the 7 million idiots who went out on the road twice with a no king's protest. When in fact, we don't have a king in fact, if we had a king they chop off your head for protesting having a king, but that didn't happen. Did it there Mr. Cox
Unfortunately, you are caught in a tidal wave of hate and gullibility not two of the finest traits of a human being
In the meantime, Trump is now the coleader of the free world voluntarily with words and deeds not by force oooooops
If your party doesn't wake up real quick, you're gonna end up like communist Russia in New York and it's gonna die a quicker death because it's surrounded by liberty and that's what we have now unbridled liberty
Well, Fred aren’t you lost? They were out there because they were depressed. They were out there because they were protesting and they don’t even know what the hell they’re protesting because they can’t even illicit the specific negative policies that are affecting their lives and I’ve asked 63 times and I’ve gotten zero answers. They’re protesting they can’t get hate Trump out of their system and there’s nothing that I can do about it. They have to do it themselves.
Well, nobody is losing their Medicaid yet. Nobody is losing their Medicaid yet. Nobody has seen. I think one rural Hospital has closed and they close and open all the time but all your imaginative disasters have not occurred every single one of them that you projected has not happened so keep being negative. That’s very very purposeful
On the other hand, Trump has done nothing but tried to reduce prices and gas prices have gone down in half egg prices are down 60% while $400 billion from foreign countries has poured into this country and yet inflation has stayed tame less than half of what it was during Biden, so if you want to see miracles, go to a circus or to a Magician This guy has been kicking ass since he took Office and he’s doing it all over the world so stop your hate. Stop your negativity. Stop your delirium and start getting behind this president and our country.
Hello! Please look in the mirror. The derrière he is kicking is yours and other MAGA cultists. You are not a billionaire getting tax cuts. You need to google the meaning of the words: con artist, demagogue, grifter, cult, fascism, etc.. And then rethink what has happened to your train of thought. You are fulfilling PT Barnum’s dictum. Escape the cult before you become a victim like the members of Jim Jones’s “People’s Temple in Jonestown.
But do you know who pays the income tax in this country you have any idea at all obviously not
And by the way, if not for Joe Biden‘s open borders, we would not be in half of the problems that we have now but the good news is in only what is it nine months he has removed or have have read ourselves of over 2 1/2 million of the illegals.
Not bad for only nine months lots of work to do gotta get rid of all these future voters that Biden planned on
I can’t even begin to describe how lost you are in life. First of all, I’m not a mega cultist and how do you know how much money I make?
And you need to Google the word reality what any historian has ever written at any point in time has no bearing on anything currently happening and you ought to get that through your stubborn living in the past head. Every time I hear someone say history repeats itself I go that’s a little redundant. Don’t you think because history continues to repeat itself and will continue to repeat itself until we are both fossil fuel.
The problem that you have is, you’re actually taking some historian wrote whatever number of years ago and tries to make it Jermaine to today when the only thing Jermaine to today is. Are you ready? Today
And Fred, you don’t even realize it yet, but many of the people here are already victims of the peoples temple in Jonestown. The people who are not are the people who voted for Trump who are free and happy and looking forward to tomorrow while every single human being waste aid is unhappy, pissed angry intolerant, hateful, and almost any other negative adjective or adverb I can think of
And you’re not even much of a mind reader either what a surprise that is
It’s people like you that I actually feel sorry for that are still living in the past and you’ll never leave the past but the past has passed you by Paypal it’s over for you mentally if you still continue to think the way you do have at enjoy yourself you’re gonna be miserable until Trump leaves Office and maybe even beyond then because he could actually pass the torch to Vance in year four without a vote and then advance is doing a good job and the economy and everything is doing well. guess what? Eight more years of republican leadership and that’s all you give a shit about you. Don’t care about right you don’t care about wrong. You don’t care about anything other than political affiliation and you’ve made that perfectly clear. Either way could care less I care about policies and the effect on people regardless of which party they came from and that’s why I happen to like Bill Clinton a lot.
Enjoy your life in your misery if you knew me you’d trade places in a heartbeat but you can’t
Sometimes you appear to exhibit flight of ideas/tangentiality and pressured speech/writing. These are signs of mental illness. Please consider seeing a qualified therapist to help you with addressing your anger and these issues.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Check this out:
https://substack.com/@jamestalarico/note/c-170853511?r=1d2cea&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
By the way, I just reread the first couple lines of your post and I hate to say this because I am as happy as possibly could be in my entire life and I’m well into my senior years and I look for tomorrow and I can’t wait for the sunrise while you wallow in your squalor and here’s the funniest thing of all this is the most ironic thing you’re gonna
It’s you that needs the mirror.
Oh, and I’m one more happy note if your party doesn’t open the government then millions of Americans will be impacted and will put the blame squarely on the nose of the Democrats for not opening the government. Snap that you were complaining about losing before you’re gonna lose because you’re stubborn hating party is gonna do it and I’m gonna sit here and laugh my ass off because they’re gonna be the ones that get the blame and get the hanging. And soon they will have no choice, but to open it up because it’s gonna be widely advertise as to who’s stopping the money from being paid and stopping the military from being paid and stopping the police from being paid. And all those people are gonna know who is at fault no matter how much the Democrats scream and Chuck Schumer Cowtows to your radical left socialists.
https://substack.com/@soulmamatalks/note/c-163385070?r=1d2cea&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
Now it's a Mellon descendant bankrolling Trump and his goons and "donating" dollars to pay members of the military during the government shutdown. This is seen by many as early steps to privatizing the US military to serve Trump and his allies.
Another curious connection... According to leaked flight logs from Jeffrey Epstein's private jet, the name "Paul Mellon" appears on the list. Paul Mellon is the father of Timothy Mellon who made these military donations.
I’ve long thought that the FBI files on Epstein go far beyond pedophilia. Robert Maxwell, Epstein and their moneyed cronies moved a lot of money around in probably not so legal ways. Remember the Palm Beach property sales.
I suspect that a major reason Speaker Johnson is so adverse to allowing all if the Epstein papers to be released is that a number of very wealthy Republican donors’ names will be on that list as well.
Yup. Or the financial gyrations. Hard to tell who’s involved.
Would you like to know a little bit more about John F. Kennedy’s dad and how he made his living.
Yeah, how come George Clooney didn’t donate LMFAO. Let’s see if we can get this clear folks. John Kennedy is dead. Bobby Kennedy is dead. Martin Luther King is dead and you’re worried about Jeffrey Epstein. Yikes. You’re like to cling on in a capt Kirk sequel
That “privatized” army is what allowed General Julius to become Julius Cesar!!!!
We were given another reminder yesterday that Trump is no Julius Caesar. All the night-time shows were tickled by the way he wandered aimlessly away from Japanese PM Sanae Takaichi while inspecting troops and then had to be escorted by her around the room. Later, on Air Force One, he told boasted to reporters about his high IQ and those 'cognitive tests' that they keep making him take (nobody's told him yet that they're not IQ tests) and criticised Texas Representative Jasmine Crockett and New York Representative Alexandra Ocasio Cortez for having low IQs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7BnukerWs8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kci4NZZPJyQ
He's a national humiliation. It's interesting that yesterday House Republican published their Biden autopen report while ignoring the increasingly alarming mental deterioration of their own leader.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/28/republicans-biden-autopen
I agree, Russell, he's declining rapidly, and spreading videos and news that show it is critical. So is exposing freaks who are REALLY running this horror show: Stephen Miller, Russell Vought, Peter Thiel. Because MAGA isn't going to step up to support any of them. They're a one-leader cult.
The really terrifying thought is that there's no one leading the government at all when Trump goes AWOL, exactly what the Republicans claimed about the end of the Biden presidency even though Biden did have the good sense to surround himself with capable people and not incompetent sycophants.
The problem for the Republicans is that they had a good opportunity in 2021 to try to envisage a future for the party without Trump but they didn't and now he's back again.
https://theconversation.com/after-trump-what-is-the-future-of-the-republican-party-154726
". . . no one leading the government," Russell?
Those excavators tearing down the White House east wing are leading.
The ICE terror squads destroying American communities are leading.
The personal vengeance lawyers in the DOJ are leading.
The tariffs besetting the American people with inflation are leading.
The cover-up of his role in the rape of many, many underage girls is leading.
The successful extortion of so many elite sectors of U.S. life is leading.
The allying with fellow criminals Putin, Netanyahu, Milei, Sisi, Erdogan, Mohammed bin Salman, and Bukele is leading.
It's all negative, vicious, hate-&-anger driven -- and it all features the main criminal in the White House as permanently AWOL, never close to doing anything positive for anyone other than his fellow cynical billionaires.
Those things you describe are happening and they're all authorised by Trump to some extent or another and he is unquestionably the leader but these increasingly frequent lapses that he has shows that while there are plenty of people behind the elephant trying to clean up the mess it's making, there's no one in front telling it where to go.
Does Trump have an economic policy not connected to his delusional belief that the whole world has been taking advantage of America and to his pursuit of self-enrichment? As far as I can tell he has no infrastructure policy except to allow fossil fuel companies to continue their activities free from regulation; the same pretty much for tech companies and their data centres; and of course building a whopping great ballroom. Does he have a health policy other than undermining the current policies? Does he have a foreign policy aside from his boastful claims of ending wars, his continued diplomatic failures in Ukraine and Gaza, and his provocations against allies and the Venezuelan government? He certainly has an immigration policy, but it consists solely of mass deportation of undocumented migrants and self-harming restrictions on visas.
I agree, his is a politics of resentment, grievance and retribution but none of it amounts to a policy with clear objects and this indicates an absence of genuine political leadership. And so his administration just muddles along subject to his capricious impulses which come thick and fast as his efforts to exert power founder in the courts. He promised to Make America Great Again, but for the life of me I cannot see how anything they've done so far is remotely likely to achieve that end.
Russell, I'm sure if WE'RE discussing who's going to lead the government when the predator keels over — which could be today if that video you linked is an indicator! — then Newsom, Pritzker, Hochul, AOC, Crockett and so many more are making contingency plans.
Democratic bunfights never seem to serve the party well. I don't think that it's helping that Kamala Harris has made it clear that she intends to run again while publishing shit about her time in office. I agree that there are some outstanding Democratic leaders right now (especially compared with the poor fare offered by Republicans) so they should choose one now as the presumptive nominee and allow that person to direct the party. At the moment, they seem rudderless and lacking a hopeful vision of what the country might look like under a future Democratic government and Congress. I suspect that it's not going to be enough simply to rely on Trump's increasingly erratic behaviour and hoping that people will be repulsed - because so far they haven't been in any way helpful to the Democratic party.
I personally think that Mertyl Streep gets it right in this short clip.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/gu_R0rG9sRQ
You need a new Constitution.
I continue to find it astounding that MSM is totally missing in action when it comes to honest reporting on what they are witnessing. They are so obedient to the idea of not giving any smidgen of offense to his incredibly fragile ego, that they have abandoned their duty to the nation to tell the truth of what they see. That is something our founders never envisioned, coming from an era of robust reporting in the media of their day. We can’t fault them for not having the foresight that 250 years have brought, any more than we can’t foresee what the world will be like in another 250 years. In the end truth telling is what gives us a fighting chance to make wise decisions day to day, sadly that’s missing and we are worse off because of it.
They're not doing enough, I agree, and there's lots of disinformation out there.
I would love to see a 'test-off' between him / Crockett & AOC. And speaking of being an embarrassment -- he did his awful dance again when being welcomed to Malaysia (?). Total Cringe.
And those stupid caps he wears.
An MRI is part of the dementia work up checking for normal pressure hydrocephalus. Interesting that they released the information that he had an MRI recently but not what body part or the results.
Probably NSFW (for any part of his body!)
I thought you guys knew that Biden had left office. In fact, he left Office about three years ago.
They would give Biden a dementia examination, but a nine-year-old child could figure that out.
Do you want to see a real leader go watch JD Vance talking right now to TPUS USA and answering every question they ask not ducking and driving like John Pierre or any democrat today
JD Vance just did such a stellar job at the TPA. I think if he ran for president today against Trump, he would win. You guys are in big effing trouble.
The Republicans are talking about substance and the Democrats are talking about ballrooms which I've said 100×1012 years from now when new presidents are using that ballroom to invite distinguished guest from other countries you guys are gonna be proud of it but now you're just haters
If I were you and thank God, I’m not I’d be worried more about Joe Biden for the last three years and you could’ve given a shit. You let him sit here and run our country into the ground open our borders and kill our economy in the process and all Trump is doing is trying to revive it and he’s doing a pretty damn good job especially if you’re in the market Pay attention pal you’re in the wrong venue right here. This is the venue of the depressed.
I agree the autopen “scandal” was so clearly an intentional distraction, I almost laughed when I saw the reports.
I've read that Trump has also used an autopen (and it's not open to doubt that he doesn't really know what he's doing) but he does like to sign things. When I first saw one of those signing ceremonies that he likes during his first term I thought for moment 'is he drawing on it?'.
Yeah, we'll just watch and learn
You're not gonna like what you see and do you think Joe Biden was actually competent to be president the last two years of administration if you do then you're a sucker you're a sap. Why the hell do you think they kicked them off the ticket and put the clown in instead. She wasted $2 billion of donors money and only three months
Do you think it’s OK for somebody else to pardon 4000 people?
Yeah, if if Donald Trump did this, you’d have a 15 million protest March. Lmao.
Trump has pardoned about 1,600 so far this year, including the Jan. 6 mob. Do you think he personally signed all of those pardons? Incidentally, by signing those pardons he relieved them of the need to make restitution payments and pay fines to American taxpayers and their other victims.
Hey Mary, have you heard Trump say he’s pardoning all those people Biden couldn’t even speak at the end of his term. Biden was a walking vegetable. And yet they had him run and they had him run again. Can you believe the stupidity of these people you think you could fool the people like that. If Trump wasn’t doing major, major ation deals around the world and here in the states bringing in right now about $400 billion of additional income into the United States through trade. There might be a cause for concern about his mental capacity but right now he’s one of the sharpest people on the planet he just met with the leader of the opposition and came out with a fair deal for both parties not to mention he is now revered all over the world and called daddy by the EU
But if you have some reason to think or some facts to indicate that he is anything but competent, I’d like to hear them
If you hold on just shortly, you’ll be able to talk about that when the new ballroom is built and see president after president after president and the future use that ballroom to entertain the world and it’s gonna be wonderful but because Trump built it there’s something wrong. The funny thing is five other presidents have remodeled or revamp the White House including Obama, who spent $400,000 of taxpayer money to do so. I have a lot more to say, but there’s a lot of people who need help here so if you have a follow up, please let me know but I’ll leave you with this one. Thought you could be number 66 on the list. Give me a list of five of Trump’s policies that are negatively affecting your life on a daily basis and be specific been nice knowing you.
To be honest, I don't know. My understanding is that Fetterman is voting with the Republicans so that would rule him out. And in case it has escaped your notice, you have elected a foul-mouthed, racist, misogynistic criminal fraudster as your president so you really haven't been setting the bar very high for political leadership.
What I do not understand is the fear and ignorance of socialism that is prevalent in your country. It's so ridiculous that you've allowed Trump to use the term 'socialism' in a derogatory sense and interchangeably with 'Marxism', and 'communism' as though they were all the same. The low levels of political literacy are quite stunning.
Your government is subsidising US companies (especially in the fossil fuel sector); buying shares in Intel and US Steel; demanding revenue from Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices; and browbeating big law firms to work for the government. Your entire welfare system is a form of socialism. One could argue that Trump's tariff policy is a rejection of free market capitalism.
Rand Paul has commented on Twitter/X:
"If socialism is government owning the means of production, wouldn't the government owning part of Intel be a step toward socialism?"
He added: “Today it’s Intel, tomorrow it could be any industry.”
It would be hilarious if it wasn't so tragically stupid.
You might get more legislation being passed but would it be any good to anyone?
Capitalism is bringing production under private ownership -that's all. It isn't intended to bring people out of poverty nor does it. Your country is the most unequal country in the world and that inequality has terrible side effects (the data is all set out in meticulous detail in Kate Pickett and Rochard Wilkinson's book 'The Spirit Level'). This is because in your country capitalism has become a system for the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a very wealthy minority of people. Your welfare system and every such system isn't capitalism - it's socialism.
You surely know the stats, but let's run through them again. The top 1% of households own 30% of the country's wealth. Last year, total government revenur was around $5 trillion; and it spent $6.8 trillion. Meanwhile, US billionaires owned around $46 trillion in wealth and paid little or no tax at all. It's like the Second Estate in France (the aristocracy) during the Ancien Regime. So the US government continues to heap up debt while those people get richer.
Trump is supported by these billionaires - they support his election campaigns and they give him money. In return, he does whatever they want - it's called Project 2025. He's a convicted fraudster who uses the presidency to make money. The New Yorker's David Kirkpatrick recently calculated that he had earned $3.4bn while he was president and his grifting goes on and on. What other president have you had that has hawked golden watches, golden guitars, golden sneakers and all the other crap he finds time to sell?
You say he's not a misogynist. He's raped one woman (E. Jean Carroll) and his association with notorious paedophile Jeffrey Epstein is more evidence of his licentiousness. The evidence of his misogyny is voluminous.
https://www.vox.com/2016/5/16/11683122/donald-trump-misogynist-sexist
You say he's not racist, but what about the birtherism business or his persecution of the Central Park Five long after they had been acquitted?
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/donald-trump-racist-examples_n_56d47177e4b03260bf777e83
Massie introduced a bill in the House to abolish the Federal Reserve Board and regional banks and hand over authority to the Treasury which would be fucking bonkers.
Rand Paul is an anti-vaxxer and a climate denialist - another bonkers politician like his father.
Yes, I think must disagree with each other!
Donald Trump is no Julius Caesar.
Well, he's Orange Julius.
Tony, he's gonna be your orange Julius for another 3 1/2 years and this country is gonna be screaming success by then then what are you gonna say? Just stay in your hate depression. That's all you are is a bunch of depressed human beings. I feel sorry for you.
Well guess what pal you’re living under the realm of Orange Julius for the next 3 1/2 years so get out of this depressing negative environment and start living your life to the fullest because that’s what all Americans who love America are doing, not sitting here in a corner facing the wall instead of facing the facts as I’ve just described them above
Julius Caesar had the genius to have himself declared a God! Not even trumpler has tried that . . . yet.
"Yet" is the key word in your comment James. 🤔
Yeah, that's what's gonna happen. Laura you people are so demented and so sick living in your dementia and your depression. You're just a circle jerk of depressed human beings and you're better off being ostracized by yourself so you can think clearly.
But the best part is this starting Saturday 40 million. People are gonna go hungry and ultimately no matter what they say. This is gonna be blamed on the Democrats not opening the government. I personally don't care. I wouldn't be complaining at all. If I republican I'd let the public figure it out itself. Don't push the Democrats to open it. Don't say a damn thing just tell the public hey we want to feed you. The Democrats won't let us.
Do you know if there's already 2 1/2 million illegal immigrants that have been sent out of this country did you know that? Do you know how much money we saved by doing that for the American people?
What privatized army you mean Merrick Garland and his hooded amigos.
What country do you live in these days? This is America and we’re winning all over the world including Home but Heather is taking you down the road of depression. Get out get out wherever you are and start living your life happily
Trump addressing troops aboard USS George Washington in Yokosuka, Japan all but told them that he would eventually need to order them to invade US cities.
“We have cities that are troubled, we can’t have cities that are troubled. And we’re sending in our National Guard, and if we need more than the National Guard, we’ll send more than the National Guard, because we’re going to have safe cities.”
It was a reprise of his speech to military leaders in Quantico where he suggested that they use US cities as "training grounds" (he didn't elaborate for what).
I believe 47 is just itching to turn the military on Americans. He has been since his first term.
I think it was “shoot them in the legs” or similar. Disgusting.
His Hitler Plan.
Why does this sound like “the trains will run on schedule”.
Sounds like Il Duce talking Gail.
And even that wouldn't be true since you get an average of 1,300 derailments every year in the US.
More of a shiny object. Safe cities vs. train schedules. Neither of which was important in the grand scheme of things.
And yes, just down the road from me there was a massive coal train derailment this week. 53 coal carrying cars and two engines, into wetlands.
Gosh!
The cause hasn’t been reported. What a mess.
Also, he’s priming them for the new loyalty oath they’ll be asked to sign in the not so distant future.
Will the doctors need to sign a loyalty oath to keep practicing? Will the teachers have to sign a loyalty oath to keep their teaching credentials? Will we have to sign a loyalty oath to receive our social security benefits? Will us veterans have to sign a loyalty oath to keep getting our VA health care? Just asking.
I shouldn't be surprised, especially after the Quantico fiasco.
These generational oligarchs! Read the room. Exit stage left already. No one likes you.
Other than more than the 80 million who originally voted for him and another 25 million more now that everything is turning up roses, the economy, the lack of inflation the market, which has made billions of dollars almost a half $1 trillion he’s brought into this country in the way of Tariffs which have not caused the inflation that everybody including the idiot Paul Krugman thought would happen
Paul Krugman is not really an economist. He’s just an anti-republican in sheep’s clothing.
$130 million won’t cover a fraction of the $192 billion payroll. It’s a stunt.
On the other hand, the fact that these folks are willing to cough up more than $100 million lets us know how much money they stand to make from this presidency. They’d rather do that, than pay their fair share. It’s a giant grift, kleptocracy on a huge scale.
I was also thinking - once a Mellon, always a Mellon.
I liked that connection too. Money illegitimately acquired handed down to descendants who are inept and have no idea what to do with such great wealth. And the people who have hysterics about being able to transfer that wealth further down the lineage. I don't think it advantages the kids.
OK, Lori, the mouthpiece how much do you want to bet that the military never becomes privatized in your lifetime? Got some cash you wanna throw in the garbage
And I just responded and of course the response went somewhere else and I went. Are you an effing out of your mind? What’s your suggesting is? We don’t pay our military.? You know if we have more people like you we’d be subservient to China and Russia in a heartbeat you moron
So if I understand you correctly, and this is unbelievable, you would rather not pay our troops you effing idiot… and this is why the Democrats have the lowest approval rating in 50 years and this is why the Democrats are scattered with no agenda, except a Trump with no leader, except the communist/socialist and no other agenda, except the misguided destruction of America. Go hug an illegal criminal
So Rick, there is such a thing as a legal criminal???
Actually Lori you make a good point there is absolutely positively a definition of a legal criminal versus an illegal criminal. You might want to get that through your head. An illegal criminal is one who commits a crime in a country he’s not supposed to be in and therefore there is a pretty good chance that that crime would not have happened whatever that crime might be, would he not have been in that country illegally. So anybody who has killed raped, trafficked, drugged, or violated in any way by somebody who’s not yes supposed to be here legally has suffered because of that as has America.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
And please forgive me for misspelling your name. I’m voice texting many posts here and don’t have time to go over with directions so you’ll please have to accept my apology.
It’s supposed to have said except hate Trump not except
Yeah, I’ll turn it around Lori. If this were Biden and the same thing was happening and he was getting sorrows to donate to pay people so he would look so bad you’d be celebrating. This is America. We’re supposed to be the United States of America and Trump is doing everything possible to make that happen but you follow one of the most depressive individuals one of those antagonistic individuals I have seen.
It’s only making your depression worse start supporting your president seeing how he’s winning around the world, especially this past week and put a smile on your face
Fantastic satire, Rick Sender. Do you do stand-up?
Here’s some stand-up comedy for you
Tim Walz bragging about making it easier to get into the daycare business in his own words
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/tim-walz-bragged-about-childcare-business-in-minnesota-during-2024-vp-debate-before-massive-fraud-scandal-came-to-light/ar-AA1Te44F
All I do is tell the truth you can deal with it or not and if you’re from Oregon well, sorry to hear that. Why do you think east Oregon wants to remove itself from the Portland area? Why do you think that might be? And that’s not satire my dear. You what you don’t understand is the people outside of Oregon look at Oregon like the wacko capital of the left coast besides California
Great letter, history repeating itself over and over again. The GOP makes a mess, the Democrats clean it up, never changes. On another note isn’t destroying Public work a crime?
Destroying the East Wing is a federal crime because it does not belong to the President, but rather the people of the United States.
Christopher, Donald has increased his crime rate to about one-a-day. But who is going to bring him to justice? His personal lawyer, Pam Blondi? His personal law enforcement officer, Kash Patel? Why would they bother when his personal court has decreed that anything Donald does while in office is not a crime?
Interesting report about the UN’s statement about the International Criminal Court’s taking on Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. There was a statement (plea?) that anyone could bring charges there when the UN was stalemated as it so often is. I hope I read this correctly, but it sounded very like a hint that any person or state could charge Trump and his cohorts in the ICC with war crimes, bypassing the pathetic SCOTUS who thought they had insulated this mad man from any consequences of his crimes.
Thanks for sharing that, Linda. The next question is, is there a member-of-ICC nation that would be willing to take that step? I nominate Canada or Greenland.
Oh! I think maybe Ukraine would be happy to get in on that, but after the speech that the German Minister (of Defence? not sure) gave to a group of European officials in response to JD Vance’s tone deaf and insulting speech, There is probably any number of the EU states that would be glad to see Trump et al in the Hague.
Forgot about Ukraine. After that little extortion attempt a few years ago and the recent "Gold Oval" ambush, Volodymyr would probably get a nice little bump of schadenfreude from recommending a trip to the Hague for Donny.
After he leaves or a congressional change at the midterms.
Remains to be seen. If we dump enough of the Republinuts out of the House who have been protecting the Felon, it may scare enough of the remaining ones into acting like sane adults for a change. If Donnie loses his yes men, and Hakeem Jeffries is Speaker instead of that toad who calls himself Speaker now, he is going to be constrained from the most egregious of his evil impulses. The trip to The Hague will have to come after he leaves……….IF he is still above ground at that point. There are others who might be charged however, and the threat of that possibility should be brought to their attention daily.
Maybe JD Vance will be able to talk Merrick Garland into coming back for another 3 years of foot-dragging.
Yeah, tell me the last time that happened? Are you trying to tell me or actually trying to sell me that Biden’s administration was successful. Well if you’re communist, China or Russia, you’d be the running joke.
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out - because l am not a Jew.
Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak for me”
- prominent German pastor Martin Niemoeller, WWII Concentration Camp internee, quoted in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, on the National Mall.
With every post you become more pathetic I had a long post during my short flight in Hawaii
Each time you refer to a link or history, you confirm my worst fears and hopes for you
I've been to Washington DC at least a dozen times and happen to be Jewish
And I've lived the writings that you portray here not just in theory like you but an actual life. I've been to 119 countries and 49 of the 50 most notable sites on the planet and all 50 states that's called practical application not theory like you attempt to practice with your sayings and historical and psychological references which mean absolutely nothing. I got a glimpse of your next post and I will respond to it as soon as we unload from the plane.
And at that point, this is probably one of the last conversations we have because I find anything you offer worthless in today's world especially the fact that the Republicans under Donald Trump are in total control and will continue to be for quite a while in fact, maybe even the next 15 years. And if not, Don will have done enough to last that long by the time he's through.
Hello am sharing an idea that I hope many of you may share with me in doing. Not everyone watches MSNBC or reads hcr so the idea is to call prominent democratic leaders and encourage them to organize daily press conferences on what the democratic message is and countering the lies and corruption of the Trump regime
I am calling at night to avoid the need to identify my location outside of their state. We need to message for all the people.
Thanks. Please join me. Nancy in San Diego
I'm dying to know: what is the democratic message?
Just for yucks here's my version: "Republicans are protecting pedophiles, starving children and leaving you unprotected against a medical emergency. What else do you need to know?"
The Democratic message tells the truth of the shutdown, who is responsible, the facts of what is at stake for healthcare, the avoidance of the Epstein files by Johnson. The Democrats lay out what is occurring in the DOJ, Hegseth's military mess, the murders on the high seas. We will win on facts stated over and over and over. And that includes us.
We need to start calling out their plans on elections right now.
VOTE THIS WEEK.
Barbara, we have to repeat our message over and over and over till redundancy. We need to talk to everyone over and over. We have to wake up a whole nation and we are running out of time.
I think “what we intend to do about [x]” needs to be included.
Then we repeat the Infrastructure Bill, the Child Care Tax Credit, the CHIPS Act etc. These were working.
The Blueprint. https://blueprint.democrats.org/
This is exactly the point that Paul Krugman made earlier today. It's that simple. Dems need to shout that from the rooftops of every building available to them. But I'm sure, at this point, they still don't get it.
I am not counting on Democratic "leadership" to do anything. This has been brewing for decades. They knew this. They watched Newt Gingrich, the Tea Party, the Heritage Foundation, Christian Nationalism, trump, Russian influence, and the growth of MAGA (to name a tiny piece of this mess) and did essentially nothing.
This is on us. We find new and vibrant leaders, we vote like crazy on November 4 and we keep protesting.
They are almost as complicit in the decline of our country as the radical right. Both parties have been subservient to their corporate overlords, but the Dems favored some social issues that the Right rejected. They ended up losing their base in the process.
"Social issues"? What a catch phrase. The work accomplished by the Biden Administration will be remembered as historic in scope of change for the good--Infrastructure Bill, Child Care Tax Credit, CHIPS, and many, many, many more all designed to benefit every single section of America. Already under Biden the blue-collar workers were seeing huge increases in good paying jobs as factories were opening, and the Infrastructure Bill was opening up all kinds of skilled labor positions.
What happened?
Ignorance happened.
The corporate complicit media refused to report on the Biden Administration's work choosing instead to focus on you-know-who. The corporate media owned by oligarchs had a great interest in seeing the Republicans win. The Biden Administration was seriously derelict in communication about their accomplishments, Biden was interview adverse and Americans apathetic.
Americans did not know what they were voting for. They were fed a toxic stew of lies, disinformation and fear mongering courtesy of the right-wing groups and the politicians. Americans today know more about their sports team than how a Democracy is supposed to work.
In the end those "social issues" were miscast as evil when in fact they would have changed the world of the people who voted for Republicans. Now they will pay severely.
Here is a small piece of Biden's work
https://oliverwillis.com/joe-biden-2024-accomplishments/#:~:text=Joe%20Biden%202024%20Accomplishments
I could not agree with you more. Except that I think you give a significant portion of the voting public a pass. Based on my own observation, there are a lot of people who did know what they were voting for, and voted for it anyway, because their hatred and tribal identity was more important to them than their own well-being or that of their country. As long as Those People were going to be hurt hard, it didn’t matter to them that they would also be hurt. It was not just ignorance or the toxic spew they lapped up from their favored propaganda outlets.
And you’re right about the Biden Administration on all counts, both good and bad, as you note so eloquently in your comment. They did a lot of really good things that would really have helped our country, and bored people to death while doing it.
One of my favorite phrases is “that doesn’t sound right” and then I go research. Why don’t more people? (Rhetorical question.)
Thank you, Barbara! Yes, yes, yes!
Paul Krugman doesn’t make any points. He makes mistakes and misjudgments and he just made a big one talking about the tariffs because every indication is the opposite of what he says what a surprise the problem with people like Truman is their only theoretical, they never touch the actual action or activity themselves. They talk about it. They write about it. They theorize about it, but they never actually immerse themselves in it to see reality. Poor guy.
Krugman.
They still don't have one. CNN yesterday found that recent polls show that the approval rating of Republicans in Congress have risen (even amongst Independents) since the shutdown started while the Democrats' approval rating has stalled. Is this only a failure of messaging or a sign of some wider malaise within the only realistic political opposition to Trump? It appears that John Thune and Mike Johnson believe that they are winning the shutdown even as misery upon misery is heaped on Americans with $15bn being lost every week according to Trump's own Council of Economic Advisers.
How is this happening? The cost of beef, bananas and coffee has soared since Trump introduced his tariffs. At least some Republican Senators have moved against him in relation to the vindictive tariffs imposed on Brazil for jailing Bolsonaro.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/inflation-beef-coffee-bananas-food-prices-cpi/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/28/us-senate-trump-tariffs-brazil
The Democrats need a stick of dynamite up their arses for this. If they don't get their act together soon they will fail at the midterms and then everyone is in trouble.
It’s happening because large swaths of this country are stupid. They’ll never believe the fascist dictator is really a fascist dictator. The feckless wimps aka as the Democratic Party couldn’t fight their way out of a wet paper bag with instructions, so the stupid millions aren’t getting the counter-narrative. Between the Congress, high court, corporate media and the useless “opposition” party, the deck is stacked against us. We’re literally on our own in this.
I think the 'No Kings' protests were a real sign of hope, but only if the Democratic party finds a way to capitalise on this feeling of frustration and anger in much of the country. The shutdown only works for the Democrats if they can convince people that the president is unconcerned about the harm being caused to families - he's instructed congressional Republicans not to negotiate on health issues, he's swanned off on a foreign trip just when SNAP funding runs out and he's building a fucking great ballroom while Americans are struggling to pay their mortgages and rents and put food on the table. I mean how hard can it be to make the case?
It truly is hard to believe. We are living through (the lucky ones who still have health care insurance!) an authoritarian takeover of our country and some are totally oblivious. This enrages me.
It also depends on what health insurance you have. John Oliver's 'Last Week Tonight' show exposed the Medicare Advantage scam as well as the deficiencies of the Medicare system.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/sl9IRn33Fig
And as soon as Americans realize this we may be able to start to make change.
Psy ops works.
Daniel, do you honestly believe that that's the only or principal reason for the Democrats' failure to make up ground on the Republicans? The 'No Kings' marches and the polls indicate that people are repulsed by many of Trump's actions but this isn't benefiting the Democratic party.
We primarily are crime victims. They stole the elections and they stole the liberal media. Most polls are bullshit.
Biden was most successful legislatively since LBJ. Left Trump the best economy in the world. People are easily snowed.
We stole the election? Are you actually one of the idiots absolute utter idiots that believe that Joe Biden who had no accomplishments his entire congressional life got 13 more million votes than Obama the God? And they stole the election.?
Yikes no wonder you hang out here. You should recognize Danielle that you’re in a room with a bunch of depressed human beings not know what else to do with themselves rather than go outside and see reality as it is.
This country is kicking ass once again everywhere around the world but you sit here in this dark, secluded room facing the wall box of tissue by your side in a self deprecating manner
No one is going to help you but yourself get the hell out of here and go live your life with a smile on your face. You have another three years to do so without Cohen continuing to be constantly in a depressed state. Life is a do it to yourself, Danielle.
Karine Jean-Pierre, the former White House press secretary, gave an interview to the New Yorker's Isaac Chotiner a couple of days ago (Why Biden’s White House Press Secretary Is Leaving the Democratic Party) in which she fiercely defends the record of the Biden administration. I agree with you, however she has also announced that she's leaving the Democratic party for what she believes was the betrayal of Joe Biden.
I think you spelled that wrong Daniel and that’s not easy to do. Lolololol
You mean the size ups by Merrick Garland or Robert Mueller or Jack Smith or Letitia James or Alvin Bragg you mean like that? Lmffffao.
People still watch CNN?
I do.
May I suggest you watch PBS news and MSNBC? Much better information.
I live in the UK, Penny, and CNN is all my platform provides but I do watch some PBS shows and ctach MSNBC (Rachel Maddow) on YouTube.
Why Jeff are you upside down? Maybe you haven’t heard the news lately. The Democrats have decided to keep the government closed and who are those pedophiles that you’re talking about? Would love to hear this story this is gonna be good. I need some humor being in this particular discussion nothing much but a a group of depressed adults, not knowing what to do with themselves. Medication might certainly help.
That’s a good start. 🎯
Nancy I wrote to and called Greg Cesar a while ago who is head of the Congressional Progressive caucus and told him to do just that. He is the one who should lead in this, not the milk toasts supposedly speaking for House and senate. I suggest everyone call him. Jessica
Thanks Jessica for info - here’s correct spelling to Greg Casar’s (last name) and link to info…
✅ Greg Casar is the Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), a leadership position he was elected to in December 2024. As Chair, he leads the caucus of nearly 100 Democratic members of Congress, advocating for progressive policies such as fighting economic inequality, advancing civil liberties, and prioritizing working people.
✅ http://casar.house.gov/media/press-releases/news-greg-casar-elected-congressional-progressive-caucus-chair
The new leadership will begin their terms on Jan. 3, 2025.
“The Members of the Progressive Caucus know how to fight billionaires, grifters, and Republican frauds in Congress. Our caucus will make sure the Democratic Party stands up to corporate interests for working people,” said Chair-Elect Greg Casar (D-Texas). The Democratic Party must directly take on Trump, and it’ll be CPC Members boldly leading the way and putting working people first.”
Casar, a former labor organizer, believes that the future of the Democratic Party is dependent on winning back the votes of workers across the country — across race, geography, and ideology — while not letting injustice and oppression go unchecked. Democrats must be able to both hold a political majority and defend all people’s rights.”
✅ Casar will lead the CPC alongside Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) as Deputy Chair and Jesús “Chuy” García (D-Ill.) as Whip.
Good stuff, JaKsaa
Jessica, I am reading this during my first cuppa. I read your last 6 words in your very good post, but stumbled for a minute as to why you wanted me to call him Jessica. Then there was a molecule of caffeine that kicked in and saw the period at the end of him, and that you were signing your post. Sigh. Guess I need another cup of coffee.
I’m with you. Posted this last night on Ron Filipkowski’s daily bulletin;
“Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) was asked by Semafor whether the statement from the govt employees union asking them to vote for the CR changed his mind: “I get it that you guys have to write new stories every day, but it’s the same story every single day. The story is they refuse to negotiate. The story is Trump isn’t here. The story is House Republicans haven’t shown up for work in a month and a half.”
Bullshit. Total bullshit.
The story is you aren’t telling the story. You’re letting the lying fascists tell the story. The story is that this is a fascist regime, run by a dictator. The story is the fascists are in control of the government, not the Democrats. The story is that that sniveling lying little weasel Mike Johnson is responsible for the House not being in session, not the Democrats. The story is the fascists have shut down the government, not the Democrats, because the dictator doesn’t want Epstein to come out. The story is that the fascists, not the Democrats, have fired or furloughed federal workers without pay, are keeping the military on duty without pay, have suspended SNAP benefits to 40 million American citizens, and the fascists lie every minute of the day telling the stupid American people that the Democrats are to blame for all of this. The story is that the Democrats are letting the fascists win every single day because they are not telling the story to the American people. Quit fucking around, get off your asses, get together, construct the narrative and tell the damned story, every single day, day after day. For God’s sakes, just do it.
!000% agree.
When the Democrats in Congress get off their arrogant high horse, stop playing victim and actually stand up with a cohesive message this will go on and on.
There are actually videos of Democratic Congresspeople playing hide and seek looking for Republicans in the Capitol.
Pay attention to NYC. Mamdani challenged the DP and with his grassroots support mobilized by DSA shocked the Democratic machine guys to their core. The media didn’t tell you this: at his rally we’re not only Bernie and AOc but the 3 most powerful people in state government in Albany. Yes the governor the legislative chairs who used to run things with Cuomo saw the writing on the wall and kissed the ring. Because they know damn well that Social democracy as it exists in all of Europe is not that radical, that people have the basics and the wealthy & corporations do pay taxes. What they didn’t believe in was the power of the people and democracy.
MSNBC is dead so is CNN Fox News has higher audience ratings than MSNBC and CNN combined. So you you should try to catch up with the news that MSNBC is changing its name because people have left and drove over 50% of its audience is gone as well as CNN who’s trying to be spun off as well you guys are really slow. maybe that’s why you study history so hard so you could sit there in history while time passes you buy.
A GLANCE INTO THE FUTURE*
I met a D.C. workman walking through a tract of rubble
Twixt the Treasury and the White House with little trouble.
He said that "These vast stumps of gold and stone
Are all that remain after their patron dismounted his throne."
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies,
Whose megalomania left him paralyzed,
And whose ego, that dwarfed his brain,
Left him disgraced and hopelessly insane.
Among this vast stretch of junk and debris, this is all that remains
Of his belligerent, corrupt and degenerate reign.
But on the largest stump these words appear:
"My name is Donald J. Trump, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare,
Slime, sleaze and sludge are left to fill the vacancy
As a monument to remind us of the evils of tyranny.
*[Many thanks to Percy Bysshe Shellley's "Ozymandias" for its eternal truth and lessons]
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46565/ozymandias
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻🎯🙏
Thanks Dick.
Awesome to watch her artwork!
And my normal -
I added a calendar on my spreadsheet so we can target our calls/letters/emails/faxes to flood offices in an organized manner.
Use/share this spreadsheet (bit.ly/Nokings) as a resource to call/email/write members of Congress, the Cabinet and news organizations. Call. Write. Email. Protest. Unrelentingly. We deserve better ❤️🩹🤍💙
Reach out (beyond your own) to as many in the Senate and House as you can. All of this is bigger than “I only represent my constituents” issues.
I keep posting. According to Congressman Eric Swalwell (D-CA) Trumpepstein may cause an "Epstein bomb" causing over 100 Republican members to "jailbreak" from Trump.
Massive Congressional visits November 18.
https://www.instagram.com/flare.usa/p/DP_mdOyjdiG/
Visit Congressional Republicans.https://www.mobilize.us/indivisible/event/851451/
I continue to be exasperated by the parties and lawyers with cases when justices and judges who have dispositive records of bribery and prejudice are not challenged. At SCOTUS, Roberts opened the door in November, 2023. https://www.supremecourt.gov/about/Code-of-Conduct-for-Justices_November_13_2023.pdf
If the Dems on the court have first hand evidence, they have a duty to come forward.
As Yogi would say it is deja vu all over again
Andrew Mellon then. Timothy Mellon today
Often (not always), a technological change provides a key force leading to a major disruption in the economy. Recent examples have tended to be related to the internet. In the 1920s, it was the humble tractor. As tractor sales grew, for the the first time ever, the horse population of the United States started falling. Also, the number of humans needed to maintain agricultural production started falling as well. The rural bottom tier of the economy was left out of the roaring 20's. If that wasn't bad enough, needless deep plowing on the south central Great Plains setup the conditions for the dust bowl after the depression was well under way, exacerbating an already bad situation.
Deep plowing and its implications were technical details well beyond the understanding of not just non-farmers, but even most people who thought of themselves as experts in the agricultural industry in the 1920s. To me, this sounds identical to the current situation with respect to network technologies.
Touché Craig. The Dust Bowl wantonly savaged the farming community. Rural bank failures exacerbated economic woes. You are the first to bring up the environmental face of the Great Depression. Operational loans today are compiled from multiple banks by producers who must borrow millions each spring to afford fuel seed and fertilizer loans. More than one producer in the Golden Triangle in north central Montana must borrow more than 3 million dollars to get wheat planted. Those are old figures related to the 1980’s when last I lived in Great Falls.
Just a couple days ago Pat, I was chatting with someone here in Snohomish County, WA who is from North Dakota. They told the same story about their family farm and the enormity of the economic risk they take every year. One thing they really don't need is a bunch of ill-informed amateurs in DC tinkering with tariffs.
As to the enormity I have friends who will put in 50 sections of wheat and run 5000 cows on the unplantable coulees considered waste land in Browning and Cut Bank. My grandmothers family put together a very complicated loan package for their 150 sections near Glendive. Jake ( my grandmother) always maintained they were just poor dirt farmers. I don’t think D.C. folks care much what happens out in the wheat lands these days. They are certainly running a fools errand.
That damn hard, red from eyes crying, dry land winter wheat farming.
Hard red winter wheat. Dem eyes dem eyes. That long thin dawn coming on again.
And indeed it is.
Sounds like: NYT -- With Some G.O.P. Backing, Senate Votes to End Trump’s Brazil Tariffs
The vote on Tuesday was 52 to 48 to end the levies on Brazil, with five Republicans joining Democrats to pass the resolution.
Anyone want to guess how many maga voters & supporters even know this history? My guess is not many. Just like many don’t know the nuclear arms race that started after WW2. Same people that are obvious to the fact that by February of ‘26, 3 nuclear power governments will have no negotiated arms agreement. This isn’t history rhyming or repeating. It’s circling the drain.
There's an educational deficit to be sure.
https://www.researchamerica.org/blog/survey-most-americans-cannot-name-a-living-scientist-or-a-research-institution/
Thank you for this link, Russell. It's a most damning fact, or set of facts.
The existence of criminal Donald on the public stage so prominently so long should occasion public officials real soul-searching as to why so many let American schooling sink so pitifully as it has -- to riddance of civics and humanities, to deference to the commercial vulgarities of billionaires only, and to their favorite tool, testing.
I agree, Phil, although Trump seems to like those 'cognitive tests' even though they're the same ones every time he's asked to do them. Ignorance is bliss.
Thanks TJB…here is a great newsletter especially for real news on the Pentagon…
Responsible Statecraft
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/latest/
Even though the name, Donald Trump, did not appear in tonight's letter, he looms over the American economy like the second coming of Herbert Hoover.
Soon Americans will lose their health insurance and start to go hungry. It will be hard to blame the Democrats when the Republicans control all three branches of the federal government. The torches and pitchforks will come out soon.
Apropos of your comment, Joel, is a recent political satire YouTube vid about ‘Rump’s new ballroom….it’s AI, but is well done and packs a punch I think: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbebXrdT8EY
One conceit I'm not sure about here, Barbara.
This video makes it seem as though it's going to be the red-hat-wearing MAGA who, after deep suffering due to Donald, finally rise in anger at his opulent ballroom, his priorities only for comforting the comfortable.
My MAGA neighbor’s kids and grandkids are receiving notice of next year’s premium increases. The attitude is “Trump will fix this”. If he doesn’t???
Thanks. I was already feeling hopeless.
And yet the polls continue to show that they are blaming Democrats equally for the shutdown, something that didn't happen in 2018, the last time they confronted a Trump administration on healthcare issues.
Such is the power of the right-wing media echo chamber/noise machine. There's also the fact that right-wingers are not particularly thoughtful or intellectually curious. I believe John Stuart Mill was correct when he stated: "Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative."
I think he was referring to the British Conservative party. He had called them "the stupid party" in his book 'Considerations on Representative Government'. There followed an exchange in the House of Commons with Sir John Pakington who objected to that description. Mill said:
"I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it. Suppose any party, in addition to whatever share it may possess of the ability of the community, has nearly the whole of its stupidity, that party must, by the law of its constitution, be the stupidest party; and I do not see why honorable gentlemen should see that position at all offensive to them, for it ensures their being always an extremely powerful party. I know that I am liable to a retort, and an obvious one enough; and as I do not wish to allow any honorable gentleman the credit of making it, I make it myself. It may be said that if stupidity has a tendency to Conservatism, sciolism, or half-knowledge, has a tendency to Liberalism. Something might be said for that, but it is not at all so clear as the other. There is an uncertainty about sciolists; we cannot count upon them; and therefore they are a less dangerous class. But there is so much dense, solid force in sheer stupidity, that any body of able men with that force pressing behind them may ensure victory in many a struggle, and many a victory the Conservative party has gained through that power”.
Lord knows what he would make of MAGA, but I concede he might indeed feel that the same point applied to the current Republican party which has become a magnet for some extraordinarily stupid people.
He was indeed referring to the Conservative Party in Britain, but it seems to be apt, so I used it. If I use it in future, I will provide the context you have noted.
As for MAGA, it is beyond anything I have encountered in my 73 years on the planet. When I talk to a MAGAt, I feel as though I am speaking to someone who doesn't have different principles, but who lives in a different reality. Cheers.
I agree, Joel. It's a mirror world, as Naomi Klein has observed following her unhappy experience of being confused with Naomi Wolf (in her book 'Doppelganger: A Trip Into The Mirror World'). Trump himself creates his own reality on Truth Social and it seeps into the real world day after day.
You’re seeing different polls than I am.
Gail, I confess that I'm no expert but I saw this on CNN yesterday.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LossM_eeHE
So you have polls showing that the majority of Americans seem to be repulsed by the policies of the Trump administration and yet they don't seem to repose much trust in the Democratic party and they're the only realistic political opposition to Trump.
I get what you’re saying but I’ve abandoned CNN. They seem to be hedging their bets. Plus it seems they may be about to be sold, to Paramount I think, along with Warner Bros. Discovery. I’ll have to find the article.
I think it's just speculation at the moment (I saw reports in the Hollywood Reporter and Newsweek). However, MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell told his viewers exactly what he thinks of CNN.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/lawrence-odonnell-scott-jennings-cnn-msnbc-b2853804.html
My view is that CNN continues to provide excellent news coverage - like today's coverage of that monster storm in the Atlantic. I still scan the New York Times although I can't abide either David Brooks or Brett Stephen. Much the same goes for the Washington Post - they did an interesting analysis today of DHS videos promoting the mass deportation scheme which found that they were using footage that was months old or recorded thousands of miles away.
I guess CNN is as it has ever been. Repetitive coverage. Thank gawd for them @9/11. I still have both newspaper digital subscriptions, despite mental trauma! I don’t watch much cable news but my husband uses it as background music. I stay on the porch lol. On a 3 hour car round trip I listened to Sirius 127 today. Good stuff.
40,000,000 people going hungry next week because SNAP funding is being withheld may be the tipping point towards massive popular violence and repressive government responses. Empty stomachs don’t wait for future elections to satisfy immediate hunger.
José Andrés has brought World Central Kitchen to DC to cook free meals for the hungry there. The hungry, who used to be government workers, and who, until recently, could afford to buy food. Are we now a third world country?
You mean country in which most of the wealth is in the hands of a few families, while most of the nation lives in poverty and chaos? Seems like we've been heading there.
Is this true?
https://www.washingtonian.com/2025/10/27/jose-andress-world-central-kitchen-will-feed-furloughed-federal-workers/
SNAP benefits - 6.25 a day the government is withholding from people, some the working poor, many the elderly and children. This is well beyond criminal.
Yes, but who will they blame?
And who will be able to help in making those meals Free?
I hope that ordinary Americans will try and find some way to keep those food banks going while this is sorted out by Congress.
In Tex some food banks are stepping up, but with meager resources
They need donations from good folk there to help their fellow Texans get through this.
Sadly, I donated to a food bank Sat and about out of funds. Seems we are expected to watch the Cretins steal the treasury and take over what the government has done. Won’t work for long…
I follow the S&P with growing incredulity these days. The market being at record highs feels perverse. I guess it is the roaring 20’s again.
It's being boosted by ridiculous investment in AI. Watch out for another Dot-Com bubble in the making.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzUxJi_5gGI
My mother’s father worked in a CCC camp. He had a wife and kids and it was their lifeline. “Them that’s got the gold makes the rules and THATS the Golden Rule “. Unfortunately.
Same here. Pappy’s work in the CCC kept my Mom’s family afloat.
Life saving the CCC workers sent their wages home to families. To this day we are the recipients of painstaking labor in creating a network of roads trails and bridges throughout the intermountain west. The museum in Salmon Idaho put together a display from pictures taken and catalogued by the USFS here locally. They also reached out to families whose relatives were in the program in order to add their experiences to the historical record.
How cool! Our favorite picnic spot growing up was a park along the Applegate River in southern Oregon that had been built as a CCC project.
When you and your wife come through Salmon we’ll tour the display my wife who volunteers at the museum has assembled. You will love that museum. We can put you up and have potato soup for supper. We will take a short drift boat ride and you must bring that tuba.
In 1929, crypto didn't exist. Neither did X. Neither did legalized sports betting. As I watch the stock market go up and up and up, as tariffs get increased and decreased and increased again, the current situation seems so untethered from reality that it's hard to imagine what kinds of shocks will have to hit us before we can once again start to become an inclusive country.
We have developed so many more ways to destroy ourselves