It is sickening to realize that the US, our beloved country, is now aligned with Russia and Putin. It is sickening to realize that when the UN took a vote to condemn Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. voted “no,” allied with Russia, North Korea, and Iran. It is sickening to realize that the U.S. is now in cahoots with the enemies of freedom and democracy.
It is sickening to see the Justice Department turned into a weapon for Trump’s personal revenge. It is sickening to see Trump’s vicious assault on higher education and academic freedom. It is sickening to watch the arrest and detention of immigrants by masked men without ID without a semblance of due process. It is sickening to see the massacre of civilians in Gaza. It is sickening to see the Trump family scoop up billlions in real estate deals, crytocurrency and other ventures. It is sickening to see the Republican Party pass a budget that cancels the health insurance of millions of low-income Americans to pay for tax cuts for the richest Americans.
One man is responsible: Trump. He worries about Putin’s feelings, not about Russian bombs hitting Ukrainian schools, playgrounds, hospitals, homes, and its energy supply. He plays with tariffs as a way to humiliate other countries, carelessly wiping out the life savings of people who trusted him. Was it by accident that he excluded Russia, North Korea, Belarus, and Cuba from his tariff threats? Trump jokes about turning Gaza into a luxury resort instead of demanding an end to the war. The cruel budget that takes from the poor and gives to the rich was his budget. It is his massive ego that has turned the Department of Justice into his personal revenge and retribution machine.
I wish he could watch Charlie Chaplin in this speech from his film The Great Dictator. It is only three minutes. Please watch. These thoughts are needed today more than at any time since 1945.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Amen!
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Yes. Trump is making enemies of our friends and friends of our enemies. I’ve thought often of Chaplin dancing with the globe. There is evil in the White House.
Randy Wieck Kentucky ________________________________
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I want to begin by saying thank you for this consistent source of information. You are a treasure. For this post, I disagree. This one man only has power because the entirety of the Republican Party has participated. What is happening can only happen with the help of many.
Get Outlook for iOShttps://aka.ms/o0ukef ________________________________
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While Trump may be the head of the spear, The Heritage Foundation and the complicit GOP bear responsibility as well.
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Putin goes to a psychic and asks, “Tell me. When am I going to die?”
“I don’t know when,” says the psychic, “But I do see that it will happen on a Ukrainian holiday.”
“Really,” says Putin. “Which one?”
The psychic answers, “Whatever day you die will be a Ukrainian holiday.”
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According to a new report published by the medical journal The Lancet, an estimate of “14 million people around the globe could die over the next five years because of the USAID cuts. including about 4.5 million children younger than 5.”
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Quite a job you did there, Elon.
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Musk tweeted a while back, when he was still Trump’s boy, that he spent his Friday or Saturday (I forget which) cutting USAID when he had lots of parties he could have been going to.
Sick ______k!
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The ICE budget is now 75 billion (plus whatever its base budget is per year). That’s 45 billion for new concentration camps and 30 billion for enforcement.
And the new bill contains another 46 billion for border wall construction.
To get a sense of how much that is, there are only four countries in the world with MILITARY budgets larger than the new ICE budget is. And if you include the border wall money, there are only TWO.
Larger than the budgets of most countries’ militaries!
And by comparison, the FBI, our nation’s federal law enforcement agency, which is also tasked with anti-terrorism work, requested a budget of 11 billion for 2025. In other words, the entire FBI budget is only 14.666 of the new ICE budget.
The new ICE budget is now a tiny bit less than THREE TIMES THE BUDGET FOR THE MARINE CORPS!!!!
INSANE. Our politicians are INSANE.
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Big funding for the war on farm workers, construction workers, hotel maids, pregnant mothers, toddlers, and anyone brown who happens to be around when the masked Trump Sturmabteilung show up.
Trump’s Secretary of Agriculture just gave a press conference in which she suggested that it will be no problem replacing our farm workers because there are “34 million people, able-bodied adults, on Medicaid.”
So that’s the big plan. The Trumpanista Clown Car Posse is going to replace the farm workers whom they have disappeared with the poor people that they just kicked off Medicaid.
There you have it. “Stable genius” from the IQ 47 maladministration.
The last time I checked, the closest thing to genius in the stables was to be found among the pigs.
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Bob– OMG did she really say that? There are 83 million people on Medicaid—including 7 million children, so 76 million working-age. 64% of them already work [44% FT, 20% PT enough hrs to qualify]. 37% are under 18yo, you do the math. I’m glossing: somewhere in there are 8% handicapped, 10% going to school/ job-training FT, but you get the picture. Yet she’s saying there are 34 million able bodied [from context, “not working”]?? That would be nearly half the people on Medicaid! Apparently it’s OK for Cabinet heads to lie outright in press conferences!
The basic disconnect I find in public commentariat on Medicaid: they don’t seem to get that Medicaid just provides low-cost or free healthcare. It’s not a stipend for living expenses. People qualify for Medicaid because they are low income, period. But low-cost healthcare doesn’t put food on table/ roof over heads. If low-income people can’t access low-cost healthcare, they go without it. They still have to work to survive.
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YUP. That’s what she says. But this is how the Trump Maladministration does it. They just lie, and the MAGATs will believe it, or pretend to.
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The lying is not just OK. It’s required.
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cx: shows up
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Ironically, trump is the puppet on a string to the Heritage Foundation ventriloquists feeding him the text from Project 2025 to make Congress impotent and more.
Headlines from past blogs here and from objective newspapers come right out the document. Supreme Court decision today on allowing the fed’s mass firings adds to the list of stripping Congress of its power and authority. Christian right validation to preach politics from the pulpit. Deflect any real news with transgender, culture war, immigration attacks (and in dire times, they bring out January 6 and stolen election).
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Chaplin’s speech is brilliant. Saturday Night Live cold openings are not.
Saturday Night Live hasn’t realized that yet. This is beyond Chevy Chase doing Gerald Ford pratfalls and the the rest over the years.
Anytime anyone make this into a joke it emboldens their cause and base. Why? Because no one takes him seriously anyway so they couldn’t care less.
Like a well-crafted editorial cartoon, at least the SNL news tells the facts and accurate information and then the joke to illustrate how heinous, repulsive, offensive, racist… the actual story is.
(Same reason “No Kings” record breaking protest crowds did not send a message to America. His base loves that “liberals” refer to him as a king. The message is “no one-branch of government taking over the other two for authoritarian rule.”)
(Same reason harping on Democracy is an abstract concept. Most don’t see the connection with real events. Again, his base and all think this is exactly what Democracy is. The voice of 51% of the people in the vote-ocracy.)
MAGA/MAWA and Project 2025 are about government and governing, not democracy.
Talking about “truth” and complaining that “they lie” says nothing about accurate news.
Of course they lie. Everyone knows it. Of course they have their version of truth. Everyone knows it. They don’t care. And, they can blow off the facts. Calling him/them a liar is name-calling. Calling them out on accuracy and fact checking can’t be denied.
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Leonard Cohen – Everybody Knows (Official Audio)
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“The voice of 51% of the people in the vote-ocracy.”
Please explain.
Are you saying that 51% of the voter eligible population voted for the ORANGE FACED CONVICTED FELON?
“In the 2024 presidential election, 73.6% (or 174 million people) of the citizen voting-age population was registered to vote and 65.3% (or 154 million people) voted according to new voting and registration tables released today by the U.S. Census Bureau.” (from census.gov)
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Putin? Yes? Or Maybe. I think Trump may see Putin as just another chess piece In his grand plan. Putin is on the backfoot now, no longer the main supplier of oil to EU, economy suffering from 3 yrs war against Ukraine. Trump will give Ukraine to Putin to keep him in his back pocket as reqd (because he’s in bed with NKorea & China). He’ll keep Netanyahu/ Israel in his front pocket [ = OK to destroy Gaza] to ensure an enforcer to keep Saudi Arabia et al major suppliers needed to plump up US oil supply.
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Ginny,
Think like a mafia don.
Trump is not really angry at Putin.
He pretended not to know that the U.S. halted arms to Ukraine.
Putin used that period to maximize bombing of Kyiv and other major cities.
Lots of death and destruction.
Now we are in the game again.
For how long?
We are not reliable allies.
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Oh, and there is no list. And Epstein didn’t have stacks and stacks of hard drives and binders and cameras in all his rooms and a server room in all his homes. Oh, and he killed himself in jail days after a failed attempt, there, on his life. And Jack Ruby killed Oswald because Ruby was a patriot. And Trump is a stable genius. And we are taking in billions from China in tariffs. And Oceana has always been at war with Eastasia.
Song of the Trump NKVD (Everybody sing! Or else.)
The memory hole is more than deep.
Disappeared secrets–those will keep.
And after that, if it’s not all through,
Those who remember we’ll disappear, too.
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Oh, and the extremely helpful information that there is no list and that Epstein killed himself was released after Muskrat made his post just to make it completely clear what everyone is required to believe.
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I recall that Epstein had video cameras in all of the rooms where his activities were carried out. I remember that the FBI seized boxes of tapes from Epstein’s homes.
Someone tweeted a picture of Ghislane Maxwell saying, “If there’s no list, why am I in jail?”
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At her trial, they did not put on the stand a single person whose story was not already widely known. It was carefully orchestrated to provide zero additional information. They’ve disappeared everything, and she is evidently too scared of what will happen to her and hers if she says anything. Ofc, there is an answer to that question. She was convicted of trafficking children to Epstein. Heinous. But the tip of the iceberg.
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A bipartisan cover-up of a bipartisan client list that included many of our most well-known politicians, public intellectuals, and business tycoons.
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