Not so: He's always ready to convert whims into action if the price is right. How about getting a full tariff carve-out--or any other requested political favor--if you buy $30 million or more of his crypto tokens. The swamp has never been more swampy.
That may be the way things go. Business people are used to this kind of graft from other countries, so they will adapt.
This will be no particular moral problem for corporate leaders because they deal with it all of the time. Domestic company owners may end up being shocked and dismayed that it has become the norm in their own country.
Republicans were once the party of free markets. They claimed government intervention in the economy was the hallmark of communism. Enter Trump. Now, the U.S. is staking its economy on the decisions of a single commissar. Like the communists, Trump believes his word is law and should supersede any opposition. The GOP has always claimed Democrats would turn the U.S. into a communist state. It turns out, Trump is beating them to it.
Government intervention is what all social democracies do. And whenever a country has a leader whose word is law - as the US now has - it is a DICTATORSHIP. That has nothing to do with "communism" and everything with the end of ALL freedom, not just the freedom of the market.
Aside from that, Democrats have never aspired to be communists or fascists, so the neofascist GOP has been lying about Democrats as much as the neocon GOP already did.
The only countries that were ever officially "communist" were Leninist dictatorships, and the authoritarian features of these states seem more durable than the Marxists pretentions they started with. Lech Walesa's comments on Trump's meeting with Zelensky (how it reminded him of the 1980s Commissars he had to deal with in the old days) are a testament to Trump's adoption of the worst aspects of 20th century "communism."
Since communism was never supposed to be a real dictatorship in the first place, and since Marx defined it as what comes AFTER capitalism - stage in the economic development of a country that self-declared "communist" fascist countries skipped altogether - I really don't see how the word "communism" could be accurately applied to any existing country, today or in the past.
As to Lech Walesa: interesting, I hadn't seen his comments yet. Do you have a link, by chance?
“We were also terrified by the fact that the atmosphere in the Oval Office during this conversation reminded us of the one we remember well from interrogations by the Security Service and from the courtrooms in communist courts,” they wrote.
“Prosecutors and judges, commissioned by the omnipotent communist political police, also explained to us that they had all the cards in their hands, and we had none. They demanded that we cease our activities, arguing that thousands of innocent people were suffering because of us. They deprived us of freedom and civil rights because we did not agree to cooperate with the authorities and did not show them gratitude. We are shocked that you treated President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a similar way,” they wrote.
I completely understand the main point you're trying to make. The only tweak I’d suggest is that Trump’s behavior (which you accurately described) aligns more with authoritarian fascism than communism. Other than that, your point is valid and well-stated. The "red scare" has always been a fear-mongering tactic used by the GOP to manipulate and control politically, distorting reality, defaming the opposition using lies and intentionally misleading the public. As the saying goes, when a Conservative Republican speaks, he’s lying.
He is like a lot of con men I covered when I was a newspaperman: Say what it takes to get past the instant obstacle, and repeat and repeat, whether the next obstacle arises in 10 minutes or 10 weeks.
This is not, in my view, whimsical but simply the reaction of the 5-year-old to the missing cookies. That is, it is operational. But it means not only that the con man does not have a plan: He cannot have a plan.
Unlike most of the con men I knew, who essentially wiped their memories and had only a future, no past; trump hangs on grimly to the husks of old lies. Hence his weird repeated claim that egg prices are down 90%.
Even his blindest followers (Hello, Stuart Varney!) know that cannot be so, but they have gotten on this bus and by gum, they are going to ride all the way to the barn!
There is a reason he is often referred to as "Don the Con," a nickname that has circulated for decades, possibly originating in the 1980s when Donald Trump first gained national fame as a flamboyant real estate mogul known for self-promotion and dubious business practices. Many of his voters remain largely unaware of his controversial past.
Not just random batshit crazy though--pretty much deliberately the most evil thing he can think of. Snuffing out anything that might bring comfort or joy to anyone but the most morally depraved.
Trump's cold, callous demeanor and character didn’t come out of nowhere — it’s a legacy from his father, Fred Trump. From father to son, the torch of arrogance and cruelty has been passed down, and now Trump Jr. carries it proudly. Maybe even young Barron will be saddled with it too, though one can only hope the cycle ends. According to multiple family members, Fred wasn’t a warm or affectionate father. He raised Donald to believe that showing joy — smiling, laughing, expressing kindness — was a sign of weakness. That’s why Trump rarely looks genuinely happy; his face is usually locked in a grimace like he’s been constipated since the Reagan era. And that bloated midsection? It’s not just from McDonald’s cheeseburgers — it’s the weight of decades of emotional repression. =D
Larger brains are supposed to mean higher intelligence — and judging by the size of his Jupiter-class gut, you'd think we were dealing with a genius. But no. If that's where his “thinking” happens, its definately overflowing with s**t
Trump and Trumpism are cancerous, and like many cancers, have grown quite awhile in the dark, before rising to a sufferer's awareness. And we are suffering. Sometimes I think a too-large portion of my life, my liberty and my happiness has been eaten away throughout this past decade. But perhaps 'suffering' is the operative word. At some point suffering will force greater awareness and consequent efforts to rid ourselves of the tumors. Hopefully, we'll also learn a thing or two about the changes we're going to have to make to avoid a relapse.
Yep, definitely a cancer. I liked Paul's analogy, too, in this case, because he's referring to the how the Covid virus disruptrd the supply chain, but now it's just his insanity doing it.
But yes, this Trump cancer has been attacking the American body politic for almost a decade now. The prognosis is grim.
Yes, and it's maddening. It started decades ago but for the majority of the public, it started in 2015 and they don't seem to get it (one person said he doesn't have anything in the stock market) or they do and that's just as bad.
As you say, they had ten years to do something effective but nothing seemed to work.
The only good that may come out of this is Canada is looking like they're voting for a sane person - not the right wing nut. They don't want to be what we've become.
I looked as them after the Ira was transferred. It was enough to make me look again, saw very little then put it into another ostensibly safe fund (top 10 holdings were shown). Thanks for that, though. I didn’t think of it before putting it in but found out quickly. It’s still okay and I don’t know why.
Putin’s Apprentice is both a symptom of decades of undermining education, rightwing hate talk radio and Faux News and a cause of rapid destruction of our government and foundational institutions.
The cancer analogy works if you use it as a framework for necessary short and long term strategies and planning.
The treatment for this disease is to flood the streets with protests, and to have (long overdue) general strikes. These actions would reactivate the immune system - congress and the judiciary. People have the power, it’s time to use it.
The vaccines would be for preventing reoccurrence, something like constitutional amendments to end the Citizens United sellout, add D.C. to the states, bring SCOTUS to accountability, limit the power of the executive branch, harden civil and voting rights, reinstate the fairness doctrine in media with a way to ensure that it is followed, bring responsibility to gun ownership, and much more.
I agree that lasting economic strikes are going to be a critical part of resisting this regime. The economy is going into a decline and that must be exacerbated to magnify the effects and duration.
General strikes might have worked in February and March, but once the tariffs were announced on April 2 it became clear they don’t care if the economy implodes and massive unemployment follows. A general strike and massive unemployment are effectively the same thing, and our overlords are obviously unfazed by unemployment. They actually welcome it with their DOGE layoffs, and they’re pushing to eliminate pesky humans from work with their robo-taxis, AI, and automated production lines.
All they care about is collecting more currency, which doesn’t make sense long term because money is a tool humans use to make bartering among themselves easier. Eliminating most humans from the equation devalues the importance of money. Robots and AI don’t need money, they need energy sources.
Now they might notice if we peons stopped accepting their money and started bartering among ourselves, but that would require levels of coordination and self discipline unseen since WWII. Our best hope is other nations move away from the dollar and shun our overlords. That would get their attention, as has been shown recently with exchange rates and bond market valuations.
Their will be no need for general strikes to weaken the economy. Putin’s Apprentice is doing that on his own. I would argue he is doing it at Putin’s direction. Let Putin’s Apprentice take credit for the declining economy.
I don’t think we need a nation wide strike. Not that there would be enough unity at this time to have one. I think organizing mass rallies and targeted boycotts, supporting local businesses would be more effective. Boycotts have already punched a hole in Musk’s bottom line. It was so enjoyable watching the clip of him whining on Faux News about the mean people picketing his companies and taking pleasure in the decline of his fortune. His indifference to the suffering he has caused by his efforts to destroy the Federal Government make it clear he is as evil as Putin’s Apprentice and as delusional as Curtis Yarvin.
This is an unfortunate facile analogy. Some cancers cannot be cured. For some cancers the cure is devastating as the disease, killing the patient, weakening the patient, causing a battle of the spirit as well.. Be careful with the cancer analogy...
No analogy is perfect, and I make no apology. Nothing is ever guaranteed, including a cure for any given disorder. And even a common cold can kill people. What I am trying to say here is that there is an opportunity inherent in this phase of our history for ridding ourselves, or at least reducing, some of the metaphorical cancers which have plagued us as a society since Europeans first landed on these shores. And please don't lecture me about cancer. My previous husband died of cancer, I have had cancer, and my present husband is six years out from successful treatment of cancer. I'm not sure what you mean by 'battle of the spirit,' however, and I would be grateful for any insights you have on that aspect of your statement.
Yes walking across the street one can get killed. Of course no analogy is perfect. And this is not "any given disorder". The so call disease is humanity, human nature. That was *way before* Europeans landed here, not only since.They brought their humanity disease with them.We are in an existential battle now because we were unaware or we tolerated, thought we were curing, thought we had the answers, "it can't happen to us”. We relaxed and were tolerant.
So is cancer for some at least existential. Cancer grows spreads.The cure also kills. People also are SCARED of cancer, of dying of the battle, of the cures. It IS a battle and not always successfully treated, though we have more treatments and *cures*. You and your 2nd husband came through. GREAT. Not everyone does.You have to be careful and watch though.
The political situation here will be always begging to come back if we get through it to a better democracy after years of battle. But we may fall asleep again. (I/you won't be here and I hope our kids/progeny will be vigilant).We have to maintain our health though. We have to pass on our wisdom and knowledge.
So take this analogy to it's fullest if you will. If we rid ourselves of the tumors, new ones may very well grow,... ones we did not see, microscopic, ones.They grow and THEN make themselves known, like now. But we cannot battle what we do not see, what we are not aware of and what we don’t understand.
I do know cancer too (intimately) and almost all of us do. We should not get into a stupid argument comparing cancers. "Battle" is the word, of the body, of the spirit.
Now we battle politically. You candigyour heels in about this analogy.I just don't use it anymore. I don't like it. You HAD cancer. It was cured apparently. Great. I hope past tense. Many are. Many are not as you know. Many in the recent past were not because they did not have the advances we have now.
This societal threat IS a battle. The “disease" is something we may hope to cure (we have been hoping a long time) but will be happy to suppress enough, IF we don't lose spirit, discover RX's, keep trying.
We are in difficult times. There is and will be suffering and pain and loss.This IS for me an unfortunate analogy on a sensitive issue because it does not follow completely. It engenders fear hopelessness and resignation for some.That is a battle of the spirit. Cancer as analogy does mesh in aspects admittedly and at times. But that depends on how one feels about cancer, whether you have it, have beaten it, fear it, suffer the loss from it. I imagine hardly anyone has no experience with cancer and who does not fear it?. I'll dig my heels in about my criticism about using this as too facile an analogy or maybe that I just don’t like to use it.
Okay, Potter, maybe my little squib needed more footnotes, or maybe it was just plain wrongheaded. If it caused you pain, I apologize. And I enjoyed reading your very generous reply, large parts of which I agree with completely. This is a long term battle of the soul which will not be won in a generation, and even if we do ultimately win it, nothing lasts forever, and as someone a lot wiser and more articulate than me observed, 'The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.'
It seems to me you are making Leigh Horne’s point. The purpose of an analogy is to facilitate understanding not precisely mimic the phenomenon being analogized. If you prefer a more scientific approach, I suggest looking at the quantitative political science and sociological studies.
I am helping to make the point by engaging in the discussion agreeing and disagreeing with what I know about the disease. But also I am concerned about the flippancy of usage without deeper discussion given that everyone has a different reaction to the word/analogy to cancer which then migrates to the subject... i.e. fear, fear of death, confidence in cure (a long struggle), hopelessness. People have different experiences dealing with cancer... like Leigh Horne. What do you think when you hear cancer? The "body politic" is not a human body. So if we facilitate further understanding and do not fool ourselves that there will be a cure to this general threat throughout history regarding the nature of humanity, and think maybe we can hold it back here with a lot of hard work ( we must and must be vigilant), the cancer analogy works somewhat. But I initially said we should be careful. I think it is too facile an analogy to just throw it around. Use it, be clear, though, what you mean. I don't use it casually.
PS off this topic but about word usage and analogies, I feel that way about mental illness- particularly schizophrenia because I have dealt with this in my family. We talk about Trump being mentally off and try to match it with what we know I.e. psycho-social disease, sociopath. I just keep saying he is unfit, and mentally off... which I believe firmly. This last is not an analogy, but begging diagnosis. We do not and do not care it seems about that. We just go around and around following this insanity where it takes us... captured by it. This is for me the real tragedy of this situation. This person is unfit and he has a lot of people propping him up for personal gain.
So basically this is not about scientific definition but usage and understanding, reactions.
If you think the cancer anology is inappropriate I think that reveals denial on your part of how bad this could all go. Beyond just the economic downturn alone, Trump and the other personality disordered psychopaths in his regime will go to extreme lengths to prevent authoritarian power from being pried from their hands. This might very well end in the death of the victim, if in this analogy the victim is the Republic, and could likely end in the actual deaths of many thousands of Americans, and the destruction of our social system. The regime is already using illegal state violence, which they are clearly trying to expand as rapidly as they are able, and we aren't even 3 months in.
More violence is coming, whether the violence of a virulent, deadly cancer on the body, or the violence of a desperate and risky radical surgery.
I am not in denial about how bad this all could go. We are in a battle. Read my above about why I don't like the cancer analogy. The cancer analogy is complicated and tends to be facile. Many people are resigned to cancer being fatal. Many are afraid of it. We are afraid of dying. We all have different reactions to cancer. We don't need to complicate this battle that we fight for our country and our children with these emotions. Cancer can be used as a scare. It's just too facile.. and some may even be inured to it. Others have had cancer, been cured ( for now), and still more I would dare to say, have suffered pain and loss. Denial is rampant out there I think...by the way. Not me. You basically prove my point by scaremongering.
PS/FYI for some denial is a coping mechanism for many.
No, I think your reaction is just a personal one, and you don't like people using a word that bothers you. You keep repeating that it's "facile", but that's not really a rebuttal.
You obviously have not read my long rebuttal. It's not the word. Facile is a perfect word to summarize my POV which I have explained. You too are having a personal reaction!! Apparently mine bothers you.
Many viruses directly cause cellular transformation that lead to different cancers. The list is long. Trump is a virus loaded with many oncogenes. If one doesn’t get you, another will. EVIL = Exonic Viral Insanity Locus.
I admit this deeper discussion is beneficial. I was saying to be careful using the analogy flippantly because it can mean different things to different people. I do not feel hopeless about our survival. This is a battle though. It’s not by any stretch useless. But some are scared negative or running from it. We need to fight. Trump by the way is not the ailment. Our vulnerability is. Our ignorance and selfishness is. Trump is the awful result and now it’s existential. We will need to be ever watching and alert if/ when we overcome this. I suppose like cancer. Thanks.
Ha ha, Maybe he's a parasitic brain worm that takes away your ability to discriminate between what's been shown to be true and what's just lurking in your imagination? And then causes a neoblastoma.
These mixed metaphors are great and all relate to the body politic being ravaged by invasive challenges of our own making. In a metaphorical way we are means testing our form of democracy. Do we qualify for receiving the benefits of freedom, self determination and the pursuit of happiness? If not, the metastatic spread of fascism will eventually commandeer the critical physiological functions of our republic. If our immune systems can stop this toxic coup of maga, we have a chance to beat it.
They are very mixed and sometimes confusing metaphors that don’t follow through deeply. Someone here in this discussion switched to vaccines needed to prevent this. There are no vaccines for cancer yet that I know of. But the cure comes with early detection a lot of the time. That is useful to note. I think we are in an advanced stage of something very toxic obviously. What are the vaccines against autocracy? That starts with education and having a common vision and moral view.
Actually, the HPV vaccine prevents many cancers, including cervical carcinoma, as well as, some head&neck SCCa, that’s a fact.
I agree Potter, that metaphorically, eduction can be thought of as a vaccine against autocracy (and fascism) but only if we have a healthy immune system; that being a common vision and moral view.
What’s happening now is the maga cells within our body politic do not share a common world vision or moral view; their “education” is misguided and has allowed these cells to express checkpoint beliefs thus escaping detection and destruction. It’s how cancers grow and we now desperately need immunotherapy (i.e. checkpoint inhibitors in the form of massive voter turnout).
Metaphorically yes maybe. Immunotherapy does not work for all cancers and for everyone who is battling. Immunotherapy, a miracle of sorts, is needed on the body politic (metaphorically) if it can work enough. Many, including myself until recently, did not know or want to know about cancer very deeply/widely. It's an existential battle for many. Cancer comes many forms, some treatable or more treatable, some less so. Using it as a metaphor depends on what the individual perception and experience of it is.
Education is sorely needed regarding what we face. And this, had it happened years ago and *well* in our population, would have served us. WE have been in a great experiment as our forefathers said and knew. We have, I have to say, a lot of ( willful) ignorance about our country ( 's vision) and world history, about social psychology, and basic science. So Trump and his media and hyper-partisan support system built over the years, very destructive, have advanced our ills to life threatening when before it was held it in check. We had more of a majority about our basic vision and cooperation needed. So we wake up now, painful, in the late stage... not the prevention stage, and feel threatened and without the architecture we built to deal with it ( checks and balances). Hyper-partisanship dishonesty greed ate the GOP.
Prevention had to and has to start early and continue... passed on. It seems this has not happened. We have been distracted into "getting and spending" (Wordsworth) and have " laid waste our powers", the power of the people, distracted away from what kind of country, society, we want to live in, what freedom and democracy means and requires.
So cancer analogy has limited use and can be a depressing/scary comparison yielding hopelessness for some who back away from the fight or who give up and maybe even leave...including our immigrants, students and other people we need who have helped us thrive. This is so sad. But we fight on. Thanks for your indulgence.
I prefer toxic, poisonous. Any disease that takes advantage of weakness and vulnerability works. Cancer is pervasive, has been defying escaping in some forms a cure, especially late stage. Trump’s evil has evolved and been perfected for a long long time as he realized his opportunities to capture the vulnerable which has grown ignorant been, distracted, brainwashed. He plays to that. Encourages it.
Very well stated. And my personal grief, like yours, is oversized. I will stay active and engaged, showing up, getting to town halls, writing to political leaders. But I must balance with time in nature, prayer and enjoying loved ones. One ‘up side’ is that even my activism is along side my loved ones.
Clearly a huge improvement in education will be needed if we want future electorates to be able to distinguish “reality TV” from reality and to actually understand how government works and what it does.
Including new forms of education, such as entertaining series along the lines of the new Pitt (I live in the Burgh and worked in ERs in Baltimore for years, so maybe I'm biased!). And some of the YouTube, Substack and podcast-verse!
To each their own. I find drama too dramatic if you get my drift. I prefer saving my emotional energy for dealing with real people and real events. My partner on the other hand likes what might be referred to as “chick flicks” to change the channel before going to sleep. I do find her analysis of the “hidden messages” interesting but I don’t need to watch them myself.
This cancer didn’t grow in the dark. It was more like we knew it was there but sought some fake homeopathic cure based on wishful thinking. Then, when it didn’t go away, only then did people take action only to have the cancer cause major damage, if not actual kill them.
The efforts of "progressives" have pared way a lot of the tumors that had infected the body politic of the nation since its inception. Their work brought about the inclusion of blacks and women in the electorate, child labor laws, the 40-hour work week, the EPA and OSHA among many other accomplishments.
The list is long and distinguished, and the value of their contributions to the welfare of the people of this nation is inestimable. Those things are what progress is all about.
Not talking about that, talking about the last 10 years when things turned from positive accomplishments to trying to shame people who didn’t use the “right” words for everything. When progressives stopped trying to expand the circle and turned to excluding anyone who didn’t share all their beliefs. Progressives have made themselves very unpopular, in spite of many voters sharing underlying values.
I disagree with your diagnosis. I think the goal was to protect marginalized groups from offensive speech. Unfortunately a sizable part of the population likes to disparage these groups and they love Putin’s Apprentice because he gave them “permission” the mock the handicapped and anyone else they deem as lesser. That Lyndon Johnson quote: "I'll tell you what's at the bottom of it. If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." describes it best.
That is why Putin’s Apprentice is so popular with the lower class whites. Big tax cuts make him popular with rich.
They obey their funders — always. When these say “Impeach”, it will be done. And that will happen when the economy starts to shrink the funders’ fortunes.
They obey their funders up to the moment when their constituents start coming at them with tiki torches and pitchforks - and maybe guillotines and gallows.
It’ll take a while: it’s reported that he has 90pc support among Republicans. If that’s the same as the 2024 election vote, it means 0.9 x 0.50 or 45pc of the country still is behind him. Sobering.
This is so very true. The R’s have the majority and they could stop him. They are completely complicit in this disaster and everyone needs to remember this election time!
Yes, at this point it is the entire Republican Party in power. We can no longer separate "Maga Republicans" & "other Republicans"; the Party is completely Maga.
I prefer to call them MAGA, or maga. To call them Republicans confuses them with the people whom I used to disagree with on policy but whom believe in real democracy. There has always been a bit of an authoritarian streak in the Republican party, but there were some real nasty elements in WOKE as well. People who were ready to destroy people's lives and careers over bad word choices.
Think of all the Republicans who have fallen on the sword. True it wasn't enough, too many were cowards who deluded themselves into thinking America was better with them in the room than outside.
I like to use MAGA, for the big movers and grifters, and maga, for all of the ignorant, misguided fools who have created the means of their destruction.
I have always been a Democrat. But we need to look to our own deficiencies. Why, even if it's messaging, has the rural and working class abandoned the party? Why can't blue states get housing and major infrastructure built?
Republicanism is an utterly debauched political theory. If you subtract the Victim Porn, Cowardice In The Face of Facts, Pursuit of Unearned Privilege, and the Choice of Tribe Over Principle, there’s just nothing left!
The citizens of the United States elected a vicious old fool. They did so because they allowed their voters to come under the influence of expert election campaigners armed with vast amounts of money.
The nasty old fool has surrounded himself with vicious younger fools, who obtained their positions and retain them by flattering him. The levels of corruption in this administration are absolutely staggering.
There is no policy. Trump can barely string a sentence together and hasn’t had a new idea in years.
We Europeans will not forgive you for selling out Ukraine. Remember that.
I'm sorry you feel that way, as do most Americans. Most of us didn't vote for this Scourge, and I know that the media overseas has been covering our uprisings on April 5 and April 19, unlike our own media. So it makes me wonder why you don't notice that and the fact that most of us fully support Ukraine?
I do, of course. But, frankly, a good American in 2025 is as much use as a good German was in 1938. You are collectively responsible for the treason, the corruption, the assault on your liberties and above all the stabbing in the back of the Ukrainians.
You are the slaves of your 18th century Constitution which prevents you from regaining any control over what your nation does until 2028, which will be far too late.
I know perfectly well that many of you are nice people and have sound ideas. But you are all in the grip of the depraved bunch who form your Administration, the terrified ninnies in your Executive and the venal old fools in your Supreme Court.
So far as your former Allies are concerned, the best thing that you can do is to overthrow your government and, as Jefferson said, institute new Government.
Otherwise we will just have to leave you to shrink into global insignificance with corruption and wickedness tempered by incompetence.
I hate trump and MAGAs with a red hot passion. But easy for you to sit where you are and be critical of those of us who really have no power at the moment. Perhaps it would be better for Europeans to support the resistance in America, as we supported the resistance in Europe during hitler's regime.
That's surprising given this comment you made: "You are collectively responsible for the treason, the corruption, the assault on your liberties and above all the stabbing in the back of the Ukrainians."
Seems like you are painting us all with your condescending brush.
My statement is correct; you are collectively responsible.
That is how this works.
You are more used to doing the condescending; we can all understand that and sympathise with you, but you are a nation which has elected your very own tyrant with his retinue of courtiers, and you, collectively, are reneging on your commitments, threatening your friends (who are becoming your ex-friends) aligning with Putin’s Russia and so on and so on. I’m just holding the mirror up to you.
Mea culpa, Mea maxima culpa. You speak the truth. We are complicit and deeply remorseful. For a people so fortunate our behavior is reprehensible. Amid all our we're #1 boasts and lifestyles of the rich and famous aspirations we forgot where we came from and who we stepped on to get here. Your contempt for us is deserved. Thank you for expressing it so clearly. Many will react defensively and attempt to avoid the mantle of shame. That response will likely be the majority opinion. Knowing thyself is one thing, doing something about it another. In between the two lies the difficult truth we will expend every effort not to uncover. However, this sorts out thank you for telling a friend that he is wrong. We'll just have to see if we can accept the truth and work to overcome our weaknesses.
As another Brit, I’d like to point out that Brits also have a lot to answer for, especially in relation to our colonial past.
But unfortunately I do think that when you’re part of a nation you do take on the mantle of the responsibility. If you’re living in the US now you do have to get out and make your voice heard, one way or another. Protest in some form is the way to meet that responsibility. And as a Brit you do need to be supporting ways to make amends for a colonial past.
Hogwash. We're not 1938 Germans. Have you not noticed the uprising? 1938 Germany didn't have that. And we're just getting warmed up. We're not just "nice people" - we're angry, we're infuriated and we are Rising and Resisting ✊✊✊.
We have revolution in our DNA, we're not going down without a fight!
I saw it when I went out there on April 5 and April 19. A million people clogging 5th Ave. all the way from Bryant Park down to 23rd St. Another million clogging 5th Ave. and Madison Ave. from Bryant Park all the way up to Central Park South.
I'm not sure how you're missing it, but make no mistake about it, it's there, it's happening. And it's just getting warmed up.
You know, back when George W Bush decided to invade Iraq based on false pretenses, I had hope that Europe would fall support the French position and recognize that the US was unfit to lead a global alliance. Of course it wouldn't be possible to turn on a dime, but Europe has had plenty of time to build up its own capabilities and be less dependent on the US for leadership, given how obvious it should have been that the US electorate had the capacity to choose an idiot to be Commander in Chief. And yet, it has taken over twenty years and a second Trump administration for Europe to finally see the light. I think there is plenty of blame to go around here.
Yes. But in partial defense of the Europeans, we should acknowledge that the election of Obama in response to Bush and the election of Biden in response to Trump 1 could look like, from a distance, sane and responsible action by a sane and responsible citizenry.
That is not the point—and anyway, the election of Obama was largely in response to the financial crisis, and anyone paying the least attention to American politics (i.e. just checking polls) would have had to note that Biden was underwater in popularity from late 2021 on. But even aside from particular bad choices on the part of US voters, no democracy has ever had as much power as the US has, and none ever should (obv no dictatorship should, either—a sole superpower is never good). The European Union has had the potential to be a superpower but has never stepped up, now it is being forced to.
(As an aside, this shows the weakness of the US Constitution as opposed to Parliamentary systems where the Executive is by definition the majority in the Legislature - Britain got rid of Liz Truss in six weeks; the USA has to wait four years).
I think the only practical way to proceed is by non-violent mass civil action. I don’t mean mere demonstrations at weekends. I mean shut the country down.
Shutting things down is the advice we have received on this forum. One of the harbingers is a trend towards liquidity, another is reduced shipping activity. What if like the Montogomery bus boycott we all stopped flying? Crickets in the airports. Zoom and staycations. Air Force One flying solo from Florida to New Jersey. Congress schlepping about on trains cars and buses. That will be the spur to action.
The key words are "of those who voted". Fairly half of eligible voters didn't vote at all. of the remainder, yes, Trumpkopf was within a hair of an actual majority - discounting the possibility of counting machine tampering on the part of MuskRat and his crew of hacker punks. Aside from that, "yes you did", actually >no< >I< didn't vote for the Orange Scourge, and neither did the remaining half of eligible voters. So my comment remains valid.
Had it not been for the pandemic induced inflation, Kamala Harris—who came within a point & a half of Trump—would he president today. The economic whiplash of the pandemic & its aftershocks guaranteed incumbent-party defeat in 2024 as well as 2020
True. But Elon is over in Europe working his magic. You've got your right wing weirdos too. Don't let them take over. Figure out what we did wrong and don't make the same mistakes.
If he were successfully impeached he would simply ignore it and remain in power. Trump has the military, all federal law enforcement and the Supreme court on his side. And don't for get the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and others. In short, all the guns. Congress has nothing but fear and greed.
He has much of federal law enforcement and the SCOTUS in his back pocket, along with reichwing "militia's". I don't believe he has the entire military on his side. For every Michael Flynn, there's at least one Mark Milley. If he were successfully impeached - and convicted in the Senate, he would ignore it, and things would get ugly from there.
In order to be successfully impeached, he would have to lose a very substantial portion of Republicans, along with his legal authority to command the armed forces. He's already losing the Supreme Court. Of course he would have a backstop in VP Vance, who would be legally enabled to step in and protect Trump unless he were somehow impeached first...
Yeah, the current congress won't likely do it. In the unlikely event that it did, we'd need a dozen GOP Senators to nail the conviction. We'd definitely have to take them both down, along with Jackass Johnson, for it to really stick. I'm not yet convinced that the SCOTUS isn't just putting on a show. I hope they're not. From a legal standpoint, his authority to command the armed forces doesn't include sending them after citizens, and I believe there would be a split if he were to attempt it.
True! Don't forget about all the brave 2nd Amendment patriots and their military grade weaponry, standing tall in case tyranny should raise its ugly head over free American soil! Oh...wait... They're all on his side, aren't they?
Mark Carney is at the center of isolating the USA diplomatically, economically and politically, inoculating the rest of the world from trumpian infection, RFK Jr being irrelevant to that. As a nationality-law academic I am watching huge numbers of Americans reclaiming ancestral citizenship—or even “golden passports far cheaper than Musk’s $5mn version—with many of the best and the brightest scientists and scholars leaving America for Canada, Europe and elsewhere. (One issue I’ve been looking at: will the USA honor its 30 Social Security totalization agreements with other countries? The Senate never ratified the treaty with Mexico, denying Mexicans benefits of FICA and SET contributions they paid.)
"Mark Carney is at the center of isolating the USA diplomatically, economically and politically, inoculating the rest of the world from trumpian infection". Good! I am proud of our Prime Minister...who BTW is poised to win a majority government in our national election. He is the ONLY person to ever be in charge of two G7 currencies being the former governor of both the banks of Canada and the bank of England. As a result he has excellent 'Friendly' relations with the non-US top people in the rest of the financial world. We are building stronger trade relationships with them...instead. What Trump is attempting to do Canada (the 51st state bullshit) has enraged us to a point where the relationship is now irretrievably broken, I will probably never set foot in the US ever again...even after the orange A-hole is long gone. In stores we are reading labels...if it says USA it stays on the shelf. In my opinion, the best thing that could happen the the US right now would involve one KFC chicken bone.
Not a single person I know agrees on the 51 state , I know when I read that I laughed so hard and then a hell NO , now humpty dumpy you are making Canada hate us you dick tater !! And no worries - I predict he has someone /s shot a peaceful gathering and that will be when we go after them hard
Totalization treaties date from an era of defined benefit pensions but still have imports and continue to be negotiated. I was an economic office at the sus Embassy in London 1977-70 when James Ammerman, Treasury Attaché across the hall from me and specialists from SSA and Treasury began negotiating an early treaty with the U.K. At the time, and to a lesser extent now with defined contribution pensions, multinational firms’ pensions were “integrated” with Social Security. For that reason the retention of the right to continue paying FICA and not paying National Insurance contributions (or in Canada CPP or QPP — there are agreements with both Ottawa and Quebec) for up to five years was important. Persons who paid into a foreign scheme for less than the ten years that both U.S and U.K. schemes require could “totalize” those contributions into the other scheme. (Many countries have no minimum number of years to collect a pension; most will pay beneficiaries abroad.) it is almost always more advantageous to get a separate pension rather than totalize. The U.K. (and Switzerland and some other countries) allow voluntary contributions. For the U.K. scheme Class 2 and Class 3 contributions are a bargain. Class 2 can be as cheap as £129 a year and 35 years of NICs entitles a pension of £209 or so a week, inflation protected. Social Security is skewed to benefit the low paid. Until 1 Jan. 2024 the Windfall Elimination Provision clawed back that benefit: until then I was getting £475 or so a month. Since Biden signed the WEP abolition act on 5 Jan. 2025 I get £1,000 retroactive to 1 Jan. 2024. I also get a small QPP payment and I inherited my late wife’s U.K. State Pension. You can find all you want to know on this subject on the internet. The SSA site lists all 30 treaty countries. An agreement was signed with Mexico years ago but the Senate has refused to ratify it (“Too costly”). They’d rather rip off Mexicans who paid FICA and SET sometimes for decades. U.S. citizens in Mexico (and for all I know citizens of totalization countries) do get SS payments there. While totalization treaties permit U.S. citizens not to most FICA or SET when they live and work in a signatory country that right can be waived. It may be advantageous to do so especially with the WEP abolished. One can usually pay back FICA or SET up to 6 (sometimes 3) years. One can pay U.K. NICs six years in arrears. U.S. taxpayers in a nonsignatory country, notably India and Israel, are double taxed unless they are employed by a local, not a U.S. employer and are not self-employed.
Thank you for this generous educational effort. Count just this one topic that the average American has scant knowledge of that's relative to "Immigration" law. Most of the 30 percent that voted for the "OiD", aka Orange il Duce are of the low information sort that only get further enraged when told that immigration law is far more complicated than erecting a fence. I've tried and tried, alas. If you can, please bear this in mind when / if resentments get the better of you. The 'tail' is wagging the entire 'dog' here. Hope necessitates a weak belief that a reckoning will come and can't come soon enough for this American victim. In solidarity, yours.
I wish! I just can’t help thinking though that if they didn’t impeach him for J6, there’s no hope now!! However I would like to ask - is there a limit to how many times articles of impeachment can be brought? Even if there is no chance of it getting the votes? Couldn’t we bring them every day???
I wish House Democrats would get together and individually file articles of impeachment every day for the next 200 plus days. This Impeachorama wouldn’t result in an actual impeachment and certainly not a conviction at this point, but it would show that Democrats have some spine and are taking control of the narrative. The media would pay attention.
It would succeed just as much as the NY case against Trump for naughty financial practices. That political stunt gave Trump a lot of support because he was able to claim to be a victim of left wing/woke judicial warfare.
support only among the illiterate. The jury carefully considered a LOT of business records and heard a lot of witnesses besides Stormy Daniels, and T. had as many lawyers as he wanted, and they helped select the jury - and the jury had no difficulty deciding he was guilty on every count as charged.
Tax fraud is not just a 'naughty financial practice'. In fact one forgets - why does the press allow us to forget? - that after an even more thorough review of Trump's records for decades, he was held to have defrauded New York State of $350 million in taxes.
So nothing left wing or woke about the legal proceedings. A belated attempt to hold a lifelong criminal accountable for some of the costs he has imposed on the society he grifts on.
John, all true but actually the FELONY wasn’t falsifying business records (a misdemeanour) but using them to mislead New York voters to help his election chances. And but for the lottery of him getting a Trumpist judge in Florida in his secret documents theft - a case that even his lickspittle former A-G Bill Barr said he was clearly going to lose - he would be a twice convicted felon. The “warfare” slur is a total GOP invention, especially the J6 lawsuits. Trump has had the luck of the Devil all his life.
Democrat Al Green "vowed" to file the first articles against Trump at a rally back on April 7th. That barely made a blip. When/if he does so it'll also barely make a blip, and your analogy with the ACA repeal doesn't work in this case.
Democrats don't control the House. Which obviously means they also don't control any of the committees. Articles of Impeachment first go through the House Judiciary Committee, they don't automatically receive a floor vote. Any articles filed between now and January 2027 have *zero* chance of getting past the Judiciary Committee. If they somehow did, they'd likely die in the Rules Committee, which is always stacked with not just members of the majority party, but loyalists of the Speaker so he or she can control the legislation that reaches the floor.
Your analogy doesn't work because the noteworthy and media attention grabbing attempts to eliminate the ACA got floor votes, because Republicans controlled the House. I believe the actual total attempts by House Republicans to kill the ACA is over 100. Some of them were defeated in committee. Nobody from the legacy media (and few voters) cares much about legislation that dies in committee, because that happens on a regular basis.
Lastly, the House is already a symptom of the clown show the Republican party, and to some extent our society, has become. We *really* shouldn't contribute to this. Democrats are the only adults left in the "room."
In our political system, the House has actual, important work that needs to get done. Instead, the Republicans have done things like depose McCarthy and take over two weeks to find a replacement, nearly default on the debt by taking until the 11th hour to raise the debt ceiling, shut down most of the federal government on multiple occasions because of their failure to pass a CR or actual appropriations bills, and come close to shutting down the government on even more occasions. Then there's the 70+ times they've voted to kill the ACA when they knew most of those attempts would die in the Senate.
Congress isn't supposed to be a performative clown, aka reality, show! We got into this mess because (low information) voters voted for a "reality" show "star" to become President, and most Republicans have cared more about making political "points" on Faux Noise than they do about legislating for over a decade.
I appreciate your thoughtful, thorough, and well-informed critique and am interested to know what you recommend Democrats do since the administration is ignoring court orders and creating a constitutional crisis.
The hard truth of the matter is, from a legislative perspective there simply isn't anything substantive Congressional Democrats can do about Trump's lawlessness until 2027, and even then it's unlikely to result in conviction and removal from office.
The courts are not completely unarmed, and Alito and Thomas aren't complete roadblocks. However, because our judicial system is (supposed to) give a lot of weight to precident, I think this crisis is based on the fact nobody wants to be the first judge to "go full nuclear" and the administration knows it. This is why we've seen judges repeatedly try to give the administration an off ramp from the insanity they've created. None of them want to do things like be the first judge to hold a sitting cabinet member in civil contempt of court...or even more, go completely around DOJ and do things like appoint a special prosecutor to indict, and then empower another court officer to arrest anybody in the administration because the answer to "What's next?" after that may be "political violence of the kind the US hasn't seen since the 1850s."
What may be more disturbing is the fact that even if a judge does go "full nuclear" there are practical hurdles to fixing some of this mess, like bringing Garcia and others back from El Salvador, that the court system (and even Congress) will have difficulty getting around.
I don't like any of this criminality and general insanity any more than anybody else. Perhaps the most unfortunate part of this is the clowns are the "face" of Trumpism, but some of the actual policies like deportation were formed by some intelligent, but IMO evil, people who have been thinking about ways to use the cracks in our political and judicial systems against us for years. Some of what they've done is so diabolical we need to accept that there aren't quick solutions, it's going to take years. Once Trump's gone, we also will need to accept that we can't "play nice" and seek bipartisan solutions like Biden did if we want to fix this mess.
What you're saying makes total sense, but it doesn't take into account how public pressure might impact Congress and even judges. Do you believe that resistance in the form of protests and contacting representatives is futile and we just need to wait for elections to turn things around? Do we just accept that the courts are only willing to go so far and that no Republicans will align with Democrats against Trump even if his approval ratings continue to fall and their seats are in jeopardy as a result? If we resign ourselves to what's happening, we can guarantee that nothing will change, but if we push back, at least there's the possibility we can move the needle. Or don't you think so? There have been successful pro-democracy movements in other countries. Why not here?
You may be right, but Republicans tried 70 times to eliminate the Affordable Care Act when it was clearly a hopeless endeavor, and it appears not to have hurt them in the least.
This is exactly what I keep hoping for; it can’t hurt and trump certainly provides brand-spankin’-new impeachable offenses every day!
I also think it’s time for congressional Dems to start “whistleblowing” on their Republican peers. We all know the elected republicans say things “off camera” that do not align with what they say in public. Republicans kiss Trump’s ass, left/right/center, they have abandoned their constituents, they’ve crapped on their oaths to this country, and they sure aren’t doing a damn thing in the Senator or the house. Democrats need to realize that republicans are not their “friends”, and forget that republicans are scared….Screw ‘em. Elected republicans are a threat to our Constitution and democrats need to grab every journalist they can find and throw those republicans under buses. Quote ‘em and name ‘em. Call their words lies and call them liars.
Imagine democrats ad American soldiers fighting on the front-lines in a war. Now imagine that they know other US soldiers are actively betraying our military, and aiding the enemy. The Dems would report those treasonous soldiers immediately, right? Congress may not literally be a military battlefront, but for all intents and purposes, war is being waged and the democrats are looking away while republicans conspire against and betray our nation.
But the cure of impeachment would require action on the part of the legislature that supports the executive overreach that they have enabled (government is now by executive order and and executive structure that does what the regime wants). Changing the legislature would involve voting in a large majority that values the founders ideals. To achieve that outcome would involve an educated populace with skills in reasoned analysis. HG Wells mentioned a race between education and catastrophe. We have lost that race, and there is no Time Machine.
That's why we shouldn't be giving up on the midterms. No excuses should be tolerated for sitting them out. Not even legitimate concerns that Republicans will try desperately to stifle votes. (Our reaction to that should be record turnout, in fact).
If our resident Nobel prize winner is right about the supply chain, among other things, we should be able to get even Trump voters on board.
Impeach, convict, and remove from office. Then, form a bipartisan, coalition government to serve only until 2028. During this period, all committees in both chambers will have even numbers of members. This is the way forward—DO IT.
If you're going to fantasize, at least make it something fun--maybe involving Trump and Musk both getting put in a rocket bound for a one-way trip to Mars. It's more likely than what you're proposing.
Let's not forget that by confirming unqualified nominees to cabinet positions and passively tolerating (and even blessing) the administration's incompetence, the Republican-dominated House and Senate share complicity in this national tragedy.
They were selected for their loyalty to Trump only, and here their erect tongues testify satisfactorily to their ample qualifications. They could spear a donut from across the table!
Please correct me if I am wrong. But I doubt Dr. Krugman would ever have posted these comments in his previous position at the New York Times. The ideas are similar. But the tone is, perhaps, more blunt. But there are still data included that support the ideas. I think it's great.
Of course, the news is different from anything we've seen before. That may account for it too.
Paul’s analogy with an abused spouse grasping for evidence contrary to the pattern of abuse is 100% accurate. That hurts but it’s true. That’s what to be made of stock market fluctuations based on “tone.” They are superficial indicators of change for the better
Nothing but the voting public can save this nation and that won’t come before irrevocable damage is done to our constitutional order, the rule of law and our economy. We hoped for the Mueller report, for conviction after two impeachments, Jan 6 indictments and now the Supreme Court and its judicial orders. None came to pass
Nothing will happen until the decided majority of the nation turns on him. That is when the hard work of repair and recovery will begin.
I’m rooting for a second coming of our nation. I believe we can and will survive as a constitutional democracy. But not before Fox News and right wing social media voices are drowned out by the roar of an angry nation devastated by the MAGA revolution.
Prof Krugman mentioned that over the years, the NYT editorial policy gradually changed in the direction of "equally presenting both sides of the argument", and he was increasingly discouraged from taking firm stands.
As some of the economics is quite exact and sometimes a given thesis follows from rules of math or massive decisive data and not from opinions or political leanings, Prof Krugman was increasingly unable to comply with this NYT "balanced presentation" policies. How do you write a balanced article on the validity of 2+2=4?
All this is funny in a way, as prof Krugman has the academic habit of quoting the opposing opinions, to a much larger degree than most newspaper authors I usually read. He should have been the last NYT writer the editors would harass for "lack of a balanced presentation".
The NYT editorial policy has moved away from math into more of a "he said, she said" format. Present the facts, but then present the "alternative facts". As if such a thing even existed in reality. "Let's be more like Faux Newspeak".
You are correct, look here on his Substack for his explanation of why he left the NYT, in short they were rewriting his articles, to say something less truthful.
Those 42% are comprised of Trump’s billionaire bros, ignoramuses, and just downright stupid people. They have caused America to be the laughing stock of the entire world.
Absolutely. Anyone who is still fully behind Trump is irredeemable and beyond rehabilitation. They must be marginalized. Trump is ignorant, corrupt, and mean spirited. Someone who loves him for those qualities is hardly a good and mentally healthy person.
Yes Scott! That's exactly why America's reputation has been trashed. These people actually voted for this fraud even after knowing what a disaster he was the first time. People around the world are just shaking their heads at Americans, asking - how could we be so stupid to elect Trump AGAIN?...
To be fair, many people in America have been convinced that Fox News is the truth and the NYT, even mushy and compromised as the political coverage is, and other traditional news sources are fake news and *we* are the deluded ones. How to bridge the divide? Until that happens, many of Trump’s grassroots supporters will remain loyal. It is well established that people who have been taken in by fraud are reluctant to admit they have been fooled, even when confronted with hard evidence that they have been deceived.
This traces back to when Reagan agreed to Rupert Murdoch’s ask that the Fairness Doctrine be scrapped. That regulation said that in order for tv content to be called news and presented as such, it had to be something that actually happened, ie the truth. Once that was relinquished, Americans were flooded with “alternate facts” and fifty years later, here we are.
"To be fair, many people in America have been convinced that Fox News is the truth"
This is no excuse. It is a personal choice to follow Fox News rather than other possible sources of information. What leads anyone to make such a choice? In many cases, it is because Fox tells them what they want to hear, confirming what they already believed.
The huge audience for Fox News points to a widely embedded culture of nastiness. There is nothing fair to say about it.
That seems too easy a dismissal. Trump supporters say the same about us. I can’t help but think, every time I hear or read a pejorative remark about Trump supporters, that it’s another brick in the wall that divides people. This is only going to get worse unless people of good will and common decency on both sides try to find common ground. I think that begins by finding things we can agree on rather than things to fight over. Here in Canada we are not as far down the road of animus as the US but there are people and organizations fanning the flames meant to burn down the countries on both sides of the border.
At least Canada has a third party - the New Democratic Party, that in the last government joined an uneasy coalition with the Liberals in return for the Liberals starting dentalcare and pharmacare programs in Canada to go with our universal Medicare. There is at least the possibility of a third way but many NDP supporters in Canada are so concerned that the Conservative Party lead by Pierre Poilievre will win that many NDP supporters are voting Liberal.
Empty Walmart shelves might get the 60% who either didn't vote or voted for Trump to question their decision. Most Americans aren't interested in economics, business, history, science etc. They're interested in celebrities, cooking, fashion...etc. A huge amount of people have turned away from politics thinking it doesn't involve them. Empty Walmart shelves, raising prices, unemployment rising and cuts in the social safety net might make them reconsider the choice to be ignorant.
We still have the FOX, right wing lies to deal with.
Most of his supporters are normal, good people that are lied to every day by their news sources. The vaccine against the assault on our democracy is getting through to them.
Justin, the Trump supporters I know don't hear about any of the horrible things he has said and done because they get their news from Fox and social media. They are not stupid or evil, but certainly miss-informed. This is why the president it putting pressure on news sources like the broadcast networks with lawsuits and regulatory pressure. We need to to reach them, not alienate them.
Regarding these propaganda dupes you're referring to: There is none so blind as he who will not see. I suspect a lot of them want to believe the propaganda...
My guess —There are a lot of people who think their overtime work will get a tax break, who really don’t care about much else and won’t realize how much Trump sucks until they are paying more for imports to fund a corporate and billionaires’
Justin, I did consider that but the poll was indeed after his latest disasters. Other insights are required beyond calling those 90pc of Republicans (42pc of Americans!) “ignorant” and “stupid” - they might be, but some presumably are not. And yes, the conclusions are not flattering: one is that they LIKE what he’s doing. They are so invested in “owning the Libs”, are so hostile to any and all immigrants; are so nativist that ANY policy that claims to “put ‘mericans first” will get their support no matter how dumb or counter-productive it is. The malice and the cruelty are the point. The stupidity is a bonus.
I look at the title of that article and what I see is "approval rating dips". Trumps approval rating has been steadily declining right from the start, and the rate of the dip is increasing over time. It will soon be a vertical drop straight down.
it is a bit depressing how slow the decline is. How can he still have 43% of Americans thinking he's doing a good job? why is it not 15%? (Fox poisoning is a large part of the explanation...)
Yeah, Faux Newspeak is a big part of it. So too their millionaire preachers telling them that TrumPox is the second coming - and they believe it.
But just remember, the rate of decline isn't linear, it is curving downward, and will accelerate over time. I know it's not easy, but try to have patience.
Many of these folks have been voting against their interests for decades - since Reagan's "welfare queens" and Rush Limbaugh's various toxicities. By now, expecting these folks to question their commitments is not realistic. The problem is ontological, not epistemological.
Unfortunately, that's mostly true. I believe however that it really applies primarily to the hardcore MAGAnuts, who have been guzzling the Kool-Aid for so long that they're just hopelessly lost. I believe there's a small segment of not such hardcore Republicans who will look at what's happening and say "wait a minute, something isn't right here". Those are the ones we can reach, and that's really all we need. Just a few converts will make a big difference.
I sincerely wish I did not sound like a crazy conspiracy theorist, but lacking rational answers causes me reluctantly to move to the irrational: Trump seems intent on destroying EVERYTHING that makes our country strong or admirable (including the relatively beneficial use of our strength), as though he is following Putin's instructions/suggestions.
And if Taiwan is absorbed by China, then the U.S. will eventually be absorbed by China because 90% of the semiconductors that make the U.S. military effective come from Taiwan.
Yes - while Trump was dancing with Vladimir, Xi waltzed away with the prize: America falling to #2 or beyond, leaving ’Gina unchallenged and without economic equal.
Three years and three months? Keep on dreaming! Does anybody seriously think he will leave after his second term??? He already said he won't. Isn't it time to see this for what it really is? Namely a hostile takeover with the goal to destroy all democratic institutions so a few billionaires can get even richer.
"We’re stuck with this chaos agent for three years and three months?" Try three years and nine months. It may feel like we have put up with him for 9 months already but its only been three.
Would President Vance be any better? I think he would be even worse because he’s actually had a good education. Educated corruption is more to be feared than selfish, greedy, vengeful corruption.
I’ve already seen announcements from manufacturers that they are no longer taking orders from the US on certain products due to instability of the tariff costs. DHL has suspended handling packages worth less then $800 arriving from China for the same reason, so no more AliBaba and Temu for US consumers.
If there is another election, by no means a certainty, there is a possibility that Trump will run again, or that a Trumpite will win. And no Democrat has emerged as a leader for the opposition, which is very disappointing, as the movement needs a galvanizing leader at this perilous time. Apart from AOC and Bernie, there has hardly been a squeak, an appropriate word as it turns out.
Overall, most people are still very comfortable with their lives. When and if that changes, the country will be more open to listening to a Democratic leader.
Seriously? Trump has shown no regard for the Constitution or the Courts. Who would stop him? You're in an autocracy now. What he has done already is more egregious than a third term.
Having said all that, what is much more likely - assuming he doesn't die or become physically incapacitated in the interim, which is a big supposition - is that he attempts to declare martial law in order to cancel the elections altogether. THAT is a realistic scenario of which I think we're all aware and about which all of us who believe in democracy are deeply concerned.
I didn't say that he's shown regard for the Constitution. But if the Constitution were not an impediment, why is he expending the time, effort and political capital to go to the Supreme Court to overturn - just to name an example - birthplace citizenship (the 14th Amendment)? Why not just issue an executive order and be done with it? Because we're not there yet, that's why.
Also, elections are administered by the states. Most states in the US would not tolerate someone running for a third term, and that would be upheld by most (if not all) of the state supreme courts. If he "runs" for president in 2028, he would need to appear on the ballot in each state. But that would not happen. Groups in every state would successfully sue on the basis of the 22nd Amendment - which is absolutely unambiguous - and they would win.
Chuck, one ploy would be for his place-man to run for President with him as V-P, with the nod-wink that he’d resign after the election so Trump could take over. It’s cynical beyond belief but probably legal (simply because the Founders never thought anyone would be that brazen).
No, it's not legal. The vice-president must be able to serve as President if the President dies or is incapacitated. Trump cannot serve as President a third time, so he cannot run as vice. Similarly, he cannot be appointed Speaker of the House.
And the founders had nothing to do with this. This term limit is defined in an amendment to the Constitution, passed and approved after FDR was elected four times.
The sooner a Democratic leader emerges, the more time there is for the Republicans to slander and attack him or her. It makes sense to wait until the last year, though the party did put it off too long with Kamala.
I wonder how long it will take before all the Republicans in my town realize what they did to themselves. Even if there are no plastic toys from China to buy at Walmart, they will probably not figure out that they did it. They will find a way to blame liberals like me. Another way this is like an abusive relationship: when the abuser does something bad, he (they) blame(s) the victim.
He doesn’t have policies; he has whims
Perhaps more like concepts of whims.
Alternative whims?
LOL Spew alert! That made me really laugh out loud, and that's hard to do in these times.
You should be following Andy Borowitz for laughs:
JD Vance to Represent Satan at Pope's Funeral
VATICAN CITY (The Borowitz Report)—JD Vance will represent Satan at Pope Francis’s funeral this weekend, the Devil confirmed on Thursday.
In a rare public statement, the Prince of Darkness said that he could not attend the funeral himself because it conflicts with a Tesla board meeting.
Explaining his choice of Vance, Beelzebub said, “If you can’t have me, JD is the next best thing.”
https://www.borowitzreport.com/p/jd-vance-to-represent-satan-at-popes
Thanks, Frau Katze, I do.
Humour can definitely help!
It really is the only way to take in the evil absurdities that are happening every single day in the country.
Whimpering whimpers, simpering surety…fear of not being wonderful!
A whiff. A hint. A redolence. A rumor. A remembrance.
🤣
Not so: He's always ready to convert whims into action if the price is right. How about getting a full tariff carve-out--or any other requested political favor--if you buy $30 million or more of his crypto tokens. The swamp has never been more swampy.
That may be the way things go. Business people are used to this kind of graft from other countries, so they will adapt.
This will be no particular moral problem for corporate leaders because they deal with it all of the time. Domestic company owners may end up being shocked and dismayed that it has become the norm in their own country.
That's why we have to Define ethical capitalism and live by that standard people do business with Putin and Israel and maybe that's not ethical
How can we do that? Modern corporations, almost by definition have one value, greed.
The only thing that might help is to establish that there is no such thing as an externality.
I'm not sure what you mean, I suspect that is true of others as well. What are you saying, exactly?
Two ideas actually. Since the prime directive for corporations is to be profitable, that translates to a flesh and blood person being greedy.
The other is that every resource used has consequences, mostly negative, corporations should not be allowed to ignore the effects of any such use
I hope that helps.
Terd WORLD!!
All brain stem, no brain.
That would explain the slithering.
Snakes are much more ethical.
Hind brain…all pain, no gain…
🤣
And impulses. Don't forget impulses.
Republicans were once the party of free markets. They claimed government intervention in the economy was the hallmark of communism. Enter Trump. Now, the U.S. is staking its economy on the decisions of a single commissar. Like the communists, Trump believes his word is law and should supersede any opposition. The GOP has always claimed Democrats would turn the U.S. into a communist state. It turns out, Trump is beating them to it.
Government intervention is what all social democracies do. And whenever a country has a leader whose word is law - as the US now has - it is a DICTATORSHIP. That has nothing to do with "communism" and everything with the end of ALL freedom, not just the freedom of the market.
Aside from that, Democrats have never aspired to be communists or fascists, so the neofascist GOP has been lying about Democrats as much as the neocon GOP already did.
The only countries that were ever officially "communist" were Leninist dictatorships, and the authoritarian features of these states seem more durable than the Marxists pretentions they started with. Lech Walesa's comments on Trump's meeting with Zelensky (how it reminded him of the 1980s Commissars he had to deal with in the old days) are a testament to Trump's adoption of the worst aspects of 20th century "communism."
Since communism was never supposed to be a real dictatorship in the first place, and since Marx defined it as what comes AFTER capitalism - stage in the economic development of a country that self-declared "communist" fascist countries skipped altogether - I really don't see how the word "communism" could be accurately applied to any existing country, today or in the past.
As to Lech Walesa: interesting, I hadn't seen his comments yet. Do you have a link, by chance?
https://apnews.com/article/poland-trump-walesa-ukraine-russia-eab6a26169183760c844580f7742fd78
“We were also terrified by the fact that the atmosphere in the Oval Office during this conversation reminded us of the one we remember well from interrogations by the Security Service and from the courtrooms in communist courts,” they wrote.
“Prosecutors and judges, commissioned by the omnipotent communist political police, also explained to us that they had all the cards in their hands, and we had none. They demanded that we cease our activities, arguing that thousands of innocent people were suffering because of us. They deprived us of freedom and civil rights because we did not agree to cooperate with the authorities and did not show them gratitude. We are shocked that you treated President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a similar way,” they wrote.
The GOP should set up their headquarters in the Kremlin. It would be way more efficient.
The WSJ keeps writing editorials about this, but he doesn’t pay attention to them.
I completely understand the main point you're trying to make. The only tweak I’d suggest is that Trump’s behavior (which you accurately described) aligns more with authoritarian fascism than communism. Other than that, your point is valid and well-stated. The "red scare" has always been a fear-mongering tactic used by the GOP to manipulate and control politically, distorting reality, defaming the opposition using lies and intentionally misleading the public. As the saying goes, when a Conservative Republican speaks, he’s lying.
The wack job believes that his whims
Will distract as he greedily skims
By arranging to purloin
From the rubes via meme coin
While America's prosperity dims
He is like a lot of con men I covered when I was a newspaperman: Say what it takes to get past the instant obstacle, and repeat and repeat, whether the next obstacle arises in 10 minutes or 10 weeks.
This is not, in my view, whimsical but simply the reaction of the 5-year-old to the missing cookies. That is, it is operational. But it means not only that the con man does not have a plan: He cannot have a plan.
Unlike most of the con men I knew, who essentially wiped their memories and had only a future, no past; trump hangs on grimly to the husks of old lies. Hence his weird repeated claim that egg prices are down 90%.
Even his blindest followers (Hello, Stuart Varney!) know that cannot be so, but they have gotten on this bus and by gum, they are going to ride all the way to the barn!
There is a reason he is often referred to as "Don the Con," a nickname that has circulated for decades, possibly originating in the 1980s when Donald Trump first gained national fame as a flamboyant real estate mogul known for self-promotion and dubious business practices. Many of his voters remain largely unaware of his controversial past.
But they’re not just whims. They’re batshit crazy whims; and it’s only going to get worse.
Not just random batshit crazy though--pretty much deliberately the most evil thing he can think of. Snuffing out anything that might bring comfort or joy to anyone but the most morally depraved.
Trump's cold, callous demeanor and character didn’t come out of nowhere — it’s a legacy from his father, Fred Trump. From father to son, the torch of arrogance and cruelty has been passed down, and now Trump Jr. carries it proudly. Maybe even young Barron will be saddled with it too, though one can only hope the cycle ends. According to multiple family members, Fred wasn’t a warm or affectionate father. He raised Donald to believe that showing joy — smiling, laughing, expressing kindness — was a sign of weakness. That’s why Trump rarely looks genuinely happy; his face is usually locked in a grimace like he’s been constipated since the Reagan era. And that bloated midsection? It’s not just from McDonald’s cheeseburgers — it’s the weight of decades of emotional repression. =D
He lets his gut do the deciding, akin to a virus entering a cell and rearranging the functions.
Or a fart clearing the room.
LOL. Anything involving the butt. Never not funny!
Butt and gut.
Larger brains are supposed to mean higher intelligence — and judging by the size of his Jupiter-class gut, you'd think we were dealing with a genius. But no. If that's where his “thinking” happens, its definately overflowing with s**t
tRump is a lot like the 'Tasmanian Devil' in the old Warner Brothers cartoons, except nowhere as bright.
More like Tourette syndrome....
A blatant insult to those who have Tourettes.
Right
Artisan whims
Right
When he’s not whining
Are they whims, or are they concepts of a whim?
Trump and Trumpism are cancerous, and like many cancers, have grown quite awhile in the dark, before rising to a sufferer's awareness. And we are suffering. Sometimes I think a too-large portion of my life, my liberty and my happiness has been eaten away throughout this past decade. But perhaps 'suffering' is the operative word. At some point suffering will force greater awareness and consequent efforts to rid ourselves of the tumors. Hopefully, we'll also learn a thing or two about the changes we're going to have to make to avoid a relapse.
Yep, definitely a cancer. I liked Paul's analogy, too, in this case, because he's referring to the how the Covid virus disruptrd the supply chain, but now it's just his insanity doing it.
But yes, this Trump cancer has been attacking the American body politic for almost a decade now. The prognosis is grim.
Yes, and it's maddening. It started decades ago but for the majority of the public, it started in 2015 and they don't seem to get it (one person said he doesn't have anything in the stock market) or they do and that's just as bad.
As you say, they had ten years to do something effective but nothing seemed to work.
The only good that may come out of this is Canada is looking like they're voting for a sane person - not the right wing nut. They don't want to be what we've become.
They may have indirect investments in the stock market, bank savings, IRAS, retirement savings (hopefully) through others, etc.
Anyone who has any money at all has an interest in the stability of the dollar, but most people don't understand that.
👆🎯Yes, since the dollar is yet the "world currency, at least until we lose that based on the tangerine toddler's destructiveness, and stupidity.
I looked as them after the Ira was transferred. It was enough to make me look again, saw very little then put it into another ostensibly safe fund (top 10 holdings were shown). Thanks for that, though. I didn’t think of it before putting it in but found out quickly. It’s still okay and I don’t know why.
Some think he's a symptom, not a cause, but who's quibbling?
Putin’s Apprentice is both a symptom of decades of undermining education, rightwing hate talk radio and Faux News and a cause of rapid destruction of our government and foundational institutions.
The cancer analogy works if you use it as a framework for necessary short and long term strategies and planning.
The treatment for this disease is to flood the streets with protests, and to have (long overdue) general strikes. These actions would reactivate the immune system - congress and the judiciary. People have the power, it’s time to use it.
The vaccines would be for preventing reoccurrence, something like constitutional amendments to end the Citizens United sellout, add D.C. to the states, bring SCOTUS to accountability, limit the power of the executive branch, harden civil and voting rights, reinstate the fairness doctrine in media with a way to ensure that it is followed, bring responsibility to gun ownership, and much more.
When the pendulum swings back we should be ready.
I agree that lasting economic strikes are going to be a critical part of resisting this regime. The economy is going into a decline and that must be exacerbated to magnify the effects and duration.
General strikes might have worked in February and March, but once the tariffs were announced on April 2 it became clear they don’t care if the economy implodes and massive unemployment follows. A general strike and massive unemployment are effectively the same thing, and our overlords are obviously unfazed by unemployment. They actually welcome it with their DOGE layoffs, and they’re pushing to eliminate pesky humans from work with their robo-taxis, AI, and automated production lines.
All they care about is collecting more currency, which doesn’t make sense long term because money is a tool humans use to make bartering among themselves easier. Eliminating most humans from the equation devalues the importance of money. Robots and AI don’t need money, they need energy sources.
Now they might notice if we peons stopped accepting their money and started bartering among ourselves, but that would require levels of coordination and self discipline unseen since WWII. Our best hope is other nations move away from the dollar and shun our overlords. That would get their attention, as has been shown recently with exchange rates and bond market valuations.
Disagree.
Their will be no need for general strikes to weaken the economy. Putin’s Apprentice is doing that on his own. I would argue he is doing it at Putin’s direction. Let Putin’s Apprentice take credit for the declining economy.
I don’t think we need a nation wide strike. Not that there would be enough unity at this time to have one. I think organizing mass rallies and targeted boycotts, supporting local businesses would be more effective. Boycotts have already punched a hole in Musk’s bottom line. It was so enjoyable watching the clip of him whining on Faux News about the mean people picketing his companies and taking pleasure in the decline of his fortune. His indifference to the suffering he has caused by his efforts to destroy the Federal Government make it clear he is as evil as Putin’s Apprentice and as delusional as Curtis Yarvin.
You beat me to this analogy!
Ha ha. Maybe because I've unwillingly become intimate with cancers.
This is an unfortunate facile analogy. Some cancers cannot be cured. For some cancers the cure is devastating as the disease, killing the patient, weakening the patient, causing a battle of the spirit as well.. Be careful with the cancer analogy...
No analogy is perfect, and I make no apology. Nothing is ever guaranteed, including a cure for any given disorder. And even a common cold can kill people. What I am trying to say here is that there is an opportunity inherent in this phase of our history for ridding ourselves, or at least reducing, some of the metaphorical cancers which have plagued us as a society since Europeans first landed on these shores. And please don't lecture me about cancer. My previous husband died of cancer, I have had cancer, and my present husband is six years out from successful treatment of cancer. I'm not sure what you mean by 'battle of the spirit,' however, and I would be grateful for any insights you have on that aspect of your statement.
Yes walking across the street one can get killed. Of course no analogy is perfect. And this is not "any given disorder". The so call disease is humanity, human nature. That was *way before* Europeans landed here, not only since.They brought their humanity disease with them.We are in an existential battle now because we were unaware or we tolerated, thought we were curing, thought we had the answers, "it can't happen to us”. We relaxed and were tolerant.
So is cancer for some at least existential. Cancer grows spreads.The cure also kills. People also are SCARED of cancer, of dying of the battle, of the cures. It IS a battle and not always successfully treated, though we have more treatments and *cures*. You and your 2nd husband came through. GREAT. Not everyone does.You have to be careful and watch though.
The political situation here will be always begging to come back if we get through it to a better democracy after years of battle. But we may fall asleep again. (I/you won't be here and I hope our kids/progeny will be vigilant).We have to maintain our health though. We have to pass on our wisdom and knowledge.
So take this analogy to it's fullest if you will. If we rid ourselves of the tumors, new ones may very well grow,... ones we did not see, microscopic, ones.They grow and THEN make themselves known, like now. But we cannot battle what we do not see, what we are not aware of and what we don’t understand.
I do know cancer too (intimately) and almost all of us do. We should not get into a stupid argument comparing cancers. "Battle" is the word, of the body, of the spirit.
Now we battle politically. You candigyour heels in about this analogy.I just don't use it anymore. I don't like it. You HAD cancer. It was cured apparently. Great. I hope past tense. Many are. Many are not as you know. Many in the recent past were not because they did not have the advances we have now.
This societal threat IS a battle. The “disease" is something we may hope to cure (we have been hoping a long time) but will be happy to suppress enough, IF we don't lose spirit, discover RX's, keep trying.
We are in difficult times. There is and will be suffering and pain and loss.This IS for me an unfortunate analogy on a sensitive issue because it does not follow completely. It engenders fear hopelessness and resignation for some.That is a battle of the spirit. Cancer as analogy does mesh in aspects admittedly and at times. But that depends on how one feels about cancer, whether you have it, have beaten it, fear it, suffer the loss from it. I imagine hardly anyone has no experience with cancer and who does not fear it?. I'll dig my heels in about my criticism about using this as too facile an analogy or maybe that I just don’t like to use it.
Okay, Potter, maybe my little squib needed more footnotes, or maybe it was just plain wrongheaded. If it caused you pain, I apologize. And I enjoyed reading your very generous reply, large parts of which I agree with completely. This is a long term battle of the soul which will not be won in a generation, and even if we do ultimately win it, nothing lasts forever, and as someone a lot wiser and more articulate than me observed, 'The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.'
It seems to me you are making Leigh Horne’s point. The purpose of an analogy is to facilitate understanding not precisely mimic the phenomenon being analogized. If you prefer a more scientific approach, I suggest looking at the quantitative political science and sociological studies.
I am helping to make the point by engaging in the discussion agreeing and disagreeing with what I know about the disease. But also I am concerned about the flippancy of usage without deeper discussion given that everyone has a different reaction to the word/analogy to cancer which then migrates to the subject... i.e. fear, fear of death, confidence in cure (a long struggle), hopelessness. People have different experiences dealing with cancer... like Leigh Horne. What do you think when you hear cancer? The "body politic" is not a human body. So if we facilitate further understanding and do not fool ourselves that there will be a cure to this general threat throughout history regarding the nature of humanity, and think maybe we can hold it back here with a lot of hard work ( we must and must be vigilant), the cancer analogy works somewhat. But I initially said we should be careful. I think it is too facile an analogy to just throw it around. Use it, be clear, though, what you mean. I don't use it casually.
PS off this topic but about word usage and analogies, I feel that way about mental illness- particularly schizophrenia because I have dealt with this in my family. We talk about Trump being mentally off and try to match it with what we know I.e. psycho-social disease, sociopath. I just keep saying he is unfit, and mentally off... which I believe firmly. This last is not an analogy, but begging diagnosis. We do not and do not care it seems about that. We just go around and around following this insanity where it takes us... captured by it. This is for me the real tragedy of this situation. This person is unfit and he has a lot of people propping him up for personal gain.
So basically this is not about scientific definition but usage and understanding, reactions.
I think discussions of “human nature” are more likely to take us in the wrong direction than analogizing the current political crisis to a cancer.
If you think the cancer anology is inappropriate I think that reveals denial on your part of how bad this could all go. Beyond just the economic downturn alone, Trump and the other personality disordered psychopaths in his regime will go to extreme lengths to prevent authoritarian power from being pried from their hands. This might very well end in the death of the victim, if in this analogy the victim is the Republic, and could likely end in the actual deaths of many thousands of Americans, and the destruction of our social system. The regime is already using illegal state violence, which they are clearly trying to expand as rapidly as they are able, and we aren't even 3 months in.
More violence is coming, whether the violence of a virulent, deadly cancer on the body, or the violence of a desperate and risky radical surgery.
I've stopped calling it the Trump regime and now I call it the Trump Fiasco
I am not in denial about how bad this all could go. We are in a battle. Read my above about why I don't like the cancer analogy. The cancer analogy is complicated and tends to be facile. Many people are resigned to cancer being fatal. Many are afraid of it. We are afraid of dying. We all have different reactions to cancer. We don't need to complicate this battle that we fight for our country and our children with these emotions. Cancer can be used as a scare. It's just too facile.. and some may even be inured to it. Others have had cancer, been cured ( for now), and still more I would dare to say, have suffered pain and loss. Denial is rampant out there I think...by the way. Not me. You basically prove my point by scaremongering.
PS/FYI for some denial is a coping mechanism for many.
No, I think your reaction is just a personal one, and you don't like people using a word that bothers you. You keep repeating that it's "facile", but that's not really a rebuttal.
You obviously have not read my long rebuttal. It's not the word. Facile is a perfect word to summarize my POV which I have explained. You too are having a personal reaction!! Apparently mine bothers you.
I understand that is how you feel, and clearly others feel differently. I think the cancer anology is valid.
Viruses can lead to cancer.
Many viruses directly cause cellular transformation that lead to different cancers. The list is long. Trump is a virus loaded with many oncogenes. If one doesn’t get you, another will. EVIL = Exonic Viral Insanity Locus.
Is Kool-aid cancer forming ?
No one has ever lived long enough to find out.
Maybe that’s why it’s actually a good analogy. There’s no guarantee this ailment (Trump) can be cured.
I admit this deeper discussion is beneficial. I was saying to be careful using the analogy flippantly because it can mean different things to different people. I do not feel hopeless about our survival. This is a battle though. It’s not by any stretch useless. But some are scared negative or running from it. We need to fight. Trump by the way is not the ailment. Our vulnerability is. Our ignorance and selfishness is. Trump is the awful result and now it’s existential. We will need to be ever watching and alert if/ when we overcome this. I suppose like cancer. Thanks.
My preferred metaphor is parasite. But I guess they all fit. He’s a parasitic virus that causes cancer.
Ha ha, Maybe he's a parasitic brain worm that takes away your ability to discriminate between what's been shown to be true and what's just lurking in your imagination? And then causes a neoblastoma.
so not a coincidence that he is married to Melanoma....?
These mixed metaphors are great and all relate to the body politic being ravaged by invasive challenges of our own making. In a metaphorical way we are means testing our form of democracy. Do we qualify for receiving the benefits of freedom, self determination and the pursuit of happiness? If not, the metastatic spread of fascism will eventually commandeer the critical physiological functions of our republic. If our immune systems can stop this toxic coup of maga, we have a chance to beat it.
They are very mixed and sometimes confusing metaphors that don’t follow through deeply. Someone here in this discussion switched to vaccines needed to prevent this. There are no vaccines for cancer yet that I know of. But the cure comes with early detection a lot of the time. That is useful to note. I think we are in an advanced stage of something very toxic obviously. What are the vaccines against autocracy? That starts with education and having a common vision and moral view.
Actually, the HPV vaccine prevents many cancers, including cervical carcinoma, as well as, some head&neck SCCa, that’s a fact.
I agree Potter, that metaphorically, eduction can be thought of as a vaccine against autocracy (and fascism) but only if we have a healthy immune system; that being a common vision and moral view.
What’s happening now is the maga cells within our body politic do not share a common world vision or moral view; their “education” is misguided and has allowed these cells to express checkpoint beliefs thus escaping detection and destruction. It’s how cancers grow and we now desperately need immunotherapy (i.e. checkpoint inhibitors in the form of massive voter turnout).
Metaphorically yes maybe. Immunotherapy does not work for all cancers and for everyone who is battling. Immunotherapy, a miracle of sorts, is needed on the body politic (metaphorically) if it can work enough. Many, including myself until recently, did not know or want to know about cancer very deeply/widely. It's an existential battle for many. Cancer comes many forms, some treatable or more treatable, some less so. Using it as a metaphor depends on what the individual perception and experience of it is.
Education is sorely needed regarding what we face. And this, had it happened years ago and *well* in our population, would have served us. WE have been in a great experiment as our forefathers said and knew. We have, I have to say, a lot of ( willful) ignorance about our country ( 's vision) and world history, about social psychology, and basic science. So Trump and his media and hyper-partisan support system built over the years, very destructive, have advanced our ills to life threatening when before it was held it in check. We had more of a majority about our basic vision and cooperation needed. So we wake up now, painful, in the late stage... not the prevention stage, and feel threatened and without the architecture we built to deal with it ( checks and balances). Hyper-partisanship dishonesty greed ate the GOP.
Prevention had to and has to start early and continue... passed on. It seems this has not happened. We have been distracted into "getting and spending" (Wordsworth) and have " laid waste our powers", the power of the people, distracted away from what kind of country, society, we want to live in, what freedom and democracy means and requires.
So cancer analogy has limited use and can be a depressing/scary comparison yielding hopelessness for some who back away from the fight or who give up and maybe even leave...including our immigrants, students and other people we need who have helped us thrive. This is so sad. But we fight on. Thanks for your indulgence.
I prefer toxic, poisonous. Any disease that takes advantage of weakness and vulnerability works. Cancer is pervasive, has been defying escaping in some forms a cure, especially late stage. Trump’s evil has evolved and been perfected for a long long time as he realized his opportunities to capture the vulnerable which has grown ignorant been, distracted, brainwashed. He plays to that. Encourages it.
Very well stated. And my personal grief, like yours, is oversized. I will stay active and engaged, showing up, getting to town halls, writing to political leaders. But I must balance with time in nature, prayer and enjoying loved ones. One ‘up side’ is that even my activism is along side my loved ones.
Take care of yourself to find your joy.
Clearly a huge improvement in education will be needed if we want future electorates to be able to distinguish “reality TV” from reality and to actually understand how government works and what it does.
👆🎯The dumbing down of the populace with so-called "reality TV" has been successful beyond their wildest dreams.
Including new forms of education, such as entertaining series along the lines of the new Pitt (I live in the Burgh and worked in ERs in Baltimore for years, so maybe I'm biased!). And some of the YouTube, Substack and podcast-verse!
To each their own. I find drama too dramatic if you get my drift. I prefer saving my emotional energy for dealing with real people and real events. My partner on the other hand likes what might be referred to as “chick flicks” to change the channel before going to sleep. I do find her analysis of the “hidden messages” interesting but I don’t need to watch them myself.
This cancer didn’t grow in the dark. It was more like we knew it was there but sought some fake homeopathic cure based on wishful thinking. Then, when it didn’t go away, only then did people take action only to have the cancer cause major damage, if not actual kill them.
Maybe progressivism is the fruit juice cure in this analogy? Not a bad thing in itself, but definitely not the cure for the problem we're confronting.
The efforts of "progressives" have pared way a lot of the tumors that had infected the body politic of the nation since its inception. Their work brought about the inclusion of blacks and women in the electorate, child labor laws, the 40-hour work week, the EPA and OSHA among many other accomplishments.
The list is long and distinguished, and the value of their contributions to the welfare of the people of this nation is inestimable. Those things are what progress is all about.
Not talking about that, talking about the last 10 years when things turned from positive accomplishments to trying to shame people who didn’t use the “right” words for everything. When progressives stopped trying to expand the circle and turned to excluding anyone who didn’t share all their beliefs. Progressives have made themselves very unpopular, in spite of many voters sharing underlying values.
I disagree with your diagnosis. I think the goal was to protect marginalized groups from offensive speech. Unfortunately a sizable part of the population likes to disparage these groups and they love Putin’s Apprentice because he gave them “permission” the mock the handicapped and anyone else they deem as lesser. That Lyndon Johnson quote: "I'll tell you what's at the bottom of it. If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." describes it best.
That is why Putin’s Apprentice is so popular with the lower class whites. Big tax cuts make him popular with rich.
The comparison to cancer is unfair to cancer. I think it's more like Tourette Syndrome.
Arf arf you MFing piece of @#$%^&*!
LOL?
Hope you are correct we must make some serious changes in who runs our Government!!!
Yes, I resent the anxiety and attention seeking, all the time.
It’s all Trump, Trump,Trump. But it should be Republicans, Republicans, Republicans.
We’re going to get nothing but trouble from Trump (indeed his whole adult life has been about nothing but trouble).
So the focus on him is guaranteed to get us nothing.
However, Republicans can alter this train wreck.
We only require about 6-7 in the House and 3-4 in the Senate to go to work on this madman.
Focus on the R’s.
They can - but they won't. At least not until they're more afraid of their constituents than they are of King MAGA.
They obey their funders — always. When these say “Impeach”, it will be done. And that will happen when the economy starts to shrink the funders’ fortunes.
They obey their funders up to the moment when their constituents start coming at them with tiki torches and pitchforks - and maybe guillotines and gallows.
I will be carrying a cardboard pitchfork at the next protest. Small steps.
As will I. A cardboard pitchfork is a perfectly good start. Rise! Resist! ✊✊✊
May Day is the next nationwide rally, be there or be square!
//
Don't let up folks, it's working:
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Curb your DOGE!
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https://www.riseandresist.org/
https://thirdact.org
First their constituents have to abandon Trump. That won't happen until the damage is done.
That's already happening. Just witness Republican town halls. The people are pissed!
*Some* people are *extremely* pissed. Many aren’t affected yet, but they will be.
Oh yeah, they will, soon enough.
It’ll take a while: it’s reported that he has 90pc support among Republicans. If that’s the same as the 2024 election vote, it means 0.9 x 0.50 or 45pc of the country still is behind him. Sobering.
Bring out Madam Guillotine
"Let them eat cake!" Chop!
This is so very true. The R’s have the majority and they could stop him. They are completely complicit in this disaster and everyone needs to remember this election time!
Yes, at this point it is the entire Republican Party in power. We can no longer separate "Maga Republicans" & "other Republicans"; the Party is completely Maga.
Excellent point.
Agreed! Dems could focus on the Republicans and the devastating CR bill. Pound the message repeatedly how devasting and make the GOP own it.
I prefer to call them MAGA, or maga. To call them Republicans confuses them with the people whom I used to disagree with on policy but whom believe in real democracy. There has always been a bit of an authoritarian streak in the Republican party, but there were some real nasty elements in WOKE as well. People who were ready to destroy people's lives and careers over bad word choices.
Think of all the Republicans who have fallen on the sword. True it wasn't enough, too many were cowards who deluded themselves into thinking America was better with them in the room than outside.
I like to use MAGA, for the big movers and grifters, and maga, for all of the ignorant, misguided fools who have created the means of their destruction.
I have always been a Democrat. But we need to look to our own deficiencies. Why, even if it's messaging, has the rural and working class abandoned the party? Why can't blue states get housing and major infrastructure built?
What genius came up with the idea that making life sweeter for our oligarchs will fix what's wrong with America, anyway?
Republicanism is an utterly debauched political theory. If you subtract the Victim Porn, Cowardice In The Face of Facts, Pursuit of Unearned Privilege, and the Choice of Tribe Over Principle, there’s just nothing left!
Tiffany of Wisconsin is a mindless R. He won’t even show up at his office in Wisconsin.
The citizens of the United States elected a vicious old fool. They did so because they allowed their voters to come under the influence of expert election campaigners armed with vast amounts of money.
The nasty old fool has surrounded himself with vicious younger fools, who obtained their positions and retain them by flattering him. The levels of corruption in this administration are absolutely staggering.
There is no policy. Trump can barely string a sentence together and hasn’t had a new idea in years.
We Europeans will not forgive you for selling out Ukraine. Remember that.
I'm sorry you feel that way, as do most Americans. Most of us didn't vote for this Scourge, and I know that the media overseas has been covering our uprisings on April 5 and April 19, unlike our own media. So it makes me wonder why you don't notice that and the fact that most of us fully support Ukraine?
I do, of course. But, frankly, a good American in 2025 is as much use as a good German was in 1938. You are collectively responsible for the treason, the corruption, the assault on your liberties and above all the stabbing in the back of the Ukrainians.
You are the slaves of your 18th century Constitution which prevents you from regaining any control over what your nation does until 2028, which will be far too late.
I know perfectly well that many of you are nice people and have sound ideas. But you are all in the grip of the depraved bunch who form your Administration, the terrified ninnies in your Executive and the venal old fools in your Supreme Court.
So far as your former Allies are concerned, the best thing that you can do is to overthrow your government and, as Jefferson said, institute new Government.
Otherwise we will just have to leave you to shrink into global insignificance with corruption and wickedness tempered by incompetence.
I hate trump and MAGAs with a red hot passion. But easy for you to sit where you are and be critical of those of us who really have no power at the moment. Perhaps it would be better for Europeans to support the resistance in America, as we supported the resistance in Europe during hitler's regime.
We are supporting you. What more do you want us to do?
That's surprising given this comment you made: "You are collectively responsible for the treason, the corruption, the assault on your liberties and above all the stabbing in the back of the Ukrainians."
Seems like you are painting us all with your condescending brush.
My statement is correct; you are collectively responsible.
That is how this works.
You are more used to doing the condescending; we can all understand that and sympathise with you, but you are a nation which has elected your very own tyrant with his retinue of courtiers, and you, collectively, are reneging on your commitments, threatening your friends (who are becoming your ex-friends) aligning with Putin’s Russia and so on and so on. I’m just holding the mirror up to you.
Your comments haven't been very supportive. Indeed, they're rather hateful.
Yes! Well said. Thank you.
Mea culpa, Mea maxima culpa. You speak the truth. We are complicit and deeply remorseful. For a people so fortunate our behavior is reprehensible. Amid all our we're #1 boasts and lifestyles of the rich and famous aspirations we forgot where we came from and who we stepped on to get here. Your contempt for us is deserved. Thank you for expressing it so clearly. Many will react defensively and attempt to avoid the mantle of shame. That response will likely be the majority opinion. Knowing thyself is one thing, doing something about it another. In between the two lies the difficult truth we will expend every effort not to uncover. However, this sorts out thank you for telling a friend that he is wrong. We'll just have to see if we can accept the truth and work to overcome our weaknesses.
As another Brit, I’d like to point out that Brits also have a lot to answer for, especially in relation to our colonial past.
But unfortunately I do think that when you’re part of a nation you do take on the mantle of the responsibility. If you’re living in the US now you do have to get out and make your voice heard, one way or another. Protest in some form is the way to meet that responsibility. And as a Brit you do need to be supporting ways to make amends for a colonial past.
Chapeau!
And a tip of the hat to you as well:-)
Hogwash. We're not 1938 Germans. Have you not noticed the uprising? 1938 Germany didn't have that. And we're just getting warmed up. We're not just "nice people" - we're angry, we're infuriated and we are Rising and Resisting ✊✊✊.
We have revolution in our DNA, we're not going down without a fight!
Report back when you have locked them up.
1. I don't report to you any more than I report to Trumpkopf.
2. You'll know when we have them locked up, unless you live under a rock.
Nasty response.
Clear as a bell. Will do.
I'll believe it when I see it (and I very much hope to see it. I just don't see it yet.)
I saw it when I went out there on April 5 and April 19. A million people clogging 5th Ave. all the way from Bryant Park down to 23rd St. Another million clogging 5th Ave. and Madison Ave. from Bryant Park all the way up to Central Park South.
I'm not sure how you're missing it, but make no mistake about it, it's there, it's happening. And it's just getting warmed up.
You know, back when George W Bush decided to invade Iraq based on false pretenses, I had hope that Europe would fall support the French position and recognize that the US was unfit to lead a global alliance. Of course it wouldn't be possible to turn on a dime, but Europe has had plenty of time to build up its own capabilities and be less dependent on the US for leadership, given how obvious it should have been that the US electorate had the capacity to choose an idiot to be Commander in Chief. And yet, it has taken over twenty years and a second Trump administration for Europe to finally see the light. I think there is plenty of blame to go around here.
Yes. But in partial defense of the Europeans, we should acknowledge that the election of Obama in response to Bush and the election of Biden in response to Trump 1 could look like, from a distance, sane and responsible action by a sane and responsible citizenry.
That is not the point—and anyway, the election of Obama was largely in response to the financial crisis, and anyone paying the least attention to American politics (i.e. just checking polls) would have had to note that Biden was underwater in popularity from late 2021 on. But even aside from particular bad choices on the part of US voters, no democracy has ever had as much power as the US has, and none ever should (obv no dictatorship should, either—a sole superpower is never good). The European Union has had the potential to be a superpower but has never stepped up, now it is being forced to.
How would you overthrow it? Seriously
(As an aside, this shows the weakness of the US Constitution as opposed to Parliamentary systems where the Executive is by definition the majority in the Legislature - Britain got rid of Liz Truss in six weeks; the USA has to wait four years).
I think the only practical way to proceed is by non-violent mass civil action. I don’t mean mere demonstrations at weekends. I mean shut the country down.
Shutting things down is the advice we have received on this forum. One of the harbingers is a trend towards liquidity, another is reduced shipping activity. What if like the Montogomery bus boycott we all stopped flying? Crickets in the airports. Zoom and staycations. Air Force One flying solo from Florida to New Jersey. Congress schlepping about on trains cars and buses. That will be the spur to action.
'Most of us didn't vote for this scourge' Actually yes you did, Trump was within a hair of an actual majority of those who voted:
Nominee Donald Trump Kamala Harris
Party Republican Democratic
Home state Florida California
Running mate JD Vance Tim Walz
Electoral vote 312 226
States carried 31 + ME-02 19 + DC + NE-02
Popular vote 77,302,580[2] 75,017,613[2]
Percentage 49.8%[2] 48.3%[2]
The key words are "of those who voted". Fairly half of eligible voters didn't vote at all. of the remainder, yes, Trumpkopf was within a hair of an actual majority - discounting the possibility of counting machine tampering on the part of MuskRat and his crew of hacker punks. Aside from that, "yes you did", actually >no< >I< didn't vote for the Orange Scourge, and neither did the remaining half of eligible voters. So my comment remains valid.
Had it not been for the pandemic induced inflation, Kamala Harris—who came within a point & a half of Trump—would he president today. The economic whiplash of the pandemic & its aftershocks guaranteed incumbent-party defeat in 2024 as well as 2020
Under the influence of their own racism is more like it.
True. But Elon is over in Europe working his magic. You've got your right wing weirdos too. Don't let them take over. Figure out what we did wrong and don't make the same mistakes.
True and fair. We have Orban, Erdogan and a whole bunch of wannabes.
Americans will never forgive our selling out Ukraine.
"We Europeans will not forgive you for selling out Ukraine. Remember that."
Would you kindly explain who exactly appointed you to speak for Europe?
I did 😉
You failed to comprehend the concept of a rhetorical question, didn't you?
No, I didn’t. You failed to understand sarcasm. But then, you Americans were Top Nation for so long, and you must be finding it hard to adjust.😉
I did not vote for him and I hate what he is doing to Ukraine - at least 1/2 of us do - he's a destryer we can nt get rid of 🙏💔
The vaccine in this case would be a successful impeachment resulting in conviction.
I think you mean a successful conviction. He was successfully impeached twice.
Thx for that, I edited it accordingly.
If he were successfully impeached he would simply ignore it and remain in power. Trump has the military, all federal law enforcement and the Supreme court on his side. And don't for get the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and others. In short, all the guns. Congress has nothing but fear and greed.
He has much of federal law enforcement and the SCOTUS in his back pocket, along with reichwing "militia's". I don't believe he has the entire military on his side. For every Michael Flynn, there's at least one Mark Milley. If he were successfully impeached - and convicted in the Senate, he would ignore it, and things would get ugly from there.
In order to be successfully impeached, he would have to lose a very substantial portion of Republicans, along with his legal authority to command the armed forces. He's already losing the Supreme Court. Of course he would have a backstop in VP Vance, who would be legally enabled to step in and protect Trump unless he were somehow impeached first...
Yeah, the current congress won't likely do it. In the unlikely event that it did, we'd need a dozen GOP Senators to nail the conviction. We'd definitely have to take them both down, along with Jackass Johnson, for it to really stick. I'm not yet convinced that the SCOTUS isn't just putting on a show. I hope they're not. From a legal standpoint, his authority to command the armed forces doesn't include sending them after citizens, and I believe there would be a split if he were to attempt it.
But if he were impeached and convicted, I believe enough of us will fight , and most of the military will back us.
German Soldiers of WWII were mostly good Christians (Catholic, Lutheran) raised in a Democratic country, the Weimar Republic. Yet....
Agreed!
Not ALL of the guns.
True! Don't forget about all the brave 2nd Amendment patriots and their military grade weaponry, standing tall in case tyranny should raise its ugly head over free American soil! Oh...wait... They're all on his side, aren't they?
Mark Carney is at the center of isolating the USA diplomatically, economically and politically, inoculating the rest of the world from trumpian infection, RFK Jr being irrelevant to that. As a nationality-law academic I am watching huge numbers of Americans reclaiming ancestral citizenship—or even “golden passports far cheaper than Musk’s $5mn version—with many of the best and the brightest scientists and scholars leaving America for Canada, Europe and elsewhere. (One issue I’ve been looking at: will the USA honor its 30 Social Security totalization agreements with other countries? The Senate never ratified the treaty with Mexico, denying Mexicans benefits of FICA and SET contributions they paid.)
"Mark Carney is at the center of isolating the USA diplomatically, economically and politically, inoculating the rest of the world from trumpian infection". Good! I am proud of our Prime Minister...who BTW is poised to win a majority government in our national election. He is the ONLY person to ever be in charge of two G7 currencies being the former governor of both the banks of Canada and the bank of England. As a result he has excellent 'Friendly' relations with the non-US top people in the rest of the financial world. We are building stronger trade relationships with them...instead. What Trump is attempting to do Canada (the 51st state bullshit) has enraged us to a point where the relationship is now irretrievably broken, I will probably never set foot in the US ever again...even after the orange A-hole is long gone. In stores we are reading labels...if it says USA it stays on the shelf. In my opinion, the best thing that could happen the the US right now would involve one KFC chicken bone.
Not a single person I know agrees on the 51 state , I know when I read that I laughed so hard and then a hell NO , now humpty dumpy you are making Canada hate us you dick tater !! And no worries - I predict he has someone /s shot a peaceful gathering and that will be when we go after them hard
",,, 30 Social Security totalization agreements" Not familiar.. Might you expound on that Andrew ?
Totalization treaties date from an era of defined benefit pensions but still have imports and continue to be negotiated. I was an economic office at the sus Embassy in London 1977-70 when James Ammerman, Treasury Attaché across the hall from me and specialists from SSA and Treasury began negotiating an early treaty with the U.K. At the time, and to a lesser extent now with defined contribution pensions, multinational firms’ pensions were “integrated” with Social Security. For that reason the retention of the right to continue paying FICA and not paying National Insurance contributions (or in Canada CPP or QPP — there are agreements with both Ottawa and Quebec) for up to five years was important. Persons who paid into a foreign scheme for less than the ten years that both U.S and U.K. schemes require could “totalize” those contributions into the other scheme. (Many countries have no minimum number of years to collect a pension; most will pay beneficiaries abroad.) it is almost always more advantageous to get a separate pension rather than totalize. The U.K. (and Switzerland and some other countries) allow voluntary contributions. For the U.K. scheme Class 2 and Class 3 contributions are a bargain. Class 2 can be as cheap as £129 a year and 35 years of NICs entitles a pension of £209 or so a week, inflation protected. Social Security is skewed to benefit the low paid. Until 1 Jan. 2024 the Windfall Elimination Provision clawed back that benefit: until then I was getting £475 or so a month. Since Biden signed the WEP abolition act on 5 Jan. 2025 I get £1,000 retroactive to 1 Jan. 2024. I also get a small QPP payment and I inherited my late wife’s U.K. State Pension. You can find all you want to know on this subject on the internet. The SSA site lists all 30 treaty countries. An agreement was signed with Mexico years ago but the Senate has refused to ratify it (“Too costly”). They’d rather rip off Mexicans who paid FICA and SET sometimes for decades. U.S. citizens in Mexico (and for all I know citizens of totalization countries) do get SS payments there. While totalization treaties permit U.S. citizens not to most FICA or SET when they live and work in a signatory country that right can be waived. It may be advantageous to do so especially with the WEP abolished. One can usually pay back FICA or SET up to 6 (sometimes 3) years. One can pay U.K. NICs six years in arrears. U.S. taxpayers in a nonsignatory country, notably India and Israel, are double taxed unless they are employed by a local, not a U.S. employer and are not self-employed.
Thank you for this generous educational effort. Count just this one topic that the average American has scant knowledge of that's relative to "Immigration" law. Most of the 30 percent that voted for the "OiD", aka Orange il Duce are of the low information sort that only get further enraged when told that immigration law is far more complicated than erecting a fence. I've tried and tried, alas. If you can, please bear this in mind when / if resentments get the better of you. The 'tail' is wagging the entire 'dog' here. Hope necessitates a weak belief that a reckoning will come and can't come soon enough for this American victim. In solidarity, yours.
I wish! I just can’t help thinking though that if they didn’t impeach him for J6, there’s no hope now!! However I would like to ask - is there a limit to how many times articles of impeachment can be brought? Even if there is no chance of it getting the votes? Couldn’t we bring them every day???
I wish House Democrats would get together and individually file articles of impeachment every day for the next 200 plus days. This Impeachorama wouldn’t result in an actual impeachment and certainly not a conviction at this point, but it would show that Democrats have some spine and are taking control of the narrative. The media would pay attention.
It would succeed just as much as the NY case against Trump for naughty financial practices. That political stunt gave Trump a lot of support because he was able to claim to be a victim of left wing/woke judicial warfare.
Bad idea.
support only among the illiterate. The jury carefully considered a LOT of business records and heard a lot of witnesses besides Stormy Daniels, and T. had as many lawyers as he wanted, and they helped select the jury - and the jury had no difficulty deciding he was guilty on every count as charged.
Tax fraud is not just a 'naughty financial practice'. In fact one forgets - why does the press allow us to forget? - that after an even more thorough review of Trump's records for decades, he was held to have defrauded New York State of $350 million in taxes.
So nothing left wing or woke about the legal proceedings. A belated attempt to hold a lifelong criminal accountable for some of the costs he has imposed on the society he grifts on.
John, all true but actually the FELONY wasn’t falsifying business records (a misdemeanour) but using them to mislead New York voters to help his election chances. And but for the lottery of him getting a Trumpist judge in Florida in his secret documents theft - a case that even his lickspittle former A-G Bill Barr said he was clearly going to lose - he would be a twice convicted felon. The “warfare” slur is a total GOP invention, especially the J6 lawsuits. Trump has had the luck of the Devil all his life.
He runs on that anyway
Democrat Al Green "vowed" to file the first articles against Trump at a rally back on April 7th. That barely made a blip. When/if he does so it'll also barely make a blip, and your analogy with the ACA repeal doesn't work in this case.
Democrats don't control the House. Which obviously means they also don't control any of the committees. Articles of Impeachment first go through the House Judiciary Committee, they don't automatically receive a floor vote. Any articles filed between now and January 2027 have *zero* chance of getting past the Judiciary Committee. If they somehow did, they'd likely die in the Rules Committee, which is always stacked with not just members of the majority party, but loyalists of the Speaker so he or she can control the legislation that reaches the floor.
Your analogy doesn't work because the noteworthy and media attention grabbing attempts to eliminate the ACA got floor votes, because Republicans controlled the House. I believe the actual total attempts by House Republicans to kill the ACA is over 100. Some of them were defeated in committee. Nobody from the legacy media (and few voters) cares much about legislation that dies in committee, because that happens on a regular basis.
Lastly, the House is already a symptom of the clown show the Republican party, and to some extent our society, has become. We *really* shouldn't contribute to this. Democrats are the only adults left in the "room."
In our political system, the House has actual, important work that needs to get done. Instead, the Republicans have done things like depose McCarthy and take over two weeks to find a replacement, nearly default on the debt by taking until the 11th hour to raise the debt ceiling, shut down most of the federal government on multiple occasions because of their failure to pass a CR or actual appropriations bills, and come close to shutting down the government on even more occasions. Then there's the 70+ times they've voted to kill the ACA when they knew most of those attempts would die in the Senate.
Congress isn't supposed to be a performative clown, aka reality, show! We got into this mess because (low information) voters voted for a "reality" show "star" to become President, and most Republicans have cared more about making political "points" on Faux Noise than they do about legislating for over a decade.
I appreciate your thoughtful, thorough, and well-informed critique and am interested to know what you recommend Democrats do since the administration is ignoring court orders and creating a constitutional crisis.
The hard truth of the matter is, from a legislative perspective there simply isn't anything substantive Congressional Democrats can do about Trump's lawlessness until 2027, and even then it's unlikely to result in conviction and removal from office.
The courts are not completely unarmed, and Alito and Thomas aren't complete roadblocks. However, because our judicial system is (supposed to) give a lot of weight to precident, I think this crisis is based on the fact nobody wants to be the first judge to "go full nuclear" and the administration knows it. This is why we've seen judges repeatedly try to give the administration an off ramp from the insanity they've created. None of them want to do things like be the first judge to hold a sitting cabinet member in civil contempt of court...or even more, go completely around DOJ and do things like appoint a special prosecutor to indict, and then empower another court officer to arrest anybody in the administration because the answer to "What's next?" after that may be "political violence of the kind the US hasn't seen since the 1850s."
What may be more disturbing is the fact that even if a judge does go "full nuclear" there are practical hurdles to fixing some of this mess, like bringing Garcia and others back from El Salvador, that the court system (and even Congress) will have difficulty getting around.
I don't like any of this criminality and general insanity any more than anybody else. Perhaps the most unfortunate part of this is the clowns are the "face" of Trumpism, but some of the actual policies like deportation were formed by some intelligent, but IMO evil, people who have been thinking about ways to use the cracks in our political and judicial systems against us for years. Some of what they've done is so diabolical we need to accept that there aren't quick solutions, it's going to take years. Once Trump's gone, we also will need to accept that we can't "play nice" and seek bipartisan solutions like Biden did if we want to fix this mess.
What you're saying makes total sense, but it doesn't take into account how public pressure might impact Congress and even judges. Do you believe that resistance in the form of protests and contacting representatives is futile and we just need to wait for elections to turn things around? Do we just accept that the courts are only willing to go so far and that no Republicans will align with Democrats against Trump even if his approval ratings continue to fall and their seats are in jeopardy as a result? If we resign ourselves to what's happening, we can guarantee that nothing will change, but if we push back, at least there's the possibility we can move the needle. Or don't you think so? There have been successful pro-democracy movements in other countries. Why not here?
The media attention would not be positive though...it would be on the order of "what a stupid thing to do, proves Democrats are hopeless."
You may be right, but Republicans tried 70 times to eliminate the Affordable Care Act when it was clearly a hopeless endeavor, and it appears not to have hurt them in the least.
This is exactly what I keep hoping for; it can’t hurt and trump certainly provides brand-spankin’-new impeachable offenses every day!
I also think it’s time for congressional Dems to start “whistleblowing” on their Republican peers. We all know the elected republicans say things “off camera” that do not align with what they say in public. Republicans kiss Trump’s ass, left/right/center, they have abandoned their constituents, they’ve crapped on their oaths to this country, and they sure aren’t doing a damn thing in the Senator or the house. Democrats need to realize that republicans are not their “friends”, and forget that republicans are scared….Screw ‘em. Elected republicans are a threat to our Constitution and democrats need to grab every journalist they can find and throw those republicans under buses. Quote ‘em and name ‘em. Call their words lies and call them liars.
Imagine democrats ad American soldiers fighting on the front-lines in a war. Now imagine that they know other US soldiers are actively betraying our military, and aiding the enemy. The Dems would report those treasonous soldiers immediately, right? Congress may not literally be a military battlefront, but for all intents and purposes, war is being waged and the democrats are looking away while republicans conspire against and betray our nation.
There's no limit.
Not as long as Republicans hold the House.
But the cure of impeachment would require action on the part of the legislature that supports the executive overreach that they have enabled (government is now by executive order and and executive structure that does what the regime wants). Changing the legislature would involve voting in a large majority that values the founders ideals. To achieve that outcome would involve an educated populace with skills in reasoned analysis. HG Wells mentioned a race between education and catastrophe. We have lost that race, and there is no Time Machine.
That's why we shouldn't be giving up on the midterms. No excuses should be tolerated for sitting them out. Not even legitimate concerns that Republicans will try desperately to stifle votes. (Our reaction to that should be record turnout, in fact).
If our resident Nobel prize winner is right about the supply chain, among other things, we should be able to get even Trump voters on board.
Impeach, convict, and remove from office. Then, form a bipartisan, coalition government to serve only until 2028. During this period, all committees in both chambers will have even numbers of members. This is the way forward—DO IT.
If you're going to fantasize, at least make it something fun--maybe involving Trump and Musk both getting put in a rocket bound for a one-way trip to Mars. It's more likely than what you're proposing.
Don't forget to include Vance in the one way tickets!
Recipe for gridlock even at committee level. The madness of “MAGA” predates DJT, and will postdate him too.
I was thinking of Chlorox, his favorite virus treatment.
Chug a lug chug a lug
Or a guillotine.
Let's not forget that by confirming unqualified nominees to cabinet positions and passively tolerating (and even blessing) the administration's incompetence, the Republican-dominated House and Senate share complicity in this national tragedy.
Every single Cabinet nominee was unqualified for the job for which they were nominated.
Yet not one of them declined, saying, "I'm not qualified for this job." That's the part that baffles me.
They were selected for their loyalty to Trump only, and here their erect tongues testify satisfactorily to their ample qualifications. They could spear a donut from across the table!
One did , just one
For those of us old enough to remember M.A.S.H.
Pete Hegseth = Frank Burns
Kristy Noem = Hot Lips Houlihan
Donald Trump = Henry Blake
Please correct me if I am wrong. But I doubt Dr. Krugman would ever have posted these comments in his previous position at the New York Times. The ideas are similar. But the tone is, perhaps, more blunt. But there are still data included that support the ideas. I think it's great.
Of course, the news is different from anything we've seen before. That may account for it too.
Anyway, thanks.
Paul’s analogy with an abused spouse grasping for evidence contrary to the pattern of abuse is 100% accurate. That hurts but it’s true. That’s what to be made of stock market fluctuations based on “tone.” They are superficial indicators of change for the better
Nothing but the voting public can save this nation and that won’t come before irrevocable damage is done to our constitutional order, the rule of law and our economy. We hoped for the Mueller report, for conviction after two impeachments, Jan 6 indictments and now the Supreme Court and its judicial orders. None came to pass
Nothing will happen until the decided majority of the nation turns on him. That is when the hard work of repair and recovery will begin.
I’m rooting for a second coming of our nation. I believe we can and will survive as a constitutional democracy. But not before Fox News and right wing social media voices are drowned out by the roar of an angry nation devastated by the MAGA revolution.
America is in denial.
Far too many of us are. I blame a steady diet of Fox propaganda channel, and so-called "reality TV" slop. No intellectual fiber there.
Prof Krugman mentioned that over the years, the NYT editorial policy gradually changed in the direction of "equally presenting both sides of the argument", and he was increasingly discouraged from taking firm stands.
As some of the economics is quite exact and sometimes a given thesis follows from rules of math or massive decisive data and not from opinions or political leanings, Prof Krugman was increasingly unable to comply with this NYT "balanced presentation" policies. How do you write a balanced article on the validity of 2+2=4?
All this is funny in a way, as prof Krugman has the academic habit of quoting the opposing opinions, to a much larger degree than most newspaper authors I usually read. He should have been the last NYT writer the editors would harass for "lack of a balanced presentation".
The NYT editorial policy has moved away from math into more of a "he said, she said" format. Present the facts, but then present the "alternative facts". As if such a thing even existed in reality. "Let's be more like Faux Newspeak".
and the sane-washing - so that Trump's "immigrants are poisoning American blood" became in the NYT "Trump discusses genetics"...
Yeah, that too. A perfect example of why we call it "lamestream" media.
👆🎯
Thanks. I was not aware of this.
The Times would never have printed a column like this. Dr. Krugman had to be more circumspect when writing for NYT.
You are correct, look here on his Substack for his explanation of why he left the NYT, in short they were rewriting his articles, to say something less truthful.
Trump still gets 42% support rate in recent poll.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-approval-rating-dips-many-wary-his-wielding-power-reutersipsos-poll-finds-2025-04-21/
If American people don't realize Trump is actually ceding the world to China. The US allies are doomed, especially Taiwan.
Those 42% are comprised of Trump’s billionaire bros, ignoramuses, and just downright stupid people. They have caused America to be the laughing stock of the entire world.
Absolutely. Anyone who is still fully behind Trump is irredeemable and beyond rehabilitation. They must be marginalized. Trump is ignorant, corrupt, and mean spirited. Someone who loves him for those qualities is hardly a good and mentally healthy person.
Yes Scott! That's exactly why America's reputation has been trashed. These people actually voted for this fraud even after knowing what a disaster he was the first time. People around the world are just shaking their heads at Americans, asking - how could we be so stupid to elect Trump AGAIN?...
To be fair, many people in America have been convinced that Fox News is the truth and the NYT, even mushy and compromised as the political coverage is, and other traditional news sources are fake news and *we* are the deluded ones. How to bridge the divide? Until that happens, many of Trump’s grassroots supporters will remain loyal. It is well established that people who have been taken in by fraud are reluctant to admit they have been fooled, even when confronted with hard evidence that they have been deceived.
This traces back to when Reagan agreed to Rupert Murdoch’s ask that the Fairness Doctrine be scrapped. That regulation said that in order for tv content to be called news and presented as such, it had to be something that actually happened, ie the truth. Once that was relinquished, Americans were flooded with “alternate facts” and fifty years later, here we are.
"To be fair, many people in America have been convinced that Fox News is the truth"
This is no excuse. It is a personal choice to follow Fox News rather than other possible sources of information. What leads anyone to make such a choice? In many cases, it is because Fox tells them what they want to hear, confirming what they already believed.
The huge audience for Fox News points to a widely embedded culture of nastiness. There is nothing fair to say about it.
When you are that easily duped by propaganda then you fit in the ignoramus category...
That seems too easy a dismissal. Trump supporters say the same about us. I can’t help but think, every time I hear or read a pejorative remark about Trump supporters, that it’s another brick in the wall that divides people. This is only going to get worse unless people of good will and common decency on both sides try to find common ground. I think that begins by finding things we can agree on rather than things to fight over. Here in Canada we are not as far down the road of animus as the US but there are people and organizations fanning the flames meant to burn down the countries on both sides of the border.
At least Canada has a third party - the New Democratic Party, that in the last government joined an uneasy coalition with the Liberals in return for the Liberals starting dentalcare and pharmacare programs in Canada to go with our universal Medicare. There is at least the possibility of a third way but many NDP supporters in Canada are so concerned that the Conservative Party lead by Pierre Poilievre will win that many NDP supporters are voting Liberal.
Empty Walmart shelves might get the 60% who either didn't vote or voted for Trump to question their decision. Most Americans aren't interested in economics, business, history, science etc. They're interested in celebrities, cooking, fashion...etc. A huge amount of people have turned away from politics thinking it doesn't involve them. Empty Walmart shelves, raising prices, unemployment rising and cuts in the social safety net might make them reconsider the choice to be ignorant.
We still have the FOX, right wing lies to deal with.
Most of his supporters are normal, good people that are lied to every day by their news sources. The vaccine against the assault on our democracy is getting through to them.
I'm not so sure I would say most, but certainly many.
Marco, consider this: (👇 link below)
Note that this was written BEFORE Trump's current disastrous regime started destroying America.
And, spoiler, he ends with this:
"Because if you’re NOT stupid, we must turn to other explanations, and most of them are less flattering."
https://www.populist.com/stories/why-do-liberals-think-all-trump-supporters-are-stupid,5030
Justin, the Trump supporters I know don't hear about any of the horrible things he has said and done because they get their news from Fox and social media. They are not stupid or evil, but certainly miss-informed. This is why the president it putting pressure on news sources like the broadcast networks with lawsuits and regulatory pressure. We need to to reach them, not alienate them.
Regarding these propaganda dupes you're referring to: There is none so blind as he who will not see. I suspect a lot of them want to believe the propaganda...
Certainly, they are welcome to join the resistance, if and when they wake up! 😊
Marco, when you are that easily duped by propaganda then you fit in the ignoramus category.
My guess —There are a lot of people who think their overtime work will get a tax break, who really don’t care about much else and won’t realize how much Trump sucks until they are paying more for imports to fund a corporate and billionaires’
tax cut.
Not so, I’m afraid. 90pc of Republicans still support him; that’s where the 42pc overall number comes from. Pretty depressing actually.
Will,
What makes you think that 90% of people who STILL self identify as "Republican" aren't either ultra-wealthy, incredibly ignorant or just plain stupid?
Just consider this: (👇 link below)
Note that this was written BEFORE Trump's current disastrous regime started destroying America.
And, spoiler, he ends with this:
"Because if you’re NOT stupid, we must turn to other explanations, and most of them are less flattering."
https://www.populist.com/stories/why-do-liberals-think-all-trump-supporters-are-stupid,5030
Justin, I did consider that but the poll was indeed after his latest disasters. Other insights are required beyond calling those 90pc of Republicans (42pc of Americans!) “ignorant” and “stupid” - they might be, but some presumably are not. And yes, the conclusions are not flattering: one is that they LIKE what he’s doing. They are so invested in “owning the Libs”, are so hostile to any and all immigrants; are so nativist that ANY policy that claims to “put ‘mericans first” will get their support no matter how dumb or counter-productive it is. The malice and the cruelty are the point. The stupidity is a bonus.
Me, I'm too terrified to laugh, and I suspect this is a sentiment widely shared.
The core problem is not laughter. Being a laughingstock would be fine if it happened because we did something right.
I look at the title of that article and what I see is "approval rating dips". Trumps approval rating has been steadily declining right from the start, and the rate of the dip is increasing over time. It will soon be a vertical drop straight down.
it is a bit depressing how slow the decline is. How can he still have 43% of Americans thinking he's doing a good job? why is it not 15%? (Fox poisoning is a large part of the explanation...)
Yeah, Faux Newspeak is a big part of it. So too their millionaire preachers telling them that TrumPox is the second coming - and they believe it.
But just remember, the rate of decline isn't linear, it is curving downward, and will accelerate over time. I know it's not easy, but try to have patience.
Many of these folks have been voting against their interests for decades - since Reagan's "welfare queens" and Rush Limbaugh's various toxicities. By now, expecting these folks to question their commitments is not realistic. The problem is ontological, not epistemological.
Unfortunately, that's mostly true. I believe however that it really applies primarily to the hardcore MAGAnuts, who have been guzzling the Kool-Aid for so long that they're just hopelessly lost. I believe there's a small segment of not such hardcore Republicans who will look at what's happening and say "wait a minute, something isn't right here". Those are the ones we can reach, and that's really all we need. Just a few converts will make a big difference.
Your mouth to God's ears, as my wife is wont to say.
I sincerely wish I did not sound like a crazy conspiracy theorist, but lacking rational answers causes me reluctantly to move to the irrational: Trump seems intent on destroying EVERYTHING that makes our country strong or admirable (including the relatively beneficial use of our strength), as though he is following Putin's instructions/suggestions.
And if Taiwan is absorbed by China, then the U.S. will eventually be absorbed by China because 90% of the semiconductors that make the U.S. military effective come from Taiwan.
Ponder that fact!
Yes - while Trump was dancing with Vladimir, Xi waltzed away with the prize: America falling to #2 or beyond, leaving ’Gina unchallenged and without economic equal.
Enjoy your bike ride! Thanks for your insights!
Trump and MAGA is a tumor. FTFY
Three years and three months? Keep on dreaming! Does anybody seriously think he will leave after his second term??? He already said he won't. Isn't it time to see this for what it really is? Namely a hostile takeover with the goal to destroy all democratic institutions so a few billionaires can get even richer.
"We’re stuck with this chaos agent for three years and three months?" Try three years and nine months. It may feel like we have put up with him for 9 months already but its only been three.
It feels like we've put up with him for 9 years already.
Do you honestly think he'll still be alive in 3 years and 3 months.
The dude is not in good health.
🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞
Would President Vance be any better? I think he would be even worse because he’s actually had a good education. Educated corruption is more to be feared than selfish, greedy, vengeful corruption.
but Vance does not have the cult, so maybe minds can be changed when the Trumpian scales are removed from some MAGA eyes.
Exactly.
Vance would be better, if only because he's such a coward. Fat Donnie is a coward too, but a coward with no sense of shame or honor.
No, certainly not. We have to do away with him too, along with the entire Evil Klown Kar. And Jackass Johnson to boot.
That's why it's imperative that we Rise! Resist! ✊✊✊
May Day is the next nationwide rally, be there or be square!
//
Don't let up folks, it's working:
Boycott TE卐LA! Boycott Swastikar!
Short TE卐LA! Short Swastikar!
Boycott 卐tarlink!
Boycott 卐/Twitter!
Curb your DOGE!
https://generalstrikeus.com/strikecard
https://www.fiftyfifty.one/
https://indivisible.org/
https://handsoff2025.com/
https://www.teslatakedown.com/
https://www.riseandresist.org/
https://thirdact.org
He’s the product of the Project 2025 laboratory gain of function experiments.
Yeah, a mutant virus.
He’s more like a cancer, but the idea’s the same.
HPV-induced tumor? He can be both!
I’ve already seen announcements from manufacturers that they are no longer taking orders from the US on certain products due to instability of the tariff costs. DHL has suspended handling packages worth less then $800 arriving from China for the same reason, so no more AliBaba and Temu for US consumers.
Jaguar Land Rover has halted deliveries to the US.
I read yesterday that China has cut off AliBaba and Temu shipments at their end. I forget what the new dollar amount is, but it's quite low.
If there is another election, by no means a certainty, there is a possibility that Trump will run again, or that a Trumpite will win. And no Democrat has emerged as a leader for the opposition, which is very disappointing, as the movement needs a galvanizing leader at this perilous time. Apart from AOC and Bernie, there has hardly been a squeak, an appropriate word as it turns out.
Overall, most people are still very comfortable with their lives. When and if that changes, the country will be more open to listening to a Democratic leader.
And THEIR lives, not the well-being of the nation, is what matters. Other people, other causes, be damned. That has led the US to where it is now.
Indeed. Well said.
Face it. Most of us are too comfortable to take risks and act for our own survival. It’ll make a terrific and damning epitaph for us!
Lifestyle yes. Better future for our kids and beyond? No.
Keep your eyes on Pete Buttigieg also.
I would but he's near invisible.
Democrats are simply allowing Trump to do their work. Nothing they could say will be more powerful than watching Trump Live.
He's already selling "Trump 2028" merchandise.
How's Trump going to run again, exactly? You'd have to overturn a Constitutional amendment to allow that to happen.
Seriously? Trump has shown no regard for the Constitution or the Courts. Who would stop him? You're in an autocracy now. What he has done already is more egregious than a third term.
Having said all that, what is much more likely - assuming he doesn't die or become physically incapacitated in the interim, which is a big supposition - is that he attempts to declare martial law in order to cancel the elections altogether. THAT is a realistic scenario of which I think we're all aware and about which all of us who believe in democracy are deeply concerned.
I didn't say that he's shown regard for the Constitution. But if the Constitution were not an impediment, why is he expending the time, effort and political capital to go to the Supreme Court to overturn - just to name an example - birthplace citizenship (the 14th Amendment)? Why not just issue an executive order and be done with it? Because we're not there yet, that's why.
Also, elections are administered by the states. Most states in the US would not tolerate someone running for a third term, and that would be upheld by most (if not all) of the state supreme courts. If he "runs" for president in 2028, he would need to appear on the ballot in each state. But that would not happen. Groups in every state would successfully sue on the basis of the 22nd Amendment - which is absolutely unambiguous - and they would win.
Well, there IS some clown who's pushing an amendment that would allow DonnyJon to run again. There's zero chance of it passing, of course.
EXACTLY my point.
Chuck, one ploy would be for his place-man to run for President with him as V-P, with the nod-wink that he’d resign after the election so Trump could take over. It’s cynical beyond belief but probably legal (simply because the Founders never thought anyone would be that brazen).
No, it's not legal. The vice-president must be able to serve as President if the President dies or is incapacitated. Trump cannot serve as President a third time, so he cannot run as vice. Similarly, he cannot be appointed Speaker of the House.
And the founders had nothing to do with this. This term limit is defined in an amendment to the Constitution, passed and approved after FDR was elected four times.
The sooner a Democratic leader emerges, the more time there is for the Republicans to slander and attack him or her. It makes sense to wait until the last year, though the party did put it off too long with Kamala.
I wonder how long it will take before all the Republicans in my town realize what they did to themselves. Even if there are no plastic toys from China to buy at Walmart, they will probably not figure out that they did it. They will find a way to blame liberals like me. Another way this is like an abusive relationship: when the abuser does something bad, he (they) blame(s) the victim.
Yeah, they'll blame the Biden Crime Family. Or Hillary. Or Canada. Or the EU. Or Powell. Basically whomever Caving Don will tell them to blame...