Author: A.T.

But first . . .

The real collusion between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.  The Economist devotes a special weekend edition to this topic, concluding: “It may be scarier than their critics long suspected.”)

Digital editor Adam Roberts introduces it:

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Did Churchill ever break into applause at the sight of Stalin, or JFK give a little ovation for Khrushchev? I suspect not. So it was striking to see Donald Trump’s thrilled reaction as Vladimir Putin approached him in Alaska last week. Some online cynics joked that it was natural that the American leader clapped: it’s not every day you get to meet your hero. Too strong? Perhaps. But Mr Trump has shown an abiding affection for the Russian autocrat.

My hunch about their relationship: Mr Trump is drawn to anyone who exudes an aura of strength. Talk of morality, rules, duty or strategy bores him. He yearns, instead, to strike bold and quick deals with tough guys and to win prizes and adoration as a result. That makes for an unstable world.

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(Or put another way:  Hi, Donald.  I was just calling to see how your meeting with Putin went.  Same two minutes as yesterday, in case you missed it.)

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And now . . .

I guess he won’t be performing at the Kennedy Center any time soon, but which guy strikes you as the true truth-telling patriot –Donald Trump or Jack White?

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The White House melts down and attacks music legend Jack White after he insults Donald Trump’s “disgusting” and “vulgar” redecoration of the White House

Jack White is a washed-up, has-been loser posting drivel on social media because he clearly has ample time on his hands due to his stalled career,” claimed White House spokesman Steven Cheung.

It’s apparent [White]’s been masquerading as a real artist, because he fails to appreciate, and quite frankly disrespects, the splendor and significance of the Oval Office inside of ‘The People’s House.’

Jack’s response…

Listen, I’m an artist and not a politician so I’m in no need to give my answer or opinion on anything if I’m not inspired or compelled, but how funny that it wasn’t me calling out trump’s blatant fascist manipulation of government, his gestapo ICE tactics, his racist remarks about Latinos, Native Americans, etc. his ridiculous ‘wall’ construction, his attacks on the disabled, his attempted coup and mob insurrection and destruction of the sacred halls of congress, his disparaging sexist and pedophilic remarks about women, his obvious attempts at distraction about being a close personal friend of Jeffrey Epstein and his inclusion in the Epstein files, his ignorance of the dying children in Sudan, Gaza, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, his lack of empathy for military veterans and those struggling with poverty, his attempts to dismantle healthcare, his obvious wimpy and pathetic kowtowing to the dictators Putin and Kim Jong Un, his nazi like rallies, his attempts to sell merchandise and products like Goya beans through the office of the President, his fake ‘gunshot to the ear’ that he showed no medical records or photographs of, his constant, constant, constant lying to the American people, etc. etc. etc.

No, it wasn’t me calling out any of that, it was the f*cking DECOR OF THE OVAL OFFICE remarks I made that got them to respond with insults.  How petty and pathetic and thin skinned could this administration get? ‘Masquerading as a real artist’?  Thank you for giving me my tombstone engraving!  Well here’s my opinion, trump is masquerading as a human being.

He’s masquerading as a Christian, as a leader, as a person with actual empathy. He’s been masquerading as a businessman for decades as nothing he’s involved in has prospered except by using other people’s money to find loophole after loophole and grift after grift.

His staff of professional liar toadies like Steven Cheung and Karoline Leavitt have been covering up and masking his fascism as patriotism and fomenting hatred and division in this country on a daily basis.  And I have ‘ample time on (my) hands’? That orange grifter has spent more tax payer money cheating at golf than helping ANYONE in the country. Improve. Anything. There is no progress with him, only smoke and mirrors and tax breaks for the ultra wealthy.

So MAGA folk, enjoy your concrete paving over of the rose garden, your 200 million dollar ballroom in the White House, and your gaudy ass gold spray painted trinkets from Home Depot, cause he ain’t spending any money on helping YOU unless you fit into his white supremacist country club rich idiot agenda.

Wow, he hates who you hate….good for you, be proud of yourselves, how Christian of you all.

The only way you can support this conman is because you are a victim of the 2 party system and you ‘defend your guy no matter what he does.’  No intelligent person can defend this low life fascist. This bankruptor of casinos. This failed seller of trump steaks, trump vodka, trump water, etc.

This man and his goon squad have failed upwards for decades and have fleeced the American people over and over.  This professional golf cheat, this grifter who has hundreds of thousands of deaths from his inaction of the pandemic on his hands, this man that the majority of the country somehow were fooled into supporting and voting into office (through the flawed electoral college) and their love of reality television stars.

Being insulted by the actual White House that this particular conman leads is a badge of honor to me, because anyone who trump supports and likes is a villain who gives nothing to their fellow man, only takes what can benefit themselves.

And no I’m not a Democrat either, I’m a human being raised in Detroit, I’m an artist who’s owned his own businesses like his own upholstery shop and recording label since he was 21 years old who has enough street sense to know when a 3 card monte dealer is a cheap grifter and a thief.

I was raised to believe that we defeated fascism in World War II and that we would never allow it again in the world. I don’t always state publicly my political opinions, and like anyone I don’t always know all of the facts, but when it comes to this man and this administration I’m not going to be like one of the silent minority of 1930’s Germany. This man is a danger to not just America but the entire world and that’s not an exaggeration, he’s dismantling democracy and endangering the planet on a daily basis, and we. all. know. it.— JW III

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Relatedly . . .

Vince D., reacting to word from the White House that Trump would sign a decree* cracking down on those who burn an American flag:

“Looks like it’s time to repost your June 28, 2006 flag burning post.”

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Oh, for crying out loud.

The whole point of America is that you can burn the flag. Nothing sums up her greatness so succinctly. And it is precisely this – that in America you should be free to do any damn thing you please so long as it does not impinge on the rights of others – that leads most of us to abhor the idea of burning it in the first place.

And one thing you should absolutely be free to do in America is criticize your country and express outrage at its behavior – even if you’re wrong. We call that the Bill of Rights.

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(The White House later announced that the ruler had changed his mind.)

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In sum . . .

Jack White concludes his rant (above) with this quote from Teddy Roosevelt:

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To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. — Theodore Roosevelt

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My money’s on Jack White.

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*They call them executive orders, but the nature of the presidency has clearly changed.

 

Conservative George Will (worth reading in full):

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As flaccid as a boned fish, Donald Trump crumpled quicker than even Vladimir Putin probably anticipated. The former KGB agent currently indicted for war crimes felt no need to negotiate with the man-child. The president’s thunderous demands — a 50-day deadline, a 10-day deadline, “severe consequences,” a ceasefire before negotiations — all were just noise. . . .

When Dwight Eisenhower asked Gen. Georgy Zhukov, the foremost Soviet hero of World War II, how the Red Army cleared minefields, Zhukov replied that it marched through them. Putin has been marinated in lore about that war, and about “the West” trying “to cancel a whole 1,000 year culture, our people.” He is delusional, but serious. . . .

Eighty-five summers ago, the United States was saluted by Britain’s prime minister in the House of Commons. On a dark day (June 4, 1940) he anticipated the day when “the New World, with all its power and might, steps forward to the rescue and the liberation of the old.”

Now it is the Old World’s turn to rescue the United States. It needs to be liberated from the chimera that it has no substantial stake in the outcome of high-intensity, state-on-state violence inflicted by a nuclear power obedient to a man who has actual beliefs: crackpot, but real, and menacing.

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Have a great weekend.

 

But first . . .

Fareed Zakariah: Alienating India is Trump’s greatest foreign policy mistake thus far.

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President Donald Trump’s sudden, inexplicable hostility toward India reverses policies pursued under five administrations, including his own previous one. . . .

Enter Trump 2.0. With little warning, Trump has undone decades of painstaking work by U.S. diplomats.

Trump has called India’s economy “dead.” In fact, for several years, India has had the fastest-growing large economy in the world (“in the second quarter of this year, India exported more smartphones to the U.S. market than China did’) . . .

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Read it and weep.

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Also . . .

President Trump’s top informal advisor (now that Four Seasons Landscaping Giuliani and the My Pillow Guy are gone) . . . conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer . . . Congratulates Herself for ‘Personally’ Saving Americans from Hamas.

Which she did not do.

The headline for which she can take credit:

US suspends Gaza visas after Laura Loomer criticizes admission of children for medical care.

Isn’t that great?  Denying desperate children medical care?

HEAL Palestine, the Ohio-based nonprofit that organized the care, explains:

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HEAL Palestine . . . deliver[s] urgent aid and medical care to children in Palestine, including sponsoring and bringing severely injured children to the US on temporary visas for essential medical treatment not available at home. After their treatment is complete, the children and any accompanying family members return to the Middle East. This is a medical treatment program not a refugee resettlement program.

Our mission gives children a renewed chance at life whether through life-saving surgery or the ability to walk again. US tax dollars do not fund this treatment. Guided by human and American values, HEAL is committed to offering hope and healing to the few young lives we can reach.

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And Laura Loomer will not stand for it.  Not on her watch.

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And now . . .

Carl sent three separate emails yesterday, hoping to set me straight.

The last of which will bring us to James Comey and Taylor Swift — which you must not miss — but let’s take one at a time:

1. “Yes Andy,” Carl writes in bold face, “another of your toilet cleaners killed 3 people… If the victims were your friends you still wouldn’t give a Schiff!”

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Illegal-migrant driver in Florida make rogue U-turn, kills 3
The alleged semi-truck driver who killed three people while making a U-turn at an “Official Use Only” turn on the Florida Turnpike is an ILLEGAL MIGRANT who was granted a commercial driver’s license by the State of California.

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→ But he’s wrong on at least two counts.

First, like most progressives (or anyone else), I actually do care when people are hurt or killed and would be beside myself if they were my friends.

Second, the conservative Cato Institute found that “in fact, illegal immigrants are less likely than native-born Americans to be arrested or convicted for violent crimes, including vehicular homicide.”

And the Center for Growth and Opportunity found that “extending driving privileges to undocumented migrants improves public safety.”

It’s quite true that if we managed somehow to get rid of all undocumented immigrants there would be fewer traffic fatalities and less crime of all kinds.  But that’s also true of rounding up all native-born Americans as well.  Especially teenagers.

Indeed, if there were none of us, there’d be no crime at all.

I’m sorry Trump killed the long-sought, hard-won bipartisan immigration bill the House and Senate passed in 2023 so he could use the border crisis as a campaign issue.

And I’m sorry that, ten years earlier, Republicans killed the comprehensive immigration reform that passed the Senate 68-32 and would have remedied the problem that much sooner.

Almost everyone — including me — agreed with Carl that we needed to secure the southern border and address the immigration issue.  Relatively few thought we should have masked men grabbing people off the street and denying them their Constitutional rights.  That’s where Carl and I disagree.

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2. “So Andy,” he wrote in response to my plug for The Pando Plan, “you want to make a better world?  Give up your insane Democrat ideas and join America!”

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Insane Democrat ideas:  Open borders.  Increased regulation on business.  Medicare-for-All.  Abolishing the Electoral College, ending the legislative filibuster.  Universal basic income.  Defund the police. Trump is a fascist and Hitler.  Men can be women if they say so.  Men in women’s sports, locker rooms and bathrooms.  Start with those!

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→ Open borders is not “a Democrat idea,” it is a dumb idea espoused by almost no Democrats.  Same with defunding the police.  The right says it anyway and Carl believes it.

There is nothing insane about regulation in general.  Some regulation is insane and should be eliminated or adjusted; but much of Trump’s deregulation will make life worse for everyday Americans (though better for wealthy shareholders).

Medicare-for-All is only insane if you consider the rest of the developed world, all of which has it in some form, insane.  It’s not immediately practical to be sure, just as it would not be immediately practical for us to switch to the metric system; but hardly insane.

Trump is not Hitler, but he is a fascist and an authoritarian.  (Also an adjudicated rapist, a convicted felon; twice impeached with a 57-43 majority of the Senate, including Republicans, voting to convict him.)

Abolishing the Electoral College would just leave the choice of president to the voters, as we do for governors and mayors and senators and representatives — and few think that’s insane.

Ending the filibuster has never been a plank of the Democratic platform.  It does, however, respond to the frustration that people — of every political persuasion — feel that the country can’t get things done.  Which is (sadly, but relatedly) why so many Americans now favor an authoritarian who simply ignores the powers granted to Congress by the Constitution.  A majority of Republicans score high on the Right-Wing Authoritarian Scale, a measure developed in 1950 after the Second World War and our defeat of fascism.  Many Democrats do favor modifying the filibuster, as has been done more than 160 times.

Universal Basic Income is an idea whose time will come — throughout Europe by 2032, according to futurist Ray Kurzweil, and to the U.S. in 2038.  Artificial intelligence and other advances in technology will both allow and require it.  Allow it, because our productivity gains will provide enormous wealth; require it, because the things the world actually needs — like food and shelter — will no longer require a giant workforce.  But this is nowhere in today’s Democratic platform.

And of course men should not be able to compete in women’s sports.  The issue of transgender athletes is more nuanced than Carl realizes or wishes to acknowledge — it would be easier for him if there simply were no trans people.  But there are, so I’d like to leave that one up to the coaches and the NCAA and the Olympic Committee.  Either way, it affects so few people, compared to, say, losing our democracy after 250 years, that I think we should keep it in perspective.

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3. “You say: <<Trump’s daddy void….. see what you think.”

To which Carl replies:

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BIZZAR OBSESTIONS! 

What do YOU think?

James Comey raves about Taylor Swift in bizarre video | Fox News Video

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→ So I was genuinely curious to see what Carl was referring to — and am now grateful to him for having shared with me.

Whatever you may think of Comey — who arguably threw the 2016 election to Trump — if you can find 5 minutes, watch him “rave” “bizarrely.”

It is diametrically opposed in tone to everything Carl seems to embody.

 

But first . . .

> Seth Meyers takes A Closer Look at Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center Honors.

Ten minutes not to be missed.

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> And from Harry Litman:

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Where the Rubber Bullets Hit the Road

Trump is not merely testing executive authority — he is establishing a police state. . . . This is the president who once told officers, “Please don’t be too nice. When you put somebody in the car, rough them up a little bit.”

Emergency powers are supposed to be temporary and limited, restoring order at the request of overwhelmed officials. Instead, federalization under Trump imposes a chain of command indifferent to constitutional limits and accountable only to him. . . .

The D.C. checkpoint and the Los Angeles profiling are not one-offs . . .  Federalization, Trump style, delivers an occupying force looking to bust heads . . . encouraged to do “whatever the hell they want.”

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And now . . .

A Gen Xer sold his company for $1.6 billion. He kept less than $100 million and gave the rest away because he doesn’t ‘believe in billionaires’

Crazy, no?

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One cause he may want to support is the now-proven brainchild of my friend, Eugene Shirley: The Pando Plan.

For just $5,000, you can improve a lot of lives.  Perhaps at your alma mater; or at a school down the street from you.  (Just $1,500 in a middle school.)

If you’re looking for a highly-leveraged, non-political (tax-deductible) way to make a better world, check it out.

 

In 1963, when I 16 and Putin was 10, I was arrested outside Kharkov (as the Russians then called it) for selling my blue jeans.  They claimed the purchaser would be executed for dealing on the black market (though I came to realize he was almost surely just part of a sting designed to frighten misbehaving tourists like me).  Because I was so young, they let me go.

But say this for the former Soviet Union:  There was virtually no violent crime.

That’s one of the appealing features of dictatorships.  Because everyone is terrified . . . and punishment, whether deserved or not, swift and severe . . . crime is very rare.

They don’t call them “police states” for nothing.

There’s no crime in North Korea, either.

Trump exchanges love letters with the leader of North Korea and rolls out the red carpet for Russia’s dictator.  (Heather Cox Richardson knocks it out of the ballpark, as usual, in describing the Putin meeting.)

Putin is 9th dan judo black belt, the highest rank achievable in the sport designed for a small power to overcome a larger power. (Trump is a fake-wrestling Hall of Famer with an alleged bone spur).

Putin’s overarching goal: destabilize Western democracies, especially the U.S., in order to reconstitute the Russian empire.

In Ukraine, he’s having a rough go.

Here in America, without firing a single shot, he is succeeding.

Long-time readers know I’ve been harping on this (because it’s kind of important?) for some time now.  The phrase “Putin is winning” appears in 42 posts (43, counting today).

I don’t expect you to re-read any of them . . . and it’s not as though I don’t realize I’m preaching to the choir (except for Carl) . . . but I did start looking back at them myself:

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March 10, 2025: Putin Is Winning. We Can’t Give In To Fear.

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Feb 25, 2025:

U.S. VOTES AGAINST U.N. RESOLUTION CONDEMNING RUSSIA FOR UKRAINE WAR.

Really.  We did that.

The Russian economy is on the brink of collapse but Trump is riding to Putin’s rescue — and fast destroying the largely successful 80-year post-War order.

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February 8, 2022: It’s Not Alarmist If The Threat Is Real

Including this footnote:

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*The only thing Trump changed in the 2016 platform he inherited when he won the nomination — the only thing! — was the part about defending Ukraine.  What a crazy coincidence.

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December 30, 2021: Grounds For Optimism

December 9, 2021: It Was The Worst of Times, It Was . . .

August 27, 2020: Winning The Second Cold War

August 22: 2020: Washington’s Left-Leaning POST Meets The Right-Leaning EXAMINER

June 3, 2020: Republican Voices I Agree With

February 27, 2020: Beating Putin

December 30, 2019: Long Before “The Perfect Call” There Was This

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I know the mind has the tendency to shut down over all this.  But Russia is winning.  Putin is winning.  America is losing.  Democracy is losing.  It’s worth our attention.  Even if it takes reading more than once.

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As you can see, I was going in reverse chronological order.

Here is the first of the 42 I found, from June, 2017:

GREAT Health Care At A Tiny Fraction of the Cost — Easy!

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Putin is winning.  Bannon is winning.  The forces of intolerance and ignorance are winning.  And millions of fine people — not deplorable, just bamboozled — are still eager to give this petulant, bullying, narcissistic, uncharitable, pathologically dishonest, ignorant president time to come through with “great health care at a tiny fraction of the cost” (“it’s going to be so easy”) — even as he takes $900 billion out of health care and slashes the budget for research that could one day save their child’s life.

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No question: Trump (and Carl) are right.  Crime is bad.  Especially violent crime.  (Which, interestingly, as Philip Bump noted Saturday, is worse in Ohio than in DC, yet Ohio is sending National Guard troops to DC.)

No liberal, no progressive, no socialist — no anything — would disagree.

But in pursuing a crime-free America (while allowing troubled teenagers to buy assault weapons), how many of us really want to live in a police state?  (Ruled by an adjudicated rapist twice-impeached convicted felon.)

I know quite a few Americans emigrating to Canada, Portugal, and elsewhere; but none emigrating to Russia or North Korea.

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In this truly dynamite post the author makes a compelling case that Putin fills Trump’s daddy void.  I hesitate to share it because its tone is far from calm and thoughtful.  More in the tone of the recent South Park episodes that have surely offended some.  But with that caveat — see what you think.

Have a great week.

 

Isn’t that annoying?

If you have only five minutes, consider watching the psychology behind the Trump cult — and how we can help break the spell.

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But if you are alarmed that democracy is hanging on by a thread — and have time to do something to save it — take an hour to watch Indivisible’s most recent training call.  It drew 20,000 people Wednesday, the limit the platform could accommodate. (Perhaps you were one of the thousands turned away.)

And to see what Indivisible’s weekly Thursday “What’s the Plan?” calls are all about, watch yesterday’s.

Here are four more ways you can get involved:

• Host your own Community Resistance Gathering
• Counter ICE’s terrorizing of our communities by spreading signs of Solidarity
• Fight back against mass deportations with actions targeted at Avelo Airlines
• Protest Trump’s aggressive effort to rig electoral maps TOMORROW (Saturday)

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Even if you do spend a hours immersing yourself in this stuff Saturday, you could still have time to get in 18 holes on Sunday.  Did I ever tell you how I once went golfing with Warren Buffett?

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Have a great weekend.

 

Ghislaine Maxwell’s new Texas prison is no country club, but a lot nicer than where she was before.

And wait — could this be true?  Ghislaine Maxwell cleared to leave prison on work release.

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. . . Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) . . . demanded to know if Maxwell received special treatment after meeting with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney.

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Isn’t having the Deputy Attorney General of the United States come visit you in prison “special treatment” on its face?

I wonder what could possibly be motivating all this?

(On a related note, I can’t recommend too often that you listen to E. Jean Carroll’s Not My Type.  If you had any doubt that Trump lies and lies and lies about everything — just bald-faced lies — that doubt will totally vanish once you do.)

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Trump Is Right That D.C. Has a Serious Crime Problem. “But he has the wrong answer for how to fix it,” writes Charles Fain Lehman in this thoughtful piece.

Trump’s D.C. Takeover Uses Classic Strongman Tactics, writes Ruth Ben-Ghiat: “Inventing a crisis; delegitimizing democratic authorities; making cities into laboratories of repression.”

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US deficit grows to $291 billion in July despite tariff revenue surge.  Trump is exploding the deficit and National Debt even as he cuts essential aid to hungry children, cripples the Social Security Administration, weakens the dollar, cancels crucial medical research that could have saved your life — or your child’s — and cuts taxes for billionaires.  Is this really what most people want?

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It’s just fun to be rich, isn’t it? (10 seconds).

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DREADING FRIDAY’S SUMMIT

Maybe Trump will finally stand up to Putin but “Nerves are on a knife-edge ahead of the Trump-Putin summit.”

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VERU

This is the one with a drug that, if approved by the FDA, would be desired by anyone taking Wegovy, Ozempic, Mounjaro or one of the others because it preserves muscle mass as you lose weight.

I hope you didn’t buy shares when I first suggested it at 52 cents (which is to say $5.20, adjusted for this week’s 1-for-10 reverse split), because it’s steadily fallen — most sharply yesterday in the wake of it’s quarterly earnings call.

Naturally (surely you know me by now), I bought more.  At a $50 million market cap, I find the speculation irresistible. Yes, they could run out of money and disappear.  But they could also make a deal with Novo Nordisk or Lilly, each with a market cap of more than $500 billion . . . for whom $1 billion to acquire this potential competitive advantage would be peanuts.

(Only with money you can truly afford to lose.)

 

“A bully pulpit” is supposed to mean “a jolly good pulpit” from which to capture people’s attention — not a pulpit from which to bully them.  Or universities.  Or law firms.  Or TV networks.  Or corporations.  Or legislators.  Or other countries.

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What are we to make of a president who declares an emergency to send troops to confront non-existent “bedlam” in the nation’s capital . . . but watches on TV — for hours — as the Capitol itself is being attacked without lifting a finger to stop it?

A president who calls Nancy Pelosi “a disgusting degenerate” but never has a bad word to say about murderous dictators like Putin and Kim?

Our friends who think “it can’t happen here” need to understand that it IS happening here.

See, for example:  I Watched It Happen in Hungary.  Now It’s Happening Here.

If you have friends who are fixated, instead, on the problem of “men playing in women sports” (which no one advocates) or (rightly) annoyed by over-wokeness, ask them to watch the clips I shared yesterday, which are arguably more important:

1. This 60-second video of protestors brutally beaten in Trump’s America.

2. This Rachel Maddow segment — no matter how much they may dislike her – because it is profoundly important.

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On the subject of over-wokeness, it’s important to acknowledge, as I think most on our side do, that it went too far.  (E.g., Enough With The Pronouns.)

Yes, they ban books, which is terrible.

But we ban “Baby It’s Cold Outside.” (No: really.)

Behold the absurdity of the over-woke (two minutes).

My friend David sent me that clip with the caption: “ONE reason we lost in 2o24.”

But then he followed it with a cheerful: “And THIS is why America will endure.”  (Two minutes.)

But will it?

As a democracy?

Does the bully in the White House care?  Or the bullies in the Proud Boys or the bullies who beat those protestors?

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Join Indivisible.

Support the opposition.

Spread DIS-disinformation.

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BONUS

John Oliver on RFK, Jr.

It would be funnier if you or a loved one were not at risk of dying — literally — as a result of his incompetence.

 

Note to an old friend who says we Dems predicted all sorts of terrible things that never happened in Trump’s first term — and now we’re just doing it again:

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I have three favors to ask:

1. Just to get you in the mood for the second and third favor, please watch this 60-second video of protestors being beaten.  This is Trump’s America.

2. Watch this Rachel Maddow segment — no matter how much you may dislike her – because I think it is profoundly important.

3. Read What A Soft Coup Looks Like at the end of yesterday’s post.

I’m sure you’ll find things that seem exaggerated or unsubstantiated.  But in the main, THIS IS REALLY WHAT’S HAPPENING.  We have a very short time – and, I would argue, an obligation to the generations who fought and died for democracy and to the generations to come – to prevent it from playing out.  Fascism never ends well.

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Recent headlines:

> Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reposts video of pastors saying women shouldn’t vote

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> Trump Orders State Department to Overlook International Human Rights Abuses

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> Donald Trump Is Mostly a Crypto Billionaire Now, Group Says

(He made an alleged fortune bankrupting businesses — and now a real one as he bankrupts the United States.  Think about it: what does an enterprise need to succeed?  Revenue!  In the case of governments: tax revenue!  Yet Trump has rammed through what he calls the biggest tax cuts in history — and simultaneously crippled the already undermanned agency tasked with collecting it.  Like the CEO of a debt-ridden, money-losing company saying, “I have an idea, fellas!  Let’s charge less for our services and not check to see whether we’re paid!”  Since January 20, our credit rating has been cut and the value of the dollar has fallen more than the stock market has risen . . . but that’s okay — the bulk of Trump’s wealth is on crypto.  And that’s risen sharply.)

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How RFK Jr. Mastered Fake Science—and Screwed Us in the Process

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He has perfected the art of undermining public confidence in vaccines by leaning on a tiny handful of fringe researchers and then sounding “sciencey”—throwing around bits of medical jargon—to give the impression he’s an expert himself.

“This is what upsets me about him the most—and believe me, there are a lot of choices—but what upsets me most about him is that he couches his reasoning in scientific terms,” Paul Offit told me, “when he doesn’t know what he’s talking about at all.”

Offit is one of the most widely respected, widely quoted vaccination experts on the planet. So in order to get a reality check on Kennedy’s rhetoric—and some perspective on his decision to pull mRNA funding—I asked him and a few of his peers to evaluate some of the key claims from last week’s HHS video.

Here’s what they had to say. . . .

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You are welcome to read it all, of course.  But the bottom line is that millions will die — possibly you yourself — because of the decisions he’s made and the research funding he’s cut off.

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Former Trump defense attorney Ty Cobb:

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He is worse than anyone in our history in my experience and opinion. . . .

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In case you don’t agree, take a minute to read it all?

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Join Indivisible.

Support the opposition.

Spread DIS-disinformation.

 

But first . . .

NOOM

Some numbers make sense.  Eat fewer calories than you burn and you’ll lose weight.

> Did you know that two 5-ounce cans of BumbleBee solid white albacore tuna have only 260 calories but 58 grams of protein?  And cost less than $3 bought by the case?  And taste great eaten with pickles?  Having begun with Noom weighing 159 pounds seven weeks ago, I’m 150.8 today.  At this rate, some of you may be pleased to know (hi, Carl!), I will have disappeared entirely by January 27, 2028.

OPRT

Other numbers make no sense — at least not to me.

> Based on Wednesday’s call projecting earnings of “$1.20 to $1.40” per share for the year, OPRT — then $6.30 and thus selling at five times projected earnings — should have risen nicely.  Instead, it’s fallen.  I’d be fascinated to know who’s selling and why.  They may turn out to be right; yet from all I can tell there’s an equally good chance the company not only earns $1.20 this year but grows to double or triple that over the next few years.  For better or worse, I bought more.

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VOTE 16

Long-time readers may recall my rant . . . Why States Should Lower the Voting Age.  Now comes Tuesday’s New York Times: They Are 16 and 17 Years Old, and They Want to Vote. Like, Now.  I think we should let them.

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REVOLT!

The violence at the end of this powerful 90-second clip is unacceptable — and not, I’m pretty sure, what the creators are actually advocating.  But it sure does capture the feeling of rage that is likely to grow as rural hospitals close; young women can’t get abortions; tariff taxes take hold; poor kids and the elderly lose food stamps; deportations shatter neighbors’ lives; billionaires buy larger yachts — the whole deal.  Watch.

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Let’s dispense with the pleasantries.

We are at war.

Not a shooting war.

Not yet.

But something worse in its own quiet, choking way: a technical state of civil war.

The kind of war that makes cowards of rules and turns procedure into shrapnel.

Glass shrapnel, completely in violation of the Geneva conventions.

And in Texas, Greg Abbott is lighting the fuse.

. . .

Half the country still thinks the Democrats are overreacting.

That we’re all just melting down because we lost a few court cases or that we’re mad we can’t get pronouns printed on our napkins.

[But no], we’re reacting because we’re watching the United States be turned inside out by men who believe they should rule forever, or not at all.

. . .

This is not just about maps.

Not just about Abbott.

Not just about Trump.

This is about a Republican Party that has now declared publicly, and repeatedly, that if a Democrat wins the presidency in 2028, they will refuse to certify the election.

Full stop.

That’s not politics.

That’s war‑by‑other‑means. . . .

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