Trump and Republicans promised to give everyday Americans more.
But all they've done in their first 100 days is take, take, take. pic.twitter.com/D4pBd6M9AL
— Katherine Clark (@WhipKClark) May 4, 2025
–> Port of Oakland trucking firm says business is down 60-70%.
–> Port of LA expects 10 container ships this 3-day period. Usually it would have 17.
Truckers "are at the verge of collapsing. The administration needs to move quickly, or it’s going to be chaos."
www.latimes.com/business/sto…— Bill Grueskin (@bgrueskin.bsky.social) May 3, 2025 at 9:17 AM
"Tariffs don’t just reduce the flow of goods coming into the country; they also cause an atrophying of the logistics system that moves products into, out of, and around the United States."
We call them "port complexes" for a reason. @TheAtlantic https://t.co/BarTqQ0KNw
— Juliette Kayyem (@juliettekayyem) May 3, 2025
The Trump family stablecoin surged to 7th largest in the world because of a shady crypto deal with the United Arab Emirates—a foreign government that will give them a crazy amount of money.
The Senate shouldn’t pass a crypto bill this week to facilitate this kind of corruption. pic.twitter.com/4is9KgpXQb
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) May 4, 2025
excellent work all you "constitutional conservatives"
www.nbcnews.com/politics/tru…— Cake or Death (@johngcole.bsky.social) May 4, 2025 at 6:07 PM
It’s that simple, to the simple-minded.
— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec.bsky.social) May 4, 2025 at 1:22 PM
No one will ever be able to convince Trump that trade isn’t a zero-sum game where the seller wins and the buyer loses (unless he stiffs the seller).
— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec.bsky.social) May 4, 2025 at 1:24 PM
I mean or he has dementia. Has anyone not taken care of your crazy conservative grandpa who becomes completely incapable of handling criticism as their brain turns to mush?
— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) May 4, 2025 at 8:45 PM
Nothing is a distraction from anything. It's all a big ball of crazy-bad.
— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec.bsky.social) May 3, 2025 at 7:55 PM
On The Road – Albatrossity – Arizona finale
ColoradoGuy
Part Kim Jong Un, part Herbert Hoover, and all crazy.
Baud
Don’t tariff me, bro.
Baud
Just wait till the people find out that we import bread and circuses from China.
Lapassionara
Someone should print out the oath Trump took in big letters, hold it in front of him, and ask him what it says. I’m not sure the guy can read.
Balconesfault
While in the short run they’d rather deal with a rational actor … In the long run the Trump Administration will be the greatest gift America could have given the Chinese
Baud
@Balconesfault:
We’ve replaced the trade deficit with the competency deficit.*
* Pretty sure Trump’s policies haven’t ended the trade deficit.
Lapassionara
@ColoradoGuy: I just read the 25th amendment, and it is virtually impossible to implement the provision that applies to a president who is unable to discharge his duties. Especially since Trump’s cabinet members have been chosen for their sycophancy instead of their ability. But his brain is going, and fast.
Tony Jay
A surprising but quite interesting factoid I was exposed to recently says that, from the Romans onwards, when East/West trade routes were properly stabilised and the hunger for eastern products got going, the only time ‘The West’ didn’t have a colossal balance-of-trade imbalance with ‘The East’ was during that brief period when China’s trendy opium addiction skyrocketed and the East India Company took over the Mogul Empire’s monopoly over opium production. Chinese demand was so high (and entrenched, since some bright spark in Java discovered a astonishingly addictive method of smoking the stuff) that opium sales alone reversed the millennia long drain of western currency into Chinese and Indian pockets.
I did not know that. That is interesting.
no body no name
@Tony Jay:
Don’t give them any ideas.
MagdaInBlack
Raw Story just showed me his truth social post saying that he is going to tariff movies not made in the U.S.
Geminid
@Lapassionara: Early last year Politico Magazine published a long profile of Trump campaign manager Susan Wiles. She’s Trump’s chief of staff now. Fun fact: Wiles served as Ronald Reagan’s chief of staff after he left the White House. So Wiles has experience with handling someone sinking into dementia.
Baud
@MagdaInBlack:
His job is to produce content for the media.
no body no name
@MagdaInBlack:
He’s convinced he can reorder the world in his image.
Aussie Sheila
@Baud:
Heh!!
MagdaInBlack
@Baud: One job well done.
Tony Jay
@no body no name:
Ha! It did occur to me. I’m sure Scheißefuhrer Miller is throbbing at the base to release a policy outline for some kind of E-Opium War (ScheißeMarshalls Thiel, Zuckerberg and Musk have devised a plan for it so incredibly devious that only their e-enhanced avatars dwelling out there in the Crystal Wind truly understand its complexity) he’s just not found a way to sell it to Prez Pustule in a way mush-mind can grasp as a win for him.
Baud
@Tony Jay:
“Everything’s computer.”
Sure Lurkalot
@Geminid:
Add in a psychopathic, malignant narcissist who needs to harm others to validate his existence and pathological upbringing. Trump’s a barely walking, barely talking suitcase of maladies.
Princess
There are things he says and does that exhibit cognitive decline, for sure. But he isn’t in full-blown dementia yet, and this tariff stuff is all him. He’s believed this about tariffs for years — has been urging them for years — and has always believed he’s the smartest person in any room he’s in. He’s trying to reinvent mercantilism which is a terrible idea, but it is a thing. He thinks the US can be like China before it got hooked on opium or as it is now — a huge market and producer of its own stuff and a source for the world. Because we all want to watch Christian movies filmed in Peoria or something I guess. But China had and has that position and he wants to be like China.
Soprano2
@Geminid: I’ll tell you this from my experience – it’s fruitless to argue with someone who has dementia. You have to live in their reality. There’s no reason to correct the wrong things they say, because they won’t remember it. If you’ve dealt with one person with dementia, you’ve dealt with one person with dementia. Her experience could help her but it won’t help us. Reagan had family who cared about him, which is one big difference.
That argument he had with the reporter about the tattoos could definitely be a sign of dementia.
Baud
@Princess:
Except for the trains!
Geminid
@Soprano2: I don’t expect Susan Wiles to help us either. Her long-term loyalties lie with the Republican Party.
Suzanne
@Princess: Yeah, I don’t think he has dementia. I think he’s really fucken dumb and delulu. He’s declined cognitively, but he’s never been smart.
As you note, he’s been hung up on tariffs for decades and new information cannot change his mind. Unfortunately, that lack of ability to adapt to new information is a thing for a lot of people. (Which is why I would prefer being governed by elites to “the common man”.)
Hildebrand
If Trump is so convinced that his tariff knavery will bring back American manufacturing, where are all the corporations rolling out announcements about new factories?
What’s that? Biden had us on that path and Trump stopped every bit of progress cold?
I mean, who could’ve guessed that Trump’s basic understanding of economics was worse than a toddler’s?
Baud
@Hildebrand:
Biden had us on a lot of good paths, but the voters stopped every bit of progress cold.
Betty Cracker
From the Wall Street Journal:
Emphasis mine. Aid groups say they won’t take part in this plan and that the threat that Hamas will co-opt the distribution is overblown. I don’t know what the facts on the ground are, but why are private U.S. security contractors involved? Seems like this could go sideways quickly.
Hildebrand
@Baud: True.
With a big assist from too many in the media who seemingly longed for the chaos of a second Trump administration because it would be good for their bottom line.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I assume private contractors sell their services to whoever pays.
Hamas really is awful, but that doesn’t make Netanyahu trustworthy.
schrodingers_cat
Orangina wants to be Queen Vicky at the height of the British Empire.
His economic policy is mercantilism.
lowtechcyclist
@MagdaInBlack:
At first I read ‘tariff’ as an adjective – there are movies about tariffs, and Hair Furor is going to go see them? Well of course they wouldn’t be made in the U.S.!
Then after a second or two, I read it properly, but the alternative version was interesting!
Dorothy A. Winsor
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Right, but it seems significant that an Israeli war plan specifies U.S. contractors. Seems likely that Israel has private security contractors of its own.
Gvg
@Betty Cracker: Israel is causing the need for aid groups, which causes support for Hamas to grow in reaction. Hamas started this war, cynically with no plan or way to win, knowing Israel would react in this way, and knowing the result would be an increase in their power over the population in their small pond (IMO). The PM was looking the other way and allowing Hamas to grow a little, keeping more peaceful rivals to them suppressed, because they knew the extremist Hamas caused Israeli voters to be more hardline and vote for his party coalition-thats what I understand the investigation afterwards and the Israeli public think.
Hamas does tend to be the only source of services in occupied areas of Palestine. That has a lot to do with Israel having been suppressing good government there, and Hamas not allowing rivals, from my understanding. I am not that deeply into it though. Things are so screwed up, it’s too late to worry about that. Get food to the people anyway that we can improve later.
I think it is contemptible that Hamas started this war, knowing the cost to their own people would be. They should be on trial right beside the Israeli criminals.
NotMax
@Dorothy A. Winsor
Prime real estate, don’tcha know. //
Welcome to the Hotel California
Such a lovely place (Such a lovely place)
Such a lovely face
Plenty of room at the Hotel California
Any time of year (Any time of year)
You can find it here
.
Librettist
He’s old, in poor health, with dementia and some other co-morbidities.
They presented his state funeral planning to him as a birthday parade.
TS
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Guess there is one business growing in the US – where they are already the largest in the world – the prison business
Tony Jay
@Betty Cracker:
Based on who is involved and their level of shameless depravity, I’d assume –
A) A deal has been made for American backing and roles assigned to the private mercenary armies already earmarked for similar operations on the US mainland. Got to get that training in somewhere.
B) Using private foreign armies to carry out these ‘special operations’ provides a legal argument that they are outside Israeli civil and military jurisdiction. It would be bullshit, but adds an extra layer of corporate law protection for the criminals responsible.
C) It’s an in-your-face insult to democratic accountability and basic human rights. They all love that shit.
Librettist
@NotMax:
Plan B for the big beautiful El Salvador gulags. No one in the White House believes monies will be forthcoming or that he’ll live to see it. They just want to shut him up about it.
PAM Dirac
It doesn’t surprise me at all that he thinks this way. He has never been associated with a business that tries to deliver value for the customer’s money, it has all been scams and grifts. Of course he is so narcissistic that I don’t think he is capable of thinking of value for others and so dumb that he couldn’t pull it off even if he could think of others.
PAM Dirac
@Hildebrand:
I think that is part of it but I also think a big part is the press doesn’t want to admit what fools they have been. In the Emperor’s New Clothes the emperor comes off as a fool, but so does the ministers and advisers that couldn’t see what a little kid could see.
Librettist
They have him chew on crap like Alcatraz, or planning Air Force One.
Here are your interior color swatches Mr. President… no Mr. President, Boeing hasn’t got back to us yet about your brilliant idea for solid gold toliets…
schrodingers_cat
@Hildebrand: Our elite media has shown us time and again that at the very least racism and bigotry are not deal breakers for them. Its not just about the economics or the bottom line
The constant harping about economics by many a white person on our side makes me wonder if they are okay with the dehumanization of minorities? Because that is the core principle of the Republicanism and they seldom say anything about it at all. Its always billionaire this and capitalism that.
NotMax
@TS
Strictly for mirth, a peek at an Aussie jail.
:)
Betty Cracker
@Tony Jay: If I were a betting woman,* I’d wager a tidy sum Erik Prince is involved.
*I am in fact a betting woman — won $5 at a Kentucky Derby party this weekend!
Librettist
Whoever is stage managing him knows damn well he will wander down to the press room if his OTP Laura Loomer is there.
Even the co-conspirators in the WH press corpse would recoil at that scene.
Lapassionara
@Betty Cracker: That’s who i thought of too. Great minds, and all that.
cmorenc
@Suzanne:
People who think they know everything can’t learn or be taught anything. People who think they are smarter than anyone else usually lack wisdom, in part because they lack humility and don’t respect the intelligence of others who don’t necessarily think the same as they do about things.
lowtechcyclist
@Betty Cracker:
I’ll have you know I have a lifetime winning record of betting on the races!
One visit to Saratoga ~45 years ago, made a few bets, came out ahead for the day by a whopping five or ten bucks. Haven’t bet on horses before or since.
Geminid
@schrodingers_cat: You asked yesterday if anyone was keeping up with tensions between India and Pakistan. I’ve been following the story through Ankara-based Clash Report. That’s a fairly reliable aggegator of Ukraine and Middle East news, and they post about developments in the India-Pakistan conflict several times a day. They probably have a pro-Pakistan bias.
Baud
@cmorenc:
Can confirm. I haven’t learned a thing in years.
NotMax
@PAM Dirac
“You get a tariff and you get a tariff and you get a tariff.”
;)
Salty Sam
Any time I see “private security contractors”, my mind instantly shouts “BLACKWATER”, even though that entity has been shut down for years.
Betty Cracker
@lowtechcyclist: Good strategy!
I make small wagers with family occasionally on football games and such, but that’s about the extent of my gambling habit. I went to the Kentucky Derby in person ages ago and lost about $10.
Once I won a large amount at a slot machine on a cruise ship. I don’t normally do cruise ships or casinos, but my in-laws paid for a cruise for themselves and all their kids and spouses.
My MIL loves casinos, so I went with her and got $10 of quarters to play the slots. I won enough to cover the substantial bar tab Bill and I racked up over the course of the 5-day cruise.
lowtechcyclist
Somebody on BlueSky brilliantly recast that Trump quote as an argument for gun control.
Trump: “We were losing hundreds of billions of dollars with China. Now we’re essentially not doing business with China. Therefore, we’re saving hundreds of billions of dollars. It’s very simple.”
qm61 on BlueSky: “We were losing hundreds of thousands of lives with Guns. Now we’re essentially not doing business with Guns. Therefore, we’re saving hundreds of thousands of lives. It’s very simple.”
Soprano2
@Geminid: I guess my argument is that she won’t be able to talk him out of the things he is obsessed with, and she doesn’t have family to help her like she did with Reagan. If he truly does have dementia we’re in a world of hurt. If she’s interested in the future of the Republican Party, FFOTUS is probably going to do a lot of damage to that and she won’t be able to stop it because he’s the president!
I listened to the show where Bill Maher talked about having dinner with FFOTUS at the White House. He said he was not at all like his public persona, that he was funny and charming. He got a lot of blowback for that, but it occurs to me that Maher could have experienced what caretakers call “Hollywooding” or “showtime”, which is where people with dementia “turn it on” for a stranger or other family member, so much so that they don’t believe the person has a problem. One person in my FB group said the only way he was able to convince his wife’s family that she had a problem was to send her on a weekend outing with them by herself. When they came back, they told him “Now we understand what you’re talking about”.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I suppose if one of them gets killed, it could be a way to draw the U.S. military into Operation Trump Hotel Gaza.
Soprano2
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I read that, it’s insane. It’s part of a national park, plus bringing it up to modern technological standards would be insanely expensive. I suspect they’ll just ignore that.
karen gail
@Salty Sam: My thoughts go to Blackwater as well, I heard they didn’t really shut down just changed name and got new person in charge without need to brag about “his private security company.”
Betty Cracker
@Baud: I had that same thought when I read about it.
The Audacity of Krope
@Soprano2: MAGA doesn’t actually mean anything about improving life in the US. He wants to reinvigorate all the symbols of American greatness, as viewed through the eyes of someone who learned about “America” 75 years ago through a picture book designed for toddlers.
Suzanne
@Soprano2: If they ever wanted to actually use Alcatraz as a prison, the building is itself unusable. Scrape it and start over.
Other than houses, buildings are much more technologically advanced than they were even 20-30 years ago. That means they’re more difficult to convert from use to use. There are cool adaptive reuse projects, out there, but almost always from a “more sophisticated/technically intensive” use type to a “less sophisticated” use type.
Kayla Rudbek
@Salty Sam: I thought that Blackwater had just rebranded itself and is still in business now
NotMax
@karen gail
Blackwater became Xe became Academi became Constellis.
Harrison Wesley
@Betty Cracker: It’s easier for US contractors to steal it and resell it to those countries that USA has cut off assistance to. You don’t actually believe there’s any intention of helping Palestinians, do you?
zhena gogolia
@Baud: He stuttered for a few minutes in a debate. Didn’t you notice?
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊 😊 😊
The Audacity of Krope
Apparently “Ye” was taken…
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
karen gail
@NotMax: So is Eric Prince still involved? I know he was when it became Xe.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
I’m grateful we don’t have to be embarrassed by our president anymore.
karen gail
@NotMax: So is Eric Prince still involved with them? Or has he created a new company?
Tony Jay
@Betty Cracker:
Oh aye. Prince, or one of the other Lords of War who allowed him to blaze a trail and draw the attention while they made notes. The end of the Roman Republic was likewise prefigured by the rise of rich men with private armies and no one to tell them “FAFO”.
The Audacity of Krope
The stuttering provided the form people were looking for to justify the notion he was old and confused, while too few are even able to judge the substance of what was being said.
NotMax
@The Audacity of Krope
Can’t tell the players without a
programpogrom.//
Jeffro
just unbelievable levels of corruption, all out in the open, all enabled by MAGAt electeds and voters alike
(gift link)
a White House completely for sale (w/ bribes payable in untraceable crypto, too)
*and by “role”, we mean, “facility bought and operated for the express purpose of bribing the trump family”
fucking BARF
Tony Jay
@Baud:
Uh huh. Send a few expendables out on a joyride. Drop a quick tip to that number Bibi gave you. Bish, bash, bosh, you’ve got Hostage Crisis II – Hotelier Boogaloo.
“Today on President Donald Trump’s decisive order, US forces obliterated 21 million enemies of the state. By my count that’s over 500 billion American lives Donald Trump just saved. Oh, what a morning in America!”
“That’s great, Pam. Now just say it straight into the camera and try not to laugh.”
karen gail
@Dorothy A. Winsor: My first thought when read this and who he wants to put in prison there: “Oh, he wants his own personal prison.”
prostratedragon
@NotMax: He’s got the obnoxious down pat. Couldn’t finish it.
New Deal democrat
From U. Michigan Econ Professor Justin Wolfers:
https://bsky.app/profile/justinwolfers.bsky.social/post/3lof7kcmlss25
“If Trump is serious about tariffs on movies, it’s a very dangerous escalation. Tariffs have not traditionally been applied to services, and the United States is a massive net exporter of services. We would be extremely vulnerable to any service-based retaliation.”
Remember that the premise of a President being allowed to impose tariffs is in case of national emergency. So now that he has learned to press the “tariffs” button, he just willy-nilly with no fact finding whatsoever, on a whim completely disrupts a massively profitable U.S. industry.
The only way this can stand is if the courts decide not just to be deferential, but as a matter of law to apply no scrutiny whatsoever.
Pretty much a textbook description of utter lawlessness.
Soprano2
@Suzanne: It’s so crazy, it’s like he’s living in the 1950’s or 1960’s and thinks that’s the toughest prison in the world. I wonder if he was watching a movie and got the idea? It’s like he doesn’t know we have supermax prisons.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@New Deal democrat:
He’s probably had a staffer make up an old Staples “Easy” button, relabeled it “Tariffs”, and put on the desk in the Oval office.
RaflW
So is anyone in the Democratic establishment paying to run ads showing parked trucks, desperate drivers & dockworkers and Trump saying “Girls only need two dolls. Five pencils not 250 pencils”…
He’s handing so much ammunition out. Use it!
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: There was an American private contractor involved in the Gaza ceasefire that lasted from late January until late March. Their role was checking vehicles returning to northern Gaza for weapons. This was only for a few days about a week into the ceasefire, and I don’t they’ve had presence inside Gaza since.
They’re probably still under contract and presumably would be used if this Israeli scheme is ever implemented. But unlike the first time, when Hamas specifically agreed to their presence, this time the contractors wil likely be under fire unless and until there’s another ceasefire.
This Israeli plan seems half-baked, like something to show Trump’s people instead of a practical plan of action.
Soprano2
@Jeffro: I think this is one of the consequences of the idea that “all politicians are corrupt” and “they all do it”. Even if people knew about this (I suspect most don’t), I think many of them would shrug and say something like “They’re all corrupt, what can you expect from them?’. I don’t think people believe corruption is the big deal it used to be, and this is why. If everyone is corrupt, then no one is corrupt because now that’s just the way business is done.
NotMax
FYI in-depth watch.
US Port Update – May 4, 2025 | Trade Wars: Port of Los Angeles Says Imports Are Dropping.
Baud
@RaflW:
I don’t think it’s useful until people start seeing shortages in their stores.
We know from experience people don’t believe our warnings, and in fact many people become locked in into opposing us rather than admit we’re right. The horse needs to drink the water on its own.
RaflW
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: His declaration that foreign movies are “a national security threat” should be sufficient grounds to nix all that shit in court.
Producing movies in Toronto or Vancouver rather than Austin or L.A. is just not a fucking national security issue. AT ALL. And the transparent use of such bullshit should punch a hole in his similar abuse of this claim for other tariffs.
Baud
@Soprano2:
Agree.
raven
@Betty Cracker: I was at the NC State School of Sports Management at Oglebay Park in Wheeling, WVA . We went to the dog track and were taking turns getting brews and putting down bets. It was my turn so I went to the concession stand and betting window. I came back to the group and they were going ape shit because the trifecta came in. We looked at the stub and I had reversed the numbers and we won zipola! The next day at classes someone wrote on the chalkboard “ask him about the trifecta”!!!!
The Audacity of Krope
Fact finding is at the core of wokeness. It must be eradicated from society and we will do so by wholly destroying any institution where it may or may not hold sway, seeing as how studying the matter would just feed the problem…
catclub
so the fentanyl is just revenge.
Soprano2
@New Deal democrat: I can’t see any way that movies being made in other countries could be a national security problem. I think he’s learned to push that button like a conditioned mouse, because it gets him whatever he wants.
karen gail
If humans don’t manage to go extinct or bomb ourselves back to stone age I believe that history will record DJTrump as the most corrupt president ever and he will have a place in history much like Hitler, Stalin, Caligula and Nero.
karen gail
If humans don’t manage to go extinct or bomb ourselves back to stone age I believe that history will record DJTrump as the most corrupt president ever and he will have a place in history much like Hitler, Stalin, Caligula and Nero.
RaflW
@Baud: I can see that. But I hope the stage is being set, and that outreach to both teamsters and the thousands of independent owner/operators of rigs is getting under way. They know.
Miss Bianca
@Tony Jay: I just read a novel called The Sea of Poppies, which has as its principal plot point the heating up of the Opium Wars. Interesting, and it’s apparently part of a trilogy, so I may just end up finding out more about the Opium Wars than I ever thought I needed to know!
Soprano2
@Baud: I agree. I’ve been telling people I feel like Cassandra, because I’ve told a few people there are going to be bad shortages and they look at me like I’m crazy. I quit talking about it, because I realized people will have to experience it to believe it. I’m having lunch with some financial advisors today, I sure hope at least they are aware of this.
raven
Why not reopen this? “The Angel Island Immigration Station, on the northeast corner of the island, which has been designated a National Historic Landmark, is where officials detained, inspected, and examined approximately one million immigrants, who primarily came from Asia.”
The Audacity of Krope
The US invented fentanyl and allowed China to manufacture it for them.
Trump is going back on decades of trade policy designed to advantage the elite of the US and China over their workers and is furiously replacing it with policy to only benefit the US elite if they are loyal to him.
satby
@zhena gogolia: @Baud: Come sit by me and my companion “deeply bitter”.
zhena gogolia
@satby: I love the people lecturing us about how angry young people are. They have no idea what “angry” means.
Ramona
Wow! Thanks for this piece of information. Might you still remember the possible places you may have encountered this nugget of knowledge even if it were not a primary source. I would love to do some digging to promote it from ‘factoid’ to fact.
catclub
@Baud:
unlike the expert who knows more and more about less and less. I know less and less about more and more.
Ramona
Wow! Thanks for this piece of information. Might you still remember the possible places you may have encountered this nugget of knowledge even if it were not a primary source. I would love to do some digging to promote it from ‘factoid’ to fact
@Tony Jay:
karen gail
@Miss Bianca: I thought I read somewhere that the British Empire was heavily involved in Opium wars and while opium was a “small” problem in China it became worse as Europeans became involved. The involvement of Europeans was one of the main drivers of China’s isolationism.
satby
@Geminid: It was quickly buried in all the other chaos, but Erik Prince has been involved for some time in both Gaza and the El Salvador planning. CNN report from March of this year
Princess
@New Deal democrat: Eg. I believe the US sells way more sevices to Canada than Canada sells to the US.
Melancholy Jaques
Did anyone really believe that? Republicans haven’t given everyday Americans more since – I don’t know, forever?
Princess
@Soprano2: Apparently Escape from Alcatraz was on television in Palm Beach the night before the Alcatraz executive order.
catclub
Yes.
No, Not yet, much lower death toll.
Betty Cracker
@Geminid: Good to know — thanks!
@raven: Woof, that hurts! ;-)
@Soprano2: “like a conditioned mouse” is a good way to put it.
satby
@zhena gogolia: 😂 so true. Plus, they confuse “anecdata” for “facts”.
Tony Jay
@catclub:
On a meta level, pretty much. It’s the demand that moves the product.
‘Funny’ thing is, the whole Opium Wars thing looks to have been one of those cosmic coincidences that bad men pray for. The Chinese liked their opium, you could even call it the fashionable drug of choice, but they drank or ate it. It just so happened that the strength and addictiveness of the drug skyrocketed because of the switch to smoking it just as the East India Company took over Bengal (and it’s opium producing monopoly) from the Moghuls just as the EIC was looking for a product they could sell on the Chinese market to make up for the fortunes they were spending buying Chinese tea.
Then someone said, hey, how about ramping up opium sales, and the rest came naturally.
JCJ
@Soprano2: I vaguely remember there was a movie called Escape From Alcatraz. Never saw it. I remember Alcatraz was always a name used for a scary prison.
catclub
@Melancholy Jaques: Trump is the greatest exponent of his own theory: “If you tell people something, they will believe you.”
Trump decided to tell people that Kamala Harris was stupid. And It worked well enough — because enough of those people believed it.
zhena gogolia
@catclub: They didn’t believe it.
Betty Cracker
@catclub: So far, but if you factor in all the deaths that have already occurred and that are likely to occur in the future due to the abrupt dismantling of USAID and programs that kept people with HIV alive, prevented malaria, stopped the spread of tuberculosis, etc., the body count approaches Pol Pot scale. And we’re only 100 days in.
Miss Bianca
@karen gail: yep, the book covers the involvement of the British in India, forcing the local peasantry to grow opium poppies to the detriment of their ability to grow anything else to feed themselves with. And then presenting the push to force China into buying it as their Christian duty to Commerce. Sound familiar?
RevRick
@Princess: @Suzanne: @Hildebrand:
Since I am not a doctor, let alone trained in diagnosing conditions of the brain, I will not assert that he has dementia. That’s way out of my wheelhouse, and as a pastor I saw it a lot over forty years. But having grown up in the NYC metropolitan area, I have been aware of Trump since the’70s, and one thing has always been clear about him. He’s a shitty person.
For one, he embodies white supremacy. Time and time again, he has said degrading things about Black people, the Central Park Five and birtherism the most glaring examples.
Second, he embodies misogyny. The way he treats women screams that he only sees them as playthings. Women who stand up to him are always labeled “nasty.”
Third, he embodies narcissism and megalomania. He claims that everything he does is “perfect”, “genius”, “the best.” And so, when he gets some notion in his head, no matter how cockamamie, he will never let go of it. He believed tariffs would put Japan in its place in the 1970s, and he believes that tariffs will put China ( and the world) in its place today. The result is that his narcissism and megalomania make him stupid.
Fourth, he embodies the bully. He learned from military school and Roy Cohn that bullying “works.” It gets him the results he wants. Those around him fear him. And that inflates his ego.
All these things together make Trump the loathsome man he is. And he attracts to himself all those who want their loathsome desires to be blessed. Of course, he mistakes their adulation for “love.” But that’s something he will never know or understand, because, by definition, love requires a giving of one’s self. And of that, he’s incapable.
Harrison Wesley
@Melancholy Jaques: Give us more what? Grief? Shit sandwiches? Trump merch?
satby
@Betty Cracker: …the body count approaches Pol Pot scale.
And you didn’t even include the US based body count from the active science denialism that killed approx. 200k more than might otherwise have died from COVID, or the increased deaths from measles and other childhood diseases now increasing, cancelled cancer and other medical research trials, soon to be cancelled Medicaid coverage…
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: Yep. And we also get lectures by frontpagers that commenters who have no qualms about using the likes of people like me as their kindling for their glorious revolution are owed grace and good manners. No such demands are made from the commenters who are “valued”.
My rage is now ice-cold not white hot.
New Deal democrat
@Soprano2: The downturn in arriving container ships has already hit the West Coast ports. This is the week it should start showing up in trucking and rail shipments.
Per the Port of LA chief, retailers on average have 5-7 weeks of inventory, so the shortages on store shelves probably won’t show up in any significance until some time in June:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aetILfTwBN0
Soprano2
@Princess: That probably explains it!
Suzanne
@Soprano2: LOL, that’s probably true. “I saw it in a movie when I was a kid, and nothing ever changes!”
I have to say, I see similar behavior in some of my family members. They learned something in school once and therefore it’s true forever.
Suzanne
@RevRick:
Agree. I grew up on Long Island, and I remember seeing him on the evening news, and my grandparents would tsk tsk at his terribleness/grossness. I didn’t think anyone would ever want that trash heap to be the president, but one of the things that I have learned as I have gotten older is how much people hate each other, and how that hatred overrides everything I thought they valued. I also learned about “lies we tell ourselves”.
karen gail
@Miss Bianca: I have all these stray bits of information from years and years of reading everything I could get my hands on; in high school I started with the A’s and finished with the Z’s before my junior year at both school library and local town library. The librarian at local town library would get me books for local college to read. It was and is a habit and probably addiction; so have bits and pieces of all this stuff that floats to top of memory at times.
lowtechcyclist
@Jeffro:
I’m guessing that one thing this story (and any similar stories) skips past is that bribery is the only crime other than treason specifically mentioned by the Constitution as an impeachable offense.
TS
@NotMax:
And he apparently congratulated the new Australian Prime Minister & the next thing is tariffs on films made in Australia. Guess no-one should remind him that we exist.
RevRick
@Suzanne: It is noteworthy that those best acquainted with him, the people of NY, NJ, and CT, have always rejected him.
WTFGhost
@New Deal democrat: True, but Trump admitting he doesn’t know if he has to uphold the Constitution tells us he’s utterly lawless as well. Scooping up people with no due process, and sending them off to a foreign land chosen for aiding and abetting kidnapping and false imprisonment also establishes lawlessness.
@Baud: Dude… too soon. (Too soon after he just embarrassed us. AGAIN. I don’t know what he did, but we both know he did something, right?)
@karen gail: Good question: which would be worse, him, or Musk, attracted by the first letter of Xe? I think you could debate the point.
@Kayla Rudbek: They were going to name it “Pipehitters” but someone finally pointed out what kind of pipe they were talking about in Pulp Fiction. It turns out it wasn’t a peaceful pipe full of a good, relaxing tobacco blend ,but of a different substance. Who could have guessed?
@The Audacity of Krope: You’re giving him too much credit for having used educational materials. He learned via right wing talk shows. They’re much simpler, and don’t have any big words like “Constitutional Republic,” in them.
@cmorenc: It’s actually funny – a lot of young folks have to unlearn what I call “smart person syndrome”. A smart person makes a lot of good guesses. A truly inquisitive smart person learns not to trust guesses, especially guesses that would possible violate the wishful thinking rule.
(NEVER fall for wishful thinking – let the evidence tear the null hypothesis from your clutching fingers.)
But a lot of people learn the wrong rule – to think they’re smarter than they are. Writers – and I am a writer – are especially vulnerable to this, since they learn to explain things that they might not quite understand. Good writers say “I barely understood this, and had the scientist check for errors.” Bad writers say “I understood this totally, and didn’t make any mistakes! I’m a JEANIUS!”
You’re not wrong – people who think they know everything are very hard to teach anything to, but, the worst are those who’ve been right often enough… or, who’ve been surrounded by yes-men all their lives.
(Actually, the yes-men trained are even worse. A smart person would say “if disinfectants could cure covid, these doctors would say so, I better keep my fool mouth shut here,” and a yes-man trained person says “let’s try that in the lungs, almost like a cleaning!”)
lowtechcyclist
@RaflW:
“It’s a foreign film. From Canada!” – SP:BL&U
TB Hill
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@RevRick:
That’s probably the most succinct summary of Hair Furor around. Okay, it’s not Fran Lebowitz and her “You do not know anyone as stupid as Donald Trump” but it’ll do.
Another great one from her:
from this Oct 23 interview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKVvZDEk1eo
Skip to the last segment where she talks only about the Orange Fart Cloud.
What’s depressing is that she talks about how she kept telling everybody there was no way he was gonna win in 2016 and she’s asked that again and her response: “I really don’t think so”.
She makes a reference to a friend telling her she could be wrong back in 2016 because she (Lebowitz) never watched reality TV. It’s fascinating.
jonas
This famous primer on why Brits hate Trump gets to the nub of the matter. Best part:
“Even his flaws have flaws…” Epic.
Ramona
I found this https://constitutionaldefense.us/ through Blue sky.
I am still trying to process what it says. It is a project to develop through community a plan for taking our politics in a positive direction.
I’d welcome the BJ community’s thoughts on this.
WTFGhost
@Lapassionara: “It says I’m President.”
@Balconesfault: Don’t be so shy; he’s also the world’s best gift to Iran, Russia, and North Korea as well.
@Lapassionara: It’s not impossible, but it is practically impossible if the President isn’t sniffing at crotches and baying at the moon, and even then, if he’s not dragging down the poll numbers, they’ll wear athletic cups and hold meetings indoors.
schrodingers_cat
@satby: They are also consider themselves spokespeople for the youth and the poor when they are neither.
CaseyL
@Soprano2:
There is a difference, which I point out every chance I get:
1. Democratic corruption, where the politician gets pay-offs but ALSO votes for policies that benefit the voters back home
2. Trump/GOP style corruption, where the pols get the payoff and the voters back home get nothing
There was a Democratic NJ Senator, Torricelli, who was practically a poster child for corrupt pols. He skimmed his own staff’s salaries, for pity’s sake! But, and this is an important but, he was also an effective Senator for the people who voted him into office. (He dropped out of a re-election race when – and this is funny, honestly it is – his GOP opponent made a big thing out of Torricelli’s campaign finance illegalities.)
Yes, politicians are corrupt. But there are degrees of corruption, and in this case the distinction is between a pol who is focused entirely and exclusively on their own advancement, and a pol who will take payoffs but still deliver for their voters.
prostratedragon
@satby:
Really feeling that, just like warmth.
Matt
@Gvg:
Yeah, those 15000+ dead under-5s are equally culpable here. They should have been organizing their nurseries and preschools against Hamas.
Do you ever even listen to yourself? At least the “genocide is good actually” people are honest; this is just the most cowardly victim-blaming ever
WTFGhost
@Ramona: I will say one thing: Democrats need to talk about the Constitution more. If you talk about X more, people think you care about X more, even if you wipe your butt with X, and X != toilet-paper/etc.. People think Republicans care about the Constitution, patriotism, and economics because they say those words a lot.
No, I am not kidding. George W. got huge props for being religious when he never showed any real meaningful amount of religion – he, like Trump, was just an evangelical suck-up, and if “Evangelicals” weren’t just another word for “Republicans” they’d be really offended by it.
If you say it, people think you care. We should say it more.
schrodingers_cat
@CaseyL: Also there is a tendency for people to label any policy they don’t like as corruption. I have seen that here and also in India.
Infact BJP’s return to power was facilitated by a grassroots org which was called India Against Corruption which actual turned out to be a front organization of the RSS. Most of its leaders have now shed their anti-corruption skin to reveal the inner RWNJ underneath.
satby
@CaseyL: And there are politicians who are not corrupt; also one political party doesn’t use the party’s governmental power to try to shield corrupt members from the legal consequences if they’re caught. And those are important distinctions that get lost in the “all politicians are corrupt” statements.
Baud
Meme
karen gail
Trump’s death toll; it has to include all the people killed by unexploded ordnance that US has left behind in “war” zones. People are still dying from landmines in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia; Trump stopped the flow of money and manpower to help remove munitions left behind. The flow of money also stopped for the long-term effects from Agent Orange.
Suzanne
@CaseyL: I’ll agree with you….. but it’s also so damaging when one of ours is corrupt. We lose credibility to talk about corruption being bad when we engage in it, too, even if the end result is not as bad. And it contributes to a perception that everyone in government is bad to some degree or another, which leads to disillusionment and tuning out. We have a challenge that the GOP doesn’t, which is that part of the Dem value proposition is that government should be a positive good and that we run it well. So when we undermine that value proposition, even if the GOP would never even try to do the right thing, it hurts us more than it hurts them,
This is why I object to the “only Democrats have agency” framing. It’s not that only Democrats have agency, but we only have influence on the people on our own side.
Betty Cracker
@satby: Agree. I think the way he has fucked with NIH is a crime against humanity all by itself.
Baud
@Suzanne:
We have corrupt people. But we’re subjected to collective responsibility where the Republicans aren’t. People who do that are engaging in bias against us, and helping Republicans.
I also consider this an evil in aid of Republicans. The rational decision in a world where you only have influence over Democrats is to prioritize electing as many Democrats as possible to increase your influence. The reality is the opposite. People who focus on Dems aren’t are biggest cheerleaders. One has to wonder whether they are operating in good faith.
Gloria DryGarden
@Suzanne: oh cool, a real estate development project. His specialty
Nukular Biskits
Good mornin’, y’all.
Getting old sucks. Somehow, despite doing almost nothing yesterday around the house, I managed to pull a muscle (?), making it it difficult to walk.
WTF?
Suzanne
@Baud: Agree. Again, this is one of those places where the playing field is inherently not level. We say that we’re going to make government work and be fair and operate in scrupulous fashion. But the GOP doesn’t make that proposition. Their voters don’t want government to work well or for society to be more fair, or to be more scrupulous in their dealings. We are held to higher standards.
You saw something similar with Obama, knowing that he could never have even a vague hint of political scandal around himself. He held himself to much higher standards than many of the GOP.
Baud
Via reddit. I can’t vouch for the author.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Re-opening Alcatraz is also a recurring trope in the lot of low budget movies.
Government policy based on what movie the President just watch, and the Right wonders why we consider them retards.
Suzanne
@Gloria DryGarden: The thing is….. no one today would ever put a supermax prison in the middle of the Bay Area. That’s some valuable real estate!
Some tacky gold schlong building with an overpriced corporate steakhouse on the first floor and “penthouses” on the levels above to be used for Russian money laundering….. that’s what he would build.
Baud
@Suzanne:
Well, they kind of do. We know they’re lying, but they do talk about government working better, within the lanes that the Republicans think are appropriate.
Suzanne
@Baud: They largely talk about making it smaller, cheaper, less responsive. It’s so much easier to destroy things than to build things. As we have seen in these last 100 or so days.
Baud
@Baud:
Are = our
lou
@karen gail:
The fantasy novel Babel by RF Kuang has the opium trade wars as a subplot. I highly recommend. It’s set in a “magical” alternate universe but the history is parallel to our own. It’s a little bit like Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell.
catclub
@satby: sorry, but none of those put Trump in the ‘world class butcher’ category along with Mao, Stalin and Pol Pot, for me.
brantl
@Geminid: this must be very nostalgic for her.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@jonas: I can’t read or listen to Trump. I can feel my brain tangling up
Baud
@Suzanne:
Trump ran away from Project 2025 during the election, though. They know what they want doesn’t sell. Republicans operate on the idea that they can just do the things they want, and once done, their voters will move on to the next thing rather than abandon them. Its a strategy that has worked for them.
catclub
@karen gail: as soon as you start hailing GWBush as the world’s greatest humanitarian for backing Pepfar,
I will consider Trump in the running for world class butcher for cutting USAID.
Suzanne
@Baud: Absolutely. They know their voters can be distracted by the next squirrel.
evodevo
@Betty Cracker:
Gee, I wonder who the private US contractor is? Hmmm…
I ‘m old enough to remember the Nisour Square massacre
Omnes Omnibus
@catclub: The original list wasn’t “world class butchers” though. It included Caligula and Nero. It was IMO “so awful that their name will forever be associated with awfulness” but YMMV.
satby
@catclub: early days yet.
@Omnes Omnibus: true, thank you.
Belafon
@Suzanne: They know that their voters will retroactively accept whatever Republicans do.
Suzanne
@Belafon: Yes. They are a personality cult. Rational thought processes, like “do they make good promises and keep them?”, are not a thing they do. That’s what we do, and it’s harder to deliver on than what they do.
Jeffro
@Soprano2: it is a consequence of ‘they all do it’, absolutely
which is why we have to keep CONSTANTLY pointing out, and fighting, corruption
never let it be normal
catclub
@satby: agreed
satby
Interesting article from Brian Klass:
The Age of the Surefire Mediocre
Professor Bigfoot
@RevRick: WELL SAID.
Old Man Shadow
I think it’s probably more realistic to imagine that they’ll just take the outrage and hit that comes from ethnically cleansing the Palestinians from Gaza and annex the entire territory.
the pollyanna from hell
Sore-winners, I thought. The list of forbidden subjects grew massively with my Maga friends. Before was the omerta of insurrection. Now is the omerta of the break-out, the looting operation.
Nukular Biskits
Y’all slow down. I’m still trying to catch up with the conversation LOL
Layer8Problem
@jonas: “[DJT’]s faults are fractal . . . ”
I’m saving that one and storing it next to Fran Lebowitz’ quote for my future rants.
Suzanne
@Old Man Shadow:
I fear you are correct. This is basically the end for any hope for a Palestinian state, and it’s just going to be nothing but bloody terror attacks against civilians for decades.
Layer8Problem
@Matt: You barely read the comment you’re “replying” to, didn’t you?
Librettist
Trump is the true vessel for the age of American wish fulfillment. That influencer junk is all over social media. “We bought an amusement park…”
Chief Oshkosh
@Baud: I just had a discussion about this last night at a meeting with a doc from Utah. She’s an oncologist/ophthalmologist, not a psychiatrist, but of course is very aware the suicide issue. In fact, parts of our chat were remarkably similar to that article. It’s a real thing and pulling the funding is going to jump-start the suicide rate, according to her.
Salty Sam
Absolutely! That’s the whole reason we are treated to culture wars bullshit— if they focused honestly on what they really want to accomplish, they would be rejected.
Ruckus
@ColoradoGuy:
You are giving him way too much credit.
Unless of course you mean both of their exit ports.
prostratedragon
@karen gail:
Also 9-11 health programs. Aside from continuing treatments for many, there are still new cancers etc appearing in those responders, for which effective programs are urgently needed.
Ruckus
@Soprano2:
Oh he’s got dementia. All you have to do is be around old farts for a while to see it. You get old, things do not work as well as they did. And in his case that lump in his head never did work all that well.
Ask me how I know……
Ruckus
@Geminid:
It’s likely not so much handling as it is using.
I doubt seriously that many of those hanging around “helping” shitforbrains has an ounce of concept of anything other than power. Their own power.
Gretchen
@Suzanne: my suburb, Prairie Village, Kansas, is having a huge fight now about its city hall. It’s been mostly decided that we would spend the money to build a new city hall/police station, since upgrading the current buildings would be nearly as expensive. There’s a loud Trumpy minority that’s pretending that if we didn’t do the upgrade we wouldn’t have to spend any money at all. These people did 6 count ‘em 6 petition drives to recall the mayor because he said maybe we should have diversity and affordable housing. They don’t have somebody to run against the guy who won with 95% of the vote. They just want to recall him.
Suzanne
@Gretchen:
I swear to the FSM…. this idea that upgrading or modernizing is always a waste of money is such idiocy. No one would blink an eye if someone replaced a 20-year-old car or a 10-year-old computer.
Ruckus
@RevRick:
The result is that his narcissism and megalomania make him stupid.
This. Though not sure that parts of his brain are not just plain stupid. He’s never actually learned to do anything, other than run his deranged mouth, operated by his deranged brain, the result being pure stupidity.
RevRick
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
@Professor Bigfoot:
Thank you both.
tam1MI
But at least the Gazassholes got to teach those damn dirty Dems a lesson.
Fair Economist
@schrodingers_cat: Anti-corruption campaigns usually turn out to be right-wing operation running on the usual principle of “every accusation is a confession”. There’s the India example you cite, and also the prosecution of Lulu in Brazil.
Betty
@Soprano2: I read that it was Don Jr.’s idea. Figures. He probably doesn’t know about super maxes. Neither does genius Senator Markwayne.
Suzanne
@tam1MI:
You know, I don’t know why there’s so much focus on these people, and not the much larger segment of Americans who are Islamophobic and think Netanyahu’s Israel shits rainbows.
RevRick
@Ruckus: Stupidity, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer observed, is not so much a lack of mental horsepower as it is a certain blind resistance to the truth. Stupid people, when confronted with the facts, often become either dismissive or belligerent. They refuse to believe that “stuff,” because they know better.
Ruckus
@Suzanne:
No one would blink an eye if someone replaced a 20-year-old car or a 10-year-old computer.
Actually there are. Sure they are often looked at like they are morons – because they are but there are people that will always think the past was better than the present or especially the future. And a part of the reason is that they cannot foresee any thing other than what is in front of their eyes. And often they don’t believe half of what is. They have no imagination. They have no vision. Sure they can see what’s right in front of them but anything more than that – not one iota. Not at a distance, not a possible future, not better, not worse, only what the can see and maybe just touch. Their worlds are tiny, require zero concept of change, difference, possibility. Or even worse have a fear of them. When I was a mental health counselor I had one client that fit into that box. The worst part, and why they stay in that box is that they are very afraid that they won’t fit in any other place so they refuse to even consider it. And it’s a long, tough road to get them out of that place. It’s humanity, in all it’s incarnations.
tam1MI
It is because we have a word to describe those folks.
“Republicans”.
The Gazassholes are just another entry in the “but I never thought the leopard would eat MY face!” column.
StringOnAStick
A close friend has a daughter in a PNW U, and all her friends who did the pro-Palestinian protests are being investigated, and the ones here on visa’s are likely headed for deportation once they get around to them; the big name uni’s were the first targeted areas. The ones who are US citizens are almost as scared as the non-citizens since they are on deck next. Her daughter is quite politically savvy, and tells stories of plenty of the citizen protestors refusing to vote for “genocide Joe” so they sat out the election. That worked out well for them.
schrodingers_cat
@tam1MI: Rashida Tlaib’s sister has no remorse in her role aiding in the election of the Orange Person.
Westyny
@Miss Bianca: my wife just read it and was enthralled. She’s started the second one.
Ruckus
@RevRick:
Yep.
Read what I answered to Suzanne just below your comment. I found out that it isn’t always because they know better, it is sometimes because they just know less. They have far less exposure to the possibilities. And are unwilling or unable to learn.
artem1s
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
maybe we can use it as an Elba substitute. Throw the whole damn administration into it.
brantl
@schrodingers_cat: The voters we need to get out of the masses or as fickle as they get they’re greedy they’re not kind or compassionate. The only thing that matters to them is their wallets are getting hit.
schrodingers_cat
@brantl: Perhaps, but sounding like you are running a socialist-Marxist seminar on campus is not the winning ticket either IMHO.
UncleEbeneezer
Bullshit.
“We support the eradication of Israel through armed Jihad and struggle. This is our doctrine.” Sinwar, 2021
“Our doctrine in fighting you (the Jews) is that we will totally exterminate you. We will not leave a single one of you alive, because you are alien usurpers of the land and eternal mercenaries.” From a sermon delivered at Deir Al-Balah Mosque in Gaza, Al-Aqsa TV, (Hamas TV channel) aired Friday, July 25, 2014
“Palestine is ours from the river to the sea and from the south to the north. There will be no concession on any inch of the land. We will never recognize the legitimacy of the Israeli occupation, and therefore there is no legitimacy for Israel, no matter how long it will take. We will free Jerusalem inch by inch, stone by stone. Israel has no right to be in Jerusalem.” – Hamas politburo 2012
“The principles [of Hamas] are definitive and non-negotiable: Palestine means Palestine in its entirety, from the River to the Sea. There will be no concession of a single inch of the land of Palestine. The fact that Hamas, at one stage or another, accepts the goal of gradual liberation – of Gaza, of the West Bank, or of Jerusalem – is not at the expense of our strategic vision with regard to the land of Palestine.” – Hamas Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh, 2011
Hamas has repeatedly and consistently stated that its goal is the eradication of Israel and the forced/violent ethnic cleansing (or killing) of all Jews/Israelis from their ancestral homeland. This is genocide, plain and simple. And they have proudly affirmed that they will sacrifice every Palestinian life in Gaza in order to achieve it. They were spawned from the Muslim Brotherhood (a pan-Islamic movement that aims to restore a caliphate, a unified Muslim state ruled by Sharia law) who directly collaborated with the Nazis and shared their antisemitic ideology. “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur’an is our constitution. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”
In addition to the 10/7 massacres which by international law standards qualify as attempted genocide (as the trial of Bosnian genocide showed, you only have to try to wipe out everyone of an ethnic group in the region available, not worldwide- IE ‘well Hamas only killed a tiny % of the Israeli population’ doesn’t mean it wasn’t attempted genocide), Hamas are also currently terrorizing, beating and killing anyone in Gaza who spoke out against them in recent protests or anyone who advocates for peace.
Stop doing their PR for them, whitewashing their atrocities, their hateful ideology, the Sharia law they force upon the people of Gaza, their fascist funding (Erdogan and Iran) and glorifying them with the label of “Resistance.”
Hamas are NOT a “resistance” group for an oppressed people. Hamas uses oppressed people as kindling/pawns in their quest to re-establish an Islamic empire and Sharia law in the region. Their goal isn’t a Palestinian state. They are only maybe open to one if it comes after the eradication of Israel/Israelis.
Ruckus
@Lapassionara:
More important, let’s say he can read.
Does he have any concept of what he’s reading?
Does he have any understanding of what he’s doing?
Does he have any concept of leadership?
I suspect that the answer to those 3 questions is NO. Not in any way shape or form.
@RevRick:
I was a mental health counselor as I’ve stated here prior and he only has the ability to see himself in a mirror. Of course even then he doesn’t see in his fun house mirror what we see in real life. Because he is incapable of seeing anything in that mirror, the image in his head is not what we all see. Because it is false to that lump in his head. And even if he saw what we see, his brain still sees what he wants to believe he is. His world has no reality in it when it comes to himself. Never has.
UncleEbeneezer
@Suzanne: Because generally speaking it wasn’t the Islamophobic assholes who were right here (and in every other Progressive space) doing everything they could to tear apart our coalition when we needed to unite to defeat Trump. Pushing BothSides, GenocideJoe, HolocaustHarris nonsense. Even now with Trump being the biggest, existential threat to everything we care about, the same assholes were calling AOC a “war criminal” just yesterday.
Sorry, but some of us will never forgive/forget that shit. Not to mention all the lectures about how we should listen to them and treat them with good faith, even when their goal of ruining our chances to stop Trump, was plain as freaking day.
BarcaChicago
@Gvg: I appreciate your thoughtful perspective. Have you heard of Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib and his project Realign for Palestine? Palestinians deserve and need good leadership. I’ve been following him for a long time and am heartened by his work.
Kent
I have a non-MAGA cousin who is an independent trucker. One of the few truckers it seems who haven’t pickled their brains by listing to right-wing talk radio and podcasts alone in their trucks 10 hours/day.
He says it is going to get really really bad. It isn’t just all the freight loss from the dialing back of imports. That is big on its own. But it will also be the spillover to the entire industry because when there is less import container shipping to be hauled, it will depress freight rates across the entire industry.
All those surplus trucks and truckers are going to go somewhere. And that somewhere is everywhere else in the industry. That is going to collapse both freight rates and truck prices which will be a death spiral. Most independent truckers and small firms operate on a pretty slim margin. You cut their freight rates by 10% or 25% and suddenly those truck and insurance payments aren’t getting paid anymore and they go bankrupt quickly. Which means tons more trucks on the used market. Which desperate people will snatch up on credit and further drive down freight rates.
Kent
@UncleEbeneezer: In the context of Gaza, “resistance” is just a euphemism for war. They wanted war with Israel and now they have it. They should be happy. They have been freed up to engage in full-scale resistance for the past 2 years.
The notion that one side can engage in violence and not expect a reciprocal or a-reciprocal response from the other side is the ideology of toddlers. It is the “Mama…he hit me” victim ideology. In the real world, violence begets violence.
artem1s
smart if you’re intention is to drag the US incumbent President into an unwinnable position on the eve of the most critical US election of the last two centuries. This was no accident.
BarcaChicago
@UncleEbeneezer: Thank you for your voice on this. It has been horrifying to me to see many on the left spout Hamas/Islamic Republic propaganda and descend into such ugliness. I view it as a kind of moral narcissism where they take all of our Western crimes and project them onto Israel – what a relief to have an external villain for our own moral failings, and how intoxicating to be so righteous and good. I follow Palestinian and Israeli activists who honor each other’s humanity and right to live in peace and dignity – yes, they are out there. I am really rooting for Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib and his Realign for Palestine project, against all the odds.
Gloria DryGarden
@Suzanne: like the kids in the blocks area. They live for the moment the6. An kick down their construction, or especially, kick down the erected towers of another child. Who then cries.
and then we demand they help rebuild. But it’s not the same, and it doesn’t always happen. Run out of time..
your “tacky gold schlock” is just the right descriptor.
I call the karma department every day with my absurd wishes, please give them a big dollop of what they dish out. I think god broke her smiting machine; I just don’t understand..
Gloria DryGarden
@Ruckus: he sees that smoky overbuilt Conan like brawn with the light saber, or the pope guy ( I have not seen that picture, gracias a dios ). Grandiosity.
but I think y may be right.
you know how girls with eating disorders see fat, in the mirror, total body dismorphia? This could be like the inverse of that.
horrible but insightful.
Im beginning to think we need to push our senators for impeachment. Yes of course the next layer of people bring other problems, it’s a long effort ahead.
my Swedish grandma with her post doc in bitterness, lived til 94 on her dementia and her bitterness, and it wasn’t even a revenge thing. So, people who think he’ll age out, I don’t trust in waiting for that.
last comment, I meant schlong. Otto correct changed it, sneaky fucker.
Gloria DryGarden
@BarcaChicago: I hope Geminid sees your comment
Gloria DryGarden
@RevRick: denial. But I like how you describe it. I have a lifelong experience with resistance to the truth, in my own family.
It goes with all the sane washing, giving abusers a pass, allowing it all to oppress victims, to maintain their silence.
prostratedragon
@artem1s: 🎯
Kayla Rudbek
@schrodingers_cat: even Queen Victoria tried to encourage British industry by buying English-made products and her family followed that (there’s reasons that everyone knows Fair Isle and most fiber arts people know Irish crochet, versus the damned Russians who blinded the inventor of Orenburg lace). Trump is much more like his master Putin in that regard.
Kayla Rudbek
@RevRick: yeah, Diane Duane is also from New York and she cast him as the Devil in her first Young Wizards book.