The Pale Rider Rides Again…

Donny says HE invented the term “America First” so HE gets to choose what it means. Here’s the thing. HE did NOT invent the term “America First.” He revived it from Nazis. It was a slogan used by American Nazi sympathizers in the 1930s. 1930s Americans can be forgiven for being attracted to pretended Nazi ideology. The Nazis hadn’t Nazi’d yet. The modern Nazi, these days calling themselves MAGA, deserve no such grace.

This is all in relation to whether or not Felon 47 should use America’s biggest, non-nuclear bomb in Iran to “stop Iran from having nuclear weapons.” The question of whether or not he should bomb Iran and drag America into yet another moronic and wrongheaded Middle East war created quite a rift in MAGA-land. Should he or shouldn’t he? Two firmly held camps. The left started to get a little excited that it might be a “MAGA civil war.”

I don’t think such a threat actually ever existed. Remember, this is the crowd that actively killed their parents and grandparents during Covid-19 just to score what they thought were a few political points. Do you really think they’re going to split over bombing Iran? Now that he’s done it, he’ll just tell the “don’t do it” crowd to sit down and shut up – and they will. They’ll fall in line because that’s what they do. Independent thought is NOT a virtue in MAGAmerica.

This bit is funny: Pakistan announced on Saturday – before the bombing – they were going to nominate Felon 47 for a Nobel Peace Prize. He really wants a Nobel Peace Prize. He just doesn’t deserve one. He thought he might get it for ending Putin’s war in Ukraine. He brought his best game to that one, inducing the infamous “Stop it, stop it, STOP it!” chant – but it didn’t work and he was out of ideas.

He has been FAR too supportive of Israel’s attempted genocide, too. It turns out, one cannot supply weapons to a maniacal government and encourage that government to use those weapons to murder as many women and children as they can and be in the top running for a peace prize. The whole world knows Israel would not be able to continue in Netanyahu’s insanity but for American weapons – now happily supplied by Felon 47, for a small fee, of course.

He failed in Ukraine and he failed in Gaza so he apparently decided his best path to a peace prize might be in bombing the crap out of a foreign sovereign nation over a fraudulent and made up story. Damn, it feels like I’ve seen this movie before. The actors are different and it’s set in a different country but the plot… the plot is very familiar. Hackneyed, even.

Here’s an interesting tidbit. Outside of American (and probably Israeli) media? The entire world agrees that Iran does not have nuclear weapons, is not planning on having nuclear weapons, does not have enough enriched uranium to make nuclear weapons, is not building nuclear weapons. Even Tulsi Gabbard, his own National Intelligence Director, said Iran isn’t trying to build a bomb.

The whole threat of Iran’s “nuclear weapons” is Iraq’s WMDs all over again. Remember how that worked out? Remember when Kindasleazy Rice terrorized people with this lie, “The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” Spoiler alert: it wasn’t. It couldn’t have been. Saddam didn’t HAVE WMDs.

He had been thoroughly defanged by the time the US went in the second time. MAGA was left pretending that some rotted and rusted chemical weapons found buried deep in the sand in the middle of a desert counted as WMDs, despite the fact that Weapons of Mass Destruction had been clearly associated with nuclear weapons.

Iran does want a nuclear power plant and such a beast requires enriched uranium, too. But the level of enrichment is vastly lower than that required to build a nuclear bomb and, again, Iran is making NO effort to enrich uranium to that extent. Well, they weren’t. It’s pretty clear the best path to avert American bullying is to HAVE a nuclear device, and Donny has now, likely accidentally, made that fact very clear to Iran.

Another promise made, another promise broken…

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I often accuse MAGA of lacking morals. I make the point because of all the immoral stances MAGA supports. It’s a judgement call, subjective. But the more I hear about 47’s big bill, the more sure I am. Remember, one of the main themes of this nightmare is to inflict as much pain as possible on struggling Americans in order to make a very small segment of our country – rich people – I was going to say “more comfortable,” but they won’t BE more comfortable. How could they? They’ll just have more money on their pile.

It turns out, one route to all of that suffering is this slashing of Medicaid. That’s going to have widespread effect on the whole nation, things one might not initially think about, like closing rural hospitals. Obviously, the White House minions are pretending that cutting needed money won’t hurt anybody or anything. In fact, the less people have, the happier they’ll be, right? So, who needs medical care?

Are you having a heart attack because you were rage-screaming at the television about “Libtards?” Did you shoot yourself in the leg while you were cleaning your gun? Did your wife go into labor unexpectedly, three months early? Wow, you need a doctor, and fast. Too bad, though. The nearest doctor will be roughly two to four hours further away now that the only medical facility in the area lost funding to the Medicaid cuts and had to shut down. Try not to bleed out, okay?

Oh, I know, MAGA was told the Medicaid cuts actually only represented fraud, waste, and abuse. You’d better check that out more closely. The GOP – I should say, the very wealthy GOP – is taking money people need so they can give it to people with no need. Rural hospitals WILL shut down. Here’s the thing: one cannot just close down a hospital, realize it was a massive mistake, then reopen the thing as though nothing had happened.

This is not like DOGE firing everybody in sight, realizing the people they fired did an important job, and bringing them back a few days, weeks, or months later. Once those hospitals close, it will be very difficult to re-open them. Once rural Americans have lost their only local access to health care, that local access will likely be gone for a long, long time, maybe forever.

Only MAGA can stop this thing. I’m a lefty. I live in California. My representatives are already against this monstrosity. If I lived in a red state, my representative would just dismiss my input as radical lefty stuff. Only MAGA can make clear to MAGA politicians that this bill will cost those politicians more than they cost the victims of the bill and they’d better do it soon – or hope that no emergency medical situations come their way…

Captain McCain vs Cadet Bone Spurs…

“All gave some.
Some gave all.
One had bone spurs…”

This, increasingly, seems to be how our military feels about their cowardly Commander-in-Chief. He wants a military parade. He pretends to honor soldiers but privately calls them ‘suckers’ and ‘losers.’ He had a chance for military glory. Instead, he got a letter that said he had “temporary bone spurs.” That was AFTER four college deferments.

47’s daddy was landlord to a podiatrist, Larry Braunstein, who, according to his family, wrote the bone spur “diagnosis” as a “favor.” The scheme involved a second podiatrist, Manny Weinstein, who also leased space from Fred Trump. Meanwhile, 47 competed in sports in the school he was hiding in. He says he was “the best,” but when does he ever say anything else? From MY point of view, the only thing he’s ever been “the best” at is evading responsibility.

I think somewhere in the dimmest recesses of is puny little mind, he KNOWS he doesn’t measure up to the soldiers who answered their country’s call. Because he’s such a shallow person, he seems to actually resent the military. He couldn’t stand John McCain, for example. He said McCain was NOT a war hero because he got shot down. Captain McCain vs Cadet Bone Spurs.

McCain DID get shot down, too. He was taken to an infamous POW camp called the Hanoi Hilton. It turns out, though, McCain was well connected back in the states and, as a result, was offered the opportunity to skip all that POW ugliness and just come back to the US. He said, “No.” He stayed with his comrades. That segment of his life cost him the use of an arm for the rest of his life. I didn’t agree with his politics, but McCain was a proud and brave man – a war hero, the likes of which Donny couldn’t even conceive. (Can you imagine 47 making a selfless decision about, well, anything, really?)

So Donny didn’t think much of McCain and McCain didn’t think much of Donny, either. The difference was, McCain had the credibility of action Donny could never gain. During an interview, McCain said, “One aspect of the conflict, by the way, that I will never ever countenance is that we drafted the lowest-income level of America, and the highest-income level found a doctor that would say that they had a bone spur. That is wrong. That is wrong. If we are going to ask every American to serve, every American should serve.”

So military members have a fun little put-down of the orange man. “One had bone spurs.” As always with 47, words are just words and Lord knows he talks. But his actions give him away, and, in action, he ran and hid…

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The military isn’t alone. Wall street has taken to referring to 47 as ‘Taco.’ That’s an acronym. It stands for ‘Trump Always Chickens Out.’ The reference is to 47’s oh-so-stupid tariffs that do so much damage each time they’re announced. Then revoked. Trump has turned the United States into a laughing stock, an ongoing joke.

It’s rather heartening to see that the joke is on him. Taco Trump. Cadet Bone Spurs. People whose respect he craves are, instead, showing him the respect he deserves…

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“Trump is not corrupt because he commits HIS crimes in plain sight.” REALLY?!? That’s the line from the GOP in defense of their corrupt idol. This guy is grifting and grafting on a daily basis. I presume he’s trying to hide some of it but there’s just mountains of it he’s doing right out in the open, with no concern for what people might think.

This is the direct result of the Robert’s Kangaroo Court saying the POTUS has near-perfect immunity, coupled with a corrupt Congress who still could, but will not take action to stop him. Instead, they offer up defenses like that. It’s not corruption because it’s in plain sight.

The only reason MAGA hasn’t turned on him, yet, is because MAGA media is still misinforming them and they still believe it. But it’s GOT to be getting harder and harder to defend him and his actions. It’s GOT to be getting harder for MAGA to convince themselves that Donny has anything in mind other than taking everything he can from them and stuffing it into his own pockets.

I’ll tell you this: the fact that he commits crime in plain sight doesn’t make them any less criminal. I see it. You see it. Sooner or later, MAGA is bound to see it…

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Musk takes away your FEMA money. It’s too expensive.
Musk takes away your NOAA money. It’s too expensive.
Musk takes your education money. FAR too expensive.
MAGA Mike will take your health care, and, likely, Social Security, too. Too expensive.
But Musk accepts your taxpayer money at an amazing rate – billions of dollars. His rockets keep blowing up or tumbling into the ocean (and, sometimes, populated land!)

There are millions of people in this country who couldn’t be where they are without government assistance – something of an indictment of Capitalism, if you ask me. Government money intended to help the needy is being canceled as too expensive while government money given to make rich people richer just keeps flowing. Welcome to the Upside Down…

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Defenders of Israel went into this whole thing with the moral high ground. Hamas HAD attacked Israel. I can’t say it was “unprovoked,” but it was certainly not smart. When Israel “responded” to that attack, much of the world understood. 1,200 people had to be avenged.

Slowly, at first, then faster, Israel has surrendered the moral high ground. Okay, 1,200 for 1,200, sure. But then, Israel didn’t stop. 120,000 for 1,200? Is that where we’re going? Anybody paying attention has seen Israel tell refugees to go to such and such a location for “safety,” only to have Israel bomb and attack that exact spot.

I think that when Hamas launched rockets into civilian areas of Israel, they committed a war crime. But Israel has been committing war crimes ever since. I think it’s time for the world to intervene. Enough is enough – and Israel has inflicted MORE than enough…

Violations…

It’s just such a weird feeling, being bummed police have captured a murderer. But I am. I’m not alone, either. The guy who shot the CEO of a health care denial company, we now know, is named Luigi Mangione. He was spotted at a McDonald’s Restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania and ratted out. Okay, turned in. Police showed up and arrested him.

Then, the Mickey D’s in question began to be bombarded with negative reviews. Google finally had to step in and remove the low ratings. The restaurant was being hit with bad reviews because that’s where Mangione was captured, not because of anything having to do with their business.

The corporate press is trying to trivialize the reality that people seem to support his Mangione’s actions. They’re calling him the “hot assassin” and pretending people only support him because of celebrity culture. They keep trying to reinforce the idea that shooting “important” people is a very bad idea.

This is just a guy with a beef who shot another guy. Murder, right? No, the CEO gets the honor of having been “assassinated.” ‘Assassinate’ is defined as murder for political or religious reasons. The corporate press wants the world to see the CEO as an innocent victim but the population, the people who deal with the fallout of the CEO’s leadership, keeps seeing the act as revenge – killing the man who killed so many.

The thing that strikes me about all of this is how the population isn’t letting itself be manipulated. We all KNOW murder is wrong. We’re not all sure this qualifies as a murder so much as an act of self-defense. I think the One Percent is about to start pressing very, very hard on the day-to-day workers, trying to extract whatever they can, however they can.

I think the population may well be far more angry about it than the One Percent have taken into account and I suspect there will be MORE vigilantes out there aiming for self-described “important” people. I think Mangione will go to jail, but I ALSO think it might take awhile to find a jury willing to convict…

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Effing Israel. Assad falls in Syria. The country is in a vulnerable moment, trying to determine what shape it’s going to take moving forward. But Israel saw an opportunity – and started bombing. Can you believe it? They say they’re just carving out a “buffer zone.” It’s one of their favorite stories, we need a buffer zone. I suspect the “buffer zone” Israel REALLY wants is one in which no Muslims can be found from the Mediterranean Sea to just beyond the Persian Gulf.

It’s a land grab, pure and simple. It’s kind of what Israel does, steal land. They’ve been doing it to the Palestinians for decades and now they see an opportunity to annex some of Syria and they didn’t waste ANY time.

Is this really behavior their god is going to protect?

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Yeah, this is dumb but here it is. I saw an article telling workers how they can plan a perfect “workation.” Get it? It’s a mashup. ‘Work’ and ‘vacation.’ See, you go on vacation, but you still work. Ooh, cute. Let’s mash that up and make it sound like something cool, working while on vacation. Yeah, workation, that’s the ticket.

Hey, you know what? Pound sand. If I’m on vacation, I’m not working. If I’m working, I’m not on vacation! This seems like an idea the One Percent is trying to inject into the populace and what a stupid, stupid idea it is. Besides, it comes out at a time when employers are demanding their employees return to the office. How the HELL do I go someplace restful (to not rest) AND show up at the office?

It reminds me of when the One Percent tried to convince people that working only as hard as people were being paid to work amounted to “quiet quitting.” Never forget, rich people literally used to work people to death. They worked children over the course of ten hour days. These guys, left to their own ends, will do ANYTHING for profits and they really don’t seem to understand worker’s reticence to be abused that way.

I doubt “workation” is something that’s going to catch on. I just wanted to mention it…

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Well, both sides ARE doing it. Joe Biden is commuting sentences of low-level criminals. The individuals in question did some real time, then got sent to home confinement because of Covid-19. They’ve BEEN on home confinement since and apparently there hasn’t been any problem. So, Biden just commuted many of their sentences (something like 1,500) in an effort to protect them from the incoming threat.

Meanwhile, in North Carolina, the Governor there is a Democrat but their state legislature is controlled by Republicans. So, the Republicans have voted to strip the Democratic governor of the state of most of his powers. Oh, and the incoming State Attorney General is a Democrat, too, so they stripped him of some of his powers, as well.

It’s a naked power grab. The thing is, the GOP is set to lose control over their legislation in the 2025 session so it may not be too serious of a move. When the Dems come in, maybe they can reverse the law.

The effing GOP is relentless in their thefts, power grabs, and hypocritical manipulations. Damn, I miss the days when people had honor…

Book ’em, Dano. Please? Finally?

WOW! Just wow. I mean, like, wow, wow, WOW! Yet another criminal complaint against Trump has been filed, this one in Ohio. Guess why. No, you have to guess, but I’ll give you a hint. It involves cats and dogs and people eating them…

See it turns out, Ohio has a law that allows a private citizen to swear out a criminal complaint. If someone does, it goes before a judge to check the merits of the case. If it survives that scrutiny, it becomes just another criminal complaint to be handled. And all of that is what happened. A warrant for the arrest of Donald J. Trump and JD Vance has been issued by the State of Ohio.

During his debate against Harris, Trump insisted that Haitians were up in Ohio eating their neighbor’s cats and dogs. They’re not. It’s a made-up story and the woman who made it up has made that completely clear. Still, even after he was told, point-blank, that, no, that’s not a real thing and it’s not happening, he maintained his false story. Authorities in Springfield, Ohio insist no such thing is happening but Trump saw someone blathering on TV (or so he says) and decided to believe the blatherer. He probably wants to make that person Secretary of Ag or something.

The thing is, as we know, when Trump speaks, MAGA acts, and they have been faithful. Haitians in Springfield started getting death threats and enduring other threatening behavior. (MAGA likes to make clear: one does NOT tell the truth about Trump…ever! It’s the law – or soon will be.) That threatening behavior is the basis for the criminal complaint.

So our President-elect, aside from being a felon and adjudicated raper, is now a wanted man in Ohio. Bizarro America is NOT a great place, but it’s going to have it’s elements of fun, you know?

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Well, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued a warrant for the arrest of Benjamin Netanyahu, one of his “defense” ministers, and a leader of Hamas, Mohammed Deif. I’d say the hardest one to serve is going to be on Deif, who was reportedly killed by Israel. But all three are charged with committing war crimes. That seems appropriate, in view of events in Gaza and spreading.

Warrants from the ICC carry little to no weight. Theoretically, those three might be arrested if they travel to certain countries. In practice, that doesn’t really happen. The ICC has no enforcement authority. Israel goes around acting badly because they have a bodyguard, the United States, who will defend them, no questions asked. The ICC certainly isn’t going to get involved in that, and, again, Deif is too dead to be charged.

Besides, with Trump coming in, Israel is about to be unleashed completely and I see the Palestinians being “cleansed” from the river to the sea…

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The left just never seems to get it, you know? We keep thinking sexual assault should be a deal killer for people nominated to some of the highest offices in the land. We expect those charges to derail their confirmations because of, well, decency. Fools. Take a look at the list. It’s long and getting longer. Sexual assault is treated like a peccadillo to be overlooked and/or brushed aside but worse, it seems to be a requirement to working for Trump.

Apparently, Trump is surrounding himself with people who “get him…”

By Thursday afternoon, one of Trump’s fellow perverts – to be clear, I mean Matt Gaetz – had to withdraw his name from consideration for the job of Attorney General. It won’t be that big of a deal for Trump. I’m sure he has a long list of fellow child molesters totally unqualified to do whatever job Trump assigns so he’ll just get one of those. He must have seen SOMEBODY on television that he can choose.

It may be a bigger deal for Gaetz. He stepped down from Congress in order to quash the ethics investigation that was about to do him so much harm. (I base the ‘do him so much harm’ comment on the reality that whenever the idea gets floated of releasing that report anyway, Republicans crap their panties and run. MAGA Mike insists releasing the report would “open a Pandora’s Box.” One has no such concerns when the report says, “Nope, no evidence. All is well.”)

He THOUGHT he was going to be USAG. That hasn’t worked out. But, hey, it’s possible he’s going to be closely associated with an AG office, here, in the very near future…

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In yet another example of how the corruption of the criminal courts is proceeding, Judge Juan Merchan, the judge presiding over Trump’s so-called “hush money criminal trial” that was REALLY an embezzlement trial he lost, is hearing an argument put forth by the defense that the charges against Trump should just be dropped. After all, they argue, being convicted of the crimes one actually committed is VERY inconvenient to one’s future. Failing that, they’re asking the court to, you know, just wait for sentencing until after Trump is finished “Presidentin’,” despite the 40+ felony convictions connected with the case.

Some of us doubt Trump ever intends to leave office under any circumstances. If nothing else, such a ruling by Merchan would give Trump even greater incentive to stay in office.
“We’ll sentence you when you come out.”
“Well, then, I’m not coming out!”

In fairness, I can see how serving the time for your crimes might interfere with the duties of the President. I’m a reasonable guy. I’d move forward with the sentencing. But I’d let him out on a work-release program by day. He could just spend the evenings and weekends in the clink, and come out and harm the nation during the day…

I’ll tell you this: when laws stopped applying across the board, the US was in trouble. These days, the phrase “rule of law” sounds like a punchline of some kind…

Nobody Lies Like A Conman…

“The rules were, you guys weren’t going to fact-check.” Oops. That was a Vance misstep in the debate. Not to think it, but to say it out loud. How does “you guys weren’t going to fact-check” NOT translate to “I need to lie to get anywhere?”

Of course, he doesn’t care about lying. He said in an interview that if he has to lie to get people talking, then he’ll lie. Except, won’t that have people talking about the lie or what an effing liar you are? How is that beneficial to the political discourse? I mean, I can see how it benefits YOU, personally, but how does it…?

Oh, I see. Never mind…

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Trump is STILL obsessed with trying to prove nobody leaves his rallies, even as video floats around of people leaving his rallies and reporters interview people leaving the rallies to find out WHY they’re leaving the rallies early. Primarily, the interviews suggest people leave because Trump is usually late to take the stage, they don’t like the length of his speeches, and they don’t like his rhetoric. (That’s from the interviews.)

One of Trump’s spokespeople, Karoline Leavitt, claimed it’s not true that people leave and that Trump’s rallies are the “biggest political events in history!” That’s yet another example of MAGA not knowing their history. Hitler’s Nuremberg rallies, anyone? Anyone?

Isn’t it interesting that the two most reviled people in history, Hitler and now Trump, are BOTH so obsessed with having the biggest rallies? They BOTH insist that nobody should love anybody more. “Thou shalt have no other gods before me,” indeed…

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Trump says the GOP is now the party of the working man and unions? Trump’s plan includes tax cuts for the rich and higher cost of living for the working man. How is that the “party of the working man?” Trump was giving a speech at one of his rallies and he said, out loud, to working people, that he hated to pay overtime, so he just didn’t pay it. Sure, he owed it according to the law. He just didn’t pay it – because he didn’t WANT to. HE said it, not me.

He was also quite specific that he doesn’t use union workers if he can avoid it. How is that the party of unions? That STILL seems anti-union, to me. You know what? I think I’m going to believe the plans they have written down (Project 2025 and Agenda 47) and not the words (or other sounds) coming out of his mouth. He’s a known liar. But he has a playbook and, like Tim Walz pointed out, one doesn’t make a playbook if they don’t plan to use it.

He’s just trying to tell you what he thinks you want to hear. He’s been doing that a lot recently. He’s promising anything, everything to everybody in an effort to convince them he’s on their side. He’s not on anybody’s “side” but his own. He’s not trying to help, he’s trying to deceive…

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Okay, I have a question. How come Israel is the only group involved who “has a right to defend themselves?” Israel was attacked on October 7, but they weren’t “innocent victims.” Israel has been engaging in Micro-aggression since it’s founding, what with all the settlements, legal and otherwise being quickly built and occupied.

But still, the logic just doesn’t track. Hamas attacks Israel, Israel has the “right to defend itself.” Israel attacked Syria but the warning was, don’t strike back because Israel has the right to defend itself. Israel attacked Iran but the warning was, don’t strike back because Israel has the right to defend itself.

If Israel has the right to defend itself because Hamas turned to weaponry, doesn’t Syria have the right to defend itself because Israel turned to weaponry? Doesn’t Iran have the right to defend itself after Israel turned to weaponry? Israel seems to be the only group with a right to defend itself because it has a big, bad bully of a bodyguard in the US.

Israel and the US are NOT on solid moral ground in this whole thing. Setting up an obvious double-standard isn’t going to convince me of the righteousness of their cause. What a freakin’ mess…