Just when you thought it wasn’t possible for the Trump corruption operation to be more blatant, it just became even more so.

Donald Trump has long been suspected of intentionally making market-moving pronouncements on his social media platform, Truth Social. Ever since his “Liberation Day” tariffs proved to be a massive windfall for those shorting stocks last year, the pattern of people somehow “in the know” profiting from his posts has become more and more obvious.

The market immediately tanked after Liberation Day. But various large short trades were entered just before the announcement. For those who are not aware, a “short” trade is where one sells securities at a certain price hoping later to buy them at a much lower price and net a profit. Huge profits were made on these shorts.

It can be safely assumed that Trump and some of his select cronies have made piles of money on these market moves. According to ABC News, Trump made more than 21,000 securities trades in his first year back in office.

Similar volatile swings happened in the markets when Trump started his war with Iran, when Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, when the “cease fire” went into place and each time there has been a restart of shooting.

Whatever else Trump is doing and sees himself it may now be useful to view him as the Day-Trader President.

But now back to where we started on this piece. Trump’s Truth Social is actually validating his market manipulation by monetizing it. For the modest fee of $100,000 per month, select banks and traders can have advanced notification of Trump’s market moving posts. Yes, you too can be a successful insider trader for the right price.

This makes a nice tidy revenue stream for Truth Social, because truth be told, they really don’t make much money at all. Check their quarterly and annual results and you’ll see steady rivers of losses. So if traders take up their invitation to insider heaven it will improve their bottom line. We also have to remember that Trump owns 41 percent of the stock in this media operation. So he gets to benefit more on his insider tips too!

As ABC News commented:

Just which firms are signing up for the feed is unclear. Asked for comment, none of the half dozen most well known high-speed traders such as Citadel Securities and XTX Markets replied. If just three sign up for the $100,000 a month fee, that would double revenue at Trump Media, which reported taking in $3.7 million last year.

So this is a double Golden Grift. Somehow blatant corruption seems like such an understatement. This deserves a Golden Grift Award, don’t you think?

Some months ago NPR did a report about the late former Senator William Proxmire of Wisconsin and his Golden Fleece Award, which he issued to various examples of wasteful spending.

Proxmire’s Golden Fleece Award was issued 168 times in his career and became a highly effective public relations tool for attracting attention to some very questionable spending practices.

Some examples are listed here:

• National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) funded project by psychologist Harris Rubin for $121,000, on developing “some objective evidence concerning marijuana’s effect on sexual arousal by exposing groups of male pot-smokers to pornographic films and measuring their responses by means of sensors attached to their penises.”

• National Science Foundation for spending $103,000 to compare aggressiveness in sun fish that drink tequila as opposed to gin.

• National Institute for Mental Health for spending $97,000 to study, among other things, what went on in a Peruvian brothel; the researchers said they made repeated visits in the interests of accuracy.

• Office of Education for spending $219,592 in a “curriculum package” to teach college students how to watch television.

• United States Department of the Army for a $6,000 study on how to buy Worcestershire sauce in 1981.

• United States Department of Commerce (Economic Development Administration) for spending $20,000 to build a 10-story replica of the Great Wall of China in Bedford, Indiana. Begun in 1979, the money proved insufficient and the site is currently abandoned.

• United States Department of Defense for a $3,000 study to determine if people in the military should carry umbrellas in the rain.

• United States Department of Justice for conducting a study on why prisoners want to escape.

• United States Postal Service for spending over $4 million on an advertisement campaign to make Americans write more letters to one another.

• Executive Office of the President of the United States, for spending $611,623 to restore a room in the Old Executive Office Building with gold trim.

If the last item above rings a bell of Déjà vu, it should when compared to current images of the Oval Office.

The blatant, in-your-face corruption of the Trump administration is just begging for its own award and so we thought it might be fun to introduce the Golden Grift Award.

The order of magnitude of wasteful spending has grown astronomically. Every day we hear of new examples of outright corruption and thievery. Trump has by varying estimates added at least a couple of billion to his own pockets since taking office. But this does not even take into account the $8 billion in Venezuelan oil revenue deposited in an off-shore account that he controls, the funds funneled to his family through various government contracts to companies they hold ownership stakes in, the $400 million dollar aircraft gifted to him by Qatar. The crypto scams, the insider trading.

The list is too long for just one brief blog article. And each instance deserves its own close examination. And let’s not forget the scams, grifts and corruption of others in his orbit and that he has pardoned.

Each of these deserve their own Golden Grift Award.

We are open to suggestions of which instances deserve the most credit and exposure.

Remember, the election theme that worked for Bill Clinton was “It’s the economy, stupid.”

The theme for Trump’s ultimate defeat could easily be “It’s the corruption, stupid.” That certainly worked for the Hungarians as they were ousting Orbán.

Please send suggestions in the comments below.

The document we celebrate every July 4th contains these key lines:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…

It should not come as a surprise to any of us that Trump and company designated this last national celebration of the 250th anniversary of our founding document to be about him. Of course this is just the usual grotesque performance art that he and his crew feel they are required to engage in. Everyone that isn’t the Trump crew is an enemy to be destroyed is their frame of mind. And this was his theme again when he ranted against his opposition as “communists.”

America has never had a king. Trump’s ambition, clearly displayed in his destructive actions against the Constitution he swore an oath to uphold—twice—shows us he wants to be the first. Branding everyone who disagrees as some sort of mutant Marxist is not going to advance his cause.

We are all too familiar with the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence above. Not as many of us are as familiar with the main body of the document which contains a long list of grievances against the King they were severing ties with. But these are an astounding read. The similarity of Trump’s behaviors today with this list is amazing. Here are a few examples:

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of
officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance….

For protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment for any murders
which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states;

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world;

For imposing taxes on us without our consent;

For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury;

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses;

There is much more.

The point here is that Trump is attempting to rule by edict (Executive Orders) instead of govern by the use of established law. All the while engaging in his own and his families’ personal enrichment, forbidden by the Constitution.

Trump frames everything he does, every crime he commits, every oppressive action, as an official act of the president. Since they are framed as official, he cannot be prosecuted for these crimes, according the the Roberts Court.

So he, his cronies and followers are getting away with monumental graft and even murder.

Air Force Major Jason Watson, arrested on the Capitol steps July 2nd, has the right idea. Three words: Impeach, Convict, Remove. These are the actions we need to require of our Congress of not only Trump but every member of this corrupt administration, including the corrupt members of the Supreme Court.

Of course the Trump-addled Republicans in Congress resist this facet of their duty. To this we answer: “The Midterms are coming.”

Months from now, November 3rd is the day of our new Declaration of Independence. We get to vote out the members of Congress who have forsaken their oath to support Trump’s criminality and Constitutional destruction. We get to vote in people who will aggressively pursue their duties.

The present Congress has spent an enormous amount of time doing nothing except to occasionally please Trump. If the next one spends a similar amount of time on a long list of impeachments and convictions, we can make some serious forward motion.

This is doable, folks. The people of Hungary tossed out Victor Orbán, who was the darling and model of Trump’s MAGA movement. They showed us how it can be done in spite of the massive election rigging Orbán had arranged. The people of that country clearly saw the depth and brazenness of that corruption. And the vast majority of Americans are far from blind to the exact same conditions here.

So let us commemorate this 250th year of our Republic as the window of opportunity to toss out a wannabe king and his band of criminal courtiers.

I’m republishing a piece—with a few edits—from over five years ago. Turns out it is still painfully current.

Scrape away the brown shirt, the pointy hood, the proud boy t-shirt or the the boogaloo Hawaiian shirt and you find the same thing: the Nazi mentality. This is a mindset of hatred and it advocates violence against any disagreement. It organizes around the idea that one leader gives the orders and all opposed must be crushed.

It is worthy of endless repetition that white supremacist is just a longer spelling of Nazi. So much so that Steve Bannon originated the term “alt-right” to unify these groups under one banner, and to attempt to obscure their true heritage and nature.

The depth of the hatred of others by members of this subset of humanity is palpable and generates a primal fear. And it should because death, destruction, slavery and genocide follow when this mindset takes hold of the reigns of authority.

It bears examining closely the individuals who would become part of these groups and movements and happily engage in violence. Hatred is a unifying factor for these people. They are personally rather ineffective in life or even outright criminals. And exporting the blame for their actions or failures to others through hatred brings them into agreement with each other and their icons.

In the case of our country, the largest voice of blame and hatred of others is Donald Trump He of course was aided and abetted by other ineffectuals—a new word that should be used to describe the core anti-socials that populate the ranks of these groups. Ineffectuals can be directly contrasted to intellectuals. The former having horribly flawed thinking and action processes and the latter is all about applying intelligence, analysis and correction to situations.

It is actually to our great benefit that ineffectuals have an innate inability to get things done. They are good at noise, destruction and complaint—welcome to the Karens. They are even better at blaming others for their actions, which as it happens is also a great tool for investigation of their criminal and destructive activities.

Of course ineffectuals heap hatred and scorn on intellectuals and target them for their problems. This is not an idle statement. Hatred of intellectuals was a key factor in the slaughter of anyone educated during the genocide by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979.

Intellectuals and intelligent people in general are capable of rapidly recognizing bullshit when they see it. So it is easy to see why ineffectuals hate them and target them with labels like “elites,” “intellectuals,” “liberals” and yes, “Jews.”

If it is one thing that sends a person with a dark heart into terror it is the idea that someone might suspect what they truly have in their hearts. When someone has committed a crime and wonders if someone might have found out about it, the reactions can range from carping criticism of the person they suspect of knowing to verbal or even physical attacks. This is when those “leaders” get truly dangerous.

If this sounds like a description of Trump and some of his proxies, like Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, Michael Flynn, Roger Stone and a host of others—well that is not a coincidence. These people, along with Orange the Menace, are criminals and, by their behavior, we can conclude that not all of their crimes have been found out yet. But boy are they worried about that. Like all people who are factually not that bright, they have not learned the basic lesson of D.C.—everything comes out eventually.

If it sounds like this essay is trying to connect the dots between the mindset of these people to the past where the actions of similar people caused the death of millions—go to the head of the class. This IS what we are looking at with their protests against education of people about history (critical race theory). This IS what we are looking at when laws are proposed to ban books. This IS what we are looking at when we see a black man murdered for running in a neighborhood or killed by a cop kneeling on his neck.

Never forget that Hitler took lessons from us. Our actions as a nation in wiping out and segregating the original population of this land and importing slaves to base an economy on their labor—these actions were emulated by Hitler, Stalin, the Apartheid government of South Africa and others. Those that want to stop the education in history are not the least bit ashamed of that history, they want to repeat it.

Hopefully this will be helpful in recognizing the problems we face. This November we will be confronted with the 2026 midterms. We need to know what is behind the messaging of hate that will surely flood our screens and inboxes and act accordingly.

There is a principle in managing any group that is critical to its success, but this data is not very well known. And is apparently a complete surprise to the DNC.

That principle is that external influences and factors are not a direct cause of a company’s or group’s success or failure. The direct causes of success or failure always rest with the management and members of any given organization. Sure external factors and pressures can create problems for any group. But it is how they respond that counts, not the fact that the pressure happened.

The much—and deservedly so—maligned “autopsy” released by the DNC about the loss of the 2024 election fails completely to recognize this principle.

Sorry, Ken Martin, et al, but nothing Trump and his Nazi fan club did or thought was the cause of your failure. This may sound harsh, but it is a hard fact. But until cold, hard facts are confronted head-on no management anywhere can pinpoint a cause. It takes humility and a willingness to self-examine one’s own actions to arrive at the real reasons and only that will open a door to solutions to remedy the problem.

The fact that this DNC report was even being considered is just sad.

Here’s a snippet of the report posted by D. Earl Stephens on his Substack blog:

Purely useless drivel. Chewing on cardboard or GrapeNuts cereal would be more entertaining and useful than this crap.

The scary thing about this report is that over one and half years later, it clearly demonstrates that the search for clues has not gotten past the “We lost, how the hell did that happen?” stage of investigation. And even worse ,Ken Martin and the DNC are not even close to looking internally where the cause really lives.

In the past 10 years, have you people learning nothing from Trump? Sure, he’s a psychotic criminal. Sure, he’s as corrupt as the day is long. But how much effective use have you made of these facts? None.

In case you missed it, and you did, demonstrably, Trump knows how to stoke fear and use it. He knows how to communicate with people who are deeply in fear of their livelihoods and futures. Even worse, these folks seem to be wiling to follow him straight into Hell, and they are willing to just follow along. If this doesn’t make sense to you, understood. But keep reading.

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz were perfect candidates who could have and would have moved the dial forward for the country. They were obviously enthusiastic and so were their boisterous and well-attended rallies. And guess what. That very enthusiasm did them in. That’s right. But wait there’s more.

Have you ever tried to communicate logically and enthusiastically with an angry or fearful person? Doesn’t work does it. What does? Anger, bluster, antagonism, etc. That’s right. Trump knows instinctively how to communicate to that section of the electorate that lives in the lower realms of emotions. So the messages of hope, future and enthusiasm towards them expressed by Harris and Walz were not even being received much less believed or understood.

And that, DNC management, is something you could have done something about and with. You couldn’t do anything about Trump’s blatant racism, “They’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats…” You could not do anything about a drug-addled Nazi donating nearly $300 million to Trump’s campaign.

But how you communicated to the members of Trump’s base was entirely under your control.

Trump and his cronies worked hard to paint Biden and then Harris into the corner created by James Carville’s famous line, “It’s the economy, stupid.” Oil companies and various other corporations hoping to benefit from Trump’s promise to gut regulations, raised prices so Trump could blame that inflation on Biden and Harris. But these guys also made money hand over fist doing this. And they bragged about it in shareholder meetings and quarterly earnings calls.

Did the Biden and Harris campaigns use any of this to generate any outrage at all? Not even close.

Both the Biden and Harris campaigns behaved like crash test dummies when this conspicuous corruption was obvious and visible. And the nation got slammed into a wall.

Trump has consistently gotten his way by lying to everyone angrily. Democrats at the national level tried to be level-headed and calm when it was exactly the wrong thing to do.

Here’s a clue for you all, the guy who yells the truth angrily is much more powerful in the end than the guy who lies with anger. The difference is the truth. And Trump is ecstatic to this day that the DNC has no idea about how to use this fact.

The collective thought agreement that taking the high road would be attractive to voters and save the day obviously missed the fact that the high road is also easier to fall off of.

We are in a fight for the very soul of this country. The GOP is firmly in charge of all three branches of the government and is following a blueprint, Project 2025, designed to turn it into a one-branch government ruled by a permanent dictator. This is where any ideas of politeness, decorum and feelings had better get tossed. The DNC has been ignoring the message of the reality pressing down on it: take the f*cking gloves off!

The fact that Trump is losing support is great news. But that does not necessarily translate to Democrats gaining it. And that is the game.

Incompetence now—when Trump and his cronies are actively working to stack the decks and take over elections and rob the country blind—starts to look more like complacency. And being complacent with treasonous activity being paraded in front of you is just being complicit which makes you part of the problem. You’re either in agreement with what is happening or too apathetic to raise a finger about it. Either way, to partially quote Mike Judge’s ever more relevant film, Idiocracy, a quote he borrowed from George S. Patton, “Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way.”

There is an obvious replacement to Carville’s campaign tag line today, “It’s the corruption, stupid!”

I’ve been thinking about various efforts we have seen over the years to break up the tech giants. It is possible to liken the tech giants, Google, Facebook and the like as empires who control vast territories. How did these empires come to be? Well, we, the inhabitants of the internet subscriber universe gave to them.

Has anyone other than the occasional attorney ever read the user agreement that we all sign when we are given our access to the tech empire we chose to inhabit? Doubtful. I certainly haven’t. Who the hell has the time?

It is sort of like we are, as the general internet-using public, a strange land that has been discovered by a more sophisticated society. They came, planted a flag, took over and created an empire. (If this reminds you of an Eddie Izzard bit, that is not accidental.)

The flags of today’s tech empires are their logos and brands.

But there is another similarity involved here. Exploitation. History is chock-a-block with examples of the resources of one geographic area being exploited, or extracted, by another. European countries have exploited African states for centuries. The native people would find themselves under a whip digging into their own soil to extract, minerals, diamonds, gold, etc., only to find the wealth from this work in a vault in London instead of in their own hands.

The American Colonies and then the Southern States engaged in stealing the humanity of Africa to enrich themselves—a fact that many to this very day are defending. Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, stated that slavery was actually a job training program from which slaves actually reaped a benefit.

Britain attacked China and took possession of Hong Kong to enforce opium trade in China, all for the pure profit despite the human addiction misery generating that money.

The tech giants are nothing if not clever—far more so than their colonial predecessors but nevertheless the comparison is there. Instead of enslaving bodies and extracting the wealth of a region by force, they have enslaved the fingers and eyeballs on their clients through algorithms and user agreements.

Don’t get me wrong, there is a value provided by Facebook and Google. They are now right up there with the US Post Office as core drivers of the economy as tools for facilitating commerce. (This is, by the way, not the least bit sarcastic.) But their algorithms are geared to exploit the chief commodity that we users provide: attention span.

Meta (the Facebook parent company) and Google were recently found negligent in a trial about the harms created by social media algorithms. There have been many other settlements over the past years because of other abuses particularly by Facebook which has been used by some vary nefarious actors. The military Junta in Myanmar used Facebook to cause a genocide against Rohingya minority in their country forcing them to flee. More famously was the case of Cambridge Analytica mining Facebook users for data that was then used by Russia’s Internet Research Agency troll farm in Saint Petersburg to sway the American electorate in 2016.

That’s a lot of damage done to people in the name of profit, created from the data people provide in using the platform. You can read about this in much more detail in the book Sowing Hate and Chaos: How Propaganda Is Used to Destroy Democracy by Mary Wald.

Not only are the tech giants behaving in an empirical fashion, they have a lot to answer for.

The funny thing is that operations like Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, Threads (all coincidentally owned by Meta), Reddit and even the now Nazi-infested X all actually provide a useful service. And it is a service they have a right to be paid for, granted. One of the greatest promises the internet gives people at every level of society is a communication system. Yet, these company’s abuse their customers on almost every front.

How do we strike a balance?

A possible answer may lie in a pattern demonstrated by users and advertisers on Twitter (now X) after it was purchased by Elon Musk. Many advertisers left Twitter after Musk suspended content moderation and gave full support to Nazi and white supremacist posters. The company was losing some very significant streams of income. And unsurprisingly, for a Ketamine addict anyway, instead of fixing the issues his customers objected to, he sued them.

Elon sidestepped the revenue loss problem by simply folding what remained of Twitter into his AI company xAI, which he then folded into SpaceX. This will allow him to bury his losses and expenses in the avalanche of money the SpaceX IPO will generate later this year. In other words, he is sticking his future shareholders with the bill.

In spite of the fact that the advertiser boycott of Twitter/X did not produce a lasting result it did demonstrate a weakness and vulnerability. The tech giants want to control us because they need not only our eyeballs and attention span, but something even more important: our clicks.

When you click on a sponsored link on any social network, two things happen: The advertiser gets billed and the network makes money. What would happen if we all just stopped clicking or better yet, registered our disapproval of all the ads we come across. On Facebook at least you can simply close them. Or you can spend a little extra time and use the “three dots” tool and register your disinterest. Whatever the method start closing this revenue stream.

Since your preferences are part of the data Meta sells to other companies, this is a way you can skew and reduce the value of that tracking data.

For lack of a better idea, lets call it The Great Click Stop. Just don’t click on ads on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Google search results, you name it. If everyone does this, these companies will be faced with a revolt by the very things their fortunes depend on. After a while, as their stock values descend, their funding for endless data centers and AI operations will become harder to find.

Then comes the deal. Will the giants make a deal with their users? I’m not sure. But maybe, just maybe, we can get them to let loose of the idea that we somehow owe them all of our data and attention for free. We need to insist on some sort of a user Magna Carta that limits the rights of these tech monarchs over our rights.

The tech giants should no longer be able to have free reign in every direction.

The “little guys” in this case are smaller countries who find themselves under full-scale attack by superpowers.

It turns out that in March of this year Ukraine destroyed a record 33,000 Russian drones sent to attack them in the 4-year long full-scale war Putin launched. Over a million Russian soldiers have died, 11,000 plus tanks destroyed, the numbers are staggering and keep rolling up. Additionally, Ukraine has now demonstrated the ability to counterattack Russian territory to a distance of 1,100 miles.

Compared to Russia, Ukraine is tiny and has not only successfully outsmarted and outfought Putin, but delivered endless embarrassment. Russia is clearly trying to erase Ukraine and its people with an overwhelming number of troops, equipment and swarms of drones. And just as clearly Russia is bearing the bulk of the pain.

Moving on to the arrogant stupidity of Trump attacking Iran. Certainly Iran has been bloodied and lost its leadership structure. The fact that the leaders killed were at the pinnacle of an intensely repressive regime is almost irrelevant. Their inherent bent toward suppressing their own people was just an excuse for Trump. The fact that Iran counter attacked the entire region, as they promised they would, is significant. Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz came as a surprise to no one with even a kindergartner’s level of knowledge of the area—but it was a surprise to Trump.

Trump however has done more damage to the US and world economy with his attack than he could possibly have calculated. This is not surprising since criminals are criminals because they lack the ability to visualize consequences. Among those “unexpected” consequences is the deaths and damage inflicted on our own military and diplomatic installations in the region. Damage cost estimates reaching up to $5 billion so far are being floated.

So now the “little guys,” the Iranians and Ukrainians are calling the shots in their wars with “super powers.”

The arrogance of authoritarian leaders is legendary. Facts and reality will always win over posturing claims of superiority. History has shown us, repeatedly, that the frantic overreach of the dictator-type personality will eventually come snapping back at them. It happened to Hitler, Mussolini, Pol Pot, the Apartheid government of South Africa. Sooner or later those who consider themselves “in charge” find out otherwise.

Probably the most uplifting recent example of this is the massive defeat of Viktor Orbán in Hungary. Orbán copied the actions of Putin for over a decade, taking control of the country’s legislature, the judiciary and the media—even gerrymandering the voting districts. But none of these typical authoritarian practices saved him. And when the new government is sworn in it is likely he and his cronies will face civic and even criminal liabilities. The incoming PM has warned that it appears Orbán and his people are preparing to flee.

All of these indications, despite the bloody aspects of Trump’s and Putin’s military blood lust, are actually hopeful. They bode well for our upcoming Primaries and Midterm elections. They clearly demonstrate that might does not make right—in fact quite the opposite. One cannot override knowledge and observation with rhetoric and lies, no matter how many guns are backing up the rhetoric.

The Republican governors so eagerly trying to curry favor with Trump by forcing through GOP-favoring districts to protect their majority in Congress may end up only damaging that majority more,

Orbán’s defeat in Hungary shows what can happen with a populace stands up and says, “Enough!”

History is choc-a-bloc full of examples like this going back to the Magna Carta in the UK that showed clearly that limits can be placed on a monarch’s authority and reach. Our own founding as a country is another example. America was founded on the action of overthrowing the authority of a monarch.

And now we are faced with someone who nakedly wields the ambition to be a monarch here.

But what is authoritarianism other than the ambition of an individual to override the wishes and in-built agreements of an entire society and population. Sure, that person will gather some agreement—psychotic criminal fools will attract other psychotic criminal fools to their side. Obvious. Why else would people like Stephen Miller, Pete Hegseth and Kash Patel have jobs.

But Trump’s tanking approval rating is just one indication that the United States has reached the stage of enough already. The Midterms will be the Rubicon we as a population will cross to overthrow a wannabe king from his palace of pomp and greed.

The fact of the matter is that no fascist wanna dictator can long overcome a population that just says, “No!”

Trump, Putin and authoritarians like them assume that everyone else is stupid and won’t see what they are doing and what they intend in a clear light. But as the evidence shows, Iranians are not stupid people, neither are Ukranians. Both have shown very high intelligence and capabilities born of high necessity.

That high necessity is being felt by the American populace at large in the face of Trump’s rampant criminality and efforts to suppress all opposition before the Midterms. The same things Trump is doing here were being done in Hungary and didn’t help Orbán at all.

One of the things that’s been driving people crazy over the past ten years is the plain-as-the-nose-on-your-face obviousness of Trump’s ever-increasing insanity being largely ignored.

If you were to run into someone on the street that speaks like Trump, has the same disjointed or non-existent logic, your first impulse is to get some distance from that person—as much distance as possible, actually.

Aberrant behaviors, nonsensical and non sequitur speech, inexplicable anger, ambitions to rule the world, bad smells—are all repellent to most people.

Yet Trump’s supporters all seem to be ready, able and willing to gloss over these points and even praise them. What gives? How can obvious looniness, callous disregard for humanity and general evil be regarded as no big deal?

Got Some ‘Splainin’ to Do

The truth of the matter is that nonsensical actions, behavior and thought processes make people uncomfortable. And rather than just confront the fact that something is just plain nuts and there is a problem with the person or persons proposing these ideas, some people try to explain it away. The mental gymnastics in this effort are just staggering.

When circumstances are hard to confront—like let’s say a world-wide pandemic killing millions of people—people with poor confronting skills can gin up fantasies and call them “theories.” Someone thinks, “Hey maybe 5G is the cause of COVID.” Then the person thinks, well I thought of it, maybe someone else did too and shares that idea. Next thing you know this insane idea becomes an oft-repeated “fact.” And what do you know? This actually resulted in some crazies destroying cell towers that may or may not have been 5G.

Additional stupidity also proliferated like claims that COVID vaccines were just a way for Bill Gates to inject tiny chips in people to track them. Of course it did not occur to these folks that tracking chips were already literally in their hands—cell phones—while they were reading or posting those insane stories.

Just because an idiot posts a stupid idea and another fool shared it does not make it a fact—no matter how many times Trump claims he won in 2020. Of course in this latter example an evil and criminal intent was also involved.

F*ck You, Pay Me!

The next factor to understand is that the propensity of people to believe and share lies and manufactured “facts” can lead some people to riches.

A recent story about a medical student in India who needed tuition money is a great case in point. This student created a very fake yet very cute blonde with AI and shared images and right-wing messaging on social media platforms. He got millions of shares from the gullible crowd, made his tuition and then some before his scam became egg on everyone’s faces.

But it can actually get worse than this and quite deadly. During the height of the pandemic, Florida was suffering one of the highest death rates from COVID. Yet the governor, Ron DeSantis, was loudly campaigning against masks, social distancing and vaccine mandates. He claimed all these things were infringements on people rights. And if someone got sick with it they could simple go to the hospital and get monoclonal antibody infusions and they’d be fine. What he failed to reveal was that his largest campaign donor was also a major shareholder of a company that made this infusion drug and that it cost $2000 per dose—on top of the other associated costs of emergency care, which were astronomical.

You can find a lot of “popular” stupidities out there that seem to be spontaneous or “grassroots,” coming out of nowhere. But a more careful examination will find them being funded by someone who stands to make a profit from them. One example is the supposedly grassroots Tea Party Movement that sprang up to oppose any and all proposals by Obama and his administration. A cursory examination of their communications showed them to be very well funded and organized with much of their money coming from right wing political activist operations like Americans for Prosperity—which was funded by Charles and David Koch and others.

Images of “spontaneous” protests against masks and social distancing in Los Angeles showed people gathering around with pre-printed, graphic-designed protest signs. Even the spontaneity was fake. And it was the gullible running around carrying those signs, failing to notice that even the presence of the signs was something staggeringly illogical.

While this may seem far afield from our headline topic, it isn’t. About 1.2 million Americans died under Trump’s gross mishandling of the pandemic. More people, by percentage of population, died here than in any other country in the world. Yet, this man, whom everyone mistook as the president because he held the title, lied in every breath about how it was a hoax invented by Democrats in March of 2020. But as we found out six months later, he had been recorded telling Bob Woodward a few weeks earlier that he knew it was dangerous and that it was airborne. Woodward has the death of possibly hundreds of thousands of Americans on his hands for failing to reveal Trump’s lie immediately—but he apparently didn’t want to ruin his chances of using that lie to promote the book he was working on. See, financial interest.

The Liars in Our Lives

Our experience with Trump clearly shows that the lives of others mean absolutely nothing to him. Not even the health and lives of his supporters. Some of his most virulent supporters are now bankrupt, ruined or disbarred. A few cases in point, pillow huckster Mike Lindell, Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman. There are others, you know who they are. And these guys kissed his feet. The rest of us rate even less attention like the “suckers and losers” (his words) in the armed forces—as he throws them into the abject stupidity of war.

Yet some people are still content to explain him away. While prices at the pump rise. While the cost of groceries go up and up. While the cost of heating and cooling homes rises relentlessly. While he works to steal our tax money in broad daylight.

Trump is only still here because we have allowed it. We have not beaten down the doors to our representative’s offices in local districts or in D.C. We have not melted their phone lines. They have the power to remove him right now and uphold their oath to the Constitution and to us.

It starts with each of us saying, “I’m done. This is not okay with me.” “I will not accept explaining away insanity.”

You don’t have to explain it other than to acknowledge it as nuts. The end. And there begins the process of confronting it. And then you can force those responsible to do their jobs.

You all know the assignment. Let’s get to it.

Here is my take on last night's episode of Trump's "reality show" presidency. Whatever the truth of the situation really is, it will trickle out over the next few days. But in the meantime, right wing propagandists are having a field day posting "data" about the shooter. Apparently he is a registered Dem and donated a whopping $25 to Kamala's campaign.

The typical action of RW media is to paint anyone they don't like with the broad brush of generalities. This includes putting up Photoshop composites of Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer standing with Cole Allen. Pretty easy to distill the messaging here.

Media will be stuffed with BS for days on this, which is manna from heaven for Trump. Perhaps the most telling photo I have seen so far (above) is one of Melania sitting with her mouth open and a WTF expression and Trump looking at her trying not to grin and a shocked Secret Service guy behind them.

Re-examination of past assassination "attempts" are finding pretty much universal fakery with dead or imprisoned patsies. Placing bets on this one, mentally, not with Polymarket.

But, today no one is talking about Epstein, Rape Island, Trump's systematic corruption, his expensive war, Trumpflation or the fact that he caused the Strait of Hormuz to close. He and his crew seem to think there's some sort of beneficial sympathy factor in him being an almost victim.

Meanwhile government of the distraction, for the distraction and by the distraction has unfortunately still not perished.

Probably the most important thing to remember about Victor Orbán’s election loss this month is that he had stacked every possible deck in his favor and still lost in a rout.

Trump’s shrinking far-right faction here has used the examples of Orbán’s reign as a model for their operations here. It should be noted that these also parallel the activities of Putin. Here are the key elements:

• Control of media outlets by cronies.

• Control of the judiciary and appointment of favorable judges.

• Extreme gerrymandering to ensure districts could not lose elections.

• Focusing on immigrants as an external threat to be feared and guarded against.

• Massive, open and obvious corruption and influence peddling.

Sound familiar?

Trump is well on the way to having media control by cronies with the upcoming purchase of Warner by Skydance/Paramount, whose owners, Larry and David Ellison are devout Trumpies. The comments by the self-named Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, that he couldn’t wait for the Ellisons to take over CNN are illustrative of this point.

Any agency that has shown the audacity to question the actions or comments of Trump or one of his henchmen gets branded instantly as a fake news outfit or just nasty and rude for doing their jobs. But the reality is that Trump’s backers already control significant portions of the news media landscape. The destruction of CBS News under Bari Weiss is an example of possible things to come.

Trump has appointed more judges that can easily be counted, including three on the Supreme Court that have already significantly degraded Constitutional freedoms. And he’s drooling to appoint more. But surprisingly even some of his SCOTUS and lower court appointees have been pushing back on some of his extremes. Though Trump will attack any judges who rule against him whether he appointed them or not. Even John Roberts, who granted Trump extra-Constitutional immunity in the Trump v United States case, has not been spared attacks. The fact of the matter is that Trump sees courts as an impediment to his desire to rule by decree.

We are all now familiar with the horror stories of the ICE Gestapo rounding up everyone they can with Hispanic surnames, Black people who sound foreign and even an 85-year-old French woman and putting them in the hurt locker of their concentration camp detention system. They have murdered citizens on the street and generally distributed mayhem across the country in the name of “saving us from the immigrant invasion” Trump harped about for years. The basic lie in the whole operation is that they were going after the “worst of the worst.” In the mind of the white supremacist anyone of color is the worst. But the stats show that only 2 percent of detainees actually have significant criminal records. Many ICE agent have far sketchier backgrounds than the people they were detaining.

But Trump and his supporters want us to somehow forget that the people they are kidnapping off the streets are actually people. They cannot overcome the fact that in any group of people anywhere the majority are actively good and productive individuals ready to get on with the daily work of living and contributing to society. This of course leads to the fact that contrary to all logic of running a country, Trump and his people haters like Stephen Miller and Tom Homan are forcibly expelling a population segment that pays billions in taxes.

Trump’s rhetoric about immigrants over the years has been a close parallel to that of Orbán recently and Hitler in the past. Calling out immigrants as somehow subhuman, poisoning the blood, “they’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats,” etc., are just some examples. This way we the “humans” are not supposed to feel bad about their mistreatment. The lack of humanity in this thought pattern is chilling.

Trump demanded Republican-led states redistrict to add more Republican seats in Congress. Some have complied. The idea here, it least in his limited mind, was to prevent a looming third impeachment proceeding. But to date this effort has backfired. Some Democratic-led states did the same thing, most notably California which exactly offset new Republican seats from Texas with Democratic seats. Lawsuits by Republicans to block Democratic states from taking these retaliatory actions were laughed out of court.

But right here we come to perhaps one of the most important factors in Orbán’s loss. The extreme gerrymandering he did in Hungary did exactly nothing to keep him in office. And it may well be the same case here.

With the abuses of the Trump administration against society in general, it is a possibility that there is no longer any such thing as a “reliable” Republican district.

One of the other things that turned Hungary away from its wannabe dictator was the corruption. One of the campaign activities the opposition effectively used was to transport people to the palace where Orbán lived. They set up ladders so that people could look over the high fences to see the unrestrained opulence.

Over here, we have been bombarded with images of the gaudy gold-painted ornamentation Trump has covered the White House and Oval Office with. But with Trump there is always more. The insane lawsuit he filed against the IRS demanding $10 billion for the leak of the tax returns he promised to release is moving forward. He is essentially negotiating with himself on a settlement. Wonder how that will turn out…

But there are more examples of the Trump grift operation. Let’s not forget the accounts in the Middle East that he controls where Venezuelan oil revenues are being deposited. Or the funds given to his “Board of Peace” which are again controlled by him. The settlements—really bribes—from CBS, Google and others.

Naked corruption did nothing to keep Orbán in office. It is unlikely that it will help Trump and his posse.

Recent local and state-level election losses by Republican and Trump-endorsed candidates also throw down some tea leaves toward what is coming in November.

It is looking now more like a tsunami than a mere high tide is coming. But the removal of Trump and his band of crooks can happen even sooner if we can persuade Congress to do its job. No doubt Republicans have arrived at a similar calculus about the loss Orbán, their buddy, experienced.

We need to do more phone calls, exert more pressure and demand. We can be rid of Trump well before November. Let’s get to it.

The art of the “Cliffhanger” dates way back before the days of television. In the early 1900’s short adventure films like “What Happened to Mary” or “The Perils of Pauline” would appear weekly in theaters. There were actually dozens of titles in this genre. Of course, the idea was to keep the public coming back week after week, so the creators would plant a mystery of “what is about to happen” at the end of each episode.

This technique has of course been a classic success generator even today and is used liberally in current episodic TV and streaming shows. It is also used is “Reality TV” productions—the use of ironic quotes is intentional since there is nothing real about “Reality TV.” That actual hallmark of reality shows is contrived or faked reality. It is all about the manipulation of circumstance to create a false sense of drama and then at the end of episodes comes the mystery to stick one’s attention on what is going to “happen next.”

It is not hard to see that this is the total description of how Trump operates his administration. There is never a well-reasoned statement of how a conclusion for a course of action was determined. We never hear about how various important aspects of a situation were discussed before a knee-jerk decision was made. No. The idea is that we are presented with a contrived drama, a war, mass roundups of people, military attacks on the civilian population, deprivation of Constitutional rights, murder in broad daylight and then, we’re supposed to wait for what will happen next.

This is Trump’s tried-and rue method of riveting the attention of the press and his hard core supporters to his every utterance. This is why he could care less if he makes any sense or not, or whether his flunkies commit high crimes in his name. He only cares about the “ratings” he has between people ears, how much of people’s attention he can own.

It is true that this is in sharp contrast to previous administrations from both parties. Things in the governmental sphere could be deathly boring on an exciting day. Obama with his deep Constitutional education and law degree could drone slowly on. But who said government was supposed to be episodic TV with daily life and death struggles thrust on the American public?

Trump came to power with his formula of outrage followed by pugilism—just as his odious mentor Roy Cohn taught him. The fact that his father was a blatant racist—associated by historians with the Ku Klux Klan—set him up with a ready faction of racists to take up his banner. But it was his laser focused ability to capture the attention of the media that gave him his escalator into our lives. And the news media outlets, desperate for the eyeballs that Trump could deliver, played right into the swirling cesspool that now engulfs them, with Trump’s allies buying them up like trading cards.

But here we arrive at the real point. We have a carnival barker con man in charge of the government and the execution of laws in this country, which is based theoretically on the rule of law. How many of us have reminded members of Congress that they have sworn an oath to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. I know at least two people who communicated with members of the House and Senate in recent days and one of them was me.

We get what we tolerate in our lives. How many of us are content to tolerate the status quo of a decrepit sex offender felon calling the shots of our nation? Are we content to wait for the next Trump cliffhanger two weeks from now? Already his cease-fire agreement announcement is turning out to be laced with lies.

If it is 3:00 in the afternoon and you ask Trump what time it is, you won’t get that answer. Everyone should have learned by now that every single statement issued by him or his press secretary lie-factory Miss Wannabe Riefenstahl can’t be taken as fact, ever.

Time to get the message to every member of Congress so loudly—from every direction so they can’t change the channel—that we now don’t care about what Trump will do next. We care only for what Congress will do next and it better be impeachment of him and his whole criminal bunch.

Sometimes reading tea leaves can be useful, especially when they are tea leaves already etched in history. In the 1920’s America was riding high on a booming stock market and the rich were getting richer every day.

We all know the narrative of what happened on October 29, 1929. The stock market crash of that day, also known as Black Tuesday, was not a singular event. It had been preceded by a smaller crash on October 24. These events triggered the years of economic disaster known still as the Great Depression.

The resultant rise of mass unemployment is seen as a result of the crash, although the crash is by no means the sole event that contributed to the depression. The Wall Street Crash is usually seen as having the greatest impact on the events that followed and therefore is widely regarded as signaling the downward economic slide that initiated the Great Depression. True or not, the consequences were dire for almost everybody. Most academic experts agree on one aspect of the crash: It wiped out billions of dollars of wealth in one day, and this immediately depressed consumer buying.

But the United States was not the only country affected. The Great Depression was an international phenomenon which was devastating in varying ways depending on the country involved. In Germany the net result was the rise of Hitler and Nazism, and we know where that led.

The United States eventually recovered. Various protections for society were put in place. One was the 1933 Banking Act also known as Glass-Steagall. This act established the FDIC to protect depositors and put strict limits on speculative investments by banks. This period also saw the rise of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal—a pact of laws benefiting everyday Americans and still hated by big business to this day.

Glass-Steagall worked. That is up until the day that Bill Clinton signed into law its repeal—to prove to everyone that Democrats could be “pro-business”—which lead later to the 2008 financial crash.

I’m not going to examine every action of Republicans and Democrats since that time. History already has shown us that Republicans generally have degraded our economic conditions and raised deficits while Democrats have improved them and lowered or even erased deficits.

But looking to our current situation, the storm clouds of economic disaster are taking on a kind of tornadic aspect. The swirl of scandal accompanied by blatant, broad-daylight corruption, discrimination and wholesale degradation of predictability are the rule of the day.

Our “Dear Leader”—as he is seen by his mouthpieces—has set no example of financial prudence or discipline in his entire life—yet he is somehow regarded as a “successful businessman.” The fact that Trump thinks getting paid for having his name on things equates to being productive should be all we need to know about his actual financial acumen. Anyone who can successfully bankrupt casinos can also ruin any other financial structure he gets involved in, and so it is with our economy.

Trump’s next target is the social safety net put in place under Roosevelt. He has proposed a budget which includes $1.5 trillion for the Pentagon “paid for” by cuts to social services “we can’t afford.” The truth of the matter is we can afford them and have always been able to. The lie here, perpetuated by Republicans for decades, is that people are liabilities if they cost society money. Never mind that Social Security and Medicare have already been paid for—by us. Never mind that the $4.5 trillion paid for healthcare in 2024 would have been less than $3 trillion if universal healthcare had been put in place. Elementary arithmetic tells us that $1.5 trillion in profit dollars went to healthcare corporations just in the year 2024. And those prices, like every other price under Trump, are going up.

In the meantime, Trump illegally sucked about $160 billion out of our pockets with his “Liberation Day” tariffs. He’s pardoned countless criminals and drug dealers who preyed on society. He’s taken money for Venezuelan oil and placed it in accounts he controls. And now we have a war, one that he started personally, for which he is demanding an additional $200 billion from Congress. Oh, and let’s not forget his $10 billion civil suit against his own DOJ for offending him with (correct) accusations of trying to stage a coup on Jan 6.

You can only take so much money out of an organization before it collapses. The same is true of a government. The United States is not a business intended to turn a profit, no matter what Trump’s Republican fan club claims. But the fact of the matter is that it is tax money paid in by us that he is demanding to steal for himself.

You can only stretch a rubber band so far before it snaps. And the elasticity of the American economy is already being stretched past any conceivable breaking point. This is being papered over by various means including fake statistics, like employment. Remember that Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics for being honest. Employment numbers for March actually looked encouraging. Just wait. In a few weeks they will be revised downward. Just like previous reporting periods.

The actual bill for this twisted financial picture will be coming due. Trump won’t pay it, something he has proven for decades.

Criminals are in charge in the White House, lead by a convicted felon. Haven’t we yet had enough of his high crimes and misdemeanors?

Congress should ignore Trump’s upcoming budget and do its proper job of impeaching this massive threat to our Constitution and our economy. That’s the only reliable way to avoid the Great Depression 2.0.

We all know what the word fool means, don’t we? Well, just to add a bit to our mental database:

noun: fool; plural noun: fools

• a person who acts unwisely or imprudently; a silly person.
  “what a fool I was to do this”

• historical: a jester or clown, especially one retained in a noble household.

• informal: a person devoted to a particular activity.
  “he is a running fool”

• archaic: a person who is duped.

But wait there’s more. The origin of the word rounds out the concept:

• Middle English: from Old French fol ‘fool, foolish’, from Latin follis ‘bellows, windbag’, by extension ‘empty-headed person’.

If you instantly get that this applies to our current wannabe king and his cabinet of jesters, good.

The image of Trump and his cabinet of TV news readers and greedy billionaires as empty-headed windbags is poetically appropriate. The problem is that these fools have their hands on the tiller of the American ship of state on an international sea—and can’t navigate a bathtub.

The distance between the psychotic reality Trump and his supporters have generated and his increasingly divergent descriptions of it grows daily. Over a year into his reign—silly to call it a term of office—the situations he accused Biden of, war, inflation and domestic strife, are expanding on a daily basis.

But it is not just Trump standing on soap boxes making insane pronouncements. Pete Hegseth thinks he is engaged in a modern day version of the Crusades. Pam Bondi classifies the truth as anything that Trump says and expects that to be somehow self-evident. Steven Miller whose demonstrated ambition is to make political prisoners of as many Trump opponents as possible and wrench apart the families of immigrants. These three are just a fraction of the noise.

The hate machine of today’s White House and Republican Party is not even remotely amusing in the way one would expect in an April First post about them. There is nothing funny in a man who daily demands tributes, honors and recognitions that were never earned or belonged to others. And there is even less humor inherent in those sycophants blindly and violently support him.

So we launch into another month of episodes of Trump’s contrived reality show, complete with teasers of what atrocity might be next. We can still find humorous viewpoints from heroes like Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel and others who are standing up in the face of his insanity.

Today’s Republicans still call themselves the “Party of Lincoln.” Only now that statement bears not the slightest resemblance to the truth. Republicans have abandoned any of the principles Lincoln espoused as a steadfast and articulate opponent of slavery and its evils.

From Heather Cox Richardson:

In the 1850s, on a fragment of paper, Lincoln figured out the logic of a world that permitted the law to sort people into different places in a hierarchy, applying the reasoning he heard around him. “If A. can prove, however conclusively, that he may, of right, enslave B.—why may not B. snatch the same argument, and prove equally, that he may enslave A?”

Lincoln wrote. “You say A. is white, and B. is black. It is color, then; the lighter, having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own. You do not mean color exactly?—You mean the whites are intellectually the superiors of the blacks, and, therefore have the right to enslave them?

Take care again. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with an intellect superior to your own. But, say you, it is a question of interest; and, if you can make it your interest, you have the right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his interest, he has the right to enslave you.”

Today’s Republican Party is all about the creation of various “less than” or “more than” classes or groupings of people. In the GOP mindset, you are definitely less than if your skin color is not white, if you speak a different language or come from a different country with different social norms. And if you are a woman, you are an object to control.

Today’s Republican Party considers you a “more than” if you are wealthy and agree with their discrimination and segregation ideals and their attempts to roll back the national clock to a time before Lincoln caused their party into existence. Those were their “glory” days where rich white people owned others they considered inferior to be their property to be bought, sold or disposed of as they saw fit. Or to at least roll things back to the lesser but useful glory days of Jim Crow—when white law and the Klan ruled.

Today’s Republican Party has a sick and twisted, terror-ridden soul calling the shots at the top. But backing him up are his Mini-Me, Vance, Mike Johnson, Steven Miller, Russell Vought, Pam Bondi and more, along with their billionaire buddies all lining up at the trough to fill their empty hearts with tax dollars sucked from our pockets.

Today’s Republican Party bears no resemblance to the party of Lincoln, or the party that brought into existence the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments. The party that created the Department of Justice to enforce civil rights—rather than dismantle them as is being done under Pam Bondi. The open embrace of racist icons like Charlie Kirk, Nick Fuentes, Ben Shapiro, Laura Loomer, the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and others makes their intent abundantly clear. This is now a party that cancels government programs simply because they might benefit people of color or women. They have the view of “How dare these ideas of equality—contrary as they are to Trump’s dictates—have the audacity to exist just because they are constitutional.”

Today’s Republican Party has abandoned any responsibility of even lip service to the oaths that each member swore on taking office. Now it is all about, “What does the Dear Leader want? Okay, that’s what we’re doing.” That is not government. That is boot licking.

Today’s Republican Party is in thrall of a man who obviously has far less than a full count of his mental faculties—and decreasing rapidly before our eyes. But they give every utterance he makes the weight of gospel—and in a case of apparent wishful thinking, believe he’s here to lead them to the end of times. In case anyone does not recognize this for what it is, it is called a death wish. Yes, the Republican Party wants this country as we know it to end.

Today’s Republican Party has no right to call itself representative of “the people.” It has no mandate. It also does not care about “people.” This is evidenced by their fervent efforts to pass the SAVE act to reduce the amount of people who will be allowed to vote by millions. The most obvious thing about the SAVE act is that it is intended to save the Republican Party and Trump. Republicans always do better in elections when fewer people vote.

Trump wants to be a king. And today’s Republican Party really wants to be his royal court.

March 28th is the next No Kings March in your local area. Come out and tell today’s Republican Party what they can do with their plans, plots and ideas.

I am not a military strategist or anything of the sort. But the progression of events in Trump’s war against Iran is becoming more and more obvious. And that’s not a hopeful statement, given that vast trove of knowledge not in the possession of our “commander-in-thief.”

Anyone who has given even a cursory look at the military history of the last half-century should be able to see the warning signs. Let’s just say it outright. Quagmires. We’ve had a few long and bloody ones. And Trump has teed up the next one.

When John Kennedy was president, Americans were already in Vietnam. He had made the decision to get out. However he did not survive to see that decision executed. And we know what happened from there. Johnson escalated, Nixon and Kissinger expanded the war and we got our collective asses kicked to the tune of over 50,000 American dead as well as millions of Vietnamese civilians.

Reagan did a little “morale booster” of an invasion of Grenada just to show the world the we still had some soldiers that were capable to shooting people in a foreign country. And Daddy Bush launched the invasion of Panama to cart Noriega off to jail. And then ran his big operation to kick Saddam out of Kuwait—Irag 1.0.

Then of course came 9/11 and Baby Bush’s bombing and invasion of Afghanistan which went so well we were only stuck there for 20 years. And in the meantime, there was Iraq 2.0 and we all know how well that went after W’s big “Mission Accomplished” splash.

Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq. All massive miscalculations. All quagmires that resulted in massive losses of life and massive financial drains on the American and world economies.

And now we’ve got Iran. Thanks, Trump! There are distinctive similarities that can be drawn in these conflicts. The first is that none of these countries have been permanently conquered. The chief reason for this is their people. The Vietnamese had been fighting off invasions for a thousand years before we showed up after the French got kicked out. Afghanistan has resisted invasions back to the time of Alexander the Great. Saddam Hussein with superior military forces spent eight years trying to invade Iran before giving up, licking his wounds and invading Kuwait a couple years later.

To start, Trump decided to start his war with Iran in the middle of negotiations that were supposed to be working to limit Iran’s future nuclear capabilities—which he claimed to have already eliminated. This is of course the same sort of tactic the Japanese did in 1941—engage in negotiations with Washington while having already launched the attack fleet against Pearl Harbor. Aside from sleaziness of this action, the opening salvos of the war gave Trump a confidence boost since he took out the leadership of the country—including of course all the favored replacements for their Supreme Leader.

Trump ignored all the warnings that attacking Iran could lead to a widening conflict in the region. This very quickly became fact with Iran attacking all the allied states in the region and Israel taking it as an opportunity to re-attack Hezbollah in Lebanon.

But the biggest predicted result was what would happen to oil prices—they were going to rocket upward. Again, that came true very quickly. Everyone who could read a map predicted that Iran would take control of the critical choke point of the Strait of Hormuz. The only oil getting through the strait now belongs to Iran on its way to their biggest customer, China. And since Russia is happily sharing intel and targeting data with them, the Iranians are letting Russia’s shadow fleet tankers have passage. Everyone else is a target.

So now Trump is in an even bigger pickle. He has directly caused an international oil shock and almost every national leader is pissed at him—except Putin and Netenyahu, who are delighted. But since he has painted himself in a corner he has to do something. The breadcrumbs of what are already visible: he’s sending the Marines, possibly to try and take Kharg Island. Taking Kharg does not make a lot of sense since it is quite far from the Strait of Hormuz. But that’s just what the current rumor is. But since everything is a real estate negotiation with Trump, taking Kharg could be about a bargaining chip.

But as soon as a landing craft hits the beach and a Marine sets foot in Iranian soil, this conflict becomes an invasion. Even contemplating this kind of action shows an unbelievable lack of understanding of the problems these boys will be faced with. The ferocity Saddam Hussein was faced with when he tried to invade Iran will be nothing compared to what will rain down on the forces of “The Great Satan”—as we are known in Iran. If Trump and Hegseth manage to gain a foothold, it will be useless and the troops will be forced to spend all their time on defense. It won’t help oil shipping at all.

To effectively protect shipping, American forces would need to occupy the Iranian shoreline, not a remote island. This would require orders of magnitude more men than are already being sent. It would be the height of arrogant stupidity to think this could be accomplished. But then again, arrogant stupidity is the current White House core branding.

There’s even more that the Trump administration does not understand: how religion relates to war, especially in the Middle East. And this is evidenced by the Hegseth Pentagon pushing the idea that our troops are fighting a religious war. You can’t really get any stupider than that—well that might yet be soon disproved. As we are all aware, there has been a long tradition in Middle East conflicts of suicide bombing. These acts are carried out by religious zealots, often under the influence of heavy drugs, giving their lives to kill enemies of their religion. The bombers are convinced that they will become martyrs and go to a heaven surrounded by rivers of milk and honey and a plethora of virgins. What many may not be aware of is that this tradition began in Iran,

Over a thousand years ago a man named Hasan-i Sabbah founded the cult of assassins in the castle of Alamut, in the mountains near current Tehran. Hasan-i Sabbah established a version of the Islamic description of paradise. His men would roam the countryside, drug and kidnap young men and bring them to Alamut. These men would awake and find themselves in paradise, surrounded by opulence, food, beautiful women and be allowed to enjoy themselves a bit. Then one day one of these gullible captives would be brought in and told that a mistake had been made and they were brought heaven too soon. They would need to return to Earth and complete one more holy act, which would be killing some ruler or another and if they happened to be killed in that act, they of course return right back to their current surroundings. The young man would happily agree, be fed more hashish in his food and soon a local sultan would find himself missing his head as a crazed assassin leaped up out a crowd with a scimitar. The assassin would of course be cut to ribbons by the late sultan’s guards.

The methodology today is undoubtedly different—psychiatric drugs and pain-drug-hypnosis are used instead of hashish—but the results are the same.

And this thousand-year-old cultural tradition is what Hegesth’s “holy” warriors will be invading into should Trump be stupid enough the approve. And who thinks he won’t?

Beyond these points it is anyone’s guess. But it will undoubtedly be ugly and bloody.

Trump has created an apparently unsolvable problem on the other side of the globe. What can we do about it here? This leads right back to the same solutions I recommended in my other recent pieces. We need to remove him from office. Congress can do this. They have the Constitutional authority. But elements of the Republican Party have abdicated their rights and authority to Trump. We need to remind them that ultimately they answer to us and not the criminal in the Oval Office. Use the tool below to contact all your representatives, of either party. Daily if need be. Trump and all his collaborators need to be evicted from government now.

It is a bottom-line fact that Donald Trump is a convicted felon and sex offender. He is also working over time and expending treasure and lives now to keep national attention riveted away from his connections to another criminal, Jeffery Epstein. Like most criminals, he’s committing new crimes to cover up his old crimes. When are we collectively going to say, “ENOUGH!”

The word treason is showing up a lot more in the news lately, used in conjunction is some way with Trump, his appointees and his backers.

Let’s take a closer look at treason. Treason in the United States is narrowly defined by Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution as levying war against the U.S. or adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. It is the only crime specifically defined in the Constitution, requiring two witnesses to an overt act or a confession in open court for conviction.

That is the Constitutional definition. Cornell Legal Information Institute adds this: Treason is the betrayal of one’s own country by attempting to overthrow the government through waging war against the State or materially aiding its enemies.

There is also the simple English definition: the betrayal of a trust. The root of the word is interesting too: Middle English tresoun, from Anglo-French traisun, from Latin tradition-, traditio act of handing over, from tradere to hand over, betray.

Synonyms and related terms:

• Betrayal of country

• Subversion

• Sedition (speech/actions inciting rebellion)

• Aid and comfort to the enemy

• Espionage (often charged alongside or instead of treason)

• Disloyalty

• Treachery

So we can see this now from a variety of facets in both governmental and general life. A person hired at a job, getting paid for that job but doing something else, even working for a competitor or the like, would be committing treason to that employer.

Now if you have gotten this far and said, “Hell, I’ve seen Trump do all of these,” welcome to the front of the class. He has been operating solely in the bounds of treason since his first term and his then feeble attempts to subvert the Constitution, through to his overt attempt to incite a rebellion to overthrow the 2020 election.

But in the Trump 2.0 administration he has gone much, much further by following the blueprint of Project 2025, which is designed to permanently ensconce the far right as the ruling entity of this country. The use of the word ruling is not casual. Trump and every other elected official in our Constitutional government is there to govern on our behalf. But Trump is trying to rule instead of govern. This is a massive distinction.

In essence he is refusing to do the job he was hired for and is working actively to subvert the Constitution and us, his employer.

So what is the remedy? Impeachment, conviction and removal of course. Once those steps are done, prosecution for the ongoing criminal activity he is engaging in daily. The problem isn’t evidence, it is gathering, cataloging and presenting it—there is so damn much.

The barriers to this sequence are pretty obvious. The Republican majority in both the House and Senate. But the first, the House majority—which will almost certainly fall in November—has eroded to only one seat. Surely one lonely Republican can be persuaded to uphold his or her oath of office. Thomas Massie comes to mind as a possibility. The Senate is a bigger problem, but not that much.

Once Trump is impeached and removed, the same thing needs to be done with every other member of the administration: Vance, Bondi, Kennedy, Lutnick—the whole criminal Klan. Mike Johnson can be removed from the Speaker post by flipping just one member of the House—that’s how close we are.

What’s needed is pressure. Tons of it. From you, me and everyone else who is fed up with this farce of an administration. How do we apply this pressure? Phone calls, emails, web forms, physical mail, demonstrations, you name it.

This link will give you the contact information for all your representatives in Congress. On March 28, the next nationwide No Kings demonstrations will happen. Go the the demonstrations. Make your voices heard. Visit your representatives local offices, or on the Hill if you are in D.C. Call and email repeatedly. Make noise—lots of it.

These people have a job we elected them to do that they swore an oath to and they need to know we expect their compliance.

Trump is not the ruler of this country, no matter how many people have chosen to believe otherwise. We ARE!

There’s another little factor that needs to be understood here. Treason can sort of rub off on you. If you ignore it, it becomes your treason. It ceases to just belong to the perpetrator. This is actually true of any crime. But the fact of the matter is that this should be made clear to the members of Congress who have the authority and power to remove treasonous people from the other branches of government. Make this clear to them. If they ignore Trump and his corruption, or the corruption of Pam Bondi or Clarence Thomas, etc., etc., they then have to own those crimes. This is a legal distinction but also a fact of life.

When you see a crime being committed and you ignore it, it has an effect on you whether you like it or not. By ignoring a crime you become complicit in that crime. Fact of life and of existence. The Oxford Learner’s Dictionary defines complicit as “involved with other people in something wrong or illegal.“

There’s another term that needs to be in the mix on this: accessory. An accessory in law is a person who knowingly aids, abets, counsels, or encourages the commission or concealment of a crime.

The most corrupt administration in the 250-year history of America is in control of our government at this moment. If anyone finds fault with this statement they are just not even trying to look. In a little over a year Trump has grifted over $4 billion into his own coffers. And he’s just getting started. This is criminality. He’s being actively aided and abetted by others in the administration who consider his word law even if it countermands established laws, you know, like the Constitution.

But the thing about corruption is that it spreads and festers. Complicity is how the corruption is allowed to happen in the first place and being an accessory is helping to actively spread it. Right now, majorities in both Houses of Congress are in varying degrees both complicit and operating as accessories to the criminal activities of the occupant of the Oval Office.

Congress has the power, on an almost immediate basis, to remove Trump from office along with all of his self-serving appointees. So the question is why aren’t they doing just that? There are myriad reasons for this continuing lapse which vary for each representative. But the fact that they are representative is key. These people were hired based on our votes. Ultimately they answer to us and their baseline job—what they swore an oath to—is to uphold the Constitution.

That document in and of itself calls for the immediate removal of Trump and his cronies.

So how do we make this happen? If you are reading this essay, you have the means. Call your representatives. Every day. Write to them. Call them. All of their contact data is available right on this page from the tool at the bottom. Use it, Make your voice heard. Make your refusal to be complicit, or worse an accessory, a demand on them. Don’t let up. Get your friends and acquaintances do the same. Over and over.

Silence is complicity. Don’t be silent.

Click here for the contact information of all members of congress.

In case anyone has failed to notice, life can be tough sometimes. Everyone has to deal with it one way or another, sooner or later. It is also an inescapable biological fact that no one gets out alive. So in the face of that inevitable, how do you want to live?

Another fact is that nature can be more than just unkind in how it can affect the lives of all of us at any given moment. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, blizzards, droughts, landslides, tsunamis and oh, yeah, pandemics, can wipe out small or large segments of our population and have. In the face of all these threats from our living environment a question arises: Do you want a society which makes things easier for our present and future generations? Or not?

What do you want more than anything when life gets in your face and makes the very idea of living hard? Probably some help, understanding, compassion, right? What if cruelty and indifference come calling instead? Too often today that is the result.

This may sound like an airy-fairy philosophical thought train, but it is simply a practical, down-to-earth, question. If life is already difficult, why work to make it harder for others and thus make it harder for yourself. Because believe me, if you are making life harder for others, it is an inescapable fact that those cruel acts will rebound on you in some way.

It is another fact of life that people are basically good. At their core making things hard for others, committing crimes, harming others, etc., are things they really don’t want to be doing. But many find themselves compelled in some way along that path. Outside pressures, internal conflicts, an inability to see consequences, or just weaknesses in their character can be the cause. And then there are those who we would classify as just plain nuts.

Our biggest societal problem in the United States—and other countries like Russia, Hungary and others run under de facto dictatorships—is that all of the character flaws that result in cruel treatment of the populations reside in those at the top of the government. You can debate this all you want, but it is just a simple observable fact.

Cruelty and inhumanity were baked in to the make-up of the American South for nearly a century after the Civil War. Every effort is being made by Trump’s administration to roll back the clock on any civil rights gains made in that time. That’s not hyperbole. That’s the policy of the government under the control of a guy who should not receive more attention than a decrepit resident of a retirement home whose racist rants are recognized as part of his dementia.

But our problem is that Trump has surrounded himself with “yes” men and women who not only agree with his insanity but relish in the activity of pushing into reality.

Many people who voted for Trump in the last election are having second, third or fourth thoughts and would not do so today under any circumstances. Trump knows this and thus is pushing every possible angle at putting his tiny thumbs on the scales this November. He knows that if Republicans lose in November, which looks more and more certain every day, he will be impeached forthwith. And then every protection he surrounded his criminality with will evaporate. And he’s right.

But here’s the present day reality check. We don’t have to continue to live in a society where cruelty, degradation and discrimination are the rules of the road. Trump and his sycophants can be tossed out now.

All it will take is getting a very few House Republicans and a very few Senate Republicans to step up to the fact that this is necessary and their duty as part of their oath of office. Get a few Republicans in the House to switch parties now and Mike Johnson would be immediately removed as Speaker and thus be removed from the presidential line of succession.

We don’t even have to wait for November. It can happen now and we have the power to make it happen by flooding every Republican member of Congress with demands to make it so.

The Preamble to the Constitution is a unique statement:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

This gives us the purpose of the document that every member of our government swore an oath to uphold, protect and defend. In case it escaped anyone’s attention, cruelty and inhumanity are not part of that statement. We can do better and we actually have the capability of making that happen.

Use the tool here to contact your members and get your friends, family and associates to do the same. We actually can have the kind of society we want and we can get rid of the insanity at the top of ours faster than we might think.

I learned a new word the other day. Someone had posted it as a comment on a Facebook group. I looked it up and realized it is a very apt term: Führerprinzip.

This mouthful of German syllables turns out to be very important. Here’s what Google’s AI has to say about it in translation:

Führerprinzip translates to “leader principle” or “leader-principle” in English. It was a core tenet of Nazi ideology (1933–1945) mandating that a single, charismatic leader—Adolf Hitler—held absolute authority, with his word placed above all written law. It demanded total, unquestioning obedience from the German populace and subordinates.

Key aspects of the Führerprinzip include:

• Totalitarian Authority: The leader’s will was considered the supreme law, requiring absolute loyalty and obedience.

• Hierarchical Command: It organized the Nazi Party and state where authority flowed directly from top to bottom, replacing democratic processes.

• Cult of Personality: A massive propaganda effort presented Hitler as infallible, culminating in the slogan”ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer” (one people, one empire, one leader).

• “The Führer is Always Right”: This phrase encapsulated the expectation that party members and citizens should follow orders without question.

In practice, this principle allowed Hitler to consolidate complete control over the Nazi Party and Germany, dismantling any checks on his power.

We see this principle not just active but in the forefront of all of Donald Trump’s “policies,” and have since he began his campaign in 2015.

Since the idea of Führerprinzip are completely contrary to any of the principles of our government for the past 250 years, Trump’s willful rejection and ignorance of the Constitution should come as no surprise.

But that’s the thing. Our entire Constitutional structure is a blueprint for governing. To many it is unwieldy, awkward, slow and ungainly. But that is by design. And Trump, his cronies and sycophants hate it. They want what he wants, not to govern but to rule. Trump was elected to participate in the governing of the United States. However, when he took the oath pledging to do so, he knew, as did we, that he was lying. All his actions and behaviors since then—both times—back up this statement.

Now that we are in a full-blown war—as opposed to a simple hijack of the oil reserves of Venezuela—anyone who says, “This isn’t what I voted for,” simply doesn’t get it. All the signs of what he would do in his second round were there before the election in blazing neon. He wants his word to be law. And as over a million dead found from his mismanagement of COVID, dead Americans is a sacrifice Trump is willing to make.

So what do we do now? Congress, lead by Republicans who are too scared or fully in agreement with his theft of their power, finds it’s Constitutional war authority ignored yet again.

The truth about our situation is that Congress alone has the immediate power to bring this Führerprinzip episode of American history to an end. Two things need to happen. A very few House Republicans need to decide to overcome their fear of getting death threats and honor their oath and sign on to Impeachment proceedings. A very few Senate Republicans need to do the same. Trump’s high crimes and misdemeanors are legion. The Constitutional violations being committed by Trump daily could, and probably will, fill books. Add to that the rampant corruption that is in plain view.

Lobbying Congress from our own roles as citizens is what we can and must do. Contact your representatives in both houses, today and every day and demand the immediate impeachment of Trump, Vance, Bondi, Hegseth, Lutnick and the host of others who think that Führerprinzip has any place in America. It does not.

It might be wise to get a couple of House Republicans to switch parties as well. That way, MAGA Mike Johnson could be removed as Speaker, removing him as Trump’s whip hand in the House and removing him from the line of succession to the Oval Office.

Let’s get to it!

Click here for help in contacting your representatives.

Something I wrote 10 years ago on Facebook when Trump’s campaign was off and running, before the 2016 primaries, brought up a fact that needs to be punched up:

People who are afraid and angry tend to make poor decisions.

Trump continually harps on “they” and “them” as a class of people we have to be afraid of and that only he can protect us from them. Who are they? Now it has become pretty clear that “they” are anyone he and his associates are interested in excluding from society. We are supposed to believe his every utterance that “they: are rapists, murderers, the eaters of beloved pets. Somehow we are supposed to adopt the idea that these people are less than human, not worthy, erasable. We’re not supposed to care if they get illegally deported, shipped to countries they have never been to or outright murdered.

To adopt these ideas is to forsake one’s own humanity, one’s honor and trust in one’s own power of observation. That’s what the fear is supposed to do. Bad decisions are those that benefit the least of not just ourselves but those around us in the world. And those are precisely the decisions demanded by Trump and his ilk.

Racism itself is based on fear. The new racism promoted by fear-promoting candidates is against “immigrants.” We’re supposed to be afraid of immigrants according to Trump, Noem, Bondi, Vance and others.

But what the hell are we but a nation of immigrants. I’m an immigrant. Born in Vienna, naturalized as an American citizen when I was 7.

People in fear make bad decisions.

Another politician in Europe promoted fear of “others” in his rise to power in the 1930s. This creep blamed a lot of “they’s” and “them’s” too. “They” to him were behind all the troubles that beset his country—completely ignoring his country’s history of attempted conquests and colonial criminality.

The people he blamed were Jews. We know the result of that hate campaign. So why give any credence to any single current political speaker who parallels this insanity?

The true fact of the matter is that there is only one race. It is called human. Skin color, country of origin, language, religion and a host of other differences matter not at all. These are artificial distinctions promoted to generate fear and the hope of fanning that fear into anger and actions benefiting the promoter.

People in fear make bad decisions. Those decisions may amount to buying something you don’t need. Or voting for someone who is backed by a corporation who wants to sell you something you don’t want or need—like a war, more oil or more drugged children. Or tearing down nearly 250 years of Democracy in favor of a fascism that seeks to benefit only one person.

Think about this when you hear the messages that are designed to make you afraid or angry as the Primaries and the Midterms approach us.

The thing that fear mongers don’t realize is that we don’t have to be afraid. We don’t have to be angry. We have to be something very different: resolute. We can simply recognize the attempts as failed manipulations.

Another reality check is that those who push fear as a method of handling and managing others are more afraid than anyone. What scares the crap out of them is when their messages fall on deaf ears and unflinching responses or scathing contempt.

Trump is calling for Republicans to take over elections at a national level. That’s not going to happen for a variety of reasons including the minor detail that it directly violates the Constitution he and every member of the government swore an oath to uphold. But his effort in this direction telegraphs his fear—justified—of the electorate.

You all know what to do when this year’s election cycles arrive. We stand up, resolute, unflinching and vote down every one of these traitors.