From a Google Image Search - The Guardian

E. Jean Carroll is, as we used to say, a trip. We know E. Jean because her trial for sexual abuse by Donald Trump in a Bergdorf’s dressing room became the hottest news in town for a while. We got to double whatever our feelings were about the first trial which ended in a victory for E. Jean Carroll, because DJT could not nurse his anger in private. He kept whispering and eventually shouting that he never met E. Jean and that she is “not his type” and tweeting derogatory comments until he got hauled into court again for defamation. In the first trial E. Jean was awarded 5 million dollars and in the second trial she was awarded 83.3 million dollars.

The book, Not My Type by E. Jean Carroll offers her views on what transpired at Bergdorf’s and her very literary descriptions of both trials. E. Jean wasn’t born in Manhattan, but she became everything that certain generations think of when they think of Manhattan. She grew up in Indiana. She started writing when she was twelve. She was not an immediate success. She did win a beauty contest. Once she arrived in NYC, she was in her element, in the literary tradition of Dorothy Parker, the famous wit who met with her Round Table in the Algonquin Hotel. E. Jean mentions “gonzo” journalist, Hunter Thompson in the offhand way we often refer to our heroes.

“Ask E. Jean” was the name of the column Ms. Carroll wrote in Elle magazine for many years. She drops the names of famous people you have heard of and famous people you have never heard of. She is an original, a unique literary voice of a lost generation. You will want to listen to her book on tape. She reads it herself and it’s not an angry diatribe against injustice, DJT, or the plight of women. It sparkles. She describes the aisle down the center of the courtroom in the Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse as the “runway.” Her detailed descriptions of the lawyers and the witnesses, and even of people behind the scenes are witty and funny, revealing both the style and character of each key figure. Alina Habba, defense attorney gets E. Jean’s best star treatment.

Ms. Carroll tells us about each outfit she takes to wear in court, who designed it, the shoes that match it, and the accessories, all with appropriate attributions. She describes the outfits of some of the men so she can offer commentary on their character without appearing critical, leaving her readers/listeners to draw their own conclusions about their values. Joseph Tacopina, Trump’s key lawyer in the first trial, also gets her most special treatment.

Bergdorf’s management, when questioned, admitted that the lingerie department on its sixth floor is often empty or nearly empty on a Thursday night and that, for that reason, it is not consistently staffed with a salesperson. He also testified that in 1996 the dressing rooms were not always locked. Clearly, this testimony gave credence to the events as E. Jean described them. She was questioned in detail about why she didn’t report the abuse to the police immediately, but many women do not report such abuse for any number of reasons. The lawyers expressed shock that she didn’t scream, but not all women scream when in a dangerous situation that seems as if screaming could cause it to escalate, and, besides, who was on the sixth floor of Bergdorf’s to hear her.

This book is packed with the details stored in the memory of a woman with prodigious intelligence and style. She shares the schema stored in the scaffolding of her brain in ways that are both astonishing and amusing. She has an old-style literary sensibility that we may never encounter again except in the literature of the era in which E. Jean Carroll came of age. She was born in 1943, when the golden era of publishing in Manhattan was perhaps past its prime, but still cast a glow over the New York literary scene.

The fact that E. Jean had been enjoying Trump’s company, the semi-flirting and the playful banter, made his attack and the demeaning nature of it, the fear that it might turn into a physical assault more surprising and shocking, and in the end frightening than if some kind of attack had been clear from the beginning. Whenever women accuse famous men, men who are financially successful, of abuse, there always lurks a suspicion that the woman’s motive is money. There are enough instances where this is true that it allows others to question whether the events happened as described by the victim. The “me too” movement decided the matter once and for all in favor of the woman. At the time these events happened to E. Jean the position of women was far less clear. Perhaps this helps explain why she made her accusations in the twenty-first century rather than the twentieth.

Don’t forget to check out my site “So Many Books, So Little Time”

https://nbrissonbookblog.com

I have been writing for many years. Be sure to read some of my past posts.

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

From a Google Image Search

Around 2010 Republicans began answering media questions about policy with a list of talking points. Lock step. The same list repeated ad nauseum.

Talking points in 2010

Stop government spending

Extend tax cuts

Cut regulations

Repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act

Push back on Federal overreach - Tea Party - emphasizing states’ rights and constitutional limits on DC

The current legislative process lacks transparency and locks out minority viewpoints (me - rural v coastal elites)

AI

They also began to present their “Makers vs Takers” theory.

The American middle class, hollowed out by factory migrations, angered by a more challenging economy without stable good-paying jobs took notice of this conservative talking point, especially after Mitt Romey was caught talking about it at CPAC. However, not everyone parsed the two groups in the same way. The “makers” group could either include the workers as also being “makers,” or these rich folks could secretly include the workers in the “takers” group. Workers were manipulated to feel a certain solidarity with the “makers,” thinking that the heads of corporations knew how important workers were to their success and their profits. These same corporate heads were already miffed at workers for the demands of unions for higher pay, better benefits, and safer working conditions. When Russia opened up to US corporations and China also opened up, along with Southeast Asia, the lure of cheap labor undercut the power of the labor unions and the Great Factory Migration began, as early as the 1980’s and continuing until Russia attacked Ukraine and COVID came out of China.

This You Tube video of an NPR news broadcast discusses the Republican wave of 2010 but also reveals what Republicans were up to at that time to squelch Obama’s Affordable Care Act, which took government spending in the opposite direction from where Republicans wanted it to go.

https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/political_commentary/commentary_by_scott_rasmussen/gop_needs_to_get_over_the_makers_vs_takers_mindset

“Mitt Romney’s secretly recorded comment that 47 percent of Americans are “dependent on the government” and “believe they are victims” isn’t the only reason he lost the presidential campaign. But the candidate himself acknowledged after the election that the comments were “very harmful.”

He added, “What I said is not what I believe.”

But many Republicans still believe it, and the “makers vs. takers” theme has a deep hold on the party. In private conversations, many in the GOP are whispering that Romney was right and that his only mistake was saying it out loud.“

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people say something like, “Well, the half who favor government programs is the half who don’t pay any taxes.”

This is ridiculous -- on many levels.

First, the overwhelming majority of those who don’t pay federal income taxes pay a whole variety of other taxes, including state and local taxes, payroll taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, sin taxes and more. They don’t feel excluded from sharing the tax burden just because they don’t pay one particular tax.

It’s also worth noting that these aren’t the people pushing for higher taxes. At Rasmussen Reports, our most recent polling shows that people who make $100,000 or more each year are more supportive of higher taxes than those who make less.

Second, the 47 percent who don’t pay federal income taxes include large chunks of the Republican base. Many senior citizens fall into this category because their primary income is from Social Security.

They don’t consider themselves “takers.” They paid money into a Social Security system throughout their working lives and now simply expect the government to honor the promises it made.

Third, low-income Americans aren’t looking for a handout. Among those who are living in poverty, 81 percent agree that work is the best solution to poverty. Most would rather replace welfare programs with a guaranteed minimum-wage job. Sharing the mainstream view, 69 percent of the poor believe that too many Americans are dependent upon the government.

Sixty-five percent of low-income Americans consider it “very important” for an economy to provide everybody with an opportunity to succeed. Interestingly enough, low-income Americans consider that more important than those who earn more.

But if I had to pick just one number to highlight how bad the 47 percent remark was, it would be this. Just 11 percent of Americans today consider themselves dependent upon government. Sure, some receive a Social Security check or an unemployment check, but that’s not dependence upon government. That’s cash received in exchange for premiums paid.

If they want to seriously compete for middle-class votes, Republicans need to get over the makers vs. takers mentality. We live in a time when just 35 percent believe the economy is fair to the middle class. Only 41 percent believe it is fair to those who are willing to work hard. Those problems are not created by the poor.”

https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/political_commentary/commentary_by_scott_rasmussen/gop_needs_to_get_over_the_makers_vs_takers_mindset

Isn’t it possible that many Americans considered themselves makers even though the Republican Party did not see it in that way.

This drawing represents how the average American pictured makers v takers. The workers believed that they were considered “makers,” along with their corporate leaders.

This next drawing represents how Republicans really thought about the makers v the takers. Most workers, they believed were takers. Although they paid taxes, they used health insurance and insisted on consumer protections. They also used unemployment insurance and planned to retire using Social Security.

The fact that many workers and unemployed workers saw themselves as belonging to the group of makers and as protesting the fraudulent use of tax dollars by the takers helps account for MAGA’s success when Trump began his rallies against fraud in government.

Workers perceived themselves as victims of takers, rather than as workers being exploited by makers. Even the skewed profits that began producing billionaires did not shake the belief of workers, even workers without jobs, that they belonged to the makers group and not the takers group.

This may or may not have been the intent of Republicans, but they saw that the misapprehension worked in their favor, and they saw that Trump made workers injured by the Great Factory Migration into a cult by boosting their pride.

Since their talking points made it clear that Republicans wanted to cut government spending by cutting government programs, making it seem as if the takers were committing massive fraud within these programs reinforced a view already held by workers and turned the working class, even as the middle class was being hollowed out, into cheerleaders for the Republican plan and into Republican voters who elected Donald Trump twice.

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

The topic of “tradwives” is trending which makes Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke very timely indeed. Conservatives are upset that Americans are having too few children. They’re upset that men are feeling challenged by women seeking fame and fortune. Right-wingers believe that men are being left feeling emasculated, and angry. The rest of us are upset that so many men are unwilling to entertain the idea of evolving to a mental state in which they can enjoy sharing power with women. The answer is, supposedly, to return to an earlier time when men were dominant and women submissive, when men “brought home the bacon” and women were “barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen”.

Natalie Heller, born in rural Idaho, a Christian girl with unbending ideas about life, morality, and the immoral behavior of modern women, accepts a scholarship to Harvard as if enlightenment will win out over culture shock. Her judgmental signals alienate roommates and dorm mates who then punish her with isolation. When Natalie attracts the son of a wealthy politician, she decides that she’ll show them all, so she leaves school to get married. However, Caleb Mills turns out to be spoiled and aimless. For a while they live with his parents. Eventually Natalie takes the wheel and talks Caleb’s father, Doug, into buying them a farm and bankrolling them. Doug agrees but his support has financial limits. Five million dollars sounds like a fortune, but Caleb has no concept of what things cost. He has an image of what a farm should be like, so he buys big equipment he doesn’t need, milk cows he can’t care for properly, and farm workers to do all the farm work. He decides that he will only grow vegetables which Natalie knows will not produce the income needed to keep up with the costs of having this farm.

Natalie, facing the end of Doug’s financial support and Caleb’s rather dreamy approach to life, decides to become a “tradwife” in an online podcast. Natalie’s mom advised her “to remember to be kind.” Although this sounds like the typical advice to women, “smile, honey”, in Natalie’s case it is simply good advice. Natalie is not kind. We see her thoughts because the author lets us in on them. She judges her followers, she judges her husband, and she has no intention of being an actual “tradwife,” although she does produce plenty of offspring (Clementine, Stetson, Samuel, Jessa, Junebug, Mary, Maeve, Noah and Abel). She has two kitchens, one without modern appliances, and around a corner in an adjacent room she has all the appliances found in modern kitchens and laundry rooms. She mistakenly hires a producer for her Instagram posts who learns all her secrets and sees the two nannies Natalie has hired to keep her children from being a burden and from being neglected by a mom who has no interest in being a mom. Natalie is, to say the least, as inauthentic as most of us would suspect a modern “tradwife” to be.

The author transports Natalie and Caleb back to 1855, to a time when life required women to occupy traditional roles. Even in this setting, Natalie avoids reality by imagining a kidnapping situation and with the help of a way moms dealt with the realities of being a tradwife in the 50s, “mother’s little helper.” (pills, drugs, alcohol)

It takes a while to put together the 1855 chapters and the present-day chapter, to see how they connect, to decide if time travel is involved. It leads to a truly surprising ending. Burke has written a book that will make you think deep thoughts about the changing roles of men and women, about parenting, about authenticity, love and kindness, and about social media’s ability to prevaricate, to present the unrealistic as real. Interesting subject, interesting book.

Still reading. See my book blog

https://nbrissonbookblog.com

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

From a Google Image Search - Der Spiegel

People write about the Trump chaos every day, multiple times. He loves attention, even negative attention. He’s a fighter, in a way. Political brawling satisfies the bully in him, especially since he wins so often. Yesterday the Supreme Court said that Trump could end protective status for Haitians and Syrians. The Supremes also ruled that people could not apply for asylum from across the border and they could not cross the border to get a court to approve asylum status (an end to asylum?). But Trump does not achieve these victories on his own. Sometimes we forget that he has the backing of some very powerful, and stubborn groups. He must toe the conservative line to keep the gifts/grift flowing. Most likely he needs to follow orders from headquarters in some areas and has considerable autonomy in others.

If conservatives have a pact with evangelicals, then they are happy to give power to a misogynist who has said that women who have abortions should be punished, who has no compunctions about tearing down the East Wing of the White House, once the domain of first ladies. Evangelicals and more than a few billionaires want to reconstruct the religious rules of 3000 year ago regarding a proper social order with dominant males served by submissive women, despite centuries of scientific evidence that cooperative relationships between men and women are more enlightened, more productive, and far less likely to lead to violence. If you believe that the rights recently given to women (the vote in 1920, the birth control pill and abortion rights in the 60’s and 70’s, coed colleges, competing in the job market) have ruined the fragile egos of men and damaged our society, then Trump is your man. The Heritage Society or Federalists, or both conservative groups, stuffed the Supreme Court in case anyone wanted to say nay. Mitch McConnell did nothing in the Senate except appoint conservatives to Federal District courts.

Trump is, at heart, a builder. He loves climbing into big trucks. He could not leave the White House alone. He considered that without lots of gold tchotchkes hanging around he was being disrespected. Elegant simplicity is not his style. There are rules about changing the “people’s house” which are mostly about getting congressional approval or consulting our historical agencies. But when you are a famous builder like Trump you don’t have to follow the rules. You just grab “it” by the rose garden, then the East Wing, then the reflecting pool, and move on to the triumphal arch. No one stops him. This is not any part of the conservative/evangelical/billionaire agenda that we recall from the talking points or Project 2025. Keeping a very pricey airplane from a Middle Eastern potentate tramples the emoluments clause, but his puppet masters just smile. It is, after all, just another big truck. If your main goals are to control the women and turn the nation into a white nationalist fascist state, then the distractions help.

Turns out conservatives/evangelicals/billionaires are all enamored of white skinned people. Perhaps this movement is also about Christianity and the English language. Trump, while hardly religious, is a white Christian nationalist at heart. He is fine with breaking every one of our immigration laws to rid the nation of the people the “triumvirate” deem unacceptable. The bully in him, the cage fighter spectator, the long-distance warmonger, the issuer of ultimatums, fits the bill to a “T”.

In a government stacked with the “unwoke,”peopled by billionaires and MAGAs and authors of Project 2025, it is highly likely that Trump is constantly steered in directions that meet the goals of the extreme right. He has been very accommodating because he knows that putting the far-right people in key places will keep his keepers happy and he can concentrate on rigging the midterms in every illegal way he can get away with, and a few legal ones also, while he stuffs his pockets. His latest ploys around mail-in ballots where he orders the US Post Office to withhold mail unless he gets the data he wants from the states is one in such a long line of unconstitutional mandates that we have to thank our lucky stars that there are groups on the left that are willing to stay sane and fight. According to the Constitution, the federal government does not have control over our elections.

Conservatives have long pushed ideas about economics that benefit the wealthy for a while but eventually crash the economy. They cut taxes on the rich, they deregulate banks and corporations, they try to sell us their fake trickle-down theory and keep wages low and profits high. The stock market is not the economy, but when the wealthy “play” the stock market, when they create real estate bubbles and real estate shortages, then create AI bubbles and build more data centers than we will ever need, we know what happens. Most of us may not make profits from the stock market, but we feel the pain if the market takes a tumble. What happens could be worse than the 2008 recession. It could be closer to the Great Depression. The wealthy will not lose their shirts like last time. They don’t use the banks we use or keep all their money in the stock market. Conservatives always raise our national debt. Liberals pay it down. If Conservatives block Liberals from governing, it could leave us with the worst economy we have ever experienced. Especially without any allies because theoretically isolationism will be good for America. How is a mystery.

Why conservatives, evangelicals, and billionaires want to create an authoritarian state is complicated. these groups don’t all have the same values or reasons, but each feels that they will gain if America is a top-down conservative state obedient to the cultural, moral, and economic strictures these groups have tried to establish, despite liberal pushback, for decades. Trump’s nonsense is a small price to pay if they can pull this off. The midterms await. Trump has taken a toll on the right-wing agenda with his falling numbers. Can they invent some Originalist crap to pretend they are on a legal footing? Can they find obscure reasons to declare National Emergencies to use force if they must? Meanwhile they have Trump’s replacement waiting in the wings. Meanwhile Democrats and friends fight, fight, fight. If we don’t win the consequences are dire.

To my readers: I will be taking a break to deal with some annoying health issues.

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

Family photo from GE Newsletter circa 1950s

Today is Father’s Day. My dad and mom had eight children. He went to work at a factory every day and he managed to feed and clothe all 10 of us. We were probably considered poor, but we didn’t feel poor. We had a home in a community with lots of children and almost all the neighborhood children ended up at our house at one time or another. We were all outside all day when we weren’t in school, if the weather was cooperative. Even in winter, Dad made an ice rink in the backyard and everyone came to skate. Elon Musk would have found my dad’s fecundity admirable. While my mom was not submissive, she was what would be described today as a “trad” wife. It was her goal to be a wife and a mom, and she was a good one.

Dad had a few common interests with each of us. He and I loved to watch storms come in and we both loved science fiction. We all drank in Dad’s handyman skills. He could fix just about anything.

But what would my dad think about 2026? What would he think about DOGE dismantling our government without any plan except erasing DEI? What would he think about AI? As a lover of sci-fi, he might have thought, “cool”, at first. Would he love that to make AI work someone had to eat the internet whole and then keep all the profits for himself? Would he think it worthwhile that every corporation had to create its own version of AI? My dad collected data for GE in their master oscillator room. He was a fan of data. Would he want to see data centers cropping up everywhere, replicating services unnecessarily out of greed and destroying America’s natural beauty? Dad loved nature’s beauty and took all of us to a park whenever he could, and if the station wagon was running.

Could my father support ten people with one salary in today’s economy? Even in the late 50s and early 60’s dad had to limit how much milk we could drink, buy day old bread, and discounted can foods that had lost their labels. Perhaps he would earn more money in this century, but I doubt it. He was brilliant, but not on paper. He dropped out of school in 8th grade to take care of his mom and dad. He taught himself calculus, but without a high school diploma he had to rely on his years of work experience. Technology finally surpassed his store of practical knowledge. TVs began to use solid state technology and all the old TV tubes in the basement became obsolete. Then GE left our town. Dad would have loved computers, but by the time some of his grandchildren had a Commodore 64, he showed no interest. Would he love that AI was going to kick people out of work? Rhetorical question.

I try to imagine my dad with a cell phone. It would have been a great help to coordinate events within a busy family. He never saw cell phones, just the same landline hanging on the dining room wall with the long cord that reached everywhere. One phone for ten people and all our friends. Sometimes I miss that old landline because it worked even when the lights went out and you always felt the security of that connection.

Dad and I had an optimistic outlook on what the future would bring. I think he would be very disappointed, as I am, to see that we are losing far more than we are getting. Mom would just say, don’t worry honey to whoever needed to hear it. I am not as sanguine as my mom, and I wonder if she would still be able to ignore the entire world outside of the family. She would probably have to go to work. That would have changed everything.

From a Google Image Search - The American Conservative

Timing is everything, or so they say. If you want to build hundreds of data centers that will use energy we can’t make yet, and freshwater we can’t live without, then elect Mr. Narcissistic Time Capsule for president. As he dismantles our democracy and creates chaos by creating his own personal make-a-wish foundation at taxpayers’ expense, I guess the billionaire class thinks we won’t notice that they are ruining America’s beauty and bounty by putting sprawling white buildings that hum unpleasantly and turn freshwater into toxins everywhere.

Erin Brockovich has taken this on as her newest fight and gives us the maps she has made of the places various wealthy tech companies want to build these monstrosities. They don’t come into communities with lists of how the folks who live there will benefit after the thing is built. (They won’t.) They don’t even say what kinds of data will be stored there using up all the water in the world to cool the servers or data storage towers. They don’t explain why it takes so many data centers to fake mine fake money. The skinny is that Trump has declared these data centers to be military installations and as such to stop them would be un-American. This may or may not be true, but it sounds true.

From a Google Image Search - maps.com

How many kinds of AI do we need? Does each tech company and billionaire want its own data center, or do they want more than one? Are they creating competing AI systems in a race to see whose makes the most money. Instead of competing couldn’t they cooperate to create one AI system that works? Does each AI system need more than one data center? Why is there so much secrecy? Are they competing with China? Are they for surveillance? We are not that interesting. Perhaps we’re just superfluous.

Whatever they tell us, it’s difficult to believe that we will benefit from these data centers in any way. A few data centers seem to be planning their own energy sources, but they have no way to get their own water resources unless they know of a hidden spring that produces endless quantities of freshwater. They see us as standing in the way of progress. We see that they are rushing us into a technology that is not ready yet for reasons of greed (and to prove their masculinity). Even high-T males cannot live without water.

Choice or no choice - we don’t want your data centers.

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

From a Google Image Search - You Tube

It’s impossible not to think about the future of America. It may seem like autocracy has won and democracy has lost and that the viewpoint of liberals is a dying ideology. It may seem as if Trump or a Trump clone will rule America for the next 250 years. However, we have a long history of freedom. We have never been any other kind of government except a democracy (or a republic, as Republicans insist on saying every time we say democracy).

There are quite a few articles about future America or America after Trump. Some suggest that socialism is the future of American governance, although the authors don’t seem to grasp the full meaning of socialism. In a socialist state, the federal government owns all the means of production. Most citizens work for the government in a socialist society. Governments, however, are run by flawed humans who like to think of the seven deadliest sins as virtues. Do we really want governments setting prices and ignoring worker’s rights? Would we want our current government controlling our businesses? They are trying. Does it seem like a good plan?

It seems that these future-focused authors want to replace capitalism, not democracy. Given that capitalists always try to rid societies of all regulations on markets and are forever extolling the virtues of the free market, which incidentally allows individuals to amass obscene amounts of money, and start getting power mad, it’s easy to see why many want to get rid of capitalism. Capitalism without regulation has never kept any economy afloat for long. Monopolies form, eventually choking out competition and the fewer sellers can raise prices and cut salaries at their whim. If consumers can no longer afford to buy what is offered in the marketplace, then the system collapses and no one profits.

So, this is probably an appropriate moment to weigh in with another option for future America (and future world). You may groan but lay awake a few nights taking a crack at it yourself. My brain tossed up the idea of organizing America like the European Union is organized. In this format, American states would gain the status of nations, and they could pass their own laws which would not have to find a consensus with all other states. The union would exist for economic reasons so interstate trade, now trade between nations, would not change. What would change is our federal governance.

Here’s a chart of how the EU is organized and governed:

https://www.cfr.org/backgrounders/how-does-european-union-work

Using this model if one state (or nation) wanted to harbor white supremacist ideas they would not have to take all the other states (nations) hostage and try to shove an unpalatable idea down their throats. If one nation-state wanted to build data centers everywhere, other nation-states could decide for themselves. If one nation-state favored unfettered capitalism and an anything-goes marketplace they could have that, but every nation-state would not have to follow suit. Texas would not have to try to control what was happening in New York. Kentucky would not have to control what was happening in California.

This could be a global governmental revolution with an Asian Union, an African Union, a South American Union and a Middle Eastern Union. Since the UK has decided not to join the EU, other nations could opt out and choose to function independently. Just throwing another idea out there.

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

From a Google Image Search - Yahoo

Now (sorry) I’m going to puke all over my Substack.

Sometimes you feel the need to just spew. It might be contagious. I hope not but, pardon me while I do just that. Trump is a gilded dolt being showered with gifts by a coalition of conservatives, evangelicals, and billionaires to undo FDR and the New Deal, LBJ and the War on Poverty and all liberal safety net systems designed for the “common good.”

These people are hiding behind laws that they’re breaking every day. They know that according to US laws, immigrants have rights to humane treatment, even undocumented immigrants. Rather than allowing immigrants to appear before the appropriate courts, ICE is arresting people who show up as scheduled. A stuffed Supreme Court backs what ICE is doing, and ICE is doing Trump’s bidding. In a recent article, Gregory Bovino told a reporter that he wants to be president in 2029, and he wants to deport 106 million Americans whose skin is not white enough. See, doesn’t that make you want to puke.

Money is the province of Congress, as we say, Congress holds the purse strings. In the Trump administration, this means that Mike Johnson, Trump’s cherubic “yes man”makes sure that Trump gets whatever budget items he asks for, even if it takes some time and some quasi-Constitutional shenanigans. (Gag.) Many funding bills have been passed by reconciliation which only requires votes of a single party, Republicans, since they hold a slim majority.

Off the top of my head, all about money:

1 billion dollars not for the ballroom, for security; a part of the 70 billion dollars for the Department of Homeland security to fund the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement through 2029 passed on June 10, 2026.

https://time.com/article/2026/06/10/house-passes-secure-america-act-senate-reconciliation-bill-funding-immigration-enforcement-trump/

Over 1 trillion dollars for the military was requested just two days ago while Republicans are asking for huge cuts in safety net programs. This has not passed yet. (Oh dear, excuse me for a moment. Urp. False alarm.)

https://democrats-appropriations.house.gov/news/press-releases/republicans-unveil-1-trillion-defense-funding-bill-largest-history-amid-steep

Money to paint the reflecting pool blue.

Money for Trump’s birthday celebration and UFC cage fighting on the White House lawn.

Money for Trump’s Arc de Triomphe.

Money for the Iran War.

Money for lawsuits against Trump’s enemies that are on-going in federal courts.

And Trump’s 1.8 billion slush fund keeps popping up just when we think it’s dead.

(Oops. Still feeling a bit sick to my stomach.)

We are bleeding money for Trump’s every whim and social programs are not on his wish list, except perhaps for housing.

Who knew these folks could come up with so many creative ways to explain that they are not breaking any laws. They keep inventing work-a-rounds like using reconciliation to pass budget bills.

An analogy:

I have carpenter bees on my deck. They are big and they fly right at me, but they just intimidate. They don’t attack. They tunnel into the wood railing on my deck. They leave sawdust under the holes they make, and they lay eggs in the wood. Then they circle anxiously making it seem that I am in their way and that I don’t belong on my own deck.

Trump and his peeps are the nation’s carpenter bees.

If they can’t live with our ideologies and we can’t stomach theirs, what are we to do?

Trump is working diligently (if such a word applies) to “rig” the 2026 midterms while Democrats are counting on people’s dissatisfaction with Trump’s regime, launching plenty of candidates and keeping the polls open and accessible. So far, cheating has meant winning for Trump and the Republicans.

We should all be sick to our stomachs. If we can’t have a free and fair election in 2026, let’s get a divorce. We are not white nationalists. We don’t want religion in our schools or in our government. We don’t want “social Darwinism” that leaves us on our own in troubled times. Do we?

For a more fact-based view read Heather Cox Richardson’s post for Saturday, June 13.

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

From a Google Image Search - The Today Show

Given all the parallels between the stock market crash, the Great Depression, and today’s economy, Andrew Ross Sorkin’s book 1929 seemed as if it would be a very timely read. So, I downloaded it in the haul of rewards books I had built up on Audible. It ended up being a good book to listen to because it’s complex but not overly academic and it’s interesting. “Andrew Sorkin is an American journalist and author. He’s a financial columnist for the New York Times and co-anchor of CNBC’s Squawk Box” (the internet tells me.)

I was most surprised to find Sorkin’s explanation of the events that relate to the Stock Market did not feature the famous names I thought were key players in the crash. His account begins with Charles Mitchell and National City Bank. Many investors had become wealthy by essentially gambling on stocks. The Stock Market at the time was the wild west in that there were few rules or limits on trading. Buying on margin (basically betting that a stock will go up in value and taking out a loan allowing the trader to trade on future profits, that may or may not happen) and short selling (an investor borrows shares of stock from their broker, then sells those stocks at the current market rate, buys them back at a lower rate, pays back the broker, and keeps the profits, if any) were some of the most speculative transactions and they were totally unregulated.

Thomas Lamont, Jr. was the acting head of J.P. Morgan on Black Thursday, 1929. He had an international footprint and helped Germany get better terms after WWII. He was attracted to Mussolini and secured a $100 million dollar loan for him in 1926 but later soured on him. Although Lamont talked his wealthy friends into putting millions back into the Stock Market, they could not stop the carnage. It was later revealed that J. P. Morgan had a preferred customer list to try to save big investors.

Charles Mitchell saw that only wealthy people “played” the stock market, so he began selling stocks to people with fewer financial resources, letting them buy on margin and even short sell stocks. Millionaires could accept loses and repay loans on stocks if they used some common sense. When stocks did well ordinary folks did well for a while, but they didn’t have any flexibility when stocks fell or did poorly. Too much credit was being extended. If it looked like market matters were putting banks in jeopardy, if the public decided that a bank would not be able to give people back their savings, then there could be a run on the bank. If the panic gets too great the bank will fail. In 1929, banks did not have enough money if all their customers wanted to cash out at the same time. The federal government did not insure deposits.

Calvin Coolidge was a Republican and US President in the years before the crash. He believed in very limited government and a totally laissez faire approach to the economy. Although Sorkin mentions Coolidge and his approach to the economy, he doesn’t place much blame on Coolidge’s policies. He stresses that opening an unregulated Stock Market to the public boosted credit debt to dangerous levels and weakened banks. Herbert Hoover was also a Republican and was President during the first four years of the Great Depression. Although Carter Glass, a Democrat, had been pushing a bill to separate traditional banks from investment banks for years, no one was listening until Steagall joined with Glass and FDR was the President. The Glass- Steagall law passed in 1933.

Sorkin does not mention political parties. He credits the actions of Charles Mitchell, and Thomas Lamont, Jr, but he doesn’t treat them harshly. He limits his analysis to the years just before 1929 and to some of the aftereffects on key players. Winston Churchill ended up losing his shirt in the Stock Market, but a contemporary bailed him out. However, this is not Dorothea Lange’s views of the Great Depression nor does Sorkin sing the praises of FDR. Still, well worth a listen.

https://nbrissonbookblog.com

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

From a Google Image Search - Scientific American - Data Center

I’m Miriam. My daughter is Nora. She’s eight. It’s summer and she keeps saying, “Mom, I’m bored” and moping around the house. She has her screens but in summer, when school is out, social media is also boring, apparently. I think we should take a trip.

It’s difficult to travel though. Most of us don’t own cars anymore. When we want a car, we order a car (for a hefty fee) and it is delivered to our door, since we own a house, passed along from my parents when they downsized.

Nora’s dad left us to “find himself” when Nora was five. We still stay in touch with Matt’s father.

Our house is in a suburb of Albany. Nora’s grandfather lives in Clay, NY. She’s excited. We never see Jay in person, only on Facetime or the new AI-in-person app. It’s a relief to be free of hearing about her boredom, with attitude, and on autoplay. Nora starts packing. I’ll check her choices later.

I’m Googling our route, so Gemini AI breaks it down for me. Back roads only please, I tell Gemini.

Take NY 7W/Troy-Schenectady Road

Cross the river and pick up NY 5W

at Little Falls take NY 169N

Cross the river and pick up NY 5 West on the north side of the river.

Stay on NY 5 past Utica and Verona

Take NY 31W to Chittenango

NY 290W to Manlius/Dewitt, cross I481 to Kinne Road heading north to Northern Boulevard and then take N NY 298W/Collamer Road to US 11

Take US11N to Route 31 W into Clay, NY

This route sounds longer, but it’s the scenic route. I have memories of how green the fields are and the forested mountains in both green and brown, the river blue and shimmering. I haven’t taken this route in ages.

We set out from Colonie, a suburb of Albany, NY at 8 am for what is supposed to be a 3- or 3-and-a-half-hour trip. Nora is glued to the window.

“What’s that place,” she says pointing to an enormous low white building.

“That’s a data center,” I tell her.

“It’s so big. What does a data center do? I tell her it stores computer data.

“Oh,” she says.

We pass a fenced expanse enclosing a parking lot and guard towers.

“Is that a jail?”, Nora asks.

“That’s a detention center for immigrants. In the mid-2020s immigrants were placed in these centers waiting to be deported. Some poor souls are still there.”

Where are the farms, I thought. This all used to be farmland with small towns popping up here and there.

Just then we passed an enormous factory farm with row after row of chickens, visible inside. Next, we passed a huge greenhouse, but the windows were translucent so we couldn’t see what was growing inside.

We passed a giant Amazon Warehouse floating like a great white ship on concrete seas.

“Where’s the grass Mom?”

“How do you know about grass?”

“Your father has a National Geographic book full of pictures of meadows, woods, mountains, and deserts,” Nora told Miriam.

“Forget you saw that,” Miriam said. “Don’t say anything to Grandpa Jay.”

“Would Grandpa Pete be put in the detention center?”, Nora asked worriedly.

“No.” Miriam said, “but the book would probably be taken away.”

“Do you see any green grass or forests around here? Was that river we crossed blue?”

“No,” said Nora, “everything is white and brown, except for the beautiful blue skies with the white clouds.”

“It’s so hot today that we don’t dare open the windows in this car,’ Miriam said.

Just before we got into Clay, NY the white fabs of Micron appeared on the right side of the road.

“What’s that for? Is that another data center?”

“Nope.” Miriam said. “That’s a chip factory. They make computer chips and phone chips there.”

In Clay, almost at Matt’s dad’s apartment were the ruins of a shopping center.

“What’s that,” Nora asked, pointing.

“People used to go to stores in person to shop. When places like Amazon delivered to people’s homes and the extreme weather made going outside dangerous, these shopping centers with stores, restaurants and movie theaters failed.”

“Oh,” said Nora, not knowing what else to say. She had seen shopping malls in old movies.

Then they were at Grandpa Jay’s. The trip had taken less time because there was almost no traffic on the road.

(This has been a blast from a possible future. It would be much nicer if the future could be green, and brown, and blue and not too hot to venture out-of-doors.)

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

From a Google Image Search - Nobu blog

It may be the 250th birthday of the United States of America, but many of us don’t feel very much like celebrating. This occasion, which should bring joy and pride, has been confiscated by a party and a president to celebrate the leader’s birthday as if we were already ruled by a dictator. It feels like it could be America’s last birthday as a democracy/republic.

America has been divided since the founding. You know this story. Many southern plantation owners objected to aspects of the Constitution and required that the document include language that protected slavery and only offered real freedom and enfranchisement to landowners and elites. Although slavery was outlawed in England, some of our founders wanted to keep it legal in America. Our Declaration of Independence boldly declared that “all men are created equal” and entitled to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” However, some of our founders apparently felt that although men may be created equal, after birth equality is not guaranteed. They engaged in an unholy trade in people, people with darker skin who lived simpler lives thousands of miles away across a vast ocean. Thus, our new nation became as divided as the cracked Liberty Bell by features of our new government like the Electoral College and counting enslaved men, who some founders did not see as humans because they were not white, as 3/5 of a person to allow southern states to win elections.

Before the Constitutional Convention, The Federalist Papers were written and sent out to the colonists by the founders arguing for two different interpretations of the newly written US Constitution. The biggest sticking point was about the size and strength of the central government. Some of the writers expressed the idea of checks and balances, the need for a Bill of Rights, and the importance of keeping important rights for the states rather than the central government. These ideas are included in our Constitution as ratified. George Washington set the tone when he passed on accepting a second term as President, making it clear that America would not become a monarchy.

Sadly, writing things down on paper, compromising on points of deep opposition, does not necessarily settle issues in hearts or minds. The differences between northern states and southern states continued to roil under the surface of our new nation. The idea that government and religion should be separate was one such issue. The idea that white people were meant to have supremacy over darker-skinned people was also a point of deep contention. Many studies were conducted to prove a foregone hypothesis that white supremacy is biological. When proper scientific methods were used the conclusions of those biased studies did not stand up. Often inclination proved stronger than scientific evidence.

For 250 years these divisions have existed in our nation. Although we have many reasons for pride, this is not one of them. Either we are free or we are not. Either all of us are free or none of us are. These divisions brought us to a bloody Civil War with brother pitted against brother and ideology pitted against ideology. Hostilities ended but the ideological divide did not. Racism has been an ugly truth that has tainted our democracy/republic (we can’t even agree about what terms to use to describe our system of government). Freed slaves believed that they would be treated as citizens when the Civil War ended. Slave owners and their supporters were willing to murder freed slaves who tried to vote and to steal land they purchased legally. All that hate was stuffed down deep, but not deep enough.

The Jim Crow years are nothing Americans should be proud of. Northerners are not totally free of blame as migrations brought freed slaves to northern cities. From 1877 until 1964-5 segregation was practiced all over America but was most harsh in states that now tend to be “red” states. Even when FDR created programs to end the Great Depression and black troops gave heroic service in WWII, it took a violent Civil Rights Movement to guarantee that black Americans could vote. Discrimination did not end. Redlining to keep segregated neighborhoods never ended. When LBJ created the programs that are now labeled DEI and Affirmative Action to make the wins of the Civil Rights Movement stick, animosity bubbled under the surface.

Now, here we are again saying that some religions have more freedom than others, and some people are superior to others, even though we have been around the globe and we know these things to be false. They serve a purpose to those who want freedom for themselves but not, horror of horrors, for everyone. Two hundred and fifty years of this should be enough, but here we are. The idea that religion and government should be separate is once more in contention. The strength of the central government (federal government) is at issue again. The conservatives created a new branch of law which they call “originalism” that takes us right back to The Federalist Papers. The unitary executive which says that the DOJ does the President’s business, not the people’s justice would not have been acceptable to the founders. The powers given to the presidency would have been hotly debated and giving the president absolute powers would have been discarded. The rationales offered up to justify overturning the Voting Rights Act and the laws intended to undo the limitations of Jim Crow and offer a level playing field would not fly with many of our founders.

This is a sad moment to have a birthday celebration and perhaps we ought to wait until America turns 300 if such a milestone happens. UFC cage fighting on the White House lawn is perhaps a symbol of this moment. Putting people in detention camps and sending them off to countries other than their birth country creates a nightmare scenario for many Americans. While we would not like to see our nation become two separate Americas, living in this America is not like having a nation at all. Perhaps “blue” states full of the abhorrent coastal elites and “woke” atrocities will have to create a new nation of our own to save our souls and our planet.

Dichotomies exist in every nation. They periodically tear nations apart. Somehow those nations go on. But this national divide has gone on for so long, and to think that it may get buried again in the future only to be hauled out at a later moment is tragic, and, perhaps, intolerable. If we take back our country will that be the death of this cruel iteration of conservatism? If we separate into two nations, get a divorce, what new dichotomies will arise? We are almost certain that utopia would bore us all to death and that duality serves a purpose. Does that mean we have to keep repeating pasts we have discarded? What do you say?

Thanks for following and reading.

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

From a Google Image Search - WREX

I didn’t know I was a domestic terrorist. There I was just living my life and now I find I was doing everything wrong. I find my whole life being erased by The Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, and Donald J. Trump. America seemed happy when JFK became our president, but he was assassinated almost before he could accomplish much except for the Bay of Pigs fiasco. In short order MLK was killed, and then Bobby Kennedy was shot. These days it seems feasible that these liberals could have been targeted by right wing extremists, but if that is true, they covered their tracks very well. I was a freshman in college when JFK was shot. My friends and I were looking at the jewelry in a downtown shop window. The owner had the radio on with outdoor speakers, and we heard the shocking news, tears in our eyes.

When LBJ was sworn in as president he vowed to continue the work JFK and his administration had set out to do. Although he was apparently a rough, unpolished, and outspoken guy, he had an aversion to poverty, especially in a country as rich and productive as America was in the post WWII boom. He declared “War on Poverty.” With the support of liberals in Congress programs designed to level the playing field proliferated. I worked in Head Start one summer when I was home from college. That was an LBJ program. Head Start was intended to give children whose readiness for schooling was limited by family circumstances, family experiences, or racism access to basic early childhood skills. Both white and black children benefited from the program, and many studies showed that the program was effective. Later I spent an entire year working to research the effectiveness of Head Start. Now, I am told that Head Start is a bad program and teaching in the program was an act of domestic terrorism.

Educational Opportunity Programs were at the center of LBJ’s initiative and by the time he left office there were 40 of these programs including Job Corps and VISTA. By 1969 there were 435 social programs to keep poverty from becoming a drag on the American society and to try to end a stubborn racism against black Americans. Today these programs are considered criminally anti-American, or unconstitutional, or part of a war on white Americans. They are now called “woke” (said with a snarl) or part of a misguided diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) movement, designed to make white folks jobless and poor. Many of us believed that DEI and Affirmative Action were programs intended to overcome racial inequalities that had continued to plague black Americans since the Civil War.

For most of my working years I worked for an urban center, connected to a university, designed to give adults who did not finish high school, or who decided to pursue a college degree later in life, the skills they would need to succeed on a college campus. These special programs were called SEEK (later EOC’s, or Educational Opportunity Centers). They served both black and white adults. Today these programs are considered wrong because they are “woke” or “DEI” and therefore, they discriminate against white people. It boggles the mind to switch gears like this after what seemed like 50 years of progress with the Civil Rights movement resulting in the enforcement of the post-Civil War Amendments - the13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the US Constitution by way of the Voting Rights Act - to ensure that minorities would not face arbitrary requirements designed to make it impossible for them to vote.

But it looks like I was a domestic terrorist for taking part in social programs that are now considered crimes against humanity, or unconstitutional, or some such thing according to “originalists.” The Supremes just finished gutting the Voting Rights Act and rampant gerrymandering is taking away minority votes once again. Is overturning the Civil Rights amendments next on their agenda?

The Women’s Liberation Movement was also in full swing when I left college. Women had only had the right to vote for about 40 years. World War II pulled women into the workforce. Economics and a sense of fulfillment kept them there. Modern conservatives are telling men that women and minorities took their jobs with liberal policies that are against what the founders intended, and that the people holding jobs that resulted from these policies must be fired.

Birth control pills were approved in 1960 and added to women’s newfound sense of independence. Women had to wait a bit for their finances to be separated from those of their spouses. Divorced women had found it very difficult to get credit cards and even bank accounts. Eventually financial rules eased and women could have both joint and independent accounts. In 1973 abortion was legalized and women could plan their families, make decisions about having children from rape or incest, or if the mother’s life was in jeopardy. Now the Supremes are considering taking away a woman’s right to get the morning-after pill in the mail, although the fertilized egg would be too underdeveloped to be viable. Conservatives want women out of the workforce. They want them to produce babies and be caretakers for extended families. Abortion is now illegal in many states and, if conservatives and evangelicals have their way, this will be true in all US States.

As a woman I have worked for all my life. How many men did I deprive of a job? I used birth control pills which apparently makes me a slut at the very least (as per Rush Limbaugh) or, potentially, a murderer.

To look back at your life and have a large group of your own countrymen find you guilty of sedition and immorality, to label you a “domestic terrorist” is upsetting, demoralizing, confusing and unacceptable.

In fact, I don’t believe them. White supremacy does not match what science has taught us. Outlawing science won’t make facts go away, at least not in just one country and one generation. Despite numerous studies, there is no proof that people of color are inferior to people with white skin. The differences these white people think they see are cultural, not genetic. Muslim Americans may be testing our founder’s allegiance to freedom of religion, but the founders had good reason to separate religion and politics, and those reasons still apply. Many of us spent our lives doing what we felt was right. The things we did are now being discredited. The question is who are the actual domestic terrorists? Am I a domestic terrorist? Are you?

From a Google Image Search - Truthout

Watching Republicans and Conservatives madly exploit their hopefully brief moments of hegemony to dismantle any election laws intended to make voting easier, makes us wish that there was someone with authority declaring these activities as the seditious acts that they are and forbidding them. Once the courts would have upheld our laws and our Constitution. Now we have partisan courts and the judges appointed to the courts that lean right keep making decisions that support this administration in dismantling the Constitutional rights of American citizens.

Both parties understand the existential nature of the 2026 midterms. Republicans are playing offense to engineer the election to stay in power. Their strategies include:

1. Letting the right gerrymander state districts while acting aghast when Democrats use gerrymandering as a defense.

2. Campaigning to make mail-in voting suspect and therefore illegal.

3. Using ICE to intimidate voters.

4. Requiring national picture ID’s which would make it difficult for married women and some minorities to vote.

5. Making Americans believe that our elections are no longer free and fair.

6. Trying to nationalize elections that the Constitution gives to the states.

7. Gutting the voting rights act in the exact moment when white nationalism is gaining power.

8. They have ideas that will jerry rig the Electoral College votes.

9. They can keep making full use of the Supreme Court, which they expect to rule in their favor.

But just think about it - would Republicans be this paranoid if they believed they would win the midterms fair and square?

No matter how difficult they make voting, vote blue at what could be our last moment to participate in a free and (somewhat) fair election. If we don’t have a blue wave we could lose our last grip on democracy and languish in an authoritarian state that favors billionaires over those of us who are not billionaires. The American we get will be even less recognizable than the one we have now.

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

From a Google Image Search - Douglas Coupland - A-Z Quotes

1. Losing our democracy.

2. Losing science.

3. Losing empathy and tolerance.

4. Losing climate science.

5. Losing the middle class.

6. Losing our Constitution

7. Losing economic balance.

8. Losing our global allies.

9. Losing educational choice.

10. Losing humanitarianism and civility.

11. Losing freedom from military draft registration.

12. Losing objective media and courts.

13. Losing our privacy.

14. Losing the future.

15. Losing global respect and power.

16. Losing our religious freedom.

Summer is coming!

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

From a Google Image Search - Pro Market

Coverup or Collusion

This information was collected by Kait Justice. These events seem interrelated but absolute proof has not been available, perhaps because it has been purposely shielded from the public. The information explores the connections between William Barr and Jeffrey Epstein and shows the complexities of a possible coverup. It’s complicated.

1. The Construction Period

1a. The idea is 50 years old.

1b. The man who wrote it down in 1973 is the same man who later hired Epstein.

What Epstein proved was possible:

a. July 2011 - Lowell Wood (nuclear weapons scientist) sent an email to Bill Gates and Boris Nikolic, Gates’s Chief Science Advisor (among others).

b. Wood -March 1981 - Presidential directive to apply nuclear weapons technology against the Soviets - outside official channels (high cover)

c. Wood also detected the existence and location of - then interacted with - offshore pirate communities (for purposes of intelligence work), which put him deep inside American national security network.

d. Wood’s email proposed the leasing of war surplus deep sea drilling platforms, then positioning them at precise coordinates outside recognized maritime boundaries. Declare sovereign nationhood, acquire the capacity for naval enforcement, then charge tolls to every ship passing through the Straits of Malacca. This activity would be self-compounding (more platforms, more sovereign space outside the jurisdiction of every existing government.

e. It could be called the Sovereign Archipelago of Francis Drake (a pirate) (or call it after Jeffrey Epstein). (He is comparing Epstein to a privateer.)

f. Building power in the gaps between jurisdictions is useful to powerful institutions.

g. Epstein operated for decades against active investigations by multiple governments - and nothing stuck.

h. Wood recognized that the concept of exploiting exterritorial spaces could work.

i. Thiel in a 2009 essay for the Cato Institute: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”

j. Thiel identified 3 exits from democracy - cyberspace, outer space and sea steading.

k. Thiel funded the Sea steading Institute with $1.25m to pursue sea steading on sovereign platforms in international locations outside the jurisdiction of existing governments.

Epstein invested in Thiel’s fund and then Thiel put money into Carbyne.

Thiel’s protégé is JD Vance, our current VP

Thiel’s network runs the WH office of Science and Technology Policy, sits on the DOD transition team and the Network State manual is the roadmap.

Donald Barr:

a. Described a sovereign planet in his 1973 Sci-fi book.

b. It is now being constructed at scale with $300 b companies and seats in the executive branch.

2. What the Church Committee found - (Senator Frank Church):

a. 1975 - US Senate gave unprecedented authority for a committee chaired by Senator Frank Church to investigate the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA for illegal domestic operations.

b. The Church committee found systematic infrastructure deliberately built, designed to be invisible and operated across decades.

c. The CIA - 3 specific activities devised

-academic institutions as talent identification and recruitment pipelines

-professional networks as cover for operational placement

-offshore vehicles for moving money outside regulatory reach

d. William Barr was the man who represented the CIA in the Church committee investigation.

e. The classified report on the CIA’s use of academic institutions for recruitment remains classified, beyond the reach of FOIA requests.

f. Take a minute to explore what Donald Barr (the father) had been up to before the Church committee convened:

1) He served in the OSS beginning in 1941 (the OSS became the CIA).

2) He moved into academic administration at Columbia University where he ran the Science Honors Program with NSF funding.

3) The NSF funding was cover for academic recruitment programs.

4) Columbia was documented as the most effective recruiter.

5) Dr. Stephen Levy identified Epstein as mathematically exceptional at 10 years old at the Hebrew Academy of Nassau County.

6) Levy was the president of Phi Delta Kappa at Columbia U. He could be the man who flagged Epstein through the system.

7) 1964 - Donald Barr left Columbia to be Headmaster at Dalton School.

8) Dalton School connected Donald Barr to the children of powerful families in NYC. (Think about the second pillar of the CIA - using professional networks as operational cover.)

9) February 1974 - Barr resigned at Dalton - ending 6.30.1974.

10) Jeffrey Epstein began teaching at Dalton in September 1974 where he met Ace Greenberg and moved on to Bear Stearns in 1976. He made partner in four years. (His clients at Bear Stearns - Robert Maxwell, father of Ghislaine, Adnan Khashoggi and the Bronfman family).

11) Epstein was running an account for Robert Maxwell (is that how he met Maxwell’s teenage daughter?) They weren’t a pair until after her father’s death in 199, so perhaps not. (Maxwell helped Israel in private ways.)

12) Adnan Khashoggi was a Saudi arms dealer with involvement in Iran-Contra.

13) The Bronfman family was associated with Meyer Lansky (crime family).

14. These activities support the 3rd pillar of the CIA - using offshore financial support for intelligence operations.

15. Bear Sterns had a documented relationship with BCCI - The Bank of Credit and Commerce International - one of the largest criminal enterprises in financial history.

The bank was deliberately structured to evade regulatory oversight and was used by intelligence agencies, arms dealers, drug cartels, and corrupt governments.

The BCCI collapsed in 1991, and the Kerry committee documented the bank’s activities.

The findings of the committee - BCCI ran a 450-person protocol with $6m annual budget specifically for procuring teenage girls to use as leverage over wealthy and powerful clients.

Bear Stearns cleared $13b in transactions through BCCI during Epstein’s tenure.

Kait Justice - “I personally believe this is the institutional predecessor of what Epstein would later build - his ‘shadow bank’.”

The 3rd pillar of the CIA - offshore corporate vehicles as financial infrastructure:

16. Edwin Wilson worked for the CIA from 1956-1971 perfecting the model of intelligence front companies that did real profitable business while serving covert purposes.

Epstein was trained to replicate this.

16a. From 1971-1976 Edwin Wilson ran Task Force 157, a navy secret intelligence unit that made $20m using business as a cover for espionage. Task Force 157 was dissolved in September 1977.

16b. Epstein left Bear Stearns in 1981 and founded Intercontinental Assets Group in August 1981.

16c. In that same year the Army created the Intelligence Support Activity to rebuild Task Force 157’s capabilities.

16d. Epstein’s stated business model was identical to Edwin Wilson’s.

17. Lex Wexner

17a. Epstein’s relationship with Lex Wexner made Epstein’s activities possible.

17b. July 1991, Epstein was granted power of attorney over Wexner’s entire estate.

17c. Attorneys say that such a thing is unprecedented.

17d. Wexner transferred his $56m Manhattan townhouse to Epstein for $0. Epstein oversaw $1.3b in stock sales for Wexner.

17e. Wexner later claimed that $46m was misappropriated but did not file charges.

17f. In the same year (1991) that Epstein was listed as President of Wexner Investment Company, he pledged $2m for a Harvard building to be named after Henry Rosovsky. (Wexner had introduced them.)

17g. Another result of the Wexner connection involves the Southern Air Transport (SAT) which relocated to Columbus, Ohio in 1995 (Wexner’s base of operations). This Air Transport was publicly acknowledged as a CIA proprietary which was once called Air America with documented involvement in Iran-Contra weapons transport. DEA showed alleged cocaine trafficking January 1985- September 1990. Wexner became the airlines primary cargo customer - Two sources (named) told reporters that Epstein was the point person for bringing SAT to Ohio.

In October 1998 Southern Air Transport was accused of drug trafficking and the airline declared bankruptcy.

18. The Last Pillar of the CIA Program - The Protection Architecture

18a. Mary Daly - Senior Advisor to FinCEN director in February 2019

18b. FinCEN is Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, part of the Treasury Department and receives every Suspicious Activity Report filed by American banks

18c. Mary Daly is William Barr’s daughter.

18d. Donald Barr hired Epstein at Dalton in 1974. William Barr joined the CIA the year his father published Space Relations.

William Barr became AG twice, both times when Epstein’s financial architecture was most exposed, with Mary Daly in place when the most significant Suspicious Activity Report arrived.

18e. The Tick Tock

February 14, 2019 - William Barr confirmed as AG

February 2019 - Mary Daly joins FinCEN

July 6, 2019 - Epstein arrested on federal charge

August 10, 2019 - Epstein dies in Federal custody

September 26, 2019 - JP Morgan files a Suspicious Activities Report flagging over $1b Epstein transactions as suspicious (wire transfers, potential human trafficking, transfers to Russian banks).

Then the Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) goes to FinCEN.

18f. Patricia Wexler - JP Morgan spokesperson after the SAR was unsealed said, “It does not appear that anyone in government acted on those SARs in years.”

18g. There is a documented pattern to how Bill Barr operates - 30 years apart in 2 separate AG tenures - two separate but connected networks

a. consolidates oversight

b. narrows the investigations

c. removes independent prosecutors

d. protects the financial architecture

18h. When the BCCI collapsed in 1991-the Kerry committee had documented a protocol for procuring teenage girls for wealthy clients and the bank had also served as financial infrastructure for generations of intelligence operations including Iran-Contra.

Barr stonewalled the committee and refused to appoint an independent counsel, and he issued pardons for the Iran-Contra participants.

18i. Danny Casolaro - a freelance journalist who spent two years investigating if a single hidden network was operating beneath multiple scandals. He called this the network the Octopus.

His thesis was that the same group of people were moving through intelligence agencies, private contractors, and financial institutions.

He believed they were responsible for Iran-Contra deals, BCCI money laundering, theft of a Justice Department software program called PROMIS which could be used to track anyone through a database, and more).

When AG Dick Thornburgh resigned William Barr was named acting AG.

Danny Casolaro was found dead in his hotel bathroom on August 10, 1991. None of his notes were found and the death was ruled a suicide.

Me

It’s a lot. The truth sometimes is stranger than fiction, or at least more intricate. It appears that structures were created by the CIA to recruit operatives, then the operations that were devised, i.e. the weapons to Iran-Contra and the drug trafficking went off the rails, defying American laws for purposes of entrapment. Next it seems that at least one of the chosen operatives (Jeffrey Epstein) used CIA tactics for personal gain and extorted his clients to keep his activities private. Whether you believe it or not is up to you at this point as no absolute proofs have been made public.

There’s more to the story. I will quote the author directly on my Substack newsletter, behind a pay wall. Depending on your choice, it can be quite inexpensive to subscribe.

The rest of the story from Kait Justice accessed through a Facebook group called Collective Evolution or behind the paywall.

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

Could be the plot of a thriller but it’s real.

Read more

From a Google Image Search - Scientific American

More from Kait Justice

(Me -These connections seem almost incestuous.)

Carbyne:

If you call 911 in 23 US states Carbyne will be activated and

a. can access your smart phone camera

b. can track your GPS location

c. can run an AI analysis on your call

d. can stream live video from wherever you are (legally required to get permission)

Carbyne:

a. Raised 100m in July 2025

b. Company’s US revenue jumped 400% between 2023 and 2024

c. Chair of Carbyne is Ehud Barak, a former PM, former commander of Unit 8200, Israel’s signals intelligence directorate.

d. Carbyne was founded and is run by veterans of Unit 8200

e. The advisory board includes Michael Chertoff and Kirstjen Nielsen, both former Secretaries of Homeland Security

f. Also on the board is Trae Stephens, a former Palantir employee, partner in Founders Fund and co-founder of Anduril Industries. (He led Trump’s DOD transition in 2016.)

Investments in Carbyne and other:

a. Jeffrey Epstein - 1.5m in 2015

b. Peter Thiel through Founders Fund - 15m in 2018

c. Jeffrey Epstein - 40m in Thiel’s Valar Ventures Fund between 2015 and 2016

d. This hidden investment grew to 170m after 9 years.

e. Is this money still generating returns? asks the author.

New Nation-States that won’t follow Earth’s rules:

a. Balaji Srinivasan, former General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz wrote a book called The Network State (published in 2022).

b. He received an investment from Thiel’s Founders Fund to his early startup Counsyl.

c. Srinivasan called his book a manual for how to establish your own nation-state with its own rules.

d. Elon Musk says that Mars will recognize its own laws rather than Earth’s.

e. Musk’s Starlink already operates above any nation’s regulatory reach.

f. X has a content policy set by one person with no external oversight.

Kait Justice sums it up like this:

“So here is what you need to keep track of as we move through all of this. A network of specific people with documented connections to each other is building a communications infrastructure above national regulatory reach, financial infrastructure outside state control, data infrastructure that processes emergency calls for half the American population, and physical territory off planet where, as the man funding the rockets has said explicitly, existing Earth law will apply only in so far as the people living there decide it applies.

While doing this, they are running the executive branch of the US government and dismantling the oversight mechanisms that would be used to trace how this is being financed.”

Me:

It’s not as if we don’t know or suspect that these things are happening, but Kait Justice offers us names and dates. Of course, there are currently no people on Mars, but Thiel has talked about sea scaping or building communities over oceans that would be exempt from Earth’s laws.

Me:

I have a lot of questions, and this content doesn’t answer any of them, although it raises more questions. Most of my questions are about mystery man, Peter Thiel.

1. Why is he so secretive? Is it because it makes us think he’s a mastermind, a genius, far above us all in understanding what path to take through a chaotic age?

2. Is he just a survivalist on a grand scale predicting that death and destruction are on the way, or is he engineering death and destruction to control his ability to survive it?

3. What is his definition of freedom?

4. Can you have absolute freedom if you have connections to one or more other people?

5. Is his plan to set up his own nation-state/s following in the footsteps of Jeffrey Epstein?

6. Does he plan to live by his own rules, launder money for clients, provide safe places to store money and remunerative ways to invest money (legally or illegally is immaterial since his nation-states would not abide by international Earth laws)?

7. Does he plan to traffic people for whatever there is a market for, whether for sex, for workers, for innovating, or for slavery?

8. Doesn’t it seem shady that one man wants to operate under his own laws without legal repercussions? (And without paying taxes?)

9. What kind of person has no empathy, does not have a sense of the common good, or of a schema for building a society that works?

10. If he is indeed planning to set up one or more sea scaped nation-states, why is he embedding his people in the US government and dismantling our social safety net? Why would he care?

11. Do these questions suggest that we are wise to be wary of what some of the planet’s billionaires are up to?

12. Why is a man who seeks absolute freedom helping our current government collect the data of all Americans?

13. I’m sure you have a few more questions of your own.

The Barr Family comes up in the next post.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

From a Google Image Search - Fair Observer

Peter Thiel

Deep Bench, or Deep State

More billionaire connections to the US Government

1. Trump took office in January 2025.

2. Palantir got 113 million in new contracts from DHS and the Pentagon.

3. Palantir, built with venture funding from In-Q-Tel arm of CIA, now processes data for federal government Intelligence and Law enforcement.

4. DOGE - seeded some personnel permanently through the agencies they had infiltrated.

4a. The man who helped dismantle USAID, now oversees foreign assistance at the State Dept.

4b. The person granted access to government health systems is now chief technology officer at HHS.

4c. Another is Chief of the Office of Naval Research.

4d. A fourth former DOGE hire is developing AI tools to identify and eliminate federal regulations.

4e. The Oversight infrastructure and the financial investigation infrastructure are now conducted by the same people

4f. “The Suspicious Activity Reports at Treasury are how financial crimes get traced. The compliance systems at federal agencies are how transactions connecting Epstein, Deutsche Bank, Kushner, and sovereign wealth channels get flagged and investigated. DOGE accessed those systems, then embedded its people permanently inside the agencies that run them, then dissolved so that the footprint continues with no central entity anyone can subpoena or hold accountable.”

This info was collected and published by Kait Justice - which I hope is a pseudonym. Much of this we know or we suspected. When I tried to write about an agency called Carbyne that is connected to both Epstein and Thiel my keyboard froze.

In the next installment, if I’m allowed, I will tell you the story Kait Justice told about the “Barr Family,” yes, that guy, William Barr.

Correction: James O’Neill was installed as acting CDC director.

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

From a Google Image Search - PA Times

We had a country. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a pretty good country. It was a nation that tried to be fair, just, and humane. We spent some of our tax dollars on ourselves. Since life throws us curves - illness, unemployment, unplanned births, unexpected deaths, children with special needs, exceptionally bright children, divorces, bankruptcies, old age and even good fortune - a social safety net seemed like a good way to spend our tax dollars. A Great Depression and the fights for civil rights and women’s rights drove support for laws that built in safeguards against life’s many vicissitudes.

Now Trump, who throws around numbers in the billions and trillions, tells us that America cannot afford daycare programs, or Medicare and Medicaid because he needs the money to deport immigrants (he means to build detention centers to warehouse them in) and to assert our hegemony over the Middle East (and the world).

https://newrepublic.com/post/208523/trump-no-money-daycare-medicare-fight-wars-military

Trump is speaking:

“I said to [Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought], ‘Don’t send any money for daycare because the United States can’t take care of daycare.’ That has to be up to a state. We can’t take care of daycare. We’re a big country. We have 50 states. We have all these other people,” Trump said. “We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of daycare. You got to let a state take care of daycare, and they should pay for it too. They should pay. They’ll have to raise their taxes, but they should pay for it. And we could lower our taxes a little bit to them to make up.

“It’s not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things. They can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal. We have to take care of one thing: military protection. We have to guard the country. But all these little things, all these little scams that have taken place … you have to let states take care of them,” Trump

This link will take you to the video record of these statements.

We know that MAGAs wanted to be sure that immigrants did not have access to these benefits. Did that mean they wanted to get rid of them altogether? Do MAGAs really want to dismantle the social safety net? Next Trump will tell us we can’t afford Social Security. Even MAGAs won’t stand for that. Trump already shut down USAID which sends aid to foreign countries in distress. Some of that aid was spent to protect us from sharing the problems of developing nations, problems which don’t confine themselves to one geographic area. Now it looks like we will be experiencing some distress right here in America with no social safety net to catch us.

How is it that we have no money for the “common good,” but 1.4 billion dollars was spent to build new sections of a border wall that were never built?

“The longest silence in the history of the United States Congress just occurred and it cost the American taxpayers exactly 1.4 billion dollars.

Representative Thomas Massie stood before the House Oversight Committee holding a bombshell Treasury Department audit that proves 230 miles of the southern border wall were certified as complete and fully paid for yet the physical wall simply does not exist.

When Massie looked Steven Miller in the eye and asked the simple question of where that money went the room fell into a haunting stillness that lasted for 143 seconds of pure avoidance.

Miller sat pale and motionless as a stopwatch on every screen in the room ticked away the moments of his refusal to account for nearly a billion dollars in concrete that was never even manufactured according to batch plant records.

This is not just a budget discrepancy it is a forensic roadmap to potential mass fraud and embezzlement on a scale we have rarely seen in Washington.

The documents are now public and the silence is a permanent part of the congressional record. We are breaking down every minute of this historic collapse and revealing why the concrete logs don’t match the payments.

“The silence speaks volumes. What happened to the $1.4 billion? Uncover the shocking truth.”

https://ifeg.info/.../the-longest-silence-in-u-s.../

Okay, this came from Facebook so it may not be completely trustworthy, but it should be considered.

Why does the Department of Homeland Security need more funding. DHS was funded at 191 billion in the ridiculously named Big Beautiful Bill. They still have 150 billion in unspent funds and now they want 178 billion more in the budget for FY2026. Does MAGA want immigrants removed from America enough to give up the safety net that gets us all through tough times. Our lives have become very expensive recently. Health care costs, if paid out of pocket, would return us to the days when health care was too expensive for most. We would not have access to the best modern pharmaceuticals. Instead, our tax dollars would go to fund wars and data centers. Most of us don’t think in billions and trillions. The math is not real to us.

If billionaires have so many ways to avoid paying taxes, it seems that most of the money America spends comes from the Americans who are not billionaires. Trump spends our money through Executive Actions. Congress is locked in by tight margins. We the people are no longer consulted about whether we want to use our safety net dollars to pretend to build a border wall while the funds may get syphoned off to an offshore account or stashed in someone’s pocket. Did anyone ask if we wanted to warehouse immigrants in warehouses all over the US, even those who were working and paying taxes? Are these warehouse detention centers managed by private for-pay companies? Do you recall being asked if you felt that Iran was an existential threat or if war with Iran was necessary?

Pentagon seeks $200 billion in additional funds for the Iran war, AP source says

https://federalnewsnetwork.com/defense-main/2026/03/pentagon-seeks-200-billion-in-additional-funds-for-the-iran-war-ap-source-says/

What will it be like without a safety net? The right-wing suggests that women should stay home again and take care of extended families. AI is already causing people to lose jobs, some that pay very well. If there is no unemployment insurance what will happen to these workers? Guess who will be taking care of the elderly along with the babies and toddlers? Is this what MAGAs signed up for? Do you feel good about our economy, or do you believe that American is bleeding money. Do you think America can’t afford to spend money on our needs? Please tune in before everything we treasured is gone. We had a country.

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

From a Google Image Search - america2.news

What happens next in America? If we rid ourselves of our troublesome autocrats, will we want to return to our historical Constitutional roots? Will we allow the Republicans who planned and executed this abominable government takeover to sit in Congress once again? Will we overlook their seditious acts? Taking a clue from history, that would be planting a mine field for future generations. When Reconstruction ended too soon and leaders of the Confederacy were allowed back in Congress and high office, when no humility was required of the losers in the Civil War, our ancestors laid the groundwork for Jim Crow, for segregation, for continuing to put forward a message that some people are more equal than others.

The mercies of the US government after the Civil War are still reverberating in today’s conservatives and in the Republican Party. Some people see kindness and forgiveness as weakness. If Abraham Lincoln had lived, he might have used wisdom and victory to knit our nation back together, to avoid all the anger the Confederate states nurtured. He might have offered higher ideals than his successor or practical solutions to the aftermath of war, and inspired reforms that could defuse the push for retribution. However, now it seems that the anger of losing, barely buried, has found expression again in the men the old confederacy chose to represent their cause, Donald J Trump, the Republican Party, and the authors of Project 2025.

The campaign to stamp out Democrats is especially ironic, because the Democratic Party was once the Party of the Southern slave owners. It gets confusing. But the Democratic Party of today does not hold the inheritance of the Confederacy. It is the party of Liberals, who have taken the ideals of the Constitution seriously and have fought for people’s rights and equality. Wealth skews the whole picture as it always has. The wealthy find it hard to accept that all are born equal with the same rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Billionaires pushed the disgruntled folks on the right to go back to the founding and The Federalist papers, and to choose the path that our founders discarded.

What will we want to do when we take back our democracy/republic? Clearly, many people have thought about this. Our Constitution had great laws, but it had no teeth. In the face of political obstruction and reinvention, one party made it impossible to use the tools of impeachment, the emoluments clause, the insurrection section of the 14th amendment, or the 25th amendment to basically fire an unfit president. Even if a tool were to have adequate support there is no mechanism of enforcement.

Do we make a list of all who took part in the government takeover and ban them from serving in public office? Trump should have been banned because of J6, but because the sentiments of the nation were evenly divided between right and left, he was allowed to sit in the Oval Office once again. All the things we were unable to do, all the unconstitutional actions we were unable to counteract, have weakened our documents. If Trump were to disappear tomorrow, would we go back to where we were before he came down the golden escalator? Could we? The Republicans, conservatives, billionaires would all still be present. And we haven’t even talked about the Evangelicals who were in it to fight against America’s supposed moral decay. Or about the Supreme Court, stuffed for life.

One writer on Tremr.com recently attended a convention of the Democratic Socialists. They have some ideas about what they want the American government to look like in the future. Here are some of the things he heard and an informal conversation he had:

The panel spent a few minutes talking about other stuff. Finally, the French panelist made a gruff statement in response to my question.

In response to our engineer friend, we will solve the problem by destroying capitalism and then create a world of democratically elected councils

.

But what is “the root cause, Julian Taylor asks himself.

The real problem is that the deeper root cause of capitalism is probably the same root cause as that of organized religion, self-help grifts, and insurance scams. All of these are tied to the promise and occasional fulfillment of the elusive dream of extreme wealth: that a person may, through largely legal means, wrest wealth from others and hoard it without practical limit.

(Later at the hotel bar.) At that moment I had a little revelation.

“Councils,” I said, “You mean like soviets?”

“Yes,” she responded confidently.

“Would these soviets be organized into groups of soviets that would coordinate with a centralized planning authority.”

“Yes,” she beamed.

“You mean like the Soviet Union.”

“Yes.”

“But” I mansplained knowingly, “the Soviet Union did not prove to be stable.”

“You are correct,” she responded, “but it doesn’t have to be that way.”

https://www.tremr.com/julian-s-taylor/solution-or-revolution

As we say these days, “are you down with that?” Soviets? Really? America has no history of autocracy and only a small group of intellectual idealists ever considered communism, the communism of Marx and Engels, not the communism of Stalin and Lenin. They were humiliated and ostracized by Joe McCarthy as the world began to see what happened when human nature was added to communism. The reality did not resemble the ideal.

I wouldn’t vote for a communist future. You decide where you fall on this option.

What would Democracy 2.0 look like? Will it be a true democracy where we all vote on our computers? The internet is untrustworthy. We would never be sure if the votes were accurate or distorted by foreign nations or hackers or gambling apps.

Getting rid of the Electoral College would be a start. Strengthening the Constitution would be essential. Perhaps we would want to put a citizen’s enforcement group in place, independent of government, although we have seen independent agencies are easy targets for bad actors.

It might be helpful to see some more articles that look ahead and share their visions for the afterlife of American democracy, it there is an afterlife at all. We could languish in totalitarianism until violent weather and rising waters take us out in the manner of the dinosaurs. It is a source of great grief that the 250th birthday of our republic has brought us to this. We should plan for America’s future as a land of the free and home of the brave, even if we don’t think there will be one. Parliamentary government seems to be resilient. Perhaps we should consider that.

Note: Julian Taylor is beginning a series of articles that offer an engineer’s suggestions for after the fall. You might want to go read his articles. He’s from a younger generation than me. The future will belong to the next generations. What they have to say is important, although not necessarily definitive.

https://www.tremr.com/julian-s-taylor/the-us-constitution-an-engineering-assessment

Subscribe now

Leave a comment