At left are the words of retired Army officer Fred Wellman, a graduate of West Point and the Harvard Kennedy School, who served 22 years in the Army, primarily in combat as an aviator.

I can only add to what he says that national security and defense clearly means nothing to the U.S. president.  It’s all about loyalty.  Everything else means zero.

If Trump were to fire Hegseth, the president would be forced to find another stooge, who could possibly be an even greater threat to our nation and embarrassment to the White House.

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Here is Patty Murray, serving her sixth term as a United States senator from Washington state, expressing a concern.

You’re demanding an answer?  Well, that’s excellent.

But, if you haven’t figured out that the Trump administration enjoys absolute power and, for some reason, reviles all American veterans (“suckers and losers”), and especially women, you apparently haven’t gotten the memo.

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This beautifully written piece at left reminds us that most Americans are not capable of discarding the bullshit to which we are exposed on a daily basis, and, in particular, how little threat the transsexual population represents to us.

Three conclusions:

Think for yourself,

Raise your children to be kind, and

Live and let live.

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“Pessimism” is the wrong word here, insofar as it concerns the future.  It’s a tendency to believe that the worst will happen; it’s a lack of hope or confidence in the future. While Americans may be pessimistic, what the meme here is about is the present, not the future.

The 58% of U.S. households that own stock are reporting about a current fact.  My portfolio is off 9% since Trump took office.  I’m not thrilled by this, but, in addition, I’m pessimistic, meaning that I’m worried that the economists are correct, and that all of Trump’s lunacy is going to send the U.S. into a deep recession, and that 9% could turn into 50%.

 

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Trump says, “You know, the cost of eggs have come down like 93, 94% since we took office. They are pretty much normally price now.”

In truth, the price of a dozen eggs in April 2024 was $4.15; now it’s $4.65.

A 93% price reduction would leave the price at 29 cents a dozen.  Somehow I don’t recall seeing anything like that in my local grocery store.
If you’re to claim a 93% price reduction, why not make it a 110%?  Stores are now paying you to take their eggs?  That’s credible, isn’t it?
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Insofar as the world is not currently beset with an epidemic like COVID-19, the subject of people’s “rights” to flout health regulations is not a present-day issue in our daily news cycles.   That’s a good thing, but it would be foolish to think it’s going to last forever.

It’s apparent that Americans, under this new Trump administration, are even more deeply rooted in their anti-scientific beliefs than they ever were before.  As evidence I cite that the new Secretary of Health and Human Services is an anti-vaxxer, and that the federal government is working hard  dismantling the Centers for Disease Control.

Here’s an article from the Economic Policy Institute called “Trump’s gutting of public health institutions is setting the stage for our next crisis” that begins:

The Trump administration is gutting our national public health infrastructure in real time, setting the stage for the next public health crisis. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), tasked with “protecting the health of all Americans and providing essential human services, especially for those who are least able to protect themselves,” is set to see a reduction in staff from 82,000 to 62,000 (a decrease of almost 25%) alongside major cuts to spending on contracts.

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It’s not just the poor, sick, and elderly who suffer, and whose lives will continue to get worse, to that group, we need to add those who count on:

Public education, labor laws, food safety standards, air traffic control, social security, Medicare, national parks, the Weather Service, FEMA, veterans affairs, NASA, the National Institutes of Health , and a clean environment.

On this last item, a clean environment, keep in mind that future generations are the ones who will experience most of the pain caused by climate change, as flood waters rise, wildfires destroy our property, our oceans no longer support aquatic animals, and land masses are lost to sea-level rise.

 

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Regrettably, what U.S. representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says here is completely true.  The genie is out of the bottle.

Long after Trump is gone, his core values of racism, xenophobia, greed and lawlessness will remain, and form the soul of a huge swath of the U.S. electorate.

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There is no proof of this.  Yet.

Even if it turns out to be untrue, his actions are identical to those that an enemy of the United States would take: crashing the economy, turning allies against us, and destroying American democracy, our rule of law, and our balance of powers.

 

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It would be foolish to think that Pope Francis made a dent in the hate and hypocrisy of the Christian right, but at least he tried.

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