The president of the United States and the president of El Salvador have conspired to kidnap a man and hold him hostage in an El Salvador prison. This criminality ignores the rule of law and thumbs its nose at a Supreme Court ruling to facilitate his return.
i am fascinated by the outright refusal of people in the professional political commentary class to just consider the possibility that there is no plan and that trump really is a braying idiot with the more acute case of narcissistic personality disorder on record
@sonnybunch.bsky.social Is it just me, or is Dark Winds wildly under discussed in the discourse considering how great a show it is?
Just read this graf. Share it with people you know who don’t pay attention to politics or news.
Dusting off my old Oxford English Dictionary and consulting carefully, I could not find "attack friends and submit to enemies" as a definition of the word "strength."
I’m so ashamed for my country right now. We should be so much better than this. Being an American used to mean more than “cutting deals” and berating victims of aggression to feel tough. We are losing what so many patriots before us have built and defended in blood and treasure. Very sad.
"There's so much fraud, waste, and abuse."
"Can you give us an example?"
"Oh ho ... trust us, there's so much fraud, waste and abuse, you wouldn't believe it."
"Try me! Just one."
"Sorry, there's too much fraud, waste, and abuse. I can't pick out just one instance of fraud, waste, and abuse."
I don't know who needs to hear this but the thing where you decide that somebody acting like a huge asshole is evidence that they're neurodivergent and then decide to defend their behavior on that basis is not actually allyship
When asked what happened to the town’s money, the mayor said, “The traveling salesman who sold us the monorail is working very hard. I have seen the big machines myself and they are currently digging a very large hole. I am sure everyone will be very impressed when the project is finished.”
Macron, with Trump scowling next to him, says "the aggressor is Russia"
The U.S. is the story, of course, but the abomination of Israel voting against a Jewish-led nation, with a fascist regime that seeks to restore the imperial Russia of the pogrom, mainly as cover for its own genocidal campaign...
Your regular reminder that the US air & water pollution laws passed in the 60s & 70s -- and the elaborate federal bureaucracy created to administer them -- constitute one of the most successful gov't interventions in history. WILDLY successful. The envy of the world.
Trump and Trumpism summed up in a single statement.
This is in fact a real picture and it will work nicely in the ads next year about the military families devastated by Elon's illegal firings.
NEW: Pregnancy became far more dangerous in Texas after the state banned abortion, according to ProPublica’s first-of-its-kind analysis, which found the sepsis rate for women hospitalized as they miscarried in the 2nd trimester shot up by more than 50%.
https://propub.li/43487Tj
This is the intersection point between Muskian arrogance and idiot populism: The conviction that there’s an extremely simple solution for everything that, somehow, nobody else has ever noticed & that you via either genius or “common sense” have uniquely hit upon.
It’s incredible that Trump’s people say the answer to bird flu is supposedly “better biosecurity” while they’re firing the biosecurity people.
It's not in spite of these indicators, it's *because* of them. Affluence and ennui are powerful drivers of modern authoritatianism.
So far, Trump’s art of the deal is to give Russia whatever it wants in advance while asking for nothing from Putin. At the same time, he has tried to extort Ukraine for mineral rights. Once again, he seems not to know or care who America’s allies and enemies are.
A curious thing about American life: Some "free-speech absolutists" regularly say that journalists ought to be imprisoned.
Actual headlines in the past week.
Let me speak to the DOGE audit language. Many people who work in both the Treasury and specifically the IRS are CPAs. Most audit firms hire CPAs. A 19yo coder has absolutely no idea how to accurately identify waste or fraud. Calling what DOGE is doing as a audit, is a flat out lie.
the single most un-american and anti-constitutional statement ever uttered by an american president
The United States of America is coercing the Mayor of a major city to follow policies by threat of criminal prosecution for unrelated corruption.
This. My God this.
17. Plaintiff Rev. Eva Steege is an 83-year-old retired pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Pastor Steege took on student loans to pursue higher education at a seminary, to fulfill her calling as a pastor. Because of her advanced chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, Pastor Steege has been told that she has no longer than six months to live. She is entitled to discharge her loans under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, and the CFPB was helping her do so. Pastor Seege wants to ensure that she discharges her debt before she dies, so that she will not burden her surviving family, and because she could pass on to her family as much as $15,000 of overpayments. Pastor Steege had a meeting scheduled with the Bureau this week that was suddenly cancelled because of the CFPB’s unlawful closure. Absent the CFPB’s assistance, it is unlikely that she will be able to discharge her debt and get her overpayments returned before she passes away.
Wow.
From the just-now amended complaint in NTEU v. Vought, challenging Trump-Musk evisceration of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
The problem with scouring Medicare and Social Security for "waste" is that they inherently don't provide a return on investment. They exist to help people who need help and often can't help themselves. To much of the far right, this in and of itself constitutes "waste."
Something else that must be stressed in covering this:
Vince McMahon admitted, in so many words, to Dave Meltzer and Phil Mushnick in 1992 that he and Linda fired Mel Phillips in 1988 on suspicion of using his job to molest children, but rehired him weeks later. And never disputed their accounts.
"An aide to a Democratic senator on the HELP Committee said McMahon’s lawsuit is “on our radar, but we’re not going to show our cards before the hearing.”
A big story on Linda McMahon and the ring boy lawsuit
Her confirmation hearing is Thursday morning
www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...
