Just Kidding!
The hot steamy Fridays of summer are always a good time to watch for the news that the Administration does not want you to know.
This week, it is the admission made by the Trump DOJ that the damage to the Refection Pool was organic, related to the poor application of the reflecting pool lining, due to the rushed contract and and the no-bid contract to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago pool guy.
The waste, the sheer waste of this President, sickens me. Embellishments, fix-ups, gilded fixtures and statues are a WASTE. Washington DC was designed with a restrained style, a colonial style, not a mix of Saudi-gaudy and Western house of ill repute. And in truth, this administration has corrupted every corner of our devastated government and its bureaucracy, has created a national confederacy of ill-repute.
And all that fraud, waste and abuse is just wires and mirrors to distract us from this inadequate man’s maneuvering to be sure he stays in political power.
It’s tempting to look away from this endless, outrageous news cycle, so full of bad surprises. And it is beneficial for your mental health to relax, breathe, and think happy thoughts for short periods every day. And then, it is of dire importance to come back, catch up on the issues and use your voice.
If you are a protester, protest. If you are a telephone caller or texter, call or text your national and state representatives and tell them to stand up to this petit tyrant. If you are a voter, please vote, and help get out the vote to put these dangerously incompetent people out of positions where they can cause such great damage to our nation.
Lest We Forget
A revered old friend from high school posted this on FB today:
AI content
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Now would be a good time to remind everyone of these Trump facts, because apparently some people still need the refresher.
Ladies & Gentlemen;
Please meet the President of the United States:
Flew on Epstein’s plane at least seven times. Just friends, I guess.
Pleaded the Fifth more than 400 times in a single deposition. Nothing says “innocent” like refusing to answer a single question about your own business.
34 felony convictions. A record most people would call disqualifying.
91 criminal charges.
Accused of sexual misconduct or assault by at least 26 women. But sure, tell me again how he’s a great guy.
6 corporate bankruptcies. The self proclaimed greatest businessman alive somehow keeps running out of money.
5 draft deferments. Funny how the toughest guy in the room never actually showed up for duty.
4 criminal indictments. Not two. Not three. Four.
2 impeachments. A club of exactly one president.
2 of his own companies convicted of criminal tax fraud. Convicted. Not accused. Convicted.
1 fake university shut down. 1 fake charity shut down.
Even his charity was a grift.
Paid 25 million dollars to settle the Trump University fraud lawsuit because scamming people who believed in you costs money eventually.
Ordered to pay 5 million dollars in the first E Jean Carroll sexual abuse verdict, then hit with 83.3 million more in the second.
A jury said it twice so nobody could pretend it was a fluke.
Ordered to pay 2 million dollars for looting his own so called charity.
Stealing from a charity with his own name on it.
Found liable for business fraud and originally slapped with a penalty topping 450 million dollars, later thrown out on appeal while the fraud finding itself stuck to him anyway.
First president in modern history to increase the deficit every single year of a full term. Fiscal responsibility, apparently, was always just a talking point.
Kept the debt to GDP ratio above 100 percent for his entire first term.
Presided over the largest single day point drop in Dow Jones history at the time. So much for the guy who claimed to be a genius with money.
Set the record for the longest government shutdown in US history in his first term at 35 days, then couldn’t resist beating his own miserable record in his second term with a 43 day shutdown, followed by yet another shutdown just months later. Encore nobody asked for.
Added roughly 2.25 trillion dollars to the national debt in his first year back in office alone, pushing the debt past 39 trillion dollars.
Somebody remind me who the party of fiscal discipline is again.
Pushed through the largest defense budget increase since World War Two while the debt kept climbing anyway.
Purged more than 300,000 federal employees in his first year back.
Efficient, if your goal is chaos.
Pardoned nearly 1,600 January 6 Capitol rioters on his very first day back in office, including Oath Keepers and Proud Boys leaders convicted of seditious conspiracy.
Law and order, except when it’s inconvenient.
At least 40 of those pardoned rioters have already been rearrested, charged, or sentenced for new crimes since walking free. Shocking absolutely nobody.
His family’s crypto ventures, including a meme coin and World Liberty Financial, pulled in more than 1.4 billion dollars in disclosed earnings while he sat in the Oval Office.
Draining the swamp was apparently code for filling his own pockets.
Sent the National Guard into American cities at a cost of nearly 500 million taxpayer dollars in 2025 alone.
His own tariffs are projected to cost the average American household more than 2,500 dollars this year.
You’re paying for this. Not China. You.
Now sitting at one of the lowest approval ratings of his second term, stuck in the high 30s while inflation and gas prices make everyday life harder.
None of this is a conspiracy theory, a rumor, or something you saw in a group chat.
It is the actual, documented record, sitting in plain sight for anyone willing to look.
So the next time someone tells you to relax and give him a chance, ask them how many more indictments, judgments, and shutdown records he needs to rack up before that chance runs out.
INTLXPATR: Wait! What about the wall that Mexico is going to pay for?
The tariffs that China will pay for?
The promise that he has nothing to do with Project 2025?
Tightrope, No Safety Net
It is astonishing and hiliarious what you can find on the internet these days if you look. I entered “image Trump on a tightrope” and came up with more than I had hoped for.
We are in dangerous times. Our President is reckless, and leaves a trail of wreckage. All the guardrails, so carefully set up to avoid corruption, abuse, waste and degradation have been dismantled. The watchers have been fired. The laws have been weakened, if not destroyed.
The relationships with reliable allies have been demolished with bravado, as if it were a good thing not to have cooperative friends.
A civilized society operates within constraints. It demonstrates self-restraint for the greater good of all. Have you ever heard this President exhibit a single concern for the citizens of the USA? Any note indicating a desire to serve and protect? You know, like the oaths of public service require?
The safety nets are gone. ICE operates with impunity; poorly trained, without accountability, preying on the most vulnerable among us. We are told in the earliest books of our religion to “welcome the stranger.” We are told by the crooks, rapists and bad people in charge that the immigrants are “crooks, rapists and bad people.” They have little protection, and, it seems, no longer have the rights guaranteed by the court system so carefully developed.
Our president and his family skim billions from the economy and deals made on the basis of presidential power. Croneys make billions from an endless war which serves no purpose and has no credible way of ending.
Our trusted institutions teeter on collapse.
I pray for our country, as I watch with horror and anticipate the next outrageous proclamations of the president and his confederacy of dunces.
Biases: Believing Our Delusions
This is from a daily reading by Richard Rohr, a theologian I love reading for his broad outlook on belief and spirituality.
None of us is free from biases that skew our thinking. He lists several of the thinking errors below.
Recognizing Our Biases
CAC (Center for Advanced Contemplation – ed.) faculty member Brian McLaren has done thoughtful and helpful research about what makes us see things so differently from one another. He identified thirteen biases that we outline today. Being a former pastor and an excellent communicator, Brian found a way to make these complex ways of seeing simple and memorable. He writes:
People can’t see what they can’t see. Their biases get in the way, surrounding them like a high wall, trapping them in ignorance, deception, and illusion. No amount of reasoning and argument will get through to them, unless we first learn how to break down the walls of bias. . . .
Confirmation Bias: We judge new ideas based on the ease with which they fit in with and confirm the only standard we have: old ideas, old information, and trusted authorities. As a result, our framing story, belief system, or paradigm excludes whatever doesn’t fit.
Complexity Bias: Our brains prefer a simple falsehood to a complex truth.
Community Bias: It’s almost impossible to see what our community doesn’t, can’t, or won’t see.
Complementarity Bias: If you are hostile to my ideas, I’ll be hostile to yours. If you are curious and respectful toward my ideas, I’ll respond in kind.
Competency Bias: We don’t know how much (or little) we know because we don’t know how much (or little) others know. In other words, incompetent people assume that most other people are about as incompetent as they are. As a result, they underestimate their [own] incompetence, and consider themselves at least of average competence.
Consciousness Bias: Some things simply can’t be seen from where I am right now. But if I keep growing, maturing, and developing, someday I will be able to see what is now inaccessible to me.
Comfort or Complacency Bias: I prefer not to have my comfort disturbed.
Conservative/Liberal Bias: I lean toward nurturing fairness and kindness, or towards strictly enforcing purity, loyalty, liberty, and authority, as an expression of my political identity.
Confidence Bias: I am attracted to confidence, even if it is false. I often prefer the bold lie to the hesitant truth.
Catastrophe or Normalcy Bias: I remember dramatic catastrophes but don’t notice gradual decline (or improvement).
Contact Bias: When I don’t have intense and sustained personal contact with “the other,” my prejudices and false assumptions go unchallenged.
Cash Bias: It’s hard for me to see something when my way of making a living requires me not to see it.
Conspiracy Bias: Under stress or shame, our brains are attracted to stories that relieve us, exonerate us, or portray us as innocent victims of malicious conspirators.
“Thieves, Radicals and Lunatics”: The Nation Laughs
The leader of our country describes his own crowd of fundamental ideologists, corrupt nepotism, the severance of watchdogs protecting the public, and broken promises about releasing incriminating Epstein files. He points his fingers at others, blaming them for violations evident in his own administration. He lies, and he doesn’t even care.
We have to laugh. It is that or cry.
What Happened to “The Buck Stops Here?”
Today, Heather Cox Richardson reports the following:
When a reporter asked Trump today why he didn’t “stick around for the signing ceremony with this Iran peace deal,” the famously camera-courting president answered: “I might, but I’d rather, this is a memorandum of understanding. It’s very important, but it might not be the kind of a document that I should be signing.” The reporter responded: “There is some element to this where you send the vice president. If it works out, great. You look like a genius for sending him. If it doesn’t work out, it’s the vice president’s fault.”
Trump responded: “I like that idea…. This way, if it works out, I’m gonna take the credit; if it doesn’t work out, I’m blaming J.D. You better be careful, J.D. He’s gonna turn his plane around and get the hell outta here. Yeah, I like that idea. I think that’s a good idea.”
If anyone else said that, and then said “just kidding!” we might believe them. When Trump says it, he means it. He doesn’t really know what the memo implies, doesn’t understand how it puts the United States in a worse position than before he started the war (the memo specifically calls it a war), and while he is already taking credit for it, he leaves himself an escape hatch in case the wires and mirrors stop working.
Citizens, more than ever, it is time to protect your vote and to make sure your vote counts.
Make sure you are registered to vote.
Call your Supervisor of Elections and make sure you are still on the rolls, and that your information is accurate.
If you intend to vote by mail, make sure you are listed for a mail-in vote, and when you vote, mail you vote at a post office, or deliver your vote to the office of the Supervisor of Elections in advance of election day.
Vote the scoundrels out.
Trump is in the process of doing everything in his power, legal or illegal (just look at the judges who stop his illegal mandates daily), to eliminate votes against his party. We, the people, must be vigilant!
The Buck Stops Here.
“You Watch, Gas Prices Will Drop Like a Rock!”
I filled my tank this morning with gas about 60 cents cheaper than last week.
I am very puzzled; gas prices fell “like a rock” the day after Trump said that as soon as peace was achieved, prices would drop like a rock. So quickly! I’ve seen prices go up overnight, but I have never seen prices go down so quickly!
We have a Memo of Understanding, not a peace treaty. We have identified areas of discussion (undisclosed) that the US will negociate with Iran over. We are in a poor position for negotiating.
From Wikipedia: Donald Trump announced the withdrawal of the United States from the Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), on May 8, 2018.
Which Iranians? Are they all on board? Are they the leaders of the country?
How will this treaty be any better than the Obama treaty Trump withdrew from in 2018?
How much will this cost the American taxpayers?
Who has made money off of this war? Who has been hurt?
How much has this war cost the world? How has it damaged our Trump-punched alliances?
I filled my tank because I know our strategic reserves are nearing depletion. I filled my tank because I don’t believe the truce will hold – it hasn’t held so far – and I filled my tank because I believe it is more wires and mirrors, trying to fool us into thinking things are better than they are.
When Lies Control the Narrative . . .
Truth disappears.
Today, National Pulic Radio reports the following:
The Trump administration has mass-deleted information regarding prosecutions related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, including cases involving defendants who assaulted police officers. This move marks the latest attempt by Trump to alter the narrative surrounding the violent riot. Last week, Justice Department news releases that detailed guilty pleas, jury verdicts and prison sentences disappeared from government websites. An NPR review found that the deletions included information about some of the most serious assaults on law enforcement that happened that day.
We all watched the attack on the Capitol happen in real time, with our own eyes, and much of it filmed by the insurrectionists who had been told the election was stolen. Mike Pence didn’t believe it and did not do as he was instructed to do. He supported the truth of the 2020 election of Joe Biden,
And now, we have a Trumpian edict of “non-disclosure” for all Federal Employees.
We used to take pride in the transparency of our government – not even that long ago! Less than one presidential administration ago! What happened to oversight (DOGE’D out of existence) and whistleblowers calling out corruption?
Calling out corrution is inconvenient for this regime. Bringing corruption into full view should make the corrupt squirm, but this administration has no scruples, no embarrassment.
And now, we have a new corrupt senatorial candidate out of Texas, Ken Paxton. Paxton has been charged with scandal and corruption by his own fellow Republicans, and is a welcome addition to the shameless corruption of the Trump Administration, bellying up to the trough, feeding off the taxpayers.
Did you know that “Tromper” in French is to fool? Si je ne me trompe pas.
Coming Home to Roost
There’s an old joke about Grand Juries being so suggestible that they will indict a ham sandwich in a paper bag.
Rarely does a Grand Jury presentation fail. Rarely, that is, when experienced prosecutors look at the evidence and decide a case is worthy of taking to trial, that the evidence supports the charges.
With changes to the Trump Department of Justice, however, grand jury cases are failing. Rules of presentation of evidence are broken. Private conversations with jurists take place. Claims are made which cannot be supported. Two things happen – some of the grand juries fail to bring back an indictment, and those that go forward are whacked in court, to the great embarrassment of those trying to follow Trumps instructions.
But don’t just listen to me – do a little educating yourself. Read the article in today’s New York Times by Alan Feuer called As Trump Politicizes Justice Dept., Prosecutors Struggle With Grand Juries
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