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.
Politicized Weaponized Justice and Unintended Consequences
I laughed when I read about the end of the Trump IRS case. He was going to lose, so he pulled an appearant agreement with the Department of Justice, where attorneys are fleeing the use of the Department to go after Trump’s enemies. Trump doesn’t care that the evidence does not support a winning case. He wants his “enemies” charged, like he was. He was found guilty, by a jury of his peers.
A very smart attorney, someone say like James Comey, will be able to find a way to use this case, and the funds set aside, to charge the current Department of Injustice with discrimination, that these funds should be widely available to those who believe the Justice Department has gone after them for purposes of vengeance, rather that breaking the law. This gang of dunces have opened a loop of opportunity, just one more tragic comedy in a regime of careless, callous, destructive actions.
This is from the news service 1440:
| Anti-Weaponization Fund’ |
| The Justice Department yesterday announced a $1.776B taxpayer-funded program to compensate individuals who claim the DOJ politically targeted them. The figure appears to be a nod to America’s founding year. Payments would come from the Treasury’s Judgment Fund, an uncapped account used to settle federal cases. The “Anti-Weaponization Fund” is part of a settlement resolving President Donald Trump’s $10B lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns, along with civil claims tied to the Russia probe and the search of his Mar-a-Lago residence. Trump and his family will receive a formal apology but no monetary damages. The tax case stems from disclosures by a former IRS contractor who was sentenced to prison for leaking high-profile figures’ tax data between 2018 and 2020.A five-member commission, appointed by the attorney general and removable by Trump, will oversee claims through December 2028. The fund is modeled after an Obama-era program that compensated Native American farmers for discrimination in federal lending programs (see DOJ explanation). |
He who accuses, accuses himself.
Robert Reich: Freedom Summer 2026
Robert Reich shares an idea for hope in a shocking season of gerrymandering. Win anyway, by registering voters. Michelle Obama would say “we go high”:
Friends,
Yesterday I spoke with Tennessee state representative Justin Jones, one of the nation’s young Black leaders who’s been a rising star in Tennessee politics, about the Supreme Court’s shameful April 29 decision in Louisiana v. Callais, gutting Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
Jones told me that, at Trump’s urging, Tennessee Republicans had prepared a redistricting map even before the Court announced its decision. Then, despite pleas from Black voters and voting rights advocates, the white Republican legislators moved their meeting to another room without allowing the public in to watch, passed the new map out of committee, and enacted it within 24 hours.
The new map has eliminated Tennessee’s one remaining Democratic district around Memphis, a city of about 610,000 people, about two-thirds of whom are Black — by cracking it into three majority-white district, one stretching hundreds of miles. The map has also divided Nashville, another city with a Black majority, into five white-majority districts.
Jones described Tennessee house speaker Cameron Sexton as the “grand wizard in chief,” explaining that “that’s what they want to do. They want to create a process that is unfair and unequal.”
Other Southern states have joined Tennessee’s rush to redistrict.
Louisiana’s governor has ordered that the state’s ongoing congressional election be set aside while state lawmakers redraw maps to eliminate a Democratic-majority – that is, a Black-majority – seat covering Baton Rouge.
At Trump’s request, Alabama Republicans have approved legislation directing the governor to schedule new primary elections this year under a GOP-friendly map that would end districts represented by Black lawmakers, if courts lift an injunction on its redistricting.
The Mississippi legislature will soon convene in a Confederate-era capitol building that it hasn’t used in 100 years, presumably to eliminate the Democratic majority in the one Mississippi district held by a Black representative.
South Carolina’s Republican majority in the statehouse voted Wednesday to extend its legislative calendar, allowing time to consider whether they should eliminate the state’s sole Democratic-majority, Black-majority district, held by long-serving representative James Clyburn.
Florida was already in a special redistricting session when the Supreme Court announced its decision, enacting a congressional map for its 28 districts that packs Black and brown voters into four districts on the south Florida coast and Orlando, eliminating every other Democratic majority.
“We’re going backwards at warp speed,” Jones told me. “In just over a week, we’ve gone from the 1965 Voting Rights Act back to the era of Jim Crow.”
I asked him what he and other Black political leaders in the South were planning to do.
“There’ll be a lot of litigation,” he said, “but we can’t be optimistic with this Supreme Court.”
“So, what’s the strategy?”
“We need the biggest voter turnout in history this fall. Every Black person, every Brown person, every Democrat, everyone who cares about the moral soul of this nation has to vote for equal voting rights. Take over Congress. Increase our power in state legislatures. This is the only way to respond.”
“I’m with you,” I said, “but I really wonder whether that’s possible.”
“How about a new Freedom Summer?” Jones responded, with a smile. “A multi-racial force of young people fanning out across the South, registering voters, getting them to the polls, just like they did in 1964.”
“I remember. I lost a dear friend in Mississippi Freedom Summer.”
“I have no direct memory, of course,” Jones said. “I was born in 1995, thirty-one years after Freedom Summer. But the South is almost back to where it was then. So, yes, it’s possible. It’s got to be possible.”
I told him I’d share his idea with you, and ask you for your responses.
If His Lips Are Moving – He’s Lying
Our Old Testament reading this morning is from Leviticus, that ancient book of do’s and don’ts tha tpeople cherry pick even today, even after Jesus came to clear up our misconceptions and told us many of these rules were not God-given, but man made, traditional customs.
Leviticus 19:
33 When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. 34The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.
35 You shall not cheat in measuring length, weight, or quantity. 36You shall have honest balances, honest weights, an honest ephah, and an honest hin: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt. 37You shall keep all my statutes and all my ordinances, and observe them: I am the Lord.
But Welcoming the Stranger is a theme throughout the book. Not cheating. Telling the truth. These rules don’t change.
Often when I don’t write, it’s because I am stunned into silence. I don’t care whether you believe as I do or not – worldwide, people share some basic beliefs because they help us survive. Kindness to one another. Compassion, even to those we might not like much. Humanity in our dealings with one another, dealing with one another straight up, giving an honest measure – often even a little more, a “bakers dozen” of 13, an extra inch of fabric, a good measure.
I knew a woman I privately considered as dishonest, and one night we were discussing the love of money as the root of evil in a group, and she said she never considered money her own, that it is God’s money, flowing through her as a conduit, going where it is meant to be.
I told AdventureMan when I got home, and he liked it, too. We decided to tip generously, to let our excess flow through our fingers, trusting God to put it where it is needed, and we would have no idea. We’ve never regretted that philosophy.
I fear for our world. I fear for the selfishness and greed putting our world at risk. I fear that the pulling back of environmental restrictions will impact on our ability as human beings to continue to live on earth. I picture Octavia Butler’s enclaves of the ultra rich while the rest of us scrabble for scraps in a world where rich and poor are breathing bad air, sweating in tropical heat and where plague and filth become common because we no longer invest in public health.
The “Truth” our leader speaks changes, not even daily, but sometimes within an hour, within 15 minutes. It’s not a War? When missiles are still destroying innocent lives? When ships cannot pass freely through a waterway that has been unguarded and open for years? When we pour the life blood of our country into guarding a war we never chose, and pulling our troops out of countries who for over half a century have been allied in creating widespread wealth, and a better world.
I gasp at his audacity, telling his citizens that a legal election was not a legal election, and that his own attempts to meddle in election results never happened, or was not illegal, or whatever the lie is today, or in his most recent speech. His truth changes according to his imagination, and he goes after those who expose his untruths.
Do you remember the wall that the Mexicans would pay for? Now we have a billion dollar ballroom, a monument to gilded vanity, that was touted as built by wealthy donors, but he is handing taxpayers the bill. The taxpayers who will pay are the same ones who have recently given up health care insurance they can no longer afford, or the dream of home ownership, or the dream of sending their first generation of American citizens to college.
What a tragic twist of fate, that the Trump years would bankrupt an entire country the way he bankrupted his own casinos and businesses. When will this stop?
Stretching the Point
Anyone who has ever served in the military knows the term 86. We used it all the time, mostly for pieces of valueless paper. 86 meant throw it in the trash can. A translation of the above would be commonly translated as “Dump Trump”.
Dump Trump is an increasingly common sentiment in the United States. It does not have violent connotations. It means, vote out this cheap fraud, lover of gilt and self-adulation, and his entire cheap entourage, pigs at the trough. Use your vote.
If you want to see truly violent inciting rhetoric, check out 45/47. He is the master of crude incitations to violent behavior. He will tell you he will bomb you back into the dark ages, and he has the record to prove it.
I applaud you, James Comey, for your balanced and fearless response. The courts have supported your case before; they will again. Thinking a photo of seashells urging the dumping of a corrupt regime is no where near an incitation to violence.
We have freedom of speech. We are allowed to say Dump Trump.
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Early Voting in Florida
Here There and Everywhere 