We don't want this particular thread falling off the first page.
Trump's just blabbing about commies again.... and way way too many Americans have no fucking clue what that even means as far as I can tell, including Trump (or so-called communist nations, for that matter. I am sad about how the term has been so disgustingly twisted).
And it's weird because he should know better. The same nonsense was going on in the late 60s and early 70s (he is 5 years older than me, but I remember that era quite well). It's discouraging to think how far we have not come in this country.
Really? I don't think so. If most people did, then something more would be happening, instead of most just going about their business as usual.
What do you want to be done? People voted and these are the consequences. There’s protests all the time. Are you expecting an insurrection or some sort of overthrow of the government? Of course people are going about their business.
Going about your business and hoping for the best is what helped get us to the genocide of millions of Jews and WW2.
This is not hyperbole. This is month THREE of FOURTY EIGHT. Imagine how quickly shit is going to get to the point of no return.
Protests. Calling congresspeople day and night. Basically harassment, and back it off a bit so it isn’t illegal. 😂
I guess we’ll just have to revisit this in 4 years and hope you’re wrong. In the meantime, I most definitely am going about my business. I voted and will continue to, but that’s it for me.
Really? I don't think so. If most people did, then something more would be happening, instead of most just going about their business as usual.
What do you want to be done? People voted and these are the consequences. There’s protests all the time. Are you expecting an insurrection or some sort of overthrow of the government? Of course people are going about their business.
Going about your business and hoping for the best is what helped get us to the genocide of millions of Jews and WW2.
This is not hyperbole. This is month THREE of FOURTY EIGHT. Imagine how quickly shit is going to get to the point of no return.
Protests. Calling congresspeople day and night. Basically harassment, and back it off a bit so it isn’t illegal. 😂
I guess we’ll just have to revisit this in 4 years and hope you’re wrong. In the meantime, I most definitely am going about my business. I voted and will continue to, but that’s it for me.
While I find this really amusing because it made me think, “is COOTWH really taking over the Vatican or is he leading Trombone Shorty down bourbon street?,” I also thought to myself that people better be paying attention to who the next pope is going to be and, perhaps, plan accordingly. Me, personally? I’m rooting for Pierbattatist Pizzaballa, if not for the name only.
I give it 5, maybe 7 years. Hey, but white, male privilege will spare or save you, right? Again, from Letter From An American:
The attempt to gain control over artificial intelligence and human communication networks regardless of the cost to ordinary Americans might have a larger theme. As technology forecaster Paul Saffo points out, tech oligarchs led by technology guru Curtis Yarvin have called for a new world order that rejects the nation states around which humans have organized their societies for almost 400 years. They call instead for “network states” organized around technology that permits individuals to group around a leader in cyberspace without reference to real-world boundaries, a position Starlink’s terms of service appear to reflect.
Mastering artificial intelligence while dominating global communications would go a long way toward breaking down existing nations and setting up the conditions for a brave new world, dominated by tech oligarchs.
I give it 5, maybe 7 years. Hey, but white, male privilege will spare or save you, right? Again, from Letter From An American:
The attempt to gain control over artificial intelligence and human communication networks regardless of the cost to ordinary Americans might have a larger theme. As technology forecaster Paul Saffo points out, tech oligarchs led by technology guru Curtis Yarvin have called for a new world order that rejects the nation states around which humans have organized their societies for almost 400 years. They call instead for “network states” organized around technology that permits individuals to group around a leader in cyberspace without reference to real-world boundaries, a position Starlink’s terms of service appear to reflect.
Mastering artificial intelligence while dominating global communications would go a long way toward breaking down existing nations and setting up the conditions for a brave new world, dominated by tech oligarchs.
This is literally JD Vance's ultimate goal.
With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy. ~ Desiderata
I give it 5, maybe 7 years. Hey, but white, male privilege will spare or save you, right? Again, from Letter From An American:
The attempt to gain control over artificial intelligence and human communication networks regardless of the cost to ordinary Americans might have a larger theme. As technology forecaster Paul Saffo points out, tech oligarchs led by technology guru Curtis Yarvin have called for a new world order that rejects the nation states around which humans have organized their societies for almost 400 years. They call instead for “network states” organized around technology that permits individuals to group around a leader in cyberspace without reference to real-world boundaries, a position Starlink’s terms of service appear to reflect.
Mastering artificial intelligence while dominating global communications would go a long way toward breaking down existing nations and setting up the conditions for a brave new world, dominated by tech oligarchs.
This is literally JD Vance's ultimate goal.
Elongitaint’s DOGE’s vast collection of personal information across platforms and databases is really scary shit. If you, general you, don’t think so, read up on the Nazi’s occupation of Holland and what and how they did what they did as it relates to the public’s “data” of the time. Knowledge is power and power is what the COOTWH fucks are after.
We’re one disaster away from becoming a full on authoritarian dictatorship, whether it’s a natural disaster, terrorist incident, civil/social unrest or a self-inflicted disaster of significant magnitude. You, general you, can’t say you weren’t warned.
From Letter From An American:
Federal Bureau of Investigation director Kash Patel, who did not have experience in law enforcement when he took the job, has drawn criticism from current and former officials in the FBI and the Department of Justice, which oversees the FBI, for reducing FBI briefings, traveling frequently on personal matters, and appearing repeatedly at pro sporting events.
Yesterday Patel showed up at a hearing for the Senate Appropriations Commerce, Justice, and Science Subcommittee on the FBI’s spending plan for 2025, but he had not produced the plan, which by law was supposed to have been turned over more than a week ago. When Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) called the absence of the plan “absurd” and asked Patel when they could expect the plan, he answered he did not have a timeline.
Amy McKinnon of Politico reported today that Trump has sat for only 12 “daily” intelligence briefing sessions since he took office, and does not read his written daily intelligence report.
Miller made an even bigger power grab when he said “we’re actively looking at” suspending the writ of habeas corpus, a legal change that essentially establishes martial law by permitting the government to arrest people and hold them without charges or a trial. Legal analyst Steve Vladeck explains that Miller’s justification for such a suspension is dead wrong, and suggests Miller’s threat appears to be designed to put more pressure on the courts.
Yup, it’s over. While some prattle on about how “Dems can’t reach the indies or undecideds,” this is what has happened and continues to happen, while most think “both sides are the same,” or that there’s a level, fair field of play. Keep pretending. And keep thinking that chanting “free Palestine” = killing Jews.
From Letter From An American:
And then there is the more hidden corruption.
Last week, David Yaffe-Bellany and Eric Lipton of the New York Times called attention to the announcement by a struggling technology company with ties to China that it had secured funding to buy $300 million of Trump’s cryptocurrency $TRUMP. It appears the company is hoping to curry favor with the president.
Zach Everson of Forbes noted that the Trump family controls about 60% of World Liberty Financial, a decentralized financial platform that produces the USD1 stablecoin, a kind of cryptocurrency that fluctuates less than most cryptocurrencies because it’s pegged to the dollar. World Liberty Financial’s USD1 stablecoin began trading yesterday on KuCoin, an exchange headquartered in the Seychelles and banned in the United States after it admitted to violating laws against money laundering and agreed to pay a $300 million fine. A spokesperson for KuCoin told Everson that it had reached out about carrying USD1 after the coin “demonstrated strong demand in certain regions.”
The racism and the corruption are coming together tonight as the top 220 holders of the $TRUMP coin join the president at a private dinner. A Bloomberg analysis of the top 25 wallets shows that 19 are owned by individuals from outside the United States, and many of the winners are companies looking for access to the president. Many of them dumped their $TRUMP coins as soon as they made the cut for the dinner.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington reported today that 50 of the people attending Trump's dinner tonight hold crypto assets with names from the alt-right, including Pepe the Frog and swastikas, or that have names that are racist or antisemitic, including the n-word and “F*CK THE JEWS.”
Their language echoes that of the elite enslavers of the 1850s—and for that matter, the Ku Klux Klan members of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the American Nazis of the 1920s and 1930s, and the segregationists of the years after World War II. And just like the elite enslavers in the 1850s, MAGA leaders want to get rid of laws that make it harder for them to monopolize the nation’s wealth and power and are using racism to get voters to support them.
Also like their predecessors, MAGA leaders are getting a significant boost from the United States Supreme Court. In a decision made today on the so-called “shadow docket”—the emergency docket in which the court makes decisions without arguments or briefs and which previously wasn’t used for major rulings—the court made it clear it is willing to abandon the idea of independent agencies. Since 1935, the court has upheld Congress’s right to appoint the heads of independent agencies and has said that the president cannot fire them without cause. Today, in an unsigned two-page order, the court paused orders by federal judges allowing board members at two independent agencies to stay even after Trump tried to fire them.
This is an extraordinary step toward the idea of the “unitary executive,” a theory Republicans began to embrace in the 1980s that because the president is the head of one of the three unique branches of government, any oversight of that office by Congress or the courts is unconstitutional, although in fact presidents since George Washington have accepted congressional oversight. It gives Trump control over the independent agencies that currently run much of the government, agencies like the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems Protection Board—both part of this case—and also the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, and so on.
The six justices who handed down today’s order tried to say that the Federal Reserve Board is different from other agencies because it has a “distinct historical tradition,” so Trump can’t just fire its head, Jerome Powell. Trump has made it clear he wants to fire Powell, but that removal would make financial markets even more precarious than they already are.
The dissent, written by Justice Elena Kagan and joined by Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor, notes that “the majority’s order…is nothing short of extraordinary” and “favors the President over our precedent.” The court has abandoned 90 years of precedent under the emergency docket, and misrepresents the case as one about the interests of two employees in keeping their job.
In fact, the liberal justices say, “the interest at stake is in maintaining Congress’s idea of independent agencies: bodies of specialists balanced along partisan lines, which will make sound judgments precisely because not fully controlled by the White House.”
Yup, it’s over. While some prattle on about how “Dems can’t reach the indies or undecideds,” this is what has happened and continues to happen, while most think “both sides are the same,” or that there’s a level, fair field of play. Keep pretending. And keep thinking that chanting “free Palestine” = killing Jews.
From Letter From An American:
And then there is the more hidden corruption.
Last week, David Yaffe-Bellany and Eric Lipton of the New York Times called attention to the announcement by a struggling technology company with ties to China that it had secured funding to buy $300 million of Trump’s cryptocurrency $TRUMP. It appears the company is hoping to curry favor with the president.
Zach Everson of Forbes noted that the Trump family controls about 60% of World Liberty Financial, a decentralized financial platform that produces the USD1 stablecoin, a kind of cryptocurrency that fluctuates less than most cryptocurrencies because it’s pegged to the dollar. World Liberty Financial’s USD1 stablecoin began trading yesterday on KuCoin, an exchange headquartered in the Seychelles and banned in the United States after it admitted to violating laws against money laundering and agreed to pay a $300 million fine. A spokesperson for KuCoin told Everson that it had reached out about carrying USD1 after the coin “demonstrated strong demand in certain regions.”
The racism and the corruption are coming together tonight as the top 220 holders of the $TRUMP coin join the president at a private dinner. A Bloomberg analysis of the top 25 wallets shows that 19 are owned by individuals from outside the United States, and many of the winners are companies looking for access to the president. Many of them dumped their $TRUMP coins as soon as they made the cut for the dinner.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington reported today that 50 of the people attending Trump's dinner tonight hold crypto assets with names from the alt-right, including Pepe the Frog and swastikas, or that have names that are racist or antisemitic, including the n-word and “F*CK THE JEWS.”
Their language echoes that of the elite enslavers of the 1850s—and for that matter, the Ku Klux Klan members of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the American Nazis of the 1920s and 1930s, and the segregationists of the years after World War II. And just like the elite enslavers in the 1850s, MAGA leaders want to get rid of laws that make it harder for them to monopolize the nation’s wealth and power and are using racism to get voters to support them.
Also like their predecessors, MAGA leaders are getting a significant boost from the United States Supreme Court. In a decision made today on the so-called “shadow docket”—the emergency docket in which the court makes decisions without arguments or briefs and which previously wasn’t used for major rulings—the court made it clear it is willing to abandon the idea of independent agencies. Since 1935, the court has upheld Congress’s right to appoint the heads of independent agencies and has said that the president cannot fire them without cause. Today, in an unsigned two-page order, the court paused orders by federal judges allowing board members at two independent agencies to stay even after Trump tried to fire them.
This is an extraordinary step toward the idea of the “unitary executive,” a theory Republicans began to embrace in the 1980s that because the president is the head of one of the three unique branches of government, any oversight of that office by Congress or the courts is unconstitutional, although in fact presidents since George Washington have accepted congressional oversight. It gives Trump control over the independent agencies that currently run much of the government, agencies like the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems Protection Board—both part of this case—and also the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, and so on.
The six justices who handed down today’s order tried to say that the Federal Reserve Board is different from other agencies because it has a “distinct historical tradition,” so Trump can’t just fire its head, Jerome Powell. Trump has made it clear he wants to fire Powell, but that removal would make financial markets even more precarious than they already are.
The dissent, written by Justice Elena Kagan and joined by Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor, notes that “the majority’s order…is nothing short of extraordinary” and “favors the President over our precedent.” The court has abandoned 90 years of precedent under the emergency docket, and misrepresents the case as one about the interests of two employees in keeping their job.
In fact, the liberal justices say, “the interest at stake is in maintaining Congress’s idea of independent agencies: bodies of specialists balanced along partisan lines, which will make sound judgments precisely because not fully controlled by the White House.”
Yup, it’s over. While some prattle on about how “Dems can’t reach the indies or undecideds,” this is what has happened and continues to happen, while most think “both sides are the same,” or that there’s a level, fair field of play. Keep pretending. And keep thinking that chanting “free Palestine” = killing Jews.
From Letter From An American:
And then there is the more hidden corruption.
Last week, David Yaffe-Bellany and Eric Lipton of the New York Times called attention to the announcement by a struggling technology company with ties to China that it had secured funding to buy $300 million of Trump’s cryptocurrency $TRUMP. It appears the company is hoping to curry favor with the president.
Zach Everson of Forbes noted that the Trump family controls about 60% of World Liberty Financial, a decentralized financial platform that produces the USD1 stablecoin, a kind of cryptocurrency that fluctuates less than most cryptocurrencies because it’s pegged to the dollar. World Liberty Financial’s USD1 stablecoin began trading yesterday on KuCoin, an exchange headquartered in the Seychelles and banned in the United States after it admitted to violating laws against money laundering and agreed to pay a $300 million fine. A spokesperson for KuCoin told Everson that it had reached out about carrying USD1 after the coin “demonstrated strong demand in certain regions.”
The racism and the corruption are coming together tonight as the top 220 holders of the $TRUMP coin join the president at a private dinner. A Bloomberg analysis of the top 25 wallets shows that 19 are owned by individuals from outside the United States, and many of the winners are companies looking for access to the president. Many of them dumped their $TRUMP coins as soon as they made the cut for the dinner.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington reported today that 50 of the people attending Trump's dinner tonight hold crypto assets with names from the alt-right, including Pepe the Frog and swastikas, or that have names that are racist or antisemitic, including the n-word and “F*CK THE JEWS.”
Their language echoes that of the elite enslavers of the 1850s—and for that matter, the Ku Klux Klan members of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the American Nazis of the 1920s and 1930s, and the segregationists of the years after World War II. And just like the elite enslavers in the 1850s, MAGA leaders want to get rid of laws that make it harder for them to monopolize the nation’s wealth and power and are using racism to get voters to support them.
Also like their predecessors, MAGA leaders are getting a significant boost from the United States Supreme Court. In a decision made today on the so-called “shadow docket”—the emergency docket in which the court makes decisions without arguments or briefs and which previously wasn’t used for major rulings—the court made it clear it is willing to abandon the idea of independent agencies. Since 1935, the court has upheld Congress’s right to appoint the heads of independent agencies and has said that the president cannot fire them without cause. Today, in an unsigned two-page order, the court paused orders by federal judges allowing board members at two independent agencies to stay even after Trump tried to fire them.
This is an extraordinary step toward the idea of the “unitary executive,” a theory Republicans began to embrace in the 1980s that because the president is the head of one of the three unique branches of government, any oversight of that office by Congress or the courts is unconstitutional, although in fact presidents since George Washington have accepted congressional oversight. It gives Trump control over the independent agencies that currently run much of the government, agencies like the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems Protection Board—both part of this case—and also the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, and so on.
The six justices who handed down today’s order tried to say that the Federal Reserve Board is different from other agencies because it has a “distinct historical tradition,” so Trump can’t just fire its head, Jerome Powell. Trump has made it clear he wants to fire Powell, but that removal would make financial markets even more precarious than they already are.
The dissent, written by Justice Elena Kagan and joined by Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor, notes that “the majority’s order…is nothing short of extraordinary” and “favors the President over our precedent.” The court has abandoned 90 years of precedent under the emergency docket, and misrepresents the case as one about the interests of two employees in keeping their job.
In fact, the liberal justices say, “the interest at stake is in maintaining Congress’s idea of independent agencies: bodies of specialists balanced along partisan lines, which will make sound judgments precisely because not fully controlled by the White House.”
Good fucking luck, you’re going to need it.
Don't forget that the Dems have apparently now rigged an election lol
Scio me nihil scire
There are no kings inside the gates of eden
0
brianlux
Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 43,227
My sister sent this to me. It's a bit long, but worth reading!
Sometimes,
late at night, when I should be asleep or, at the very least, staring
at the ceiling in a stupor of my own design, I do something I know I
shouldn’t: I open the news. YouTube. Google. Anywhere the algorithm
decides to serve up another bite-sized glimpse into the slow, unraveling
death spiral of this country. It’s not curiosity anymore—it’s
compulsion. Masochistic ritual. A midnight communion with chaos.
Some
part of me needs to press my face against the glass and watch the fire.
Like viewing a digital menu—one of those glossy, high-resolution
spreads at a restaurant, every dish pictured in vivid detail, each more
overwhelming than the last, until you can’t tell the difference between
hunger and nausea. The headlines blur together—flashing like neon signs
in a ghost town: “Democracy falters.” “Fascism surges.” “Rights erased
in real time.” It doesn’t even feel shocking anymore. It feels like
prophecy fulfilled. I don’t read the news to learn something new—I read
it to confirm what I already know: the house was never stable. It just
looked that way when you were too young, too white, or too safe to see
the cracks. And now those cracks are swallowing everything.
This
isn’t going to be some meticulously sourced essay or policy deep dive.
This is a confession. A personal purge. I’m thirty years old. Barely a
decade into so-called adulthood. I was born in the mid-’90s—a time when
every adult in the room pretended like the past had been settled, that
the future was ours, and the world was fine because they’d already done
the hard work of making it so. The Cold War had thawed. The markets were
booming. And democracy? That was a permanent fixture now, wasn’t it?
Like electricity or sidewalks. A solved problem.
But
no one wanted to admit or confront the fact that the scaffolding was
hollow. Life was “good”—but only if you fit the blueprint: white,
straight, Christian, male—or at least close enough to pass in polite
company. For everyone else, the cracks weren’t metaphor. They were lived
experience. But the myth of a just and stable America was too
intoxicating, too convenient, for the majority to question. So we were
handed a polished fiction and told it was foundation.
I
remember the tail end of the ’90s and the naïve bliss of the new
millennium. The chunky computers and cable news, the rising hum of the
internet just starting to seduce the world. I remember not understanding
what 9/11 meant, but sensing it was the end of something quiet and the
beginning of something loud and vicious. And from there, it only
escalated: wars for profit, mass surveillance passed off as patriotism,
school shootings that became background noise, polarization so deep it
tore through families, culture wars engineered to distract and divide,
disinformation weaponized as strategy, the criminalization of poverty,
the erosion of reproductive rights, the rot of infrastructure both
literal and moral. Meanwhile, the rest of us were left to scroll and
swipe and scream into the algorithmic void.
I
don’t carry nostalgia for that era. But I do carry the fury of someone
who came of age just in time to inherit the slow-motion collapse. I’ve
voted in three presidential elections. I’ve marched, I’ve organized,
I’ve been politically awake since I knew what politics was. And still, I
find myself exhausted—watching as the structures meant to protect us
crumble under the weight of indifference and old money and outright
fucking fascism.
And
sure, not everyone is equally to blame. Some have always known the
system was a rigged casino of white supremacy and corporate power. But
let’s not pretend like we all weren’t complicit to varying
degrees—lulled into the illusion that America’s darkness was a thing of
the past, not something we’d let fester in plain sight. Too many bought
the lie that fascism was a phantom confined to history books—some ghost
from Europe’s attic, long exorcised. Too many white Americans in
particular let their comfort calcify into apathy, mistaking peace for
justice, law for morality.
And
now? Now that the fire has jumped the fence and scorched their own
front lawns, there’s shock. Outrage. As if this was some brand new
nightmare that dropped from the sky. But let’s be honest: this—all of
this—is old news to Black Americans. To Native peoples. To immigrants
who crossed imaginary lines only to meet concrete cruelty. To everyone
who’s ever lived on the wrong side of power. The surveillance, the
gaslighting, the systemic cruelty masquerading as law and order—it’s
been their America since the beginning. This country was forged in blood
and written in denial. What’s happening now isn’t new. It’s just
finally coming for the people who thought they were safe.
I
won’t pretend to be above the rage. I’m furious. Furious that at
thirty, I already feel world-weary. That I’ve had to watch the promise
of progress slip through my fingers before I even had a chance to
fucking grip it. I’m not disillusioned—I’m precisely the opposite. I see
the illusions for what they are. I’ve taken the tour. Read the plaques.
I know now that the “adults in the room” were mostly sleepwalkers in
suits.
And
yet, there’s no joy in this vindication. Just the echo of missed
chances, of roads not taken, of red flags ignored. I don’t know what
comes next. I don’t know if we claw our way back or collapse into the
same authoritarian abyss that swallowed other empires before us.
I
won’t lie—I’ve been tempted to give in. To let the exhaustion calcify
into apathy. To let the rage curdle into cynicism. But I can’t. I won’t.
Because that’s exactly what they want. They want us numb, divided, and
too tired to care. But I refuse to let them win.
We
are living through a dark chapter in our history. But within this
darkness lies a rare and powerful opportunity: the chance to confront
all that is rotten, cruel, unjust, and illogical in our society. To face
it head-on and refuse to let it fester any longer. To reclaim the
humanity that has been lost in the relentless pursuit of profit and
power. We are capable of so much better.
And
truthfully, if there has been one thing that has given me more
aspiration, hope, strength, and persistence to push forward despite the
exhaustion and cynicism, it is seeing the community of those who resist.
The protests. The acts of defiance and resistance—not violent, but
human and compassionate, yet raging with passion and just anger. I see
it in the comments on my posts, in the friend requests, in the online
communities. I see more good people—not just Americans, but people,
fellow humans around the world, sharing in this strange, painful,
beautiful experience we call life—trying to talk to each other, support
each other, make sense of things, come up with plans, and embrace more
humanity than we were once becoming dangerously distant from.
So
while I know there is a mountain of work ahead, I’m going to embrace
it. Because it’s worth it—not just for my son and family, but for all
individuals, all families, for all future generations. We have a
responsibility to fight for a better world, to ensure that the values of
compassion, justice, and dignity prevail over greed, hatred, and
indifference.
I
know I’m not going quietly. I know that in this storm of
disinformation, despair, and deliberate dehumanization, I still believe
in fighting—because it’s the only thing that gives this cursed
inheritance any dignity. So, like me, rage, if you must. But rage with
purpose. Rage like it’s the last clean act of love left in a world gone
mad.
To
anyone reading this who feels the same ache, the same grief, the same
fury or confusion or weariness: let it in. Let yourself feel it
all—because that’s what makes you human. Don’t numb it. Don’t run from
it. Rage, mourn, cry, laugh, scream. Then use it. Every drop of it. Let
it sharpen your clarity. Let it guide your choices. Let it be your fuel.
Because the fight ahead isn’t short. But it is necessary. And it’s not
just survival we’re after anymore—it’s something better. Something more
whole. This road forward is long and uneven, but it’s ours to make.
1995 Milwaukee 1998 Alpine, Alpine 2003 Albany, Boston, Boston, Boston 2004 Boston, Boston 2006 Hartford, St. Paul (Petty), St. Paul (Petty) 2011 Alpine, Alpine 2013 Wrigley 2014 St. Paul 2016 Fenway, Fenway, Wrigley, Wrigley 2018 Missoula, Wrigley, Wrigley 2021 Asbury Park 2022 St Louis 2023 Austin, Austin 2024 Napa, Wrigley, Wrigley
And MAGA is 100% behind it, especially JD Vance - it's basically his world view. I have no idea why the chosen word is "monarchy" though. I assume because it's just more palatable than totalitarian dictatorship.
Post edited by PJ_Soul on
With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy. ~ Desiderata
And MAGA is 100% behind it, especially JD Vance - it's basically his world view. I have no idea why the chosen word is "monarchy" though. I assume because it's just more palatable than totalitarian dictatorship.
Dishonest language always makes the Kool-Aid more enticing and goes down easier.
Comments
And it's weird because he should know better. The same nonsense was going on in the late 60s and early 70s (he is 5 years older than me, but I remember that era quite well). It's discouraging to think how far we have not come in this country.
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Good luck.
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
The attempt to gain control over artificial intelligence and human communication networks regardless of the cost to ordinary Americans might have a larger theme. As technology forecaster Paul Saffo points out, tech oligarchs led by technology guru Curtis Yarvin have called for a new world order that rejects the nation states around which humans have organized their societies for almost 400 years. They call instead for “network states” organized around technology that permits individuals to group around a leader in cyberspace without reference to real-world boundaries, a position Starlink’s terms of service appear to reflect.
Mastering artificial intelligence while dominating global communications would go a long way toward breaking down existing nations and setting up the conditions for a brave new world, dominated by tech oligarchs.
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
This is literally JD Vance's ultimate goal.
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/09/politics/miller-habeas-corpus-immigrant-judge
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Federal Bureau of Investigation director Kash Patel, who did not have experience in law enforcement when he took the job, has drawn criticism from current and former officials in the FBI and the Department of Justice, which oversees the FBI, for reducing FBI briefings, traveling frequently on personal matters, and appearing repeatedly at pro sporting events.
Yesterday Patel showed up at a hearing for the Senate Appropriations Commerce, Justice, and Science Subcommittee on the FBI’s spending plan for 2025, but he had not produced the plan, which by law was supposed to have been turned over more than a week ago. When Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) called the absence of the plan “absurd” and asked Patel when they could expect the plan, he answered he did not have a timeline.
Amy McKinnon of Politico reported today that Trump has sat for only 12 “daily” intelligence briefing sessions since he took office, and does not read his written daily intelligence report.
Miller made an even bigger power grab when he said “we’re actively looking at” suspending the writ of habeas corpus, a legal change that essentially establishes martial law by permitting the government to arrest people and hold them without charges or a trial. Legal analyst Steve Vladeck explains that Miller’s justification for such a suspension is dead wrong, and suggests Miller’s threat appears to be designed to put more pressure on the courts.
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/21/politics/blue-state-flood-prevention-cuts
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
And then there is the more hidden corruption.
Last week, David Yaffe-Bellany and Eric Lipton of the New York Times called attention to the announcement by a struggling technology company with ties to China that it had secured funding to buy $300 million of Trump’s cryptocurrency $TRUMP. It appears the company is hoping to curry favor with the president.
Zach Everson of Forbes noted that the Trump family controls about 60% of World Liberty Financial, a decentralized financial platform that produces the USD1 stablecoin, a kind of cryptocurrency that fluctuates less than most cryptocurrencies because it’s pegged to the dollar. World Liberty Financial’s USD1 stablecoin began trading yesterday on KuCoin, an exchange headquartered in the Seychelles and banned in the United States after it admitted to violating laws against money laundering and agreed to pay a $300 million fine. A spokesperson for KuCoin told Everson that it had reached out about carrying USD1 after the coin “demonstrated strong demand in certain regions.”
The racism and the corruption are coming together tonight as the top 220 holders of the $TRUMP coin join the president at a private dinner. A Bloomberg analysis of the top 25 wallets shows that 19 are owned by individuals from outside the United States, and many of the winners are companies looking for access to the president. Many of them dumped their $TRUMP coins as soon as they made the cut for the dinner.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington reported today that 50 of the people attending Trump's dinner tonight hold crypto assets with names from the alt-right, including Pepe the Frog and swastikas, or that have names that are racist or antisemitic, including the n-word and “F*CK THE JEWS.”
Their language echoes that of the elite enslavers of the 1850s—and for that matter, the Ku Klux Klan members of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the American Nazis of the 1920s and 1930s, and the segregationists of the years after World War II. And just like the elite enslavers in the 1850s, MAGA leaders want to get rid of laws that make it harder for them to monopolize the nation’s wealth and power and are using racism to get voters to support them.
Also like their predecessors, MAGA leaders are getting a significant boost from the United States Supreme Court. In a decision made today on the so-called “shadow docket”—the emergency docket in which the court makes decisions without arguments or briefs and which previously wasn’t used for major rulings—the court made it clear it is willing to abandon the idea of independent agencies. Since 1935, the court has upheld Congress’s right to appoint the heads of independent agencies and has said that the president cannot fire them without cause. Today, in an unsigned two-page order, the court paused orders by federal judges allowing board members at two independent agencies to stay even after Trump tried to fire them.
This is an extraordinary step toward the idea of the “unitary executive,” a theory Republicans began to embrace in the 1980s that because the president is the head of one of the three unique branches of government, any oversight of that office by Congress or the courts is unconstitutional, although in fact presidents since George Washington have accepted congressional oversight. It gives Trump control over the independent agencies that currently run much of the government, agencies like the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems Protection Board—both part of this case—and also the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, and so on.
The six justices who handed down today’s order tried to say that the Federal Reserve Board is different from other agencies because it has a “distinct historical tradition,” so Trump can’t just fire its head, Jerome Powell. Trump has made it clear he wants to fire Powell, but that removal would make financial markets even more precarious than they already are.
The dissent, written by Justice Elena Kagan and joined by Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor, notes that “the majority’s order…is nothing short of extraordinary” and “favors the President over our precedent.” The court has abandoned 90 years of precedent under the emergency docket, and misrepresents the case as one about the interests of two employees in keeping their job.
In fact, the liberal justices say, “the interest at stake is in maintaining Congress’s idea of independent agencies: bodies of specialists balanced along partisan lines, which will make sound judgments precisely because not fully controlled by the White House.”
Good fucking luck, you’re going to need it.
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
And then there is the more hidden corruption.
Last week, David Yaffe-Bellany and Eric Lipton of the New York Times called attention to the announcement by a struggling technology company with ties to China that it had secured funding to buy $300 million of Trump’s cryptocurrency $TRUMP. It appears the company is hoping to curry favor with the president.
Zach Everson of Forbes noted that the Trump family controls about 60% of World Liberty Financial, a decentralized financial platform that produces the USD1 stablecoin, a kind of cryptocurrency that fluctuates less than most cryptocurrencies because it’s pegged to the dollar. World Liberty Financial’s USD1 stablecoin began trading yesterday on KuCoin, an exchange headquartered in the Seychelles and banned in the United States after it admitted to violating laws against money laundering and agreed to pay a $300 million fine. A spokesperson for KuCoin told Everson that it had reached out about carrying USD1 after the coin “demonstrated strong demand in certain regions.”
The racism and the corruption are coming together tonight as the top 220 holders of the $TRUMP coin join the president at a private dinner. A Bloomberg analysis of the top 25 wallets shows that 19 are owned by individuals from outside the United States, and many of the winners are companies looking for access to the president. Many of them dumped their $TRUMP coins as soon as they made the cut for the dinner.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington reported today that 50 of the people attending Trump's dinner tonight hold crypto assets with names from the alt-right, including Pepe the Frog and swastikas, or that have names that are racist or antisemitic, including the n-word and “F*CK THE JEWS.”
Their language echoes that of the elite enslavers of the 1850s—and for that matter, the Ku Klux Klan members of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the American Nazis of the 1920s and 1930s, and the segregationists of the years after World War II. And just like the elite enslavers in the 1850s, MAGA leaders want to get rid of laws that make it harder for them to monopolize the nation’s wealth and power and are using racism to get voters to support them.
Also like their predecessors, MAGA leaders are getting a significant boost from the United States Supreme Court. In a decision made today on the so-called “shadow docket”—the emergency docket in which the court makes decisions without arguments or briefs and which previously wasn’t used for major rulings—the court made it clear it is willing to abandon the idea of independent agencies. Since 1935, the court has upheld Congress’s right to appoint the heads of independent agencies and has said that the president cannot fire them without cause. Today, in an unsigned two-page order, the court paused orders by federal judges allowing board members at two independent agencies to stay even after Trump tried to fire them.
This is an extraordinary step toward the idea of the “unitary executive,” a theory Republicans began to embrace in the 1980s that because the president is the head of one of the three unique branches of government, any oversight of that office by Congress or the courts is unconstitutional, although in fact presidents since George Washington have accepted congressional oversight. It gives Trump control over the independent agencies that currently run much of the government, agencies like the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems Protection Board—both part of this case—and also the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, and so on.
The six justices who handed down today’s order tried to say that the Federal Reserve Board is different from other agencies because it has a “distinct historical tradition,” so Trump can’t just fire its head, Jerome Powell. Trump has made it clear he wants to fire Powell, but that removal would make financial markets even more precarious than they already are.
The dissent, written by Justice Elena Kagan and joined by Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor, notes that “the majority’s order…is nothing short of extraordinary” and “favors the President over our precedent.” The court has abandoned 90 years of precedent under the emergency docket, and misrepresents the case as one about the interests of two employees in keeping their job.
In fact, the liberal justices say, “the interest at stake is in maintaining Congress’s idea of independent agencies: bodies of specialists balanced along partisan lines, which will make sound judgments precisely because not fully controlled by the White House.”
Good fucking luck, you’re going to need it.
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
There are no kings inside the gates of eden
Oliver Kornetzke, May 20 at 7:28 PM
Sometimes, late at night, when I should be asleep or, at the very least, staring at the ceiling in a stupor of my own design, I do something I know I shouldn’t: I open the news. YouTube. Google. Anywhere the algorithm decides to serve up another bite-sized glimpse into the slow, unraveling death spiral of this country. It’s not curiosity anymore—it’s compulsion. Masochistic ritual. A midnight communion with chaos.
Some part of me needs to press my face against the glass and watch the fire. Like viewing a digital menu—one of those glossy, high-resolution spreads at a restaurant, every dish pictured in vivid detail, each more overwhelming than the last, until you can’t tell the difference between hunger and nausea. The headlines blur together—flashing like neon signs in a ghost town: “Democracy falters.” “Fascism surges.” “Rights erased in real time.” It doesn’t even feel shocking anymore. It feels like prophecy fulfilled. I don’t read the news to learn something new—I read it to confirm what I already know: the house was never stable. It just looked that way when you were too young, too white, or too safe to see the cracks. And now those cracks are swallowing everything.
This isn’t going to be some meticulously sourced essay or policy deep dive. This is a confession. A personal purge. I’m thirty years old. Barely a decade into so-called adulthood. I was born in the mid-’90s—a time when every adult in the room pretended like the past had been settled, that the future was ours, and the world was fine because they’d already done the hard work of making it so. The Cold War had thawed. The markets were booming. And democracy? That was a permanent fixture now, wasn’t it? Like electricity or sidewalks. A solved problem.
But no one wanted to admit or confront the fact that the scaffolding was hollow. Life was “good”—but only if you fit the blueprint: white, straight, Christian, male—or at least close enough to pass in polite company. For everyone else, the cracks weren’t metaphor. They were lived experience. But the myth of a just and stable America was too intoxicating, too convenient, for the majority to question. So we were handed a polished fiction and told it was foundation.
I remember the tail end of the ’90s and the naïve bliss of the new millennium. The chunky computers and cable news, the rising hum of the internet just starting to seduce the world. I remember not understanding what 9/11 meant, but sensing it was the end of something quiet and the beginning of something loud and vicious. And from there, it only escalated: wars for profit, mass surveillance passed off as patriotism, school shootings that became background noise, polarization so deep it tore through families, culture wars engineered to distract and divide, disinformation weaponized as strategy, the criminalization of poverty, the erosion of reproductive rights, the rot of infrastructure both literal and moral. Meanwhile, the rest of us were left to scroll and swipe and scream into the algorithmic void.
I don’t carry nostalgia for that era. But I do carry the fury of someone who came of age just in time to inherit the slow-motion collapse. I’ve voted in three presidential elections. I’ve marched, I’ve organized, I’ve been politically awake since I knew what politics was. And still, I find myself exhausted—watching as the structures meant to protect us crumble under the weight of indifference and old money and outright fucking fascism.
And sure, not everyone is equally to blame. Some have always known the system was a rigged casino of white supremacy and corporate power. But let’s not pretend like we all weren’t complicit to varying degrees—lulled into the illusion that America’s darkness was a thing of the past, not something we’d let fester in plain sight. Too many bought the lie that fascism was a phantom confined to history books—some ghost from Europe’s attic, long exorcised. Too many white Americans in particular let their comfort calcify into apathy, mistaking peace for justice, law for morality.
And now? Now that the fire has jumped the fence and scorched their own front lawns, there’s shock. Outrage. As if this was some brand new nightmare that dropped from the sky. But let’s be honest: this—all of this—is old news to Black Americans. To Native peoples. To immigrants who crossed imaginary lines only to meet concrete cruelty. To everyone who’s ever lived on the wrong side of power. The surveillance, the gaslighting, the systemic cruelty masquerading as law and order—it’s been their America since the beginning. This country was forged in blood and written in denial. What’s happening now isn’t new. It’s just finally coming for the people who thought they were safe.
I won’t pretend to be above the rage. I’m furious. Furious that at thirty, I already feel world-weary. That I’ve had to watch the promise of progress slip through my fingers before I even had a chance to fucking grip it. I’m not disillusioned—I’m precisely the opposite. I see the illusions for what they are. I’ve taken the tour. Read the plaques. I know now that the “adults in the room” were mostly sleepwalkers in suits.
And yet, there’s no joy in this vindication. Just the echo of missed chances, of roads not taken, of red flags ignored. I don’t know what comes next. I don’t know if we claw our way back or collapse into the same authoritarian abyss that swallowed other empires before us.
I won’t lie—I’ve been tempted to give in. To let the exhaustion calcify into apathy. To let the rage curdle into cynicism. But I can’t. I won’t. Because that’s exactly what they want. They want us numb, divided, and too tired to care. But I refuse to let them win.
We are living through a dark chapter in our history. But within this darkness lies a rare and powerful opportunity: the chance to confront all that is rotten, cruel, unjust, and illogical in our society. To face it head-on and refuse to let it fester any longer. To reclaim the humanity that has been lost in the relentless pursuit of profit and power. We are capable of so much better.
And truthfully, if there has been one thing that has given me more aspiration, hope, strength, and persistence to push forward despite the exhaustion and cynicism, it is seeing the community of those who resist. The protests. The acts of defiance and resistance—not violent, but human and compassionate, yet raging with passion and just anger. I see it in the comments on my posts, in the friend requests, in the online communities. I see more good people—not just Americans, but people, fellow humans around the world, sharing in this strange, painful, beautiful experience we call life—trying to talk to each other, support each other, make sense of things, come up with plans, and embrace more humanity than we were once becoming dangerously distant from.
So while I know there is a mountain of work ahead, I’m going to embrace it. Because it’s worth it—not just for my son and family, but for all individuals, all families, for all future generations. We have a responsibility to fight for a better world, to ensure that the values of compassion, justice, and dignity prevail over greed, hatred, and indifference.
I know I’m not going quietly. I know that in this storm of disinformation, despair, and deliberate dehumanization, I still believe in fighting—because it’s the only thing that gives this cursed inheritance any dignity. So, like me, rage, if you must. But rage with purpose. Rage like it’s the last clean act of love left in a world gone mad.
To anyone reading this who feels the same ache, the same grief, the same fury or confusion or weariness: let it in. Let yourself feel it all—because that’s what makes you human. Don’t numb it. Don’t run from it. Rage, mourn, cry, laugh, scream. Then use it. Every drop of it. Let it sharpen your clarity. Let it guide your choices. Let it be your fuel. Because the fight ahead isn’t short. But it is necessary. And it’s not just survival we’re after anymore—it’s something better. Something more whole. This road forward is long and uneven, but it’s ours to make.
"I know I’m not going quietly."
https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/22/us/west-point-dei-changes
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DI6c8SrNfz5/?igsh=MXNuaTJuYzd0ZW1vNQ==
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
https://www.joewrote.com/p/it-cant-happen-here-says-the-country
2013 Wrigley 2014 St. Paul 2016 Fenway, Fenway, Wrigley, Wrigley 2018 Missoula, Wrigley, Wrigley 2021 Asbury Park 2022 St Louis 2023 Austin, Austin
2024 Napa, Wrigley, Wrigley
https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/31/us/r-word-slur-comeback-cec
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Dishonest language always makes the Kool-Aid more enticing and goes down easier.