When I was a kid in kindergarten every morning we would recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Of course, as a kid it was just something we did. I never realized, until my country was threatened from within, how much that pledge actually meant to me. With the advent of the I.C.E. “surge” in Minnesota it has become abundantly clear that for some that Pledge means little.
We in this country are experiencing a threat to not just our economy, but to our liberty. When we have a president who believes that “retribution” is an appropriate stance to take when dealing with citizens of this country we are traveling down a road that bodes ill for all of us. Yes, that includes you, MAGA. The idea that people and companies are actually afraid, yes afraid, in the United States of America to speak out in opposition to government policies that are detrimental to our country is disgusting.
We have tried to warn you about the critical role that immigrants play in this country. No amount of “encouraging” women to have more babies will solve this. It will be too little, too late. We have tried to warn you about the cost of tariffs on our economy. That the Supreme Court ruled Trump’s tariffs illegal may also be too late. Many of our trading partners are looking elsewhere for trade agreements. China is a beneficiary of this. Instead of taking his loss like a man Trump doubles down on stupid putting on global tariffs of 15%. Yes, they are supposed to be temporary, but the uncertainty for businesses is just one more burden they have to bear. Hollowing out small businesses in favor of large corporations will only make this country less stable, both economically and as a society.
It has been somewhat heartening to see that other people in this country are standing up and saying enough is enough.
In Colorado:
In Texas:
What some of our children have seen:
Voices from North Carolina:
We now have more problems to deal with because of the self inflicted wound created by the architects of Project 2025’s poorly thought out policies. We need intelligent, honorable, I cannot stress that last quality enough, governmental elected officials. Right now I am seeing few of those. Getting into another war or invading our allies is not the way to solve our internal issues. Those are a dictator’s tools.
Remember. We will.
23 comments:
I've been speculating about tonight's "State of the Union" address by Trump. It's got the potential to be a real pot-boiler, given that Trump's governmental initiatives seem to be starting to come apart all around him. Likely though, it'll just be more Trump being Trump.
I've decided to compromise on the question of whether I should watch. "Night of the Living Dead" is playing on one of the old movie channels, in competition with Trump's speech. It happens to be a classic genre setting film for the zombie apocalypse category, moving the zombie films out of the Caribbean "voodoo" revenge theme into the contagious, biting, brain eating, zombie type we know today. Night of the Living Dead was the prototype. I think I'll watch it instead and tape the Trump speech in case it happens I should have paid attention to it.
Probably a good choice.
Rumors are starting to circulate that the Department of Justice has "redacted" Epstein files (plural, more than one) which accuse Donald J. Trump of sexual assault against minor females from its release of files in its possession.
Goes beyond just rumors--it's been reported by NPR
Nobody else has independently reported on this one, but it may be worth keeping an eye on.
His hair swirl has come unstuck. He's got tufts of hair sticking straight up on the left side of his head.
Well, except for those two tufts that popped up before he even entered the chamber, the rest of his hair swirl otherwise stayed stuck down through the remainder of his presentation.
Nope, couldn't do it. I watched a couple of episodes of "The Night Agent" instead. I watched some of the Supreme Court justices come in and a little of the hockey team when he spotlighted them and then turned it off. I just can't listen to his propaganda.
Listening to the Democratic response.
Hmmm..they just played a clip of Trump leaving the chamber. I see what you mean about the hair.
A small aside. We are experiencing weird swings in temps here. We had an ice storm this morning that coated the roads and then it got sunny and everything melted. Tomorrow will be in the single digits and then it will warm up into the 40's.
I basically caught him coming in and then again going out. I was mildly surprised to see that he'd consumed almost all of the two hour block the networks had set aside for his speech, but I did get to see his hair tufts both entering and leaving. That's pretty much all of it I was exposed to.
First reviews I've read seem to suggest that the Trumpkan/Republicans are mostly relieved that he stuck to his script this time. But that also means he didn't flame the "woke" folk to the delight of his base voters. So that's kinda two edged sword there. So…
He aggravated the Democrats, but they's gonna be aggravated anyway, just 'cause he's Trump and they don't like listening to him. And he almost certainly bored the independents and potential swing voters along with disappointing his dedicated Trumpkin 'base'.
All in all, he didn't change much with the longest State of the Union speech in recorded history. Be interesting to see a graph of how viewership fell off during that hour and forty-eight minutes. (Good bet Trump's been studying on those numbers already.)
CNN is reporting that the Pentagon used a laser to shoot down a border protection drone.
Sounds like we are being "protected" by the Three Stooges.
Trump has taken an overdue break from attacking our allies and attacked Iran this weekend. (Wasn't necessary to attack Iran I don't think, but the break in attacks on American allies will no doubt be appreciated.)
Well, isn't that special. The blowhard in chief managed to gin up an unnecessary hot war that may get Americans killed and sow chaos and destruction across the Middle East.
Oh, yeah, and his retaliation against the state of Minnesota continues. They will withhold $270 million in Medicaid funding until we roll over and give them some kind of plan to deal with fraud. This after Trump's inflation of the amount of fraud that actually exists. And after policies we have already began to deal with it.
So his attacks on the poor, disabled and the elderly continue.
I think the federal courts will likely put a kibosh on that cut off of funds to Minnesota. Even his own judicial appointees are getting fed up with his presistent discregard for court orders in the prosecution of his Minnesota War.
Meantime, I think we're seeing a widespread boredom arising among congressional Trumpkan/Republicans on the subject of Trump's War on Iran. They don't wanna vote on that issue if they don't gotta, and they're hoping that the "don't gotta" option prevails this coming week.
Lastly, I'm thinking that this is Trump's second violation of the U.N. Charter's prohibition against targeting the head of a sovereign state (Articles 2 and 51). He doesn't seem to fear the ICC will ever come after him, even though they've issued an international warrant against Putin.
It does seem like Republicans are rallying around the orange flag.
They may even renew their demands that Trump be awarded a Noble Peace Prize.
The informal "Claude poll" bodes ill for Trump & Co. It seems Antrhopic's Claude AI app was the number 1 downloaded over the weekend. It seems to me to be a resounding response to Hegseth's and Trump's trying to strong arm the company.
We'll see what the response is to Trump's war of choice long term.
Senate primaries in Texas:
MAGA favorite Ken Paxton is running a fairly close second to incumbent (and traditional Republican) John Cornyn. Both are in the low 40% range with a half a handful of minor candidates eating up the remaining 20%. It's likely there'll be a runoff for the GOP nomination and Paxton currently looks like the likely winner for the two-man race (the minor candidates are MAGA friendly right-wingers).
On the Democratic side "moderate" Democrat James Talarico is is pulling 53% of the vote over the "progressive" type Jasmine Crockett.
If this holds then there might be a Senate seat from Texas up for potential grab by the Democrats. That'll be hard for Trump to swallow.
I don't really like John Fetterman. He is all in for Netanyahu's forever war where they target every subsequent Iranian leader until they come up with one that meets with Israel's approval. Sounds a bit like Putin in Ukraine.
His Senate seat is good until 2029.
Trump has put in a claim that he would be intimately involved in the choice of a new leader for Iran. The Iranians, on the other hand, have just announced that a new Supreme Leader has already been selected.
I must conclude that the Iranians have decided to not implement Trump's Iranian War agenda. It is questionable whether he was prepared for this outcome.
It is questionable if he was prepared for any of the outcomes from his war of choice.
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