Can we say the Republicans are even a legitimate political party when they have a record, and a pattern, of plotting to undermine the electoral process through illegal covert actions? There is only one party committed to democracy, and that's the Democratic Party; hence, there is no other way to vote, if democracy matters.
Reagan repaid Khomeini, by honoring his part of the deal, by using the CIA to transport weapons and ammo to Nicaragua to give to the Contras, in exchange for cocaine being flown in from Colombia.
The cocaine was sold to drug pushers the CIA developed, and thus created a drug problem, which Reagan obfuscated with his wife, Nancy"s, just say no campaign. The story is well told in the TV series, Snowfall.
The funds collected by the CIA, were deposited in their bank in the cityof Panama, the Merchant Marine Midland bank, located next to the Vatican Embassy on Avendia Balboa which fronted the Pacific Ocean (nice view)
The the funds were dispersed to the Mossad, which bought weapons, like the F-14 Tomcat, to deliver to Iran, and of course rceived payment. both ends of the deal.
The affair was investigated as Iran Contra and Col Oliver North was convicted and jailed, and then pardoned in 1992, by Reagan's former VP, now President George H W Bush.
Some of this story has been fictionalized on TV and Movies, but the full extent of the story, the involvement of the CIA, it's bank in Panama and the Mossad has not,
I believe that the invasion of Panama to arrest Manuel Noriega, was a consequence of Iran Contra, as Noriega committed the biggest sin of a bag man, dipping into the bag and skimming.
Noriega became Presidente de Panama on Jul 31,1981 when Torrijos was blown up by the CIA as he boarded a helicopter.
Repugnicans know from long experience that Democrats are reliably slow to detect and address their treasonous duplicity. Joe Biden, despite being Barack Obama’s vice president for eight years, where he witnessed Mitch McConnell’s corrupt obstruction on a daily basis, evidently failed to recognize or saw no point in addressing POSOTUS’S, and Merrick Garland shockingly demonstrated no interest. Current Democratic leadership prefers to talk about “kitchen table issues” while treating monumental corruption as an abstraction to be considered at some point in the future. And they never miss an opportunity to undermine anyone working to upset the status quo while daily emailing me for contributions. I’m not inclined to throw good money after bad.
Well yes, this time we CAN see it coming (and the enemies of democracy are not even in denial,) but we cannot do much about it because we do not have the Supreme Court, Senate, military, law enforcement, and a third of the citizenry solidly behind us. The Trumplicans even tell us what they are going to do, but they have the guns ( if it should come to that) and the legal fire power to accomplish their ends. All we can do is contribute, yell out, and assuming we even have elections (and that their numbers are counted correctly,) show up and vote.
With your permission and If my printer worked, i would send your comment to every democrat request for money, making use of all those prepaid stamped envelops.
So much corruption unpunished. So many bad decisions made by Dems in response, at critical moments…I did look up whether Fla would have gone to Gore if the recount had been properly done, the study Thom mentioned by the group of Fla newspapers, and what I saw is that the limited recount they were able to do may still have ended up with Bush the winner, just barely…it appears, though, that there were disagreements among those examining the ballots…and it also seems to be the case that the thousands unfairly purged from the voter rolls could have made a diffference if they had actually been able to vote and had done so. So that result is still somewhat murky, even now. But clearly stopping the count was insane and likely unconstitutional, since states run elections and the state had authorized that recount.
Right now, given all the crap the Repubs and Trump admin are cooking up to screw over the 2026 elections, it’s heartening to know that Dem legislators, along with high power elections lawyers such as Marc Elias and Norm Eisen, are right now launching war games to figure out how they can effectively respond/prevent the stuff that gets thrown at us this time around.
It’s critical for Thom and other progressive journalists to avoid sounding like doom sayers who encourage us to be deflated, depressed, and demoralized and possibly not show up, feeling it won’t matter anyways. We MUST show up by the millions so that the results are so lopsided the results will not be able to be undone. And we must be prepared, like the Hungarians and the South Koreans, to show up in the streets by the gazillions if they skew the results somehow.
I am strongly urging folks like Thom to be sure to cover how Dems HAVE woken up to these issues and are preparing, so that we do not feel we are doomed and will have the energy we need to do the work that has to be done, and now is when we need to get going, not in September after Labor Day!!! Phonebanking, canvassing, postcard writing, have to be on all of our agendas right now.
Yesterday I participated in an easy phonebank to strong Dems in WI to work on getting poll observers for the August 11th primary there…the governorship is on the line and we must have a strong candidate! Please visit Wisdems.org and find out how you can help, or work on swing district campaigns near you, now. We all have to be, in Obama’s words, “fired up, ready to go!” Si se puede!!!!
Might be easier to explain who ISN"T trying to get their grimy, cheating hands into our elections.
Democrats have fought and won in the actual courts. Now it may be more important to win in the court of public opinion. We need the independents to vote with us. And yes, we're going to need all the former Republicans as well. Sorry is going to have to be "good enough" from them for now. Let's put out the WELCOME sign and join forces.
Ashley St. Clair, Elon's baby mama, has some interesting comments on these subjects that she just gave in an interview with Don Lemon. Thom and Company and Greg Palast are giving us 100% every day. STAY LOUD EVERYBODY! See you in the streets.
The key takeaway for me is we need to educate folks and mobilize against the Trump schemes to obstruct democracy.
Yes, we need to turnout a huge vote for Democratic candidates and their policy positions to help working people. We need a huge turnout to compensate for the vote suppression and interference that we expect. But that isn’t enough.
We can do two things at once. We also need to organize and stay in the streets to protest the Trump/Republican moves against democracy along with preparing and supporting legal and public challenges to vote suppression and manipulation.
On the Democratic side we don’t see everything as one or the other. We can work to turnout a huge vote for our candidates and also turnout for protests and other activities to support our democratic rights and a fair vote.
In Stevenson, Washington, we had a January 10, 2026 “Conference on Strategies to Oppose Authoritarianism”. With 250 people registered, we had a large turnout of folks who wanted to know what our situation was and how to react. Our panel of history and political science professors laid out how we had crossed into authoritarianism and how authoritarian governments have been opposed in the past. The conference followed that presentation and discussion with 5 workshops by groups with specific strategies to combat aspects of the authoritarianism we face. We have to understand what we are facing to effectively oppose it. Our participating groups were the Vancouver Metro League of United Latin American Citizens, the Democratic Party (Washington State, Skamania County and Klickitat County Democrats), Hood River Latino Network, Skamania Pride, Greater Vancouver Indivisible, and the Columbia Gorge Women’s Action Network.
Being realistic about what we are facing doesn’t demoralize us. It gives us the framework for understanding the gravity of our situation, prioritizing our tasks and pacing ourselves for sustained activity.
I agree with many that the secret to winning in these Mid-terms is turnout -- massive turnout -- that dwarfs all of the seen and unseen election inference schemes of the dark right. But still I worry because "they" care nothing about democracy. And they have EVERYTHING to lose if they lose. I am following Substack: This Will Hold closely as a source for Elon-powered / Trump-fanboy'd election rigging news. Many articles there have receipts supporting that Harris won. And that the vote totals were manipulated to swing states just beyond the mandatory recount totals. I believe it will happen again, but now two-further-years-AI-powered, via Starlink. Check it out. To the ramparts everyone.
p.s. There are conspiracy theories, and there are actual conspiracies. Both are important to investigate. In this case, existentially important. Don't be fooled again.
One of the lessons history teaches is that democratic institutions are most vulnerable when citizens assume someone else is paying attention.
"This time we know. We can see this coming" captures both the opportunity and the responsibility of this moment. You are so right that vigilance is preventive, not retrospective. This piece should motivate all of us to recognize the warning signs and address challenges to our elections before—not just after—the votes are counted. Our democracy depends on it.
There's only one answer to all of this and that is to forcefully remove all of these corrupt politicians and start over with new ones with better guardrails for their conduct. This includes the supreme court. It's time for a clean slate.
Honestly! I take my Senator from NC to task quite often, striking the stance of “What is going on in your head to allow—to facilitate!—all this corruption and moral decay? It’s so patently obvious it’s sometimes sickening b
For Cheeto the most despicable word in the English language is "loser". For a malignant narcissist there can be no defeat. Pure and simple the psychopath always wins. If it weren't for the economic pressures coming from his billionaire cronies in the oil industry and more broadly the energy sector, Cheeto would have manufactured reasons to carry out this war out interminably.
But alas, Nature always catches up with psychopaths eventually. The governing laws of human behavior are inextricably tied to forces beyond human control and Cheeto is as good as a cooked turkey for Thanksgiving.
Nonetheless the Cheets will find some way to creatively make it so he doesn't appear to be the loser that he is. For every self respecting malignant narcissist there has to be a way out of this conundrum. Blame as WE the People have seen is the most common highway but in some spin there will the obvious lies that all his objectives have been met so in stretching truth to meaningless meanderings is a good way for Fox to give him an off ramp.
But this sad hunk of human protoplasm is still just a demented psychopathic loser.
Some of us remember all this and have a genuine concern that it will be worse this time around especially if the GOP continues to control the Senate and the confirmation process for judges.
Can we say the Republicans are even a legitimate political party when they have a record, and a pattern, of plotting to undermine the electoral process through illegal covert actions? There is only one party committed to democracy, and that's the Democratic Party; hence, there is no other way to vote, if democracy matters.
Reagan repaid Khomeini, by honoring his part of the deal, by using the CIA to transport weapons and ammo to Nicaragua to give to the Contras, in exchange for cocaine being flown in from Colombia.
The cocaine was sold to drug pushers the CIA developed, and thus created a drug problem, which Reagan obfuscated with his wife, Nancy"s, just say no campaign. The story is well told in the TV series, Snowfall.
The funds collected by the CIA, were deposited in their bank in the cityof Panama, the Merchant Marine Midland bank, located next to the Vatican Embassy on Avendia Balboa which fronted the Pacific Ocean (nice view)
The the funds were dispersed to the Mossad, which bought weapons, like the F-14 Tomcat, to deliver to Iran, and of course rceived payment. both ends of the deal.
The affair was investigated as Iran Contra and Col Oliver North was convicted and jailed, and then pardoned in 1992, by Reagan's former VP, now President George H W Bush.
Some of this story has been fictionalized on TV and Movies, but the full extent of the story, the involvement of the CIA, it's bank in Panama and the Mossad has not,
I believe that the invasion of Panama to arrest Manuel Noriega, was a consequence of Iran Contra, as Noriega committed the biggest sin of a bag man, dipping into the bag and skimming.
Noriega became Presidente de Panama on Jul 31,1981 when Torrijos was blown up by the CIA as he boarded a helicopter.
Repugnicans know from long experience that Democrats are reliably slow to detect and address their treasonous duplicity. Joe Biden, despite being Barack Obama’s vice president for eight years, where he witnessed Mitch McConnell’s corrupt obstruction on a daily basis, evidently failed to recognize or saw no point in addressing POSOTUS’S, and Merrick Garland shockingly demonstrated no interest. Current Democratic leadership prefers to talk about “kitchen table issues” while treating monumental corruption as an abstraction to be considered at some point in the future. And they never miss an opportunity to undermine anyone working to upset the status quo while daily emailing me for contributions. I’m not inclined to throw good money after bad.
Is this on purpose? or maybe the "c" word - conspiracy - pops into my mind immediately.
Establishment corporate Democrats can be difficult to distinguish from Repugncans.
Well yes, this time we CAN see it coming (and the enemies of democracy are not even in denial,) but we cannot do much about it because we do not have the Supreme Court, Senate, military, law enforcement, and a third of the citizenry solidly behind us. The Trumplicans even tell us what they are going to do, but they have the guns ( if it should come to that) and the legal fire power to accomplish their ends. All we can do is contribute, yell out, and assuming we even have elections (and that their numbers are counted correctly,) show up and vote.
With your permission and If my printer worked, i would send your comment to every democrat request for money, making use of all those prepaid stamped envelops.
Permission granted, intentions encouraged!
So much corruption unpunished. So many bad decisions made by Dems in response, at critical moments…I did look up whether Fla would have gone to Gore if the recount had been properly done, the study Thom mentioned by the group of Fla newspapers, and what I saw is that the limited recount they were able to do may still have ended up with Bush the winner, just barely…it appears, though, that there were disagreements among those examining the ballots…and it also seems to be the case that the thousands unfairly purged from the voter rolls could have made a diffference if they had actually been able to vote and had done so. So that result is still somewhat murky, even now. But clearly stopping the count was insane and likely unconstitutional, since states run elections and the state had authorized that recount.
Right now, given all the crap the Repubs and Trump admin are cooking up to screw over the 2026 elections, it’s heartening to know that Dem legislators, along with high power elections lawyers such as Marc Elias and Norm Eisen, are right now launching war games to figure out how they can effectively respond/prevent the stuff that gets thrown at us this time around.
It’s critical for Thom and other progressive journalists to avoid sounding like doom sayers who encourage us to be deflated, depressed, and demoralized and possibly not show up, feeling it won’t matter anyways. We MUST show up by the millions so that the results are so lopsided the results will not be able to be undone. And we must be prepared, like the Hungarians and the South Koreans, to show up in the streets by the gazillions if they skew the results somehow.
I am strongly urging folks like Thom to be sure to cover how Dems HAVE woken up to these issues and are preparing, so that we do not feel we are doomed and will have the energy we need to do the work that has to be done, and now is when we need to get going, not in September after Labor Day!!! Phonebanking, canvassing, postcard writing, have to be on all of our agendas right now.
Yesterday I participated in an easy phonebank to strong Dems in WI to work on getting poll observers for the August 11th primary there…the governorship is on the line and we must have a strong candidate! Please visit Wisdems.org and find out how you can help, or work on swing district campaigns near you, now. We all have to be, in Obama’s words, “fired up, ready to go!” Si se puede!!!!
Might be easier to explain who ISN"T trying to get their grimy, cheating hands into our elections.
Democrats have fought and won in the actual courts. Now it may be more important to win in the court of public opinion. We need the independents to vote with us. And yes, we're going to need all the former Republicans as well. Sorry is going to have to be "good enough" from them for now. Let's put out the WELCOME sign and join forces.
Ashley St. Clair, Elon's baby mama, has some interesting comments on these subjects that she just gave in an interview with Don Lemon. Thom and Company and Greg Palast are giving us 100% every day. STAY LOUD EVERYBODY! See you in the streets.
The key takeaway for me is we need to educate folks and mobilize against the Trump schemes to obstruct democracy.
Yes, we need to turnout a huge vote for Democratic candidates and their policy positions to help working people. We need a huge turnout to compensate for the vote suppression and interference that we expect. But that isn’t enough.
We can do two things at once. We also need to organize and stay in the streets to protest the Trump/Republican moves against democracy along with preparing and supporting legal and public challenges to vote suppression and manipulation.
On the Democratic side we don’t see everything as one or the other. We can work to turnout a huge vote for our candidates and also turnout for protests and other activities to support our democratic rights and a fair vote.
In Stevenson, Washington, we had a January 10, 2026 “Conference on Strategies to Oppose Authoritarianism”. With 250 people registered, we had a large turnout of folks who wanted to know what our situation was and how to react. Our panel of history and political science professors laid out how we had crossed into authoritarianism and how authoritarian governments have been opposed in the past. The conference followed that presentation and discussion with 5 workshops by groups with specific strategies to combat aspects of the authoritarianism we face. We have to understand what we are facing to effectively oppose it. Our participating groups were the Vancouver Metro League of United Latin American Citizens, the Democratic Party (Washington State, Skamania County and Klickitat County Democrats), Hood River Latino Network, Skamania Pride, Greater Vancouver Indivisible, and the Columbia Gorge Women’s Action Network.
Being realistic about what we are facing doesn’t demoralize us. It gives us the framework for understanding the gravity of our situation, prioritizing our tasks and pacing ourselves for sustained activity.
I agree with many that the secret to winning in these Mid-terms is turnout -- massive turnout -- that dwarfs all of the seen and unseen election inference schemes of the dark right. But still I worry because "they" care nothing about democracy. And they have EVERYTHING to lose if they lose. I am following Substack: This Will Hold closely as a source for Elon-powered / Trump-fanboy'd election rigging news. Many articles there have receipts supporting that Harris won. And that the vote totals were manipulated to swing states just beyond the mandatory recount totals. I believe it will happen again, but now two-further-years-AI-powered, via Starlink. Check it out. To the ramparts everyone.
p.s. There are conspiracy theories, and there are actual conspiracies. Both are important to investigate. In this case, existentially important. Don't be fooled again.
Why did Harris cave so fast? C'mon. It was disturbing. Why no demands for recounts?
I doubt America can handle facts.
One of the lessons history teaches is that democratic institutions are most vulnerable when citizens assume someone else is paying attention.
"This time we know. We can see this coming" captures both the opportunity and the responsibility of this moment. You are so right that vigilance is preventive, not retrospective. This piece should motivate all of us to recognize the warning signs and address challenges to our elections before—not just after—the votes are counted. Our democracy depends on it.
There's only one answer to all of this and that is to forcefully remove all of these corrupt politicians and start over with new ones with better guardrails for their conduct. This includes the supreme court. It's time for a clean slate.
Honestly! I take my Senator from NC to task quite often, striking the stance of “What is going on in your head to allow—to facilitate!—all this corruption and moral decay? It’s so patently obvious it’s sometimes sickening b
Cheeto Is A Loser
For Cheeto the most despicable word in the English language is "loser". For a malignant narcissist there can be no defeat. Pure and simple the psychopath always wins. If it weren't for the economic pressures coming from his billionaire cronies in the oil industry and more broadly the energy sector, Cheeto would have manufactured reasons to carry out this war out interminably.
But alas, Nature always catches up with psychopaths eventually. The governing laws of human behavior are inextricably tied to forces beyond human control and Cheeto is as good as a cooked turkey for Thanksgiving.
Nonetheless the Cheets will find some way to creatively make it so he doesn't appear to be the loser that he is. For every self respecting malignant narcissist there has to be a way out of this conundrum. Blame as WE the People have seen is the most common highway but in some spin there will the obvious lies that all his objectives have been met so in stretching truth to meaningless meanderings is a good way for Fox to give him an off ramp.
But this sad hunk of human protoplasm is still just a demented psychopathic loser.
We both happened to write about this subject today.
https://thiswillhold.substack.com/p/the-2024-election-was-stolenbut-the?r=57k1uv&utm_medium=ios
When you are boxing a maniac*, the Marquess of Queensberry rules go out the window.
Or they should. . . . Timorous Ds have not yet figured that out.
So we all must pay. Even DT's cement-headed zombies pay.
#VOTE #Draft Donald's 3 sons
*e.g. Musk, Elon; see below
This is long-form but worth it. https://newrepublic.com/article/211936/elon-musk-race-war-belfast
We allow it as citizens. That’s our failure.
Some of us remember all this and have a genuine concern that it will be worse this time around especially if the GOP continues to control the Senate and the confirmation process for judges.