Given my several decades, pretty good chance I'll run out the clock before the full impact of social security reductions hit. Except. The "kids" behind me will suffer. And for what? Some Nepo baby's house in Aspen? Or a CEO/Televangelist's new Lear jet? But, truthfully, the lost social security is a trifling in comparison to a lost nation.
In my travels to Russia some years ago, I watched first hand the Militsia--state police. Unconstrained. We are creating our own now. The incident Thom cites with the AMERICAN teen is egregious. And our DoJ? Corrupt to the core.
This won't end well. Don't count on the media. The CBS "truth police" appear to be the future--the Constitution, perhaps not. "South Park" nailed it.
"recently, a phone-video recorded by an 18-year-old American citizen who was traveling with an undocumented friend shows ICE officers brutally attacking the car full of teenagers. They bragged that, “You’ve got no rights here!” while making fun of their captives and discussing with each other whether they’d hit the threshold to get the $30,000. You can watch the video here. "
Yet none of this shows up on corporate media.
As regards masked, unidentified people kidnapping folk off the streets and breaking into cars. Whether it is constitutional or legal is irrelevant. Trump and his regime will do exactly as they please
We are no longer a nation of laws, are institutions have been eradicated, there is no authority to hold the regime accountable. It is a regime not an administration. Administrations administer the laws, regimes make their own laws.
Who is there to hold the regime to account? The Department of Justice? LOL. The U.S. Marshalls whose boss is Pam Bondi?
Collaborating with ICE: The U.S. Marshals Service has partnered with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on immigration enforcement efforts, according to a June 2025 Instagram post from the Marshals Service.
And don't look to the military, they will soon turn their guns on us, just as they are doing along the border and in L.A.
Kinda makes me feel ok with the fact that I am in the last years of my lifespan and don’t have to witness the absolute trashing of this country over the next few years. I worry for my family and young people who will have a harder struggle to survive in this hellscape that will evolve under the fascist regime takeover. America was never “great”, not really, but at least there was aspirational ideologies to be a better nation. Now, the masks are off and we as a society need to take a hard look in the mirror and face how one megalomaniac conman has entrapped a nation into abandoning whatever principles it had left. At least for the remainder of TACO47’ s time in office and for those who have a clear view of reality, there is no longer any doubt how corrupt he is along with his boot licking magat/republican sycophants .
As regards my descendants. They will have to do what we had to do, learn to survive in the world into which they were born.. As Billy Joel wrote: We didn't start the fire
Agree, I have been warning family/friends about reality hitting the USA in the near future as tariffs hit and the prices soar more than they are now. And pandemics come more frequently without the ability to access vaccines and healthcare services. Then the reality of natural disasters taking out communities without assistance from government to recover from destruction. I think Americans have been indoctrinated slowly over the last decade (due to the absence of reality and truth based reporting) by the mainstream media to just shrug off reality. Too many Americans no longer have a clear understanding of what true corruption looks like and who represents the threat to our democracy and way of life.
I agree Kathy, except with the term "mainstream media", it is corporate media, and the only objective, the only purpose of a corporation is to make a profit for the investors.,and to do that they have to survive, and that requires them to not piss off the corporations that fund them.
Corporations have boards of directors,and large corporations have interlocking boards of directors. Jane blue suit might sit on the board of CBS, but also sits on the board of Raytheon and Pfizer. and so it goes, and corporations own each other. The Board of Directors,often controlled by the Chairman like Brian L. Roberts, who is the majority individual share holder of Comcast, which owns NBCUniversal, which owns MSNBC and NBC, is also the CEO , and so it goes with other corporate media.
CBS is owned by Paramount Global,which is owned by National Amusements which is owned by Shari Redstone and her brother.
Skydance is owned by David Ellison,son of Larry Ellison who owns Oracle and is a major trump contributor and is also owned by Shari Redstone.
Yup, I get it. Corporate media/legacy media, they all have an agenda, profit over people and the truth. The facts are only useful when it serves the corporate agenda and self interests. It seems hopeless but I no longer subscribe to any of them.
As my dear friend, the late Yellow Dog Granny would say, "We are fucked". I hope I am wrong but it appears USA is past the tipping point into authoritarianism and tyranny. And some MAGAt "Christian USian is trying to import their hatred into Canada. With lots of pushback so far.
I agree, now if someone could tell me how to put Humpty Dumpty back together again, without recourse to magical, hopeful thinking or invoking some ancient deity, I would be glad to change my mind
My wife Wes recently diagnosed with Stage 3 ovarian cancer, Yesterday was her first round of chemo and she currently is feeling chipper, and in many ways quite relieved: it took 2 months from diagnosis to treatment, nerve-wracking when there is something aggressively growing inside. So 2 points...
1) The fascisti want to rebrand slavery as a kinder and gentler abomination. They call the truth corrosive and would criminalize it to protect the delicate sensitivities of the poor, downtrodden whiteys, all of which is unadulterated BS. Cancer is corrosive but we shouldn't tell the patient because it might upset their (illusory) equanimity. The truth is often painful but lies kill. Without the truth there can be no cure, and it is all too apparent that this nation is dangerously sick. What we see today is more likely to destroy our nation than the dangers America faced in December of 1860.
2) Social Security and Medicare are targeted to be significantly reduced by 2032. My wife and I wouldn't be able to pay for her treatment with the proposed Medicare cuts even without factoring in the butchering of Social Security. Treatment would force us into unescapable debt so we would have no choice but to sell our house and land, at which time we would be thrown into a system where rents are too high and food and energy prices are rising beyond the reach of many. Without Social Security we would most likely descend into poverty and die painful and destitute. O brave new world, that has such people in it!
Without treatment, America herself is mortally ill. There is an infection that is rotting away a limb and gangrene is setting in. Without a cure there are only two paths forward (at least that I'm aware of) death or amputation. The Body Politic is close to being mortally ill. It's not too late to apply the antidote but the window of opportunity is rapidly closing. If we wait too long there are only two paths forward — we can choose to do nothing and destroy everything, or we can amputate, dissolve the Constitution (it's no..longer the law of the land anyway), and go our own ways.
3. I've been advocating endowment of the SSA trust funds since I was involved in "reengineering government" when Al Gore was VP. . Threats of “bankruptcy” of the two Social Security Trust funds abound in the media, and Trump Administration budgets have cut operational funding. There is reason to worry.
If Social Security is sliding toward a "default" it is because Congress and a succession of presidents would sell their families for a few votes. The default of Trust Funds is supposed to apex in 2033 due to the increase of birth rates of baby boomers. After 2033, birth rates of later generations flatten and the funds can be solvent.
Social Security protects workers, widow(er)s, orphans and disabled people and is a major investment for many of us.
Please donate to create an endowment to slow down the rate. If everyone who donates to say, universities, which aren't really charities, the trust funds would be secure.
Last week in Oregon an Iranian doctor who was driving his baby to daycare was stopped by ICE. They asked for his ID and while he was getting his license out asked him where he was going. He said taking my baby to daycare. They told him to get out of the car but the doctor said pointing to the child in the car seat that he will as soon as he drops off the baby. They then asked him where the daycare was. He said it’s only few minutes from here why don’t you come there and I’ll get out of the car. At which point they started breaking his window so he was dragged out of the car and handcuffed!! Apparently he had a green card was married to an American and was awaiting his citizenship! This appeared on Instagram. Not sure if he had green card pending or city. Either way brutal behavior with a baby in the car!! Where are the Democrats in the senate? The judges? The prosecutors even ACLU that has brought a law suit but this brutality continues!!! Every night on MSNBC we hear prosecutors or Harvard professors like professor TRIBE and dozen other legal scholars testifying on the illegality of this cruelty but NO ONE is succeeding to stop this!. Even ICC in the HAGUE condemned the illegality of the State of Israel in its actions in Gaza, recognized Palestine as a state but people are continuing to starve!!! In both cases it’s all talk!! No one is capable of stopping brutality!!!
Here is what I expect Daniel. That the Democrats stand up in mass, and walk out of Congress, that the Democrats stand up in en masse and block ICE and DoJ.
That Democrats stand up en masse and stop writing strongly worded letters and making ineffectual speeches.
Yeh I know that the PA is willing and able to participate, that it is HAMAS and Islamic Jihad who are on a religious mission.
Congress can't do anything without a quorum a minimum of 218 Representatives if there are no vacancies in the House, to be present on the floor whenever the House conducts business. if just two Republicans don't show up then no quorum. Besides it doesn't matter whether there are any Democrats on the floor, does it Daniel. The Republicans do what they want to do anyway, whether or not there are Democrats on the floor.
so by their presence Daniel, the Democrats are legitimizing the actions of Trump and his cult.
Music is your only friend, until the End. Turn out the lights, turn out the lights, turn out the lights. This is The End.
While we watch in stunned amazement, the goon squads of religious fanaticism spin their end-of-times fantasies, with much glee it appears. Somehow, the teachings of most major religions failed to get their main points across, if they ever truly believed them, which I doubt. Faith is as fickle as Fear, and as tortured. Those 'teachings' promised a better life, off-world, in a land of milk and honey. Rapture, the mesmerized swoon of belief in the End Of Misery.
Meanwhile, as Colbert would say, the filthy engines of Human Fear continue to crank out all the really good stuff that will make 'murka and its envisioned world really great again. Who needs a heaven when very soon there will be a chicken in every pot and a white picket fence around every mansion high in the hills. Shining cities on hills. Thousands of Points of Light.
This is, of course, happening due to the now stochastic failures of Earth's physical, chemical and biotic systems, evinced by a 'warming' so vast, across the surface of the entire globe, the whole enchilada, that exponential failures are becoming commonplace. To combat heat we make things hotter and drier. To make things safer we poison, maim, rape, torture and murder at breakneck pace. We cannot even pick up the litter. How will we bury the mass of bodies that make Covid look like a freezer in the garage? All the fresh water is being pumped into the atmosphere, drying the soil, dirt and rock. Erosion leaps off the land and into our sinuses and lungs. The food we eat, already engorged with toxins, is slated to be slathered in both old and new poisons that only pass two musters - do they kill and do they make a profit?
The paradigm shift planned by rapture will be short-lived and long dead. It took around 66 million years between the last major extinction and this ONE NOW. It is here, and like the dinosaurs, we just walk around eating and defecating and breeding and killing everything so we can assist this colossal End of Consciousness.
Will geneticists find the Crazy Gene and turn it off, via some elixir, before this End? We can play and play with Nature, but we will never fool it. When the Music's Over. Rapture my Ass.
My response to Alis’ comment in a thread to me that she sees a light at the end I don’t buy. The maggots headed by Stephen Miller are not backing down.
The Trump administration is the fever dream of extreme right wing racists who have always lived in our nation but had little power to make things go their way.
Of the nightmare scenarios outlined above one pragmatic idea is WHO NEEDS CBS ANYWAY?
Stop watching it.
Another idea not talked about much is about the numbers, hundreds if not thousands if not hundreds of thousands, and now voting in the millions of complicit people who have allowed and encouraged the destruction of America - the toxic, corrosive destruction of everything American. They voted for it!
Folks, the milk is not going back into the bottle - it spilled onto toxic corrosive material that cannot be just put into the washer and cleaned. Once etched in acid on stone what's it going to take to fix it, stop it, replace it? Because going back to what America was would still be going back to the path of destruction because those millions of voters are still there, the entity is still there like slime oozed into all crevices or ingredients baked into their genetics.
How do you fix millions of people who just HATE? And they vote that way!
The BIG news is the Epstein/Maxwell coverup. Trump, in Scotland, asks the media to concentrate on Democrats. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche met with Maxwell and David Markus, her attorney Friday in Tallahassee for a second day of interviews. She got "queen for a day" "use" immunity for 2 days and is poised to support Trump to obtain a better deal. Trump says he hasn't considered pardoning Ghislaine Maxwell, but "I'm allowed to do it."
Over the past few days we've discussed how Trump was told in May that his name was in the DOJ file, although publicly both he and Pam Bondi said otherwise. Although they claim there is no Epstein client list, evidence shows Epstein had a black book.
E.G. "I Called Everyone in Jeffrey Epstein’s Little Black Book: What I learned about rich people, conspiracy, “genius,” Ghislaine, stand-up comedy, and evil from 2,000 phone calls."
The media should start with Alex Acosta, who apparently was told that Epstein was a government asset when Epstein got the deal of the century. According to the Florida Bar he is at The Law Office of Jonathan Jonasz. https://www.jonathan-jonasz.com/
According to Julie Brown of the Miami Herald, there are 22 files containing over 500 pages in the FBI vault, a portal on the FBI’s website accessible to the public. The bulk of those 11,000-plus pages are heavily redacted, and Justice Department prosecutors have fought their release for years…. One critical source of evidence against Epstein was in the discovery for a Florida civil case brought by Epstein’s victims against the FBI in 2008. That case spanned a decade and included tens of thousands of pages of material that sheds light on how federal prosecutors mishandled that early case. Not all the FBI documents connected to that case — or the federal criminal case — in Florida have been made public.
Brown has been waiting to see files from a civil racketeering case filed in the Virgin Islands against Epstein’s estate, which was settled for $105 Million; FAA and U.S. Marshal records concerning his planes; and files from Maxwell’s prosecution. In addition, the files concerning Epstein’s slap-on-the-wrist 2007 settlement have not been released.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer must sign the subpoena for the DOJ Epstein/Maxwell records before it can be officially issued, per committee rules. Comer plans to sign off on the subpoena, a Republican committee source told ABC News.
Although she has died, Virginia Giuffre was an under age Trump employee who apparently ties Trump, Maxwell and Epstein. Did Maxwell have anything to do with Trump Model Management?
Did any of the lawyers who represented Epstein or Maxwell also represent Trump?
The fix is in, Trump may not even have to pardon her, she could get off on a technicality regarding a Non Prosecution Agreement she is basing her appeal on. timestamp at 5 min.
That would be ideal for both of the sex traffickers. TRump pimped-out those pageant girls according to an eye witness---Luther Campbell interview with Mark Thompson on his Sirius FM radio show called Make It Plain.
Thanks for the link, arshambow, I loved listening to Lev. It took prison, but he saw the light after totally going down the rabbit hole. The QAnon Shaman figured it out too.
He can't pardon just yet without MAGA going bat-shit-crazy (crazier). Virginia told us she would not commit suicide. Maxwell hung out with and knows the truth about Donald. She's trying to figure out if she is dead if she does or if she doesn't talk. She is screwed, and she deserves every bit of it. No where safe after this.
"and starting in a mere 7 years you’ll see an average $18,000/year cut in Social Security for the average married, retired couple and an 11% reduction in Medicare payments to providers.
Is misleading. It is partly due to the government reducing flow into the trust funds, which are related to the BBUB. But also, the trust fund will be insolvent by 2032, and only payroll tax input will be the only income, triggering a 24% decrease in income for an average retired couple.
Thanks, Thom. The word for these people is decrepit everyday of the week. We need civility in our country. Thom, the Felon is coming the Felon is coming to Scotland and they love that fact. Funny.
Excellent commentary, Thom.
Given my several decades, pretty good chance I'll run out the clock before the full impact of social security reductions hit. Except. The "kids" behind me will suffer. And for what? Some Nepo baby's house in Aspen? Or a CEO/Televangelist's new Lear jet? But, truthfully, the lost social security is a trifling in comparison to a lost nation.
In my travels to Russia some years ago, I watched first hand the Militsia--state police. Unconstrained. We are creating our own now. The incident Thom cites with the AMERICAN teen is egregious. And our DoJ? Corrupt to the core.
This won't end well. Don't count on the media. The CBS "truth police" appear to be the future--the Constitution, perhaps not. "South Park" nailed it.
Here goes the cynic:
"recently, a phone-video recorded by an 18-year-old American citizen who was traveling with an undocumented friend shows ICE officers brutally attacking the car full of teenagers. They bragged that, “You’ve got no rights here!” while making fun of their captives and discussing with each other whether they’d hit the threshold to get the $30,000. You can watch the video here. "
Yet none of this shows up on corporate media.
As regards masked, unidentified people kidnapping folk off the streets and breaking into cars. Whether it is constitutional or legal is irrelevant. Trump and his regime will do exactly as they please
We are no longer a nation of laws, are institutions have been eradicated, there is no authority to hold the regime accountable. It is a regime not an administration. Administrations administer the laws, regimes make their own laws.
Who is there to hold the regime to account? The Department of Justice? LOL. The U.S. Marshalls whose boss is Pam Bondi?
Collaborating with ICE: The U.S. Marshals Service has partnered with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on immigration enforcement efforts, according to a June 2025 Instagram post from the Marshals Service.
And don't look to the military, they will soon turn their guns on us, just as they are doing along the border and in L.A.
Kinda makes me feel ok with the fact that I am in the last years of my lifespan and don’t have to witness the absolute trashing of this country over the next few years. I worry for my family and young people who will have a harder struggle to survive in this hellscape that will evolve under the fascist regime takeover. America was never “great”, not really, but at least there was aspirational ideologies to be a better nation. Now, the masks are off and we as a society need to take a hard look in the mirror and face how one megalomaniac conman has entrapped a nation into abandoning whatever principles it had left. At least for the remainder of TACO47’ s time in office and for those who have a clear view of reality, there is no longer any doubt how corrupt he is along with his boot licking magat/republican sycophants .
I am in the same boat as you Kathy. It is reckoned that social security has about seven more years, before benefits will be cut, like $18,000 to a married couple https://www.crfb.org/blogs/retirees-face-18100-benefit-cut-7-years?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email.I will be long gone and my wife will be 80, if she is still alive.
As regards my descendants. They will have to do what we had to do, learn to survive in the world into which they were born.. As Billy Joel wrote: We didn't start the fire
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFTLKWw542g
Agree, I have been warning family/friends about reality hitting the USA in the near future as tariffs hit and the prices soar more than they are now. And pandemics come more frequently without the ability to access vaccines and healthcare services. Then the reality of natural disasters taking out communities without assistance from government to recover from destruction. I think Americans have been indoctrinated slowly over the last decade (due to the absence of reality and truth based reporting) by the mainstream media to just shrug off reality. Too many Americans no longer have a clear understanding of what true corruption looks like and who represents the threat to our democracy and way of life.
I agree Kathy, except with the term "mainstream media", it is corporate media, and the only objective, the only purpose of a corporation is to make a profit for the investors.,and to do that they have to survive, and that requires them to not piss off the corporations that fund them.
Corporations have boards of directors,and large corporations have interlocking boards of directors. Jane blue suit might sit on the board of CBS, but also sits on the board of Raytheon and Pfizer. and so it goes, and corporations own each other. The Board of Directors,often controlled by the Chairman like Brian L. Roberts, who is the majority individual share holder of Comcast, which owns NBCUniversal, which owns MSNBC and NBC, is also the CEO , and so it goes with other corporate media.
CBS is owned by Paramount Global,which is owned by National Amusements which is owned by Shari Redstone and her brother.
Skydance is owned by David Ellison,son of Larry Ellison who owns Oracle and is a major trump contributor and is also owned by Shari Redstone.
Sydance and Paramount global are merging.
Yup, I get it. Corporate media/legacy media, they all have an agenda, profit over people and the truth. The facts are only useful when it serves the corporate agenda and self interests. It seems hopeless but I no longer subscribe to any of them.
We didn't start the fire, but we're going to burn in it.
Incidentally, I wonder if Billy Joel will write a sequel to that song?
Thank you for the walk down memory lane. My generation did not start the fire, but I remain fired up to put HIM out.
We didn't start the fire---we warned about the sources of it all of our lives.
I'm proud that we served, that we never shut-up, and kept voting. TRump and rock bottom sucks, but teach we must.
As my dear friend, the late Yellow Dog Granny would say, "We are fucked". I hope I am wrong but it appears USA is past the tipping point into authoritarianism and tyranny. And some MAGAt "Christian USian is trying to import their hatred into Canada. With lots of pushback so far.
I agree, now if someone could tell me how to put Humpty Dumpty back together again, without recourse to magical, hopeful thinking or invoking some ancient deity, I would be glad to change my mind
My wife Wes recently diagnosed with Stage 3 ovarian cancer, Yesterday was her first round of chemo and she currently is feeling chipper, and in many ways quite relieved: it took 2 months from diagnosis to treatment, nerve-wracking when there is something aggressively growing inside. So 2 points...
1) The fascisti want to rebrand slavery as a kinder and gentler abomination. They call the truth corrosive and would criminalize it to protect the delicate sensitivities of the poor, downtrodden whiteys, all of which is unadulterated BS. Cancer is corrosive but we shouldn't tell the patient because it might upset their (illusory) equanimity. The truth is often painful but lies kill. Without the truth there can be no cure, and it is all too apparent that this nation is dangerously sick. What we see today is more likely to destroy our nation than the dangers America faced in December of 1860.
2) Social Security and Medicare are targeted to be significantly reduced by 2032. My wife and I wouldn't be able to pay for her treatment with the proposed Medicare cuts even without factoring in the butchering of Social Security. Treatment would force us into unescapable debt so we would have no choice but to sell our house and land, at which time we would be thrown into a system where rents are too high and food and energy prices are rising beyond the reach of many. Without Social Security we would most likely descend into poverty and die painful and destitute. O brave new world, that has such people in it!
Without treatment, America herself is mortally ill. There is an infection that is rotting away a limb and gangrene is setting in. Without a cure there are only two paths forward (at least that I'm aware of) death or amputation. The Body Politic is close to being mortally ill. It's not too late to apply the antidote but the window of opportunity is rapidly closing. If we wait too long there are only two paths forward — we can choose to do nothing and destroy everything, or we can amputate, dissolve the Constitution (it's no..longer the law of the land anyway), and go our own ways.
1. Hang in.
2. Medicare is exposed in 2026 because of PAYGO.
3. I've been advocating endowment of the SSA trust funds since I was involved in "reengineering government" when Al Gore was VP. . Threats of “bankruptcy” of the two Social Security Trust funds abound in the media, and Trump Administration budgets have cut operational funding. There is reason to worry.
If Social Security is sliding toward a "default" it is because Congress and a succession of presidents would sell their families for a few votes. The default of Trust Funds is supposed to apex in 2033 due to the increase of birth rates of baby boomers. After 2033, birth rates of later generations flatten and the funds can be solvent.
Social Security protects workers, widow(er)s, orphans and disabled people and is a major investment for many of us.
Please donate to create an endowment to slow down the rate. If everyone who donates to say, universities, which aren't really charities, the trust funds would be secure.
https://www.ssa.gov/agency/donations.html
Why doesn't SSA advertise that donations can flatten the curve and extend the default date beyond 2033?
The taxable income cap for Social Security tax needs to be removed. If that happens, SS would be fully funded in perpetuity.
Needs Congress.
What Congress?
Hi thanks Thom for all your reporting.
Last week in Oregon an Iranian doctor who was driving his baby to daycare was stopped by ICE. They asked for his ID and while he was getting his license out asked him where he was going. He said taking my baby to daycare. They told him to get out of the car but the doctor said pointing to the child in the car seat that he will as soon as he drops off the baby. They then asked him where the daycare was. He said it’s only few minutes from here why don’t you come there and I’ll get out of the car. At which point they started breaking his window so he was dragged out of the car and handcuffed!! Apparently he had a green card was married to an American and was awaiting his citizenship! This appeared on Instagram. Not sure if he had green card pending or city. Either way brutal behavior with a baby in the car!! Where are the Democrats in the senate? The judges? The prosecutors even ACLU that has brought a law suit but this brutality continues!!! Every night on MSNBC we hear prosecutors or Harvard professors like professor TRIBE and dozen other legal scholars testifying on the illegality of this cruelty but NO ONE is succeeding to stop this!. Even ICC in the HAGUE condemned the illegality of the State of Israel in its actions in Gaza, recognized Palestine as a state but people are continuing to starve!!! In both cases it’s all talk!! No one is capable of stopping brutality!!!
Where are the Democrats period with this outrage going on Nasrin? Good question.
Hunkered down it looks like,trying to be invisible . Keeping a low profile less the Trumpian scythe lops off their head.
Bull. Democrats are vocal but have no power. What the hell do you expect?
As to Palestine, the PA is ready, willing and able to participate. Has been actively opposing Hamas in Gaza. Unreported.
Here is what I expect Daniel. That the Democrats stand up in mass, and walk out of Congress, that the Democrats stand up in en masse and block ICE and DoJ.
That Democrats stand up en masse and stop writing strongly worded letters and making ineffectual speeches.
Yeh I know that the PA is willing and able to participate, that it is HAMAS and Islamic Jihad who are on a religious mission.
ALL Congressional Democrats oppose. To walk out is to give Republicans carte blanche.
What we MIGHT be able to do is get converts.
Congress can't do anything without a quorum a minimum of 218 Representatives if there are no vacancies in the House, to be present on the floor whenever the House conducts business. if just two Republicans don't show up then no quorum. Besides it doesn't matter whether there are any Democrats on the floor, does it Daniel. The Republicans do what they want to do anyway, whether or not there are Democrats on the floor.
so by their presence Daniel, the Democrats are legitimizing the actions of Trump and his cult.
Do you not see that?
Trump gets all his appointments.
My hair has been on fire ever since the 2000 election 🥵🤬
Music is your only friend, until the End. Turn out the lights, turn out the lights, turn out the lights. This is The End.
While we watch in stunned amazement, the goon squads of religious fanaticism spin their end-of-times fantasies, with much glee it appears. Somehow, the teachings of most major religions failed to get their main points across, if they ever truly believed them, which I doubt. Faith is as fickle as Fear, and as tortured. Those 'teachings' promised a better life, off-world, in a land of milk and honey. Rapture, the mesmerized swoon of belief in the End Of Misery.
Meanwhile, as Colbert would say, the filthy engines of Human Fear continue to crank out all the really good stuff that will make 'murka and its envisioned world really great again. Who needs a heaven when very soon there will be a chicken in every pot and a white picket fence around every mansion high in the hills. Shining cities on hills. Thousands of Points of Light.
This is, of course, happening due to the now stochastic failures of Earth's physical, chemical and biotic systems, evinced by a 'warming' so vast, across the surface of the entire globe, the whole enchilada, that exponential failures are becoming commonplace. To combat heat we make things hotter and drier. To make things safer we poison, maim, rape, torture and murder at breakneck pace. We cannot even pick up the litter. How will we bury the mass of bodies that make Covid look like a freezer in the garage? All the fresh water is being pumped into the atmosphere, drying the soil, dirt and rock. Erosion leaps off the land and into our sinuses and lungs. The food we eat, already engorged with toxins, is slated to be slathered in both old and new poisons that only pass two musters - do they kill and do they make a profit?
The paradigm shift planned by rapture will be short-lived and long dead. It took around 66 million years between the last major extinction and this ONE NOW. It is here, and like the dinosaurs, we just walk around eating and defecating and breeding and killing everything so we can assist this colossal End of Consciousness.
Will geneticists find the Crazy Gene and turn it off, via some elixir, before this End? We can play and play with Nature, but we will never fool it. When the Music's Over. Rapture my Ass.
The concentration camps are coming soon to a theater near you. Here is where. https://hotbuttons.substack.com/p/concentration-camping-ii?r=3m1bs
Call the monitors what they are- political officers installed to ensure/demand adherence to .1 dogma (political/social dogma that benefits the .1 %)
My response to Alis’ comment in a thread to me that she sees a light at the end I don’t buy. The maggots headed by Stephen Miller are not backing down.
The Trump administration is the fever dream of extreme right wing racists who have always lived in our nation but had little power to make things go their way.
Of the nightmare scenarios outlined above one pragmatic idea is WHO NEEDS CBS ANYWAY?
Stop watching it.
Another idea not talked about much is about the numbers, hundreds if not thousands if not hundreds of thousands, and now voting in the millions of complicit people who have allowed and encouraged the destruction of America - the toxic, corrosive destruction of everything American. They voted for it!
Folks, the milk is not going back into the bottle - it spilled onto toxic corrosive material that cannot be just put into the washer and cleaned. Once etched in acid on stone what's it going to take to fix it, stop it, replace it? Because going back to what America was would still be going back to the path of destruction because those millions of voters are still there, the entity is still there like slime oozed into all crevices or ingredients baked into their genetics.
How do you fix millions of people who just HATE? And they vote that way!
The BIG news is the Epstein/Maxwell coverup. Trump, in Scotland, asks the media to concentrate on Democrats. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche met with Maxwell and David Markus, her attorney Friday in Tallahassee for a second day of interviews. She got "queen for a day" "use" immunity for 2 days and is poised to support Trump to obtain a better deal. Trump says he hasn't considered pardoning Ghislaine Maxwell, but "I'm allowed to do it."
Over the past few days we've discussed how Trump was told in May that his name was in the DOJ file, although publicly both he and Pam Bondi said otherwise. Although they claim there is no Epstein client list, evidence shows Epstein had a black book.
E.G. "I Called Everyone in Jeffrey Epstein’s Little Black Book: What I learned about rich people, conspiracy, “genius,” Ghislaine, stand-up comedy, and evil from 2,000 phone calls."
Leland Nally. October 9, 2020
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/10/i-called-everyone-in-jeffrey-epsteins-little-black-book/
https://thelefthook.substack.com/p/meet-the-journalist-who-called-every
The media should start with Alex Acosta, who apparently was told that Epstein was a government asset when Epstein got the deal of the century. According to the Florida Bar he is at The Law Office of Jonathan Jonasz. https://www.jonathan-jonasz.com/
141 Almeria Ave, Miami, FL 33134-6008. Office: 786-594-0180.
According to Julie Brown of the Miami Herald, there are 22 files containing over 500 pages in the FBI vault, a portal on the FBI’s website accessible to the public. The bulk of those 11,000-plus pages are heavily redacted, and Justice Department prosecutors have fought their release for years…. One critical source of evidence against Epstein was in the discovery for a Florida civil case brought by Epstein’s victims against the FBI in 2008. That case spanned a decade and included tens of thousands of pages of material that sheds light on how federal prosecutors mishandled that early case. Not all the FBI documents connected to that case — or the federal criminal case — in Florida have been made public.
Brown has been waiting to see files from a civil racketeering case filed in the Virgin Islands against Epstein’s estate, which was settled for $105 Million; FAA and U.S. Marshal records concerning his planes; and files from Maxwell’s prosecution. In addition, the files concerning Epstein’s slap-on-the-wrist 2007 settlement have not been released.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer must sign the subpoena for the DOJ Epstein/Maxwell records before it can be officially issued, per committee rules. Comer plans to sign off on the subpoena, a Republican committee source told ABC News.
Although she has died, Virginia Giuffre was an under age Trump employee who apparently ties Trump, Maxwell and Epstein. Did Maxwell have anything to do with Trump Model Management?
Did any of the lawyers who represented Epstein or Maxwell also represent Trump?
The fix is in, Trump may not even have to pardon her, she could get off on a technicality regarding a Non Prosecution Agreement she is basing her appeal on. timestamp at 5 min.
https://jimacosta.substack.com/p/trump-to-pardon-maxwell-in-epstein? utm_source=podcast-email&publication_id=3775894&post_id=169257668&utm_campaign=email-play-on-substack&utm_content=watch_now_button&r=2g7cs&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
That would be ideal for both of the sex traffickers. TRump pimped-out those pageant girls according to an eye witness---Luther Campbell interview with Mark Thompson on his Sirius FM radio show called Make It Plain.
Thanks for the link, arshambow, I loved listening to Lev. It took prison, but he saw the light after totally going down the rabbit hole. The QAnon Shaman figured it out too.
He can't pardon just yet without MAGA going bat-shit-crazy (crazier). Virginia told us she would not commit suicide. Maxwell hung out with and knows the truth about Donald. She's trying to figure out if she is dead if she does or if she doesn't talk. She is screwed, and she deserves every bit of it. No where safe after this.
Excellent article !!
I still say, one to the head and one to the heart.
You are a national treasure, sir, and your articles are works of art.
Wow. Death by Project2025 pogroms for Americans and American democracy—complicit CBS — #Epstein #EpsteinList #EpsteinListTrump
Your comment
"and starting in a mere 7 years you’ll see an average $18,000/year cut in Social Security for the average married, retired couple and an 11% reduction in Medicare payments to providers.
Is misleading. It is partly due to the government reducing flow into the trust funds, which are related to the BBUB. But also, the trust fund will be insolvent by 2032, and only payroll tax input will be the only income, triggering a 24% decrease in income for an average retired couple.
Thanks, Thom. The word for these people is decrepit everyday of the week. We need civility in our country. Thom, the Felon is coming the Felon is coming to Scotland and they love that fact. Funny.