Using the same tactics that made him a TV star, he stokes outrage, scripts conflict, and dominates headlines even as his actions weaken democratic norms and heighten international risk…
That's very good. Barnum was actually a smart man who cared about his performers, served a solid term as mayor of Bridgeport CT, had a sense of humor and knew how to run a business. And he made people laugh. But this guy depends on a laugh track like some poorly written situation comedy. He should be in the dustbin of forgotten shows.
How can a newsletter be both entertaining and scarier than sh*t at the same time? Removal from office is the only option now. We must message the world that this behavior is not okay with us....
Now, Trump will possibly have two more weeks to manipulate the stock market with bombing threats and "now you see it, now you don't" tricks, unless he changes his mind, whenever.
We all know that no one is going to try and impeach Trump. Especially within the next two weeks. Nor is anyone going to try and use the 25th amendment. What we do know, is that no one in government will use any authority to stop Trump from saying or doing whatever he wants. The only reasonable reason we are where we are right now, is (from what I've read or heard today) that the generals stood up and told him that they would not order their troops to commit war crimes in his name.
Will that last? Only Trump knows. What will Israel do in the meantime? Again, unknown but we can make an educated guess. They will be watching closely and if things don't go their way, Netanyahu may make another trip to D.C. or they will restart the bombing campaign and force Trump to support it.
It's probable that Trump will be impeached. Kalshi and Polymarket place the probability of a third impeachment occurring at any point before the end of Trump's term at 65% to 72%.
IMHO Trump's fatal flaw is Epstein.
Today's bombshell. Jeffrey Epstein made millions of dollars after the U.S. Justice Department settled an investigation into Switzerland-based private bank Edmond de Rothschild Group in 2015. The institution, founded by the French branch of the storied centuries-old Rothschild banking dynasty, was the subject of a Justice Department probe under the Obama administration into whether it had helped wealthy U.S. citizens evade taxes.
Epstein, according to a Miami Herald review of records released by the Justice Department, had consulted for the bank and one of its owners, Baroness Ariane de Rothschild, on this issue. He was paid $25 million for consulting on “strategic business matters” and “estate planning” in December 2015 after the Justice Department settled with the bank, two business agreements and wire transfers show. The agreements — made with Epstein’s Southern Trust Company — were signed by executives of the Swiss bank and de Rothschild.
While the agreements do not spell out the details of the work Epstein did for the Rothschilds, an earlier draft of the documents reveals more information, the Herald found. Epstein’s remuneration, according to the draft, was on a sliding scale: He would be paid $10 million if the Justice Department imposed a penalty that was between $75 million to $150 million. If the penalty was less than $75 million, Epstein’s compensation would be $25 million. The Justice Department settled on $45 million and agreed to not prosecute the bank, triggering the $25 million fees to Epstein. The settlement was one among 75 agreements the agency finalized that year as part of a program for Swiss banks to resolve potential criminal liabilities in the United States.
“This happened under the Obama Administration and the vast majority of employees who worked on it have since left the department,” a Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement.
Thom, enough about Trump. He's been outed, we all know it. How abut outing the folks enabling him? We need to know who they are, what they do, where to find them. One day we will be able to hold them accountable, legally, and they will pay. They need to know this is coming. And meanwhile, knowing who, what, when and where might help us slow them down, and then help us in holding them accountable.
"It’ll take at least a generation for this nation to heal from the damage Trump, his billionaire buddies, and his GOP toadies have done." This is the takeaway.
It will fall to working class and middle class folks to push for a course correction.
The billionaires and the rest of the ruling rich are fine with this damage to democracy, along with the damage to the functioning of the economy and the ability of the working class and middle income folks to have an improving living standard. The rich have always been incapable of sustaining a functioning capitalist system. It's working folks through their representatives who establish restraints and guidelines, and create a framework that sort of makes the system work.
FDR put in the regulations for the banks, biggest corporations, land grabbing industrialists while at the same time establishing legal rights for workers to unionize. The extremely wealthy, through the GOP and compliant Democrats have been deconstructing this framework ever since. That includes the Carter, Clinton and Obama administrations making concessions on de-regulation, trade and economic protections for working people.
The rich have always been compliant with authoritarianism and loss of democracy...as you can see from history and looking around the world today. The rich have always been so narrowly focused on immediate gains that they run capitalism into the ground with recessions and depressions because they are too greedy to keep it working. They refuse to see that working people and middle class folks need to have large enough incomes to keep up buying power and keep the system functioning. Instead the rich focus on getting a larger and larger share for themselves. And they are willing to give up functioning democracy in their quest for this larger share.
The ruling rich can't be trusted to run either capitalism or democracy.
At anytime the billionaires could tell their Republican representatives to end this Trump nightmare. But it continues.
Thom wrote about EVs the other day. It's reasonable to expect that demand for all alternatives is up. Demand for rail over highway deliveries. More demand for local products.
The energy market is a scam. Prices are fixed through OPEC procuction. We have enough domestic production to set our own prices. Unfortualtely, OPEC interests control our refinery capacity, contriol corporate priorities.
And yet the stock market rose sharply, apparently in denial of all the economic damage that has been done. It will take years to right the wrongs that have been perpetrated by a delusional mad narcissist.
The great ceasefire deal by our illustrious president has the Iranians advising us that, “safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz will be possible via coordination” with the Iranian military. Maybe I'm missing something here but it sure sounds like a great deal for the Iranians. They will continue charging transit fees. BIG WIN!
Very insightful, but this last time was also predicated on the arrival of the Marine Expeditionary Force on the USS Boxer. This MEU has helicopters, amphibious landing craft, assault weapons and 2,500 Marines, it is not due int the Gulf until Mid April at the latest.
There has been talk of taking Kharq Island.
Kharg Island is the main pumping station for Iranian oil, the facility covers half of the island, it was put out of operation during the Iran Iraq war and took 20 years to put back into full service
Trump wants Kharq island, Trump wants Irnian Oil.
The IRGC has heavily mmined Kharq Island, and will fiercely defend it, as they have mined it, they knowe where the safe zones/paths are, and thus can funnel the Marines into a kill zone.
But taking the Island is one thing (it will be Iran's Wake Island,, which cost the Japanese so badly that out of anger they executed almost all of the defenders that surrendered, holding it is another.
Kharq Island sits under and in line of sight of the Zagros Mountains in which Iran has spent 37 years building caves, tunnels and bunkers in which to store rockets and missiles, and the IRGC can sit in their bunkers with binoculars and pound the island with preregistered rockets,missles and even artillery.
IMO, Trump is delaying awaiting the arrival of the USS Boxer., and I suspect the Iranians know that as well.
Iran claims that we covered up a failed attempt to steal enriched uranium.
The Iranian Narrative: Tehran alleged that a mission publicly described by the U.S. as a pilot rescue was actually a "deception operation" intended to seize nuclear material from the Natanz facility or sites near Isfahan.
Failed Extraction Claims: Iranian officials and state media claimed that several U.S. aircraft, including C-130J transport planes and helicopters, were destroyed during these clashes.
The U.S. Response: Washington maintains the mission was a successful intelligence-led recovery of stranded airmen following the downing of an F-15E.
Just watched the DOD press confeerence. Nobody asked.
The C-130. nose wheel got burried in the soft soil, and even when the props were reversed there is not enough power to back them out Who ever surveyed the landing site didn't do a good job.
I know what went on. a chopper landed, combat controllers jumped out, did a quck survey of the proposed landing Zone, erected some vizual panels to designed the landing zone and got on their manpack portable radiosto clear the aircraft to land.
A C-130 can land in a very short distance. an empty Herk can land in 1,000 ft to 1,800 ft.
It takes time to perform a soil assessmentm abd tune us ibe tgubg tget dudb;t gave,
Pf course the Iranians lie, so do we, itis war and war is fought on many fronts, including propaganda/news.
It takes a construction crew and heavy equipment to lay down PSP.
After you left, they used PSP for the ramps and aluminum matting for runways, . Aluminum mattting also made excellent roofs for dugouts.
It would have taken a month or more to get PSP , if they still make it. I doubt that it is in stock, then transport it to Kuwait, then there is the problem of airlifting the heavy equipment to the site.
And Trump Trump said the ceasefire was contingent on the “complete, immediate and safe opening of the strait of Hormuz”. Tehran agreed that shipping would now proceed through the waterway, but with the caveat that passage would be under the control of the Iranian armed forces.
He has in fact surrendered., Until the USS Boxer arrives.
It’d be useful if we could also impeach our vapid corporate media, his enablers from across the spectrum, John Roberts and the Supreme Supplicants, and the utterly corrupt DOJ. That might send Vlad and Bibi a message they need to hear - and something to celebrate in our 250th year.
"But America and the world will pay the price, and it won’t be paid easily or quickly."
Truer words never spoken. Problem is the "US" is too intellectually lazy, and arrogant, to TRULY realize how high that price will be. Because, if it did, it would be scared shitless. Be mindful that we are only one-third through the year with midterms coming. The "US" got its ass whipped, Trump got his ass whipped and, like a true coward, he will turn both his ire and sights on the domestic population. We are about to see things that are unfathomable.
friends get angrywhenI said he isa genius at manipulating the media And what you say here at the moment please hold the line the next available employee fits perfectly and shows the whole history of hislessons9NBC to Roy Cohn
Apologies for the non sensical insertion I have to use voice recognition after a stroke And my wife was on a call that goy recorded In the middle of whatm I was trying to say
What I want to know is, who persuaded him to TACO? That should give us a much better idea of which way things will go. Doesn't look like it was Israel.
Interesting take on Don Dementiano as I like to call him.
The Don's TACO should not dampen efforts to get this demented racketeer out of office. He is dangerous to our nation and our individual economic health. My take on Trump is less about his media manipulation, and more about how he does business - like a racketeer.
His #1 leadership method is extortion - just like a mobster. Failing to do his bidding, the Don periodically insults people in the media to diminish their influence or he sues them into poverty as an example others who might try to resist his will. As ICE grows and his concentraion camps expand, he will likely add disappearing people just like his hero, the late Al Capone.
I like this thesis. He's like PT Barnum on crack.
That's very good. Barnum was actually a smart man who cared about his performers, served a solid term as mayor of Bridgeport CT, had a sense of humor and knew how to run a business. And he made people laugh. But this guy depends on a laugh track like some poorly written situation comedy. He should be in the dustbin of forgotten shows.
Good one.
How can a newsletter be both entertaining and scarier than sh*t at the same time? Removal from office is the only option now. We must message the world that this behavior is not okay with us....
Now, Trump will possibly have two more weeks to manipulate the stock market with bombing threats and "now you see it, now you don't" tricks, unless he changes his mind, whenever.
We all know that no one is going to try and impeach Trump. Especially within the next two weeks. Nor is anyone going to try and use the 25th amendment. What we do know, is that no one in government will use any authority to stop Trump from saying or doing whatever he wants. The only reasonable reason we are where we are right now, is (from what I've read or heard today) that the generals stood up and told him that they would not order their troops to commit war crimes in his name.
Will that last? Only Trump knows. What will Israel do in the meantime? Again, unknown but we can make an educated guess. They will be watching closely and if things don't go their way, Netanyahu may make another trip to D.C. or they will restart the bombing campaign and force Trump to support it.
This is not over by any means.
It's probable that Trump will be impeached. Kalshi and Polymarket place the probability of a third impeachment occurring at any point before the end of Trump's term at 65% to 72%.
IMHO Trump's fatal flaw is Epstein.
Today's bombshell. Jeffrey Epstein made millions of dollars after the U.S. Justice Department settled an investigation into Switzerland-based private bank Edmond de Rothschild Group in 2015. The institution, founded by the French branch of the storied centuries-old Rothschild banking dynasty, was the subject of a Justice Department probe under the Obama administration into whether it had helped wealthy U.S. citizens evade taxes.
Epstein, according to a Miami Herald review of records released by the Justice Department, had consulted for the bank and one of its owners, Baroness Ariane de Rothschild, on this issue. He was paid $25 million for consulting on “strategic business matters” and “estate planning” in December 2015 after the Justice Department settled with the bank, two business agreements and wire transfers show. The agreements — made with Epstein’s Southern Trust Company — were signed by executives of the Swiss bank and de Rothschild.
While the agreements do not spell out the details of the work Epstein did for the Rothschilds, an earlier draft of the documents reveals more information, the Herald found. Epstein’s remuneration, according to the draft, was on a sliding scale: He would be paid $10 million if the Justice Department imposed a penalty that was between $75 million to $150 million. If the penalty was less than $75 million, Epstein’s compensation would be $25 million. The Justice Department settled on $45 million and agreed to not prosecute the bank, triggering the $25 million fees to Epstein. The settlement was one among 75 agreements the agency finalized that year as part of a program for Swiss banks to resolve potential criminal liabilities in the United States.
“This happened under the Obama Administration and the vast majority of employees who worked on it have since left the department,” a Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement.
Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/crime/article315294636.html#storylink=cpy
Thom, enough about Trump. He's been outed, we all know it. How abut outing the folks enabling him? We need to know who they are, what they do, where to find them. One day we will be able to hold them accountable, legally, and they will pay. They need to know this is coming. And meanwhile, knowing who, what, when and where might help us slow them down, and then help us in holding them accountable.
Look at the cabinet and major donors.
All completely true
"It’ll take at least a generation for this nation to heal from the damage Trump, his billionaire buddies, and his GOP toadies have done." This is the takeaway.
It will fall to working class and middle class folks to push for a course correction.
The billionaires and the rest of the ruling rich are fine with this damage to democracy, along with the damage to the functioning of the economy and the ability of the working class and middle income folks to have an improving living standard. The rich have always been incapable of sustaining a functioning capitalist system. It's working folks through their representatives who establish restraints and guidelines, and create a framework that sort of makes the system work.
FDR put in the regulations for the banks, biggest corporations, land grabbing industrialists while at the same time establishing legal rights for workers to unionize. The extremely wealthy, through the GOP and compliant Democrats have been deconstructing this framework ever since. That includes the Carter, Clinton and Obama administrations making concessions on de-regulation, trade and economic protections for working people.
The rich have always been compliant with authoritarianism and loss of democracy...as you can see from history and looking around the world today. The rich have always been so narrowly focused on immediate gains that they run capitalism into the ground with recessions and depressions because they are too greedy to keep it working. They refuse to see that working people and middle class folks need to have large enough incomes to keep up buying power and keep the system functioning. Instead the rich focus on getting a larger and larger share for themselves. And they are willing to give up functioning democracy in their quest for this larger share.
The ruling rich can't be trusted to run either capitalism or democracy.
At anytime the billionaires could tell their Republican representatives to end this Trump nightmare. But it continues.
Thom wrote about EVs the other day. It's reasonable to expect that demand for all alternatives is up. Demand for rail over highway deliveries. More demand for local products.
The energy market is a scam. Prices are fixed through OPEC procuction. We have enough domestic production to set our own prices. Unfortualtely, OPEC interests control our refinery capacity, contriol corporate priorities.
And yet the stock market rose sharply, apparently in denial of all the economic damage that has been done. It will take years to right the wrongs that have been perpetrated by a delusional mad narcissist.
The great ceasefire deal by our illustrious president has the Iranians advising us that, “safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz will be possible via coordination” with the Iranian military. Maybe I'm missing something here but it sure sounds like a great deal for the Iranians. They will continue charging transit fees. BIG WIN!
Very insightful, but this last time was also predicated on the arrival of the Marine Expeditionary Force on the USS Boxer. This MEU has helicopters, amphibious landing craft, assault weapons and 2,500 Marines, it is not due int the Gulf until Mid April at the latest.
There has been talk of taking Kharq Island.
Kharg Island is the main pumping station for Iranian oil, the facility covers half of the island, it was put out of operation during the Iran Iraq war and took 20 years to put back into full service
Trump wants Kharq island, Trump wants Irnian Oil.
The IRGC has heavily mmined Kharq Island, and will fiercely defend it, as they have mined it, they knowe where the safe zones/paths are, and thus can funnel the Marines into a kill zone.
But taking the Island is one thing (it will be Iran's Wake Island,, which cost the Japanese so badly that out of anger they executed almost all of the defenders that surrendered, holding it is another.
Kharq Island sits under and in line of sight of the Zagros Mountains in which Iran has spent 37 years building caves, tunnels and bunkers in which to store rockets and missiles, and the IRGC can sit in their bunkers with binoculars and pound the island with preregistered rockets,missles and even artillery.
IMO, Trump is delaying awaiting the arrival of the USS Boxer., and I suspect the Iranians know that as well.
Iran claims that we covered up a failed attempt to steal enriched uranium.
The Iranian Narrative: Tehran alleged that a mission publicly described by the U.S. as a pilot rescue was actually a "deception operation" intended to seize nuclear material from the Natanz facility or sites near Isfahan.
Failed Extraction Claims: Iranian officials and state media claimed that several U.S. aircraft, including C-130J transport planes and helicopters, were destroyed during these clashes.
The U.S. Response: Washington maintains the mission was a successful intelligence-led recovery of stranded airmen following the downing of an F-15E.
Just watched the DOD press confeerence. Nobody asked.
The C-130. nose wheel got burried in the soft soil, and even when the props were reversed there is not enough power to back them out Who ever surveyed the landing site didn't do a good job.
I know what went on. a chopper landed, combat controllers jumped out, did a quck survey of the proposed landing Zone, erected some vizual panels to designed the landing zone and got on their manpack portable radiosto clear the aircraft to land.
A C-130 can land in a very short distance. an empty Herk can land in 1,000 ft to 1,800 ft.
It takes time to perform a soil assessmentm abd tune us ibe tgubg tget dudb;t gave,
Pf course the Iranians lie, so do we, itis war and war is fought on many fronts, including propaganda/news.
I am 50 years removed, but we used psp (pierced steel plating) to set up an LZ. Would cover anything from sand to a rice paddy.
It takes a construction crew and heavy equipment to lay down PSP.
After you left, they used PSP for the ramps and aluminum matting for runways, . Aluminum mattting also made excellent roofs for dugouts.
It would have taken a month or more to get PSP , if they still make it. I doubt that it is in stock, then transport it to Kuwait, then there is the problem of airlifting the heavy equipment to the site.
Thus combat engineers and seabees. Psp was part of our TO&E.
Didn't need a Chinook -- Huey. Took about a half hour once we had the measurements.
That's part of what I did for Special Forces.....
Soil has to be prepared. Hueys don't have the range to transport PSP from Kurwait or even the UAE,
Most important they haven't produced PSP since VN and I don't think that they produced during VN they used left over stocks from WWII
No time for combat engineers. There is an airfiled preparation group in country the https://www.21af.amc.af.mil/Units/621st-Contingency-Response-Wing/
But it can only work on land already held and protected, not an emergency landing spot.
Poaint is there is no way that the LZ could have been fully surveyed and prepped for landing.
However the take away is lessons learned. I can see one hell of a lot of after action reporting, correction, training and logistics.
Here is how everyone spins things to suit their ideology
Statement of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran: "Iran has achieved a great victory and forced the US to accept its 10-point plan" https://conflictsforum.substack.com/p/statement-of-the-supreme-national
Meanwhile:William Kristol claims that it is not TACO but surrender https://www.thebulwark.com/p/its-not-a-taco-its-a-surrender-trump-iran-ceasefire-plan-hormuz
And Trump Trump said the ceasefire was contingent on the “complete, immediate and safe opening of the strait of Hormuz”. Tehran agreed that shipping would now proceed through the waterway, but with the caveat that passage would be under the control of the Iranian armed forces.
He has in fact surrendered., Until the USS Boxer arrives.
It’d be useful if we could also impeach our vapid corporate media, his enablers from across the spectrum, John Roberts and the Supreme Supplicants, and the utterly corrupt DOJ. That might send Vlad and Bibi a message they need to hear - and something to celebrate in our 250th year.
Enough, already.
77.3 million nutjobs voted for this virulent Commie, Putin's Useful Idiot.
Congress is a pharisaical gaggle of cowards and jackasses. So, let's clean out the building.
VOTE and take an "Eligible" non-voter with you to VOTE.
# Draft Barron, and the now-eligible, 42-year-old Eric.
We wuz screwed.
And yet, here we are.
Spot on Thom, except for your AI illustration. Here's my AI version: https://bsky.app/profile/halmbrown.bsky.social/post/3miygvscgpk2a
"But America and the world will pay the price, and it won’t be paid easily or quickly."
Truer words never spoken. Problem is the "US" is too intellectually lazy, and arrogant, to TRULY realize how high that price will be. Because, if it did, it would be scared shitless. Be mindful that we are only one-third through the year with midterms coming. The "US" got its ass whipped, Trump got his ass whipped and, like a true coward, he will turn both his ire and sights on the domestic population. We are about to see things that are unfathomable.
Nobody's ever seen anything like it.
friends get angrywhenI said he isa genius at manipulating the media And what you say here at the moment please hold the line the next available employee fits perfectly and shows the whole history of hislessons9NBC to Roy Cohn
Thanks
Apologies for the non sensical insertion I have to use voice recognition after a stroke And my wife was on a call that goy recorded In the middle of whatm I was trying to say
Got to beware of those goys.....
What I want to know is, who persuaded him to TACO? That should give us a much better idea of which way things will go. Doesn't look like it was Israel.
Interesting take on Don Dementiano as I like to call him.
The Don's TACO should not dampen efforts to get this demented racketeer out of office. He is dangerous to our nation and our individual economic health. My take on Trump is less about his media manipulation, and more about how he does business - like a racketeer.
His #1 leadership method is extortion - just like a mobster. Failing to do his bidding, the Don periodically insults people in the media to diminish their influence or he sues them into poverty as an example others who might try to resist his will. As ICE grows and his concentraion camps expand, he will likely add disappearing people just like his hero, the late Al Capone.