Potpourri – v25.0
POST 1301
The Cure For Your Ennui
Click me – First check Note #5 below
Sure, you’re discouraged. We’re being hit by American right wing terrorists undermining our country in every way, as they cheat and scheme to take away the America we believe in. They’re taking away our rights and even our lives. But, honestly, there really is some good news, and it isn’t only Marc Elias beating the snot out of Trump in court over and over. This part is more about we Americans and our supposed polarization that so many talk about.
Ambassador Michael McFaul is fresh off a long national book tour for his new book Autocrats vs. Democrats and he wrote about the tour in his post What I Learned on My Book Tour Across America. I haven’t read his book yet and plan to so do soon. What you need to read right now is his “What I Learned” essay. It is full of optimism and reasons to believe in us. We aren’t nearly as fractured as pundits and the few loud extremists and cowardly politicians would have us believe.
Most of all, you’ll learn that we Americans really do still care. Go read his essay.
The cure for despair is action.
Fascist Red Warning Flag of the Month
Read Thom Hartmann’s post that’s scarier than it at first seems, That Sign in Front of the Smithsonian is More Dangerous Than You Think. Your freedom of speech is at risk. Again. Still.
July Jobs Report
From Jim Acosta:
CNBC anchor Rick Santelli was blown away by a disastrous July jobs report that showed Trump’s economy not just missing the expected 85,000 or so jobs gain — but actually losing 23,000 jobs — and another hundred thousand in downward revisions.
On Friday morning, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released a July jobs report that was a disaster for Trump:
And still [Trump] tells us that this is the greatest economy ever.
Trump Fantasy Post of the Month – So Far
This was a real post on Trump’s blabbing platform:
I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, on the Reflecting Pool. I don’t know what she was thinking? To me, it was a pure case of VANDALISM…. There may have been some contractor difficulty, but the major damage was caused by VANDALS! President DJT
Nah – I’m betting that the dark reality is that Trump is an embarrassing illegitimate descendant of fictional Captain Queeg and that the whole VANDALIZED! Reflecting Pool claim is equivalent to an imaginary theft of strawberries. Blame others and twiddle those steel balls, President DJT!
It Won’t Cost Taxpayers Anything
After Trump’s Pearl Harbor-like sneak attack on the East Wing of the White House he announced his grand plan for a ballroom for his presidency-built-on-spectacle, a structure that would dwarf the actual White House. It is to be a gilded monument to himself which he claimed would cost just $200 million. He told us that funding for it would be supplied by private donations.
Now we find out that – surprise! – it will cost over $900 million and we taxpayers will pay most of that, The cost will likely to grow to well over $1 billion as construction and the Trumpian lies and overreach grow.
Construction has been partially stymied by the courts, with only “underground and security related” construction allowed to continue. You don’t suppose such a claimed purpose might be used by Trump to get around Congress and the courts, do you?
This classic dishonesty is a valuable warning siren for why we need a Democratic Congress to stifle Trump’s “I’m the president and I can do whatever I want” ongoing anti-America tantrum.
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Why Does the MAGA Culture Hate Dr. Fauci?
Lucas Bean lays it out for you in this short video.
Unwitting Decoys
Imagine you’re a journalist traveling home from the NATO conference in Turkey aboard Air Force 1. It isn’t until you’re back in the U.S. that you learn that you’re been used as a decoy, a target to attack, in order to sneak the president away,
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Nobody on Air Force 1 other than those riding in the presidential section, not the staff, not Secretary of State Rubio or Treasury Secretary Bessent nor any member of the press knew that the president was not on that plane. He left you all to be a potential target of an Iranian missile.
You were put in mortal danger without your knowledge, much less your consent. You were left to be a sacrificial pawn for a president who thinks only about himself.
We all agree that presidential safety is a real issue. But is that all that your next of kin would be focused on after they learned that you were used as a disposable, your demise an acceptable cost of doing business? Perhaps there are other real issues, too.
The Best Call To Action
Yes, even better than, “Grab a bat – You’re up!“
From the closing words of Rick Wilson’s post, Trump and American Enshittification:
The [democracy] machinery only starts working again when enough people decide that being a citizen costs something, and start paying it.
Whose Voting Rights?
The President of the United States is begging the Supreme Court to allow him to kill all mail-in ballots in all states where they refused to hand over confidential and protected state voting records for Trump’s SS to purge. Red states everywhere are in gerrymander overdrive and are purging legitimate minority voters and women from voting rolls at hypersonic speed. I say it’s time to stop pussyfooting around with these weenie methods and drop the voting rights nuclear bomb.
Congress must initiate and pass a law that allows only White (as in: northern European ancestry), Christian male citizens to vote. Enough of pesky Voting Rights and John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Acts! This is a White, Christian country, dedicated to all control and power to be held by men, especially rich men, the way the Founders wrote – somewhere, I think. To Hell with the 13th, 14th, 15th and 19th Amendments! It’s time for us to enshrine our well practiced voting suppression into one supreme law that will supersede whatever laws for the benefit of We The People might still exist.
For Residents of Northbrook, IL Only
There is some suspicious stuff going on that has the potential to dramatically and adversely affect our village. It’s a local matter akin to Trump’s sneaky trashing of our national historic treasures.
Watch local resident Lee Goodman’s video explanation here. Then decide that being a citizen costs something. Let’s start paying for it with our voices.
The time for action is NOW!
Keep standing up,
speaking out
and taking action
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Count-down Timer
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To The November 3, 2026
Mid-Term Election
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JA
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