Month: October 2025

And in your employees’ mouths

If it was not clear before, the executive branch of the U.S. government is now a fully owned subsidiary of the Trump Organization.

“The White House ballroom, should it be completed, will stand as another symbol in the ongoing project of rebuilding American democracy in the image of one man’s brand,” the Trump brand, proposes Debbie Millman, brand strategist and host of the “Design Matters” podcast.

She illustrates her own op-ed:

Between Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff and Trump’s own remora, and Russ Vought, OMB director and principal author of Project 2025, the functioning of the executive branch down to its finest details is now the Trump Organization too.

I’ve said frequently that the GOP does not want to govern, it wants to rule. That’s true of Donald Trump as well, but in his mind dominating is a byproduct of branding. His logo is not yet on government stationary, but he’s got people working on it (Federal News Network):

Furloughed staff at the Education Department say out-of-office messages for their government email accounts have been automatically updated.

The new out-of-office message blames an ongoing government shutdown on Senate Democrats who didn’t vote on a stopgap spending bill that would keep the government funded through Nov. 21.

“Thank you for contacting me. On September 19, 2025, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 5371, a clean continuing resolution. Unfortunately, Democrat Senators are blocking passage of H.R. 5371 in the Senate which has led to a lapse in appropriations,” the new out-of-office message says. “Due to the lapse in appropriations I am currently on furlough status. I will respond to emails once government functions resume.”

An Education Department employee told Federal News Network that they discovered the updated message on Thursday.

“Those were not my words,” the employee said.

The New York Times adds:

In response to a request for comment, an automatic reply from an Education Department spokeswoman, Madi Biedermann, did not include the politically charged language. Instead, it read, “Thank you for your email. There is a temporary shutdown of the U.S. government due to a lapse in appropriations.”

About an hour later, Ms. Biedermann sent another response referencing the continuing resolution that would have funded the government: “The email reminds those who reach out to Department of Education employees that we cannot respond because Senate Democrats are refusing to vote for a clean C.R. and fund the government. Where’s the lie?”

Did they up her dosage in the interim? The Times does not include a current photo that might indicate whether Biedermann posseses a thousand-yard stare, the flat affect found among cult members and combat veterans suffering PTSD.

* * * * *

Our friend Susie Madrak is experiencing a cash crunch. She’s looking for whatever help you might lend this week. Making things worse is an insurance settlement delayed on account of paperwork. Plus:

In the meantime, my neurologist suspects I have an obscure lupus-like autoimmune disorder that’s causing all kinds of weird symptoms (for one thing, she says the signals my brain are sending to my feet aren’t making it through and I’m off balance) but first she has to rule out blood cancers, etc. There’s also a lesion on my lung and they want an MRI.

Susie has been posting at Suburban Guerrilla and Crooks & Liars for 20 years. It’s a calling, not a great-paying gig. We need to stick together. Help out Susie if you can.

Butt Crack and Beer Belly not available online

Taking my own advice.

Old items: Carhartt cargo pants (khaki) and heavy web belt (not shown) from Cabelas; 511 desert tactical boots (not shown) from Amazon; Men’s Sonoma Goods For Life® Supersoft Crewneck Tee from Kohls. New: SUVIYA Personalized Custom Tactical ID Patch with Hook Backing and Loop; KBETHOS Low Crown Cotton Baseball Cap; and YAKEDA Tactical Airsoft Vest for Men from Amazon. Masks have been banned in North Carolina.

Point being, any yahoo can dress like one of Donald Trump’s non-uniformed, unbadged secret policemen, even those not sporting butt cracks and beer bellies. (Butt Crack and Beer Belly not available online.) That’s why agents masking is BS, as U.S. District Court Judge William Young found this week (Footnote 29). It’s meant to “to terrorize Americans into quiescence.” Except real ICE agents or imposters are unlikely to stand at a busy intersection at rush hour advertising that ICE stands for I Can’t [get an] Erection.

Chris Hayes Thursday night had more on 300 CBP and ICE agents storming a Chicago apartment building and rousting out all the poor tenants (including children). The assault might have resembled something from Apocalypse Now if only the Blackhawk chopper had come in blaring “Ride of the Valkyries.” This isn’t law enforcement. It’s terrorism.

At the same time, if we expect people to pay attention and engage without tuning out to preserve their mental health, humor is a weapon we dare not deploy. Too much outrage leads to numbness. Rachel Maddow on Monday played a clip of the bicycle delivery guy taunting CBP agents in Chicago who then gave chase and failed to catch him. She said about all that was missing was the Benny Hill theme (“Yakety Sax”). The clip went viral.

Mockery has a place here. I’ve watched clips of protesters confronting ICE for days at the Broadview facility outside Chicago to little effect. It’s clear from ICE behavior that Kristi Noem is hiring brutish testosterone junkies not law enforcement professionals. Angry confrontation just gives them the chance they’re looking for to bust heads under color of law. What they need to prove, as does Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump himself, is how freaking manly they are. Feeling laughed at has gnawed at Trump his entire life. It’s a glaring soft spot. Maybe leave an indelible impression of his secret police based in humor rather than outrage. 

Commuters (women especially) who’ve laughed and cheered at me costumed and spinning this 2-sided sign overhead at rush hour won’t forget it either. Two different drivers shouted thanks out the window for the laugh they’d been needing. (It’s a community service.) Part of building the movement is not numbing potential allies into immobility.

* * * * *

Our friend Susie Madrak is experiencing a cash crunch. She’s looking for whatever help you might lend this week. Making things worse is an insurance settlement delayed on account of paperwork. Plus:

In the meantime, my neurologist suspects I have an obscure lupus-like autoimmune disorder that’s causing all kinds of weird symptoms (for one thing, she says the signals my brain are sending to my feet aren’t making it through and I’m off balance) but first she has to rule out blood cancers, etc. There’s also a lesion on my lung and they want an MRI.

Susie has been posting at Suburban Guerrilla and Crooks & Liars for 20 years. It’s a calling, not a great-paying gig. We need to stick together. Help out Susie if you can.

PM of Albania having a good laugh with President of Azerbaijan and Macron about Trump repeatedly claiming that he ended the war between their two countries which were not at war with each other. pic.twitter.com/5lP6XTps2J

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) October 2, 2025

Yep. They’re laughing at him again. How can they not?

Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama jokingly scolds his colleague French President Emmanuel Macron that he didn’t congratulate Albania and Azerbaijan for brokering a peace deal thanks to the U.S. president, saying the countries worked “very hard” to achieve the deal.

“You should make an apology to us because you didn’t congratulate us for the peace deal that President Trump made between Albania and Azerbaijan,” Rama said while Macron and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev laugh.

Macron responded to the joke with a mock apology, saying, “I am sorry for that.”

Trump has been told that he “ended” seven wars for which he is owed a Nobel Peace Prize but he doesn’t know what they are. This one was between Armenia and Azerbaijan the latter of which he couldn’t pronounce. He couldn’t find either country on a map.

You have to laugh or you will never stop crying.

Today:

The Democrats should know that they put the White House and the president in this position. And if they don’t want further harm on their constituents back home, then they need to reopen the government. It’s very simple: Pass the clean continuing resolution, and all of this goes away.”

That’s from the White House Secretary Karoline Leavitt today, openly threatening to inflict pain on Americans who don’t agree with Donald Trump unless they bow down and lick his feet.

Yeah.

I was going to write about this piece by Andrea Pitzer that’s been making the rounds but it seems everyone in the world has already weighed in so I decided to let it go. I pretty much agree with Josh Marshall here and you should read it and come to your own conclusion. But Josh goes on to make another point that I think is vitally important (and have written about myself in the past.)

It’s about the necessity to understand how to lose well:

So what do I mean when I saw that being prepared to lose well is usually the prerequisite to winning well? I mean two things by it, first a recognition and second a calibration, a heuristic. First it’s a recognition that we live in history and sometimes — actually, a lot of time — you can have the right values, a great strategy and give it your all and still lose. That’s history and that’s life. It’s a recognition and a reminder that perseverance is a more important quality than cleverness or ingenuity.

The calibration point is a bit more idiosyncratic. If you lose an important fight you want to know you did everything you could. You left it all on the field, as they say. You don’t want to have made any dumb mistakes you’ll be kicking yourself over later. In a football game you can have a great strategy, the whole team gives it everything and you come up short. There’s no shame in that. Disappointing but no shame. You want your politics to work the same way.

The additional factor is that dignity — knowing who you are, not being lost — is an essential part of both winning battles and the perseverance that is necessary to endure and come back from defeats. The one thing you never want to do is fight over something important, see reverses, freak out, trade away all the things and the values that are most dear to and still lose. Then you’ve sort of lost everything. Your dignity, your sense of who you are … all in addition to the thing you were fighting over in the first place. If you’re on the wrong track and you ask yourself this question, you’ll know.

Democrats faced such a question in early 2005 when George W. Bush appeared to be on his way to phasing out Social Security in favor of a system of 401k-like private accounts. Responding with a flat “no” to any version of this kind of phaseout wasn’t just good political strategy, as none of it was popular. It also gave the Democrats a clarity of purpose and a mix of morale and motivation that added to their power. Various actors quickly bullied straggling members of Congress to adopt that line. It worked.

This isn’t or should be a straightjacket. There’s a certain kind of person who thinks that any accommodation of public opinion or tactical adjustment is a betrayal or abandonment of this or that group of value or whatever. That’s at least not how I see it. Or it’s not what I’m saying. When I ask myself these kinds of questions it’s really, Is this the most effective approach available? Am I focused on what’s most important?

I may be too much of an instinctive pragmatist that quizzing myself about my “values” feels too treacly or precious. How will I feel losing on these terms, with this approach is probably my version of it. If you look at what you’re doing and the beam is straight and true, you’ll know. And it’s not just a matter of being at peace with yourself, though that’s nice. You really don’t want to lose. Because losing may mean losing a lot. When that beam is straight and true it has a way of bringing everything into alignment. It makes people motivated. It drives morale. Because everything being in alignment, being prepared and ready to lose well is the best way to win too, and not just in some touchy-feely way. It aligns motivation, commitment and a sense of solidarity.

When you have no institutional power you make the case, stand up for principles, stick together. You might just win and if you lose at least the American people know what you stand for.

From the moment Trump took office he was committed to going after Palestinian protesters. I guess it’s just because they were supported by left wing students? That seems like a stretch even for them and I wonder if there was more to it. A special favor for Bibi perhaps? Who knows?

Anyway, they went full STASI on this, right out of the gate:

When Rumeysa Ozturk was grabbed by masked federal agents outside her Massachusetts home in March, the video of the Turkish graduate student being handcuffed and hustled into an unmarked vehicle spread around the world.

A federal trial that ended Tuesday revealed for the first time the story behind the images, showing how the government assigned a special team to target Ozturk and other pro-Palestinian activists, laying the groundwork for their highly unusual arrests.

Ozturk had committed no crime, yet her detention was a priority for the new Trump administration.

[…]

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge William Young in Boston ruled that the push to target Ozturk and other students was blatantly unconstitutional. The White House vowed to appeal the decision.

The bench trial — decided by a judge rather than a jury — generated thousands of pages of depositions, court transcripts and filings that provided a detailed picture of the machinery that led to the arrests.

Among the findings: White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, a top ally of President Donald Trump and architect of his mass deportation campaign, spoke with senior officials at the State Department and DHS more than a dozen times in March to discuss student visa revocations.

Homeland Security Investigations, an arm of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that investigates transnational crime, took the lead. HSI researched the protesters and referred dozens of cases to the State Department, sometimes citing an obscure statute for revoking visas. Then it carried out the arrests.

[…]

While Trump administration officials have repeatedly accused the students of being “terrorist sympathizers” and “Hamas supporters,” no evidence of any connection to violence or terrorism was presented at trial.

That video of Ozturk still makes my blood run cold. It was the first of many but it’s still emblematic of the terror these people are inflicting on our streets. And anyone who thinks their citizenship will protect them from these people is living in a dream world. This is just their opening gambit.

The judge in the referenced case produced an astonishing opinion that’s well worth reading in its entirety. It’s written by an 85 year old Reagan Appointee who has produced one of the most cogent critiques of Trump’s assault on free speech I’ve yet seen (proving that not all elders are too addled to serve — his wisdom here is welcome.)

Here’s a rundown of it by Chris Geidner. An excerpt:

Young does more in one decision than perhaps any public official has done this year to detail the specific methods President Donald Trump and the Trump administration use to act illegally and unconstitutionally, the many ways the other branches and outside institutions have capitulated to those acts, and the essential and powerful ways people — and the legal system — can push back.

It is, however, ultimately a challenge to America.

Young is aware — as he detailed in a 10-page section of his ruling explaining “Justice in the Trump Era” — that he and the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts cannot hold the line. In a conclusion that first quoted Ronald Reagan’s 1967 statement that freedom is “never more than one generation away from extinction,” Young then wrote:

I fear President Trump believes the American people are so divided that today they will not stand up, fight for, and defend our most precious constitutional values so long as they are lulled into thinking their own personal interests are not affected.

Is he correct?

That fear and question might have felt forced or exaggerated for emphasis elsewhere, but, by time it was posed on page 160 of Young’s ruling, it was simply a statement from a judge who has been on the federal bench for 40 years, has been alive for more than double that time, is overseeing multiple cases addressing this administration’s actions, and is questioning what’s to come.

I think we know what’s to come unless we can save ourselves.

He promised to fix it. But he didn’t….

Americans say it’s harder to afford their groceries now than it was a year ago, a warning sign for President Trump and Republicans, in the latest Axios Vibes survey by The Harris Poll.

Why it matters: Everyone’s gotta eat. High food prices disproportionately impact working-class voters, the very people Trump promised lower grocery prices on the campaign trail a year ago.

• Just 1 in 5 respondents say it’s easier to afford groceries now than this time last year; nearly half say it’s harder, while 1 in 3 say it’s about the same.

The big picture: 8 in 10 Americans say they believe the president has “significant influence” over the U.S. economy, but just 47% say the Trump administration has had a positive impact on the economy this year.

What they’re saying: “The midterms might hinge on a ‘Cleanup on Aisle 4!’ ” said John Gerzema, CEO of The Harris Poll.

• “It’s such a visible signal that life is harder today than it was even last year when we were in an election cycle,” Gerzema said of grocery bills. Respondents “don’t feel like things are changing fast enough. This is going to be a significant issue for the president.”

Trump says it’s all Biden’s fault so never mind. In fact, he says prices on groceries are actually lower. Ok:

Reality check: Three factors appear be contributing to Americans’ discontent over those higher prices.

• Prices for certain staple items many people consume nearly every day have risen much more than the average, including ground beef (up 12.8% in the past year), eggs (up 10.9%) and coffee (up 20.9%).
• Moreover, the price rises now are coming on top of earlier price surges in the 2021-2022 period, which slowed down in 2023 and 2024 but never reversed. Over the last five years, grocery prices have risen by more than 30%.
• The job market is weaker and wages aren’t rising as quickly as they were earlier in this economic cycle, so any given rise in grocery bills may pinch harder than it did when employers were racing to give employees wages.

Zoom out: This is part of a broader phenomenon in which consumer sentiment and confidence data is depressed, despite many measures of well-being — the unemployment rate, the stock market, GDP growth — looking pretty good.

Tariffs weigh on sentiment

By the numbers: Less than 1 in 3 say Trump’s tariffs have been good for the U.S. economy, U.S. businesses or personal finances; 63% worry about shortages of key goods they rely on due to tariffs.

• Less than half (47%) say 2025 has been a better year than 2024. Nearly two-thirds (65%) say they’re financially squeezed each month.

I think Trump is planning on simply blaming Biden and the Democrats for everything and assuming people will believe it. But one of the downsides of being so ubiquitous and doing so much right in everyone’s faces is that it’s made the Biden administration feel like it happened a decade ago. I don’t think that’s going to work much longer.

Whether this inflation will be enough to break this electoral log jam is yet to be determined. But I do remember a time not really so long ago when the price of eggs had people very upset, so upset that they were willing to vote to put a known criminal back in the White House to fix it. Will they be upset enough to toss out his accomplices next year?

A Washington Post poll conducted on Oct. 1, the first day of the shutdown, found that 47% of U.S. adults blame Trump and Republicans in Congress, while 30% blame Democrats and 23% said they’re not sure.

The survey found that independents blamed Trump and Republicans over Democrats by a wide margin of 50% to 22%. And one-third of Republicans were either unsure who to blame (25%) or blamed their party (8%).

I don’t know if the Republicans will be able to turn this around. It’s possible. But the weight of all the atrocities Trump has brought to bear on the country since he took office makes if far more logical to blame him and the GOP for anything horrific that happens — especially when they brag about it as a great opportunity to do what they want. What other conclusion should we reach?

Don’t count on Trump 2.0 incompetence

Paul Krugman this morning offers a kind of grim good news, citing Hannah Arendt’s “The Origins of Totalitarianism.” She explained that totalitarians eschew competency and promote “crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.” Case-in-point, Trump’s reign is an “autocracy of dunces,” Krugman observes:

But like all authoritarian regimes, America’s autocracy is being run by malevolent incompetents. And while our hallowed institutions are utterly failing to rise to the occasion, the sheer incompetence of these hacks is generating pushback that may yet save us.

That’s not terribly encouraging, but this morning I’ll take it.

He concludes:

In a perverse way, we can be grateful that Trump and his minions are so incompetent, because that is forcing the dormant parts of our country to push back. Let’s just hope that the pushback is strong enough and fast enough to save us all.

Over at The Ink, Anand Giridharadas has been speaking with Anat Shenker-Osorio about how Democrats should message the government shutdown. Sure, the GOP threat to people’s healthcare is important, but it’s not the most important issue to message. That is, if we want to mobilize those dormant parts of our country Krugman just mentioned. Less-engaged people have to recognize just how dangerous the Trump administration is in all its malevolent incompetence.

Shenker-Osorio recommends:

What we see in all of our focus groups and our quant is that viewing the regime as an existential threat not a right wing government you don’t like is THE precondition for activation. It is what separates the people engaged in civil resistance or amenable to it from those who disapprove of MAGA but say they’ll never act. So, if you believe as I do, and as scholars of authoritarianism counsel, that sustained widespread mobilizing is essential – you use every opportunity to say “we will not be complicit in MAGA’s attack on Americans.” If you wanna add stuff about them stealing our healthcare to hand to billionaires, great.

On the people [who] don’t know what fascism is – having tested it over and over, the “don’t know” on it is around 8%, same as other terms we try. Could people pass AP Poli Sci defining it? Probably not! All they know and need to know is – bad thing I don’t like. And some even know that fascism is a thing Americans proudly fought in our past.

Next, what we also see from conflicted voters in every group is extended wondering if things ARE really that bad or they’re the ones who are nuts. If you’re saying, as Dems are some of the time, this is dangerous/authoritarianism/wanna be dictator etc, you cannot also say we’re going to negotiate about this one (very important!!!) thing but we will sign on to fund abductions and military occupation and turning DOJ into department of prosecuting enemies.

RIGHT THIS MOMENT Trump is militarizing American cities. He just sent hundreds of federal agents to storm a Chicago apartment building, even rapelling agents onto rooftops from military helicopters. He has squads of CBP officers roaming the Chicago Loop harrassing anyone who doesn’t “look” American.

“ICE is running around the Loop, harassing people for not being white,” Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker said this week.

Just their names would be enough to get Giridharadas and Shenker-Osorio detained, perhaps violently. If you are darker than the guy at the top, you’d best watch your back.

My recent experience on the streets with people under 35 is that they “need to feel they’ve been seen and heard. They need to know that they are not alone.” They need to know what they are feeling is real and shared, that, as Anat says, they are not nuts. Things are bad. Don’t soft-pedal it and demonstrate it by actions. Be there on October 18.

* * * * *

Our friend Susie Madrak is experiencing a cash crunch. She’s looking for whatever help you might lend this week. Making things worse is an insurance settlement delayed on account of paperwork. Plus:

In the meantime, my neurologist suspects I have an obscure lupus-like autoimmune disorder that’s causing all kinds of weird symptoms (for one thing, she says the signals my brain are sending to my feet aren’t making it through and I’m off balance) but first she has to rule out blood cancers, etc. There’s also a lesion on my lung and they want an MRI.

Susie has been posting at Suburban Guerrilla and Crooks & Liars for 20 years. It’s a calling, not a great-paying gig. We need to stick together. Help out Susie if you can.

Using “cities as training grounds” is potentially lethal

I’m old enough to remember police actions against residences that went very, very badly. In Philadelphia (1985 MOVE bombing; six adults and five children killed, 250 left homeless). In Waco, Texas (Waco siege; over 80 dead, including at least 20 children and four ATF agents).

What happened Tuesday night in Chicago gave me shivers. It was worse for residents when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raided a South Shore apartment building (New York Times):

“It felt like we were under siege,” said one bystander, Darrell Ballard, 63, showing videos on his cellphone of officers entering the apartment building in the dark.

A U.S. Border Patrol official involved with the operation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said that the effort involved nearly 300 federal agents from various agencies. The agents came from various directions around the building.

The operation that night targeted an apartment complex that federal officials said was frequented by members of the Tren de Aragua gang. The Border Patrol official said that snipers rappelled down from helicopters on top of the apartment complex, as a precaution from potential violence. Federal authorities said that at least 37 people without legal immigration status were arrested.

Video:

Sorry, that was from The Blues Brothers (1980).

ABC 7 Chicago follows up:

“My building is shaking. So, I’m like, ‘What is that?’ Then I look out the window, it’s a Blackhawk helicopter,” said witness Dr. Alii Muhammad.

[…]

ABC7 spoke to Pertissue Fisher, a woman who lives in the building. She said ICE agents took everyone in the building, including her, and asked questions later.

“They just treated us like we were nothing,” Fisher said.

Fisher said she came out to the hallway of her apartment complex on the corner of 75th and South Shore Drive in her nightgown around 10 p.m. Monday only to find armed ICE agents yelling “police.”

“It was scary, because I had never had a gun in my face,” Fisher said. “They asked my name and my date of birth and asked me, did I have any warrants? And I told them, ‘No,’ I didn’t.”

Fisher said she was handcuffed before being released around 3 a.m., and she was told that if anyone had any kind of warrant out for them, even if it was unrelated to immigration, they would not be released.

Donald Trump and Kristi Noem think Fisher should be grateful, I’m sure, that her building wasn’t bombed or burned to ashes. Oh, but what a missed opportunity for dramatic TV!

“Get out of Chicago,” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said this week. “You are not helping us.”

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson agrees (Times again):

Democrats in Illinois have also spoken out against Mr. Trump’s plan, which he revealed on Tuesday while speaking to a roomful of military leaders, to use Chicago and other American cities as “training grounds” for future wars. “We’re going to straighten them out one by one, and this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room,” Mr. Trump said.

Mr. Johnson said in a statement on Wednesday that he rejects any attempt to militarize American cities.

“Chicagoans are not test subjects for the president to train our military,” he said. “The brave men and women who sign up to serve our country do not want to be deployed against their neighbors.”

Someone needs to inform our president that using American “cities as training grounds for our military, National Guard, but military” is not only improper, unprecedented, but illegal. And for its residents, innocents and not, potentially lethal.

As our proprietor wrote, “They want to use the military to violently suppress all dissent in America’s big cities where they believe their political opposition is.”

The Trump administration will blame the victims for their own deaths.

Update: (h/t MCP) Block Club Chicago has a story with pictures of the damage done to 7500 S. South Shore Drive.

“The raid saw people’s apartments turned upside down, citizens held for hours and their neighbors taken away to unknown places. Belongings were stolen from apartments after the agents left the building open.”

“ICE really just a gang,” said resident Dan Jones.

* * * * *

Our friend Susie Madrak is experiencing a cash crunch. She’s looking for whatever help you might lend this week. Making things worse is an insurance settlement delayed on account of paperwork. Plus:

In the meantime, my neurologist suspects I have an obscure lupus-like autoimmune disorder that’s causing all kinds of weird symptoms (for one thing, she says the signals my brain are sending to my feet aren’t making it through and I’m off balance) but first she has to rule out blood cancers, etc. There’s also a lesion on my lung and they want an MRI.

Susie has been posting at Suburban Guerrilla and Crooks & Liars for 20 years. It’s a calling, not a great-paying gig. We need to stick together. Help out Susie if you can.