A running team from Chicago posted that Trump’s federal agents dragged a runner (67 years old) from his car, broke his ribs, and caused internal bleeding.
I would imagine that quite of few of us older duffers can see ourselves in that guy. He drove his car into one of these ICE blockades and they went nuts, dragged him out of his car, threw him to the ground, kneeled heavily on his back and neck and broke 7 ribs.
This is happening to latinos of all ages, every day, all over the country. These cos-playing thugs drive around in unmarked cars wearing masks which makes them unidentifiable and unaccountable. And, as this shows, they’re brutalizing anyone who gets in their way, no matter who they are. They are clearly completely out of control.
And let’s not forget that it’s over nothing. This made-up crisis about undocumented immigration, of people who’ve been here for decades working and paying taxes, kids, old people, valuable workers, all so Trump and his henchmen can militarize the streets and brutalize America into submitting to their fascist mission. There is no other reason.
With all this video everywhere, how can it be that this is just going on with people like us saying “this is outrageous, it’s illegal” and it just keeps escalating? I don’t think anyone voted for that but it seems at the moment that there’s nothing to be done. Where does it end?
Trump: I did. I got an MRI. It was perfect. Yeah… nobody has given you reports like I have given you. The doctors said some of the best reports they have ever seen. https://t.co/k4XL0j2NFKpic.twitter.com/pb09fTLCCs
I don’t know what it says about his encroaching dementia but the fact that he brags about that test is conclusive proof that he’s dumb as a post.
Here’s a little sanewashing from the NY Times:
Mr. Trump also reiterated that he was interested in serving a third term, saying that he “would love to do it” because of his popularity with his supporters.
What did he actually say?
Trump on a third term: "I would love to do it. I have the best numbers ever. Am I not ruling it out? You'll have to tell me."
That’s right. He did NOT specify that he was popular “with his supporters.” He just said, “I have the best numbers ever…” We don’t know if he’s just lying or deluded or both. But his numbers are actually the worst they’ve ever been.
I really don’t think he’s planning to do this. He’s being the reality show star, of course. It’s his schtick. But it’s also to keep himself from becoming a lame duck for as long as possible. He’ll tease a third term for as long as he possibly can note that in his comments above he is actively pushing Rubio and Vance, even suggesting they run together. He wants to anoint his successor.
Garret Graff writes one of the darkest newsletters about our current situation and he’s pretty much always on target. But he offered some more optimistic thoughts in this one and I think they’re well worth sharing:
I’ve written over the last three months about how the United States has tipped into authoritarianism — we’ve crossed an invisible line never crossed before in our history — but that slide is not necessarily permanent nor irreversible, and I hope that this weekend’s “No Kings” protests will someday be looked back upon as a turning point when the public anger’s and resistance to fascism began to boil.
Last month, at the Author’s Guild literary festival in the Berkshires, an audience member asked me a question I at first stumbled to answer: What are my reasons for hope in this time? I will admit that they are few and far between right now. However, there are three significant reservoirs of hope for me:
The first is that there are more of us than them, and that’s true and it’s important. He notes:
Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, and the other corrupt cronies and would-be fascists of this administration are in many ways racing the clock. As Paul Krugman wrote last month, “Trump is nakedly following the playbook of autocrats like Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orban. As his poll numbers fall, he is rushing to lock in permanent power by punishing his opponents and intimidating everyone else into submission… Yet Trump has a significant problem that neither Putin nor Orban faced. When Putin and Orban were consolidating their autocracies, they were genuinely popular. They were perceived by the public as effective and competent leaders. Just nine months into his presidency, Trump, by contrast, is deeply unpopular. He is increasingly seen as chaotic and inept.”
According to all of the experts on modern authoritarianism, this is key. On the other hand Trump’s doing some old school stuff like putting brownshirts in the streets and calling in the military. The minute any violent resistance happens, as is very possible, I think we’re going to see a reversion to the old style of violent state repression. Still, they are inept and Trump is not a focused ideologue. He’s just dancing as fast as he can swinging wildly from wanting to be the biggest asshole on the planet to the prince of peace. I just don’t know if he’s got what it takes to pull off Stephen Miller’s fascist agenda.
The second thing that gives Graff hope is America’s history which has had some extremely dark periods and yet the country survived and went on to improve and show progress. It’s all true. But as Keynes famously quipped, sure it will work out in the long run “but in the long run we’ll all be dead.”
The third thought is the one I’m most interested in and I think it’s what gives me the most hope:
Trump won’t last forever, which means “Trumpism” will fall.
Trump may want to be a dictator and emulate Franco and Orban, and — who knows — maybe the ridiculous White House ballroom he’s building is an indication he doesn’t plan to leave peacefully on January 20, 2029, but time tells us that he’s never going to be Franco, the dictator who reigned in Spain from 1939 until 1975. The reality is Donald Trump is 79 and not well — and probably less well than the media is willing to dig into — and his reign as president and America’s would-be king will be measured in years, not decades.
Whenever and however Donald Trump exits the stage, there just isn’t anyone who will step into the MAGA movement’s shoes — there are plenty of people who will try, from JD Vance to Marco Rubio to Ron DeSantis to Don Jr. to Ted Cruz, but the thing we’ve seen over and over across the last decade is that no one is Donald Trump. Vice President JD Vance, an incredibly awkward and unfunny Trump-lite who is widely despised by both sides, is most certainly not Donald Trump.
Trump has built in MAGA not a movement but a personality cult — a fragile coalition of anti-government extremists, white nationalists, conspiracists, disaffected people hurt by globalization, and a lot of low-information voters whose brains have been fried by right-wing media and social media algorithms.
If civil society and good people, like the millions who will march this weekend at the No Kings protests, can stay strong, vocal, and active in the months and years ahead, there’s plenty of reason to believe that the United States — or at least parts of the United States — can begin to repair the damage done by Trumpism and continue to advance our national, collective 250-year-old dream of a multiracial democracy more just, more equal, and more free.
The damage that Trump has already done to our government, our institutions, and our civic national fabric will be real and lasting. We will never be the country we were before Donald Trump corruptly won the election in 2016 with Russia’s help, but someday — across years and decades, and maybe not even during my lifetime but perhaps during my childrens’ lifetime — we can strive to work together to ensure that the country we hand off to future generations is better than the one we’ve inherited.
In this I’m actually heartened by the fact that most Republican politicians are cowards rather than ideologues dedicated to the fascist project. And those in the latter camp are incredibly stupid. (Kash Patel? Ed Martin?)
The cult of personality has the GOP in its grip and it’s creating habits of mind that will be very difficult to dislodge. The younger generation of MAGAs have no frame of reference before Trump who is a weird, demented, rapidly aging old man. He hasn’t had the time or the discipline to create a real movement. It’s mostly showbiz with dire consequences and massive damage done but he’s not Adolph Hitler, Stalin or Mao. And none of his would-be successors will be able to take the baton and run with it. Without Trump MAGA will die.
The country is irreversibly changed in many ways, as Graff suggests. But nothing says that whatever comes next has to be fascism and corruption. The demise of Trump will be an opportunity for others to step in and create something newer and better than what came before. If only to combat the existential threat of climate change we must hope that we can do it. That’s where my hope lies today.
This time last year, America was focused on the upcoming presidential election. Despite a major hiccup during the summer, in which President Joe Biden bowed out after weeks of fevered speculation following a catastrophic debate performance and left Vice President Kamala Harris to carry the banner into November, Democrats were feeling very positive about their prospects. After all, the former guy, as Biden often referred to him, had lost the previous election, tried to stage a coup and had been convicted of 34 felonies. He couldn’t possibly make a comeback.
But no matter how they tried to explain it to voters or to shift the focus to other issues, Democrats were faced with a problem. In the end, they couldn’t escape it.
In mid-2021, for the first time in 40 years, inflation took hold of the American economy. The Covid-19 pandemic had caused upheaval around the world. Delayed consumer demand accelerated dramatically at a time when supply chains were chaotic and necessary government stimulus increased the money supply. The Russian invasion of Ukraine put even more stress on the situation by driving up food prices and energy costs. By June 2022, inflation reached 9%.
In October 2024, just a month before the presidential election, inflation had decreased dramatically to 2.4%, just slightly above the Federal Reserve’s target of 2%. But people weren’t feeling the recovery — and in politics, perception is everything.
Prices hadn’t reverted to what they were before the pandemic. And when the price of eggs spiked due to an outbreak of avian flu, it became the symbol of general anger and unhappiness at the overall economy. The vibes, as they became known, were bad.
Many Democratic party officials, pundits and analysts believe inflation is what got Donald Trump reelected. There were enough people who were spooked by perceptions about the economy, and many remembered the first Trump administration as a kind of golden economic age — mostly because he kept telling them they were. They believed he would bring prices down. At campaign events and in interviews, Trump would be asked what he planned to do about the cost of living, and he would meander around, saying that tariffs would bring in huge amounts of money, implying the government would cover additional costs.
During one appearance, he was asked about the soaring cost of child care. He clearly had no idea how to respond, so he first referenced his daughter Ivanka’s work on the issue during his first term. Then Trump declared that, “relatively speaking, [childcare is] not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers we’ll be taking in.” At an event at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, he posed with tables full of groceries and vowed, “When I win, I will immediately bring prices down, starting on Day One.”
That never happened, and now many of the people who were counting on their grocery bills going back to what they were seven or eight years ago are gravely disappointed. Still, that hasn’t stopped Trump from telling them that their vibes are wrong and that inflation is gone. During a Thursday roundtable at the White House, he dismissed such anxieties. “Inflation, I’ve already taken care of,” he said. “Economically, the country is the strongest it’s ever been — thank God for tariffs. If we didn’t have tariffs we’d be a third-world nation.”
That’s a typically absurd comment and barely anyone believes it — not even many of his own supporters. Polling shows that inflation is the president’s lowest issue rating, averaging in the mid-30s and dropping. While the price of eggs has fallen back to normal levels now that the bird flu crisis has abated, people are seeing the price of beef skyrocket by 51% since February 2020. Americans famously love beef, so this placed Trump in dangerous territory — even before he announced his plan to quadruple imports of Argentinian beef, which have left ranchers “furious,” according to the New York Times.
The president’s tariffs haven’t helped. Inflation has been edging up ever since he announced his trade war in April, despite the warnings of most economists, who cautioned that tariffs will raise prices for consumers. The full effects of Trump’s tariffs haven’t yet been felt. Bigger companies were able to front load their inventories in anticipation, and small businesses have been taking out loans and freezing hiring to keep from raising prices. While farmers are being squeezed by losing their international markets due to retaliatory tariffs, they are facing higher prices for their own inputs at the same time.
Aside from the AI boom that’s fueling the stock market bubble, the economy is basically frozen, according to economist Paul Krugman. Everyone is holding their breath, waiting to see if the mercurial Trump will continue these tariffs, or if he will pull back once he’s flattered just the right way or given something he wants in return. (On Saturday, Trump announced an additional 10% tariff on Canadian goods after a television ad funded by Ontario used the voice of President Ronald Reagan to denounce tariffs and aired during the World Series. He had already suspended trade talks with Canada on Thursday because of the ad.) But with the tariffs in effect, businesses are paying more for the imports they need to produce their goods and supply their customers.
The government shutdown has delayed the release of all economic data except the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for September, which the administration called back federal workers to produce because it’s required to determine Social Security payments. On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the CPI showed a 3% rise when compared to September 2024 — the fastest annual pace since the start of the year. When combined with what is assumed to still be a deteriorating job market — those numbers are still unavailable due to the shutdown — it shows that Trump’s claim that the economy is the strongest it’s ever been to be laughable.
Inflation is now a ticking time bomb for Republicans. They should have learned from the Biden administration’s stumbles that you can’t persuade people that they should be happy about the cost of living just because the statistics are good. And in this case, the statistics are not good. In fact, they’re getting worse.
Not even Trump, with his talent for pounding falsehoods so relentlessly that it convinces a lot of people to believe him instead of their own eyes, can beat the vibes when people are paying more and earning less. It’s another perfect storm, and this time it’s one entirely of his own making.
Rebecca Solnit flagged a September podcast she missed, as I did:
Acts of non-coöperation are very powerful,” Merriman, the former president of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, says. “Non-coöperation is very much about numbers. You don’t necessarily need people doing things that are high risk. You just need large numbers of people doing them.”
I missed this The Political Scene podcast (link at bottom of post) when it came out in late September, but DDaniel Huntersteered me to it and I’m listening for the second time because it’s such extraordinarily good (and encouraging) insight into how resistance can and does work in general and in our current crisis in the US: “The Washington Roundtable discusses how, in the wake of the reinstatement of Jimmy Kimmel’s show, public resistance has a chance to turn the tide against autocratic impulses in today’s politics. They are joined by Hardy Merriman, an expert on the history and practice of civil resistance, to discuss what kinds of coördinated actions—protests, boycotts, “buycotts,” strikes, and other nonviolent approaches—are most effective in a fight against democratic backsliding”
Conventional wisdom has it that Trumpism is going to win and prevail for a long time and there’s not much we can do, but it’s conventional because it’s informed by status quo/centrist notions that power is something that resides in those people we call ‘the powerful,’ the elite few, that the rest of us have none, and that most people are narrowly self-interested and won’t stand up on principle (leaving aside that we don’t need ‘most people,’ just a lot of people). Which is just wrong and ignorant and extremely disempowering and a story some of all of us get fed all the time and some of us swallow. Especially as people are standing up in a thousand ways. Do not forget that the Trumpists are weak and scared and rushing to destroy as much as possible before we stop them.
As an aside, one of my frustrations about moderate Democrats, some socialist-y people, and too many pundits is their insistence that ‘people’ other than themselves, the people they’re patronizing, only vote for narrow self interest, aka ‘kitchen table issues.’ In fact, people often choose the candidate they agree with ideologically over their immediate material well-being or there wouldn’t be this right-wing stuff to begin with. The whole idea that when you’re financially insecure you don’t care about democracy and human rights is an insult to poor people and a total miss of the rich people who would sell democracy and human rights and their mom to add to their billions.
George Lakoff insists that people don’t vote their self-interest. They vote their identities. I’ve ranted on this before: Thank you for not voting your best interests. It’s not that people don’t worry about the cost of living. They do. But people are more than balance sheets. Democrats would be well advised to treat them as more.
Professional soldiers don’t serve for the money. Plenty of others sold out their love of country and the Constitution for the thrill of seeing Donald Trump stomp their enemies. Some would rather go without eating than see their “lessers” get a leg up on the American Dream.
Seeing the East Wing demolished last week was a gut punch. It’s not as if Trump 2.0 is not systematically demolishing the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. (A Sunday show guest offered that Trump has effectively eliminated the House of Representatives.) But such acts of vandalism against the republic are not visually impactful the way seeing the East Wing gone is. Everyone not MAGA saw it as a metaphor for Trump 2.0 and Project 2025. Dan Pfeiffer felt it even more keenly.
It is easy to feel like political roadkill lately. So, I went back to the archives to take some of my own advice this morning on why I don’t. Because the cure for helplessness is not less engagement, but more, as I recalled in 2016:
Anyway, the upside of staying in the fight is you stop feeling like roadkill. Even when you lose. But there’s a cost. The proprietress of our local pub always comes over and asks quietly what is going on politically that she’s missed.
Once in reply, I made the mistake of complaining that I used to have a life. She stabbed a finger in my direction and scolded.
“No! This is your life. This is what you do now.”
Some people even appreciate it.
Look, I’m an introvert. A behind-the-scenes guy. I’ve written here every morning since August 2014. I extract data and analyze voting patterns for local candidates. I donate what I can. It’s not enough now. Since retirement, there’s time to do more. The right derided No Kings protesters as predominantly senior and white. That’s right. Less vulnerable to economic blackmail, we’re doing what struggling working people can’t.
For the last 11 weeks, I’ve stood on an overpass on Fridays at rush hour. Rush hour the night before the No Kings rally lasted nearly two hours. This introvert plays a dance mix on a Bluetooth speaker to keep him bobbing with a sign like a human air dancer. I may not own a TV station but estimate (I was an engineer) 10,000 passengers saw my invitation to the rally. The number of pedestrians who thanked me and actually patted my back was a stunner.
It seems I’m now the crazy “guy on the bridge.” The waves and thumbs-up have gone from spontaneous agreement with the week’s message to recognition of the sign-holder as a friend and ally.
But what stands out more as commuters roll underneath (and past major intersections three or four other weeknights) is that our neighbors are anxious. Maybe a little frightened. Those who work and can’t do this need persistent visual proof that there is a Resistance to the budding dictatorship and people like themselves unafraid to be public about it. The number of thank-yous confirm that it lifts people’s wounded spirits. They need hope. Hope builds movements.
Remember ladies. If your child has autism Dr. Donald Trump (UncleMIT) has proved that it’s because you didn’t do what he’s telling you to do. If you have a child with autism in the future you could be in big trouble because it will prove that you didn’t listen to Dear Leader.
He has given you fair warning.
By the way, that was posted on his account while he’s in Asia surveying his kingdoms. And yet, he’s still thinking about the health of your children. He truly is a god.
You will note that the above post links to a Daily Caller “investigative” report which claims that the FDA and the pharmaceutical company that makes Tylenol were working together for years to cover up the evidence, which they also claim is irrefutable. Case closed. If the Daily Caller’s crack investigative unit (who knew they had one?) says it you can take it to the bank.
It’s easy to make light of this nonsense but there are going to be many women feeling the heavy weight of guilt about taking a perfectly safe pain reliever during pregnancy and others who will deny themselves and their children relief from fever, which can cause serious consequences. Nobody will be spared the autism diagnosis because of this but a bunch of kids are going to get diseases they don’t need to get and which could result inlong term health problems and even death.
But it isn’t just Trump and RFK Jr who are pushing this. Look who else is getting in on the act?
Hey, so you lose a few kids. What’s the big deal? It’s not like everyone dies.
A doctor responds:
Joe Rogan doesn’t even know the difference between chickenpox and measles, yet millions of people are still listening to him for health information. Here are a few factchecks:
-children do die from measles -measles wipes out your immune memory -healthy people can get very sick and die from viruses
And, by the way, chickenpox (not the vaccine) leaves the virus in your body so you can get the wonderful experience of Shingles later in life. That’s a real party, let me tell you.
Quacks are overtaking our society in every single sector. I feel very sorry for the people who listen to them and the poor kids who didn’t ask to be born.
If you read this site regularly you know that I’ve been complaining about the state of arrested development among so many of our fellow Americans. Our culture is just so sophomoric these days and no one is more childish than Donald Trump who has made it the default attitude of Republicans everywhere (and quite a few others as well, unfortunately.)
Recall this from 2015 when Trump announced his candidacy:
VAN SUSTEREN: Donald, you’re likeable but I tell you, I sort of gasp when I hear you sort of making bathroom jokes about Secretary Clinton. Or anyone. And that’s why I wonder… should you get the nomination, are you going to change your language a bit and appear what I call more presidential?
TRUMP:”I think I’m presidential and I think I’ve done what I call presidential work. You know I built an incredible company. I’ve made great deals, I’ve had tremendous success.”
On a random Sunday night in September, Bluesky user and musician Patrick Cosmos (@veryimportant.lawyer) shared an observation that quickly spread across the whole internet. He wrote, “working on a new unified theory of american reality i’m calling ‘everyone is twelve now.'”
A smattering of responses:
It’s true. How about this?
If you want to see the perfect example of this, here it is:
Republicans are posing for pictures in front of it. Here’s Rachel Campos-Duffy, Fox news star and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s wife:
Trump was president during the 2020 election so if these people rigged it they must have time traveled into the past to do it. Of course it might have been Christopher Wray doing it all by himself — he was Trump’s FBI Director, after all.
The Department of Labor posts these images across social media on a regular basis.
I suppose it shouldn’t surprise us that AI creates excellent Stalinist Socialist Realist art. Of course it does. And while I seriously doubt that the dullards in the Trump administration know anything about that, they wouldn’t care if they did. They don’t even notice the grotesque white nationalism, not to mention the paternalistic sexism, because it’s just normal to them.
What’s it all about? Something called “Project Firewall,” the policy to keep highly skilled foreigners out of the country by charging hundreds of thousands of dollars for a H-1b Visa.
It’s also about their apprenticeship program. Apparently, only white men need apply:
I know it’s a cliche by now but I can’t resist:
Look for JD Vance to make that his campaign theme song.
