Oligarchs are waging a war on the working class, and they are intent on winning. But this is what I know: The worst fear that the ruling class in this country has is that Americans come together to demand a government that represents all of us, not just the wealthy few.
Bernie as a presidential candidate struck me as a one-trick pony: class struggle. But he knows that trick in his bones.
“The Pitchforks Are Coming… For Us Plutocrats,” entrepreneur Nick Hanauer wrote over a decade ago To: My Fellow Zillionaires:
But let’s speak frankly to each other. I’m not the smartest guy you’ve ever met, or the hardest-working. I was a mediocre student. I’m not technical at all—I can’t write a word of code. What sets me apart, I think, is a tolerance for risk and an intuition about what will happen in the future. Seeing where things are headed is the essence of entrepreneurship. And what do I see in our future now?
I see pitchforks.
Better late than never.
The Congress won’t save this republic. Nor will the courts. The press is owned by and enabling the oligarchs. We are going to have to take to the streets. It’s just a matter of when.
A friend just yesterday said you will know someone by what they’re willing to die for. He and his spouse recognize that taking to the streets under Trump 2.0 involves physical risk. Their strategy is never to both go to the same event. One has to be there for the grandkids.
Even as Elon Musk’s Dunning-Kruger saboteurs bleed federal agencies of skilled public servants and threaten nuclear stockpile security at the National Nuclear Security Administration, Donald Trump is selling out Ukrainian allies to Russia and again trying to shake down NATO. Trump on Tuesday blamed President Volodymyr Zelensky for presiding over a country “that has been blown to smithereens” in a war he falsely accused Ukraine of starting. Russia invaded Ukraine three years ago.
Zelensky responded, “Unfortunately, President Trump – I have great respect for him as a leader of a nation that we have great respect for, the American people who always support us – unfortunately lives in this disinformation space.”
As do we all.
Nice country you got there
The Telegraph of London reports on the $500 billion “deal” Trump’s agents dropped on Ukraine in exchange for its strategic minerals. The Telegraph obtained a Feb. 7 draft of the offer Trump must think Ukraine can’t refuse:
The terms of the contract that landed at Volodymyr Zelensky’s office a week ago amount to the US economic colonisation of Ukraine, in legal perpetuity. It implies a burden of reparations that cannot possibly be achieved. The document has caused consternation and panic in Kyiv.
[…]
The agreement covers the “economic value associated with resources of Ukraine”, including “mineral resources, oil and gas resources, ports, other infrastructure (as agreed)”, leaving it unclear what else might be encompassed. “This agreement shall be governed by New York law, without regard to conflict of laws principles,” it states.
The US will take 50pc of recurring revenues received by Ukraine from extraction of resources, and 50pc of the financial value of “all new licences issued to third parties” for the future monetisation of resources. There will be “a lien on such revenues” in favour of the US. “That clause means ‘pay us first, and then feed your children’,” said one source close to the negotiations.
I don’t think we should call it a “deal.” After all, isn’t a deal something in which both sides bring something to the table? What Trump suggested was that Ukraine give the United States half of the revenue it gets from resource extraction, as far as I can tell in perpetuity. Trump suggested that this would amount to $500 billion, although this seems like a wildly exaggerated sum.
In return, Trump offered, well, zero. No additional aid, no security guarantees, no nothing.
Many of us look at Ukraine and see a nation heroically defending freedom against heavy odds, receiving arms and money from the world’s democracies but doing all the fighting and dying — a nation that deserves our deepest gratitude. Trump, however, apparently thinks that America’s past aid — which has been substantial, although Europe has given considerably more — entitles us to strip Ukraine of its wealth.
Not to mention, Krugman adds, that if Vladimir Putin conquers Ukraine, there is no way he’d honor Trump-the-Dealmaker’s deal. That would be the deeply stupid part.
Trump’s vision isn’t even the old-fashioned imperialism of Weimar Germany, but more like “the Belgian Congo in the late 19th century, a personal possession of King Leopold which he brutally exploited for its rubber and ivory.”
And the price of this depravity would be to mark America irrevocably as a rogue nation, one nobody will want to deal with and nobody will trust to honor its promises.
Donald Trump is taking America out of NATO to join the Warsaw Pact.
Well done, my Republican friends. You have no character, no conviction, and your legacy will be the betrayal of the Greatest Generation's sacrifice.
You are a disgrace and will be remembered for who you are.
Trump is not simply operating in a disinformation space, or in a 19th century space, or in a depraved and deeply stupid one. He and his broligarch accomplices are operating in a fundamentally un-American one. Over the last century, American troops rode into Europe (twice) and the Pacific in white hats to save the world from the very imperialism and fascism Trump and his red-hatted goons now embrace like Trump’s friends in the Autocrats Club.
Trump has twice sworn to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” and to uphold its laws, then set about finding ways to subvert them. His effort to elide the unambiguous language of the 14th Amendment and strip birthright citizenship from a class of Americans he dislikes is indefensible. Not that conservatives in his thrall won’t try.
The only thing American about Donald Trump is his birth certificate. You can’t even say that much about Elon Musk or J.D. Vance sponsor Peter Thiel.
If Trump wants to revoke birthright citizenship, let’s start with his.
a feeling of well-being combined with a tingling sensation in the scalp and down the back of the neck, as experienced by some people in response to a specific gentle stimulus, often a particular sound.
Note that the original tweet came from the official White House feed.
We are dealing with sociopaths. They don’t try to hide it. And because of that it is rational to be horrified and enraged right now about what these people are willing to do to us. Normalizing this level of sadism and cruelty can only lead in one direction.
I just assume now that all Republicans agree with these sentiments since none of them have said a peep about any of this.
Never forget that even as President Musk is destroying the government agencies and Trump’s henchmen are taking apart the Department of Justice piece by piece, when he isn’t pretending to be Alexander the Great and playing golf he’s making money for himself and his family. This term they aren’t even trying to hide it:
The acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration left her job this weekend after a clash with billionaire Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service over its attempts to access sensitive government records, three people familiar with her departure said Monday.
The Oval Office meeting convened by President Trump brought together the most important leaders in the world of professional golf: Jay Monahan, the top executive at the PGA Tour, and, via telephone, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the chairman of the Saudi Arabia-backed league known as LIV Golf. The stated goal was to figure out a way to eliminate roadblocks preventing the planned merger between the rival two groups.
But the gathering earlier this month said something even more important about the Trump administration itself. Mr. Trump was not simply using the power of his office to forge an agreement — something that presidents have done for centuries. In this case, Mr. Trump was pushing a merger that relates to his own family’s financial interest. The Trump family is a LIV Golf business partner. The family has repeatedly hosted LIV tournaments at its golf venues, including one planned in April at the Trump National Doral in Miami for the fourth year in a row.
There was a time when a president was harassed for four years for allegedly taking a phone call from his son when he was Vice President years before. You know, that whole HUnter Biden thing. Today, Trump is putting together million dollar deals for himself right in the oval office.
It seems trivial now considering what else they are doing to actually kill, sicken and impoverish Americans. But it’s still worth mentioning, I think. The President of the United States is selling the presidency of the US to a Saudi Arabian golf tournament for his own profit. And that’s on top of a whole bunch of Trump Org. deals all over the world. I honestly won’t be surprised if he signs the deals in the Oval like he signs his Executive Orders.
Ask yourself what you would have thought during the Bush administration if anyone had told you this would happen in the future.
The NY Times has a good piece today (gift link) looking at the inside workings of the Adams case at SDNY. It is truly astonishing. What this case proves is that what’s happening is truly the complete corrupt Trumpification of the DOJ that goes way beyond just seeking retribution for the Special Counsel prosecutions.
This is a remaking of the department as a full-fledged political arm of the president and this case was chosen in particular to demonstrate to the lawyers and the public that they plan to use that power. By choosing to protect a Democrat who made an appeal directly to Donald Trump, licking his boots and promising to do his bidding, they have shown that it’s not about the past, it’s about the future. By choosing the SDNY, the flagship office of the DOJ, they prove that no office has any independence.
This is the conclusion of the piece:
Across the department, dismay has set in over the standoff in the Adams case, which echoes a grim moment during the Watergate scandal known as the Saturday Night Massacre. Rather than carry out an order from President Richard M. Nixon to fire the prosecutor investigating him, several senior political appointees resigned.
The current conflict, some in the department believe, is even worse. When senior leaders resigned in 1973, they were in essence standing up to the White House, even as political appointees.
But now the department’s leaders are taking aim at their own lower ranks, in what many current and former Justice Department officials describe as a profound betrayal of the shared cause of justice.
Mr. Bove and Ms. Bacon could have signed the Adams motion at any time, without drawing other department lawyers into it, the officials said. Proceeding this way appeared to accomplish little more than forcing career prosecutors to capitulate.
It was a power play, pure and simple.
And they will find people in the department more than willing to sign on. A bunch of people resigned as you know, and the man who ultimately agreed to sign the dismissal is a long time career prosecutor considered to be a sort of hero because he took the hit to his integrity mostly because he had already been tainted with an earlier case. I’m not really sure I understand all that but I take their word for it.
But the Trump cult has infected many people you might have thought would have some integrity. Here’s an example:
Many in the group considered Mr. Sullivan’s decision to step forward an honorable act.
Along with Mr. Sullivan, another lawyer put her name on the document: Antoinette Bacon, known as Toni. Current and former Justice Department officials view her role more critically.
A longtime prosecutor in Ohio, Ms. Bacon had joined the administration to run the criminal division — an appointment that had been initially greeted with relief by career officials. But as the standoff between Mr. Bove and the career prosecutors persisted last week, many who report to Ms. Bacon came to see her as unquestioningly following Mr. Bove’s instructions, despite her years of experience as a corruption prosecutor.
Ms. Bacon’s former supervisor in Ohio, Ann Rowland, expressed disbelief at her actions.
“Toni is one of the foremost public corruption attorneys in the country, so she knows the Adams indictment is more than worthy of prosecution,” Ms. Rowland said. “One then can only conclude her decision to sign off on the motion to dismiss was purely political.”
She signed that loyalty oath so she had to sign this dismissal. That’s how things are going to work in Trump’s DOJ. The Constitution is toilet paper — you do as the king says.
In the office of the DC US attorney’s office today, another career prosecutor in charge of the criminal division resigned after being told to “claw back” grants that the Biden administration had already sent out, another violation of the Constitution. That order apparently came from the main justice department.
That’s right — Bove cited a Project Veritas video. That’s where we are.
Last night the White House submitted a filing to Judge Tanya Chutken that Elon Musk does not lead the DOGE and has no power to do anything but advise the president. Apparently, this was an attempt to head off her potential ruling that DOGE is not properly constituted to do what it’s doing, particularly under the leadership of the unaccountable Musk:
These are the people, you’ll recall, who have made a fetish out of “America First” leave the rest of the world alone. Their little white neo-con is showing only this time their reason for this bellicose bullshit is that the Prime Minister of Canada is younger and better looking than Donald Trump.
This morning I heard Dana Bash feeling the need to explain to her viewers that the Treaty of Versailles after WWI led to Adolph Hitler and WWII.
Then from Politico this morning:
He didn’t know any of this? This journalist needs to click on another Wikipedia page about the year FDR took office. The US was in the midst of the worst economic depression in its history. Unemployment In 1932 was 25% and getting worse and the banking system was near collapse.
He won in a landslide with 472 electoral votes, 42 (out of 48) states and 57.4% of the popular vote. The nation was desperate for relief and Roosevelt had a massive mandate to do what he was doing.
Trump,on the other hand, barely won the popular vote with 1.5% and didn’t even achieve a majority and only got 312 electoral votes. He has taken office in a period of full employment and economic vitality. The financial markets are booming and inflation, which was moderately high two years ago, is tamed.
Trump isn’t even trying to pass his agenda through the Congress as Roosevelt did because the GOP majority is so slim as to be almost non-existent. His policies are aimed at a phantom problem that nobody voted for or needed, all to benefit his buddies in the private sector who are no doubt going to be tapped to take up the slack that Musk has created with his indiscriminate cuts. And then, the corruption will really take off.
The only way you can compare Trump’s wrecking ball to Roosevelt’s is as the Bizarroworld version in which instead of saving the country he is destroying it.
If you don’t follow her orders she will shoot you down like a dog. You know she’ll do it, too:
Tonight, I’m announcing a nationwide and international multimillion-dollar ad campaign warning illegal aliens to leave our country NOW or face deportation with the inability to return to the US. This serves as a strong warning to criminal illegal aliens to not come to America. If… pic.twitter.com/VcVgJYfSKR
As they destroy the lives of Americans by firing half the federal workforce in the name of eliminating waste, they’re spending millions on vanity projects like that piece of work.
US President Donald Trump on Sunday attended the Daytona 500 which is a NASCAR Cup Series motor race, but more than his attendance, it was his mode of transport that gathered quite the chatter online and offline. Trump took his Air Force One to attend the sports event at the Daytona beach. NASCAR fans were thrilled to see the Air Force One flyover the area before Trump rode in the presidential limousine onto the Daytona International Speedway.
Air Force One took off from Palm Beach International Airport shortly after noon. The White House in a statement said that he was accompanied by his son Eric, grandson Luke, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum among others.
[…]
While some were relishing in their fan moment, others were not so happy about the whole show. @CalltoActivism shared the disappointment and pointed out how American taxpayers’ money was being wasted. “Since we’re on the topic of government waste, Donald Trump’s joyride around the Daytona 500 cost American taxpayers around $5,000,000,” the tweet said. Giving further breakdown, the user wrote,
The government is being run on a day to day basis by our Prime Minister Elon Musk and various henchmen. King Trump appears to be mostly doing ceremonial duties, as monarchs tend to do.
These ceremonies cost a lot of money but they are important to ensure that the public is given many moments they can relish as assurances that their president is a star. As you know, when you’re a star they let you do it.
“I’d understand a strategic reduction in force if needed,” said one USDA employee, who was fired over the weekend. “But this was a butchering of some of our best. Does the public know this?”
The termination letters hitting inboxes all struck the same note: Probationary workers were getting the ax for poor job performance. But many of those fired had just received positive reviews, or had not worked in the government long enough to receive even a single rating, according to interviews with federal employees and documents obtained by The Post.
[…]
Firing employees en masse with the same claim of poor performance is illegal, said Jim Eisenmann, a partner at the Alden Law Group, a law firm specializing in litigation by federal employees. It violates federal law covering career civil service employees, he said.
“It can’t be true,” Eisenmann said. “They’re clearly not articulating this on an individual basis, which is what makes it so suspect.”
One of those civil servants fired for “performance” is from nearby. This FB account from Jenifer Bunty popped up this morning. She’s a local employed by the U.S. Forest Service (also USDA) involved in disaster relief. Or she was:
Terminated, Effective Immediately
At the risk of exposing what a nerd I am, I’ll tell you that when I first opened my Forest Service uniform, I held my badge and cried. I was so proud to be part of the agency whose mission is “caring for the land and serving people”. I thought about how proud my dad would be. He instilled in me a sense of duty, patriotism, and a strong desire to do what’s right, especially when people need it most.
For the past 19.5 months, I’ve been working in disaster recovery for the National Forests in North Carolina. I worked on 6 hurricanes or major storms and a dozen or more wildfires during that time, including deployments to western states.
I also took a temp promotion as the District Ranger for the Grandfather Ranger District two weeks before Hurricane Helene ravaged Pisgah National Forest, western NC, and other states. While my own family didn’t have power or a way to keep food and medication cold, I went in and worked 19 days straight before someone made me take a break.
I led the District to the best of my ability through something none of us signed up for. I had to. People needed us. Our first focus was clearing a path to get to 35 kids and their teachers who were trapped in a facility behind several landslides and giant piles of debris. After that, we focused on supporting search and rescue, clearing roads for emergency access, and helping everywhere we could.
I returned to my normal role on the disaster recovery team in January and started working towards long-term recovery for the Forest and our local communities. On Thursday, I stood on the ruined part of I-40 with a team planning how to stick an interstate back on the side of a mountain. People probably don’t realize that portion sits on National Forest land and cannot be fixed without Forest Service employees. That afternoon we got word that 14 of our employees were indiscriminately fired. All of them were actively working on hurricane recovery.
Photo via Jenifer Bunty’s FB page.
Yesterday, I received the call that I was being fired. We’ve lost 17 in total from the National Forests in North Carolina. Every single one was working on hurricane recovery projects. The majority of them hold firefighter or incident management qualifications and actively support wildfire operations. The US Forest Service has reportedly lost more than 4000 employees at this point. More than 10% of the agency.
My termination letter said it was “based on performance”. The supervisor that called me said I was the best hire they had ever made. My performance reviews have always been excellent. I love what I do and, like so many of my colleagues, I care about getting it right to meet our mission.
In my time working for this agency, I think I’ve made a difference. Besides growing personally and professionally, I’ve tried to be an example of a strong, caring woman for my daughters. I talk with them about how we can do hard things and we should always “do what we can, with what we have, where we’re at.” When I told them that I wasn’t allowed to do my job anymore, they cried with me. We have all sacrificed for my work. I’ve taught them to believe it matters.
It still matters.
I hope I get to do it again one day.
I was planning a second post this morning about something much scarier. But Jenifer’s story needed a wider audience.
