If it's Thursday, this must be Ankara.
Only 1,409 days to go...
Call to Action...
A friend sent me the following. If you feel so inclined to voice your concerns:
Card Campaign for Democracy - #TheIdesOfTrump
POSTCARDS TO TRUMP - March 15th is date!
Living through these times…
Why you should make your phone boring: What’s really worked in terms of helping me be on my phone less is just making it less interesting.
How I Lost Hope and Took Up Singing
#6 Touch grass
While it’s important to stay engaged, so is getting outside and connecting with nature to calm and soothe your busy brain. Logging off and connecting with people in real life will keep your support system strong for when things are tough. Protect your mental health by turning off notifications and taking breaks from your phone.
Finding the humor…
Thought for the day in honor of her birthday…
“The war, which destroyed so much of everything, was also constructive, in a way. It established clearly the cold, and finally unhypocritical fact that the most important thing on earth to men today is money.”
~ Janet Flanner
Must Read Article:
TDS Turns Out to Have Been Prophetic
So, one after another, Republicans fell back from one red line to another. Instead of taking one of the many off-ramps offered to them, they returned him to power. And have now transformed the GOP into a Trump rubber-stamp-cum-cult. Trump, of course, is who he always was; except angrier, more bitter, and still unburdened by either principles or guardrails.
So, I have to ask what remains of the GOP:
You elected a convicted felon to the most powerful office in the world — broadly immune from accountability, and literally above the law in his official duties. WTF did you think would happen?
Now look at you, with the chaos bubbling all around you. On again, off again, pointless trade wars with our allies; endless graft; a slash and burn through the government that endangers everything from air travel to Social Security; pardons for rioters and crooked politicians; assaults on the rule of law and free speech; the abandonment of allies; and now a crumbling stock market.
What you called Trump Derangement Syndrome turns out to have been a warning — and a prophecy. And you ignored it, you cowardly, ignorant, servile scum.
So we got scenes like this from the White House: As Americans lost trillions of dollars in the markets, the president was hawking cars for the world’s richest man.
It such a relief to know that our president makes decisions based on FauxNews reporting from Jesse Watters… oy veh.
Over the ensuing weeks, the president grew unhappy with the television coverage of cuts affecting his voters, according to two of those officials, while the White House fielded calls from Cabinet members and Republican lawmakers frustrated by Elon Musk, the billionaire tech mogul empowered to slash the federal government. Some of Trump’s top advisers became worried about the political fallout from DOGE’s sweeping cuts, especially after seeing scenes of angry constituents yelling at GOP members of Congress in town halls.
“I don’t think anything has fundamentally changed. It’s not about government efficiency and effectiveness. It’s about crippling the federal workforce because he sees it as a threat to him instead of a service provider to the country.” ~Representative Adam Smith, ranking member of the Armed Services Committee
Quote of the day:
“Trump seems determined to prove how quickly he can spark American society’s undoing. In record time, he has brought shame and disorder to the country…. Trump has set out to fire countless civil servants, punish his adversaries, and threaten the press. He has cast aside essential climate actions, humiliated undocumented immigrants and trans men and women, coddled dictators, and unnerved allies…Trump has empowered extremists distinguished principally by their conspiracy thinking, sycophancy, and incompetence…
Is this really what Trump’s supporters voted for? How does the decimation of American values, institutions, and commitments bring down the price of eggs?”
~ David Remnick
What I’m reading today…
One of President Donald Trump’s lesser known but profoundly damaging legacies will be the explosive rise in the national debt that occurred on his watch. The financial burden that he’s inflicted on our government will wreak havoc for decades, saddling our kids and grandkids with debt.
The Path to American Authoritarianism
Democracy survived Trump’s first term because he had no experience, plan, or team. He did not control the Republican Party when he took office in 2017, and most Republican leaders were still committed to democratic rules of the game. Trump governed with establishment Republicans and technocrats, and they largely constrained him. None of those things are true anymore. This time, Trump has made it clear that he intends to govern with loyalists. He now dominates the Republican Party, which, purged of its anti-Trump forces, now acquiesces to his authoritarian behavior.
DOGE Is Courting Catastrophic Risk
More than 800 workers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have lost their job in recent weeks, including many who helped mitigate climate disasters, track hurricanes, predict ever-stronger storms, and notify potential victims. Meanwhile, cuts to volcano monitoring are crippling the government’s ability to measure eruption risk. DOGE is also reportedly preparing to cancel the lease on the government’s “nerve center” for national weather forecasts.
Top CEOs mark down economic outlook
The data from the Business Roundtable is the latest sign that a volatile policy environment is dampening the outlook in Corporate America — and these survey results were mostly collected before last week's on-then-off tariffs and ensuing stock market volatility. The group's economic outlook index fell 7 points from its December release. At 84, the level is now about the same as it was in the first half of last year and in line with its historical average, implying steady overall growth ahead….
Before the latest wave of volatility and emergence of recession fears, America's most important corporate decision-makers were becoming more wary of the growth outlook.
‘You Can’t Pin Him Down’: Trump’s Contradictions Are His Ultimate Cover
Since storming back into office, Trump has used a dizzying rhetorical tactic of shifting positions like quicksand, muddying his messages and contradicting himself, sometimes in the same day. The inconsistencies have presented the American public with dueling narratives at every turn, allowing people to pick and choose what they want to believe about the president’s intentions. Trump has long dealt in distortions and lies, including in his first term. But as he executes a much more aggressive agenda at home and abroad, his contradictions have become more brazen and more pronounced. “The reality of our modern information world is that you can pick and choose what you want to believe. He instinctively knows that.”
Republicans' "not-in-my-backyard" strategy on DOGE cuts
"That is no way to run a government. That is, sort of, the ultimate partisan crony capitalism ... but apparently that's what we've come to these days."
Trump is lying about dead people and Social Security
Donald Trump repeated Musk’s claims in the State of the Union Address, again suggesting that money is being paid out to super-centenarians on a scale that is relevant to long-term fiscal policy. This isn’t true, Trump is not proposing any solutions to the actual problem, and I don’t understand what move he’s trying to set up with this claim.
Thom Tillis’ Spat With Trump Advisers Raises a New Reelection Challenge
Tillis is widely seen as the GOP’s best chance at retaining the North Carolina swing seat. But first he has to survive the primary, where his light history of working with Democrats is a bit of a liability. Tillis has been trying to play both sides of the dynamic, voting in lockstep with Trump on his legislative agenda and for his cabinet while also nodding to his bipartisan record, which could be helpful in the general election.
US Ag secretary says 'mistakes made' in some fed firings; may review local Forest Service fires
The secretary’s trip comes on the heels of termination letters sent to nearly 6,000 probationary employees from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, including 3,400 Forest Service employees. Several of these employees worked on wildfire response and Helene recovery efforts in Western North Carolina, the Citizen Times reported.
Justice Dept. Official Says She Was Fired After Opposing Restoring Mel Gibson’s Gun Rights
Elizabeth G. Oyer, the former pardon attorney, described the sequence of events as an alarming departure from longstanding practice, one that put public safety and the department’s integrity at risk. Mr. Gibson had lost his gun rights as a result of a 2011 domestic violence misdemeanor conviction. “This is dangerous. This isn’t political — this is a safety issue,” Ms. Oyer said in an interview with The New York Times as she described the internal discussions about whether to give gun rights back to people with domestic violence convictions.
Amid a growing measles outbreak, doctors worry RFK Jr. is sending the wrong message
News of a second death comes as infectious disease doctors worry that the federal government's messaging about the outbreak is putting more emphasis on treatments like vitamin A than on vaccination, even as misinformation about some of these treatments is spreading online. Those concerns come in the wake of recent comments made by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kennedy addressed the growing measles outbreak in an editorial for Fox News published on Sunday, also posted on the HHS website.
“We can give ourselves far, far more than Donald Trump can ever take away, but it will—it will take extraordinary efforts. It won’t be business as usual. We will have to do things we haven’t imagined before, at speeds we didn’t think possible. [...] I know, I know that these are dark days, dark days brought on by a country we can no longer trust. We are getting over the shock, but let us never forget the lessons: we have to look after ourselves and we have to look out for each other. We need to pull together in the tough days ahead.”
~ Mark Carney, Prime Minister elect
Wildfire season is here. Helene and DOGE could make it worse.
Fires start and spread easily in the dry, windy weather typical to the region this time of year. Debris from Tropical Storm Helene, including hundreds of thousands of acres of downed trees across the state, threatens to fuel fires and hinder the crews trying to put them out. And in a realm where resources often run thin even in politically stable times, recent cuts to federal agencies including the U.S. Forest Service could limit both fire prevention and response.
Trump Golf Weekends’ Cost To Taxpayers Hits $18.2 Million
Donald Trump’s insistence on playing golf at his Florida courses has now cost American taxpayers more than $18 million since he regained the presidency, setting him on a pace to exceed the $151.5 million he spent in his first term. On Saturday, Trump is playing golf for the 13th day of his 48 in office. It was his 10th day playing at his course in West Palm Beach… According to a 2019 Government Accountability Office report examining the first four trips Trump took to Mar-a-Lago during his first administration, each one costs $3,383,250 — a sum based on 2017 dollars that is likely higher now.
Trump Allies Seek Pardons From an Emboldened White House
Lawyers and lobbyists with connections to Mr. Trump have scrambled to take advantage. They have collected large fees from clemency seekers who would not be eligible for second chances under apolitical criteria that are intended to guide a Justice Department system for recommending mercy for those who have served their time or demonstrated remorse and a lower likelihood of recidivism. Instead, clemency petitioners are mostly circumventing that system, tailoring their pitches to the president by emphasizing their loyalty to him and echoing his claims of political persecution. Among them are a rapper convicted in connection with a Malaysian embezzlement scheme, a reality-television-star couple found guilty of defrauding banks and evading taxes, and two Washington, D.C., police officers convicted after a chase that killed a young man.
Are We on the Verge of a Population Collapse?
A new report from the United Nations reveals that the global population will be 700 million people less than previously thought by the end of the century. The global population will now, according to projections, peak at 10.3 billion around 2080 and then decline to 10.2 billion by 2100. By 2100, the population of Europe is expected to shrink by 21% from its peak in 2020 due to plunging birth rates.
Bravo Senator Kelly
“He’s slashed and burned the federal government to make room for a giant tax cut for billionaires like himself. I’ve sworn an oath to this country, flown in combat, I served in the Navy for 25 years. It appears to me the oath that Elon Musk stands by is the oath of billionaires, to make their lives easier, not the American people, not veterans.”
“Musk — a man who’s never put his own skin on the line for anything tougher than a bad quarterly report — is now gatekeeping patriotism against a guy who literally flew combat missions for America? You can’t make this stuff up.” ~Matt Lewis
What I am watching…
North Carolina businesses fear Trump cuts months after floods
CNN chief climate correspondent Bill Weir speaks to Asheville residents and business owners about the struggle to recover from Hurricane Helene and rebuild their economy. President Donald Trump is still taking aim at FEMA, promising sharp cuts. DOGE's efforts laid off many people who were working toward that goal, including forest and parks service employees.
What I read every day…
PLEASE Keep Writing!! Awesome