Tag: facts

Wenzdaz Wandering Political Thoughts

It’s just another WTF morning. Emil Bove was confirmed by the Senate to be a .

You might have more than one Emil Bove in your contact list. This Emil Bove was Trump’s personal lawyer. I know, that starts a gag reflex, doesn’t it? A whistleblower came forward before and reported that this honorable individual, sworn to uphold the law, told people to blow off the courts.

Bove reportedly “stressed to all in attendance that planes needed to take off no matter what,” though he also noted “the possibility that a court order would enjoin those removals before they could be effectuated.”

The suggested response? “Bove stated that DOJ would need to consider telling the courts ‘fuck you’ and ignore any such court order,” per Reuveni’s report.

His response to questions about this was that he didn’t recall. Well, of course this ‘honorable man’ didn’t recall saying such things. Despite that, other whistleblowers emerge to reveal this individual’s corrupted character. Republicans, as they’re prone to do in this era, ignored facts and truths and hurried on to curry favor with TACO. So now, Emil Bove has a lifetime appointment as a judge in that same legal system which he told other lawyers to ignore.

But what did you expect at this point for the United States Senate? Voters, led by Republicans, elected an embecile for POTUS. Not just an embecile, but a felon, convicted in court. A sludge of being who’s been accused of being a rapist multiple times.

  • A person desperately trying to squirm away from being connected to Jeffrey Epstein and his crimes despite aircraft flight logs, anecdotes, news articles, and photographs.
  • A decadent and disgusting individual recorded as saying derogatory things about women, such as “Grab them by the pussy.”
  • An individual, who, when accused of rape, didn’t deny it but instead said, “She’s not my type.”
  • An idiot of a human being who drew a map to overrule what experts said about a hurricane’s landfall, a brainless meatbag who claimed, “I would never golf,” because he would be too busy and has since mostly golfed.
  • A liar, documented and caught in lies well over 30,000 times and counting. One factcheckers catch telling a lie in almost every speech and statement he makes.

With that piece of puke as their leader, were there real expectations that Republicans would find a backbone and vote down his personally endorsed nominee?

Come on, man.

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Fridaz Wandering Poliical Thoughts

Huzzah! The Enshittification of the United States continues at a shitty pace in the United States under PINO TACO. In this story, we have TACO’s full fears on display. See, under the deal approved by the FCC under Trump for Skydance to acquire Paramount, ARSTechnica is reporting that TACO’s regime is permitted to influence editorials at CBS.

Are you ready for a laugh? Here’s what one of the Republican commissioners approving it said:

“Under the agreement, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr explained that Skydance has given assurances that all of the new company’s programming will embody “a diversity of viewpoints from across the political and ideological spectrum.” Carr claimed that the requirements were necessary to restore Americans’ trust in mainstream media, backing conservatives’ claims that media is biased against Trump and appointing an ombudsman for two years to ensure that CBS’s reporting “will be fair, unbiased, and fact-based.” Any complaints of bias that the ombudsman receives will be reviewed by the president of New Paramount, the FCC confirmed.“

*giggle giggle giggle* So fucking hilarious. They — the lyin’ right wing, led by the lyin’ Trump — are gonna ‘restore trust’ in the mainstream media.

Trump has been at war with the media, mainstream or not, whenever they criticize him. Screaming, “Fake news!”, TACO waddles hastily away from any confrontation with facts and reality. Want the truth of that? Hell, it’s all over our news for the last dozen years. Just harken back to when Trump kept insisting that President Obama prove that that he was born in the United States, a fact that had been proven and vetted again and again. Trump pushed that fake news all the way, while insisting it was the truth, and then tried to blame it all on Hillary Clinton.

Look at TACO’s dodging and weaving to prove he never had an affair with Stormy Daniels and never paid her off. Just ask Michael Cohen and Hope Hicks about that.

How ’bout that whopper he keeps telling about the 2020 election being stolen from him, a claim never proven and thrown out of court over 60 times?

Last year, while running for President, he pushed the lie that immigrants were eating pets.

Let us consider the current truth Trump is trying to bury, that he and Jeffrey Epstein were never a thing. The latest laughing about the truth of that is how fast Trump’s AG, Bondi, went from saying “the list is on my desk” to Trump and the DOJ claiming there is no list.

Epstein & Trump, BFFs

Trump buries his financial records because he fears the truth. He hides his school records because the truth about them is too much for him to handle. He’s lied and cheated throughout his entire adult life, cheating on wives, cheating on business partners, cheating students at Trump University, cheating investors cheating contractors, and lying about it all.

TACO and the GOTP. They can’t handle the truth. That’s why Trump is always chickening out.

Now it looks like Skydance, Paramount, and CBS can’t handle the truth, either.

What a pathetic bunch of losers.

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Frida’s Wandering Political Thoughts

Well, well, well. I think John Stoehr kicks a few relevant covers off the whole MAGAmess as it relates to Jeffrey Epstein files.

Donald Trump just blew his cover as the ‘real victim’ in new scam on MAGA | Opinion

The president is trying to change the subject after the attorney general closed the case on disgraced financier and Jeffrey Epstein. That’s why Donald Trump has lately been harping on Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. Someone is to blame for some makebelieve problem and Trump wants to be seen as the solution.

But even if Trump were able to redirect the press corps’ attention, he is unlikely to change the dynamics under way among the MAGA faithful. Trump says Powell must go so that interest rates fall, but to the extent that MAGA base was ever motivated by inflation or the cost of living, it was a secondary concern. MAGA’s principal motivation is drawn from a cosmic story about the battle between good and evil, and with the Epstein scandal, Trump has raised doubts about which side he’s on.

Which story? QAnon. It’s the belief that Donald Trump is the epic hero in a secret war against powerful and malevolent (and Jewish) conspirators who have plotted with agents in the government (the deep state), corporations (wokeness) and the media (lies) to sabotage America. The end of the story was supposed to come when Trump released the Epstein files in advance of executing God’s enemies.

Read more here…

Stoehr’s piece of thinking tickled me. I knew MAGALand was infuriated by how the Trump Regime is handling the Epstein Files. Trump promised to release the files so they could know the truth. MAGAts want the files, specifically, ‘the list’, released. The List is supposed to be the smoking gun, the evidence of all the deep shit that Trump has been claiming the hated Democrats and Liberals have been doing in secret while creating and managing their vast shadow government, where they control the weather and scheme against the pure Christians and whites who deserve a nation unsullied by non-whites, a land where education isn’t tainted with facts and truth that makes them queasy.

But after detail after detail is put out there about the Epstein file, Trump finds himself increasingly angry, defensive and isolated. He’s flailing to make the rest of the world turn the damn channel. But as Stoehr points out, MAGALand can’t; to disavow the Epstein files as Trump demands means that they must also disavow the entire fabric of the QAnon universe.

Pulling that thread would unravel their fantasy. MAGALand knows it; Trump is trying to pretend it isn’t true. But if MAGALand is forced to accept that the Epstein files lack all the damning evidence that Trump has claimed is in it, they might be forced to confront, how else has he lied to us? They might even start realizing how much Trump duped them and used them. They might even question if Trump was sent by God. As one of Trump’s far right supporters, Nick Fuentes, said, “You are fat, you are a joke, you are stupid, you are not funny, you are not as smart as you think you are,” Fuentes said, later adding, “This entire thing has been a scam.”

That could be the end not just of Trump but of all those others who spread and supported his fictions. For him, for them, it’s less about if Trump is in the files; it’s more about the Democrats not being in it.

Fingers crossed that this all blows up. Frankly, I don’t give a damn any longer who might be in it.

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Facts, Truths, & Observations

Daily Kos has a smile-producing post today. Here are some highlights.

What in the name of dysentery is Kristi Noem talking about?

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is so freakin’ weird.

On Monday, the official Department of Homeland Security X account posted an image of a painting, along with the caption, “Remember your Homeland’s Heritage. New Life in a New Land – Morgan Weistling.”

DHS screenshot dysentery MM

First, Noem is showing a painting of people who could be immigrants. Many immigrants came to the United States and went west as settlers or pioneers. But let’s go on.

DK points out the Oregon Trail truth:

If you grew up playing the video game “Oregon Trail,” you know what this evokes: dysentery. The National Park Service estimates that 30,000 settlers died from it—nearly 10%—on the Oregon Trail alone. That’s 10-15 deaths per mile.

But maybe that’s on brand for today’s conservatives. After all, they’re bizarrely excited to bring back measles, too.

But dysentery was just the beginning. Gun mishaps, hypothermia, wild animals, drowning during river crossings, rightly hostile Indigenous tribes—this was a death gauntlet. It’s just plain weird to romanticize one of the most brutal chapters of American expansionism.

And that baby in the painting? That poor, nameless baby?

In the mid-1800s, one-third of children didn’t make it to their 5th birthday according to this study from Our World in Data. Other estimates suggest that infant mortality was closer to 40-45% during this era and likely even higher on the trail. 

~snip~

And stepping back, what does this painting even have to do with DHS? Are they trying to police vibes now?

It’s just all so weird.

These Trumpists aren’t “tough.” They’re just strange.

What strikes me as so wild and strange about this is is similiarity to Trump’s fantasy that he’s like the fictional Superman character. Both Noem and Trump’s willingness to play make-believe has to dismiss the truth and facts. Many ratioed Trump’s post, pointing out that Superman was an undocumented immigrant, and that he stood up for the oppressed, and was not an oppressor, like Trump. Superman fights the kind of evil which Trump is spearheading.

Yep, the Trumpettes are delusional. They’re bullies. They’re liars.

And they’re strange.

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Sunda’s Wandering Thoughts

I baked for the Independence Day festivities. I’m not usually the house baker but my wife thought I should bake as a blow against the patriarchy. So bake I did.

My baking was the modern kind: a brownie mix, egg, oil, water. Everything except the water was purchased at a store. The water came from my faucet, part of our city’s water and sewage systems.

I made circular brownies with M&Ms in a silicon baking pan created for that job. We have a gas oven with a timer and all that. I added the ingredients into a bowl per directions, preheated the oven to the temperature they told me to use, and doled the rich concoction into the waiting little cups built into the silicon ‘pan’. Then, see the timer for the time the instructions recommended, wait, watch, and test to see if they’re done, using the honored toothpick test.

The process allowed a lot of free time thinking. And that becomes my point. Baking has been around about 10,000 years. The earliest evidence of baking comes from Egypt, and not the United States. While it may have started around the Meditarranean Sea, it grew. Many peoples, cultures, and societies contributed to its growth and the lessons learned in what works. Then they passed it on. People took it up, tweaeked and refined it, documented it, and passed it on. People from many religions and ethnicities had a hand in it. Men and women, along with people of less certain genders baked, regardless of their sexual orientation, regardless of nationality or religion, until we reached this point that baking is a well-refined and understood process, simplified enough that even a neophyte like me can gather stuff and bake.

Here is my real point, something the Trump Regime and its half-assed backward, racist, sexist supporters want to dismiss. We live in a world of developments built on the shoulders of others. We’ve stacked advances and helped consolidate, perpetuate, and spread the gains. Name an industry and explore it, and amazingly, you’ll probably discover that it wasn’t all done by white Christian American men. Now the Trumpettes want to pretend that no one except white Americans did anything worthwhile, especially in the United States to deliver the success we’ve achieved as a nation, trying to bestow as much credit as possible on men and Christianity, even if they need to lie to make their case, which they do.

America First! Hell, the United States wouldn’t exist without immigration — and shall we talk to the peoples who lived in North America before the waves of explorers, settlers, and armies ‘discovered’ the land mass? America First! Our form of democratic government is derived from other nations, as is our mercantile system, which also depends on other nations for success.

Trump’s willful, deliberate ignorance won’t stand, although it will do serious damage. Progress comes from unforeseen developments as much as planned advances. We don’t know who will make a critical, game-changing insight. Trump is trying to pretend otherwise. He can successfully fake it for a while, but eventually, his willful stupidity will bite us all in the ass.

As always, time will tell when and how. Meanwhile, we grit our teeth and resist his ignorance as best as we can.

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Frida’s Wandering Political Thoughts

Just putting out reminders who Trump is because he likes pretending he’s someone else. I know I’m getting numb to it; I’m sure others are, too. We’re angry but numb.

Angry But Numb might be a good rock group name.

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Wenzda’s Wandering Political Thoughts

I was one to jump on the stage when we asked before the flash flooding in Texas killed so many, “Why weren’t they warned?” Now we have more insight into the answer. And yes, the path to this disaster goes right through DOGE.

As the Texas Floodwaters Rose, One Indispensable Voice Was Silent

When a reporter demanded to know why the summer camps along the Guadalupe River weren’t evacuated before its waters reached their deadly peak on July 4, Rob Kelly, the highest-ranking local official, had a simple answer: “No one knew this kind of flood was coming.”

Why not? Kerr County, Texas, had lots of history to go on — as Kelly went on to explain: “We have floods all the time. This is the most dangerous river valley in the United States.” The National Weather Service had even brought in extra staff that night. Most important, the service had issued three increasingly dire warnings early that morning — at 1:14 a.m., 4:03 a.m. and 6:06 a.m.

What Kelly didn’t mention, but which has since become well known, is that the Weather Service employee whose job it was to make sure those warnings got traction — Paul Yura, the long-serving meteorologist in charge of “warning coordination” — had recently taken an unplanned early retirement amid cuts pushed by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. He was not replaced.

Read more here…

This is infuriating. This was one of the many warnings we progressives, liberals, and Democrats voiced time and again: Trump and the right wing want to destroy government. They don’t care who is killed or impoverished when they do, as long as it isn’t them. And it wont’ be them; they’re protecting themselves.

We see similiar stories emerging with taxes, education systems and school districts, disaster responses, diseases, trade, employment, deportation, rising crime, and healthcare emerging across the nation. It’s horrible to read these stories. But so many blindly follow Trump and the GOP, they voted for their own ruin. And many still swear, “Yes, but this is better than what the Democrats were offering.”

What is it that they thought the Democrats were offering, they can’t really explain. They just insist that President Biden was destroying the United States. They rallyed around the price of eggs.

The price of eggs are higher now. Do they really think they gained anything by supporting Trump and his treacherous agenda, which is clearly based on Project 2025, which he dismissed over and over again.

When will they learn and reject the Trump Regime’s incompetence and destruction? How many more dead Americans will we count before they finally awaken? Repu

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Frida’s Wandering Political Thoughts

As I survey life in the United States from my home in 2025, it feels to me like we’ve gone from Nanny State to Bully State. Trump demonstrates his bully tendencies with everything that he does.

Donald Trump Makes Legal Threat To CNN And The New York Times Over Their Reporting On Iran Intel Assessment

Along the way to becoming a bully nation, the Trump Regime is energetically dumping facts. Trump’s own regime’s Intel said Iran wasn’t near completing a nuclear weapon. Trump claimed that he knew better without offering any facts.

After the bombing, Trump said that the mission resulted in Iran’s nuclear capabilities being “obliterated.” The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) assessment said that Iran’s program was probably only set back a few months. Trump insists, without evidence, we must believe him.

On June 20, a reporter asked Trump: “What intelligence do you have that Iran is building a nuclear weapon? Your Intelligence Community has said they have no evidence that they are at this point.” Trump responded, “Well then my Intelligence Community is wrong,” and he said that Gabbard was “wrong.”

You can see why doubt is blooming like flowers in the spring. The Trump Regime’s response to everything among its directors, press secretaries, and cabinet members is, hey, trust us. They really dislike questions and react with violent anger when questioned, especially when facts get involved. Yet, we have several parts of the government saying one thing while TACO insists its otherwise. We have metrics saying one thing while TACO and his trumpizens insist their alternative set of facts say differently.

Polls are showing, for now, that more U.S. citizens believe the United States is on the wrong track. We see more of the same in the latest consumer confidence index.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans’ view of the U.S. economy worsened in June, resuming a downward slide that had dragged consumer confidence to its lowest level since the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago.

The Conference Board said Tuesday that its consumer confidence index slid to 93 in June, down 5.4 points from 98.4 last month, which represented a brief uptick.

Of course, as a group, the U.S. electorate is a jelly-filled crumbly invertebrate. Many critics will say of this group and my gross generalization, there are so many issues, the issues fracture us. Yes, and that’s normal in any democracy. But shouldn’t history, truth, and facts mean more? As we’re frequently finding, truth and facts only matter to same when they slap people in the face like a used diaper via personal experience.

We see this especially demonstrated in the Immigration issue, as orchestrated by Killer Noem and her banditos. After teaching people to question authorities and question mask-wearing gunmen, we’re now supposed to just accept that it’s okay for ICE to disappear people? We used to fill milk cartons with people who went missing. Now, like a lying president and mass shootings, disappeared people is becoming a new American norm. Doesn’t matter if the disappeared are criminals; doesn’t matter if due process is followed. Who needs law and order in this growing lawless nation?

Remember when we used to say, “Innocent until proven guilty”?

Do you recall the days when “Everyone has their day in court”?

What about that old idea that, “If you’re not doing anything illegal, you don’t have anything to fear”?

Hey, that shit is gone. This is what happens when history, facts, and truth no longer matter. Little by little, day by day, decision by decision, act by act, truth, justice, and due process matter less and less.

And then a point is reached when nothing matters except the bully in charge.

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