Lilsma

[Imagination Library @dollyslibrary]

Our team, our local program partners, and every operational partner who helps make this program possible each month are heartbroken at the loss of our founder, Dolly Parton. (cont.)

[djconn @djconn]

@starsandstripes @Rose_Lori THIS HAPPENED

[15six @the15six]

@starsandstripes @Rose_Lori

[Covie @covie_93]

Under hegseth, rape is considered to be just part of a woman's duties aboard Navy ships.....

[Roman Sheremeta 🇺🇸🇺🇦 @rshereme]

Is Donald Trump a Russian asset?

For years, Trump has repeatedly taken positions that benefit Vladimir Putin.

He blamed Ukraine for the war. He publicly humiliated Zelenskyy. He cut intelligence support to Ukrainian forces. He exaggerated how much America had spent helping Ukraine. He pressured Kyiv to surrender territory while repeatedly treating Putin as someone deserving accommodation and respect.

And yet Putin invaded Ukraine. Putin bombs Ukrainian cities. Putin rejects ceasefires. Putin demands Ukrainian territory. Putin openly wants to destroy Ukraine as an independent state.

Still, somehow, the pressure repeatedly falls on Ukraine.

Therefore, Luke Harding’s new book, Betrayal: Trump, Putin and the New Age of Conquest, raises a natural question: If Trump actually were a Russian agent, what exactly would he be doing differently?

This is not an accusation that Trump was recruited by Russian intelligence or that he takes orders from the Kremlin. Putin does not need to control the American president if the American president voluntarily advances policies that serve Putin’s interests.

For decades, the Kremlin’s strategic objectives have been remarkably consistent: weaken NATO, divide Europe from the United States, undermine Western institutions, discredit Ukraine, and force Kyiv back into Moscow’s sphere of influence.

Now ask yourself: which of these objectives has Trump opposed consistently, and which has he helped advance?

At some point, intentions matter less than outcomes.

Whether this comes from admiration for strongmen, personal grievances, ideology, business interests, manipulation, or something else may ultimately be for historians to determine.

But from Putin’s perspective, the result is what matters.

Russia has spent decades trying to weaken the West from the outside. It could hardly have hoped that the help would come from within.

[Lorraine E-Van-Off @LorraineEvanoff]

"In February, I reported in Byline Times that Trump’s pardon of former FBI counterintelligence agent Mark Rossini came six months after Isabela Herrera, daughter of bribery co-defendant Julio Herrera Velutini, completed $3.5 million in contributions to Make America Great Again Inc.

A $2.5 million check arrived on New Year’s Eve 2024. Another $1 million followed seven months later.

The clemency Trump ultimately granted covered Rossini and his two co-defendants, Herrera Velutini and former Puerto Rico Governor Wanda Vázquez Garced, and sealed the record of what Rossini’s firm had done for Kremlin-linked oligarchs Oleg Deripaska and Dmitry Rybolovlev.

The story depended on a legal fiction built into super PAC law after Citizens United. Courts allowed unlimited fundraising only on the theory that these committees stay independent of the candidates they benefit.

Under that theory, a check to MAGA Inc. is not a check to Trump. Remove it and money from a bribery defendant’s family into “the super PAC Trump’s allies control” becomes money to the man who signs pardons.

Trump removed it himself this month. In a Punchbowl News “Flyout Day” interview taped at the White House and released August 7, Jake Sherman put the standard framing to him directly, calling MAGA Inc. the super PAC “that you, that your allies control.”

Trump corrected him. “Not my allies, I control it.” Sherman laughed. He put the PAC’s holdings at $800 million and said he intended to spend it helping Republicans through the midterms.

Sitting presidents do not usually say this about committees barred from coordinating with them, least of all into a reporter’s microphone.

The $800 million figure does not square with the numbers MAGA Inc. has disclosed, either."

Bribery Has Two Ends. Trump Holds Both. https://t.co/vFLm1vfwxk

[Andrew Perez @andrewperezdc]

Just thinking about how Clarence Thomas wrote a health insurance decision that's allowed insurers to just completely fuck patients, so perhaps they die, while he was in the process of getting a free or nearly free $267,000 RV from a health insurance exec https://t.co/2mwiFtUnvL

[frakmaga2025 @FrakMAGA2022]

Defense Secretary Hegseth branded a program to protect civilians as "woke" and "politically correct," then polled his top commanders, expecting them to agree. Instead, every single general told him cutting it would *decrease* operational efficiency and *increase* the risk of misidentifying targets. They explicitly said keeping it was vital for "maximum lethality," not some soft ideal. But Hegseth, ignoring all military expertise, gutted it anyway, prioritizing a culture war talking point over actual combat effectiveness and the advice of people on the ground.

Predictably, after the program was defunded and ignored, U.S. strikes killed hundreds of civilians, drawing global condemnation and Congressional questions. Now, they're considering reviving the very program they demonized. This isn't "supporting the troops" or being "tough on national security." It's dangerous ideological posturing, overriding expert judgment, causing preventable deaths, and then a humiliating reversal when their "bombs away" mentality backfires spectacularly. https://t.co/XkbfQ8io5I

[Democratic Wins Media @DemocraticWins]

BREAKING: In a stunning moment, Fox News just revealed that JPMorgan is predicting that we will enter a global food crisis due to Donald Trump's war in Iran. Every American needs to see this.

[BrooklynDad_Defiant!☮️ @mmpadellan]

Good morning and Happy Tuesday to everyone who agrees that it is OBSCENE that the President is trying to block U.S. citizens from exercising their right to vote via mail-in ballot.

He uses it HIMSELF... and he is STILL the only person caught trying to steal "11,780 votes."

[NBC News @NBCNews]

BREAKING: Trump administration says it might demolish the Kennedy Center if court blocks renovations. https://t.co/OiYBRSEavf

[The Tennessee Holler @TheTNHoller]

ALEX PRETTI'S FAMILY: "He was a good man... No one called us - we found out on TV... It's been 7 months... There was more effort vilifying him than pursuing justice. People need to be held accountable when they murder someone in this country."

Full: https://t.co/sUmrC7cex1

[Jack Hopkins @thejackhopkins]

Well…this is interesting…

A U.S. Air Force C-17 just landed in Moscow. Flew in from Riga. No explanation.

The Pentagon: silent. The Kremlin: “no information.”

Nobody knows who was on it. Or what was in it.

But sure. Routine Tuesday cargo run.

Nothing to see here, folks.

[Norm Eisen @NormEisen]

BREAKING: the administration is now threatening in federal court to LEVEL the Kennedy Center if Trump does not get his way

His path of destruction knows no bounds & he will answer for it in court @DDAction_ @WLG -TN
https://t.co/gyUgFd15RX

[Mike Nellis @MikeNellis]

NEWS: Trump's lawyers just told a federal court that if they don't get their way on renaming and "restoring" the Kennedy Center, they will tear it down and replace it with an outdoor amphitheater. He's holding the Kennedy Center hostage — and it's a preview of what happens to every public institution he can't put his name on.

[ᗰᗩƳᖇᗩ @LePapillonBlu2]

Please repost…. Thank you!

[ᗰᗩƳᖇᗩ @LePapillonBlu2]

Dolly Parton, the Queen of country music, has sadly died at the age of 80… RIP, Queen.

[Lilsma @Lilsma196601]

https://t.co/lW8CoJgHOf

[Gandalv @Microinteracti1]

Hi, My Name Is Gandalv, and I Have Trump Derangement Syndrome.

It started innocently enough. Someone announced that a 50 percent tariff on imported goods would be paid by the exporting country, and I opened my mouth and said that this is not how tariffs work, that the American importer pays it at the border and passes it on to the American consumer, and that a president who does this is essentially fining his own voters for shopping.

The reply came within seconds. TDS. That was the diagnosis.

Not an argument, just three letters and a shrug, the way a doctor might say “terminal” and leave the room.

So I have decided to stop hiding. I am standing up in the church basement with the bad coffee and the folding chairs, and I am saying it out loud.

I have Trump Derangement Syndrome, and the first step is admitting that you find the following things deranged.

I find it deranged that a man imposed tariffs on Heard Island, a territory inhabited exclusively by penguins, and then explained the formula on a cardboard chart in the Rose Garden.

I find it deranged that he wanted to buy Greenland, threatened to take it anyway, and then acted surprised that Denmark, a NATO ally that lost soldiers in Afghanistan on America’s behalf, was not flattered.

I find it deranged that Canada, the country that shares a continent, a hockey rivalry and a nine thousand kilometre undefended border with the United States, was told it should be the 51st state, and that this was meant as a compliment.

I find it deranged that a hurricane forecast was corrected with a Sharpie, that disinfectant was floated as an internal remedy on live television, that windmills were accused of causing cancer, and that the Gulf of Mexico was renamed.

I find it deranged that the men who beat police officers with flagpoles on January 6th were pardoned as patriots, that the Defense Secretary posted strike timings in a group chat that happened to include a journalist, and that a foreign government offered a 400 million dollar aircraft and the answer was not no.

I find it deranged that the East Wing of the White House was demolished for a ballroom, that Zelensky was shouted at in the Oval Office for not saying thank you enough, and that NATO allies were told their protection is conditional while the actual adversary was told he was doing a great job.

And yes, I find it deranged that all of this is defended by people who will pay more for their groceries, their cars and their phones as a direct result, and who will call you sick for noticing.

Here is the thing about TDS. The symptoms are reading, remembering and doing arithmetic. There is no known cure, and frankly none of us are looking for one.

So if you have ever winced at a tariff, sighed at a Sharpie or asked what exactly the penguins did wrong, you belong here. You do not need to whisper. You do not need to hide behind a burner account. Come out of the closet. There are more of us than you think, we are not ashamed, and we saved you a folding chair.

Proud TDS sufferers, welcome home.

Stay deranged, Follow Gandalv @Microinteracti1

[Eileen Left @EileenLeftPA]

trump-pardoned Banuelos is in a Utah jail awaiting a trial on nine first-degree felony charges stemming from the alleged kidnapping and brutal assault of a woman.
Possible life in prison, where he belongs.
https://t.co/9Y46P7KPFt