LeRoy Otis

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald. ✍🏻♟🎼

[LeRoy Otis @AncientOne007]

No pun is so low that I will not stoop to pick it up.

[Dana Scully Fella 🇺🇦 @danascully1984]

Ukraine vs Ruzzia

[Scott Robertson @sarobertson_]

McGowan: Every single country in the World Cup has universal health care except us. That's not a far left position.

[Acyn @Acyn]

Biden: The reflecting pool reflects something even worse than the narcissism and incompetence at the core of this administration. It’s the corruption. The corruption. The brazen, blatant corruption. Corruption on a scale never seen before in American history in any administration.

Trump has made billions of dollars since returning to the White House. Simply stunning to me.

He has no shame. Frankly, it’s embarrassing for the country. Trump couldn’t care less.

Making money off the presidency is one of the reasons he wants to be president

[The Bulwark @BulwarkOnline]

Gov. Mike DeWine on the Mullin v. Doe: "It's a mistake for a number of reasons…You cannot fly into Port-au-Prince…It is clearly not safe…It is worse than it has ever been…It's not in the U.S. interest, certainly not in Ohio's interest, to have people who are working every single day, who are supporting a family, who are buying houses, fixing up old houses, starting businesses, and put deep roots in this country and really are contributing — and yank them out…That is a huge, huge mistake."

[Ed Krassenstein @EdKrassen]

WWII Veteran and Purple Heart recipient Robert Hilliard:

"Next week I'll be 101 years old. In February 1944 when I was 18 years old I was inducted into the army and what they taught me to do there was to kill people who set up detention camps. Can you imagine how I felt earlier this year when they announced that one of the future detention camps would be at that same camp landing in Florida? We have a fascist, a fascist government, that allows innocent people to be put in detention camps and incarcerated."

Source: @tomaskenn

[Mike Young @micyoung75]

Elias's comparison is the one worth sitting with. When Bill Clinton briefly boarded Loretta Lynch's plane on a Phoenix tarmac in 2016 and they talked about grandchildren and golf - no documented request, no documented outcome, a conversation - the media treated it as a scandal that required weeks of coverage. Trump stood at a podium in Pennsylvania, described personally calling a federal prosecutor to investigate an election while his preferred candidate was losing, and the Pennsylvania federal prosecutor was sitting in the audience being publicly thanked. Elias: none of the reporters present found this worthy of a question.

The normalization that allows that to happen is not benign. When the president describes using the federal prosecution apparatus to intervene in a state election and it registers as a moment of rally color rather than a constitutional question, the mechanism that would otherwise produce accountability has been eroded. That erosion is itself the story underneath the story.

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

Let me tell you what just got reported, because you will not believe it until you see it laid out.

The Trump administration cut a billion-dollar tungsten deal with Kazakhstan. Tungsten is the metal we need for missile warheads, fighter jets, and computer chips. Trump himself got on the phone to close it. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick worked it from the inside, sending letters, leaning on the Kazakh president, lining up as much as $1.6 billion in federal financing.

Within weeks of those negotiations, investors tied to a firm partly owned by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump took a 20% stake in an entity connected to the very same Kazakhstan project their father was negotiating. Around that same time, Cantor Fitzgerald, the firm run by Lutnick’s own sons, raised $210 million for a partner in the deal and pocketed the fees.

The fathers set the policy. The sons cashed in.

Six days after the Trump sons and their partners moved their money, Lutnick signed the final deal.

The reporting found one or both families have financial ties to at least 14 companies working with the government on critical mining deals.

The total federal funding flowing toward those companies tops $8.9 billion.

This is your tax money.

It is supposed to secure our supply chains and protect our troops, not pad the portfolios of the President’s children and the Commerce Secretary’s children.

This is the most corrupt administration in American history. It is not close.

We must keep digging, and keep asking the questions they do not want asked. Republicans in Congress are unwilling to lift a finger. Mike Johnson is running a protection racket.

Either we will end the corruption, or the corruption will be the end of us.

https://t.co/yFOl7zvOhC

[The Shallow State @OurShallowState]

He fomented an insurrection. He botched a pandemic. He stole classified documents. He committed every type of fraud known to man. He protects pedophiles. He's a convicted felon. He's an adjudicated rapist. He monetizes the presidency and weaponizes justice. He's lawless. He obstructs justice at every turn. He's compromised. He's narcissistic. He's psychopathic. He's paranoid. He's sadistic. I can go on.
YET - no matter how bad we know he is, and no matter how bad the things we know he did are, remember this: Some of the things we don't yet know, are even worse.

[Frank Grimes @mandaginjir]

@DoubtingDerek @JamesSurowiecki Nailed his entire persona, or lack thereof

[Bill Madden @maddenifico]

Christian Nationalists, white supremacists, and Republican MAGA bigots seem to have NO FUCKING CLUE about what makes America so special.

[LeRoy Otis @AncientOne007]

@GerhardStein17 @terrybythebay @Acyn @MeidasTouch That, plus he has legal cases hanging over his head once he's out of Office.

[Jennifer Griffin @JenGriffinFNC]

From the Navy SEAL officer who planned and executed the Bin Laden raid: “In recent months, President Trump, upon advice from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, has relieved or forced the retirement of some of the finest officers that have ever served this nation. I have personally worked with most of them in combat….And this week, in an egregious decision, the president forced General Chris Donahue to step down from his position in command of U.S. Army Europe. Donahue is without question one of the most brilliant officers I know. He is strategically focused, tactically aggressive, personally courageous, exceptionally thoughtful in his planning and execution, and compassionate with his troops. He has the respect of every man and woman who ever served with him—and you can put me at the top of that list.”

[Willie Ross Jr. Knee Deep @RossKneeDeep]

I think it was just hate.

By Sincerely, American:

"Trump supporters say, 'We suffered 8 years under Barack Obama.'

Fair enough. Let’s take a look.

The day Obama took office, the Dow closed at 7,949 points. Eight years later, the Dow had almost tripled.

General Motors and Chrysler were on the brink of bankruptcy, with Ford not far behind, and their failure, along with their supply chains, would have meant the loss of millions of jobs. Obama pushed through a controversial, $80 billion bailout to save the car industry. The U.S. car industry survived, started making money again, and the entire $80 billion was paid back, with interest.

While we remain vulnerable to lone-wolf attacks, no foreign terrorist organization has successfully executed a mass attack here since 9/11.

Obama ordered the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden.

He drew down the number of troops from 180,000 in Iraq and Afghanistan to just 15,000, and increased funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs.

He launched a program called Opening Doors which, since 2010, has led to a 47 percent decline in the number of homeless veterans. He set a record 73 straight months of private-sector job growth.

Due to Obama’s regulatory policies, greenhouse gas emissions decreased by 12%, production of renewable energy more than doubled, and our dependence on foreign oil was cut in half.

He signed The Lilly Ledbetter Act, making it easier for women to sue employers for unequal pay.

His Omnibus Public Lands Management Act designated more than 2 million acres as wilderness, creating thousands of miles of trails and protecting over 1,000 miles of rivers.

He reduced the federal deficit from 9.8 percent of GDP in 2009 to 3.2 percent in 2016.

For all the inadequacies of the Affordable Care Act, we seem to have forgotten that, before the ACA, you could be denied coverage for a pre-existing condition and kids could not stay on their parents’ policies up to age 26.

Obama approved a $14.5 billion system to rebuild the levees in New Orleans.

All this, even as our own Mitch McConnell famously asserted that his singular mission would be to block anything President Obama tried to do.

While Obama failed on his campaign pledge to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, that prison’s population decreased from 242 to around 50.

He expanded funding for embryonic stem cell research, supporting ground breaking advancement in areas like spinal injury treatment and cancer.

Credit card companies can no longer charge hidden fees or raise interest rates without advance notice.
Most years, Obama threw a 4th of July party for military families. He held babies, played games with children, served barbecue, and led the singing of “Happy Birthday” to his daughter Malia, who was born on July 4.

Welfare spending is down: for every 100 poor families, just 24 receive cash assistance, compared with 64 in 1996.

Obama comforted families and communities following more than a dozen mass shootings. After Sandy Hook, he said, “The majority of those who died today were children, beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10 years old.”

Yet, he never took away anyone’s guns........

He sang Amazing Grace, spontaneously, at the altar.

He was the first president since Eisenhower to serve two terms without personal or political scandal.

He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

President Obama was not perfect, as no man and no president is, and you can certainly disagree with his political ideologies. But to say we suffered?

If that’s the argument, if this is how we suffered for 8 years under Barack Obama, I have one wish: May we be so fortunate as to suffer 8 more."

[GBC @GBC_Press]

🚨 BREAKING:

​China confronts Trump:

​Trump: "We need $2 billion daily to reopen the Strait of Hormuz."

​Chinese FM: "The Strait was open before the war. The root cause is your illegal operations against Iran; you created a global crisis from nothing."

[LeRoy Otis @AncientOne007]

@Jenna_DC @vmsalama Are you talking about JD "ICE Agents have absolute immunity" Vance?

[LeRoy Otis @AncientOne007]

@michaelscherer With Poserdent tRump, it's always about Other People's Money and getting his hands on it.

[LeRoy Otis @AncientOne007]

@nxthompson @nancyayoussef @missy_ryan I still think Hegseth is acting out his vengeance on the military because he was kicked out.

[LeRoy Otis @AncientOne007]

@BulwarkOnline Johnson is describing what he and his party are doing. Protection Program? That's mob talk.

God never told this guy to prepare to become Moses. Johnson wouldn't know God's voice even if it thundered.

He poses while wandering aimlessly around a desert.

[anyone_want_chips @anyonewantchips]

Anita Hill was attacked for warning us about Clarence Thomas. Hillary Clinton was attacked for warning us about Samuel Alito. Christine Blasey Ford was attacked for warning us about Brett Kavanaugh. E Jean Carroll was attacked for warning us about Trump.