Donald Trump is a pustulent boil on the backside of American. While the purulent effects have poisoned our politics, MAGATs are proud of its size and toxicity and gleefully display it to the world. The few R’s in Congress who once stood upright have abandoned the fight.
GOP Rep. Thomas Massie:
“I think it's ironic that we control the House, Senate, Supreme Court, and the White House, and we're yelling 'election fraud'? I mean, we won all the damn elections."
MAGA will believe the Reflecting pool was vandalized with no video proof but deny an insurrection happened when it was on live television. These people are cult fanatics.
Step 1: Remove filters in Reflecting Pool because Obama put them in.
Step 2: Give your criminal neighbor who runs "Greenwater Services" a $20 million no-bid contract to paint the pool.
Step 3: Fill the pool with water from the Potomac River, the phosphates from which cause algae blooms.
Step 4: Freshly sealed pool and extreme heat result in a super scum event
Step 5: Direct National Park Service to dump hydrogen peroxide into the pool which causes the paint to peel.
Step 5: Deploy US National Guard to stop people from taking photos of the swamp as a perfect metaphor for the administration.
Step 6: Blame someone else.
Former Fox News host Pete Hegseth’s crusade to purge women and people of color from our Armed Forces has never been subtle.
But today, a New York Times exposé revealed exactly how far he’s gone to dismantle the careers and achievements of our finest servicemen and women.
More than a dozen military insiders — both active duty and those already purged — spoke to the Times anonymously to unmask a horrific ongoing attack.
They detailed a process used by Hegseth and his team to halt senior officer advancements for reasons completely unrelated to merit, job performance, or fighting wars.
Hegseth’s efforts are part of a quest to advance his white-and-male centered worldview, facts, history, and actual service be damned.
In the absence of any such evidence, insiders confirmed that he has used his position to withhold promotions from qualified, decorated veterans. The Times cited several enraging examples:
• Last fall, Hegseth ordered Army Secretary Daniel P. Driscoll to remove two Black and two female officers from a 29-person promotion list. Driscoll repeatedly refused, citing their decades of exemplary service. In March, Hegseth bypassed him, removed their names, and sent the modified list to the White House.
• In total, Hegseth has removed 32 officers from Air Force and Navy one- and two-star promotion lists. He also pulled the only Black officer and the only female officer from a Marine Corps list, leaving their promotions in limbo.
• Vice Adm. Sara Joyner, a highly decorated three-star fighter pilot, saw her advancement stalled over a 2021 Navy recruiting ad where she said, "I’m not just a girl with a dream. I’m a sailor with one." Hegseth deemed the line a "big problem." Joyner has since retired.
• Rear Adm. Stephen D. Barnett was recommended for a promotion after successfully managing the aftermath of a massive Navy fuel spill in Hawaii. Hegseth blocked his advancement after Barnett participated in a Navy-sponsored Pride event back in 2018.
It is an outrage to watch a media personality whose greatest battles have been with hangovers intentionally harm the careers of people who risked everything to keep America safe. Hegseth’s actions are insult to all who have served and a risk to national security.
[Image: REUTERS/Stoyan Nenov]
For the first time ever in the United States the national price of a pound of Ground beef is now higher than the federal hourly minimum wage.
Thank you MAGA & Trump!
https://t.co/ZEx6YxKCaO
I mean, there’s a reason why our National School of Tropical Medicine @BCM_TropMed is based in the Texas Medical Center in HoustonTX. The mosquitoes, soft-ticks (relapsing fever), hard-ticks (cattle fever), fleas (typhus), sandflies (leishmaniasis), triatomines (Chagas disease), hookworms are all on board
BREAKING: In a shocking maneuver, Senate Republicans just BLOCKED a Democratic effort to BAN federal troops from entering polling stations or seizing ballots or voting machines. Makes you wonder what they’re planning this November…
Some thoughts on the new Epstein Files revelations:
I’ve now read everything that’s come out from the new Haberman and Swan book, and the thing I keep coming back to is the Situation Room. They held multiple meetings in the Situation Room about the Epstein files. That room is for war. It’s for national security emergencies. It is not for figuring out how to spin a scandal you’re telling the country is a hoax.
While the President was deflecting or calling this old news, his own Vice President and Chief of Staff were huddled in the most leak-proof room in America because they knew how bad it really was.
You don’t take a nothingburger to the Situation Room.
And I have to be honest, reading all this brings back a lot of frustration about what happened in the House of Representatives. I sat there and watched Mike Johnson send the House home early to dodge a vote on releasing these files. I watched him refuse to swear in a duly elected colleague for months just to stall the discharge petition. Month after month of excuses, arm twisting, and procedural games, all to keep this information from the public. We only got the files because survivors, families, and a handful of members in both parties simply refused to let it go.
So when people ask me why I talk so much about transparency and accountability, this is why. The truth eventually comes out. It always does.
The only question is whether your leaders helped reveal it or helped bury it.
Everyone who voted to keep these files hidden should have to answer for that.
Finally, notice what’s missing from all of this is any sign that Trump’s DOJ will actually investigate the powerful men named in these files.
Draw your own conclusions about why a Justice Department run by the President’s former defense lawyers might not be eager to pull that thread.
Only 3% of individuals detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the first 14 months of the second Trump administration had a violent felony conviction, according to an @ABC News analysis of government data. https://t.co/9TKPQ3FG1v
Defacing Big Bend National Park is a failure at every level. It's idiocy to think the "barrier" is a real deterrent to illegal immigration. It's cowardice from @GregAbbott_TX, @KenPaxtonTX & other TX Rs to let it happen. It's a corrupt & greedy $$ grab.
https://t.co/2SANBsAzFp
Buttigieg: We didn't know it, but we've all been trusting our lives to the restraint of whoever the president might be. And now we have a president who is completely unrestrained. And so the only answer to that is a functioning Congress.
It turns out we do not have a functioning Congress. The House of Representatives is not representative. One of the most important organs of our democracy is not democratic.
They say, "Oh, no. We're not manipulating the map to disempower black people. We're manipulating the map to disempower Democrats who happen to be black people.”
So, the time has come to make it impossible to manipulate the map for any reason and just have fair maps.
CNN aired a montage of Trump’s past claims that the U.S. was on the cusp of a deal with Iran, with Anderson Cooper noting that today’s announcement marks the 39th time he’s made a similar claim.
.@JamesTalarico: There's been a lot of talk in this race about what it means to be a real man.
Recently on the campaign trail I told the story of my adoptive dad, Mark Talarico. Every Saturday morning, he would mow our lawn, and then without anyone asking him to, he would go next door and mow our neighbor's lawn because she was a widow. My dad never talked about it — he just did it, because that's what a man does.
A man takes responsibility, upholds his commitments to his family and his neighbors, and does what's right, even when no one is watching.
Here's what real men don't do. They don't lie and cheat their way through life, sell their soul to the highest bidder, or steal from other people in order to enrich themselves. Real men serve others. Weak men serve themselves.
I welcome this debate about what it means to be a man, and I don't think Ken Paxton or Ted Cruz are in a position to tell anybody what a real man is.