03/24/2024. Biden Campaign Lists Former Trump Officials Who’ve Turned Against Him And... Wow! Even his former VP, Mike Pense, won't support him.

President Joe Biden’s campaign on Thursday shared a thread on X (formerly Twitter) of damning comments that 17 former top officials in Donald Trump’s administration have made to condemn the former president and presumptive GOP nominee.

“The people who know Trump best won’t support him. Why should you?” the Biden campaign began the thread featuring videos of high-ranking White House officials ripping their former boss.

Former Attorney General Bill Barr called Trump “a consummate narcissist” who “constantly engages in reckless conduct” in one clip.

Dictators like Russia’s Vladimir Putin think Trump is “a laughing fool and they’re fully prepared to take advantage of him,” said former National Security Adviser John Bolton.

Former Communications Director Alyssa Farah Griffin called Trump “unfit” for office again, a claim echoed by former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham who said she was “terrified” of his 2024 campaign.

“The thing about Donald Trump is that he lacks the character and the moral center we desperately need again in the White House." -- House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) - August 7, 2015

There are whole web sites devoted to expalinning why many Republicans and even former Trump voters would never vote for him again. Republican Voters Against Trump

Former Attorney General Bill Barr said Friday (5/5/2023) that former President Trump will deliver “chaos” and a “horror show” if he returned to the White House in 2024. Barr further said that his former boss doesn’t have “the ability for strategic thinking” or “setting priorities.” “It is a horror show when he’s left to his own devices,” Barr said. “And so, you may want his policies, but Trump will not deliver Trump policies.” “He will deliver chaos and, if anything, lead to a backlash that will set his policies much further back than they otherwise would be,” he added.

Former President Donald Trump has long touted what he says are strong relationships with high profile leaders on the world stage, but they actually think he’s a ‘laughing fool, according to John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser. 05/16/2023

Nikki Haley, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, warned Trump puts the American military in danger. Trump’s own Vice President Mike Pence refused to endorse Trump. Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci’s condemned Trump as a “domestic terrorist”.

Criticism from those that worked for Trump also came from former Defense Secretary John Mattis, former National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, former Joint Chiefs of Staff chair Mark Milley, former White House Chiefs of Staff Mick Mulvaney and John Kelly, former Secretaries of State Mike Pompeo and Rex Tillerson, former Navy Secretary Richard Spencer, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and former Defense Secretary Mark Esper.

Trump's Vice President, Mike Pence, as reported by NBC news, told us all about Trump’s failures on the run up to the January 6 insurrection. Trump “surrounded himself with "crank" attorneys, espoused "un-American" legal theories, and almost pushed the country toward a "constitutional crisis," according to sources familiar with what Pence told investigators.

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On Jan. 6, 2021, Mike Pence said “President Trump also demanded I choose between him and our Constitution. … Anyone who puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president of the United States.”

Only Twice in our History has the UN General Assembly openly laughed at a Sitting US President. Both Times it was Trump they laughed at. 05/16/2023

US Senator Ted Cruz once called Trump an “utterly amoral” “pathological liar” who acted like a “mobster,” had a “pattern of inciting violence,” and was “surrounded by sycophants.”

Senator McConnell said. “The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their President. And their having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories, and reckless hyperbole which the defeated President kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth.”
“Former President Trump’s actions that preceded the riot were a disgraceful, disgraceful dereliction of duty,” added McConnell. “Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day.”

In 2021, House, Speaker Kevin McCarthy directly blamed Trump for the attack on the Capitol. “Nobody can defend that, and nobody should defend it”

04/05/2024. Karl Rove, no liberal, said "He wants to pardon these people who attacked our Capitol”. He continued, saying siege on Jan. 6, 2021, was “a stain on our history, and every one of those sons of bitches who did that, we ought to find them, try them and send them to jail.”

According to Trump's former White House lawyer, Ty Cobb, democracy is on the ballot along with the American Dream.

"He has never cared about America, its citizens, its future or anything but himself. In fact, as history will show from his divisive lies, as well as from his unrestrained contempt for the rule of law and his related crimes, his conduct and mere existence have hastened the demise of democracy and of the nation," Ty Cobb wrote in an email. "Our adversaries and our allies both recognize that even his potential reelection diminishes America on the world stage and ensures continued acceleration of the domestic decline we are currently enduring. If that reelection actually happens, the consequences will extinguish what, if anything, remains of the American Dream." ~ Ty Cobb, Trump's former White House lawyer

In 2016 Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) called Trump a “con artist”. Then again, Trump previously mocked and tagged him with the nickname “little Marco,”

12/14/23. Former Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who headed the Republican House majority during former President Trump’s first two years in office, says that Trump is not conservative but instead an authoritarian narcissist whose guiding principle is to aggrandize himself.

Feb. 2024. Michael Steele, a former chair of the Republican National Committee, on Sunday, ripped Donald Trump supporters as “MAGA zombies” as he expressed his frustration with those who don’t appear to believe the former president will likely attempt to deliver on his increasingly wild threats if he wins back the White House.

“Why don’t they see that he’s trying to build a sycophantic army of, I’m calling them zombies, MAGA zombies, to do as he’s instructing them to do?” Steele asked former Trump White House national security adviser John Bolton. “What is the disconnect that people don’t seem to get?” Steele added.

“I think people really don’t believe it could be as bad as it might be,” Bolton, now a fierce critic of his former boss, Trump. “I think a Trump victory risks continuing constitutional crisis,” he continued. “I think we’ll survive it. I don’t think democracy is threatened, but I think we could suffer a lot of damage, and many others have tried in different ways to convince, especially Republicans, that this is serious. But as you say, we have not been successful so far.”

Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) is currently an avid Trump supporter, but in the past, he was more honest. The thing is though, in the past, Vance has publicly called Trump an “idiot”, “reprehensible” and “noxious”. In Facebook messages, Vance wrote “I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad… or that he’s America’s Hitler.”

Vance was a fierce critic of Trump ahead of the 2016 election. He called himself a “Never Trump guy” who “will never vote for Trump.” Trump’s policies, meanwhile, ranged from “immoral to absurd,” he added at the time.

Vance later went full MAGA with his 2022 run for Senate, though. Trump rewarded him with an endorsement.

Like longtime Republican strategist Rick Wilson once said: "Everything Trump touches dies."

The GOP has become a shrill version of "Mean Girls", just far more dangerous.

2023 Brought in a new Congressional House of Representatives and the first thing the Republicans worked to demonstrate is their incompetence and disorganization. They couldn't even elect their own leadership. They are obviously planning on continuing the 40+ year Republican tradition of getting absolutely nothing accomplished for America or Americans.
They consider themselves conservative purists who cannot be placated unless all their demands are met — and maybe not even then. Their agenda is mostly to defund, disrupt and dismantle government, not to participate in it.

House Republicans have grown more skilled at legislative sabotage than legislative success,

The best thing about modern Republicans is that people like them that are in it only for the power, eventually always turn on each other.

They want to defund the IRS. The only Profit Center the Government has. Sure, makes perfect sense.

The GOP regards paying taxes not as a way of supporting the nation, but as an obligation to be avoided, noted an editorial in The Charlotte Observer.

The Republican Party is changing from the Party of the Second Amendment to the Party of the Fifth Amendment.

The far-right Republican minority took Kevin McCarthy hostage as a way to increase their power far beyond their actual numbers. Then that same minority of Republicans held the US Debt limit hostage as a way to get budgetary political concessions. Hostage taking is not democracy but a form of mob rule by the minority. Trump charged $8 trillion on credit card, now the bill is due and MAGAs in the House don't want to pay for it.

The GOP plan calls for $4 trillion in cuts from projected health care spending and another $2 trillion from programs including food stamps, child nutrition, student loans and agricultural price supports, Roll Call says." "Commitment to America" plan includes fighting against lower prescription costs, raising the out of pocket on Medicare to $8,0000 annually, cutting Social Security, and cutting Medicare by raising age to 75 and ending it at 90. Taxing Disabled Veterans Benefits. Taxing employer health care plans. That comes directly from Republican Senator Ron Johnson. Call it by its right name: Destruction Of America. You can't have it both ways. Either we are a collection of independent states or we are a nation. We are far stronger as a nation.

You can't make this stuff up. Here are just two of many. It's good reading if you don't understand just what Trump is about. Donald Trump’s 2024 Campaign, in His Own Menacing Words.

— “We did a fantastic job with Kim Jong Un. You know, I got along with him very well. The fake news said, It’s terrible that he gets along with him. I said, Really? It’s not terrible, it’s a very good thing. You know, it’s a positive thing.” June 30, Philadelphia

— “A man who looks like a piece of granite, right? He’s strong like granite. He’s strong. I know him very well, President Xi of China. … He runs 1.4 billion people with an iron hand. … I got along well with Putin. That’s a good thing.” Nov. 18, Fort Dodge

Republicans' Government, take your pick:
Plutocracy is a society that is ruled or controlled by people of great wealth or income.
Corporatocracy is an economic and political system controlled by corporations or corporate interests.
Fascism is a form of radical authoritarian ultra-nationalism, characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition and strong regimentation of society and of the economy. Fascism is "everything for the state," and the autocratic leader decides what is good for the state. Fascism is placed on the far-right within the traditional left–right spectrum.
Theocracy is a form of government in which a deity of some type is recognized as the supreme ruling authority, giving divine guidance to human intermediaries that manage the day-to-day affairs of the government.

All are Authoritarian forms of Government, but it seems the Republicans are aiming for a theocratic oligarchy.

12/13/23. I something reminiscent of the case of Trump having Super-Sensitive Nuclear Weapons Documents at Mar a Largo, a binder holding top-secret intelligence related to the FBI's "Crossfire Hurricane" investigation, that contributed to a U.S. assessment that Russia tried to help throw the 2016 U.S. election to Donald Trump has been missing since the last days of his presidency. The biggest problem is that the Russia materials included highly classified raw intelligence gathered by the U.S. and NATO allies, fueling fears that the methods used to collect the information could be compromised, the source added.

In a federal court document filed in August by Trump appointed John Solomon, a conservative journalist, the binder was described as 10-inches thick. Trump appointed Solomon to be a representative authorized to access records from his presidency in the National Archives.

The court document said that Mark Meadows, who served as Trump’s last chief of staff, was involved in handling the missing binder and developing with Solomon a strategy to release the materials that Trump planned to declassify. Copies were provided to Solomon. As he began preparing a story for his website, he received a call from the White House asking that copies be returned for additional redactions. “Meadows promised Solomon that he would receive a copy of the revised binder,” said the document. “This never happened.” There has been no trace of the classified version since then.

June 14, 2023 Trump is calling the indictment a hoax and a witch hunt. "The ridiculous and baseless indictment of me by the Biden Administration’s weaponized Department of Injustice".
A spokesperson, Trump attorney Alina Habba, said the special counsel's team of prosecutors is applying the "antiquated" Espionage Act "to political opponents in a way that has never been seen before." But it was Trump that updated the act while President.

On the recording the prosecution presented, he admits the document is classified and he can't declassify the document and yet he's showing it to someone without security clearance. These documents are marked with some of the highest security levels in the U.S. They cover war plans, nuclear capabilities, capabilities of enemies, and many other top secret subjects.

He's not denying any of it. He is just saying it is a witch hunt. His entire point is that the whole system is corrupt. He seems to be saying that the law cannot apply to him. That is a dangerous attack on the rule of law. Further, he has called for violence over the indictment.

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Just some of the contradictory lies he has told about the documents/classified info that he stole:
1. He doesn't have any.
2. It was planted.
3. He kept it in a very secure place, even though he didn't know he had it.
4. He has it but it's not classified.
5. It was classified but he declassified it by ESP.
6. Someone else packed and brought it.
7. He brought it because it's his.
8. He has it's but it's his because he gave it to himself (sounds a lot like stealing)
9. He gave it all back even though it's his and he doesn't have it.
10. They were secure in his bathroom.
11. They contain personal items like golf shirts and pants.
12. He was too busy.

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A common talking point from the Republicans is that if Trump can be indicted and prosecuted, by the DOJ, so can anyone else.

“If they can come for President Trump, they can come for you too,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), a Trump loyalist, wrote on Twitter after the former president was indicted on 37 federal charges in the classified documents scandal.

Some version of that line has been repeated by many others in Trump’s corner.

MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan needed just 60 seconds to dismantle that by listing nine people the Trump administration sent to prison for the very same charges the former president now faces.

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The Republican establishment is mostly denying it all.

When interviewed, Jim Jordon tried to claim that Trump said he declassified all the documents when he was President even though the recording by Trump said he didn't. Besides, you can't declassify documents like that with a thought.

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During an ABC interview, Sen Lindsey Graham distracted from the issue by attacking Hillary Clinton.

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William Barr, Trump's former Attorney General, laid out on Fox News how bad the whole case is for Trump. "If even half of it is true, then he's toast. I mean, it's pretty, it's a very detailed indictment, and it's very very damning. And this idea of presenting Trump as a victim here as a victim of a witch hunt, is ridiculous.

Barr said the critical charges against Trump stem from obstruction for his alleged resistance after he was subpoenaed for the documents. Trump could have opposed the subpoena legally “but he did not,” Barr said.

“What did he do?” Barr continued. “He engaged in an outrageous act of obstruction and deception that obstructed that subpoena. And that is wrong. That’s a violation of law. That’s a serious problem for him.”

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Here is an NBC Discussion of the Classified Documents Investigation that seems to cover most issues.

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All it would take is a spy poking around and finding just one of the box collections and then using a high resolution camera. It would be very fast. Any 10 mega-pixel camera can take fine images of text. I've done it often for speed and convenience. 2 people could go though a few boxes a night without a trace and put it all on a 32 Gig SD Card. They would also know to look for more boxes.

I'm not an expert on national security, but I am an expert on cyber security and if that was a computer system I would assume at least a 50% chance someone found it. A common mistake people in cyber security make is that their system isn't going to be actively attacked by various actors that are constantly doing their job of looking for anything they can copy and show their boss to prove they are working hard. They also may assume no one is going to stumble on the data by chance. It's called "Security by Obscurity". It doesn't work.

Mar A Largo has to be a spy magnet, good spies. They are not only looking for things to "spy" on, but any material they can give their bosses to show they are working. They are just looking for opportunities like that and those boxes were in multiple places. That's like leaving multiple network ports opened. They would be found and pretty quickly. That was a mother load of espionage gold and there were lots of prospectors looking for any trace of it.

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And to those that call it a "raid", keep in mind that the authorities notified trump's attorneys of the day and time when they would arrive. Whenthey arrived at the security gate they notified Trump's lawyers were they were approaching? They then knocked on trump's door to let them know they were there? That hardly a "raid".

Trump Case Rocked By Super-Sensitive Nuclear Weapons Document

Among the “boxes and boxes” of documents that show up in widely circulated photos featured in the federal Donald Trump indictment, the document identified as No. 19 stands out. Dealing with super-sensitive nuclear weapons secrets, No. 19 has a different status (FRD) than the other documents that Trump is accused of illegally possessing after he left the Oval Office. Even when Donald Trump was President of the United States, he lacked the authority to unilaterally declassify this particular document. Due to the extraordinarily high sensitivity, its declassification is subject to a protocol that requires collaboration with both the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy.

According to the Department of Energy Guide, documents classified as FRD include data on the U.S. nuclear warhead stockpile quantities, nuclear warhead safety and storage, weapons locations and yields.

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06/14/2023 - WSJ - Karl Rove - Trump Invited This Indictment

Rove, a former top aide to former President George W. Bush, wrote in an opinion piece published in The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday that “America has been plunged into an unprecedented crisis by the indictment of Donald Trump.” “The blame for this calamity rests solely on Mr. Trump and his childish impulse to keep mementos from his time in the Oval Office, no matter what the law says,” Rove said.

Rove this week warned the classified documents case against Trump “will further tear our country apart, as it has a heavy impact on the presidential campaign and – wrongly – undermines confidence in our justice system.”

June 18, 2023 Painting him as a security risk, former Defense Secretary Mark Esper added his voice to those critical of former President Donald Trump for his handling of classified information after his presidency Esper, who served in Trump's Cabinet, said: "People have described him as a hoarder when it comes to these type of documents. But clearly, it was unauthorized, illegal and dangerous." Rove accused Trump of knowing that the documents had not been declassified and were not his personal property. Trump has previously claimed he declassified documents.

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Speaking on CNN's "State of the Union," Esper compared Trump's legal case — he was recently indicted on 37 charges related to his post-presidency handling of secret documents — to that of Jack Teixeira, a Massachusetts Air National Guard member accused of posting secret and sensitive military documents on social media. Teixeira was indicted Thursday.

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Ex-Bush Aide Rips Evangelical Trump Supporters For 'Obvious' Hypocrisy

Peter Wehner, who served in the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and as a senior aide to George W. Bush, accused evangelicals of hypocrisy for their continued support for Donald Trump.

“You have in Donald Trump the person who probably most embodies the antithesis of the Sermon on the Mount, the person of Jesus, and the teachings of Jesus,” Wehner, a prominent conservative Christian, said on MSNBC on Tuesday (06/20/2023). “And this guy’s a rock star and has been for year after year.” “And yet they stayed and it’s a tremendous indictment of them” and of the evangelical movement overall.

The Republicans claim the high ground when it comes to the economy but they shouldn't be trusted running a lemonade stand.

Pay-Go kept the debt under control until the Republicans focused on unfunded tax cuts for the wealthy. Trickle down never worked but did impoverished the working class while building the national debt.

“I’ve been around for a long time and it just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats than the Republicans.” - Donald Trump in an interview with Wolf Blitzer, 2004

Jobs Created under each President Since 2001:
Bush Jr: 0.5M
Obama: 12.5M
Trump: -3.1M
Biden: 6M
Support working class? Republicans are Anti-Union, which is Anti-America.

10/23/2023 Kim Griest on the US National Debt: Republicans vs. Democrats
I keep getting annoyed when libertarians/conservatives say or imply that Republicans would do a better job than Democrats at dealing the US national debt. History shows this is patently false! Republicans like to say this and somehow imply it’s true, but when it comes to economics what matters is not words, but numbers.

Looking at each year, during the 32 Republican years the National Debt increased by an average of 9.7% per year, while during the Democratic president years it increased by only 5.9% per year. Thus, Democrats are roughly twice as good as Republicans at not increasing the debt!

That is, if Republicans had been constantly in power since 1961, with their 9.71% yearly debt increase, then the US debt would now be $89 trillion, three times larger than our current $30.9 trillion debt. While if Democrats had been in power that whole time, the debt would be only $10 trillion, $20 trillion less than now! Actually, if Democrats had remained in power that whole time, the US debt might actually be zero, since they would not have lowered taxes on the wealthy so much.

When GW Bush took over, the U.S. had a surplus, projected to continue as far as the eye can see. It was projected to be able to eliminate the debt in 11 odd years. Yet he and the "conservatives" pushed through a tax cut so severe, they realized it would be so toxic to the national debt they mandated it end on Dec.31, 2010. When that date arrived they then screamed we could not increase taxes on job creators (while they simultaneously blamed Obama for the bad job situation which was actually caused by the great recession which was actually caused by conservatives eliminating regulation of Wall St. and corporations). GWB also started two wars, the Medicare donut hole fix (which his administration deliberately lied to Congress about the cost of),off budget so they would not reflect badly on his administration, but were added back in when Obama took office. There was a lowering of the growth of debt when Obama passed a slight tax increase but that was ended when Trump took over. So, yes, the National Debt shows a sharp increase while Obama was in office but it was almost entirely due to unpaid bills from GWB.

One of Trump's lesser known but profoundly damaging legacies was the explosive rise in the national debt that occurred on his watch. Trump had the worst jobs record in modern U.S. history. His tax cuts, especially the sharp reduction in the corporate tax rate to 21 percent from 35 percent, took a big bite out of federal revenue. The national debt rose by $8 trillion during Trump's time in office. That's nearly twice as much as what Americans owe on student loans, car loans, credit cards and every other type of debt other than mortgages, combined. The combination of Trump's 2017 tax cut and the lack of any serious spending restraint helped both the deficit and the debt soar. As of Dec. 31, 2020, the national debt had jumped to $27.75 trillion, up 39 percent from $19.95 trillion when Trump was sworn in.

The entire national debt is equivalent to two republican wars and the three republican tax breaks for the rich.

From Brookings Institute: "In 2016, we wrote that the 2,584 counties that Trump won generated just 36% of the country’s economic output, whereas the 472 counties Hillary Clinton carried equated to almost two-thirds of the nation’s aggregate economy.

This time, Biden’s winning base in 509 counties encompasses fully 71% of America’s economic activity, while Trump’s losing base of 2,547 counties represents just 29% of the economy."

Red states are the true welfare state of the USA.

Recessions Since 1950 and Party in WH at Onset

Jul 1953 - May 1954 Republican
Aug 1957 - Apr 1958 Republican
Apr 1960 - Feb 1961 Republican
Dec 1969 - Nov 1970 Republican
Nov 1973 - Mar 1975 Republican
Jan 1980 - July 1980 Democrat
Jul 1981 - Nov 1982 Republican
Jul 1990 - Mar 1991 Republican
Mar 2001 - Nov 2001 Republican
Dec 2007- Jun 2009 Republican

There have been 22 recessions since 1900. 16 have started under Republican leadership, 6 under Democrat leadership and the 2 worst 1929 and in 2007 when Republicans had control of WH and congress for more than 8 years (the only times in history).

•Personal disposable income has grown nearly 6 times more under Democratic presidents
•Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has grown 7 times more under Democratic presidents
•Corporate profits have grown over 16% more per year under Democratic presidents (they actually declined under Republicans by an average of 4.53%/year)
•Average annual compound return on the stock market has been 18 times greater under Democratic presidents (If you invested $100k for 40 years of Republican administrations you had $126k at the end, if you invested $100k for 40 years of Democrat administrations you had $3.9M at the end)
•Republican presidents added 2.5 times more to the national debt than Democratic presidents
•The two times the economy steered into the ditch (Great Depression and Great Recession) were during Republican, laissez faire administrations and 3rd was at end of Reagan with an S&L bailout, tripling of the debt, doubling government jobs, 96% of all debt now tied to Republicans and/or their policies.

Reagan era - tax breaks to the wealthy and large corporations - results in the worst economic crash since the Great Depression, skyrocketing unemployment.

Clinton era - higher taxes across the board, especially on corporations - results in an economic recovery, an annual budget surplus, significant paydown on the national debt, and unprecedented wealth for all Americans, especially the middle class.

Bush era - tax breaks to the wealthy and large corporations, plus involvement in two wars with no provision for funding those wars - results in an economic crash even worse than the Reagan crash, plus even higher unemployment.

Just looking at the National Debt, Every year of Trump's administration added more debt than any but two years of the Obama Administration.

Democrats vs. GOP - Last 50 Years
Presidency held: Dem - 22 years, GOP - 28 yrs
Stock Market Return: Dem - 992%, GOP - 109%
Total Jobs Created: Dem-42 million, GOP - 24 million
Income Growth: Dem-2.2%, GOP-0.6%
GDP: Dem-4.1%, GOP-2.7%
The GOP is bad for the economy has been ever since Reagan.
Clinton took a weak economy from Bush Sr. and built a surplus.
Obama took a recession from Bush Jr. and built the longest job creation stretch in history.
Biden took a reckless budget from Trump and cut the deficit $1.4 Trillion in 2022 alone.
Republicans talk the talk on the economy while the Democrats walk the walk.

President Clinton announced that the federal budget surplus for fiscal year 2000 amounted to at least $230 billion, making it the largest in U.S. history and topping last year's record surplus of $122.7 billion. “This represents the largest one-year debt reduction in the history of the United States," Clinton said. "Like our American athletes in Sydney, we've been breaking records and have come a long way. “In June, the administration predicted the surplus would be $211 billion, and would increase by as much as $1 trillion over the next 10 years.

Clinton also announced the federal government paid down the national debt by $223 billion this year, and by more than $360 billion since 1998, the largest debt reduction in U.S. history. “The key to fiscal discipline is maintaining these results year after year. We need to put our priorities in order," Clinton said.

At that point, America was on its way to retire the National Debt. Then came George Bush Jr who "shot the lock off" that had been put there by his father George Bush Sr.
"The debt explosion has resulted not from big spending by the Democrats, but instead the Republican Party’s embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don’t matter if they result from tax cuts.” "If there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing" said David Stockman, creator of Reaganomics, NYT op-ed 2010.

The wealth transfer of the tax cuts might be the main point of Repub policies, but the problem is also that the Republicans want the National Debt so that they can prevent there from being any social spending that might help the Democrats politically.

Since 1929, Republicans and Democrats have each controlled the presidency for nearly 40 years. So which party has been better for American pocketbooks and capitalism as a whole? Well, here’s an experiment: imagine that during these years you had to invest exclusively under either Democratic or Republican administrations. How would you have fared? As of Friday, a $10,000 investment in the S.& P. stock market index* would have grown to $11,733 if invested under Republican presidents only, although that would be $51,211 if we exclude Herbert Hoover’s presidency during the Great Depression. Invested under Democratic presidents only, $10,000 would have grown to $300,671 at a compound rate of 8.9 percent over nearly 40 years. According to the conservative New York Times New York Times Obviously with the stock market more than doubling under Obama, this comparison gets even worse.

If you look at Republicans record on GDP growth, wage growth, depressions and recessions, investment returns, deficit spending increases, investment returns, job creation, over 100 years, you would not let then run a lemonade stand!

President Trump's tariffs on trade were passed on directly to consumers and bankrupted many farmers. Both contributed to inflation. If he were elected in 2024 and implemented the trade wars he says he will while at the same time cutting immigration, inflation will soar.

03/27/2024. Trump’s proposed tariffs could cost US households $1,500 per year, a new economic analysis has found. Broken down by sector, the tax on imports would translate to an additional $90 per year spent on food, $120 on oil, $220 on automobiles, $70 on clothes, $80 on electronics, and $50 on furniture and appliances, according to the analysis from the Center for American Progress (CAP), a left-leaning Washington think tank.

“Middle-income U.S. households—those in the 40th to 60th percentile of the income distribution—consume about 85 percent as much as the average household according to the Consumer Expenditure Surveys, which suggests a roughly $1,500 tax increase for the typical household,” the group said in its report.

“Despite what the President says, it is almost always paid directly by the importer (usually a domestic firm), and never by the exporting country. Thus, if the US imposes a tariff on Chinese televisions, the duty is paid to the US Customs and Border Protection Service at the border by a US broker representing a US importer, say, Costco,” Howard Gleckman of the Tax Policy Center wrote in 2018.

03/19/2024. When former President Donald Trump was in the White House, he proudly referred to himself as a “Tariff Man” – and he has no intention of retiring that self-proclaimed title if re-elected. Trump has repeatedly floated the idea of imposing a 10% tariff on every good coming into the US, as well as a tariff upward of 60% on all Chinese imports if he regains the presidency.

tariffs don’t bring in revenue from foreign countries, as Trump often claims. It’s American importers – not China or any other foreign country or company – that pays the tariffs. “A tariff is just a form of a tax,” said Erica York, a senior economist and research director at the conservative-leaning Tax Foundation. “It’s the US purchaser, the importer of those goods, that makes the physical payment to the US government,” she added. Several studies have suggested that US companies and consumers are bearing the brunt of the tariff cost. In a 2023 study, the independent US International Trade Commission federal agency said that “U.S. importers bore nearly the full cost of these tariffs.”

Americans have paid more than $230 billion to date for tariffs that Trump imposed on imported solar panels, steel and aluminum and Chinese-made goods, according to US Customs and Border Protection. Plus, Trump gave farmers – who were hit hard by retaliatory tariffs – $23 billion in direct aid payments in 2018 and 2019 to help soften the blow of trade-related losses.

Still, Trump’s tariffs were put on a relatively small share of all the goods consumers purchase. Several studies show they only marginally contributed to US inflation that followed the Covid-19 pandemic. Trump’s tariffs helped create some jobs, but even more were lost in the wake of his trade wars.

Much of the purpose was to get China to stop unfair trade practices and that got China's President Xi to agree to a truce in January 2020, signing what’s known as the Phase One agreement. They didn't really follow through though, the main reason President Biden has kept the Trump tariffs.

The Republicans love pointing to President Biden for a failure and incompetence for the disaster of the Afghanistan pullout, but in reality, Trump owns that mess.

What happened in Afghanistan was directly from Trump's signing a treaty with the Taliban. It was a repeat of the betrayal of our allies, the Kurds... Just Trump's pattern. Trump just decided it was time to go, plan or no plan. Like his financial habits, he just left the mess for someone else to clean up.

To be sure, Biden was left a mess by Trump, who committed to completing the troop pullout by May 2021 without processing a massive backlog of visa applications from Afghans who worked for the U.S. government.

At least President Biden's administration was able to orchestrate the evacuation ferried more than 124,000 Americans and Afghans to safety over 15 days. Tens of thousands of Afghans, many of whom worked for U.S. forces, now have resettled in the United States in the largest U.S. refugee operation since the Vietnam war.

"We inherited a deadline in Afghanistan, but not a plan for withdrawal," a National Security Council spokesman said.
Former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani agreed on Sunday that the Trump’s administration’s deal with the Taliban that intended to lead to the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country was a disaster.

Trump not Biden made Abdul Ghani Baradar, the new leader of Afghan. He was in a Pakistani jail until released at the request of Trump in 2019.
Trump not Biden negotiated directly with the Taliban and excluded the Afghan government.
Trump not Biden facilitated the release of 5,000 Afghan fighters from prison.
Trump not Biden wanted to invite the Taliban to Camp David on the anniversary of 9-11.
Trump not Biden refused to brief the incoming administration's transition team on the Afghan situation.
Trump not Biden bragged he didn't need an exit strategy for Afghanistan.
Trump not Biden signed the agreement in February 2020 and did nothing for the next 11 months. He could have started evacuations then.
Trump not Biden boasted in August 2021 that troop withdrawal he set in motion could not be stopped.
Afghanistan is another Trump FAILURE.

If Biden hadn’t pushed it back a few months, we would have literally had to have left Americans behind, because there was no way to get them back in the time between when Trump left office and when Trump’s plan was supposed to take place.

When speaking with Fareed Zakaria, former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani agreed on Sunday that the Trump’s administration’s deal with the Taliban that intended to lead to the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country was a disaster.

Ghani declined to say whether he felt betrayed by the U.S. but when Zakaria asked, “Do you think that Trump accord with the Taliban was a disaster?” Ghani replied, “It was,” adding that he believed the Afghan-led portion of the process was “hijacked.” “We were excluded from the peace table, and the peace process was incredibly flawed. It’s assumption that Taliban had changed— were delusion,”

The withdrawal (non) plan was made on Trump's watch. There wasn't much Biden could do about it. That train wreck was already in motion. Trump had already given the power to the Taliban and had their leaders released. Coming up with a worthless plan doesn't put the responsibility of it's failure on the person that inherits the plan. Who is responsible for the fiasco in Ukraine. The soldiers fighting for Russia or the people that set the war in motion and planned how it would be executed?

Trumps Afghan pull out plan was like his Health Plan and that's just one of his so called plans that never happened.

It was Trump who surrendered to the Taliban on Feb 29, 2020 with no participation participation from Afghanistan in the withdrawal process.
A series of conditions that the Taliban were required to adhere to was ignored and Trump Did NOTHING to address it.
Trump stated the US would be gone by May 2021 and had NO PROCESS in place.
Trump REFUSED to allow the turnover teams to come into play for as long as possible and froze out Biden's ability to respond.
When Biden's team was finally onboard, they extended the withdrawal to August.
Trump's failures allowed the Taliban to strengthen and regroup, leading to those disastrous last days.
Biden's plans did indeed come apart - exactly as Trump had planned.

The Durham report yielded only one conviction — a guilty plea from a little-known FBI employee — and the only two other cases that were brought both ended in acquittals at trial.

Although Durham accused the FBI of confirmation bias, he did not allege that political bias or partisanship were guiding factors for the FBI’s actions.

John Durham was purposefully trying to mislead the committee and the American public. He ignored that on June 9, 2016, when Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort met with an emissary of the Russian government, Trump Jr. had an email from a business associate that set up the session that this meeting was part of a secret Russian scheme to help Trump’s campaign. Durham dismissed the matter.

When Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), observed that the “central charge in the Russia collusion hoax was that Trump campaign operatives were in contact with Russian intelligence sources, Durham replied, “There was no such evidence.” While running Trump’s campaign in the summer of 2016, Manafort had regular contact with Konstantin Kilimnik, a former Manafort employee in Ukraine who has been repeatedly identified by US government officials as a Russian agent. In a detailed, bipartisan 2020 report, the Senate Intelligence Committee, then chaired by Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, called Kilimnik “a Russian intelligence officer.” There were numerous other official reports on Kilimnik's activities as a Russian agent. Durham knew this. In 2018, Mueller indicted Kilimnik on charges of obstruction of justice.

What Durham, a Trump appointee with far right wing leanings, found, which is fairly incredible given his strong opinions rior to his appointment, was evidence of procedural failures that the FBI has already fixed, including some the fixed before his investigation. All the innuendo in the world doesn’t change the fact that the Durham investigation produced 3 indictments, one guilty plea to making a false statement in an official proceeding, and two acquittals. In four years Durham found no evidence of a “grand conspiracy.” If he had anything close to enough evidence, which the courts of the United States still require at least as of now, he would have tried to charge as many people as he thought were connected to this supposed conspiracy. Facts matter, even to John Durham, the most biased special prosecutor since Ken Star. ago

Durham basically took the Office of the Inspector General report and slapped his name on it and said these things need to be fixed even though many of them had already been addressed after the report came out originally. Nevertheless, Durham's primary conclusion that the FBI didn't have sufficient probable cause to open the Russia investigation contradicts the conclusions of the Inspector General report and is false.

According to a report from TheHill.com, Trump's one-time chief of staff, John Kelly said the former president had pushed for the IRS to investigate FBI officials including Director James Comey and his deputy, Andrew McCabe. Trump has also called for then-Attorney General Bill Barr to investigate the Biden family over allegations of corruption.

02/01/2024 Update. A judge in London has thrown out a lawsuit by Donald Trump accusing a former British spy of making “shocking and scandalous claims” that were false and harmed his reputation.

Steele, who once ran the Russia desk for Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6, was paid by Democrats to compile research that included salacious allegations that Russians could potentially use to blackmail Trump.

Orbis said the lawsuit should be thrown out because the report was never meant to be made public and was published by BuzzFeed without the permission of Steele or Orbis. It also said the claim was filed too late.

The judge agreed, concluding Trump had “chosen to allow many years to elapse -– without any attempt to vindicate his reputation in this jurisdiction -– since he was first made aware of the dossier” in January 2017.

Schiff: Trump and his campaign welcomed and encouraged Russian interference?
MUELLER: Yes.
SCHIFF: And then Trump and his campaign lied about it to cover it up?
MUELLER: Yes.

FOX and Breitbart reported the one hundred forty seven meetings between trump people and Russians.

A lot of America's current problems and political gridlock were started by No Compromise, No Cooperation Newt Gingrich. The problem the Republicans had is that they haven't had any policies to benefit ordinary Americans in 40 years. Just trickle down tax cuts to benefit the rich. So, since they can't win with the elections, it's why they focus on dominating the courts.

Gingrich is a fan of biology and saw that the Republicans could make gains using confrontational, aggressive strategy. He created the Contract On America and recruited the meanest, most confrontational people he could as representatives. He wanted the Law of Nature rather than the Constitution. He is the one that brought us here.

Also, he's the one that pioneered politics by accusation and litigation. In his words, "investigating to create an impression of wrongdoing". Unfortunately, it's about all the strategy the Republicans have got, Benghazi, Hunter Biden, Joe Biden Impeachment Inquiry, etc. They fail with the majority of voters, so they rely on the courts and lies.

Pox News lies... Democracy dies.

The truth stands no chance against a fool determined to believe a lie. (M.T.)

It turns out that spreading lies had become the Fox news business model.

Fox News intentionally poisoned our democracy just to line their pockets.

I'd love to see how Hannity would spin it if they had hung Pence on Jan 6.

Steven Cobert went through the “damning” private communications of Fox News staffers and TV personalities and came to one stinging conclusion. “Fox News doesn’t believe a word they say ― and neither should you,”

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"You don't piss off the base." - Hannity in texts with Fox News host Steve Doocy. He also said that Sidney Powell is lying," he once wrote to his producer, referring to her outlandish claims about the election. That didn't stop him from spreading her election conspiracy stories on air though.

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The problem isn't just that the Fox News personalities testified under oath that they lied about the election. The problem is that you cannot count on any particular news story to be truthful. That makes their news as reliable as rumors on Wall Street about “hot stocks”. It may cost you money – or more. During the heart of the on-going pandemic in 2020-2022, it actually cost many Americans their health and some, their lives.

Seriously. When you need to use the term "alternate facts", you should not be saying anything. Instead they helped Trump spread his over 30,000 verified lies. That hurt America. They did it to avoid losing TV ratings points and market-share.

When the owner of a TV network admits they lied to you and their hosts lied to you and you still believe them, congrats you're in a cult.

"What I see us doing is losing the silent majority of viewers as we chase the nuts off a cliff." - Former Political Editor Stirewalt in a Dec. 2., 2020, text to Bill Sammon. In later testimony he said "no reasonable person would have thought" the allegations against Dominion were true.

Carlson also admitted privately that they’ve been “pretending” the Trump presidency was a success “because admitting what a disaster it’s been is too tough to digest.”

And when asked why Fox continues to give a platform to Lindell, Murdoch agreed that “it is not red or blue, it is green,” according to the filing.

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One of the first moral lessons a child is supposed to learn is not to lie. After that, the next moral lesson is to never trust a liar. Just reject them.

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A former producer for Fox News host Tucker Carlson made his contempt clear for the “Tucker Carlson Tonight” audience after he referred to those who falsely believed the 2020 presidential election was stolen as “terrorists” and incestuous.
“Like negotiating with terrorists,” former producer Alex Pfeiffer said in a text, “but especially dumb ones. Cousin f***ing types, not saudi [sic] royalty.”

A popular accusation by the Republicans is that the Democrats want to defund the police. It's not what has happened. An analysis by ABC News examined the budgets of more than 100 cities and counties and found that 83% are spending at least 2% more on police in 2022 than in 2019.

08/30/2023 - Many big US cities now answer mental health crisis calls with civilian teams -- not police

By their protecting the Jan 6 rioters, it seems that Republicans now believe that attacking police officers is "legitimate political discourse". Personally I find that reasoning to be a whole lot worse than defunding the police.

The police were called on George Floyd because of a suspected counterfeit $20 bill. After his murder and the disaster that followed, there were calls for moving some of the police budget to metal health resources. The Republicans claim that there as been a crime wave because of this. It never happened.

If my child hit another kid with a stick, I wouldn't blame the stick but I would take it away from him.

Every day in America, more than 200 people are wounded by guns; 120 are killed by them. Of these 120, 11 are children and teens. The leading cause of mortality among children in America is now death by a gun. The same number of deaths—120—will happen tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that, every day, until we come to our senses and do something about it.

Saying that a gun is just an innocent inanimate object is like claiming Babe Ruth could hit a home run without a bat.

Here's some tidbits to post when the Second Amendment worshippers talk about the shootings in Dem areas.

Whenever there is a shooting, the Republicans claim it is a mental health issue. Keep in mind that when Trump was elected in 2016 and the Republicans had full control in Washington including the House and Senate, the very first substantive bill they passed was make it easier for people that had been declared mentally ill to buy guns. It was not part of a larger bill. It was the one and only purpose of their first bill.

The horrible thing is that the problem of gun violence started 40 years ago as the gun lobby's attempt to just sell more guns no matter what the consequences. It was financed by the gun manufactures for the non-ideological purpose of making money. Nothing more, but it is a lot of the reason for today's incredible count of gun deaths.

The gun lobby and gun extremists want to convince people that it's utterly futile to try to introduce gun legislation and they will bribe politicians to agree or politically blackmail any politician that disagrees.

They love to say that "guns don't kill people, people kill people", but it iis rather hard to kill people without a gun, especially more than one person. Otherwise, the U.S. could save billions of dollars a year by arming the military with hammers instead of guns.

Actually stopping a mass shooter as a civilian is exceptionally rare, according to Texas State University’s Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center. Less than 3% of more than 430 active attacks in the US ended with a civilian firing back from 2000 to 2021.

The problem is not the Second Amendment. The problem is that Gun Rights have been co-opted into the culture wars that are the political wars that are so that the Republican base doesn't notice the economic war being waged on them by the big dollar Republican donors.

The Second Amendment is not supposed to be a suicide pact.

The Gun Lobby has spread the story that it's a people problem and that the gun is just an innocent tool that innocently happens to accidently be at the scene of the crime. If that was true then they would support background checks that led to the denial of guns to people with mental health problems, but they don't. They fight for everyone, including people with mental health problems, to have unlimited access to guns. They lie and children die.

Cars kill many more people than guns, but there are far more cars and to drive one you need training, a licence and insurance. Maybe guns should be that way.

Guns don't kill people, people kill people. Yeah, sure, and drugs don't kill people either, but dead is dead.

Guns don't kill people, but they give guns to soldiers because it is hard to kill people without them.

Less than 1 in 100 firearm fatalities in the U.S. is the result of Justifiable Homicide. (i.e. Good Guy with a gun) - FBI statistic.

June 16, 2023 - Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, one of several GOP presidential candidates, warned his fellow Republicans to “back off” allegations that the Justice Department has been “weaponized.”

“In terms of the overall charge of weaponization of the Justice Department, look at [former president] Donald Trump. He’s already declared that he- if he’s elected president, he’s gonna appoint a special prosecutor to go after the Biden family. That’s called a weaponization of the Justice Department,” Hutchinson said on ABC’s “This Week.”

“And so let’s back off of these accusations, and let’s get back to being the party of the rule of law, of the justice system supporting law enforcement and the equal application of law. Let’s don’t undermine the greatest justice system and criminal justice system and rule of law in the world today, this side of heaven,” Hutchinson said.

The greatest evil of Trump is not his personal corruption, as impressive as it may be. Instead his greatest evil is how many he has corrupted and how much he has corrupted the institutions and morals of this nation.

During his regime, Trump did all sorts of things that strained the guard rails on the presidency to the breaking point. He fired people who were investigating him and his minions. He attempted to extort the president of Ukraine. He lined his own pockets with government money by directing business to his properties and charging above-market rates. He made so many pronouncements about his own presidential powers that at times he seemed positively imperial. And then he launched a violent coup to try to seize power on Jan 6 after he lost the election.

Subsequently, he's promised to take revenge on everyone he deems as an enemy. He's openly talked about imprisoning or even executing political opponents. He's promised to create 'loyalty tests' to screen out 'unwanted ideologies'. He's suggested he'll deploy the military on day 1 to crush any protestors. He's publicly suggested the Constitution might need to be 'suspended'.

He's the only politician I've heard of to actually talk about suspending the Constitution. He's talked about using the military to suppress entirely legitimate protests using the Insurrection Act. He's talked about bringing treason charges against the then-outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He's talked about bringing treason charges against Comcast, the owner of NBC and MSNBC. He's talked explicitly about weaponizing the government against his political enemies. And, of course, he continues to talk about crushing an independent press.

Anyone who thinks there's not a chance he becomes a dictator is being foolish. This is the candidate whose lawyers just argued that he, as POTUS, never took an oath to support the Constitution of the United States of America.

No President of the United States, or any other world leader has been held in such universal contempt by the people who have worked for him. His secretary of state, Rex Tillerson called him a moron. His chief of staff John Kelly called him an idiot. Low level staffers leak embarrassing information about his work habits, his temper tantrums and his inability to understand anything written above a 5th grade reading level. A mid-level former staffer writes a book titled “A Team of Vipers” about the constant backstabbing and infighting. Even Anne Coulter has called him an idiot.

There is literally no other point of view available from current and former staffers. When Tillerson and Kelly’s comments became known, nobody on his staff took it upon themselves to say something like “Well, that’s certainly not the Donald Trump I know!” Their silence speaks volumes. Not even his kids rush to his defense.

Trump's greatest appeal is how he gives his followers and others in the MAGA movement's orbit permission to be their worst true horrible selves. Violence bonds members of a social group together; this is especially true of political personality cults such as the Trump MAGA movement. Healthy democracies discourage and outlaw political violence because it is antithetical to normal politics with its rules-based deliberation and collective decision-making and other ways of attempting to be legitimate sources of authority among the governed.

Trump continues to valorize the Jan. 6 terrorists as "heroes" and "political prisoners" who are victims of the deep state and the Biden administration.

The coup attempt on Jan. 6 was part of a much larger strategy of using violence, threats, and intimidation to undermine American democracy and to create a space for Trump-GOP fascist MAGA movement and larger white right to expand their power and influence. To that point, the Republican Party and its voters have not disavowed political violence as seen on Jan. 6 and beyond. In fact, public opinion polls and other research show the opposite: A significant percentage of today's Republican voters increasingly see right-wing political violence up to and including a coup to remove President Biden from office and/or a sustained insurgency or second Civil War as legitimate means of getting and keeping political power.

Republican lawmakers push for national concealed carry and expanded "stand your ground laws." Based on what is known about how the easy access to guns and the encouragement to use them irresponsibly directly correlates to an increase in gun violence (including suicides and mass murders), the American right wing is trying to create a Hobbesian state of nature where violence and fear of death is everywhere and the rule of law is increasingly meaningless.

Today's Republican Party and "conservative" movement and its forces want the American people to be sick and terminally ill with such violence and all the misery and death it causes. It is that sickness and death which the Republican fascists, the "conservatives" and the larger white right and their forces see as a pathway to unlimited power for all time and their dream-nightmare of a new American plutocracy.

Democracy depends on the good faith of the people. Richard Nixon and Al Gore lost elections that were very questionable, but they accepted the outcomes for the good of the nation. Not so Donald Trump. Trump places himself ahead of America and American democracy. Donald Trump is the only president in American history who has refused to guarantee the peaceful transfer of power. He lost the election and he knew it. He betrayed millions of Americans by telling them the election was stolen. He ignored the rulings of dozens of courts. Rather than accept his defeat, he mobilized a mob to come to Washington and march on the Capitol. Then, he watched on television, while the mob attacked law enforcement, invaded the Capitol, and hunted the vice president. He refused, for three hours, to tell the mob to leave. There has never been a greater dereliction of duty by any president. Trump was warned repeatedly that his plans for January 6th were illegal. He didn't care and today, he celebrates those who attacked our Capitol. Donald Trump has proven he is unfit for office.

A few of Trump’s accomplishments:
1) He denied losing the 2020 Presidential election.
2) He led an attack on the US Capitol to change the outcome.
3) He was twice impeached.
4) He told more falsehoods than any president in history.
5) He killed Roe v. Wade.
6) He denied the Corona Virus as long as possible and then suggested injecting bleach.
7) He staged a magnificent propaganda photo op for Kim Jung Un.
8) He set a new record in grift.
9) He attracted multiple lawsuits for corruption, greed and graft.
10) He clogged the WH toilet with secret docs.
11) He stole classified docs and refused to give them back.
12) He told 60,000+ verifiable lies
13) He created a divisive atmosphere of polarization.
14) He destroyed the historic values of the GOP, 15) A record 300 rounds of golf, 16) He commited Emoluments crimes.

There has always been people with authoritarian tendencies in America, but by 2016, Donald Trump was helpful to anyone who still had trouble making the choice between authoritarianism and democracy. Trump required they take sides.

So what you are telling me is that after the doctors, medical scientists and medical industry has defeated smallpox, tuberculosis, measels, polio, pneumonia, shingles and probably a hundred more diseases with vaccines, you know better than them. You are very unconvincing. As a matter of fact, the whole anti-vax movement compares to the medical industry about the same as a bicycle compairs to a jet airliner... or not even that.

One problem the anti-vaxxers are going to have is that the mRNA vaccines they hate were so effective that moving forward, pretty much all vaccines will be mRNA type and there is a lot worse out there than Covid.

02/15/2024. As of Jan. 1, 2024, there are 12,854 COVID-19 countermeasure claims, 9,682 of which are claims of injury or death due to the vaccines, according to the HRSA. Grimes noted in his opening remarks that the claims account for less than 0.001 percent of vaccine administrations. Well that sure makes it safer than Covid.

In the 04/10/2024 meeting of the House oversight committee’s COVID-19 subcommittee, Rep. M. T.Greene questioned Food and Drug Administration official Dr. Peter Marks about the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines once they became widely available in 2021. Marks replied that “It’s estimated in the United States about 3.2 million lives [were saved] and it’s estimated, globally, that COVID-19 vaccines saved over 14 million lives, conservatively,”.

03/06/2024. One 62 year old German man deliberately got 217 Covid-19 vaccine shots in the span of 29 months. That’s an average of one jab every four days. Taht is not recommended. A correspondence published Monday (03/04/2024) in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases outlined his case and concluded that while his “hypervaccination” did not result in any adverse health effects, it also did not significantly improve or worsen his immune response. He didn't get covid either though.

In total, the man got eight vaccine formulations, including mRNA vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna, a vector-based vaccine from Johnson & Johnson and a recombinant-protein vaccine from Sanofi. “The observation that no noticeable side effects were triggered in spite of this extraordinary hypervaccination indicates that the drugs have a good degree of tolerability,” Schober said in a news release.

Ya know, all this anti-vax nonsense will go away if the H5N1 bird flu jumps to humans. A 50% mortality rate should do the trick and if it's not that one, it will be another. The war with disease is almost as old as life. Luckily the CDC is watching for the jump and at the same time working on vaccines for humans. There are other diseases that they watch as well. A warming world has already caused traditional diseases such as Dengue Fever to extend their range.

The Hongkong flu killed about the same number of people as covid in 1968, when the world population (3,547,00,000) was a fraction of what it is now (8,045,000,000) and it was not considered a really bad flu.

08/18/2023 Analysis shows that only 52 doctors spread covid medical misinformation during the pandemic. That is of roughly 1 million Americans who hold medical licenses in the United States. Misinformation that comes from doctors can be particularly damaging and once false impressions take hold, it can be very hard to change them. The misinformation ranged from claiming masks didn't work to complicated conspiracy stories about the origins of Covid.

In March 2021, the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate published a report finding that 12 anti-vaxxers were responsible for the majority of anti-vaccine content on social media.

04/09/2024. A representative for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign admitted in a meeting with New York Republicans what some Democrats have long suspected — that Kennedy’s independent bid is designed to thwart Joe Biden.

“The only way for him, for Bobby, to shake it up and to get rid of Biden is if he’s on the ballot in every state, including New York,” Kennedy campaign representative Rita Palmer told a group of New York Republicans, per CNN, which referred to Palmer as the campaign’s New York state director. “The Kennedy voter and the Trump voter, our mutual enemy is Biden.”

Palmer also reportedly told the group the campaign’s aim is to deny Biden 270 electoral votes so that Congress will ultimately decide the election in favor of Trump. (If no candidate reaches a majority of Electoral College votes, the presidential election is decided in the U.S. House of Representatives; the U.S. Senate would get to pick a vice president.)

The GOP has a Catch 22 problem. If they support safety net programs their big dollar donors evaporate and incumbents risk re-election. To overcome this dilemma they've hopped on the manufactured outrage wagon to keep the low info crowd engaged and voting GOP. The long term problem is that the non-college electorate is the economic "golden goose" that the economy needs to be healthy. The GOP has been slowly killing the goose for decades, offering just enough sustenance to keep the goose's nose above water, but not enough to be truly healthy. You would think that CEO's would know the importance of a thriving middle class, but their shortsighted goals don't allow them to acknowledge this important issue. All they want is low corporate tax rates, generous deductions, exemption from any regulation, and all the subsidies they can wrangle. Bottom line, the GOP is creating the need for the safety net while simultaneously trying to eliminate the safety net.

Republicans are the best thing to ever happen to China. First, Reagan and his "free trade" crowd offshore our jobs to China and with them goes the IP/patents. Fast forward to today, and Republicans are trying to slash funding for domestic green tech, infrastructure upgrades to improve competitiveness and divert the money into more tax cuts for the rich and business. The same ones that fueled China's rise in the first place.