Trump’s Tariffs in Trouble after Supreme Court Hearing
Addicted to hyperbole, President Trump calls it…
"One of the most important, maybe the most, but one of the most important cases in the history of our country"
It may prove to be the most important for him. The question the Supreme Court examined Wednesday is whether Trump had the right to impose tariffs around the world, a power the Constitution gives to Congress. The word that occurred to seemingly everyone in the media about what the questioning by the justices revealed was “skeptical”. If the Court rules that Trump's usurpation of the tariff power was unconstitutional, "That’s undoing some of the key and critical achievements of this administration" was the reaction of the U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer.
finally pushing back?The Court has been notoriously deferential to Mr. Trump, giving him immunity from prosecution for illegal official acts, allowing mass layoffs of federal workers, impoundment and recision of congressionally allocated funds, the firing of heads of independent agencies, halting nationwide injunctions that blocked his agendas. Maybe they’ll get around to looking at these more closely someday.
But this time the Court is up against it and cannot duck. At issue is the very structure of the Constitution, whether the separation of powers it prescribes is to be reinforced or allowed to further deteriorate. Is it to be a furtherance of the conservatives' new fondness for the unitary executive, in which all power is vested in the president, or a restitution of the powers of Congress,…
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What Did the Right-Wing Think of “No Kings”?
Republicans had a problem having to say the words "No Kings" in order to denigrate it, as that would suggest there should be a king. So they needed to come up with a different name: the Hate America rally.
Do Trump devotees actually believe that people protesting a president who arrogates to himself the powers of a king hate America when they protest to preserve it? House Speaker Mike Johnson thinks so, and is shameless enough to promote the false name, saying…
"They're going to descend on our capital for their much anticipated so-called 'No Kings' rally. We refer to it by its more accurate description, the hate America rally."
That Johnson and Republicans are against Americans who are rightly alarmed by authoritarian Trump's outlaw actions says it is they who hate America for… Read More »
War Story: A Dramatic Decision in World War II
Pete Hegseth wants to inculcate a war fighting spirit throughout our military, but he has a difficult job ahead if he hopes to return us to the awe-inspiring bravery of our men and women in World War II. While the National Guard major was telling some 800 generals and admirals how it's gonna be, I came upon this story in Craig L. Symonds, "World War II at Sea":
In June of 1944, almost in simultaneity with the D-Day invasion on the other side of the world, the United States invaded the Marianas, the Pacific island chain that runs north-south parallel to the Philippines some 1,500 miles to their east. The largest island is Guam, but the Americans chose to invade Saipan, the northernmost of the fifteen islands and closest to Japan, the objective being for the Seabees to construct airfields for B-29s to attack the Japanese mainland.
Japanese policy had been to conserve their fleet,… Read More »
Our Constitution In Tatters
Those who think the Constitution is the bedrock of our democracy were aghast when this week 
the Supreme Court decided there is nothing wrong with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents practicing racial profiling, seizing anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job, and detaining them for deportation.
It is yet another instance of either government or the Court chipping away at the grand old document, so we thought to take a look at some of the other provisions that have been ignored or transgressed, beginning with this week's:
Racial profiling has been the practice from the beginning of Stephen Miller's demand that ICE round up 3,000… Read More »
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politics
With Time’s Passage Can We Now Speak Openly About Charlie Kirk?
The months since Charlie Kirk's assassinations have seen opposite effects, a surge in growth as more school groups apply to form chapters and more young people join, while critics finally feel free to expose Kirk's bigotry and homophobia without fear of losing their jobs in the great anti-free speech pogrom that followed his death.
Andrew Kolvet, who has taken Kirk's place as the host of "The Charlie Kirk Show," a national radio program and podcast followed by some two million listeners every week, says 
Turning Point has received some 140,000 inquiries from high schools and colleges about stating affiliates, and among the individuals joining the existing 2,100 chapters, some 200,000 have signed up to work in the coming elections. Kirk, who dropped out of college to start Turning Point USA and died at 31, has in those 13 years founded a formidable organization to promulgate right-wing views.
No matter one's politics or ideology, his killing was a horrific shock — that it had come to this in America. Objections to his mission and his personal ideology were set aside for a time. Kirk had targeted college campuses to counter the pronounced leftward ideology prevalent in the academic ranks, but had set about his own indoctrination of America's youth.
martyrs have their flaws
But opprobrium for his caustic intolerance could not be contained forever.
Kirk has made derogatory comments about Blacks. For starters, he was irked that Biden let 10% of Haiti's population, Read More »
The months since Charlie Kirk's assassinations have seen opposite effects, a surge in growth as more school groups apply to form chapters and more young people join, while critics finally feel free to expose Kirk's bigotry and homophobia without fear of losing their jobs in the great anti-free speech pogrom that followed his death.
Andrew Kolvet, who has taken Kirk's place as the host of "The Charlie Kirk Show," a national radio program and podcast followed by some two million listeners every week, says
Turning Point has received some 140,000 inquiries from high schools and colleges about stating affiliates, and among the individuals joining the existing 2,100 chapters, some 200,000 have signed up to work in the coming elections. Kirk, who dropped out of college to start Turning Point USA and died at 31, has in those 13 years founded a formidable organization to promulgate right-wing views.
No matter one's politics or ideology, his killing was a horrific shock — that it had come to this in America. Objections to his mission and his personal ideology were set aside for a time. Kirk had targeted college campuses to counter the pronounced leftward ideology prevalent in the academic ranks, but had set about his own indoctrination of America's youth.
martyrs have their flawsBut opprobrium for his caustic intolerance could not be contained forever.
Kirk has made derogatory comments about Blacks. For starters, he was irked that Biden let 10% of Haiti's population,
pandemonium
Trying to Stay Sane with Chaos Monkey on the Loose
Chaos Monkey is software created to deliberately disrupt computer systems with unexpected errors to test resiliency and recoverability. It seems the monkey is running free in our midst, throwing new disruptions at us daily, to test how well the nation holds up. Here’s a mix of what’s been happening, and it doesn’t even touch on the armies invading our cities, a subject all its own.
Hunger Game
With the government shutdown in its 32nd day, four days from setting the record as the longest, food assistance from the SNAP program ends today, November 1st. It doesn't have to. There's about $5.5 billion in a SNAP (formerly food stamps) contingency fund meant for emergency to which the shutdown certainly pertains — lack of food being far 
The red states will be hurt the most but the shutdown of food assistance.
more an emergency that any on Trump's bogus list that now numbers eight. The fund has enough to cover more than half November's needs, yet the Trump administration has chosen to sequester it. House Speaker Mike Johnson claims it’s because the funds are not "legally available". It's remarkable that this Bible-believing Christian can lie so facilely. By statute the monies cannot be used for anything other than SNAP.
The Trump regime is holding 42 million people…
Read More »
Chaos Monkey is software created to deliberately disrupt computer systems with unexpected errors to test resiliency and recoverability. It seems the monkey is running free in our midst, throwing new disruptions at us daily, to test how well the nation holds up. Here’s a mix of what’s been happening, and it doesn’t even touch on the armies invading our cities, a subject all its own.
Hunger Game
With the government shutdown in its 32nd day, four days from setting the record as the longest, food assistance from the SNAP program ends today, November 1st. It doesn't have to. There's about $5.5 billion in a SNAP (formerly food stamps) contingency fund meant for emergency to which the shutdown certainly pertains — lack of food being far
The red states will be hurt the most but the shutdown of food assistance.
more an emergency that any on Trump's bogus list that now numbers eight. The fund has enough to cover more than half November's needs, yet the Trump administration has chosen to sequester it. House Speaker Mike Johnson claims it’s because the funds are not "legally available". It's remarkable that this Bible-believing Christian can lie so facilely. By statute the monies cannot be used for anything other than SNAP.
The Trump regime is holding 42 million people… Read More »
trump law
Wasn’t the Right Against Cancel Culture and Lawfare?
Now they’ve embraced what they hated about the Left
What drove conservatives to anger over recent years was what they regarded as the liberal takeover of the culture, imposing dictates of diversity, equity, and inclusion 
and cancelling anyone who was so gauche as to emit an opinion they viewed as politically incorrect. We wrote of this a month ago, the right-wing's rapid adoption of a cancel culture that took the form of having people fired from their jobs should they have said anything negative about Charlie Kirk. As a footnote, a website called Expose Charlie's Murderers received over 63,000 tips about people judged to be applauding Kirk's death. Urging cancelling peoples' lives came from the top, JD Vance saying,
"When you see someone's celebrating Charlie's murder, call them out. And hell, call their employer."
Perhaps Nick Catoggio at The Dispatch got it right, that conservatives…
"never wanted an America where people don't get cancelled, they want an America where they get to do the cancelling."
law as a weapon
When Trump ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to get busy prosecuting his retribution list, she swiftly obliged…
Read More »
What drove conservatives to anger over recent years was what they regarded as the liberal takeover of the culture, imposing dictates of diversity, equity, and inclusion
and cancelling anyone who was so gauche as to emit an opinion they viewed as politically incorrect. We wrote of this a month ago, the right-wing's rapid adoption of a cancel culture that took the form of having people fired from their jobs should they have said anything negative about Charlie Kirk. As a footnote, a website called Expose Charlie's Murderers received over 63,000 tips about people judged to be applauding Kirk's death. Urging cancelling peoples' lives came from the top, JD Vance saying,
"When you see someone's celebrating Charlie's murder, call them out. And hell, call their employer."
Perhaps Nick Catoggio at The Dispatch got it right, that conservatives…
law as a weapon"never wanted an America where people don't get cancelled, they want an America where they get to do the cancelling."
When Trump ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to get busy prosecuting his retribution list, she swiftly obliged… Read More »
media
The Rightwing’s Chokehold on American Media Is Tightening
Many voices across America during the past week insisted on the safeguarding of unabridged free speech after the cancellation of Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show and after no less than the attorney general, Pam Bondi, 
declaring that the Justice Department will “will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech”. That’s the very speech the amendment protects. “Pam Bondi Needs a Free Speech Tutorial” was the title of a Wall Street Journal editorial.
But there is the looming question of where we will be able to hear free speech other than populous ideology and propaganda as ever more media outlets are scooped up by rightwing owners.
ABC, Now TikTok
On Thursday, President Trump signed an executive order that, still subject to China’s Xi Jinping’s final approval, would move content control of TikTok away from…
Read More »
Many voices across America during the past week insisted on the safeguarding of unabridged free speech after the cancellation of Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show and after no less than the attorney general, Pam Bondi,
declaring that the Justice Department will “will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech”. That’s the very speech the amendment protects. “Pam Bondi Needs a Free Speech Tutorial” was the title of a Wall Street Journal editorial.
But there is the looming question of where we will be able to hear free speech other than populous ideology and propaganda as ever more media outlets are scooped up by rightwing owners.
ABC, Now TikTokOn Thursday, President Trump signed an executive order that, still subject to China’s Xi Jinping’s final approval, would move content control of TikTok away from… Read More »