< mental illness|250||>
For ten years we have been subject to the inanity of Donald Trump’s rampant narcissism, but his recent act of self-adulation is a contemptible act of vandalism: his adding himself to the Kennedy Center. This is a memorial to our assassinated president John F. Kennedy revered worldwide and yet the current president believes we should honor him still more, even to the extent of not just listing his name first on the title of the cultural center, but above Kennedy’s. Trump called the change he had demanded of the Center’s board “a surprise”; 
his name was on the building within 24 hours. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt astonished:
“Congratulations to President Donald J. Trump and likewise congratulations to President Kennedy because this will be truly a great team long into the future.”
Going well beyond the usual puerile bragging about himself, Trump has here crossed a line with a physical act intended to subordinate another president. It shows him to be a narcissist well beyond what we’ve known him this decade and that was already narcissism beyond what was thought humanly possible.
We’ve seen his self-infatuation from the beginning. He told us,
“I went to an Ivy League school. I’m very highly educated. I know words. I have the best words.”
That was of course met with derision as was an early reaction to comments about his erratic conduct,
“My strongest thing is my temperament I think I have the best temperament or certainly one of the best temperaments of anybody that’s ever run for the office of president. Ever.”
Right off, when he ran for president in 2016, we were warned by psychiatrists in the media that he is in the grip of “malignant narcissism”, a more serious level which they say is incurable. “Narcissism impairs his ability to see reality”, said a prescient clinical psychologist quoted in New York’s Daily News. Our publication ran an article on his malignancy nine years ago titled “Psychiatrists Say Trump ‘Dangerous’ and ‘Untreatable’“.
We have since endured the grandiosity of his exalted view of self burst forth regularly.
“I’m a very capable person…I haven’t changed very much. Been very consistent. I’m an extremely stable genius”.
About a climate report he said, “One of the problems that a lot of people like myself, we have very high levels of intelligence but we’re not necessarily such believers.”
On one Thanksgiving, asked what he was most thankful for — a question that for commanders in chief usually prompts praise of service members in harm’s way — Trump delivered a singularly Trumpian answer: “I made a tremendous difference in our country”.
Dismissing likelihood of high turnout in the 2018 midterms, he said, “I’m so important that people aren’t going to go out and vote unless it’s all about me”.
He said after the debate last year that Kamala Harris was up “against one person of extraordinary genius”.
To his audience at a campaign rally he said, “Did you hear? The most popular person in the history of the Republican Party is Trump. Can you believe this? Does that include honest Abe Lincoln? You know, he was pretty good, right?”
We have heard him repeatedly say, “I built the greatest economy in the history of the world” about the economy before the pandemic.
When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, he extolled, “For 54 years they were trying to get Roe v. Wade terminated, and I did it. And I’m proud to have done it…Nobody else was going to get that done but me.”
Examples are boundless.
his favorite charity
To console his staggering self-regard, he confers awards on himself. He must have, ultimately for his own use, the gift from Qatar’s ruling monarch, the Boeing 747-8 “Palace in the Sky”. The world’s most luxuriously appointed aircraft is 13 years old and will need a possible billion dollars to renovate and outfit. The cost is classified. Congressional budget sleuths spotted a mysterious $934 million transfer out of funds for the modernization of America’s ground-based nuclear missiles. They’re convinced those taxpayer dollars are for the plane.
Before the Kennedy Center, Trump had already renamed the building of United States Institute of Peace after himself. A congressionally funded independent nonprofit focused on conflict prevention and resolution around the world, it was emptied of personnel by Elon Musk’s DOGE project. A Department of State release said the change to The Trump Institute of Peace was “to reflect the greatest dealmaker in our nation’s history”.
As Theodore Johnson of The Washington Post wrote, Trump seeks “national idolatry”. He has “gilded the Oval Office” and hung massive, dictator-style portraits of himself on buildings around the nation’s capital like al-Assad in Damascus.
An 1866 law that dictates only the deceased can appear on U.S. currency 
will not stop Trump from having a $1 coin struck with his image on both sides. The Treasury Department said in a post on X…
“On this momentous anniversary, there is no profile more emblematic for the front of this coin than that of our serving President, Donald J. Trump”
Speaking at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest in Phoenix days ago, Fox News host Jesse Watters revealed to the audience that Trump is building the $350 million, 90,000-square-foot gilt White House Ballroom as a ‘monument’ to himself “because no one else will”.
And now Trump plans an arch, to be placed facing the Lincoln Memorial. 
It of course must be bigger than Paris’s Arc de Triomphe so as to upstage Lincoln, and is to be named the Arc de Trump, or is that a joke? Either way, his repulsive egomania tells him that he must leave his imprint all over Washington.
nobel oblige
The Hamas attack would not have happened, Trump has often said, had he been in the White House, nor would Putin have invaded Ukraine, a war Trump would succeed in ending on his first day back in office because of his imagined control over the Russian dictator. He claims to have ended eight wars. He did participate in settlements to varying degrees, but his influence has been disputed. Two of the wars had not yet started. Others have resumed. Just this Monday Trump claimed,
“We stopped a potential nuclear war between Pakistan and India. And the head of Pakistan… said President Trump saved 10 million lives, maybe more…”
New Delhi consistently denies any third-party intervention.
Who doesn’t cringe in embarrassment at our President’s unseemly campaigning for the Nobel Peace Prize. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer says that Trump has phoned foreign leaders to ask that they recommend him to the Nobel committee. “Have we ever had a president so pathetic?”, he said.
At a dinner in July, flattery being the surest way to get what one wants from Donald Trump, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reached across the table to give the President a copy of a letter sent to Stockholm for “forging peace as we speak, in one country and one region after the other”. Similarly, Trump said the subsequently assassinated Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan “gave me the most beautiful copy of a letter that he sent to the people who give out a thing called the Nobel Prize”. How coy. A Japanese newspaper reported that Trump asked Abe to send the letter.
What better proof of his malignant narcissism than his “obsession with not only wanting the award but believing he is deserving of it”, as a writer at Lincoln Square put it.
escalation
Over time, Mr. Trump has shown indications he believes he is meant for a higher calling. Running against Biden in 2020 he said in July,
“I’m the only thing standing between the American dream and total anarchy, madness, and chaos…If we don’t win, it’s all gone, okay? It’s all gone…We have to win the election. I’m the one”
As he contemplated running for the presidency again, he said in July of 2022:
“If I renounced my beliefs, if I agreed to stay silent, if I stayed at home and just took it easy, the persecution of Donald Trump would stop immediately. It would stop. But that’s not what I will do. I can’t do that. I have to save our country.”
In his victory speech after winning election to a second term, and referring to the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania, he said,
“[M]any people have told me that God spared my life for a reason. And that reason was to save our country and to restore America to greatness.”
At a gathering of conservative pastors in Concord, North Carolina, last October, he spoke of himself as anointed by the “supernatural hand” of God to win a second term in office. “I would like to think that God saved me for a purpose”, Trump said to them.
That convinces him that he should stop at nothing. Chief of Staff Susie Wiles in her Vanity Fair interview said Trump has “an alcoholic’s personality”. He “operates [with] the view that there’s nothing he can’t do. Nothing. Zero. Nothing.” In an interview with The Atlantic magazine he said, “I run the country and the world”.
narcissism’s enablers
Whether out of adoration or fear, a host of worshippers feeding Trump’s narcissism serve to make Trump think his vainglory is only fitting. Several in Congress have proposed bills to exalt the President.
No sooner than Trump had been inaugurated did Rep. Addison McDowell (R-NC) propose renaming Washington’s Dulles International Airport the “Donald J. Trump International Airport.” Calling him “the greatest president of my lifetime”, co-sponsor Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-Pa) said, “This legislation will cement his status in our nation’s capital as our fearless commander in chief, extraordinary leader and relentless champion for the American people.”
Trump’s birthday, June 14th, would be made a national holiday by Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY)’s bill. She submitted on Valentine’s Day.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fl) introduced legislation to have Trump’s face carved into Mount Rushmore National Memorial. There’s no stable area for an addition, but credit with her leader was assured. While still governor of South Dakota, Krisiti Noem had put forth the same proposal, which explains why she is Secretary of Homeland Security.
Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Tx) proposed in the Golden Age Act of 2025 that Treasury print $100 bills with Trump’s portrait on them, presumably bumping Benjamin Franklin.
Finding that insufficient, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC)’s bill 
said make that a new $250 bill with Trump’s image, coincident with the nation’s 250th anniversary.
Just days after inauguration, Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tn), who was under investigation for fraud by the Office of Congressional Ethics and the F.B.I., announced he would press for changing the Twenty-second Amendment to allow Trump to serve a third term. His logic was, “If the man who created the disastrous ‘New Deal’ gets more than two terms, then the man who created ‘The Art of the Deal’ should get the same”.
all hail the chief
This adulation carries over to the White House where we, the public, get to watch the strange ritual of cabinet meetings. A spell seems to have been cast over members rendering them willing to debase themselves by subservient fawning that would humiliate any normal person. As for Trump, incapable of embarrassment, he wants us to hear the praise heaped upon him – TV cameras on hand for the nightly news — as one after another delivers his or her encomium. Here’s a sampling:
Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence: “[T]his is just such a great opportunity really to recognize your leadership as a true champion for working people.”
Homeland Security Secretary Krisiti Noem (ICE’s boss): “The average family and individual that lives in this country is safer than they’ve been in years because of what you’ve done.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent: “Our country has never been so secure, thanks to you. You have brought us back from the edge. You have the overwhelming mandate from the American people. You’re restoring confidence in government. “
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick: “This is the greatest cabinet working for the greatest president .”
And on it goes around the table, at least a dozen effusively proffering their admiration
three more years
But perhaps those who propose name changes and peace prizes, and a cabinet that lavishes praise, all serve an important function. The media is abuzz with Trump’s rapid decline, both failed accomplishment and mental slippage. Clinical psychologist Dr. Julie Futrell was quoted nine years ago in these pages saying,
“The maintenance of self-identity is the organizing principle of life for those who fall toward the pathological end of the narcissistic spectrum.”
Perhaps it’s essential that the minions who dote on Trump continue propping up his egoist self-identity. Because if the Potemkin world that Trump has designed for himself crashes to the ground, laying bare an intolerable reality, he might lash out with the ultimate retribution. We need remember that this country mindlessly gives the nuclear keys to the single person who inhabits the White House.
Dec 27 2025 | Posted in
Healthcare |
Read More »
< the economy|206||>
Over ten months into his second term, President Trump has paid no attention to fulfilling the campaign pledge that is believed to have won him the election: the promise to bring down inflation and prices.
Until this week. Perhaps urged by aides that “affordability” has become the hot button issue for America’s families struggling to pay their bills, he staged a rally in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains. He had previously said, “The word affordability is a con job by the Democrats” and “a Democratic hoax”. But at the rally he was expected to execute a volte-face and acknowledge that, yes, there is a problem, and to announce a vigorous plan to battle high and rising costs.
But he didn’t. As someone for whom there’s never been a moment in his life when he’s lacked for money, he cannot make the transition into the lives of ordinary Americans. He fraternizes with other billionaires, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who of like mind said on “Face the Nation” last Sunday, ”The American people don’t know how good they have it.”
So Trump continued to spoof the word ‘affordability’ at the rally:
”I say it and I said it the other day and a lot of people misinterpret it, ‘Oh, he doesn’t realize prices are high’. Prices are coming down very substantially, but they have a new word — you know, they always have a hoax — the new word is ‘affordability’.”
…always said in a mocking tone. Behind him, a banner the width of the stage and printed cards held up by the audience proclaimed “Lower Prices” and “Higher Paychecks” as the crowd chanted “Four More Years”.
A quick run-through of what you probably already know to get to the larger point of today’s piece:
Prices are not “coming down very substantially”. The price of oil and concomitantly gasoline has come down, but mostly during 2024 and only slightly since – from $3.02 a gallon a year ago to $2.99 now according to AAA. But other prices are rising – food up 2.7%, electricity up 5%, the two cost indexes felt day-to-day by U.S. households. There is nothing at play to prevent prices rising further. The soaring demand for electricity by the build-out of AI data centers will continue to force power companies to raise prices for needed funding. Businesses that initially absorbed tariffs will be factoring them more fully into prices. Trump’s tariffs work at cross purposes to any attempt to halt inflation. Given his election pledge, why ever did he impose tariffs on beef, coffee, bananas, and other tropical fruits, tariffs he belatedly realized he had to scrub? And now he is about to erect a 100% tariff on America’s everyday staple — pasta from Italy.
the inheritance
“I inherited the worst inflation in history.” Mr. Trump says that repeatedly, and continues to do so well after being corrected. J D Vance faithfully supports the narrative. On Sean Hannity’s show ten days ago he said,
“We inherited a disaster… We inherited the worst inflation crisis in at least the last 40 years. I know that there are a lot of people out there, Sean, saying things are expensive and we have to remember they’re expensive because we inherited this terrible inflation crisis from the Biden administration.”
That’s more accurate, at least. It cordons off the inflation peak of 14.8% in 1980, 45 years ago.
Recent inflation peaked at 9% in July of 2022. But the inheritance was at only 3% when Trump returned to the presidency, and is 3% in the most recent report, with an update finally coing next week.
July was not the only month in 2022 reporting higher costs and those increases cumulated. Until rates subsided, the aggregate of those post pandemic year-over-year increases saw costs rise a good 20%. That elevated plateau of what everything now costs is what Trump inherited, and what he incessantly blames on Biden. So effectively does the media — left and right — by accepting the claim without reservation. Which is why, to correct the record, we’re taking a look at Trump’s contribution, which, of course, goes unmentioned by him, because it’s his inflation, too.
stimulants
The closure or crippling of businesses brought about by the stay-at-home mandates of the pandemic left millions without an income. To keep the economy from collapsing, the U.S. government flooded the country with money.
In March of 2020, Congress passed and President Trump signed the $2.2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) with no thought given to how to pay for it. Trump signed off on another $900 billion that December. Joe Biden promptly added the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act in early 2021.
Direct cash payments to individuals were part of all three bills. Out went $1,200 checks (with Trump’s name on them — unprecedented) 
Check with Trump’s name as first proposed. Final version had names side-by-side in smaller size
to every adult (and dependent) who earned less than $75,000 for singles and $150,000 for marrieds, the payout scaled down for those earning higher. Trump sent another $600 in January 2021 just before he left office. He had lobbied for $2,000 per person before the election. Not to be outdone, on taking over Joe Biden made up the difference with $1,400 checks in March 2021.
Three times over, the program sent checks to people irrespective of whether they continued to be employed. Checks also went to however many of the 69 million receiving Social Security were no longer working and suffered no income loss from the pandemic.
In total, a $3,200 gift from the Trump and Biden administrations. Cash totaling $817 billion was dropped into America’s pockets.
The CARES Act provided $600 a week in unemployment payments spanning four months from April through July in Trump’s final year, 2020. But the program was extended repeatedly, first by Trump and then by Biden, not ending until the day after Christmas 2021. The Treasury Department under Steven Mnuchin had quickly decided it was too complex and time costly to figure the amount 50 different ways so as to pay only the differential between $600 and the varied amounts and duration of eligibility of each state. The Treasury simply paid the full amount to everyone, which came to $678 billion.
The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) provided $835 billion in loans to businesses, self-employed workers, sole proprietors, non-profits — loans that needn’t be repaid provided the funds were used to cover payroll, rent, interest, and utilities. PPP’s intention was to keep entities out of bankruptcy and people in their jobs, “But as the pandemic dragged on, Congress weakened those requirements, allowing companies to keep the cash even if they made deep staffing cuts”, The New York Times reported in a 2022 analysis of where all the government largesse went.
As much as $80 billion — almost 10% — went to what prosecutors have called the biggest fraud in U.S. history. That’s on top of the $90 billion to $400 billion believed to have been stolen from the unemployment relief program — at least half taken by international schemers — as NBC News reported at the time. Investigators found examples of fraudsters buying “Lamborghinis, Ferraris, and Bentleys, and Teslas, of course, lots of Teslas” as well as mansions, vacations, and private jets flights to those vacations.
A ban on evictions to protect renters left some 11 million households with that much extra cash every month. Begun by Trump in September 2020, the moratorium was extended several times by Congress and Biden all the way to August, 2021, when it was finally ended by the Supreme Court ruling that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) did not have the authority to ban eviction as a health measure.
President Trump immediately suspended student loan repayments as COVID began to ramp up in March 2020. Like eviction suspension, that left more cash in circulation to buy goods. Biden, mixed in with his many attempts to cancel student debt outright, inexcusably kept the moratorium going far past the pandemic, not ending it until October 2023.
a perfect storm
All totaled, $5 trillion flooded the economy, making inevitable the inflation that followed once the pandemic subsided and goods returned to market. Sheltering at home from the scourge, unable to spend on services — restaurants, movies, travel — people shifted to homelife improvements — electronics, appliances, furnishings. But quarantine lockdowns made production sporadic. Accustomed to finding just what we look for on well-stocked shelves, we learned about supply chains and what happens when they are disrupted. Industry discovered that just-in-time inventory control, a quantum leap in efficiency, could have drawbacks; shortages developed and prices were bid up when trucks didn’t show up at unloading docks. The shortage of semiconductors periodically shut down auto assembly lines. Used car prices shot up 37%. Lumber costs became prohibitive, adding $35,000 to building the average house. The median house sales price went to $346,900 in 2021, up 16.9% from the year before.the point
Which is to say that the pandemic inflation had many causes but with Mr. Trump attempting to shift blame for the high prices he inherited as solely the malfeasance of Joe Biden’s administration, we thought it in order to bring back a little history to show that his contribution to inflation was substantial.
Dec 12 2025 | Posted in
Economy |
Read More »
< immigration|131||Biden’s disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal left thousands behind in the original betrayal>
Without any of the careful deliberation we should expect from a president, Donald Trump instantly reacted to the National Guard shootings that killed a young woman and left another soldier in critical condition with a tweet:
“I will permanently pause immigration from all Third World Countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover, terminate all of the millions of Biden illegal admissions, including those signed by Sleepy Joe Biden’s Autopen.”
Crowd below offering clearance papers to American troops above in hopes of boarding planes to U.S. at Kabul Airport August 28, 2021.
He continued elsewhere that he would “end all Federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens of our Country and denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility.”
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced,
“Effective immediately, processing of all immigration requests relating to Afghan nationals is stopped indefinitely pending further review of security and vetting protocols.”
At the direction of the president, the agency is to re-examine all people from 19 countries including Afghanistan who hold green card work permits.
Trump on his Truth Social pledged to…
“remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States or is incapable of loving our Country”.
rushing to extremes
Trump and his administration are precipitously taking these ill-considered actions, affecting tens of thousands of lives of Afghans we rescued from the Taliban, because a single, mentally troubled man turned killer decided to drive across the country to shoot two National Guard troops for reasons as yet unknown.
In any population, there will be those of a criminal bent, those who are mentally ill, true of the Afghans in our country, true among the millions of American citizens. But isolated incidents prove for Mr. Trump that other than white ethnic groups must be bad in their entirety and must be banned from entry or purged if already here. That is the America Donald Trump is deciding for us.
once aided our troops
The Associated Press reports that Rahmanullah Lakanwal, married and a father of five,
“had been unraveling for years, unable to hold a job and flipping between long, lightless stretches of isolation and taking sudden weekslong cross-country drives” from his home in Bellingham, Washington.
How does this not describe mental illness? How is Trump’s projecting him onto his entire people not the product of an equally ill mind?
CIA Director John Ratcliffe confirmed that Lakanwal had served as part of an elite CIA-trained counter-terrorism unit alongside American troops in Kandahar, the most dangerous Afghanistan province for being the Taliban’s heartland. He arrived in this country in 2021 and was granted asylum by none other than Donald J. Trump just this April, a fact we won’t hear from him.
an enormous debt unpaid
Lakanwal is one of about 76,000 Afghans brought to the United States after President Biden’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan at the end of August 2021 under a program named “Operation Allies Welcome” (OAW). As this publication reported almost three months before the evacuation:
”President Biden seems only at this last minute to have discovered that we are entirely unprepared to rescue the interpreters, drivers, cultural advisers, security guards — many of whom have been embedded with our troops, living with them at remote firebases, risking their lives on combat patrols, and now face inhuman retribution by the Taliban for their having rendered essential service to the U.S.“
Mr. Trump has no sense of honor or obligation for what is owed to those who assisted our troops. In April he had the Homeland Security Department terminate the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for some 9,000 Afghans in the U.S. for whom returning to their country was deemed too dangerous. Now they are to be sent back. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem’s explanation is imbecilic:
“Afghanistan has had an improved security situation, and its stabilizing economy no longer prevents them from returning to their home country.”
Their families will be uprooted, gainful employment left behind, and they face an Afghanistan ruled by the Taliban where they face imprisonment and very possibly death. The Taliban hunts for those who helped Americans. At organizations such as No One Left Behind and #AfghanEvac, veterans of that war work to get those who helped them out of the country and settled in the U.S. It’s personal, and you can read a segment of our prior article here that tells a few of their stories.
Trump’s edicts subvert their efforts, disallowing entry. As a sociopath, he doesn’t care. In the last few days he has been ending TPS for a number of countries, effectively throwing everyone non-white out of the U.S. with no concern for their lives or what they may be contributing to this country.
where to assign blame
It is heartbreaking to think of Sarah Beckstrom, her life ended at age 20 for no reason, as if there could be any, and Andrew Wolfe, 24, still critical, fighting for life. Making it worse, neither of them should have been there, 
National Guard troops, brought from regional states to Washington D.C.
to fight crime, were instead used by the president for landscaping
to “beautify” the city.
their National Guard unit called to D.C. because Donald Trump must satisfy his lust for power by commanding the military to bring cities to heel in a nonsensical farce to supposedly fight crime.
lies as policy
The Afghan émigrés were not properly vetted in a resettlement program that was as shambolic as Biden’s Afghanistan departure, Trump and Republican allies say.
In an X post, Noem said the suspect “was one of the many unvetted, mass paroled into the United States.” In response to reporters asking if Biden had erred by letting the suspect into the U.S., FBI Director Kash Patel claimed that there had been “zero vetting”. Vice President JD Vance, also in an X post, said Lakanwal and other Afghan refugees like him came into the U.S. “unvetted” and that “they shouldn’t have been in our country.” CIA Director John Ratcliffe said,
”This individual — and so many others — should have never been allowed to come here. Our citizens and service members deserve far better than to endure the ongoing fallout from the Biden Administration’s catastrophic failures.”
And there you have it: the total betrayal of the Afghans who aided our troops and were promised entry into the U.S. in return for risking their lives. Our service members wanted them to come here, their Afghan mates on whom they had so heavily relied. Ratcliffe and the others speak from the ignorance of the lazy who took no trouble to find out about vetting, or, more likely, just lie so as not to deviate from Trump’s pronouncements.
In fact, we dug into this in 2021 and our analysis reported the polar opposite, that tens of thousands of those seeking resettlement were stuck…
“in the bureaucratic hairball of an absurdly copious vetting process that seems not to recognize that these workers had already been screened before their employment and went on to prove their loyalty performing valuable service alongside the military, the diplomatic corps, and contractors.”
They were seeking a Special Immigrant Visa, which Congress authorized in dribs and drabs, while 70,000 were caught in a bureaucratic vetting process that was taking an average of three and a half years for each single applicant.
As for Trump, what better speaks for the stupidity and ill-bred crudity than the exchange with CBS News’ Nancy Cordes, who, referring to the Justice Department Inspector General and the Department of Homeland Security, asked:
”Your DOJ IG just reported this year that there was thorough vetting by DHS and by the FBI and by these Afghans who were brought into the U.S. So, why do you blame the Biden administration?”
Trump: Because they let him in. Are you stupid? Are you a stupid person? Because they came in on a plane along with thousands of other people that shouldn’t be here and you’re just asking questions ’cause you’re a stupid person.”
the real agenda
The sudden closure of all avenues of ingress – sealing all immigration from unspecified third world countries, denaturalization, purges of green card holders, etc. – intimates that Trump is using the travesty that befell two Americans to shut out or expel people from countries other than white, other than Christian, in keeping with the new right-wing criterion that only those with generational roots are the true Americans.
Dec 4 2025 | Posted in
Immigration |
Read More »
< news briefs|208||>
This isn’t meant to be a newspaper, but to ignore the torrent of news that bombards us daily runs the risk of seeming clueless. So here are a few items from the last ten days or so to show we’ve stayed tuned:
Washington post says hegseth ordered war crime
As surveillance aircraft closed on the first alleged drug boat that the U.S. was about to destroy on September 2nd, “The order was to kill everybody” given verbally by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth according to two involved in the operation, The Washington Post reported Friday. When two survivors were spotted clinging to the burning wreckage, “The Special Operations commander overseeing the attack… ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions” and “the two men were blown apart in the water” that, according to a person who had seen the second video not released to the media, “people would be horrified” to see.
Hegseth dismissed the Post’s investigation as ”fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting”.
There were eleven people on that September 2nd boat and the next day Hegseth said on Fox News:
“I watched it live. We knew exactly who was in that boat. We knew exactly what they were doing. And we knew exactly who they represented and that was Tren de Aragua, a narco-terrorist organization designated by the United States trying to poison our country with illicit drugs.”
No evidence was been presented then or since to prove the Pentagon knew anything whatever about the occupants of the boat, which entitles us to think everything he said was a lie. And the one question which no one asks, and which would make his lying desperate, is this: Why would it take eleven people to smuggle drugs into the U.S.? Wouldn’t it have been more profitable to displace their weight with more drugs? And most particularly, might they have been sex traffickers with a cargo captive females?
The U.S. Coast Guard has always interdicted drug traffickers, It is a matter of law enforcement, not the “armed conflict” that the Trump administration has tried to create to justify summary killings with no due process. The Coast Guard trains its seamen to follow a strict step-by-step process that orders boats to stop for boarding, fire a short burst of warning shots into the waves if a boat does not halt, then shoot out the engine if the crew still keeps going. Any illegal substances are confiscated and those on board are arrested – all in accordance with international law. Instead, the Trump regime obliterates the boats and shreds their crews.
We are in a “non-international armed conflict” with “designated terrorist organizations”, says the White House, which had the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel work up an opinion of absolution reminiscent of the infamous John Yoo memos that approved torture by Bush-Cheney operatives. Barbaric as that was, it said torture must stop short of “serious impairment to… any bodily organ”. But this regime has taken it beyond damage to body organs to what can only be called murder – with 23 boats and over 80 killed so far, mass murder.
The “double-tap,” the second hit, was to sink the boat and remove a navigation hazard to other vessels, not to kill survivors, was the cover-up in a written briefing by the military to the president. Without first rescuing the shipwrecked and presumably wounded occupants of the boat, an obligation under the law? Anyway…
“The idea that wreckage from one small boat in a vast ocean is a hazard to marine traffic is patently absurd, and killing survivors is blatantly illegal”
…said Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass), a four-tour Marine Corps combat captain who, as a member of the House Armed Services Committee received a classified briefing from Pentagon officials.
“Mark my words: It may take some time, but Americans will be prosecuted for this, either as a war crime or outright murder”.
If the two in the water were no longer able to fight, that “would in essence be an order to show no quarter, which would be a war crime.”
The Supreme Court gave Trump immunity from prosecution for any official act taken while president. He has chosen murder. Former prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, who writes for the conservative National Review, provides for us the complete legal judgement:
“If this happened as described in the Post report, it was, at best, a war crime under federal law. I say ‘at best’ because, as regular readers know, I believe the attacks on these suspected drug boats — without congressional authorization, under circumstances in which the boat operators pose no military threat to the United States, and given that narcotics trafficking is defined in federal law as a crime rather than as terrorist activity, much less an act of war — are lawless and therefore that the killings are not legitimate under the law of armed conflict…Even if you buy the untenable claim that they are combatants, it is a war crime to intentionally kill combatants who have been rendered unable to fight. It is not permitted, under the laws and customs of honorable warfare, to order that no quarter be given — to apply lethal force to those who surrender or who are injured, shipwrecked, or otherwise unable to fight.”
One of Hegseth’s first moves was to replace the Pentagon’s lawyers of the Judge Advocate General’s Corps (JAG) that advises on the legality of planned military actions because he didn’t think they were “well-suited” to provide recommendations. He didn’t want them to be “roadblocks to anything that happens” over the next four years, he said in February. “His contempt for the law, his contempt for JAG officers, permeates this entire thing”, says Representative Adam Smith (D-Wash).
Joe Scarborough of MSNOW’s “Morning Joe” said he had talked to a Navy Seal in operations “down there” who said “they understand that there are people on the boat only because the cartel has kidnapped their families and said either get on that boat or we’re going to kill your children”. The last thing Pete Hegseth wants is for there to be survivors to tell that story to the U.S. Congress and reveal that is the barbarity the Trump administration is playing into. Cleaning up debris, you say?
Trump as usual professes to know nothing about anything. “Number one, I don’t know that that happened”, he said on Air Force One, “and Pete said he did not want the, he didn’t even know what people were talking about.”
The Post’s revelation about the “double tap” killing comes just days after the video of six in Congress alerting the military,
“Our laws are clear. You can refuse illegal orders. You must refuse illegal orders.
trump awakens to his campaign promise of lower prices
Just days ago, President Trump – rich all his days – came upon what he said was a “new word” for him, “affordability”. In a Truth Social post, he now insists that the word belongs to him. Touting drug prices that are purportedly…
“FALLING AT LEVELS NEVER SEEN BEFORE, 500%, 600%, 700%, and more. No other President has been able to do this, BUT I HAVE!”
…he proclaimed “I AM THE AFFORDABILITY PRESIDENT”. Told that the average age of first time homebuyers is 40, he blamed Biden and came up with the idea of a 50-year mortgage, which would drive house prices up. Then, to make everything more affordable, why not give everyone $2,000 from tariff revenues? But didn’t 2021’s stimulus payments cause the inflation for which Republicans so roundly excoriate Biden (and Biden gifted everyone less: $1,400 in early 2021)?
“Everyone agrees energy is down”, Trump said. Gasoline, yes, but certainly not electricity, its costs rising often because of runaway AI demand for power, which the president wants to proceed unencumbered by any regulation despite aggravating electricity costs.
”We’re going to take care of all this stuff very quickly, very easily. It’s surgical. It’s beautiful to watch.”
He is now confident, after the GOP losses in elections three weeks earlier, that “we should win the Midterm Elections in RECORD NUMBERS”.
Just weeks ago, with so many going without a paycheck during the government shutdown, the Trump administration battled to withhold food aid, making life just that much more unaffordable.
United States reviving the Monroe doctrine
“To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social. “Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
It doesn’t need explaining that this is ridiculous, but it appears in his distorted reality field he is plotting air attacks on Venezuela. He is already operating outside the law without any involvement of Congress by his attacks on what we are asked to assume are boats smuggling drugs, which constitutionally has the power to decide whether or not the United States should go to war.
The Ukraine peace proposal so heavily stacked in Russia’s favor hands Putin his wish to dominate that region, while at the same time the Argentina bailout, tariff punishment of Brazil for prosecuting its ex-president, talk of attacking Mexico’s cartels, annexing Greenland says Trump is adopting 19th Century sphere of influence policy as the new foreign policy posture of the U.S. And he certainly won’t want to go to war with China over that little island off the China coast named Taiwan.
Trump’s obsession with biden is boundless
“Any document signed by Sleepy Joe Biden with the Autopen, which was approximately 92% of them, is hereby terminated, and of no further force or effect,” Trump said in a Friday post on Truth Social with no substantiation of that number, of course. “The Autopen is not allowed to be used if approval is not specifically given by the President of the United States.”
And the 1,600 January 6 pardons? Trump has admitted to autopen use for “very unimportant papers”, apparently unmindful that he had to be speaking of the convicted insurrectionists, the pardons of whom he of course did not sign individually, so is he saying those pardons were unimportant? Trump will of course claim that autopen use was specifically approved by him, without proof, but not by Biden, also without proof.
“The Radical Left Lunatics circling Biden around the beautiful Resolute Desk in the Oval Office took the Presidency away from him”, Trump averred.
“I am hereby cancelling all Executive Orders, and anything else that was not directly signed by Crooked Joe Biden, because the people who operated the Autopen did so illegally. Joe Biden was not involved in the Autopen process and, if he says he was, he will be brought up on charges of perjury.”
It’s infantile.
was trump an accomplice in a Brazil conspiracy?
Jair Bolsonaro, the former Brazilian president, attempted to overthrow the Brazilian government to retain power after his election loss. Unlike Trump for attempting the same, Bolsonaro was tried for treason and convicted. For prosecuting him, Trump punished Brazil with an extra 40% tariff that American coffee drinkers paid for – until he heard about “affordability”’s threat to the midterms and exempted coffee, fruit, and beef. He begged unsuccessfully for the Brazilian government to pardon their outlaw leader.
About to enter prison to serve a 27 year sentence, Bolsonaro was in house arrest while he appeals. He was caught attempting to saw off his ankle bracelet and put in custody. Had he planned an escape?
Drowned by the noise of his chopper a week ago, Trump didn’t quite hear a reporter’s question about Bolsonaro and answered, “So I spoke last to the person you just referred to, and we’re going to be meeting, I believe, in the very near future.” Asked again, “Sir, are you aware about the president being arrested today?” Trump was surprised and said, “No, I don’t know anything about that.” So what are we hearing? Expecting to meet “in the very near future” a man in an ankle bracelet sentenced to 27 years? How can that be interpreted as anything other than a plot to subvert Brazil and give their criminal president asylum in the U.S.?
Dec 1 2025 | Posted in
Items |
Read More »
