You seem to be very happy that the grand experiment is ending after…almost 250 years.
Trump shows no interest in upholding the law or protecting and preserving the Constitution. According to him and your ilk, the law is whatever he says it is.
So, are we a nation of laws?
Do we care about the Constitution? Or are you good with terminating it?
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I understand it can be difficult for those whose intelligence abruptly stopped growing at age 15.

I didn’t ask about you? Or your issues But it makes sense since you mentioned it…. Your brain is not so different from the material you work with

Cut to length dense and takes a nail and hammer for it to work … your issue is you only use one type of nail …. Insults ya know the kind only a 15 years old would use. :buds:


And let’s be Clear RMARSH. The difference between us is clear

I love our country and thats why I despise Trumps action in 2016 and now.

Yet You Love Trump the Man. 1st and country 2nd. And how do we know this. Because all you do his defend HIM…. You have Never defend the constitution or the rule of law.
Even these you’ve attacked in defense of your dear Leader Trump

Poor suffering billionaires

Tesla Paid Zero Federal Income Tax in 2024, Despite $2.3 Billion in Income
This brings Tesla’s average tax rate over the past three years to 0.4 percent.
https://truthout.org/articles/tesla-...ion-in-income/
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NEWS ANALYSIS: White Nationalist Forces Consolidate Power Alongside Musk’s Junta
By William Boot
Two weeks into a fast-moving coup by a South African tech oligarch, the United States — which was already deep into planning for its 250th birthday next year — hangs suspended this weekend in a liminal state somewhere between the constitutional republic it has been for 249 years and an authoritarian regime akin to Europe’s infamous fallen democracy, Hungary.
Following the alarming purges of the security services last week and the successful capture of the national treasury and other federal agencies by technical junta forces loyal to centibillionaire Elon Musk, the country’s constitutional system seemed to awaken from slumber this week.
Although by Monday Musk reigned unquestioned as head of the government, he appears content to allow the country’s elected president, Donald Trump, to remain the ceremonial head of state, and overall the political situation seemed to stabilize as the week progressed. Amid widening protests by opposition leaders and the public, damning media reports, and a flurry of court orders that blocked or slowed some of the most controversial power grabs, the country even appeared — at least temporarily — to pull back from the abyss.
Nevertheless, tensions remained high on the streets of the federal district known as Washington and uncertainty filled governmental offices.
The capital’s limbo status was reflected in a bizarre power sharing arrangement—some agencies were directly controlled by Musk, while others remained led by ideologically aligned ministers appointed by the figurehead Trump. Many of those officials who support Musk’s white nationalist agenda went out of their way to pay homage to the oligarch. The transportation minister bragged publicly about inviting a Musk takeover of his ministry’s work on aviation safety, and the capital’s federal prosecutor posted a letter to social media putting his supposedly independent force at Musk’s disposal.
The small handful of correspondents whose news organizations have not been cowed into compliance by regime threats spent much of the week in the embattled capital trying to even identify the mysterious Musk-backed figures taking control of government systems. Many of the junta gang members, who would only identify themselves by first-names and were known locally as DOGE, adopted a standard uniform of t-shirts under blazers and appeared to be youths, some even in their teens — one went online by the moniker BigBalls.
Many of these child foot soldiers were apparently mercenaries pulled from the sprawling business empire run by Musk, himself a notoriously immature and boyish oligarch raised amid wealth and privilege in apartheid-era South Africa who has steadily built deep ties to far-right political movements around the globe in recent years.
Regime spokespeople refused to clarify for much of the week whether the DOGE operators deployed across Washington were officially employed by the government or just acting at the personal order of Musk.
Throughout the week, reports and rumors of surprise DOGE appearances at one government office or another spread like wildfire on social media and over text-messaging chains filled with nervous government employees. Members of the parliament’s opposition party tried to investigate some of the agencies under siege, but were blocked from even entering buildings occupied by DOGE forces; at the education ministry, for instance, they faced down an anonymous brown-shirted enforcer who refused to identify himself.
At Parliament, members of the loyalist faction spent day after day pretending to not notice that Musk’s junta was undermining laws and blocking critical federal funding that they had settled on and approved themselves just months ago. One loyalist senator went so far as to say that “nobody should bellyache” about the unconstitutional and extra-legal moves by Musk.
Beyond the DOGE forces directly controlled by Musk’s junta, Christian white nationalists aligned with Musk solidified their control on other government institutions throughout the week, seeking to restore the primacy of the white male ruling class that has held power since the country’s founding and undermine the recent progress toward equality and professional advancements made by women and the country’s long oppressed racial and ethnic minorities.
After twenty members of the Democratic opposition party held an all-night protest, loyalist Republicans who control the Senate body approved a self-described Christian nationalist to head the country’s budget office. That official wrote in 2021 that he “recognizes America as a Christian nation, where our rights and duties are understood to come from God and where our primary responsibilities as citizens are for building and preserving the strength, prosperity and health of our own country.”
In her first communications as the country’s top law enforcement officer — a post known as attorney general — Pam Bondi acted quickly to criminalize both private sector and educational programs that aimed to help hire, educate, or support minority workers. On Thursday, the government also issued a new presidential order officially favoring Christians, a policy that almost certainly violates the country’s longstanding constitutional freedom of religion and separation of church and state.
The military — now overseen by a TV host-turned-defense-minister who has tribal tattoo markings that celebrate the Christian Crusades and are commonly associated with white nationalist groups — canceled programs that support minority or women personnel, saying that he believed helping non-white men succeed and thrive was “incompatible” with military values. The defense minister’s sweeping decrees even “paused” trainings aimed at combating sexual assault and harassment, led museum officials to cover up pictures honoring women who had served the nation’s intelligence services, and the Air Force to stop teaching history about Black men who served heroically in World War II.
The country’s oldest military academy — a school known as West Point that has served for centuries as a treasured training ground for the nation’s soldiers and business elite alike — disbanded longstanding student groups for Black, Hispanic, Japanese, Korean, and indigenous students, as well as a society for women engineers, but notably preserved student groups made up of religious denominations popular with the country’s white majority.
It was clear the assault on women and minorities in the military came from the top down: In his first hours as president, Trump had fired the national coast guard commandant, the first woman ever to lead a branch of the military, and on Tuesday he capriciously ordered her to give up her government housing with just three hours notice.
The combination of actions by various federal leaders, including Bondi — whose justice ministry leadership has quickly undone decades of traditional independence and is instead primarily made up of Trump’s personal lawyers who successfully stymied last year the then-former president’s prosecution on 94 felony criminal charges stemming from four criminal cases — seems focused on turning the clock back to one of the country’s darkest historical chapters, known as Jim Crow, when it strictly enforced racial segregation laws, particularly in economically depressed southern regions that had until the middle of the 19th century legalized the enslavement of Black people.
In fact, naked racism and support for white supremacy seemed one of the defining attributes of staffers across the new government. At least three of the DOGE mercenaries, when identified, were quickly traced to racist or extremist postings online; one of them, who had advocated for eugenics and called to “normalize” hating Indians, resigned, only to be quickly reinstated by Musk with support from the vice president. (“Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool,” a social media account linked to the staff posted last July.) Similarly, a man appointed to be the nation’s top public diplomat had been previously fired from a government role for attending a gathering of white nationalists and had called the nation’s Black population “feral” and advocated sterilizing Black men by incentivizing them with fancy sneakers.
As if to underscore the new ties between apartheid-era South Africa, the regime — which spent much of first two weeks brutally cracking down on non-white refugees — moved in recent days to explicitly welcome new white Afrikaner refugees.
It is perhaps not surprising, in retrospect, that the United States government might be overthrown by such a radical, youthful, tech-enabled junta.
Throughout the governmental upheaval, there have been consistent warning signs of the country’s creaking gerontocracy and an aging, increasingly out-of-touch generation unwilling to cede power peacefully — after all, three of the country’s last five presidents have all been born in 1946 and the just-departed president, who was forced to drop out of his reelection bid after appearing unable to answer questions during a televised debate last June, was even older.
Attorney General Bondi’s confirmation hearing was overseen by a 91-year-old senator who could barely string together coherent sentences and the body’s longtime Republican leader, now 82 and who repeatedly froze in public appearances last year, fell down twice in the Capitol building on Wednesday and was spotted thereafter using a wheelchair.
Most of all, though, that gerontocracy seemed on full display in the presidential mansion. There, the seemingly senile elected president, mid-level oligarch Donald Trump — reduced apparently without public complaint by Musk’s coup to a ceremonial figurehead — continued his practice of issuing bizarre and impractical daily announcements aimed primarily at attracting media headlines, each almost less sensical than the last. There was little evidence he was aware of the broader actions taking place across his government and no sense he was in control of the capital.
Over last weekend, the president — a failed real estate developer who remade his public image in the early 2000s as a hardened business executive through a popular reality TV show and who makes a habit of announcing that he’s solved crises that he invented himself — initiated a bizarre and ill-planned trade war with the country’s two main trading partners, only to rescind the threatened tariffs on Monday and Tuesday after the leaders of both countries placated him by announcing things they’d already been doing.
Later on Tuesday, he announced — with no official plan or even reasonable hope of execution — that the US would take over Gaza and develop it into golf courses; he devoted Thursday to an intensely personally attack on what amounts to just ten transgender college athletes nationwide, out of some 500,000 student athletes, the latest in a long series of actions aimed at inciting a moral panic over a tiny minority of an already heavily persecuted population; to cap off the week Friday evening, in a move more likely historically to emanate from Turkmenistan than the United States, he declared himself the chairman of the capital’s main arts institution, known as the Kennedy Center.
Then, for the third time in as many weekends of his presidency, he headed south to his personal beach compound located in Florida, a southern province known as a political stronghold and led by a loyalist governor. Presumably, this weekend — like the others so far — he’ll go golfing and then on Sunday, he is scheduled to attend the nation’s biggest secular holiday festival, an American football game called the “Super Bowl.”
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Best not the argue with a cult member, you will only get more of the same, he is a Trump mini me, angry, racist, narcissistic, never wrong, never willing to intelligently debate the policy issues, he knows it all, but clearly knows little and is ready to welcome a country ruled by the rich few funded on the backs of the poor and middle class.

OH BOY!!! You guys need to fish.

Or play golf

Both are frozen up here
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FElon wants to frame the NIH indirects cut as $4B in savings.

But given that NIH returns $2.5 on every $1 investment, this would actually cost US economy a net $6 BILLION (per year!). Not to mention the human costs of wrecking education and research sectors and the communities they serve.
Bu bu but…
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This is how MAGA logic works

They can round people up
They can put them in camps
They can villainized them
They can separate children
They can deport people to unsafe and other dictators
They can use them as scapegoats for the nation’s problems

But you can’t compare them to 1930 or 1940 Germany

Even if 99% of their rhetoric behaviors and actions mirror what happened in Germany

And their defense …. Is. Well we haven’t gassed them or killed them ….. AND AM I SUPPOSED TO PAT THEM ON THEIR BACKS FOR STOPPING THERE?

It’s like claiming not to be a rapist because you didn’t stick it in him or her

It’s just an attack on woke universities.

Nearly all of these “cuts” are politically driven with zero thought into the negative ramifications.

Musk thinks he can replace most of the government with an AI bot and eliminate all the pesky regulations impacting his businesses.

When the working class wakes up to what’s really going on it’s going to be ugly.

I really think one big problem is the young are more interested in their social media feeds and are either tuned out to what is happening, or believing all the spin those working this coup are putting on their phones. If and when the massive marches and demonstrations begin, I hope the military aren’t going to blindly follow orders if those orders means silencing free speech by force. Wait until the job market that clearly shows what Trump and Musk are up to tanks, hope you are too heavily invested in the stock market.

And just like that, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau homepage, consumerfinance.gov, is being erased. As of January 30, 2025, CFPB enforcement actions resulted in
$19.7 billion in consumer relief.

The budget for 2025 for CFPB is $823 million. Since its creation in 2011, the CFPB has returned $20.7 billion to consumers

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Nothing to see here you crazy liberal, until dawn breaks over all the marbleheads.

So let me understand what Trump and Republicans claim is happening with Musk and Trump

They all claim Trump has won an Historic mandate. And his is doing what Americans elected him to do…

We all a know the mandate line is a lie.

But can Republicans or supporters explain why Trump with such a mandate In control of the presidency the House and the Senate

Be so weak. That their entire agenda is based on executive actions!

You know the ones republicans claimed and I quote

Burgum, a Trump ally who has been floated as his potential running mate, responded: "We've got three branches of government and this president, more like any other, has bypassed Congress.

As recently as October, now-President Biden said you can’t legislate by executive action unless you’re a dictator. Well, in one week, he’s signed more than 30 unilateral actions, and working Americans are getting short shrift,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell

Or. The party of voter ID was against

Republicans and conservative activists have increasingly been targeting an executive order issued three years ago by the Biden administration that is intended to boost voter registration, claiming it’s unconstitutional and an attempt to interfere in the November election.

Anyone else see a pattern .. republican terms an EO by definition from a democratic is evil and is circumventing the roll of congress and the constitution! Yet an EO by Trump is leadership with no mention of the role of congress or the constitution…. Is the word mandate in the constitution?

Everyone was warned and those that helped put him in office wanted this apparently, or just assumed it was all talk. Trump and Musk are exposed for exactly who they are, Americans and true conservative patriotic republicans better wake up soon or it will be to late. Another perfect example of who he is was shown in his shameful tweet about why the department of education is being scrapped, don’t want ugly teachers in the schools.

JD Vance 2022 in case you had any doubt why the FFOTUS picked him

He said he thought this was pessimistic. "I tend to think that we should seize the institutions of the left," he said. "And turn them against the left.
We need like a de-Baathification program, a de-woke-ification program."
"I think Trump is going to run again in 2024," he said. "I think that what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice: Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people."
"And when the courts stop you," he went on, "stand before the country, and say—" he quoted Andrew Jackson, giving a challenge to the entire constitutional order-"the chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it."
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I would say they’re writing the Democrats campaign but I think they’ve convinced MAGA that bureaucrats have magical powers.
There’s a reason the President is Article 2 in the Constitution.

BASH: I remember a time when Republicans were very careful about the government having access to personal data

NOEM: Well, we can't trust the government anymore

BASH: You are the government
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Trump keeps yelling waste fraud and abuse. And corruption


Yet since . As of February 9th. of this year he's visited Mar-A-Lago more times. Than the WH. His supporters don't seem to care, apparently enriching himself by playing at his own properties and charging the Secret Service up to $650 a day to stay at those properties


Same as last time :btu:

Its A CULT
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It is the biggest grift of all time, between Trump and Musk, they are just making money off all Americans, blue, red or purple.

Apparently FElon has spent millions for a propaganda add about USAID during the superbowl
Here’s a little video to get out in front of his lies
https://vimeo.com/1052680025
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Candidates for top intelligence and law enforcement jobs were asked to give “yes” or “no” responses to questions such as: Was Jan. 6 “an inside job?”


That’s funny not one of Trump nominees. Would answer hypothetical questions,


More loyalty less competency. What could go wrong

I did not write this but it makes an earlier comment I made .. better

I. believe our current administration is fascist. Not because I dislike them or because I can’t get over an election, but because I've spent too many years reading and learning about the Third Reich to miss the similarities. Not because any administration I dislike must be Nazis, but because things are actually mirroring authoritarian and fascist regimes of the past.

I think either his good friends are paying him or he’s just a moron. Both have the same result.

Trump: "I'm gonna tell Elon very soon, like maybe in 24 hours, to go check the Department of Education. He's gonna find the same thing. Then I'm gonna go to the military. Let's check the military. We're gonna find billions, hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse."
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Mark Cuban moments ago:
"If you have nothing to hide, hide nothing. Elon Musk, why not invite some democrats to work side by side with your Doge teams and report on what exactly is going on?"

He’s right, there’s no proprietary software or information involved.
Shouldn’t need anymore clearance than the people already involved
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Over the past 24 hours, officials ranging from billionaire Elon Musk to Vice President JD Vance have not only criticized a federal judge's decision early Saturday that blocks Musk's Department of Government Efficiency from accessing Treasury Department records, but have also attacked the legitimacy of judicial oversight, a fundamental pillar of American democracy, which is based on the separation of powers.

But they’re not fascist
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Odds are looking more and more like they just ignore the courts, hell, even Nixon had a sense of shame.

Our republic is on life support.

We will see if they ignore the Courts.
Some of what they are doing assumes future evil plans.
You wouldn't dismantle the agency (CFPB) that has and would protect consumers from corporate abuse and scams unless you wanted your rich buddies to be able to abuse and scam consumers.
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Well worth a watch.

https://www.reddit.com/r/missouri/s/k0d7NrzP0j
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Very informative, simple to the point historical basis. But it comes down to will Trump supporters be willing to admit they’ve been lied to.. like the man asked .

Honestly, I doubt it. They will just label this Trump derangement syndrome. Which is actually a Trump supporter affliction.
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I agree. As I often say, “Its a cult”. Just like jonestown everyone was willing to die before they could grasp it was all a ridiculous stack of lies.


I think that the average trump voter will just blame joe biden and obama for the pain that Trump and Co are going to put on them or say its just a natural market correction. Real pain is coming down the pipe for the not so well off.
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Of course. None of this will be Trumpy's fault. It will be blamed on Biden or the Derp State.

Read The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control, by Steve Hassan (he is also on the StandUp! with Pete Dominick Podcast today, worth a listen)

Well the FFOTUS is threatening everyone that he’ll invoke tariffs again. He’s doing this by using emergency powers that were foolishly given to the Presidency by Congress.

Section 8: Powers of Congress

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises,

He’s playing a dangerous game where the United States holds at best 30% of the chips and threatening the holders of the other 70%.
He’s counting on BRICS who hold 36% of the chips to not be able to get any of the remaining third of the world economies to join them.
Unless he succeeds in his current coup, he will likely only hold the house and senate thru the midterms.
They all realize that and are waiting to see what happens in the short term.
Any combination of players can buy Canadian oil and LNG to make up the Canadian shortfall, this in turn will drive energy prices up in the USA by half.
China has banned the export of a number of rare minerals to the United States and we cannot easily replace them, Canada has some of them but do you think they trust FFOTUS?
These are interesting and scary times we are living in
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This is from an article in The Atlantic
It’s gifted on Bluesky in the link

"The US is sliding toward a more 21st-century model of autocracy: competitive authoritarianism—a system in which parties compete in elections but incumbent abuse of power systematically tilts the playing field against the opposition...retreat to the sidelines could be fatal for democracy."
https://bsky.app/profile/pt007.bsky..../3lhtgmpdtp22v
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If we make it to the mid terms and there are actually elections, I suspect our democracy might survive. If Trump and his billionaire buddies have their way, it will be over before then and it might take drastic action to reverse it, I wouldn't want to bet my kids future on which way it goes.

A view from a European
https://youtu.be/8lvUwrmMtFA?si=vna5g3ej08xbZ_rp
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Nothing to worry about

We call upon our elected representatives to stand with us and to insist upon adherence to the rule of law and the legal processes and procedures that ensure orderly change. The administration cannot choose which law it will follow or ignore. These are not partisan or political issues. These are rule of law and process issues. We cannot afford to remain silent. We must stand up for the values we hold dear: The ABA will do its part and act to protect the rule of law.
We urge every attorney to join us and insist that our government, a government of the people, follow the law. It is part of the oath we took when we became lawyers. Whatever your political party or your views, change must be made in the right way. Americans expect no less.
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Just saw google maps. Changed Gulf of Mexico to gulf of America.. it’s amazing how cowardly these private companies are. Bending the knee to Herr Trump
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It’s only for US users, will likely be changed back in just under four years. I wouldn’t order new encyclopedias just yet.

It’s all a dog and pony show. Like renaming fort Bragg. After some random guy named Bragg from world war 2. Hint hit wink wink. Telling maga we outsmarted the left
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