April 2025 Blog

4/24: Trump and Vance should be told they are NOT WELCOME at Pope Francis’ funeral! He’s only interested in an immoral photo-op.

Just this past Sunday, Pope Francis’ Easter message implored Christians: “I would like all of us to hope anew and to revive our trust in others, including those who are different than ourselves, or who come from distant lands, bringing unfamiliar customs, ways of life and ideas! For all of us are children of God!" He exclaimed, “How much contempt is stirred up at times towards the vulnerable, the marginalized, and migrants!”

In his final message, Pope Francis declared, “There can be no peace without freedom of religion, freedom of thought, freedom of expression, and respect for the views of others.”

As Jennifer Rubin of The Contrarian (Substack) puts it: “In a broken world, Be a Francis, not a Trump.”

4/23: Trump and Vance are traitors to America and the World Order. They demonstrate it by how they are throwing Zelensky and Ukraine under Putin’s feet. They need to be forced to walk the gangplank off the edge of the earth in iron leggings and hands tied behind.

The United States is NOT working primarily with Russia. TRUMP AND HIS THUGS are working primarily with Russia.

C’mon Congress. Get with it. Stop this Putin ass-kisser. Help us save Ukraine.

4/23: The New York Times found three users on X who feuded with Mr. Musk in December only to see their reach on the social platform practically vanish overnight. The accounts are the starkest signs yet that Mr. Musk or others at the company have the power to punish critics and that they may be willing to use it, startling free speech advocates who hoped that the billionaire would be their champion.

4/23: Why do we have to project anger at the world? This shows in our punitive bullying ways of responding to the world.

4/22: Virginia’s House representative Graham Connolly wrote: “I am concerned that DOGE is moving personal information across agencies without the notification required under the Privacy Act or related laws, such that the American people are wholly unaware their data is being manipulated in this way.”

4/21: Raising a dog is like raising a kid. Fun Puppyhood turns into teenage problems and in their late teens they’re gone. The difference is you cry when you lose your dog. You celebrate when you lose your kid.

4/21: The current Republican-controlled Congress has subjugated its role as an independent branch of government to the executive, which has allowed Trump to pursue his most extreme appointments and policy positions, destroy the government infrastructure, and destabilize the global economy.

4/20: What goes around comes around.

Liberals castigated the court for inventing the major questions doctrine, which appears nowhere in the Constitution or any federal statute, yet still operated as a “heavyweight thumb,” as Justice Elena Kagan put it, against the Biden administration.
Now the tables have been turned.

There is a deep irony here. The Supreme Court deployed the major questions doctrine to block broad invocations of presidential power by President Joe Biden. The conservative justices did so to surmount a big obstacle: Each of those actions was permissible under existing legal doctrine that gave government agencies broad discretion in how they would carry out congressional mandates.

In many cases based on trump’s first three months destruction — litigants are seizing on the major questions doctrine in an effort to rein in Mr. Trump’s boldest assertions of authority.

4/20: America should get off its high horse and join the rest of the world. We no longer have the enviable economy, democracy, or lifestyle. We pissed it all away in the last 80 days.

4/20: “Globalisation may be in retreat, but the product that millions of us spend our days glued to, the glossy rectangle that has become an utterly essential part of our every waking hour, is entirely globalised, with a supply chain reaching from Galicia to Taipei. And, crucially, sitting right at the heart of that supply chain, like a power station in an electricity grid, is China, the very rival that Trump wants to bring to heel.” — London Sunday Times

4/19: Does this wording make sense, "criminally immune felon"? And can this wording be used in place of, "President of the United States"?

4/19: Today is Patriots Day in Boston. Please visit my Substack post: Two Lanterns

4/18: it’s time to light two lanterns. “And once in a great while, someone will light a lantern—or even two—that will shine forth for democratic principles that are under siege, and set the world ablaze." — Heather Cox-Richardson

4/18: We need to be proactive in preventing Trump from cozying up to Putin. Trump seems like he is preparing to abandon Ukraine and throw Zelensky under the Russian bus.

4/18: Pontius Pilate crucified “terrorist” Jesus Christ by nailing him to a cross. Donald Trump crucifies his “terrorists” by shipping them to El Salvadore.

4/17: To ensure arm’s length separation between government and religion, all churches and religious organizations should not have non-profit tax exemption status with the IRS.

4/17: "It’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising. It’s time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement. Trump is about power. The only way he’s going to be stopped is if he’s confronted by some movement that possesses rival power." — David Brooks, NYT "This is what America needs right now. Trump is shackling the greatest institutions in American life. We have nothing to lose but our chains."

4/17: I think computer technology has robbed our youth from the beauty and adventure of pure imagination.

4/17: Re. Harvard University and the IRS: Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark reposted a clip of then-senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) on the Fox News Channel when a right-wing group falsely alleged the IRS was targeting them. "This is about whether we have functional constitutional government in this country,” Vance told host Laura Ingraham. “If the IRS can go after you because of what you think or what you believe or what you do, we'd no longer live in a free country.“

4/16: Ms. Ocasio-Cortez also assailed the president in deeply personal terms, suggesting that if he “wants to find the rapists and criminals in this country, he needs to look in a mirror, today.”

4/15: “Trump is undermining our sacred rule of law, he is tossing away our allies, he is undermining the value of the dollar and he is shredding any hope of national unity. He’s even got Canadians now boycotting Las Vegas because they don’t like to be told we will soon own them.
So, you tell me who’s playing with a pair of twos.
If Trump doesn’t stop his rogue behavior, he’s going to destroy all the things that made America strong, respected and prosperous.
I have never been more afraid for America’s future in my life.” — Thomas Friedman, NYT

4/15: THE CLEAR VIEW. To know where you are going you must know from where you came. — D Crellen

4/14: Scholar of authoritarianism Timothy Snyder explained the larger picture: “On the White House’s theory, if they abduct you, get you on a helicopter, get to international waters, shoot you in the head, and drop your corpse into the ocean, that is legal, because it is the conduct of foreign affairs.” He compared it to the Nazis’ practice of pushing Jews into statelessness because “[i]t is easier to move people away from law than it is to move law away from people. Almost all of the killing took place in artificially created stateless zones.”

4/14: “Once you give up the idea that we are all equal before the law and have the right to due process, you have given up the whole game. You have admitted the principle that some people have more rights than others. Once you have replaced the principle of equality before the law with the idea that some people have no rights, you have granted your approval to the idea of an authoritarian government. At that point, all you can do is to hope that the dictator and his henchmen overlook you.” — Heather Cox-Richardson, Letter from an American

4/13: “The forest was shrinking, but the trees kept voting for the axe, for the axe was clever, and convinced the trees that because his handle was made of wood, he was one of them.” — ~Turkish proverb

4/13: El Salvador is Trump’s Siberian Gulag. But the torturous cold is replaced with heat.

4/13: So what was really happening beneath the cacophony of the tariff cover?

Another worrying, not-so-prevalent issue is Trump’s attempts to revise or destroy and control history. As George Orwell wrote in 1984, “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” When you destroy history, Orwell concludes, “Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”

Fight every attempt. The National Archives, the Smithsonian Institute, the Kennedy Center for the Arts, and even the White House walls!

4/12: “Using American taxpayer dollars to hold people in an inhumane prison in El Salvador violates all notions of American justice. Treating people like animals is a dangerous warning of where this administration is willing to go.” — Civil Discourse With Joyce Vance in Substack.

This attitude and behavior does not exclude American citizens.

4/11: Project 2029 Constitution - The president may issue executive orders but they expire after 14 days if not reviewed and approved by congress. If it survives it remains an effective executive order and can be overturned by any future president.

4/10: Civilization was fun while it lasted. — David Brooks, NYT

4/10: Around The World In 80 Days! Even Jules Verne couldn’t have envisioned the world’s collapse that Trump accomplished in 80 days.

4/10: How can a single judge’s decision affect a national issue? How can a single president’s decree affect an entire nation?

4/10: It’s a sad and shameful time when the office of the American president is the ongoing fodder and brunt of embarrassing and disgusting humor by all of the popular comedians. That hallowed office has been hollowed— it took a very dumb man just 80 days to accomplish it.

4/9:  Attorney General Pam Bondi announced today that she had terminated a career DOJ employee who was caught with a copy of the U.S. Constitution on his desk. She took the opportunity to remind all DOJ staffers that the U.S. Constitution is on the Republican Party’s banned reading list. So what has party politics got to do with operations within the Department of Justice? Recall your oath, Bondi!

4/9: The ongoing vote-stealing drama in North Carolina’s 2024 justice election where loser Griffin is attempting to steal the election won by Riggs is a serious test to subvert democracy, ultimately affecting the entire nation. The crooked republicans are trying to disqualify 65,000 voters.

How can 65,000 votes be directly matched to 65,000 voters? Doesn’t our constitution guarantee secret ballots? The ballots can not be associated to the voter when counting thus there should be no way for anyone to subtract the proper 65,000 votes.

4/8: Sign up for MAWA Make America Weak Again. Actually, it never was weak — till now! Get your own red hat!

4/8: One simply cannot imagine Trump or Vice President JD Vance aspiring to build the America that Ronald Reagan described in his Jan. 11, 1989, farewell address. Reagan spoke of the need to reinforce in our children “what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world.” That America was a moral and political beacon, “a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors, and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.”

4/8: Is dueling legal in America. If so, Navarro should throw down the gauntlet in front of Musk for Musk’s insults.

To all who aspire to prevent a post-America, post-Israel world, I have only one message: This is the fight of our lives. I am all in — and I am not tired. How about you?

4/8: Pain& Coincidence
Olivia Julianna expresses two of the essential lessons of life: "Pain often comes before purpose. Even if you don’t know what it is yet," and "Don’t believe in coincidences. Believe things fall apart so better things can come together."

4/8: I shouldn’t feel this way, but I don’t mind sacrificing my investments to see Tesla (Musk) tank!

4/7: Most basic ideas and inventions came from Arabia and China to which they are returning. Paper, porcelain, gunpowder, tea, woodblock printing, ink, spaghetti, the number system, the concept of the number zero, etc. Buddhism and Muslim philosophies.

4/7: William Lederer called us a Nation of Sheep in his 1957 book. I think we have evolved to be a Nation of Lemmings.

4/6: There’s one thing that Elon Musk has right. That is, North America and Europe should be free trade zones.

4/5: Here’s a more wearisome thought: JD Vance will sit behind the resolute desk if Trump is removed. He is younger, more sinister, and has more ominous goals than Trump ever did. For Trump, it was just ego. Vance desires to rule. 

4/4: Everything Trump touches dies. That is his entire history – bankrupting business after business. 

What Trump meant by “America first” is that he’s wrecking the American economy first, then the world’s.

4/4: The US is repatriating all its gold stored in the Bank of England to the US, I imagine in part because it probably feels it may need some hard assets and in part as a hedge. Transfers of gold from the UK to the US have rocketed up literally exponentially. When there’s a hard transfer of assets rather than simply allocating vault-held gold, it’s usually a sign that something is going to go horribly wrong.

Not long ago, Germany and some European countries did the same thing.

4/4: Where is this administration taking us? I don’t like the signs:
“Based on the level of hatred spewing forth from the US administration, from Musk, Vance, and Trump, is harsh, disgusting, and unacceptable to many people around the world.

The world is undergoing a sense of abandonment right now, and this is deeply traumatic. After abandonment usually comes anger, and this usually translates into emotionally unregulated behavior in psychological terms… and then comes violence.

As long as Vance is allowed to open his mouth, it doesn’t matter what else happens; the world is beginning to decide this is too much to bear and will make “alternative arrangements” in the background, even while smiling and bowing in the foreground.” — Tommo from the UK

“Europe is feeling pretty directly insulted, betrayed, abandoned overnight, and belittled, and that’s a tough soufflé for anyone to get just right without collapsing and has already almost gone past the point of no return sentiment-wise.”

4/3: The fact that Americans elected Trump exposes America’s basic tenets. — that of confrontation., fear, ignorance. Read William Lederer’s 1961 book, A Nation if Sheep.

Nothing’s changed, as Tom Lambert wrote in 2006. “He [Lederer] details how Americans threw away our good money and goodwill for little return in nations we didn’t bother to understand. Sure, in retrospect, our industrial resources allowed us to spend the Soviets into the ground and win the Cold War. Still, Lederer shows how poorly that money was spent and how much more effective we could have been had we bothered to send diplomats and journalists who actually knew the local language rahter than ones that had to depend utterly on translators who often fed them a line of bull, as just one example.” https://raisedbyturtles.org/lederer-nation-sheep

Trump is reflecting that in spades but, because of his ignorance, is basing it on the wrong reasons.

4/3: "America is being looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far," said Trump. "America being “looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by Elon and me, both near and far," thought Trump.

4/2: Will “Liberation Day” put Italy’s olive oil mafia out of business?

4/2: "It’s downright scary to watch this close up. President Trump is focused on what teams American transgender athletes can race in, and China is focused on transforming its factories with AI so it can outpace all our factories. Trump’s “Liberation Day” strategy is to double down on tariffs while gutting our national scientific institutions and work force that spur U.S. innovation. China’s liberation strategy is to open more research campuses and double down on A.I.-driven innovation to be permanently liberated from Trump’s tariffs.

Beijing’s message to America: We’re not afraid of you. You aren’t who you think you are — and we aren’t who you think we are." — Thomas Friedman, NYT

"with all the new U.S. “overseas investment restrictions and disincentives to collaborate, we are now blind to China tech developments. China is defining the tech standards of the future without U.S. input. This will put us at a serious competitive disadvantage in the future.”

4/2: Mr. Trump, Tear Down This Wall!

America now represents a vastly larger market than its four percent of the world’s population. The wall we are creating will shut us odd, totally, from that other 96%. We already stymy our world competitiveness such as not conforming to standards such as the metric system and not making our automobiles with interchangeable left/right driver positions. But focusing on gender standards and DEI standards will not lift us to the technical level which China is rapidly raising — to our exclusion. It feels like we are racing, at flank speed, in the opposite direction — to Mao’s Cultural Revolution.

Let’s take that mind-altering drug that allows us to rebuilt that self-confidence we once had — less defending what we are, how we think and more proud of who we are, what we’ve done. Let’s change our national anthem to make this possible. Let’s sing America The Beautiful. Make us alive again!

Let’s tear down our walls and build something new — a loving, sharing, cosmopolitan nation — America The Beautiful.

4/1: The serial rapist has just raped the entire world!

4 /1: ### One of the leaders on the Food and Drug Administration response to bird flu was laid off today, according to two people familiar with the matter. Tristan Colonius, chief veterinary officer at the F.D.A., was supervising efforts to investigate bird flu illnesses of pets, determine how they became infected and try to limit further exposure of the pet population. He also worked on an Agriculture Department effort to award funding to develop vaccines and therapeutics to protect humans and animals from bird flu. Several other senior veterinarians were also cut as well.