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Castironskillet's avatar

And another one today, 5/28. Larry Hoover???? I am an old ER nurse who is very familiar with Mr Hoover’s gang, Gangster Disciples. I cannot even count how many shot up and dead young men I took care of because of that gang. Hoover ran the 90’s crack trade, FROM JAIL!! He was as the king of crack. How in the world (Kanye) did he pick THAT guy.

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GA Westover's avatar

Professional courtesy? Grifters con artists, fraudsters, embezzlers, scamsters of all types have one of their own with the power to mainstream their industry. Pardons, getting rid of any oversight, hamstringing lawyers and judges, corrupting law enforcement. Demented

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Alta Flobert's avatar

Gosh, why would trump pardon dirtbags? Oh, wait, I get it. It is so he will have some pals in prison when we “ lock him up” with his clown car load of staffers.

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Eric73's avatar

Trump: "Part of the problem with Harvard is that there are about 31% of foreigners coming to Harvard, but they refuse tell us who these people are."

Harvard releases admissions data every fall. About 18% of the class of 2028 are international students. They are likely mostly Asian, who tend to kick everyone else's asses on standardized test scores.

Nice job, America, re-electing a guy who invents his own reality whenever convenient, and did so from Day One in 2016. I have reservoirs of sympathy, albeit limited ones, for people not tuned in to some of the more esoteric aspects of Trump's first-term trespasses. This isn't one of them.

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Macfly163's avatar

"...a grave threat to the rule of law ..."

Would you have ever thought that that statement would become trite?

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Wd52's avatar

Congratulations, Bill. You helped make this a reality:

For decades, the GOP was the respectable party of small business and the middle class (excluding Nixon)

In 1980, it became clear the traitors needed much more money for TV campaigns, so they sold out to the super-rich and corporations.

And as the US demographics shifted, rather than find a set of better policies, they decided to kill education and suppress the vote and campaign on emotional, divisive issues devoid of reason.

Now the GOP has mutated into a #Fascist cancer in OPEN WARFARE on democracy.

#GOPtraitors

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Angie's avatar

IF you want to call the main writers names and assume they did something, maybe you shouldn't post here...not very civil, which they promote, and why be on a place looking for like minded people to get rid of Trump, when you obviously don't want to be a part of it?

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Bruce Jordan's avatar

I left the Republican Party when Newt Gingrich became Speaker of the House . He became the party flamethrower and was the GOP mouthpiece who introduced the idea of "Us vs Them".

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Wd52's avatar

Shameful. The abandonment of honest, integrity, service ... all in the name of absolute permanent power. Obscene.

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Bruce Jordan's avatar

Trump might as well hang a shingle on the front door of the White House reading : PRESIDENCY FOR SALE.

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Jerome's avatar

Probably thousands of people in federal prison for marijuana possession and Trump pardons the white collar criminals. What could possibly be the reason? Could it be as simple as black and white? No duh!

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Elizabeth McIlvaine's avatar

Things are probably going to get really bad in the United States over the next few years. If Trump’s policies destroy the economy and many Americans really suffer we may have an opportunity for positive change. So I have made a list of Constitutional Amendments that I would like to propose:

1. Reform the pardon power

2. Get money out of politics: eliminate Citizens United

3. No one over the age of 70 can run for President, Senator, or Representative

4. 18 year term limit for Supreme Court Justices

5. No criminal immunity for the President or anyone else.

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LYNN COOK's avatar

Wish I could forward your recommendations to some of my dearly loved..but sadly believers in all their messiah preaches. Would be quickly, summarily deleted before even reading a word. Some, will grant, have stopped posting loud plaudets to his edicts/ ongoing grift successes....; quiet is what I hear...nothing extolling his pathway to being crowned ' king of all he surveys' ....that ' absence of comment' fills me with hope that some of heretofore entrenched cult members are beginning to feel the individual.touch of pain the whole country has felt so egregiously. Dr. Brandy Lee is so eloquent in the derangement of Trump's mind.....we've all seen for ourselves up to now. Am hoping the cult members break free of the malignant narcissist's clutches....

Hope springs eternal...

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Sal's avatar

Does the fact that the WH insisted Trump did the crypto dinner on “personal time” mean it’s NOT AN OFFICIAL ACT covered by the immunity SCOTUS idiotically granted?

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Old Chemist 11's avatar

"Cheap Shot" screams for a reply to JD Vance's tantrum: "I'll stop calling you a 'fascist' if you stop calling me - and everyone who challenges your rabid authoritarianism - a 'lib'."

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E. A. Bare's avatar

The quote from trump in the cheapshot thing was patently absurd. I guarantee you every foreign student at Harvard is absolutely known by and registered with the government. What DHS was asking for is the McCarthy questions about associates and organization, and no laws have been broken, that is none of their business.

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TOM HESLEP's avatar

Perhaps Scott Jenkins committed state crimes as well. The SOL won't have run by years end.

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E. A. Bare's avatar

They would have to be different crimes, like when courts in the south acquit the KKK then federal courts charged them under hate crime laws.

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Jennie Ehrmann's avatar

The NYT today reported that Trump pardoned Paul Walczak this week after Walczak was convicted of $1,000,000 in tax fraud. Walczak's mother attended the crypto dinner. So the grifter-in-chief keeps on grifting.

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Carol S.'s avatar

What Trump apologists call "corruption" is something entirely different.'

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Marisa Curran's avatar

This is not a government, it’s a crime syndicate.

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Nancy (South NJ coast)'s avatar

Leading in today's NY Times:

Trump Pardoned Tax Cheat After Mother Attended $1 Million Dinner

Paul Walczak’s pardon application cited his mother’s support for the president, including raising millions of dollars and a connection to a plot to publicize a Biden family diary.

Walczak scammed his nursing-home company's employees (and the Treasury) out of $millions in federal taxes withheld from their paychecks. He spent the money on a yacht, among other luxury purchases. He and his mom were hardly destitute. She was well known in trumpworld as a generous donor to the president.

Meanwhile, trump and the Rs are lavishing more tax breaks on rich folks like Paul Walczak and his mom in the One Big Ugly Bill, while reducing the income of low-wage workers like those who labor in nursing homes. And the pardon tells all the Walczaks of America that they can rip off their workers (and the Treasury) with no fear of accountability.

Use this link to read the Times story for free:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/27/us/politics/trump-pardon-paul-walczak-tax-crimes.html?unlocked_article_code=1.KU8.nAVV.elOAwcSyXNNG&smid=url-share

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Carol S.'s avatar

They're not even hiding it: "If I support Trump, I should be free to commit crimes without consequence" - just as Trump apologists think he should be free to commit crimes without penalty. He really attracts the best people, doesn't he?

Also, he's a populist who genuinely cares about "ordinary Americans" who've been left behind.

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Julie's avatar

"...Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a high degree than any other form." Listening to Sarah Longwell's podcast this last weekend, I was sickened by how supportive of Trump's policies and his actions Trump voters still were. They weren't at all appalled by transporting people to prisons in foreign countries for almost certain torture and abuse in spite of not knowing if people were actually guilty or not. The number of Trump's abuses of our laws are legion and his supporters don't care, in fact they like it. The shift from human decency to depravity has been so fast it's unbelievable and I don't think our forefathers could have done more than they did to plan for it. I believe it is up to us, the American people who still believe in being basically decent, to stop Trump and this decline.

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Frau Katze's avatar

MAGA believes Trump’s lies that the men are gangsters.

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Mark's avatar

Part of the challenge is that there is not an effective counterpunch to what MAGA has offered. Democrat's approval rating is lower than Trump's and he's under 40%. That tells you something. The opposition can't just be a less-bad Trump, it needs to offer something compelling.

What I've gleaned from the last 10 years is that most people are ultimately either selfish or in a zombie state where they won't upset the apple cart as long as their life doesn't get worse. I have my own personal theories as to how we got here, but one of the big ones is that we had too many years of "success" as a society. We don't have a true sense for what is at stake because other people have thrown out hyperbole for so long, we just raise our eyebrows and move on.

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E.K. Hornbeck's avatar

MAGA only offers propaganda espoused by a professional con man, which is hard to beat if the audience is brainwashed for the last 40 years starting with Limbaugh and Fox News through Musk/Twitter.

Hopefully enough of the selfish, zombified people you mention will wake up by 2026 as Trump's economic policies turn to shit, the Democrats better have their act together by then.

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Truckeeman's avatar

The House delayed some of their worst policies until after the next Congressional election.

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E.K. Hornbeck's avatar

Democrats better take it back then!

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Truckeeman's avatar

Makes sense. Then all the stupid MAGA voters will think the Dems were the ones that took away their Medicaid.

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Different drummer's avatar

JVL has written and talked a lot in the past about how the decadence resulting from how easy most Americans alive today have had it is contributing to where we are.

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Mark's avatar

And yet many of our kids and grandkids are worse off economically than the earlier generations. There's a lot to unpack there.

Ultimately, I think the issue is that we don't have an alternative to MAGA and "I can't think of anything I'd do differently" is pretty much asking to get your ass kicked when the kids aren't alright. If your choice is the status quo or a longshot bet to blow it all up and build something else, it's easier to understand why they fell for it.

We probably focused our education a little too much on academic topics like grammatical sentence structure or derivative equations (something few of us will use very often in real life) vs the importance of due process, multicultural freedom, and how to maximize our economic opportunity. You pair that with outsized voting blocks for some generations vs others and you have a recipe for trouble.

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Julie's avatar

I think you're right. And with the deaths of people who lived during the Depression and WWII, it's easy to forget what things were like. I guess we'll find out the hard way.

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Mark's avatar

Boomers certainly led a semi-charmed existence. What shocks me is the Gen Z and Millennials who don't seem to understand many of these things have happened before and they aren't a solution (blaming immigrants, tariffs, etc.) I get that the US system is failing them, but these are non-starters as a way to fix it.

I'm assuming it's probably a failure of our schools and parenting.

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E.K. Hornbeck's avatar

As a late Boomer I don't get people saying we had it easy. The late 1970's and early 80's were a period of high inflation (40% over 3 years), high interest rates (mortgage 14%) and economic stagflation, the conditions we're just starting to get into today.

Trump is of course a more existential threat internally than anything in the recent past and I wish people would stop looking backwards and assigning blame. When I went to the "Hands Off March" in April I mostly saw Boomers and Gen X, I hope to see more younger people at the "No Kings" march next month. They'll be the main ones left with the detritus of MAGA if it continues unchecked.

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Julie's avatar

I too am a later Boomer and remember well the inflation rate and stagflation. I was looking for employment and it was hard.

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