There is nothing new in this. Anyone who even fantasizes about the Felon and his maniacal minions doing anything from a position of knowledge, intelligence, or even basic competence is completely deluded. They are not mediocre--which describes the vast majority of people in Congress. They are far worse: utterly incompetent, utterly corrupt, utterly actively evil. And they revel in being so. And because of the idiocy of 70+ million morons who voted for him instead of for a competent, humane person who happens to be a woman of color, we are absolutely at the mercy of these m*therf*ckers.
That 70 million people voted for the Felon/rapist/pedophile/tax cheat/liar is a deep, deep condemnation of our education system. As the Felon has often said, he likes "stupid people", mainly because he is one himself and cannot bear to be upstaged in any way. When we rid ourselves of this malevolent horde of ignoramuses, one of the many firsts that has to be accomplished is the establishment of a national education system that teaches civics, history, and media literacy with a competency exam before graduation from high school...that is if we don't want this nightmare to happen again.
Carol, I totally agree--I have been known to suggest that the defense and education budgets be reversed. But since this malevolent maladministration is getting rid of the Department of Education in their merry crusade to kill off democracy, we will never see this even becoming a point of conversation.
Exactly. However, when Donny Boy is out the Heritage Foundation will find someone to replace him and they probably will pick someone more intelligent and a more sophisticated liar. The MAGA Voodoo Cult will go on without it's current god.
Like the Tea Party, Know-nothings, and Whigs, the MAGA cult will ultimately lose credibility and return to the minimalist influence that it should never have left.
They have no credibility now to people who can put two brain cells together. They are a numerical minority in the US as a whole, but every state gets two Senators and half the states are Fascist States. The voting majority in those states want the equivalent of Fascism. MAGA may lose control of the US temprorarily but we should not expect them to disappear just as the Southern Confedracy didn't disappear. It only went underground.
You called it well, thank you, especially on our educational needs. There has been a weakening in teaching all of the subjects that you name, and it has come home to bite us.
As a former high school history teacher, I can state that the concept of critical thinking has been long missing from our high school education. It can be taught starting at the middle school level in math and science as well as civics and history. People do not need a college education to be able to think critically.
In 2002 the George W Bush administration pushed the "No Child Left Behind" crap on us. At the time I was a 5th grade public school teacher. Curriculum was narrowed to focus on Math and Reading skills taught in 90 minute blocks of time each day. That is 3 hours out of a 6.5 hour day.* There was zero flexibility and, during the Reading block, teachers were not allowed to use any curriculum other than the district chosen Reading Curriculum. Fortunately, our school district did purchase a very good one, but it didn't include any U.S. history materials.
In 5th grade students are supposed to be taught US history, using a fact-based curriculum. Our school district had textbooks with follow-up work book assignments for the students. I tried to incorporate some of this into the Reading Block, with the reasoning that students needed to develop reading comprehension skills for non-fiction, fact-based materials. My principal told me "No, that's not allowed." She also said that she, personally, thought history was boring.
[ * The following are other subjects & activities to be fit into the daily/weekly schedule: Science= 1 hr per day; Writing/grammar skills = 30-45 min per day; P.E./Music/Library=35 min per day; Lunch & recess 40 min per day; All school assemblies once per week; Art instruction (yes, we did have an authentic curriculum) usually taught on Friday aft, unless there was an assembly.]
Tragically, learning about our country's history & government was deemed unimportant!!! At the time this attitude hit the public school system in the early 2000s, I knew it was a bad decision, as did many of my other 5th grade colleagues. 23-26 years later here we are!!! And, oh, gee, which political party was responsible for "No Child Left Behind"? Oh, yeah, the "keep the masses dumb & unaware" Republicans!!!
But the Heritage Foundation established as one of its earliest priorities, back in the 1970s, to eliminate Civics as a required, or even optional, course in junior high and high schools throughout the country. They have ALWAYS opposed an educated electorate -- which is why they began promoting their stealth candidates for public school boards in 1980 -- the same year an earlier group of morons voted for the racist, semi-traitorous (remember the Iran-Contra deal) Ronald Reagan.
He turned on unions whose members had voted overwhelmingly for him. As a candidate and Republican nominee, he sent his envoys to Iran to scuttle the possibility that Jimmy Carter -- nuclear scientist and peanut farmer -- could negotiate the hostages' release (as he was on track to accomplish). Hence Iran-Contra.
By eliminating civics courses, the Heritage Foundation succeeded in creating the electorate that would consistently vote for the dumbest cut-ups and good ol' boys in the class--the ones who not only were D students but could also convince the others that the smart kids were jerks. Hence Reagan, Bush Jr. Trump, Paxton, DeSantis, Tuperville, Ivey, Budd (NC), Johnson (WI), and scores of other literally lowest-common-denominator MAGA-GOP officials around the country.
Let's hope we can outrun them this year and in 2028.
Once again, I just have to compliment Ms. Rubin's take-no-prisoners writing style.
I feel a deep sense of satisfaction and agreement with her analyses.
And the well-deserved snarky criticisms!
"At any rate, Netanyahu is not the only leader adept at selling Trump a bill of goods. The world has seen that Trump has long been under the spell of Russian President Vladimir Putin. As far back as 2018, Putin persuaded Trump to believe him, not our own intelligence community, about election interference. Since then, Putin has assumed the role of ventriloquist, Trump the dummy (pun intended)."
Thanks for choosing honesty over politeness. Those 70 million will probably never admit their horrific betrayal of our country, but their descendants may. It is they who will have to suffer the aftereffects.
What a can of worms you are opening there, Don. There are so many issues where no middle ground exists making compromise all but impossible. That's the main reason we are all stuck in this political limbo state.
"Trump is putty in the hands of cagey manipulators such as Putin or Netanyahu. " Master of art of dealing. Mr Trump is our president. He has two ways: a total defeat in the hands of Iran leaders or sending US marines to Iran for land wars.
Nothing surprises me anymore. I believe more than ever that the US will never fully recover from trumpism. We have lost our place on the world stage, no country is really going to trust us, especially since another trumpie could be elected in just 4 short years.
It will recover some day but not for many decades. I truly don't expect this country to be "normal" again in my lifetime (I'm 63). It's not just trump who has decimated America, it's the entire GOP. They took a precious jewel and smashed it to pieces, all because of racism and greed.
"Nothing surprises me anymore. I believe more than ever that the US will never fully recover from trumpism."
Of course it will, and faster than you think. Most people (even those who voted for him) don't like Trump personally. The policies are what got him elected. But when he's gone, he'll be irrelevant, and that will bother Trump more than anything else. Until then, we will have to endure Trump's antics on social media and the rabid base who have no problem beclowning themselves to stay in his good graces.
It will depend on how thorough a “house cleaning” the Dems conduct in 2029. While the situations aren’t identical, we need to watch the early stages of Peter Magyar’s tenure as Hungary’s head of state. If he finds some way to quickly dispose of Orban’s infrastructure, restore a free media, and fix a corrupted judicial system, Dems should have him and his people on speed dial. We will never be trusted as a country again until it is abundantly clear that the fascist threat can never again control our government.
Everything Ms. Rubin says about Trump is true, but to my mind the real story here is the complete and total capitulaton of the entire Republican party.
All of this could have (and should have) been stopped by Congress.
It should have been stopped by the spineless GOP during the first term when Moscow Mitch put party over country and bent the knee at Mar-a-Lago. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger were the last Republicans true to their oaths and the nation.
Yes to that last statement. The McConnell senate was twice handed Articles of Impeachment by the House of Representatives. Twice, he and his cohorts failed to convict and remove Trump. Two golden opportunities missed, and we've been facing and enduring the results ever since.
I still pay attention to mainstream news but I have been forced to go to Substack sources as mainstream organizations seem unwilling to risk offending Trump. Remember how they ganged up on Biden for his mental deficiencies? Nothing even remotely the same is happening with respect to Trump out of mainstream news. This Jesus meme is the first thing that finally seems to have broken through his Teflon Don status. Maybe because Iran weakened it first.
As one of the late night comics quipped, Trump amazingly claimed the Iranians "have no cards" when they are literally holding a strait. (Talk about being an inadvertent straight man.)
How many times does one have to say it? The Dear Leader is insane and suffering from dementia. He cannot think or plan rationally because he, never too smart to begin with, has descended into madness. Would anyone listen to someone pushing a shopping cart down the street and screaming obscenities? Would they give that person the nuclear codes? His party, his Cabinet, his wife and his family are responsible for whatever havoc and damage he causes. He had become irrelevant and needs to be hospitalized.
All too true, Gloria. But how do we get this through to cowardly Congressional Republicans, nearly all white and nearly all male? They can't even summon up the gumption to tell him that his ballroom isn't going to happen, much less his Trumpian arch.
This may be your best column yet, Jennifer Rubin. You have so perfectly captured the foibles of our clown president, con artist who can’t even recognize a con when it hits him. Too bad our country and the world are collateral damage.
What a time for the stable genius to stop renewable energy projects that were well underway. China is eating our lunch when it comes to renewable energy.
The sad thing is that this was totally predictable and some of the people on our side are reported to have told tRump some of the pitfalls... but, alas, he did it anyway. It is said so often that it has lost all of the impact it should have, but tRump - the squatter in the Oval Office - is a very stupid fascist. He seeks only self-enrichment and self-aggrandizement. He would sell us in a heartbeat if he could profit off the transaction. It would be wholly fitting if we were to capture him and make a gift of him to the World Court.
Ms. Rubin noted that hapless Lebanon is caught up in this war. Relative to its size, Lebanon is much worse off than Iran - it has not been able to fight back against Israel, about one sixth of its population is displaced, with no end in sight, and thousands of people killed. Also, Israel seems to want to occupy a large area of southern Lebanon indefinitely. A ceasefire is urgently needed here, with meaningful negotiations.
Unfortunately, ceasefires with Israel are as about as credible as ceasefires with the current US president. Anyone agreeing to abide by their ceasefire terms must keep a hand behind their back, with fingers crossed. If you get my drift...
I left a detailed comment about Rubin's single paragraph focused on Israel. Nearly every sentence she posted in that paragraph was misleading, and as usual, she omits big parts of the story (again, not even a single word about the thousands killed in Iran and Lebanon) while Israel has effectively annexed a large portion of all of Lebanon, which the state has wanted to do for generations.
If a critically minded reader wants 'unflinching, unapologetic, and unwavering in its commitment to truth-telling' (from The Contrarian's About page), concerning this war, they would be much better off with Democracy Now! or Drop Site News, or any number of other independent outlets. When reading this closely, the Iraq War-era neocon Rubin is clearly still present, even as her criticisms of Trump are largely correct.
Still, I feel like someone here should point this out, among the daily torrent of gushing and uncritical praise in these threads.
Thank you for being a kind of ombudsman/advocate for the victims of Israel's and their US funders' genocide/war crimes, Jason. There are many events needing attention but the Gaza and now Lebanon cases can't be forgotten. Ditto for Ukraine.
Well, like you said above, 'ceasefire' seems to have a flexible meaning.
Here's today's news from the ''ceasefires' :
The Israeli military bombed a police vehicle in Gaza City on Tuesday killing four Palestinians and wounding nine others, according to Drop Site contributor Mohammed Ahmed. Earlier on Monday, one Palestinian was killed in an Israeli bombing in Beit Lahia.
Israeli forces attacked a cafe near Dawood Tower in central Gaza City on Monday evening, WAFA reported, killing one and injuring several others. Earlier Israeli gunfire had left two Palestinians wounded, in the neighborhoods of Shujaiyya and Zeitoun east of Gaza City.
In the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces fired tear gas at Palestinian schoolchildren who were staging a sit-in protest Monday after settlers blocked access to their school in the village of Umm al-Khair in the Masafer Yatta region. The students had been peacefully holding an open-air class when they were gassed. They’d been seeking to return to classrooms for the first time in over 40 days, after the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran forced schools across the West Bank to close.
The death toll from Israel’s assault on Lebanon has risen to at least 2,089—with 6,762 wounded—since March 2, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry. That figure includes more than 166 children and 88 health care workers.
"Like" isn't really the right reaction, is it. These killing have to be stopped, WE need to stop enabling them with our dollars, probably our petrodollars.
"Relative to its size, Lebanon is much worse off than Iran - it has not been able to fight back against Israel..."
Lebanon knows that Israel is fighting Hezbollah. Until recently, the Lebanese government has not been able to take any action against them. Israel did a great job last year taking down Hezbollah's leadership and ability to strike.
Israel has killed and wounded many Lebanese civilians who have nothing to do with Hezbollah, except that they live in a country where the central government is too weak to deal with Hezbollah.
World leaders (and everyone else) know that Trump can be played. It's too bad that his domestic fans (i.e., his cabinet and Republican lawmakers) are too scared to tell Trump to cut it out.
Our legislators get far more financial "support" from the fossil fuel industry. Green energy is fine as long as it's not on their (or our taxpayer's) dime.
There's an old saying that 'inside every grifter lives a mark" - and Trump is a grifter extraordinaire. He's also not a smart man, never has been. Hell, he couldn't even read the collapsing real estate market [his alleged wheelhouse] in the early 2000s and decided that was the time to jump into the mortgage business - even as the subprime crisis was about to bubble over. His narcissism makes him the easiest mark ever to inhabit the White House.
Over the last few days we've heard from former SOSs Kerry and Clinton talk about how Netanyahu has been peddling his argument for the U.S. to bomb Iran for decades now. Every other president saw through the sales pitch. Until this one. Every other president foresaw the consequences of unleashing a war with Iran. Until this one.
After 12 YEARS of serious negotiations with Iran, they were finally willing to come to the table for an agreement under President Obama, the JCPOA, aka 'the Iran nuclear deal.' The one Trump didn't understand. The one Trump reflexively hated because Obama did it. The one he tore up the minute he got into office the first time. And here we are..... Stuck in the quagmire every other president saw coming if anyone was foolish enough to go to war with Iran; stuck with an unstable, unpredictable 'ally' in the form of Netanyahu. Stuck with a witless administration that thought one day of negotiating would bring an agreement with Iran.
It's time for all Americans of good sense and conscience to do what the brave patriots of Hungary just did - end a corrupt, stupid regime for good and all. November is coming.....
Don the Con's problem is that, never having served either in the military or in government before becoming President, he has no real concept of what war is and what it does. Eisenhower famously said "I hate war as only a soldier can. As only one who has seen first hand its brutality, its futility, its stupidity".
But Trump approaches it like he's a ten-year-old playing war with toy soldiers. It's beyond his comprehension that real people-- combatants on both sides as well as civilians are killed and countries battered and even destroyed. It's beyond his comprehension that the end of one war often succeeds only in planting the seeds of the next one. To him it's all a game.
Wow, spot on, Ivan! Trump's narcissism plays a role in that attitude as well. He can't process what other people, civilians or combatants, feel, are living through, and dying for. They aren't real to him. And their suffering doesn't count.
P.S. And we have a glimpse of how JD Vance would fare: he couldn’t help Orban, and he couldn’t nail down a peace agreement with Iran. In short, the guy can’t get things done. Maybe he shouldn’t be allowed to forget that.
I'm not defending him, not at ALL, but weren't these two incidents Trump (or an advisor) simply setting him up for failure? The last thing Trump wants to think about is being succeeded in the long term or usurped in the short term.
Hello Jennifer, I agree that Trump‘s problem is more than a short term one, of course. But I also feel that saying that Trump got played by Netanyahu or Putin, or some other manipulator, is a form of sane-washing. He’s unstable and dangerous all by himself. He is an evil bully and wants any excuse to use the military at home and abroad as an expression of his power.
The term 'sane-washing' hardly applies when the evidence shows that Ms. Rubin is telling the truth about Trump vis-à-vis Putin and Netanyahu. They play him like a fiddle. War criminals in cahoots isn't just a catchy phrase.
Your assessments are accurate about the "squatter in the White House" but that does not mean that he was not "played." We are in a situation like I saw in elementary school (looong ago) where dumb evil bullies would manipulate the kids from Special Education into doing things that would harm and embarrass themselves and others, and the bullies would laugh uproariously at their ability to do it.
There is nothing new in this. Anyone who even fantasizes about the Felon and his maniacal minions doing anything from a position of knowledge, intelligence, or even basic competence is completely deluded. They are not mediocre--which describes the vast majority of people in Congress. They are far worse: utterly incompetent, utterly corrupt, utterly actively evil. And they revel in being so. And because of the idiocy of 70+ million morons who voted for him instead of for a competent, humane person who happens to be a woman of color, we are absolutely at the mercy of these m*therf*ckers.
That 70 million people voted for the Felon/rapist/pedophile/tax cheat/liar is a deep, deep condemnation of our education system. As the Felon has often said, he likes "stupid people", mainly because he is one himself and cannot bear to be upstaged in any way. When we rid ourselves of this malevolent horde of ignoramuses, one of the many firsts that has to be accomplished is the establishment of a national education system that teaches civics, history, and media literacy with a competency exam before graduation from high school...that is if we don't want this nightmare to happen again.
Carol, I totally agree--I have been known to suggest that the defense and education budgets be reversed. But since this malevolent maladministration is getting rid of the Department of Education in their merry crusade to kill off democracy, we will never see this even becoming a point of conversation.
Exactly. However, when Donny Boy is out the Heritage Foundation will find someone to replace him and they probably will pick someone more intelligent and a more sophisticated liar. The MAGA Voodoo Cult will go on without it's current god.
Like the Tea Party, Know-nothings, and Whigs, the MAGA cult will ultimately lose credibility and return to the minimalist influence that it should never have left.
They have no credibility now to people who can put two brain cells together. They are a numerical minority in the US as a whole, but every state gets two Senators and half the states are Fascist States. The voting majority in those states want the equivalent of Fascism. MAGA may lose control of the US temprorarily but we should not expect them to disappear just as the Southern Confedracy didn't disappear. It only went underground.
Note that I used the term 'minimalist influence'. I still have enough critical thinking skills to know that they will not disappear completely.
Agree otherwise.
You called it well, thank you, especially on our educational needs. There has been a weakening in teaching all of the subjects that you name, and it has come home to bite us.
As a former high school history teacher, I can state that the concept of critical thinking has been long missing from our high school education. It can be taught starting at the middle school level in math and science as well as civics and history. People do not need a college education to be able to think critically.
Along with critical thinking comes the ability and interest to ask questions of statements made that appear to be wonky.
Correct - and that usually can't be done if all one reads are on-line posts.
In 2002 the George W Bush administration pushed the "No Child Left Behind" crap on us. At the time I was a 5th grade public school teacher. Curriculum was narrowed to focus on Math and Reading skills taught in 90 minute blocks of time each day. That is 3 hours out of a 6.5 hour day.* There was zero flexibility and, during the Reading block, teachers were not allowed to use any curriculum other than the district chosen Reading Curriculum. Fortunately, our school district did purchase a very good one, but it didn't include any U.S. history materials.
In 5th grade students are supposed to be taught US history, using a fact-based curriculum. Our school district had textbooks with follow-up work book assignments for the students. I tried to incorporate some of this into the Reading Block, with the reasoning that students needed to develop reading comprehension skills for non-fiction, fact-based materials. My principal told me "No, that's not allowed." She also said that she, personally, thought history was boring.
[ * The following are other subjects & activities to be fit into the daily/weekly schedule: Science= 1 hr per day; Writing/grammar skills = 30-45 min per day; P.E./Music/Library=35 min per day; Lunch & recess 40 min per day; All school assemblies once per week; Art instruction (yes, we did have an authentic curriculum) usually taught on Friday aft, unless there was an assembly.]
Tragically, learning about our country's history & government was deemed unimportant!!! At the time this attitude hit the public school system in the early 2000s, I knew it was a bad decision, as did many of my other 5th grade colleagues. 23-26 years later here we are!!! And, oh, gee, which political party was responsible for "No Child Left Behind"? Oh, yeah, the "keep the masses dumb & unaware" Republicans!!!
Spot on, Carol Lama! I’ve been saying that to several people for years. We are a laughingstock of the world.🤦🏻♂️
d'accord, Carol.
But the Heritage Foundation established as one of its earliest priorities, back in the 1970s, to eliminate Civics as a required, or even optional, course in junior high and high schools throughout the country. They have ALWAYS opposed an educated electorate -- which is why they began promoting their stealth candidates for public school boards in 1980 -- the same year an earlier group of morons voted for the racist, semi-traitorous (remember the Iran-Contra deal) Ronald Reagan.
He turned on unions whose members had voted overwhelmingly for him. As a candidate and Republican nominee, he sent his envoys to Iran to scuttle the possibility that Jimmy Carter -- nuclear scientist and peanut farmer -- could negotiate the hostages' release (as he was on track to accomplish). Hence Iran-Contra.
By eliminating civics courses, the Heritage Foundation succeeded in creating the electorate that would consistently vote for the dumbest cut-ups and good ol' boys in the class--the ones who not only were D students but could also convince the others that the smart kids were jerks. Hence Reagan, Bush Jr. Trump, Paxton, DeSantis, Tuperville, Ivey, Budd (NC), Johnson (WI), and scores of other literally lowest-common-denominator MAGA-GOP officials around the country.
Let's hope we can outrun them this year and in 2028.
Once again, I just have to compliment Ms. Rubin's take-no-prisoners writing style.
I feel a deep sense of satisfaction and agreement with her analyses.
And the well-deserved snarky criticisms!
"At any rate, Netanyahu is not the only leader adept at selling Trump a bill of goods. The world has seen that Trump has long been under the spell of Russian President Vladimir Putin. As far back as 2018, Putin persuaded Trump to believe him, not our own intelligence community, about election interference. Since then, Putin has assumed the role of ventriloquist, Trump the dummy (pun intended)."
Thanks for choosing honesty over politeness. Those 70 million will probably never admit their horrific betrayal of our country, but their descendants may. It is they who will have to suffer the aftereffects.
Those millions think the country betrayed them first, so this is just payback for all the grievous sins they believe they have suffered.
What a can of worms you are opening there, Don. There are so many issues where no middle ground exists making compromise all but impossible. That's the main reason we are all stuck in this political limbo state.
Yep, cannot disagree with that.
"Trump is putty in the hands of cagey manipulators such as Putin or Netanyahu. " Master of art of dealing. Mr Trump is our president. He has two ways: a total defeat in the hands of Iran leaders or sending US marines to Iran for land wars.
Nothing surprises me anymore. I believe more than ever that the US will never fully recover from trumpism. We have lost our place on the world stage, no country is really going to trust us, especially since another trumpie could be elected in just 4 short years.
It will recover some day but not for many decades. I truly don't expect this country to be "normal" again in my lifetime (I'm 63). It's not just trump who has decimated America, it's the entire GOP. They took a precious jewel and smashed it to pieces, all because of racism and greed.
I would add to the Republican motivations set out above, the hope of installing a permanent political majority.
Yes, China has a higher worldwide favorability rating than the U.S. does.
China’s leader is not a blithering fool.
"Nothing surprises me anymore. I believe more than ever that the US will never fully recover from trumpism."
Of course it will, and faster than you think. Most people (even those who voted for him) don't like Trump personally. The policies are what got him elected. But when he's gone, he'll be irrelevant, and that will bother Trump more than anything else. Until then, we will have to endure Trump's antics on social media and the rabid base who have no problem beclowning themselves to stay in his good graces.
It will depend on how thorough a “house cleaning” the Dems conduct in 2029. While the situations aren’t identical, we need to watch the early stages of Peter Magyar’s tenure as Hungary’s head of state. If he finds some way to quickly dispose of Orban’s infrastructure, restore a free media, and fix a corrupted judicial system, Dems should have him and his people on speed dial. We will never be trusted as a country again until it is abundantly clear that the fascist threat can never again control our government.
Everything Ms. Rubin says about Trump is true, but to my mind the real story here is the complete and total capitulaton of the entire Republican party.
All of this could have (and should have) been stopped by Congress.
It should have been stopped by the spineless GOP during the first term when Moscow Mitch put party over country and bent the knee at Mar-a-Lago. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger were the last Republicans true to their oaths and the nation.
Yes to that last statement. The McConnell senate was twice handed Articles of Impeachment by the House of Representatives. Twice, he and his cohorts failed to convict and remove Trump. Two golden opportunities missed, and we've been facing and enduring the results ever since.
I still pay attention to mainstream news but I have been forced to go to Substack sources as mainstream organizations seem unwilling to risk offending Trump. Remember how they ganged up on Biden for his mental deficiencies? Nothing even remotely the same is happening with respect to Trump out of mainstream news. This Jesus meme is the first thing that finally seems to have broken through his Teflon Don status. Maybe because Iran weakened it first.
I concur with your statements, Thomas Moore!
As one of the late night comics quipped, Trump amazingly claimed the Iranians "have no cards" when they are literally holding a strait. (Talk about being an inadvertent straight man.)
And a "strait" flush beats a full House of toadies.
well done
How many times does one have to say it? The Dear Leader is insane and suffering from dementia. He cannot think or plan rationally because he, never too smart to begin with, has descended into madness. Would anyone listen to someone pushing a shopping cart down the street and screaming obscenities? Would they give that person the nuclear codes? His party, his Cabinet, his wife and his family are responsible for whatever havoc and damage he causes. He had become irrelevant and needs to be hospitalized.
All too true, Gloria. But how do we get this through to cowardly Congressional Republicans, nearly all white and nearly all male? They can't even summon up the gumption to tell him that his ballroom isn't going to happen, much less his Trumpian arch.
He's not irrelevant as long as he holds power.
This may be your best column yet, Jennifer Rubin. You have so perfectly captured the foibles of our clown president, con artist who can’t even recognize a con when it hits him. Too bad our country and the world are collateral damage.
What a time for the stable genius to stop renewable energy projects that were well underway. China is eating our lunch when it comes to renewable energy.
So are a number of European countries. Our legacy media gives us scant reporting on this fact.
The sad thing is that this was totally predictable and some of the people on our side are reported to have told tRump some of the pitfalls... but, alas, he did it anyway. It is said so often that it has lost all of the impact it should have, but tRump - the squatter in the Oval Office - is a very stupid fascist. He seeks only self-enrichment and self-aggrandizement. He would sell us in a heartbeat if he could profit off the transaction. It would be wholly fitting if we were to capture him and make a gift of him to the World Court.
It seems the DJT philosophy can be summarized thusly: "Everyone and everything exists to serve ME ME ME!!!"
Ms. Rubin noted that hapless Lebanon is caught up in this war. Relative to its size, Lebanon is much worse off than Iran - it has not been able to fight back against Israel, about one sixth of its population is displaced, with no end in sight, and thousands of people killed. Also, Israel seems to want to occupy a large area of southern Lebanon indefinitely. A ceasefire is urgently needed here, with meaningful negotiations.
Unfortunately, ceasefires with Israel are as about as credible as ceasefires with the current US president. Anyone agreeing to abide by their ceasefire terms must keep a hand behind their back, with fingers crossed. If you get my drift...
I left a detailed comment about Rubin's single paragraph focused on Israel. Nearly every sentence she posted in that paragraph was misleading, and as usual, she omits big parts of the story (again, not even a single word about the thousands killed in Iran and Lebanon) while Israel has effectively annexed a large portion of all of Lebanon, which the state has wanted to do for generations.
If a critically minded reader wants 'unflinching, unapologetic, and unwavering in its commitment to truth-telling' (from The Contrarian's About page), concerning this war, they would be much better off with Democracy Now! or Drop Site News, or any number of other independent outlets. When reading this closely, the Iraq War-era neocon Rubin is clearly still present, even as her criticisms of Trump are largely correct.
Still, I feel like someone here should point this out, among the daily torrent of gushing and uncritical praise in these threads.
Thank you for being a kind of ombudsman/advocate for the victims of Israel's and their US funders' genocide/war crimes, Jason. There are many events needing attention but the Gaza and now Lebanon cases can't be forgotten. Ditto for Ukraine.
Well, like you said above, 'ceasefire' seems to have a flexible meaning.
Here's today's news from the ''ceasefires' :
The Israeli military bombed a police vehicle in Gaza City on Tuesday killing four Palestinians and wounding nine others, according to Drop Site contributor Mohammed Ahmed. Earlier on Monday, one Palestinian was killed in an Israeli bombing in Beit Lahia.
Israeli forces attacked a cafe near Dawood Tower in central Gaza City on Monday evening, WAFA reported, killing one and injuring several others. Earlier Israeli gunfire had left two Palestinians wounded, in the neighborhoods of Shujaiyya and Zeitoun east of Gaza City.
In the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces fired tear gas at Palestinian schoolchildren who were staging a sit-in protest Monday after settlers blocked access to their school in the village of Umm al-Khair in the Masafer Yatta region. The students had been peacefully holding an open-air class when they were gassed. They’d been seeking to return to classrooms for the first time in over 40 days, after the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran forced schools across the West Bank to close.
The death toll from Israel’s assault on Lebanon has risen to at least 2,089—with 6,762 wounded—since March 2, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry. That figure includes more than 166 children and 88 health care workers.
"Like" isn't really the right reaction, is it. These killing have to be stopped, WE need to stop enabling them with our dollars, probably our petrodollars.
yea, 'like' is not the right reaction.
"Relative to its size, Lebanon is much worse off than Iran - it has not been able to fight back against Israel..."
Lebanon knows that Israel is fighting Hezbollah. Until recently, the Lebanese government has not been able to take any action against them. Israel did a great job last year taking down Hezbollah's leadership and ability to strike.
Israel has killed and wounded many Lebanese civilians who have nothing to do with Hezbollah, except that they live in a country where the central government is too weak to deal with Hezbollah.
World leaders (and everyone else) know that Trump can be played. It's too bad that his domestic fans (i.e., his cabinet and Republican lawmakers) are too scared to tell Trump to cut it out.
The Iranians should insist that any long term deal to constrain their nuclear program be called ObamaPlan 2.0
Ha ha ha ha
All the more reason for our government to support and finance green energy projects so we are not held hostage like this in the future.
Our legislators get far more financial "support" from the fossil fuel industry. Green energy is fine as long as it's not on their (or our taxpayer's) dime.
There's an old saying that 'inside every grifter lives a mark" - and Trump is a grifter extraordinaire. He's also not a smart man, never has been. Hell, he couldn't even read the collapsing real estate market [his alleged wheelhouse] in the early 2000s and decided that was the time to jump into the mortgage business - even as the subprime crisis was about to bubble over. His narcissism makes him the easiest mark ever to inhabit the White House.
Over the last few days we've heard from former SOSs Kerry and Clinton talk about how Netanyahu has been peddling his argument for the U.S. to bomb Iran for decades now. Every other president saw through the sales pitch. Until this one. Every other president foresaw the consequences of unleashing a war with Iran. Until this one.
After 12 YEARS of serious negotiations with Iran, they were finally willing to come to the table for an agreement under President Obama, the JCPOA, aka 'the Iran nuclear deal.' The one Trump didn't understand. The one Trump reflexively hated because Obama did it. The one he tore up the minute he got into office the first time. And here we are..... Stuck in the quagmire every other president saw coming if anyone was foolish enough to go to war with Iran; stuck with an unstable, unpredictable 'ally' in the form of Netanyahu. Stuck with a witless administration that thought one day of negotiating would bring an agreement with Iran.
It's time for all Americans of good sense and conscience to do what the brave patriots of Hungary just did - end a corrupt, stupid regime for good and all. November is coming.....
Don the Con's problem is that, never having served either in the military or in government before becoming President, he has no real concept of what war is and what it does. Eisenhower famously said "I hate war as only a soldier can. As only one who has seen first hand its brutality, its futility, its stupidity".
But Trump approaches it like he's a ten-year-old playing war with toy soldiers. It's beyond his comprehension that real people-- combatants on both sides as well as civilians are killed and countries battered and even destroyed. It's beyond his comprehension that the end of one war often succeeds only in planting the seeds of the next one. To him it's all a game.
Wow, spot on, Ivan! Trump's narcissism plays a role in that attitude as well. He can't process what other people, civilians or combatants, feel, are living through, and dying for. They aren't real to him. And their suffering doesn't count.
P.S. And we have a glimpse of how JD Vance would fare: he couldn’t help Orban, and he couldn’t nail down a peace agreement with Iran. In short, the guy can’t get things done. Maybe he shouldn’t be allowed to forget that.
I'm not defending him, not at ALL, but weren't these two incidents Trump (or an advisor) simply setting him up for failure? The last thing Trump wants to think about is being succeeded in the long term or usurped in the short term.
Good point. Do you think Trump devised that plan by himself, or did he have help?
My first thought was Susie Wiles, not that Trump himself can't be cunning about something like making sure he alone is seen to be on top.
hump doesn't do anything by himself except F up
On his own, he is a idiot, but those advising him seem stupid, too. Hegseth, for just one example.
It was Mission Impossible, and I'm no fan of Vance.
totally impossible...even with our two best real estate developers...
Vance is an empty suit.
not true...he is FOS
Hello Jennifer, I agree that Trump‘s problem is more than a short term one, of course. But I also feel that saying that Trump got played by Netanyahu or Putin, or some other manipulator, is a form of sane-washing. He’s unstable and dangerous all by himself. He is an evil bully and wants any excuse to use the military at home and abroad as an expression of his power.
The term 'sane-washing' hardly applies when the evidence shows that Ms. Rubin is telling the truth about Trump vis-à-vis Putin and Netanyahu. They play him like a fiddle. War criminals in cahoots isn't just a catchy phrase.
Your assessments are accurate about the "squatter in the White House" but that does not mean that he was not "played." We are in a situation like I saw in elementary school (looong ago) where dumb evil bullies would manipulate the kids from Special Education into doing things that would harm and embarrass themselves and others, and the bullies would laugh uproariously at their ability to do it.