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Stephen Hatchett

Re Jack's insights into how not to fight an insurgency. I'm afraid we had better think (or at least try to think) of the MAGA movement as a kind of insurgency. No question in my mind that there was "fire in the belly" of the Jan 6 Capitol attackers.  And in many of the voters who returned Trump to power.

Jack Mallory

Stephen--I think MAGA in its inception and pre-Trusk victory in November might be seen as an insurgency, but the definition of insurgency always involves resistance to government and an asymmetry of power. The insurgent is militarily and politically less powerful, forced to use innovative strategies against an established government. "Asymmetrical warfare" is a synonym for insurgency. 

Once the insurgent is in power, it IS the government--and may remain so through either democratic or dictatorial strategies. This may be the transition we are now seeing--as MAGA and Trusk see the possibility/likelihood of losing political power gained democratically.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/25/us/politics/trump-poll-approval.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

The option of maintaining control by terminating the Constitution, using the judicial system to attack political opponents, jailing them overseas without due process, may seem to be the path to permanent power. 

We must find a way to, hopefully, Constitutionally return power to the hands of the people. Even if that gets us labeled "Scumbag Commie Libs" by those controlling the criminal justice system. Wear the label proudly--WITH FIRE IN YOUR BELLY!

********

Did you all see that the government has deported a 2 year-old U.S. citizen without real due process, according to a Trump--appointed judge? Safer to deport toddlers, I suppose, especially if they're brown-skinned. https://www.lawdork.com/p/trump-deports-two-year-old-us-citizen?utm_campaign=post_embed

*******
And the administration has just changed the interpretation of the Hatch Act to allow government employees to wear MAGA hats or Trump-Vance buttons in a future election--but not political paraphernalia supporting opposition candidates! The kind of totalitarian politics that creates insurgencies. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/25/us/politics/trump-hatch-act.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
 

Jack Mallory

Also, Steve, in asymmetrical warfare with fire in the belly so key, information warfare, or psychological warfare as we called it, is an essential weapon. I was just reading a review of a book on war since 1945 up through the Ukraine war, and came on this:

"A more important lesson from this conflict is that information and disinformation have become nearly as important as bullets in the truly first information war of this century. The use of social media, cell phones, and other means of instantaneous real time communications have been used by both sides, to not only present their message to a world audience, but as propaganda against their opponents to attack their morale and induce them to surrender or desert. This weaponization of new communications methods is something other Western powers ignore at their peril since any major conflict will become as much a war of narrative as it is of position or firepower. This is being shown in the Israeli-Hamas conflict even now."

". . . any major conflict will become as much a war of narrative as it is of position or firepower." Just as true, or truer nowadays, of politics as of war. I don't begin to understand social media and modern communication technology well enough to appreciate their impact on war and its continuation by other means, politics. To turn von Clausewitz around. 

********

Glen Hirose

Getting old was the Easy part,

Staying old is proving to be

much hard part...

So instead I've opted for plan "B"

Joanie Bender (Grosfeld)

Glen that dessert looks delicious. I love whipped cream so the topping is great. Hope you are all doing well. Love, Joanie

Jack Mallory

Apropos of Stephen's suggestion that we see MAGA as an insurgency, with motivational fire in the belly:

This is a not uncommon left-inspired depiction of MAGA voters, judging from what I see on social media, and many/most MAGA voters know it. Regardless of the moral issues around such stereotyping, does this put fire into their belly? Is this effective in making the changes in American society that we think should take place?

Jim Boone

Are there any members of this site that were at Rollingwood. I am interested in the Integration of the school in 1955-56. Looking for memories, stories etc. A very important time in our lives and we were so young so interesting to know how we remember it. I have several stories I am willoing to share if there are others interested.

Thanks

Jim Boone

Jack Mallory

Trusk couldn't win a majority of the popular votes cast for the presidency in 2024, but a true majority of those polled do believe he's a dangerous dictator.

https://www.axios.com/2025/04/29/prri-poll-most-americans-trump-dangerous-dictator

*********

The woods and the water today and yesterday provided several species for photographs. 
 

A bullfrog, with attendant mosquitoes--we've all felt like this:

Double Crested Cormorant:

And another--quite a character!

This is the 3000 mm. zoom lens at work! Thank you Social Security Fairness Act!

*******

Sorry Jim, my first year in the district was 10th at BCC. Would be interested in hearing what stories you collect, though. 

Joanie Bender (Grosfeld)

Great Pictures Jack and also good info about the bad numbers for Trump. Too bad that he got in though. Its been a disaster. I feel hope though with

so many people rising up including some Universities and law firms and courts, etc. Love, Joanie

Jay Shackford

Trump’s First 100 Days:

The Politics of Destruction

By Heather Cox Richardson

April 30, 2025

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt popularized the idea that the first 100 days of a presidency established an administration’s direction. As soon as he took office on March 4, 1933, he called Congress into special session to meet on March 9 to address the emergency of the Great Depression. Congress responded to the crisis by quickly passing 15 major bills and 77 other measures first to stabilize the economy and then to rebuild it. On July 24, 1933, FDR looked back at “the crowding events of the hundred days which had been devoted to the starting of the wheels of the New Deal.”

In a Fireside Chat broadcast over the radio, FDR explained that his administration had stabilized the nation’s banks and raised taxes to pay for millions in borrowing. That federal money was feeding starving people, as well as employing 300,000 young men to work in the Civilian Conservation Corps planting trees to prevent soil erosion, building levees and dams for flood control, and maintaining forest roads and trails. It was also funding a public works program for highways and inland navigation, as well as state-based municipal improvements. The government had also raised farm income and wages by regulating agriculture and abolishing child labor.

FDR was speaking on July 24 to urge Americans to get behind a program of shorter hours and higher wages to create purchasing power that would restart the economy. “It goes back to the basic idea of society and of the Nation itself that people acting in a group can accomplish things which no individual acting alone could even hope to bring about,” he said. “If I am asked whether the American people will pull themselves out of this depression, I answer, ‘They will if they want to.’”

Today is the 100th day of President Donald Trump’s second term in office. He marked it by delivering what amounted to a rally outside Detroit, Michigan, in which he claimed his had been “the most successful first 100 days of any administration in the history of our country, and that’s according to many, many people…. This is the best, they say, 100-day start of any president in history, and everyone is saying it. We’ve just gotten started. You haven’t even seen anything yet.”

In fact, Trump has signed just five measures into law: the Laken Riley Act, which Congress passed before he took office; a stopgap funding measure; and three resolutions overturning rules set by the Biden administration.

But Trump’s administration does parallel FDR’s in an odd way. Trump set out in his first hundred days to undo the government FDR established in his first hundred days. Trump has turned the nation away from 92 years of a government that sought to serve ordinary Americans by regulating business, providing a basic social safety net, promoting infrastructure, protecting civil rights, and stabilizing global security and trade. Instead, he is trying to recreate the nation of more than 100 years ago, in which the role of government was to protect the wealthy and enable them to make money from the country’s resources and its people.

Trump set out to destroy the modern American state, gutting the civil service and illegally shuttering federal agencies, as well as slashing through government programs. His team has withdrawn the U.S. from its global leadership and rejected democratic allies in favor of autocrats like Russia’s Vladimir Putin. At home he has imitated those autocrats, ignoring the rule of law and rendering migrants to prison in El Salvador without due process, and using the power of the state to threaten those he perceives as his enemies.

As is typical with autocratic governments, corruption appears to be running deep in this White House. The president and his family are openly profiting from his office. And it would be hard to find a better example of a government letting cronies profit off public resources than Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s relinquishing of control over the department to a DOGE operative, or of a government permitting businesses to profit from ordinary Americans than billionaire Elon Musk’s apparent creation of a master database of Americans’ information.

Trump’s dismantling of the modern American state has been a disaster. Trump spoke tonight in Michigan to tout his hope that his new tariffs will center auto manufacturing back in the U.S., but the economic chaos his tariff policies have unleashed has turned what was a booming economy 100 days ago sharply downward. That economic slump, along with Trump’s illegal renditions of men to El Salvador and the gutting of services Americans depend on, has given Trump the lowest job approval rating after 100 days of any president in 80 years.

And that suggests another way to look at the first 100 days of a presidential term. For all that the 100-days trope focuses on presidents, the first 100 days of Trump’s second term have shown Americans, sometimes encouraged by their allies abroad, pushing back against Trump to restore American democracy.

Democratic attorneys general began to plan for a possible Trump second term in February 2024, preparing for cases they might have to file if Trump followed through with his campaign promises or implemented Project 2025. California, with 5,600 staffers in its department of justice, and New York, with 2,400, carried much of the weight. They were able to file their first challenges to Trump’s January 20 executive orders on January 21. Their lawsuits, and those of others, have been so successful that they have sparked both Trump and MAGA Republicans to attack judges and even the judiciary.

Early observers of the movement to stop Trump’s destruction of the modern state argued that the opposition was too burned out to mount any meaningful pushback against a newly emboldened Trump. But, in fact, people were not in the streets because they were organizing over computer apps and at the local level, a reality that burst into the open at Republican town halls in late February as angry voters protested government cuts at the hands of Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency.”

On March 4, Representative Richard Hudson (R-NC), the head of the House Republicans’ campaign arm, told Republicans to stop holding town halls to stop the protests from gaining attention. So Democrats began holding their own packed town halls in the absent Republicans’ districts.

On March 20, 2025, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) launched their “Fighting Oligarchy” tour in Las Vegas. Unexpectedly huge crowds flocked to their rallies across the West, revealing a deep well of unhappiness at the current government even in areas that had voted for Trump.

At 7:00 on the evening of March 31, Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) launched a marathon speech attacking the Trump administration and imploring Republicans to defend democracy because, he said, he had “been hearing from people from all over my state and indeed all over the nation calling upon folks in Congress to do more, to do things that recognize the urgency—the crisis—of the moment. And so we all have a responsibility, I believe to do something different to cause, as John Lewis said, good trouble, and that includes me.” Before he finished twenty-five hours later on April 1, his speech—the longest in congressional history—had been liked on TikTok 400 million times.

The quiet organizing of the early months of the administration showed when the first call for a public “Hands Off!” protest on April 5 produced more than 1,400 rallies in all 50 states and turned out millions of people. Organizers called for “an end to the billionaire takeover and rampant corruption of the Trump administration; an end to slashing federal funds for Medicaid, Social Security, and other programs working people rely on; and an end to the attacks on immigrants, trans people, and other communities.”

On April 11, Harvard University rejected the administration’s demands In a letter noting that the administration’s demand to regulate the “intellectual and civil rights conditions” at Harvard, including its governance, admissions, programs, and extracurricular activities, in exchange for the continuation of $2.2 billion in multiyear grants and a $60 million contract.

Harvard’s lawyers wrote: “The university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights. Neither Harvard nor any other private university can allow itself to be taken over by the federal government. Accordingly, Harvard will not accept the government’s terms as an agreement in principle…. Harvard is not prepared to agree to demands that go beyond the lawful authority of this or any administration.”

Last Sunday, April 27, Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker gave a barn-burning speech to Democrats in New Hampshire, telling them to “fight—EVERYWHERE AND ALL AT ONCE.” “Never before in my life have I called for mass protests, for mobilization, for disruption. But I am now,” he said.

“These Republicans cannot know a moment of peace. They have to understand that we will fight their cruelty with every megaphone and microphone that we have. We must castigate them on the soap box, and then punish them at the ballot box. They must feel in their bones that when we survive this shameful episode of American history with our democracy intact— because we have no alternative but to do just that—that we will relegate their portraits to the museum halls reserved for tyrants and traitors.”’

And so, even as Trump tries to erase the government FDR pioneered, Americans are demonstrating their support for a government that defends ordinary people, and proving the truth of FDR’s words from 1933, that when people act together they “can accomplish things which no individual acting alone could even hope to bring about.”

—

Notes:

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/fireside-chat-recovery-program

https://www.npr.org/2025/04/29/nx-s1-5379554/trump-100-days-numbers-laws-immigration

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-100-days-speech-detroit/

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-lowest-100-day-approval-rating-80-years/story?id=121165473

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/27/democrats-taking-trump-musk-winning-00206310

https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/03/04/congress/gop-town-halls-richard-hudson-00210024

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-bernie-sanders-rally-democrats-rcna197296

https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/05/us/hands-off-protests-trump-musk/index.html

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/harvards-president-says-school-will-not-compromise-trump-admin-rcna202564

https://www.harvard.edu/research-funding/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/2025/04/Letter-Sent-to-Harvard-2025-04-11.pdf

https://www.harvard.edu/president/news/2025/the-promise-of-american-higher-education/

https://www.wired.com/story/doge-collecting-immigrant-data-surveil-track/

https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/5259589-interior-secretary-doug-burgum/

https://www.harvard.edu/research-funding/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/2025/04/Harvard-Response-2025-04-14.pdf

YouTube:

watch?v=vXdqHXbp04s

watch?v=zMndfvxVeRo

Bluesky:

drewharwell.com/post/3lls2yurefk2x

Joan Ruggles (Young)

Nora Skinker (Morton)

Hi Joanie.  Love your posts.  They are so reasonable and thoughtful.  May I suggest you look at the recent indepth interview Bret Baier hosted with Elon Musk and his group of very smart and experienced associates who compile DOGE?  You may find them and, more importantly, their work very compelling.  Also, you may want to research Obama's record of deportations (far greater numbers than any other president) and see that close to 87% were deported without due process. Nor was due process demanded of Obama's deportation policy at the time. Another gentle suggestion: take a look at YouTube and observe the transparent cabinet meeting that took place publicly yesterday.  It may bolster a better understanding on what, specifically, these people are workng. Reports from every department of government were presented by each secretary and the fact that we, as a nation, can look in on the discussions is quite an insightful opportunity. Perhaps by doing so, it gives you hope that everything is not in utter chaos afterall. These are mere suggestions to balance your opinions a bit with a growing understanding of goals this bold and brave administration has set out to accomplish and the key roles involved in those efforts.  Without media pundits and editorials, it's a pure way to make up your own mind. Somebody once said, "I take my facts from anybody, and my conclusions from nobody."  Let me know if you reached any new conclusions. 

Jack Mallory

In depth interview

87%

without due process

Etc.

I don't take "facts" from anyone who doesn't give me a source with which to check them. You shouldn't either, Nori. 

Joanie Bender (Grosfeld)

Hi Nori, I'm out of town now. I will reply to your note more extensively when home. It's easier using my computer. Have a good weekend friends, love, Joanie

Jay Shackford

Trump Saves 258 Million American Lives

By Dead-Center Shacks

May 3, 2025

Tomorrow is the 55th anniversary of one of the more important events of our generation — the May 4, 1970  Kent State shootings where four students were slain and 9 others were wounded during a student protest against President Nixon’s expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia.  

In my view, the Kent State shootings by the Ohio National Guard (most of whom were about the same age as the students they shot) really marked the beginning of the end of our tragic military campaign in Vietnam and the so-called “domino theory.”  

Looking back on those days, our disengagement from Vietnam really should have begun four years earlier after the January 1968 TET Offensive (Chinese New Year) when it became obvious to everyone — including Walter Cronkite — that the war was a lost cause and the sooner we disengaged and got out the better.  

1968 was a crazy year — LBJ surprising the nation by announcing he would not run for reelection and trying desperately to start the Paris peace talks with the North Vietnamese, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, the urban riots and the violence-plagued Democratic Convention in Chicago where police gassed and billy-clubbed anti-war protesters.

 (I remember watching the Chicago convention on our fuzzy black and white, 13-inch TV with rabbit ears in our Colorado college  apartment with our 10-month old Shane sleeping in the bedroom. It was brand new, fully furnished 2 bedroom apartment and it rented for $99 per month all utilities included. It’s hard to imagine that.)   

For those of us who stayed up late, who can forget Senator Abe Ribicoff’s nominating speech for George McGovern where he lambasted Mayor Richard Daly for his police “Gestapo” tactics on the streets of Chicago. 

Then, of course, we had “peace with honor” Richard Nixon being elected in 1968 and extending the war for another seven years. 

As the history is being written and rewritten about our involvement in Vietnam (Netflix has a new series on it now), it’s interesting to note that Henry Kissinger— acting as candidate Richard Nixon’s foreign affairs expert — worked behind the scenes and convinced the North Vietnamese not to negotiate in good faith because they could cut a better deal with the incoming Nixon Administration that was a sure bet to win the election.  So even LBJ’s willingness to pause in the daily bombings of Hanoi had little, if any effect, in getting North Vietnam back to the peace table.  We finally withdrew from Vietnam for good in April 1975 after another 29,000 Americans had lost their lives.

We’ve lived through and survived a lot of crazy times, including the Cold War, the Kennedy assassination,  Vietnam, crazy 1968, Watergate, 9/11, the Iraq war and the war on terror, the world-wide financial crisis of 2008 and its after-effects, the Covid pandemic, Trump’s two impeachments and the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.   When history is written years from now by our children and grandchildren, I believe the first 100 days of Trump’s second term in office will be added to that list. 

One of my high school classmates watched Trump’s televised cabinet meeting last week to celebrate his first 100 days in office and she was thrilled, noting that  at long last we had a President that was “brave and bold” enough to take on the tough issues confronting America.

I had a slightly different take.  Besides the normal lying and ass-kissing that Trump always demands, I give the line of the day to our astute Attorney General Pam Bondi who said that the President was being way too modest when claiming that “it was the most successful 100 days in the history of our country.”  

Bondi added:  “Mr. President, your first 100 days has far exceeded that of any other Presidency in this country ever, ever….”  She added that his federal agents had seized so much of the “deadly drug fentanyl that they had already saved an incredible 258 million lives.”  

Let’s think about that.  The U.S. has a total population of slightly less than 350 million.  And President Trump has already saved 258 million of them from dying from an overdose of fentanyl. If my math is right, that’s nearly three fourths of the entire population in the United States.  

I think we are all beyond the point of being shocked or surprised by anything Trump or any of his toadies have to say, but giving Trump credit for saving 258 million American lives takes the cake.  

Jack Mallory

Thanks for noting the anniversary, Jay. Sometime in the next few hours marks the 55th anniversary of my boarding the "freedom bird" that brought me back from Vietnam. 

At some point while that aircraft full of American military was in the air, thousands of miles to the east American soldiers were shooting down American college students at Kent State. That's what I came back to. 

I landed at Travis Air Force Base, processed out of the military and spent that Monday night with family south of San Francisco.  I flew the rest of the way home on Tuesday, after getting stoned for the first time on my way to SFO. Thanks, cousin Bill!. 

Tuesday night in Chevy Chase I told my family of my feelings about the war--couched pretty obscenely, I think. Brother Mark, editor of the Tattler, told me about the anti-Cambodia/anti-Kent State murders protest coming up at BCC on Friday. He encouraged me to come, and made arrangements for me to speak.

So three days after getting back to "the real world," as we called the U.S. while we were "in-country," I was speaking at an anti-war demonstration. I haven't a fucking clue what I said! At some point I had the Tattler article in which the photo below appeared, but I can't find it now. 

The next day, Saturday May 9th, I joined 100,000 or so protestors in downtown DC for the first of the many big DC antiI-war demonstrations I was to attend and/or organize over the next several years. Some of you may have been there too? May have done a teeny-tiny bit to help end the war, did do a huge bit to keep me more or less sane. 
 

A couple of things stand out to me about the photo:

The peace symbol around my neck: I didn't have that in Vietnam, have no recollection how I acquired it between landing in California and standing in front of that crowd of BCC students a few days later. 

And how slim and trim I was! Tropical environment and C rations! 

And ALL that DARK hair! Ahh, youth!
 

Thanks again for the memory prompt, Jay!

Jay Shackford

Thanks Jack!

Jack Mallory

I emailed my last forum post to Mark. He responded,

"Oh dear, this brings back memories indeed. We had not heard much from Jack when he was in Vietnam, and of course the sorts of communications for families today simply didn’t exist then. He wasn’t a good letter writer.  He had volunteered to re-enlist and go to Vietnam the year before, at that point a “Green Beret” Special Forces Captain.

"He’s flying back while Kent State is exploding and we had essentially no idea what Jack’s thoughts were about the war or the protests.  One of the most distinct memories of my life is sitting in the living room at 4818 Cumberland Avenue, drinks in hand, and either my mother or father asking Jack what he thought about his experience, to which Jack replied, “I saw too much of that shit over there,” (exact quote) and no one asked for details. We moved immediately on to what he wanted to do, and what we in the community were doing . . . .

"I don’t remember much of the substance of Jack’s speech (though I do have a copy of the B-CC high school paper article about the walk-out and demonstration which I’ll try to find when I’m back in Gilmanton next), but I certainly remember being pretty awe-struck by it. Love you, Bro"

Yeah, no details. How do you talk about body parts at the dining room table?

********

This meme posted on FB is apropos of some of our forum posts. 


 

Joan Ruggles (Young)

If somebody posted this on Instragram I would have thought it in incredibly bad taste. But no, it was posted by the WHITE HOUSE. Even as a former Catholic, seeing this posted by a rapist, felon is beyond imagining. These days it's incredibly embarrassing to be an American. And the Pope just died! Unbelievable!

https://www.instagram.com/p/DJLMHzLskBj/

Jack Mallory

Joan is a better human being than I am. She is understandably reluctant to post Trump's AI fantasy photo of himself as pope, but I'm willing to post it because I then feel justified in posting somebody else's AI fantasy photo. 

I'm sorry, I just couldn't stop myself. 

Jack Mallory

Boycotting META, so I'll post some of this week's pix here instead. Not sure there will be very many--pouring rain right now, rain for the next several days. 
 

Yesterday. Peering through this super-zoom lens into the little window of leaves makes me feel a bit like some kind of perverse, cross-specific voyeur! 

Still no direct evidence of an egg or eaglet, but they're sure dedicated to sitting in that nest. Late April and May is when eaglets have first been visible in previous years, and when mom and dad begin flying fish into the nest. 


A brief interlude in their chasing each other around the house, tussling over dog toys, demanding our attention.

Jack Mallory

My sources in Washington tell me that this will be replaced by an exhibit of photos of the perpetrators of mass shootings, honoring them for their dedication to our Second Amendment rights. 

Nora Skinker (Morton)

Explosive emotions aside, perhaps Snopes is (at least) somewhat factual (?) when it states that "during the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama, immigration authorites deported more than 3M people, 75% to 83% of whom did not see a judge or have the opportunity to plead their case."

Where was the outrage then? The public backlash, the protests, the demonstrations, the venom? Apparently, it wasn't only Obama. With Clinton & Bush, millions were deported without due process. Could it be that Trump is being targeted?  Could it be that MORE facts are needed to discern that Trump indeed IS being singled-out due to his party affiliation? Ya think? Or is that just stupid thinking?

As for Trump's retaliation: is it really that illogical to think that those who may have literally made-up demeaning lies exhibited through a false dossier on a candidate's opponent in 2016, should not stand to be accountable today for doing so?  Accountable so as to see that creating such a hoax doesn't reoccur in a future election?  Or is that stupid, too? Marc Elias (lawyering for Clinton in the 2016 election campaign) (allegedly) helped make up the false narrative that Trump colluded with Russia. Do we, as a nation, like the idea of promoting damaging and false narratives in our elections and then permitting them to go unchecked? As president, I know I would not like it.  Do you, Joanie, want the winner of an election to ignore it, or explore it?  I say explore it. You say it's retaliation and I say it's common sense for the good of the nation to find out and expose the TRUTH of the matter. And yes, it's an important matter.

Besides Trump colluding with Russia, let's examine a few of the false narratives heard over the last 4 years, just to balance the political scale for a minute: too many guns (or too few gun controls) cause crime: protecting biological women in sports is hating trans people; Hunter's laptop computer was fake news; inflation was merely transitory; our borders are secure; & (my personal fave) Biden has never been more fit to occupy the office. Let me repeat myself, I WANT a strong Democratic Party but wonder what the hell happened to it, when people like AOC, Crockett, Waters, Walz, Harris, Warren and Sanders have the loudest voices these days.  Find some strong 'moderates' and get back in the game, fergoshsake! JMHO

Victim exhibits are sad...and interesting.  Should we exhibit victims of car crashes by getting rid of cars?  Victims of knifings by getting rid of knives? Victims of drunk drivers by getting rid of alcohol? Victims of plane crashes by removing planes? Victims of illegal immigration crime by getting rid of illegal immigrants...YES!

Jack Mallory

CONGRATULATIONS, NORI! After years of asking, you're finally giving sources for your claims! Keep it up!

You could have given us the link to check on what you've said (https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/obama-deportations-court/), although that makes it clear that there's MUCH more to the data than simply true or false. Hence Snopes only rates the claim as "mostly" true.

The article on the ATF exhibit makes clear its purpose to anyone who actually reads it. Not a call to "get rid of guns," as you suggest, but as the former ATF director put it, "The 'Faces of Gun Violence' exhibit is a permanent reminder of what ATF comes to work to do every day — a reminder of why agents risk their lives and why everyone at ATF dedicates their careers to this mission: to honor the fallen and protect the living." 

And "Those faces once served as a call to action — reminding ATF employees why their work matters and inspiring them to protect our children," as the mother of a child killed by an unsecured weapon put it. https://www.npr.org/2025/05/04/nx-s1-5386668/atf-trump-administration-gun-violence-memorial

Perhaps the designers of the exhibit feared that the overwhelming number of shootings in this country (over 100,000 a year: https://www.bradyunited.org/resources/statistics) makes individual victims disappear in the crowd, and they wanted to bring focus to some of those individuals. But nowhere in the article is there any suggestion that the intention was "getting rid" of firearms. I would guess that BATF agents are no more anti-gun than other law enforcement personnel. I expect that they, like me, are firearm owners who believe that firearms are far too easily accessible in this country, and need far more effective controls.

Joanie Bender (Grosfeld)

Nori, you are right that Obama and others deported some without due process. That doesn't make it ok that Trump is doing this. I wasn't aware of it at the time or I would have spoken up against it. However, I think you are missing the bigger point about Trump and that is that he is behaving as a dictator, not an American President who swore an oath to the Constitution. He is trying to consolidate all the power for himself and forget about the rights of others. People are being deported for their free speech. Nori that is dangerous. Here are some of the things that Trump has done in just 100 days. I don't consider this bold and impressive as you do.  https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/04/president-trumps-first-100-days-attacks-on-human-rights/

Its not ok to ignore the judges when you don't like their decisions. Its not ok to take away programs for the poor that they depend up like SNAP and Headstart. Its not ok to try to destroy public radio and stations that have programs you don't like. Its not ok to attack lawyers who have been on cases you don't like. Its not ok to try to destroy Universities and take away their tax exempt status. Its not ok to send out an AI image of yourself dressed as if you are the Pope. How insulting to the late Pope Francis who was a true caring person for the poor. This person you are so devoted to Nori is not a Democratic President. He is a dictator and he has been siding with Vladimir Putin more then Ukraine. Its only because of the rare minerals he wants from Ukraine that he is softening some of his stances. He admires Kim Jung Un and Putin and Erdogan, all dictators so maybe it would be good to look a little deeper into who you are rooting for. Its not ok to fire huge amounts of government workers that help protect us with food safety and against terrorism and so much more...then he has accused some of being fired for cause which means they get no compensation Nori. Its not ok to disband 80% of USAID that helps people all over the world in need iwth AIDS and hunger and diseases that if untreated will also come ot the US and harm us too. We are part of a world order and what happens in the world can affect us too. People will die because of his actions. That is not ok...he is a very cruel man. Love, Joanie