Message Forum - GENERAL

https://www.thepricer.org/how-much-did-obamas-basketball-court-cost/

Nori as Joan said this is history thrown down the drain for a lavish ballroom bigger then the whole White House. It's not comparable to remodeling your kitchen and adjusting to it later. The White House is the People's house not King Trump's House. Obama building a small basketball court outside of the White House is no comparison. Trump is the most corrupt President of all the Presidents. His main goal is self wealth and thinks nothing of us the tax payers funding his pay to play. To think he would give 20 or 40 billion to Argentina while people are hungry in the US. He likes the perks he would get back from the deal. Love, Joanie

10/26/25 12:49 PM

#18550

Joan Ruggles (Young)

Nori I'm sure that since you were so concerned about Obama's basketball court, you're waiting to hear more about it. So here's the info:

Obama’s court was a conversion (lines + removable hoops) of an existing tennis slab; no official cost released, but equivalent work today typically lands in the high four to low five figures if resurfacing is needed, less if the surface is already sound. The adapted tennis court then hosted everything from NCAA champions to Wounded Warrior players.

I know you have as soft a spot in your heart for wounded warriors as you do for the dozens of corporate sponsors on the gilded ballroom, such as Apple, Google, Comcast, META, Microsoft, T Mobile, just a few of the 36 donors who just might need some help influencing the White House. Pay to play? Oh NO Trump would never do that! Are you really that blind??

10/26/25 06:14 PM

#18551

I expect Joan is as concerned as I am by the use of a $130 million dollar donation from a billionaire to fund the U.S. military. Although the donor is not demanding use of the ballroom--as far as we know--what are his hopes in terms of military gratitude for his payment of their salaries? Is this an attempt to build ties from the rich, from the corporate sector, to both our military leadership and the lower ranking military as well?

Such a donation, corporate millions to government security forces, rings of the quote often attributed to Mussolini: "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, because it is the merger of state and corporate power."

The American military should be paid by the American tax payers through a functioning Congress, not by individual plutocrats. The military's allegiance must be to American society and the Constitution, uncorrupted by any taint of gratitude to rich individuals and the corporate sector.

10/27/25 08:51 AM

#18552

As was pointed out, it is shocking how Trump is destroying the East Wing of the Whire House with all its rich history to build a kingly lavish ballroom bigger then the whole White House costing over 300 million dollars while a shutdown is going on in this country and people are starving. He also is sending billions to Argentina to bail them out rather then help everyday Americans. And what about leaving for a trip overseas now when he would be needed to negotiate an end to the shutdown. And you can't justify it by saying well Obama built a basketball court. Joan showed why that is ridiculous. Love, Joanie

10/27/25 08:52 AM

#18553

The Teardown!

Why Trump Tore

Down the East Wing?

The act of destruction is presciiy the point: a kind of performance piece to display Trump’s arbitrary power over the Presidency, including the physical seat.

By Adam Gopnik/The New Yorker

Oct. 25, 2025

The surprise and shock that so many people have registered at the photographs of Donald Trump’s destruction of the East Wing of the White House—soon to be replaced by his own ostentatious and overscaled ballroom—is itself, in a way, surprising and shocking. On the long list of Trumpian depredations, the rushed demolition might seem a relatively minor offense. After months marked by corruption, violence, and the open perversion of law, to gasp in outrage at the loss of a few tons of masonry and mortar might seem oddly misjudged.

And yet it isn’t. We are creatures of symbols, and our architecture tells us who we are. John Ruskin, the greatest of architectural critics, observed that a nation writes its history in many books, but that the book of its buildings is the most enduring. The faith in order and proportion embodied in the Alhambra, the romance of modernity caught in the Eiffel Tower’s lattice of iron—these are not ideas imposed on buildings but ideals that the buildings themselves express, more lastingly than words can. Among them, not least, is the modest, egoless ideal of democratic tradition captured so perfectly in such American monuments as the Lincoln Memorial, which shows not a hero but a man, seated, in grave contemplation.

The same restrained values of democracy have always marked the White House—a stately house, but not an imperial one. It is “the people’s house,” but it has also, historically, been a family house, with family quarters and a family scale. It’s a little place, by the standards of monarchy, and blessedly so: fitting for a democracy in which even the biggest boss is there for a brief time, and at the people’s pleasure. As Ronald Reagan said, after a victory more decisive than Trump could ever dream of, the President is merely a temporary resident, holding the keys for a fixed term. That was the beauty of it.

The East Wing has never been a place of grandeur. The structure as we knew it was built in the anxious years of the Second World War. It was Franklin Roosevelt’s attempt to regularize a jumble of service spaces and, not incidentally, to carve out a secure refuge beneath them. But it quickly became a center of quiet power. Eleanor Roosevelt hosted women journalists there. Two decades later, Jacqueline Kennedy presided over a different kind of transformation from the same offices, founding the White House Historical Association. The wing’s very plainness came to symbolize the functional modesty of democratic government: a space for staff, not spectacle; for the sustaining rituals of civic life, not the exhibition of personal glory.

All of that is now gone. The act of destruction is precisely the point: a kind of performance piece meant to display Trump’s arbitrary power over the Presidency, including its physical seat. He asks permission of no one, destroys what he wants, when he wants. As many have noted, one of Trump’s earliest public acts, having promised the Metropolitan Museum of Art the beautiful limestone reliefs from the façade of the old Bonwit Teller building, was to jackhammer them to dust in a fit of impatience.

Trump apologists say that earlier Presidents altered the White House, too. Didn’t Jimmy Carter install solar panels? Didn’t George H. W. Bush build a horseshoe pit? Didn’t Barack Obama put in a basketball court? What’s the fuss? And, anyway, who but élitists would object to a big ballroom that looks like the banquet hall of a third-rate casino? Who decides what’s decorous and what’s vulgar? Even the White House Historical Association, with a caution that has become typical of this dark time, confines itself to stating that it has been allowed to make a digital record of what’s being destroyed—as though that were a defense, rather than an epitaph.

This, of course, is the standard line of Trump apologetics: some obvious outrage is identified, and defenders immediately scour history for an earlier, vaguely similar act by a President who actually respected the Constitution. It’s a form of mismatched matching. If Trump blows up boats with unknown men aboard—well, didn’t Obama use drones against alleged terrorists? (Yes, but within a process designed, however imperfectly, to preserve a chain of command and a vestige of due process.) If Trump posts a video featuring himself as the combat pilot he never was, dropping excrement on peaceful protesters—well, didn’t Lyndon Johnson swear at his aides from his seat on the john? What’s the fuss? The jabs and insults of earlier Presidents, though, however rough, stayed within the bounds of democratic discourse, the basic rule being that the other side also gets to make its case. Even Richard Nixon sought out student protesters one early morning—at the Lincoln Memorial—and tried to understand what drove them.

So it was with the White House. Earlier alterations were made incrementally, and only after much deliberation. When Harry Truman added a not very grand balcony to the Executive Residence, the move was controversial, but the construction was overseen by a bipartisan commission. By contrast, the new project—bankrolled by Big Tech firms and crypto moguls—is one of excess and self-advertisement. The difference between the Truman balcony and the Trump ballroom is all the difference in the world. It is a difference of process and procedure—two words so essential to the rule of law and equality, yet doomed always to seem feeble beside the orgiastic showcase of power.

That is the rhetorical fragility of liberal democracy: its reliance on rules rather than on rage. If the White House must be remade, let there be a plan; let it be debated; let the financing be transparent and free of kickbacks and corruption. It isn’t complicated, and it’s the very principle at the heart of the American Revolution: following rules is not weakness. It is the breaking of them that is the indulgence of insecure tyrants, who feel most alive in acts of real and symbolic violence.

Architecture embodies values; it is not merely a receptacle of them. Simple proportions and human-scale spaces don’t just suggest the spirit of a democratic nation. They are that spirit in three dimensions, with doors and windows. Reverence for the past, and reluctance to destroy until the risks of destruction are fully known, is not timidity but wisdom, in architecture as in life. To conserve, after all, is the essence of conservatism. The shock that images of the destruction provoke—the grief so many have felt—is not an overreaction to the loss of a beloved building. It is a recognition of something deeper: the central values of democracy being demolished before our eyes. Now we do not only sense it. We see it. ♦

10/27/25 10:07 AM

#18554

It’s our duty to warn the nation about RFK, Jr.

We took an oath to declare dangers when we found them. We are doing that again today.

The Washington Post/Oct. 7, 2025

The writers are all former U.S. surgeons general.

As former U.S. surgeons general appointed by every Republican and Democratic president since George H.W. Bush, we have collectively spent decades in service as the Nation’s Doctor. We took two sacred oaths in our lifetimes: first, as physicians who swore to care for our patients and, second, as public servants who committed to protecting the health of all Americans.

Today, in keeping with those oaths, we are compelled to speak with one voice to say that the actions of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are endangering the health of the nation. Never before have we issued a joint public warning like this. But the profound, immediate and unprecedented threat that Kennedy’s policies and positions pose to the nation’s health cannot be ignored.

Despite differences in perspectives, we have always been united in an unwavering commitment to science and evidence-based public health. It is that shared principle that led us to this moment.

Over recent months, we have watched with increasing alarm as the foundations of our nation’s public health system have been undermined. Science and expertise have taken a back seat to ideology and misinformation. Morale has plummeted in our health agencies, and talent is fleeing at a time when we face rising threats — from resurgent infectious diseases to worsening chronic illnesses.

Repairing this damage requires a leader who respects scientific integrity and transparency, listens to experts and can restore trust to the federal health apparatus. Instead, Kennedy has become a driving force behind this crisis.

HHS is the one of the largest civilian agencies in the federal government, with a nearly $2 trillion budget and oversight of programs and agencies that touch every American family and business: Medicare, Medicaid, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health and more. It requires steady, ethical leadership grounded in science.

By contrast, Kennedy has spent decades advancing dangerous and discredited claims about vaccines — most notoriously, the thoroughly discredited theory that childhood vaccines cause autism. He has promoted misinformation about the HPV vaccine, which protects against cervical cancer, and he has repeatedly misrepresented the risks of mRNA technology and coronavirus vaccines, despite their lifesaving impact during the pandemic.

This year, as the United States faced its worst measles outbreak in more than 30 years, Kennedy de-emphasized vaccination and directed agency resources toward unproven vitamin therapies. The result: months-long outbreak, three preventable deaths and the first measles-related child death in the U.S. in over two decades.

More recently, Kennedy removed every member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, replacing its scientific experts with individuals who often lacked basic qualifications, some of whom are vaccine conspiracy theorists. The new committee has already begun casting doubt on the hepatitis B vaccine for newborns, despite decades of data affirming its effectiveness and strong safety profile.

Discrediting vaccines undermines one of the most important public health tools in American history. Thanks to widespread immunization, we eradicated smallpox, eliminated polio in the U.S. and prevented an estimated 1.1 million deaths and 508 million infections among children born between 1994 and 2023. Operation Warp Speed, initiated under President Donald Trump, brought lifesaving mRNA vaccines to the world in record time.

10/27/25 06:10 PM

#18555

(What I love most about Trump is that he’s so darn articulate. Below is an actual transcript of Trump responding to media questions about blowing up 10 small speed boats off the coast of Venezuela.)

“Going to kill people — like dead”

Our sea drugs, as they call them, they

use the term sea drugs. The drugs coming

in by sea are are like 5% of what they

were a year ago, less than 5%. So now

they're coming in by land. And even the

land is concerned because I told them

that's going to be next. You know, the

land is going to be next. And we may go

to the Senate. We may go to the, you

know, Congress and uh tell them about

it, but I can't imagine they'd have any

problem with it. I think in fact while

we're here I think it's a good idea Pete

you go to Congress you tell them about

it what are they going to do say gee we

don't want to stop drugs pouring in I

don't see any laws in going no reason

not to you know they'll always complain

oh we should have gone so we're going to

definitely I'd like to just tell you

let's go we'll go

tell them what we're going to do and I

think they're going to probably like it

except for the radical left lunatics.

Question: Mr. President, if you are declaring

war against these cartels, and Congress

is likely to um approve of that process,

why not just ask for a declaration of

war?

Well, I don't think we're going to

necessarily ask for a declaration of

war. I think we're just going to kill

people that are bringing drugs into our

country. Okay? We're going to kill them.

You know, they're going to be like dead.

Okay.

10/27/25 07:05 PM

#18556

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/28/us/politics/us-military-boat-strikes.html?smid=url-share

Sure he's incoherent, Jay. There's no rational thinking detectable, he wouldn't know a fact if it bit him on the ass, he lies like Nixon . . . BUT WHAT ABOUT OBAMA'S TENNIS COURT?

********

re: the boats Bone Spurs is bravely using his powers as Commander in Chief to obliterate.

Boats are made of wood and metal and plastic and whatever. We must focus on the dozens of people in those boats--human beings, blood, bone, organs--that he and our tax dollars have obliterated. People never convicted of a crime, never even accused or tried. Under our system of law, until this administration, innocent people. When an innocent person is killed by someone with no legal right to do so, what do we call it? Murder.

We, as the taxpayers who buy the explosives, are all responsible. Those who voted for Trump and continue to support him are a bit more responsible.

*********

And another four boats, 14 more innocent--uncharged, untried, unconvicted, unsentenced--killed.

37 minutes ago

Helene Cooper

The U.S. military killed 14 more people accused of smuggling drugs on boats, Hegseth says.

The Trump administration launched another round of deadly strikes on vessel it accused of smuggling drugs, killing 14 people in four boats on Monday in its growing military campaign off the Central and South American coasts, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday.

Mr. Hegseth said that the strikes — three of them — took place in international waters and that there had been one survivor. They bring the overall death toll to 57 in the campaign, which began in September.

10/28/25 03:37 PM

#18557

Yep. Not particularly concerned about a ballroom, folks. Love the beautiful new Rose Garden & love the idea of foreign dignitaries/visitors walking/dancing on flooring & accessing modern plumbing in lieu of grounds under tents & port-a-potties. That said, I love history, appreciate museums, historical societies & architectural places & designs. But, as long as the WH is home to today's presidents & today's events, it should be updated & maintained as such. Oh, and not involving taxpayers' money is an added bonus. Party on, Mr. President! Looking forward to the end result for (hopefully) tasteful visuals.

Yep. I guess if I thought Trump was actually dumping on me, I might not like it, Jack. Luckily for me, I don't think like that...any more than I overthink a silly movie (ie "Dumb & Dumber" ) or silly stand-up comic (Jimmy Kimmel) or silly songs (Wooly Booly). One of the reasons perhaps that Trump is so popular is because he doesn't take himself too seriously & has an entertainment streak. Immature, yes. Outlandish, yes. Presidential, no. Your humor, no. But silly, nonetheless. Hang in there, Jaybirds! 2028 will be here before you know it!

Postscript: Personally glad that Trump IS taking the war on drugs seriously. Not an easy target. Cartels & mafia families are dangerously ambitious undertakings.

10/28/25 04:22 PM

#18558

At least you've got the good sense not to try and claim his killing people in boats is in any way justified, Nori. You just ignore it. How many presidentially-ordered deaths have you ignored in your political life, Nori? Say, Johnson through Trump? How many deaths have your tax dollars paid for? Ah, hell. Just easier to turn a blind eye. Or just figure if the Prez sez, must be OK. Much easier to talk about "dangerously ambitious undertakings than" visualize vaporized human beings. Uncharged, untried, unconvicted human beings. You must sleep well.

10/28/25 05:19 PM

#18559

Well, let's talk about it. There are some interesting aspects in my consideration to just "ignore it": (1) A "declaration of war" has gone by the wayside, since WW2, (save Iraq, & we all know how that went). (2) Some believe (including me) that our intelligence plays an enormous role in knowing who are (& who are not) drug runners. (3) Fishermen do not fish without fishing gear .. particularly from submarines. (4) Venezuela, since Maduro & minions, has become a drug trafficking government, complete with cocaine manufacturing plants. (5) As for due process, did we give previously sought-after enemies (i.e. Bin Laden) due process before "murdering" them? (6) literally millions of Americans have died of overdoses since 1999. Today 105,000 average drug deaths a year. In 2023 alone, overdose deaths exceeded homicides by 338% & suicides by 103%. That same year, almost 73k Americans died from fentanyl alone. These are facts from USAFACTS.org & I'm assuming they would know. (7) Trump may be aligning us with resistance forces in Venezuela for regime change as he teases with the mention of land warfare. Granted, we don't know. But for now, drugs entering the US by sea are way down, along with minimal entry via Mexico & that makes me grateful that Trump is NOT ignoring it.

10/28/25 07:41 PM

#18560

Nori, are you suggesting that since Bin Laden was killed without due process that justifies all killing without due process? Really?

Nowhere in your justications 1-7 do I see any basis in law for killing people, Nori. I believe any President of the United States should have explicit, legal, Constitutional grounds for killing people. The 5th and 14th Amendments are quite clear about that.

Neither Trump nor you have provided such grounds, leading me to oppose blowing people into tiny pieces just because whoever the guy/gal living at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. says to.

10/28/25 10:28 PM

#18561

Nori, It seems like this President can do no wrong in your eyes. You explain away things he does. Decimating the East Wing to spend over 300 million on a lavish kingly ballroom is not a good thing while people are starving in this country. Pushing the cruelest Ice raids that have thrown Americans to the ground as well as the cruelty to Immigrants is not OK. Its not OK as Jack said to murder people in boats off Venuzuala..What's to stop Trump from deciding to murder some people in the US without due process. You are applauding a Dictator. He tells his Justice Department to go after his political rivals. That is not ok...the Justice Department Nori is supposed to be non partisan and for the people but its Trumps Justice Department and he orders Bondi to indict Comey...first he fires the Prosecutor who found no there there to prosecute Comey. This stinks to high heaven. I'm sorry you are not seeing the corruption of this President you so admire.Trump's whole purpose as President is to avoid his own prosecution which worked as his Justice Department did away with all the cases against him, and to further enrich himself. He is always trying to get more money for himself. He sets up deals with foreign governents where they give him money in return for his favors like what he did in Saudi Arabia. You are entitled to your feelings but I feel you are not seeing the destructiveness of this President.

10/28/25 11:16 PM

#18562

Joanie, I offer a different lens. Period.
Jack, US presidents have ordered the "murdering" of enemy combatants in all kinds of ways our whole lives! What is the difference between a deadly drone strike & blasting drug runners aimed for our shores to kill Americans? Trump has openly warned drug traffickers who boat drugs to our country that they will be killed if they continue to target us. Aren't the real murderers the drug traffickers? Cartels have been designated terrorist organizations for a reason, giving the POTUS legal rights to order the executions. Furthermore, do we want a leader who issues warnings without actions to back them up or do we want a leader who does what is legal & necessary to protect us?
Lastly, I never justified the ballroom because Obama built a basketball court. I merely cited my observation that a ballroom would probably be more useful.

10/29/25 06:30 AM

#18563

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/was-deadly-us-attack-venezuelan-vessel-legal-2025-09-04/

Nori, the problem is you believe everything Donald Trump says and he lies all the time...You assume that its ok to take out those boats in International waters even though we are not at war with Venezuala and we don't always know who are on those boats and some may be fisherman...Here is an article about why this is not legal to do. Love, Joanie

10/29/25 06:37 AM

#18564

OK, Nori, I hear you. No due process. It's so much simpler that way.
And there are certainly those who agree with you:

“It is not the task of the law to weaken the State with individual rights.”

— Paraphrase of Hitler’s legal philosophy in Mein Kampf and Nazi jurist commentaries.

Source: Ernst Rudolf Huber, Verfassungsrecht des Großdeutschen Reiches (Hamburg, 1939), citing Mein Kampf.

“The Führer himself is the ultimate source of the law.”

— Schmitt, “Der Führer schützt das Recht” (The Leader Protects the Law), Deutsche Juristen-Zeitung, Vol. 39, No. 15 (August 1, 1934), p. 945.

But let's cut to the chase:

“Shoot first and inquire afterwards, and if you make mistakes, I will protect you.”

— Göring to Gestapo officials, circa 1934.

Source: Quoted in William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (Simon & Schuster, 1960), p. 267. Law), Deutsch.

“The Führer himself is the ultimate source of the law.”

— Schmitt, “Der Führer schützt das Recht” (The Leader Protects the Law), Deutsche Juristen-Zeitung, Vol. 39, No. 15 (August 1, 1934), p. 945.

10/29/25 07:22 AM

#18565

Joan Ruggles (Young)

We can agree there's no accounting for taste. Here are pictures of the White House Rose Garden before and after the felon got his hands on it. The old one was good enough for Tricia Nixon's wedding. Nori is delighted with its new incarnation. Judge for yourselves. I hear it was partly done because Melani's heel dug into the grass. Who's dumb enough to still wear stilettos? HA!

Nori tells us we should take a wait and see attitude while we watch the East Wing be bulldozed and the Golden Ballroom. is built in it's hugeness and it's too late. I mean it worked for her kitchen didn't it??

Clever thinking.

10/29/25 08:27 AM

#18566

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/27/science/archaeology-spain-skulls.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

A NYT article this morning shows us a bit of what life was like before Enlightenment liberals brought us commie claptrap like due process. Possibly a furriner, maybe even an immigrant. Now that's the way to deal with them!

Next step is to wipe Voltaire, Locke, Rousseau, etc. out of our history books! And they're furriners, too! Safest thing to do is take ANYTHING Trump, and his followers, are unfamiliar with out of the curriculum. That should save a lot of money on texts and teachers.

Actually, public education itself derives from Enlightenment values. Let's get rid of that, too, just to be on the safe side.

10/29/25 10:28 AM

#18567

While reviewing some of the ideas of the Enlightenment thinkers to whom we owe our systems of governance, rights, and justice, it occurred to me that many of those ideas are shared by many of us anti-fascists, or antifa, that Trump is so frightened of. Our parents shared them, too, and fought for them.

Paine: “Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another; and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess.”

Voltaire: “It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one.”

Montesquieu: “There is no liberty if the power of judging be not separated from the legislative and executive powers.”

Beccaria: “Every punishment which does not arise from absolute necessity is tyrannical.”

The four above speak very directly to the rights and protections of those suspected of crimes; the rights and protections that are denied when we bomb those suspected but unconvicted of crimes, and when the chief executive demands rights to judge and execute.

Also Voltaire: “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Speaking to due process, “Political liberty is to be found only when there is no abuse of power.”

And my favorite, Diderot (though like so many "quotes," probably apocryphal): “Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest." A bit overstated, perhaps, but this is the Trump era so Nori should appreciate it as an "entertainment streak."

Nori, if you're keeping track of those of us confessing to antifa sentiments make sure you spell my name right when you send it in.

10/29/25 10:19 PM

#18568

Trump doesn't want to let the SNAP program go forward for 16 million people. Children will go hungry. Nori how do you feel about Trump saying he won't fund Democrat programs like SNAP. People from all political parties have families that count on SNAP to survive. Mothers are planning to not eat to give what they can scrounge up for their children. Do you still see through a different lens? Love, Joanie ❤️

10/30/25 08:56 AM

#18569

“My life mission has been [to] work on a piece of technology that would improve the quality of life of every human on the planet and hasten the coming of Christ’s return . . .” https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/28/patrick-gelsinger-christian-ai-gloo-silicon-valley

Diderot in the 21st Century? "Men will never be free until the last CEO is strangled with the entrails of the last priest."

10/30/25 11:47 AM

#18570

Throwing Americans Out of Planes

By Dead-Center Shacks

Oct. 30, 2025

If going to Hell is anything like living in the U.S. during the 2nd Trump Administration marked by cruelty, murder, uninterrupted lying, fraud, cheating, tearing down the East Wing and other national landmarks, retribution against political enemies and other assorted crimes, I’m moving to India to meditate with a Zen Master on a mountaintop to search for the “sound of one hand clapping” and find my place in the wonderland of peace and tranquility in what Trump might call the “big, beautiful sky.”

In recent weeks, a newly energized Donald Trump — fresh off “Acing” a sixth-grade IQ test — and determined to keep the Epstein Files private and put his enemies behind bars has thrown so much against the wall that the vital organs of democracy along with the rule of law are breaking down and bleeding out. Besides shutting down the government, consider this:

The twice-impeached felon with 34 federal convictions has blown out of the water more than 10 boats and killed, according to Old Bone Spurs, at least 40 narco-traffickers and terrorists in international waters coming mostly from Venezuela. Now he’s blowing up boats in the Pacific. There was no effort to stop and search the boats. There was no evidence that the boats were loaded with fentanyl or any other drug as Trump has claimed. (Most of the world’s fentanyl is coming from China where Trump is today to negotiate a trade deal.)

In addition, the boats were in international waters and fell far short of having enough fuel to make it to the U.S. shores. In some circles, that constitutes an act of piracy or an act of war. Talk to the Coast Guard. When suspicious boats and ships enter U.S. waterways, they will stop and board the ship and inspect the cargo. If necessary, the Coast Guard will arrest smugglers. That’s all changed. Now it’s fire away and ask questions later. If anyone asks, just say they were narco terrorists. Trump even joked a week ago that he “wouldn’t go fishing off the coast of Venezuela.”

Need an extra $50,000? Apply for ICE. You don’t need a high school degree; you get bonus points for having a criminal record; you don’t have to pass any crazy competency or literacy tests; and you don’t even have to be fit physically — as we’ve seen on TV with these fat, masked ICE agents throwing pregnant women and grandmothers in the back of cars or cargo vans — all to meet Stephen Miller’s weekly arrest quotas for capturing so-called illegal aliens. This is Miller’s new version of family separation at the border. In his twisted mind, the dumber and fatter you are, the less likely you will ask questions like: “Is this the right thing to do? Is this the American way?” As one ICE agent recently noted, “We quit going after the worst of the worst months ago; they were too hard to catch.”

“Stand together or fall one at a time.” That’s the question university presidents as well as leaders in law firms, the technology world, and big business should have been asking themselves months ago.

Consider the plight of university presidents. They should have joined together to form a coalition with six presidents representing all universities in negotiating with the corrupt Trump Administration that is trying to extort money and other concessions at the expense of academic freedom. With the “Big Six” representing all regions of the country, universities/colleges would gain negotiating power. It is kind of like unionizing university leadership. As it stands today, Trump is able to pick them off one at a time. The same tactic would work effectively with law firms, technology companies, and other businesses — although probably much harder to organize because of competitive pressures. Trying to negotiate your own deal is a losing proposition in today’s mob-like Trump world.

Trump’s crazy tariffs are getting crazier. He bounced off the wall when he watched the Canadian-produced ad featuring his hero, President Ronald Reagan, talk about the benefits of free trade and the sins of tariffs — sins that will send the world’s economy back to the dark ages.
Beyond that, Trump’s tariffs are making almost everything more expensive at a time when tens of millions of Americans are just barely holding on financially. This weekend, 42 million Americans will lose their food stamps thanks to the Trump shutdown, leaving millions of women and children hungry and in desperate straits.

In November, the 24 million Americans now receiving subsidies to help pay for Obama care health insurance will discover that their rates will double or triple starting in 2026. Rep, Marjory Taylor Greene of Georgia is pissed because her adult kids have already received notices that their health care premiums will more than double. Families in the red states will be hit the hardest, with hundreds of rural hospitals closing down. Health costs will rise for everyone.

Talking about the economy, think about this: the top 10% of America’s income earners are accounting for 50% of the nation’s economic activity. And consumer spending accounts for two-thirds of the nation’s $28 trillion dollar economy. We are living in a very unbalanced economy, with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

Housing construction is in the tank; consumer confidence is nose-diving; unemployment is rising; layoffs are increasing; bankruptcies are rising, food prices have skyrocketed, rents and homeownership costs are going up, and the Trump idiots are bragging about how great things are or blaming our economic woes on President Biden. That doesn’t bode well for the economy in the immediate future.

Consider the Magnificent Seven — Google, Nvidia, Meta, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Tesla— which are almost solely responsible for the record increases in the stock market. It’s an AI “Gold Rush” or sugar high of unknown proportions. In northern Virginia as well as elsewhere, we are spec building dozens of block-long-and-wide data centers — in the Dulles Airport corridor heading west on Route 50 to Middleburg and all along Interstate 66 and Route 28. Staffed by four or six security guards 24/7 and sucking up huge amounts of electricity and water, these architectural monsters make Trump’s new ballroom look like a Venetian masterpiece. I check out the few already operating data centers on the way to golf; there are only a half dozen cars parked in a tiny lot for that super-sized building. The bet is that we will need huge amounts of computing power as AI gathers momentum. What if we grossly overestimate our AI computing needs? Or, the electrical grid goes down?

Amazon has announced layoffs of 14,000 white-collar corporate jobs that are being replaced by AI, and that’s just the first wave of cuts. Expect the same from other high-tech firms. We could lose upwards of 30 million high-paying, white-collar jobs (workers with $300,000 or higher college degrees) over the next 10 years to artificial intelligence, making the manufacturing job losses and plant closings in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s look like a tea party.

What’s the potential impact of AI? That’s what Trump and his gang of bounty hunters should be thinking about instead of trade wars, hiding the explosive Epstein files, extorting hundreds of millions of dollars from big tech, law firms, and universities, and beating up and throwing out of the country anyone who has brown skin.

Hey, my wife is Greek with that beautiful olive skin; she could be next. (In the 1980s, Argentina’s masked national security police were picking up people indiscriminately and then throwing them out of planes into the Atlantic Ocean, never to be heard of again. Thousands went missing.) How do we train young people for tomorrow’s economy that is arriving much sooner than we expect? That’s the issue we should be concentrating on instead of throwing Americans out of planes.

This all brings us to the Epstein Files. As Elon Musk noted, “Trump’s in the Epstein Files.” Elon wasn’t kidding. Think about this. Melania, now 55, was 26 when she immigrated to New York City in 1996 — considered past her prime in the modeling world. Previously, she was a model of some success in Milan and Paris. She met Donald in 1998, reportedly introduced to him by Paulo Zampolli, who was her agent in Europe and co-owner of Metropolitan Models. But the details of how Melania moved and found work in NYC and met Donald Trump are still pretty hazy. What we do know is that Ghislaine Maxwell was looking around eastern Europe — freed after the collapse of the Soviet Union and Berlin Wall — for young, beautiful, and vulnerable girls to move to NYC as prospective models. She apparently lent a helping hand, relying on her good contacts in Europe who were already in the modeling business to scout for new recruits. Now could one of those scouts have been Melania?

Talking about Elon Musk, a couple of days ago I was watching CNN’s Jake Tapper interview Stephen Miller’s wife, Katie Miller. She went on and on about these narco terrorists. Beautiful 32-year-old lady, but she’s been fed a steady diet of Stephen’s “mean pills.”

Interestingly, Katie was Elon’s personal assistant when Elon was promising to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget earlier this year. How did that work out? Elon wasn’t just fucking with the federal government; according to reports on X as well as various media, he was also having a hot affair with Katie, and reportedly offered her a home at his Austin, Texas compound where he has many of his past wives and girlfriends living along with more than dozen kids he has fathered. Apparently, Katie patched up things with Stephen and stayed in Georgetown.

10/30/25 01:29 PM

#18571

Well done, Shacks. But you fail to credit Nori's defense of murdering people in little boats (up to 14 attacks, 61 dead, Th pm). We killed Bin Laden without legal due process. Nori seems to assert that this justifies any and all process-free killing. Only when those killed aren't Americans, or can we even kill US citizens without process, Nori? If not, why not?

Actually, the legality of the Bin Laden killing is far from settled. And its comparability to blowing up alleged criminals without trial is even more questionable. Here's the Wikipedia treatment of the pertinent U.S. and international legal issues around Bin Laden's death:

"Legality

Under U.S. law

"Following the attacks of September 11, the U.S. Congress passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists, which authorized the president to use "necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons" he determines were involved in the attacks.^[189] Congresswoman Barbara Lee has initiated several attempts to repeal the authorization.^[190] The Obama administration justified its use of force by relying on that resolution, as well as international law set forth in treaties and customary laws of war.^[191]

"John Bellinger III, who served as the U.S. State Department's senior lawyer during President George W. Bush's second term, said the strike was a legitimate military action and did not run counter to the U.S.' self-imposed prohibition on assassinations:

The killing is not prohibited by the long-standing assassination prohibition in executive order 12333 [signed in 1981], because the action was a military action in the ongoing U.S. armed conflict with al-Qaeda, and it is not prohibited to kill specific leaders of an opposing force. The assassination prohibition does not apply to killings in self-defense.^[192]

"Similarly, Harold Hongju Koh, Legal Adviser of the U.S. State Department, said in 2010 that "under domestic law, the use of lawful weapons systems—consistent with the applicable laws of war—for precision targeting of specific high-level belligerent leaders when acting in self-defense or during an armed conflict is not unlawful, and hence does not constitute 'assassination.'"^[192]

"David Scheffer, director of the Northwestern University School of Law Center for International Human Rights, said the fact that bin Laden had previously been indicted in 1998 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New Yorkfor conspiracy to attack U.S. defense installations was a complicating factor. "Normally when an individual is under indictment the purpose is to capture that person in order to bring him to court to try him ... The object is not to literally summarily execute him if he's under indictment."^[193] Scheffer and another expert stated that it was important to determine whether the mission was to capture bin Laden or to kill him. If the Navy SEALs were instructed to kill bin Laden without trying first to capture him, it "may have violated American ideals if not international law."^[193]

"Under international law

In an address to the Pakistani parliament, Pakistan's prime minister Yousaf Raza Gillani said,

Our people are rightly incensed on the issue of violation of sovereignty as typified by the covert U.S. air and ground assault on the Osama hideout in Abbottabad. ... The Security Council, while exhorting UN member states to join their efforts against terrorism, has repeatedly emphasized that this be done in accordance with international law, human rights and humanitarian law.^[194]

"Former Pakistani president Gen. Pervez Musharraf denied a report in The Guardian that his government made a secret agreement permitting U.S. forces to conduct unilateral raids in search of the top three al-Qaeda leaders.^[195]

"In testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Eric Holder said, "The operation against bin Laden was justified as an act of national self-defense. It's lawful to target an enemy commander in the field." He called the killing of bin Laden "a tremendous step forward in attaining justice for the nearly 3,000 innocent Americans who were murdered on September 11, 2001."^[196] Commenting on the legality under international law, University of MichiganLaw Professor Steven Ratner said, "A lot of it depends on whether you believe Osama bin Laden is a combatant in a war or a suspect in a mass murder." In the latter case, "you would ... be able to kill a suspect [only] if they represented an immediate threat."^[193]

"Holder testified that bin Laden made no attempt to surrender, and "even if he had there would be a good basis on the part of those very brave Navy SEAL team members to do what they did in order to protect themselves and the other people who were in that building."^[196] According to Anthony Dworkin, an international law expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, if bin Laden was hors de combat (as his daughter is said to have alleged)^[151] that would have been a violation of Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions.^[197]

"Former Nuremberg prosecutor Benjamin B. Ferencz said it was unclear if bin Laden's killing was justified self-defense or premeditated illegal assassination,^[198] and that "killing a captive who poses no immediate threat is a crime under military law as well as all other law,"^[199] a view also held by legal scholar Philippe Sands.^[198]

"The UN Security Council released a statement applauding the news of bin Laden's death, and UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said he was "very much relieved."^[200] Two United Nations Special Rapporteurs issued a joint statement seeking more information regarding the circumstances in which bin Laden was killed and cautioning that "actions taken by States in combating terrorism, especially in high profile cases, set precedents for the way in which the right to life will be treated in future instances."^[201]

Link to entire article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Osama_bin_Laden

10/30/25 04:38 PM

#18572

Joanie, you certainly have a good point when it comes to this shutdown threatening food shortages & job/program/income losses. The squeeze is materializing to a point where pressure to open the government has certainly arrived. Who should fold? Who will fold? Who will lose? Does anybody win? No idea. It just hammers home the notion that politics is truly a game. When lives are at stake, we'd like for it to be more than a game. But alas, it is not.
Joan, one needn't wear stilettos to trip on grassy, uneven ground. Particularly at our age. True, Tricia's grandma HAD to balance herself over 55 years ago, but why not fix that issue & give it more space as well!? Now, if Malania insists on plastic roses from Michael's, they'll hear from me.

10/30/25 10:20 PM

#18573