Monthly Archives: July 2026

What Next?

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After MAGA completes its mass deportations, what happens to the more than 200 immigrant detention centers in the U.S. that currently hold nearly 71 thousand people? What happens to all the new detention centers built at a cost of $45 billion? What happens to ICE, now the nation’s largest “law enforcement” agency that’s 80,000 strong with an annual budget of $27.7 billion? What happens to the roughly 8,500 new Customs and Border Patrol agents? What happens to the new nationwide surveillance system tracking immigrants and citizens alike? What happens to the hyperinflated budget for the DHS?

I think it’s naïve to believe that they’re going away. Or that they’ll even be downsized. After all, there’s a longstanding belief among those in government that if you don’t use it, you lose it.

I believe that MAGA may very well have long-range plans for them – to create concentration camps for political dissenters. For the so-called “communist” Democrats. For reporters who refuse to submit and refuse to perpetuate MAGA propaganda. For military officers who refuse to follow MAGA’s illegal orders. For academics who refuse to teach the false narrative of whitewashed history. For Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and other non-Christian nationalists. For atheists. For women who exercise the right to control their own bodies. For people of color. For gays and lesbians. For transgenders. For anti-Israelis.

Possibly for you.

We’ve seen variations of this before. In Hungary, Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Zionist Israel, China, Russia, fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and dictatorships throughout history and around the world.

Think it couldn’t happen here? Think our government institutions and the Constitution will prevent it?

Thanks to DOGE and the Felon-in-Chief’s MAGA loyalists, those institutions have already been dismantled or hollowed-out. Congress has become a rubber stamp for the Felon’s fascist policies. The fascist-friendly majority of SCROTUS has consistently ruled in support of the Felon – even granted him immunity. And the Felon and his regime have already violated or attempted to violate more than a dozen provisions of the Constitution, the document that makes America what it is. Or, at least what it was.

Most of the safeguards are gone and many Americans helped destroy them by voting for a felonious charlatan who promised them cheaper gas and groceries. By refusing to fight back when threatened with a lawsuit or the Felon’s cyberbullying. By hoping that that the Felon and his MAGA government will just go away or, at least, not come after them.

If our democracy fails, many of those people will have gotten what they deserve – likely a gang of warrantless, masked, armed men breaking down their doors and taking them to one of the detention camps. Or, like Renee Good, Alex Pretti and others, something even worse.

Why Does The Republican Party Even Exist?

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Once the proud party of Lincoln whose actions saved the Republic and emancipated the slaves, the Republican Party has been caught in a destructive downward spiral ever since. Of the seven presidents who served during the nation’s Gilden Age, six were Republicans. Together, they endorsed Horse and Sparrow economics – the predecessor of Trickle-Down economics – that allowed a few industrialists to create an enormous wealth gap between themselves and ordinary Americans.

Likewise, the scandal-plagued, pro-business administrations of Republicans Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge created an overheated economy that led to the 1929 Wall Street crash and the Great Depression. They were followed by Republican Herbert Hoover who, although he was credited with organizing a massive food relief program during and after WWI, his timid response to the Great Depression resulted in a deepening of the depression that continued until the election of Democratic Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower, the hero of WWII, led us into the Vietnam War and signed off on the Dulles brothers’ ill-advised overthrow of democratically elected governments in Iran, Guatemala, Indonesia and Congo. He also embraced White Christian Nationalists who added “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance and changed the national motto from “E Pluribus Unum” (from many, one) to “In God We Trust. Those same religious and racist zealots have been trying to turn the U.S. into an unconstitutional theocratic-driven Christian nation ever since.

Republican Richard M. Nixon was elected, in part, due to his violation of the Logan Act by intervening in the Vietnam peace talks. He and Henry Kissinger supported a military coup to overthrow the democratically elected government of Chile. Further, his re-election campaign was marked by a series of dirty tricks aimed at Democratic candidates leading to the Watergate break-in and cover-up and his eventual resignation to avoid impeachment. Not surprisingly, Nixon’s Republican successor, Gerald R. Ford, pardoned Nixon to save him from criminal prosecution.

Like Nixon, Republican Ronald Reagan was elected, in part, as a result of his violation of the Logan Act by encouraging Iran to delay the return of U.S. hostages until after the election in return for a better deal. His Trickle-Down economic plan led to a wave of corporate consolidations that continues today, as well as tax cuts for the wealthy. He opened the door for today’s propaganda network by ending the Fairness Doctrine. And he famously created a shadow government as part of Iran-Contra Affair.

Republican George H. Bush continued Reagan’s pro-corporate economic policies and led the U.S. into a war with Iraq called Desert Storm. Republican George W. Bush reprised his father’s war with Iraq costing the U.S. 4,431 military deaths and an estimated $4 trillion. His economic policies also led to the Great Recession following the 2007 banking and real estate crash.

Finally, we get to the worst of them all: the twice-impeached Donald J. Trump.

Elected with the obvious help of Russia, the Felon-in-Chief mishandled the Covid pandemic leading to the deaths of roughly 1 million Americans. Among other illegal acts while in office, he ordered the payment of hush money to coverup an affair and sex with a porn star. He led a conspiracy to overturn his election loss through insurrection. He stole boxes of the nation’s top secrets and engaged in a coverup. Then, when he returned to office, he pardoned the insurrectionists and seditionists and sold pardons to convicted supporters.

He has engaged in self-dealing and insider trading helping his family raise between $2 and $4 billion to date. He and his cabinet have committed numerous constitutional violations. He illegally destroyed the East Wing of the White House. He has engaged the U.S. in an ill-advised and illegal war against Iran leading to out-of-control inflation. He has attacked news media and advanced the MAGA propaganda network. He imposed illegal tariffs against most of our trading partners. He has compromised relationships with our most trusted allies and NATO.

He has threatened free and fair elections. He has used the FBI and DOJ to exact vengeance against his perceived political enemies. He has ignored the climate crisis. He has tried to rewrite history to diminish our nation’s involvement in genocide and slavery. He created a large masked and heavily armed militarized force to arrest hundreds of thousands of hard-working immigrants. In the process, that force has repeatedly violated the Constitution and murdered dozens of people, including two U.S. citizens. Further, the 34-time convicted felon and litigated sexual assaulter has overseen the destruction of virtually every institution and norm that made our country great.

Seriously, why does that party continue to exist?

Home Of The Brave?

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This year, the MAGA-controlled Congress is expected to pass a Pentagon budget of $1.15 trillion, an increase of roughly $250 billion from this year’s already bloated budget. To put that in perspective, a trillion is a million millions!!! Or, to look at it another way, it’s the equivalent of the next eight nations’ military budgets combined, of which six are allies.

That doesn’t look like bravery to me. It looks like a whole lot of fear – $1.15 trillion worth.

And that’s not all. Adding to the total is the $190.6 billion budget for the Department of Homeland Security (in other words, defense), a department that didn’t even exist before 9/11. Removing the $26.2 billion of the DHS budget intended for disaster relief, that means taxpayers are paying a grand total of approximately $1,314,400,000,000 for defense.

Why?

I submit it’s less about defending our citizens than it is about defending our global corporate empire. In the 1980s, I asked the Central American bureau chief of a large news organization to explain the fighting in El Salvador and Nicaraugua. “Who are the good guys?” I asked. “There are none,” he replied. He told me that the U.S. doesn’t really care about international justice and human rights. That we simply support those who will support our corporate interests.

Nothing I have seen since then has contradicted that argument.

We didn’t intervene in Israel’s genocide of Palestinians perhaps because we have economic and military ties to Israel. Our intrusion in Venezuela wasn’t about human rights or communism. It was about that nation’s large oil reserves. Likewise, our attacks on Iran are all about oil. Indeed, our history of conflicts with Iran began in 1953 after the democratically elected government of Iran nationalized its oil resources.

Truth is, American taxpayers pay to defend U.S. corporate interests with our treasure and our lives. And how do our multinational corporations repay us? They pay to elect the government they want and demand ever greater tax cuts. Based on the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy’s April 2026 analysis, at least 88 of the largest U.S. corporations paid no federal income tax in 2025, despite earning over $105 billion in U.S. pretax income.

Home of the brave? More like home of the suckers.

Welcome To Trumpistan.

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On the 250th anniversary of our nation’s Declaration of Independence, we are experiencing a type of autocracy that exceeds everything the Founders feared. In fact, few royals in history have exhibited the kind of unrestrained narcissism that we have seen from the current occupant of the Oval Office. Even the actions of such despots as Sadaam Hussain, Idi Amin, and Muhammar Khadafi seem quaint by comparison.

Before being forced to remove it, Trump illegally added his name to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Arts. He has placed his portrait on passports. There are plans for his image on coins and on a $250 bill. He is intent on remaking the White House into Mar-a-Lago north by paving Jackie Kennedy’s Rose Garden, by illegally demolishing the East Wing in preparation for an enormous, but unnecessary ballroom, and by adding glued-on gold geegaws throughout the Oval Office.

Not content with remaking the People’s House, he insists on remaking the nation’s capital by turning the reflecting pool into an algae-covered swamp, by adding a colossal Arch d’Trump, and by constructing a Trump promenade behind the Lincoln Memorial. He has even demanded that Penn Station and Dulles Airport be renamed after him.

As disgusting and problematic as his vanity projects are, even more worrying is how the Felon-in-Chief, his family and his sycophant appointees have used their positions to collect billions in favors and unethical business deals with the likes of the Saudis, Qatar, UAE, Kazakhstan and more. They have also engaged in insider trading through investments that preceded government decisions and concessions to foreign leaders.

And that’s just the corruption in plain sight. Who knows how much corruption has been cloaked in secrecy by the illegal use of encryption apps to evade public scrutiny and congressional oversight? (If only the media were as outraged as they were over the trumped-up scandal of Hillary’s emails.)

Now SCROTUS has added to the Felon’s power by ruling that he can fire anyone in a government agency, except the Federal Reserve, without cause. That means he will insert even more loyalists at every level of government to do his bidding.

This is already the most corrupt regime in American history intent on filling their personal bank accounts with taxpayer funds. Meanwhile they ignore the financial pain of the hard-working Americans who are the source of that money

Trump and his cultists claim we’re living in a “golden age.” But the only thing golden is the now trashy gold-encrusted Oval Office.