Month: April 2025

It’s a silly notion, for sure, but Donald Trump makes a lot of bold claims. Things like “he’ll solve the Russia assault on Ukraine in a day”, or “bring down the cost of grocery (you know that old word “grocery” he claims no-one uses anymore) prices” or “make a run for a 3rd term Presidency”.

So let’s entertain for a moment the reasons Trump could never be Pope.

Despite the obvious, that he’s not Catholic there are few others that are even more ovbvious.

1. Trump is an adulterer, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-ten-commandments-love-stormy-daniels-affair-b2566780.html
2. Trump is a rapist, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_sexual_misconduct_allegations
3. Trump is a liar, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_or_misleading_statements_by_Donald_Trump
4. Trump is untrustworthy https://en.mehrnews.com/news/228083/Trump-is-not-trustworthy-at-all-Former-Pakistan-FM (to pick an entirely random article of which there are countless describing Trumps untrustworthiness

But of course, there have been some really shady characters in history who have had similar character attributes yet have held the office of Pope. So geesh, maybe Trump could be Pope. Oh, right. He can’t. He’s not Catholic.

For me it’s hypocritical that the Vatican would give the Saudi Arabia Crown Prince, a murderer, this seating at the funeral. It goes to show that money is and always has been the root of all evil.

Why is it acceptable that officials at the highest level of government use social media? It’s unprofessional and demeaning to the office.

I’m sure there are many who are swayed by Hegseth’s boyish charm or his macho “I’ll kick their ass” demeanor but underlying all of this is what many knew all along. Hegseth is an incompetent buffoon that prioritizes showiness over all else. The guy needs to be fired before he makes a mistake that drags the World into an international conflict.

Trump, you screwed up! Again.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared detailed plans about a military operation against the Houthis in Yemen on a second Signal group chat, this one on his personal phone and including his wife, lawyer and brother, three people familiar with the chat told CNN.

The chat was set up during Hegseth’s tumultuous confirmation hearing process as a way for his closest allies to strategize, two of the people familiar with the matter said. But Hegseth continued using the chat, which had more than a dozen people in it, to communicate after he was confirmed, the people said.

The revelation comes as some of Hegseth’s closest advisers have begun sounding the alarm about the secretary’s judgment, including his former press secretary, John Ullyot, and three former senior officials Hegseth fired last week — his top adviser Dan Caldwell, deputy chief of staff Darin Selnick, and Colin Carroll, who served as chief of staff to the deputy secretary of defense.

Every President makes mistakes but Trump’s mistakes are too often and too significant to ignore. Trump is incompetent. The following taken from Peter Wehner’s Atlantic article entitled “America’s Mad King”

• The formula Trump used to calculate his tariffs was not just ill-advised but nonsensical as well.
• Trump’s messaging around tariffs as been confusing. Realy, an absolute disaster!
  • Trump’s press secretary said that the tariffs were not a negotiation—until Trump and his secretary of the Treasury said they were.
  • His commerce secretary said there wasn’t any chance that the president would back off from his tariffs—until Trump backed off from his tariffs the following week.
  • Last Friday, the administration announced that it would exempt iPhones, computers, and other electronic devices from the tariffs—and on Sunday, Trump announced that this did not count as a tariff exemption.   
• Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth gave orders so vague for DEI purging that the Defense Department flagged photos of the Enola Gay for deletion from all websites and social-media posts. (The B-29 bomber that dropped the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima was named after the pilot’s mother, Enola Gay Tibbets.
• Hegseth, during a February press conference at the NATO headquarters, in Brussels, unilaterally conceded a major Ukrainian negotiating position before anyone had even met with the Russians. Roger Wicker, the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that he was “disturbed” by Hegseth’s comments, calling them a “rookie mistake.” The Mississippi Republican added that everyone knows that “you don’t say before your first meeting what you will agree to and what you won’t agree to.” Wicker added, “I don’t know who wrote the speech—it is the kind of thing Tucker Carlson could have written, and Carlson is a fool.”
• In an appearance on The Tucker Carlson Show, Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy and the lead negotiator tasked with ending the war in Ukraine, was not only effusive in his praise of Russia’s totalitarian leader, Vladimir Putin, but even repeated Kremlin propaganda that “the overwhelming majority” of people in four Ukrainian regions that have been occupied and annexed by Russia want to be absorbed by Russia. (During the interview, Witkoff, a wealthy real-estate developer, struggled to remember the names of those Ukrainian regions.)  
• The editor in chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, was mistakenly added to a Signal group chat that included senior Trump officials who were coordinating an air strike against Houthi rebels in Yemen.
• In its mass firing of federal workers, the Trump administration dismissed—and then had to rehire—people with highly sensitive jobs in the National Nuclear Security Administration, which is responsible for ensuring the readiness of America’s nuclear arsenal. The people who ordered the firings had failed to grasp the nature of those responsibilities.
• Employees who were working on the federal government’s response to the H5N1 avian-flu outbreak, which is decimating poultry flocks and spreading to humans, were fired. The Department of Agriculture scrambled to reverse the firings.
• The single biggest line item on the DOGE website claimed a savings of $8 billion from one canceled contract. The actual contract was worth $8 million, much of which had already been spent.
• The Department of Health and Human Services, which is run by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a well-known anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist, hired a discredited vaccine skeptic to study whether vaccines cause autism.
• Amid a measles resurgence in the United States, Kennedy is also making unsupported and misleading claims. ProPublica reported that leaders at the CDC ordered staff not to release its assessment linking the spread to areas where many are unvaccinated.
• The National Institutes of Health, the global leader in biomedical research, is getting irreparably damaged by dramatic and reckless cuts being made by people who have no knowledge of the agencies they are gutting. Progress in cancer therapies such as cell-based immunotherapy is being threatened. Active clinical trials are being disrupted. Decades of research are being undermined.     
• Also being decimated is PEPFAR, the global AIDS initiative started by President George W. Bush in 2003, which has saved more than 25 million lives; until the Trump era, it enjoyed strong bipartisan support. PEPFAR is estimated to save 1.6 million lives each year.
• Secretary of State Marco Rubio has issued some waivers for PEPFAR, but they are a mirage. The waivers have done very little to restore funding or provide distribution of medication. One expert told The Dispatch that aid groups that do qualify for waivers have been unable to draw down funds from the USAID payment system. “A waiver is kind of useless without the ability to have some cash flow,” Chambers Sharpe, who previously worked in the Office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator at the State Department, told The Dispatch. “You can’t ship a waiver to a clinic as an antiretroviral medicine.” There have been massive disruptions in HIV prevention, testing, and treatment services. Clinics continue to close, and people are beginning to die at an alarming rate.
• In February, an inspector general wrote that about a half billion dollars in food aid that had already been purchased was at risk of spoilage. That inspector general was fired the next day. In addition, the Trump administration has “dismissed the few remaining health officials who oversaw care for some of the world’s most vulnerable people: more than 500,000 children and more than 600,000 pregnant women with H.I.V. in low-income countries,” Apoorva Mandavilli reported earlier this month in The New York Times. “Expert teams that managed programs meant to prevent newborns from acquiring H.I.V. from their mothers and to provide treatment for infected children were eliminated last week in the chaotic reorganization of the Health and Human Services Department.”
• DOGE cut almost $900 million from the Department of Education’s effort to collect national statistics and track the progress of American students, eviscerating one of the genuinely valuable things the federal government has done in the area of education. The cuts threaten to leave us in the dark when it comes to determining school effectiveness, where gaps exist, and what works. Many of the projects being canceled were near completion, making the decision even more mind-bogglingly stupid.
• The Trump administration has acknowledged mistakenly deporting a Maryland man with protected legal status to a notoriously brutal prison in El Salvador. (Later claims by the White House aide Stephen Miller that the deported man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, was lawfully sent to El Salvador were undercut by the facts of the case and court rulings.) The judge presiding over the Abrego Garcia case, Paula Xinis, said on Tuesday that she was weighing contempt proceedings against the Trump administration. Xinis previously ordered the administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s release from the custody of El Salvador, and the Supreme Court upheld that portion of her order last week. “To date, what the record shows is that nothing has been done. Nothing,” Xinis said on Tuesday.
• According to their lawyers, some Venezuelan migrants are being falsely accused of gang membership and deported to that same prison in El Salvador based on their tattoos and high-end urban street wear. “In one instance, a man who was deported was accused of having a crown tattoo that officials said proved his membership, but his lawyers claimed that the tattoo was in honor of the man’s favorite soccer team, Real Madrid,” The New York Times reported. “Another migrant got a similar crown tattoo, the lawyers said, to commemorate the death of his grandmother.”
• Yesterday, federal judge James E. Boasberg said that he had found probable cause to hold the Trump administration in criminal contempt for violating an order he issued last month directing officials to stop planes of Venezuelan migrants from being sent to El Salvador.

Trump calls a reporter fake and says prices haven’t gone up, citing gas at $1.98 a gallon and that the price of eggs has gone down 92%
byu/Im_A_Fuckin_Liar inthescoop

My question to chatGPT…..”What is the classic playbook for a democracy to be turned into an autocracy”

chatGPT’s response…….

That’s a powerful question — and one that historians, political scientists, and watchdog groups have studied deeply. The classic playbook for turning a democracy into an autocracy tends to follow a recognizable pattern. It rarely happens overnight. Instead, it often involves a slow erosion of democratic norms, institutions, and public trust.

Here’s a breakdown of the common steps in that authoritarian playbook:

Classic Autocrat Playbook: Democracy to Autocracy

1. Undermine Trust in Democratic Institutions

“The system is rigged. The courts are biased. The media lies.” Go to statements of Trump’s

Spread doubt about elections, legislatures, courts, and the press. Trump has done this in spades and continues to do it even in Executive Orders. See Presidential Memoranda “Addressing Risks from Chris Krebs and Government Censorship”

Undermine belief in impartial rule of law.

Use disinformation and conspiracy theories to confuse the public.

2. Attack the Free Press

“Fake news” becomes a rallying cry.

Discredit independent journalism.

Promote state-run or loyalist media.

Intimidate, jail, or silence critical reporters.

3. Politicize the Judiciary and Law Enforcement

Use courts and cops to protect friends and punish enemies.

Appoint loyalists to courts and key agencies.

Use legal systems to harass opposition (lawfare).

Weaken checks on executive power.

4. Manipulate Elections

“We’re just ensuring fairness” becomes an excuse for rigging.

Suppress voter turnout (e.g., targeting minority or opposition voters).

Change voting rules or gerrymander districts.

Undermine electoral oversight bodies.

Refuse to accept legitimate election losses.

5. Erode Civil Liberties

“National security” or “tradition” is used to limit freedom.

Restrict freedom of speech, assembly, or religion.

Use surveillance and intimidation against dissenters.

Pass laws criminalizing protest or opposition organizing.

6. Divide and Polarize Society

“Us vs. Them” becomes the norm.

Stoke fear, identity politics, nationalism, or racism.

Create scapegoats (immigrants, minorities, “elites,” etc.).

Use fear of chaos or “the other” to justify harsher control.

7. Consolidate Power

Gradually turn the state into a tool for personal control.

Centralize authority in the executive branch.

Sideline or dissolve opposition parties.

Rewrite the constitution or laws to extend power or abolish term limits.

8. Create a Cult of Personality

“Only I can fix it.”

The leader becomes a symbol of the nation.

Critics are painted as enemies of the state.

Loyalty to the leader is valued over loyalty to law or truth.

9. Use Crises to Justify Overreach

“We must act quickly and decisively.”

Exploit emergencies (war, terrorism, pandemic, economic collapse) to bypass normal processes.

Extend “temporary” emergency powers indefinitely.

10. Claim Legitimacy, Deny Responsibility

“The people love me. The problems are someone else’s fault.”

Use manipulated elections, rallies, and propaganda to claim mass support.

Blame others (media, opposition, foreign actors) for failures.

Important Note:

This playbook has been seen in:

Hitler’s rise in Germany

Putin in Russia

Erdogan in Turkey

Orban in Hungary

Multiple others in the 20th and 21st centuries

Not every autocrat uses every tactic, but most follow some combination of these.

Want to dive into historical examples or see how modern democracies are resisting this slide?

Basically as I see it, China and Canada have backbone. The rest, a bunch of pussies!

In a deeply troubling development for the U.S. system of checks and balances, the House of Representatives narrowly passed the No Rogue Rulings Act (HR.1526) in a 219-214 vote. The bill now moves to the Senate, where it faces steeper odds—but it deserves the public’s full attention and firm opposition.

At first glance, the bill’s name might suggest it’s about reigning in “out-of-control” judges. But the reality is far more dangerous: this legislation is a direct attack on the judicial branch’s constitutional authority to check abuses of power—and it could silence courts just when Americans need them most.

What the Bill Does

The No Rogue Rulings Act would bar federal district courts from issuing nationwide injunctions—legal orders that halt unlawful government actions across the entire country. Under this bill, judges could only issue injunctions that apply to the individual plaintiffs in a given case.

That may sound technical, but the consequences are sweeping.

Under this rule, even if a federal court finds that an agency, executive order, or law is unconstitutional or illegal, the judge could only protect the person or group who filed the case—not the public at large. This would prevent courts from stopping nationwide harm—even when it’s clear that government overreach or rights violations are occurring.

Undermining the Judiciary—and the People

This bill is not about stopping “rogue” judges. It’s about weakening one of the most vital tools the judicial branch has to protect Americans from unconstitutional actions by the executive or legislative branches.

The Founders designed a government of three co-equal branches for a reason. Limiting the judiciary’s ability to enforce the Constitution weakens that structure—and erodes the freedoms of every American.

Courts have historically used nationwide injunctions to:

• Halt discriminatory immigration bans
• Stop unconstitutional executive orders
• Block harmful environmental rollbacks
• Protect consumers and workers from overreach

Under this bill, none of those protections would have extended beyond the individual plaintiffs. Imagine how much longer unconstitutional policies could remain in place—even after a judge declares them illegal—simply because relief is piecemeal.

Who Benefits? Not You.

Make no mistake: this bill does not protect the average American. It protects those in power from being held fully accountable. If a policy violates your rights, you may not have the time, money, or legal expertise to sue. But under current law, when someone else takes on that burden and wins, you are protected too.

The Bigger Picture: A Constitutional Crisis in the Making

This bill is a clear step toward a weakened judiciary, a stronger executive, and an unbalanced democracy—exactly the kind of system the Founders warned against.