That’s a go bag.
She’s ready to leave the country on the drop.
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Trump Dictatorship and All Things Politics
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That’s a go bag.
She’s ready to leave the country on the drop.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Sardines
Well-Known Member
Did someone interrupt her travel plans?
The Thriller
Well-Known Member
Seriously who keeps blank checks and $3,000 in cash? I don’t know if you’re being serious or not but that’s really suspicious
The checks and passport stuff is weird as ****. 3k in cash is on the high side but not completely strange.
Or a blow bag, ready to pick up an 8-ball on the drop.
Red
Well-Known Member
Only going to get worse, until he’s removed. What an absolute amateur hour this administration is.
Info Pete Hegseth shared with wife, brother came from top general's secure messages
Hegseth has denied the information he shared was classified, but it was given to him on a system for sensitive and classified information, sources told NBC News.
www.nbcnews.com
Red
Well-Known Member
People with relevant experience find it easier to recognize what’s happening in our nation. Textbook fascism in America.
www.theatlantic.com
Look around, take stock of where you are, and know this: Today, right now—and I mean right this second—you have the most power you’ll ever have in the current fight against authoritarianism in America. If this sounds dramatic to you, it should. Over the past five months, in many hours of many conversations with multiple people who have lived under dictators and autocrats, one message came through loud and clear: America, you are running out of time.
People sometimes call the descent into authoritarianism a “slide,” but that makes it sound gradual and gentle. Maria Ressa, the journalist who earned the Nobel Peace Prize for her attempts to save freedom of expression in the Philippines, told me that what she experienced during the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte is now, with startling speed and remarkable similarity, playing out in the United States under Donald Trump. Her country’s democratic struggles are highly instructive. And her message to me was this: Authoritarian leaders topple democracy faster than you can imagine. If you wait to speak out against them, you have already lost.
Shortly after Trump was reelected last fall, I called Ressa to ask her how she thought Americans should prepare for his return. She told me then that she worried about a failure of imagination. She knew that the speed of the destruction of institutions—one of the first steps an authoritarian takes to solidify and centralize power—would surprise people here, even those paying the closest attention. Ressa splits her time between Manila and New York, and she repeatedly warned me to be ready for everything to happen quickly. When we spoke again weeks after his inauguration, Ressa was shaken. President Trump was moving faster than even she had anticipated.
I heard something similar recently from Garry Kasparov, the Russian dissident and chess grand master. To him, the situation was obvious. America is running out of time, he told me. As Kasparov wrote recently in this magazine, “If this sounds alarmist, forgive me for not caring. Exactly 20 years ago, I retired from professional chess to help Russia resist Putin’s budding dictatorship. People were slow to grasp what was happening there too.”
The chorus of people who have lived through democratic ruin will all tell you the same thing: Do not make the mistake of assuming you still have time. Put another way: You think you can wait and see, and keep democracy intact? Wanna bet? Those who have seen democracy wrecked in their home country are sometimes derided as overly pessimistic—and it’s understandable that they’d have a sense of inevitability about the dangers of autocracy. But that gloomy worldview does not make their warnings any less credible: Unless Trump’s power is checked, and soon, things will get much worse very quickly. When people lose their freedoms, it can take a generation or more to claw them back—and that’s if you’re lucky.
The Trump administration’s breakneck pace is obviously no accident. While citizens are busy processing their shock over any one shattered norm or disregarded law, Trump is already on to the next one. This is the playbook authoritarians have used all over the world: First the leader removes those with expertise and independent thinking from the government and replaces them with leaders who are arrogant, ignorant, and extremely loyal. Next he takes steps to centralize his power and claim unprecedented authority. Along the way, he conducts an all-out assault on the truth so that the truth tellers are distrusted, corruption becomes the norm, and questioning him becomes impossible. The Constitution bends and then finally breaks. This is what tyrants do. Trump is doing it now in the United States.
In the Philippines, it took about six months under Duterte for democratic institutions to crumble. In the United States, the overreach in executive power and the destruction of federal agencies that Ressa told me she figured would have kept Trump busy through, say, the end of the summer were carried out in the first 30 days of his presidency. Even so, what people don’t always realize is that a dictator doesn’t seize control all at once. “The death of democracy happens by a thousand cuts,” Ressa told me recently. “And you don’t realize how badly you’re bleeding until it’s too late.” Another thing the people who have lived under authoritarian rule will tell you: It’s not just that it can get worse. It will.
Americans who are waiting for Trump to cross some imaginary red line neglect the fact that they have more leverage to defend American democracy today than they will tomorrow, or next week, or next month. While people are still debating whether to call it authoritarianism or fascism, Trump is seizing control of one independent agency after another. (And for what it’s worth, the smartest scholars I know have told me that what Trump is trying to do in America is now textbook FASCISM—beyond the authoritarian impulses of his first term. Take, for example, his administration’s rigid ideological purity tests, or the extreme overreach of government into freedom of scientific and academic inquiry.)
A Ticking Clock on American Freedom
It’s later than you think, but it’s not too late.
www.theatlantic.com
Look around, take stock of where you are, and know this: Today, right now—and I mean right this second—you have the most power you’ll ever have in the current fight against authoritarianism in America. If this sounds dramatic to you, it should. Over the past five months, in many hours of many conversations with multiple people who have lived under dictators and autocrats, one message came through loud and clear: America, you are running out of time.
People sometimes call the descent into authoritarianism a “slide,” but that makes it sound gradual and gentle. Maria Ressa, the journalist who earned the Nobel Peace Prize for her attempts to save freedom of expression in the Philippines, told me that what she experienced during the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte is now, with startling speed and remarkable similarity, playing out in the United States under Donald Trump. Her country’s democratic struggles are highly instructive. And her message to me was this: Authoritarian leaders topple democracy faster than you can imagine. If you wait to speak out against them, you have already lost.
Shortly after Trump was reelected last fall, I called Ressa to ask her how she thought Americans should prepare for his return. She told me then that she worried about a failure of imagination. She knew that the speed of the destruction of institutions—one of the first steps an authoritarian takes to solidify and centralize power—would surprise people here, even those paying the closest attention. Ressa splits her time between Manila and New York, and she repeatedly warned me to be ready for everything to happen quickly. When we spoke again weeks after his inauguration, Ressa was shaken. President Trump was moving faster than even she had anticipated.
I heard something similar recently from Garry Kasparov, the Russian dissident and chess grand master. To him, the situation was obvious. America is running out of time, he told me. As Kasparov wrote recently in this magazine, “If this sounds alarmist, forgive me for not caring. Exactly 20 years ago, I retired from professional chess to help Russia resist Putin’s budding dictatorship. People were slow to grasp what was happening there too.”
The chorus of people who have lived through democratic ruin will all tell you the same thing: Do not make the mistake of assuming you still have time. Put another way: You think you can wait and see, and keep democracy intact? Wanna bet? Those who have seen democracy wrecked in their home country are sometimes derided as overly pessimistic—and it’s understandable that they’d have a sense of inevitability about the dangers of autocracy. But that gloomy worldview does not make their warnings any less credible: Unless Trump’s power is checked, and soon, things will get much worse very quickly. When people lose their freedoms, it can take a generation or more to claw them back—and that’s if you’re lucky.
The Trump administration’s breakneck pace is obviously no accident. While citizens are busy processing their shock over any one shattered norm or disregarded law, Trump is already on to the next one. This is the playbook authoritarians have used all over the world: First the leader removes those with expertise and independent thinking from the government and replaces them with leaders who are arrogant, ignorant, and extremely loyal. Next he takes steps to centralize his power and claim unprecedented authority. Along the way, he conducts an all-out assault on the truth so that the truth tellers are distrusted, corruption becomes the norm, and questioning him becomes impossible. The Constitution bends and then finally breaks. This is what tyrants do. Trump is doing it now in the United States.
In the Philippines, it took about six months under Duterte for democratic institutions to crumble. In the United States, the overreach in executive power and the destruction of federal agencies that Ressa told me she figured would have kept Trump busy through, say, the end of the summer were carried out in the first 30 days of his presidency. Even so, what people don’t always realize is that a dictator doesn’t seize control all at once. “The death of democracy happens by a thousand cuts,” Ressa told me recently. “And you don’t realize how badly you’re bleeding until it’s too late.” Another thing the people who have lived under authoritarian rule will tell you: It’s not just that it can get worse. It will.
Americans who are waiting for Trump to cross some imaginary red line neglect the fact that they have more leverage to defend American democracy today than they will tomorrow, or next week, or next month. While people are still debating whether to call it authoritarianism or fascism, Trump is seizing control of one independent agency after another. (And for what it’s worth, the smartest scholars I know have told me that what Trump is trying to do in America is now textbook FASCISM—beyond the authoritarian impulses of his first term. Take, for example, his administration’s rigid ideological purity tests, or the extreme overreach of government into freedom of scientific and academic inquiry.)
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The 1:00AM Supreme Court ruling was a big check on Trump, but of course he is already praising Alito and pressuring to recast throwing out the 5th and 14th amendment right to due process as necessary because, "we're not going to have a country any longer", and "we can't give everyone a trial."
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
I’m doing what I was elected to do, remove criminals from our Country, but the Courts don’t seem to want me to do that. My team is fantastic, doing an incredible job, however, they are being stymied at every turn by even the U.S. Supreme Court, which I have such great respect for, but which seemingly doesn’t want me to send violent criminals and terrorists back to Venezuela, or any other Country, for that matter — People that came here illegally! The Courts are intimidated by the Radical Left who are, “playing the Ref.” Great Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito correctly wants to dissolve the pause on deportations. He is right on this! If we don’t get these criminals out of our Country, we are not going to have a Country any longer. We cannot give everyone a trial, because to do so would take, without exaggeration, 200 years. We would need hundreds of thousands of trials for the hundreds of thousands of Illegals we are sending out of the Country. Such a thing is not possible to do. What a ridiculous situation we are in. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
6.48k
ReTruths
23k
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Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
I’m doing what I was elected to do, remove criminals from our Country, but the Courts don’t seem to want me to do that. My team is fantastic, doing an incredible job, however, they are being stymied at every turn by even the U.S. Supreme Court, which I have such great respect for, but which seemingly doesn’t want me to send violent criminals and terrorists back to Venezuela, or any other Country, for that matter — People that came here illegally! The Courts are intimidated by the Radical Left who are, “playing the Ref.” Great Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito correctly wants to dissolve the pause on deportations. He is right on this! If we don’t get these criminals out of our Country, we are not going to have a Country any longer. We cannot give everyone a trial, because to do so would take, without exaggeration, 200 years. We would need hundreds of thousands of trials for the hundreds of thousands of Illegals we are sending out of the Country. Such a thing is not possible to do. What a ridiculous situation we are in. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
6.48k
ReTruths
23k
Likes
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Only going to get worse, until he’s removed. What an absolute amateur hour this administration is.
Info Pete Hegseth shared with wife, brother came from top general's secure messages
Hegseth has denied the information he shared was classified, but it was given to him on a system for sensitive and classified information, sources told NBC News.
How has he not been fired?
Red
Well-Known Member
Soon!
The White House has begun the process of looking for a new leader at the Pentagon to replace Pete Hegseth, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to speak publicly. This comes as Hegseth is again mired in controversy over sharing military operational details in a group chat.
The Thriller
Well-Known Member
This will definitely help the working class slob out there. Take that elites! Libs who want safe milk? Up yours!
View: https://bsky.app/profile/jamellebouie.net/post/3lnfpa67ruk2f
View: https://bsky.app/profile/jamellebouie.net/post/3lnfpa67ruk2f
The Thriller
Well-Known Member
How many of these suckers and losers would vote for him a fourth time if given a chance? Lol
Thoughts and prayers red staters. Enjoy Trump and that Republican Party.
View: https://bsky.app/profile/cnn.com/post/3lnizkdkbbk2h
Thoughts and prayers red staters. Enjoy Trump and that Republican Party.
View: https://bsky.app/profile/cnn.com/post/3lnizkdkbbk2h
Al-O-Meter
Well-Known Member
The surprise in this is not that media outlets would churn out headlines so misleading they are basically lies feeding the large collection of morons who will click on the links desperate to affirm their beliefs. No, the shocking thing is that one major media outlet was willing to tell the truth.
"The claim that the FDA is suspending routine food safety inspections is false. FDA is actively working to ensure continuity of operations during the reorganization period and remains committed to ensuring critical programs and inspections continue"
The truth teller is CBS News.
FDA making plans to end its routine food safety inspections, sources say
Food safety inspections would be left to state and local authorities under the plan being developed by the FDA.
www.cbsnews.com
The reality is the FDA has been turning over the responsibilities to state and local inspectors who do their job to standards set by the FDA going all the way back to 2010. The supposed "suspension of FDA inspections" started under Obama, and more happened under Trump 1.0, and more happened under Biden, and now some more are taking place under Trump 2.0. All the food is being inspected, but the FDA is focusing on setting standards and aggressively addressing non-compliance events.
fishonjazz
Well-Known Member
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