Mostly Monday Reads: Life in the Time of Cruelty

Posted: November 10, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: #FARTUS, #We are so Fucked, court rulings, Democratic Politics, presidential pardons | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

“The end is nigh. Gas prices haven’t dropped, electric bills have gone up, groceries are ridiculous, a year later, Putin is still killing Ukrainians, there is no peace in the Middle East, tariff costs are still passed on to consumers, America is once again the laughing stock of the world, need I say more?” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

There has been another bit of good news to complement last week’s. However, we cannot let our guard down or our actions slacken. Even a few battles won will not end a war. Today, the Supreme Court dismissed a case to overturn its landmark decision legalizing same-sex marriage.

There is a distinct possibility that a stronger attempt may be underway, so vigilance is necessary. More analysis is likely to come out as court watchers ponder the decision.

This is from the AP’s Mark Sherman. “Supreme Court rejects call to overturn its decision legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide.” The dissenting voices hint that more compelling cases may come before them.

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a call to overturn its landmark decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.

The justices, without comment, turned away an appeal from Kim Davis, the former Kentucky court clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples after the high court’s 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges.

Davis had been trying to get the court to overturn a lower-court order for her to pay $360,000 in damages and attorney’s fees to a couple denied a marriage license.

Her lawyers repeatedly invoked the words of Justice Clarence Thomas, who alone among the nine justices has called for erasing the same-sex marriage ruling.

Thomas was among four dissenting justices in 2015. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito are the other dissenters who are on the court today.

Roberts has been silent on the subject since he wrote a dissenting opinion in the case. Alito has continued to criticize the decision, but he said recently he was not advocating that it be overturned.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who was not on the court in 2015, has said that there are times when the court should correct mistakes and overturn decisions, as it did in the 2022 case that ended a constitutional right to abortion

But Barrett has suggested recently that same-sex marriage might be in a different category than abortion because people have relied on the decision when they married and had children.

The basis of Davis’ complaint may be the reason why the religious fanatics placed on SCOTUS by extreme right-wing theocrats might have been encouraged to wait for a more direct call to overrule Obergfell. This is explained in this NBC News analysis by Lawrence Hurley.

But reconsidering Obergefell was not the main legal question presented in Davis’ appeal.

Although the court has a 6-3 conservative majority, none of the other justices joined Thomas’ opinion.

Just last month, Justice Samuel Alito, who authored the abortion ruling, indicated he was not pushing for Obergefell to be overturned.

Davis, represented by the conservative group Liberty Counsel, refused to issue any marriage licenses in the immediate aftermath of the Obergefell decision. She said that as a conservative Christian who opposed same-sex marriage, she should have a religious right not to put her name on marriage licenses involving same-sex couples.

Her office in Rowan County, Kentucky, denied licenses to several such couples, including David Moore and David Ermold, who subsequently filed a civil rights lawsuit.

Davis was ordered to issue a license for Moore and Ermold, but defied the court injunction and still refused to do so. The judge then held her in contempt, and she was jailed for six days.

While she was jailed, Moore and Ermold were able to obtain their marriage license.

Subsequently, the state changed the law in order to address the controversy, allowing for a license to be issued without the clerk’s name on it.

But Davis’ case continued, with Moore and Ermold seeking damages for the initial refusal.

After lengthy litigation, a jury awarded $100,000 in damages. Davis was also required to pay $260,000 in attorney’s fees, according to her lawyers.

Davis then appealed, claiming that she should have been able to cite as a defense her right to the free exercise of religion under the Constitution’s First Amendment.

After losing an appeal at the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in March this year, Davis turned to the Supreme Court, raising that question, as well as the much more contentious issue of whether Obergefell should be overturned.

While the Supreme Court has for now given no indication it would seek to overturn Obergefell, it has in other rulings in the last decade strengthened religious rights at the expense of LGBTQ rights, including by expanding the ability of people to seek exemptions from laws they object to because of their faith.

Are they just waiting for a better case to come along? That is the question from me and others. Only time will tell.

The other big headline is the end of the government shutdown. The circumstances surrounding the resolution are far from ideal. There are a large number of articles expressing anger and disgust at the actions of eight Democrats in cutting this deal. It’s quite challenging to keep up with the decline of the world’s once-great democracy. This is the headline from Politico‘s Katherine Tully-McManus. “The 8 Senate Democratic Caucus members who voted to end the shutdown. There are few obvious threads connecting the group who broke the partisan impasse.”

Eight members of the Senate Democratic Caucus broke ranks Sunday and voted to advance a deal to reopen the federal government.

That’s fewer than the 10 Democrats who broke ranks in March to advance a previous GOP-led stopgap funding bill — a move that sparked a huge backlash against Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

There are few obvious threads connecting the group who broke the partisan impasse this time. Some of them helped broker the agreement with Republicans over the opposition of Schumer and most other Democrats, who wanted a guaranteed extension for expiring federal health insurance subsidies.

Most, but not all, previously held state-level office — including four former governors. Most, but not all, come from presidential swing states. Two have announced they are retiring from the Senate after their current terms end, and two are senior members of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

None are up for reelection in 2026.

More on these eight senators at the link. There are numerous punditry thoughts on what is being called “The Great Cave-in.”  This first take is from MSNBC’s Steve Benen.  “As the Senate advances a plan to end the government shutdown, what happens now? As the shutdown continued, the pieces were in place for Democrats to stand firm in support of a popular cause. Eight senators folded anyway.”

As the ongoing government shutdown was poised to begin in late September, three members of the Senate Democratic caucus — Nevada’s Catherine Cortez Masto, Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman and Maine’s Angus King — broke party ranks and voted with the Republican majority to prevent the breakdown. That gave GOP leaders 55 votes, five short of the 60-vote threshold.

At that point, the Republican plan, in a nutshell, could be summarized in one word: wait.

GOP leaders, in the White House and on Capitol Hill, assumed that just enough Senate Democrats would cave under pressure. Those assumptions proved true. MSNBC reported overnight:

After nearly six weeks of a painful shutdown, a critical number of Senate Democrats backed a Republican funding bill to reopen government — with little to show for holding out so long. The breakthrough, which came together suddenly on day 40 of the shutdown, offers Democrats few new concessions beyond what Republicans had already proposed.

There’s quite a bit to this, so let’s unpack the details.

Is the shutdown over?

Not yet. The Sunday-night vote in the Senate was a procedural vote to advance a bill intended to end the shutdown. It received 60 votes, but the underlying legislation still needs to pass.

Who caved?

In addition to Cortez Masto, Fetterman and King, who’ve consistently voted with Republicans to end the shutdown, five other Senate Democrats sided with the GOP on the procedural vote: Dick Durbin of Illinois, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Tim Kaine of Virginia, Jackie Rosen of Nevada and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire. (Durbin and Shaheen, it’s worth noting for context, are retiring at the end of their current terms.) Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, meanwhile, voted with most Democrats against the package.

Did they get anything in exchange for their votes?

Not much. The deal, to the extent that it can fairly be described as such, includes three full-year appropriations bills to fund some federal departments through the end of the fiscal year and money to fully fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). It also reverses Donald Trump’s shutdown layoffs (also known as “reduction in force” notifications, or RIFs).

What about the Affordable Care Act, which was largely the point of the shutdown?

Republicans promised Democrats there will soon be a vote on extending the expiring ACA subsidies.

For health care advocates, does this offer some reason for hope?

Not really. Even if there is a vote, there’s no reason to assume it will pass the GOP-led chamber. And even if it were to pass, there’s no guarantee that the Republican-led House would care.

So why in the world did these eight senators cave?

According to King, it was time to surrender because the status quo “wasn’t working.”

This final analysis is by Sarah Ewall-Wice, writing at The Daily Beast. “Dems Skewer ‘Trainwreck’ Schumer for Caving Over Shutdown. WHAT THE CHUCK?! The Senate minority leader is facing calls to resign despite his “no” vote.”

Democrats from across the political spectrum are livid with Minority Leader Chuck Schumer after a group of Senate Democrats caved and reached a deal with Republicans to end the government shutdown.

Schumer, 74, came out against the bipartisan plan and voted against moving it forward in the Senate on Sunday night.

However, eight Democrats joined Republicans in a 60-40 vote to proceed, sparking turmoil within the party.

“Tonight is another example of why we need new leadership. If @ChuckSchumer were an effective leader, he would have united his caucus to vote ‘No’ tonight and hold the line on healthcare,” wrote Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton, who is challenging Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey in the primary.

He called on Markey to join him in a pledge not to vote for Schumer as Senate leader.

Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz posted an image of Schumer photoshopped into the Amy Schumer movie ‘Trainwreck’ with the caption “Different Schumer, same title.”

“Senator Schumer is no longer effective and should be replaced,” wrote progressive Rep. Ro Khanna. “If you can’t lead the fight to stop healthcare premiums from skyrocketing for Americans, what will you fight for?”

He replied that he was a “fan” of Sen. Chris Van Hollen in response to political commentator Krystal Ball’s suggestion that he should become the leader.

We know what or who the basic problem is. Who wouldn’t love a Substack titled “Are you f’ng kidding me?” That’s a daily question around here these days. This is the brainchild of JoJoFromJerz. The title is even hotter. “Portrait of a Man Who Doesn’t Give a Fuck. Starring: indifference, ego, and forty-two million people he is actively fighting to starve.” Yup, are president is the ultimate example of Anti-social Personality Disorder.” He comes replete with a lifetime of examples. And there’s that photo that keeps showing up everywhere, including this blog when I peeled it on Monday.

This photo should be hung in the Louvre of moral decay.

Look at it. The tableau is so absurd it feels storyboarded by Voldemort and Liberace’s real estate LLC. A man collapses on the floor where presidents once ended wars and launched moon missions. Now the room has all the gravitas of a Vegas timeshare bathroom, festooned with Chinese-made American flags marinated in Drakkar Noir. It’s as if history’s most consequential decisions are now being made in the world’s tackiest escape room.

Aides kneel. Hands reach. Chaos unfolds.

And Donald Trump just stands there — bored, irritated, visibly put-out — like the collapse in front of him is a personal scheduling conflict. His face isn’t concern. It is inconvenience.

His jaw hangs open in that dopey, defeated pout you only see when a chain-steakhouse diner learns their “Buy One Get One Ribeye” coupon expired yesterday. His eyes aren’t searching for a pulse; they’re searching for the nearest camera.

He’s not seeking help. He’s seeking a close-up.

If Dante were alive today, he wouldn’t write The Inferno. He’d pitch a reality show called Keeping Up With the Collapse and hiss to the crew, “We don’t need CGI. Just let him talk.”

The entire scene looks like Norman Rockwell painted The Death of Empathy, directed by Jeffrey Dahmer and executive produced by Satan. Hang this next to The Scream and the painting would lean over and whisper, Is that guy okay.

It feels like someone pitched, What if Succession had a baby with Idiocracy and then handed the baby the nuclear codes. It should not be funny. But it is. It should not be real. And yet here we are.

Because this photo is not merely symbolic of who he is.

This is who he is.

A convicted felon. Found liable for sexual abuse in a court of law. A man whose closest approximation to empathy is jabbing the close door button in an elevator while someone sprints toward it.

This is who Donald Trump is.

He doesn’t give a fuck about anyone but himself.

A man collapses behind him. Just as our country has been collapsing behind him for the entirety of this second so-called term.

And he doesn’t give a fuck.

He is not thinking, Is that man okay. He is thinking, How dare he steal my scene.

This is who Donald Trump is.

He doesn’t give a fuck about anyone but himself.

He isn’t numb to suffering—he feeds on it. Suffering is his currency, his spotlight, his scepter. Every ounce of pain around him inflates his sense of importance. He doesn’t create, build, or inspire; he only knows how to conquer by making others smaller, hungrier, emptier. His power is measured in what he can take away. He is a parasite of misery, thriving on the wounds he inflicts.

Go read the entire post. She’s right. He doesn’t give a fuck about anyone but himself. And here’s more evidence, as Trump pardons all of those election-denying cronies while possibly looking forward to handing one to that miserable sex-trafficking ghoul Gislane Maxwell. The first article comes from Politico‘s Kyle Cheney. “Trump pardons top allies who aided bid to subvert the 2020 election. Pardon recipients include Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, John Eastman and dozens more.” I weep for justice in my country today.

President Donald Trump has pardoned a long list of prominent allies who backed his effort to subvert the 2020 election, according to Justice Department Pardon Attorney Ed Martin, who posted the relevant document Sunday night.

Among those who received the “full, complete and unconditional” pardons were Rudy Giuliani, who helped lead an effort to pressure state legislatures to reject Joe Biden’s victories in key swing states; Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff in 2020 and a crucial go-between for Trump and state officials; John Eastman and Kenneth Chesebro, two attorneys who helped devise a strategy to pressure then-Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the election on Jan. 6, 2021; Boris Epshteyn, a longtime Trump adviser; and Sidney Powell, a conservative attorney who launched a fringe legal assault on election results in key swing states.

The pardons are largely symbolic — none of those identified were charged with federal crimes. The document posted by Martin is also undated, so it’s unclear when Trump signed it. The White House and Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Giuliani, Eastman and Powell were among those identified by former special counsel Jack Smith as Trump’s co-conspirators, though he never brought charges against them. The pardons would preclude any future administration from potentially pursuing a criminal case against them.

The language of the pardon is broad, applying to “all United States citizens for conduct relating to the advice, creation, organization, execution, submission, support, voting activities, participation in or advocacy for or of any slate or proposed slate of presidential electors … as well for any conduct relating to their efforts to expose voting fraud and vulnerabilities in the 2020 presidential election.”

Though Trump has long insisted he has the power to pardon himself for federal crimes — an untested proposition — it appears he is not yet prepared to test that theory. Though the pardon document indicates it could apply to others who fit the same criteria, it explicitly excludes Trump.

In addition to his inner circle, Trump pardoned dozens of GOP activists who signed paperwork falsely claiming to be legitimate presidential electors, a key component of the bid to pressure Pence.

Regarding the potential pardon for Maxwell, this information comes from Scott MacFarlane of CBS News. “Ghislaine Maxwell plans to ask Trump to commute prison sentence, House Democrats say.”

Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking co-conspirator, is planning to apply for a commutation of her federal prison sentence, which is set to run through 2037, according to documents obtained by Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee and seen by CBS News.

In a letter to President Trump on Monday, also seen by CBS News, Judiciary Committee Democrats wrote that Maxwell “is preparing a ‘Commutation Application’ for your Administration to review, undoubtedly coming to you for your direct consideration. The Warden herself is directly helping Ms. Maxwell copy, print, and send documents related to this application.”

The letter says the information received demonstrates “either that Ms. Maxwell is herself requesting you release her from her 20-year prison sentence for her role as a co-conspirator in Jeffrey Epstein’s international child sex trafficking ring, or that this child sex predator now holds such tremendous sway in the second Trump Administration that you and your DOJ will follow her clemency recommendations.”

The letter also alleges that Maxwell is receiving preferential and lenient treatment at the Bryan federal prison camp in Texas, where she was transferred over the summer after meeting with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche to discuss the Epstein case.

“Federal law enforcement staff working at the camp have been waiting on Ms. Maxwell hand and foot,” says the letter signed by Rep. Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the committee.

It appears that something needs to be done to address the fundamental nature of the Presidential Pardon. It’s supposed to be the last chance at justice for the wrongly accused. It was never supposed to be an article of power handed to an autocrat to rewrite the guilt and punishment of evil minions.

I’ve also been crying and listening to Warren Zevon songs since his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as featured on David Letterman. I love his lyrical melodies and his strong rhythms and beats. His lyrics tell stories that are both funny and sad, full of vivid characters. I have finally uncovered the underlying sadness behind most of his lyrics and can no longer unhear them. They’ve burrowed into my heart. And so, I cry, which is quite uncharacteristic for me. But then, it seems American life these days requires tears.

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?

Finally Friday Reads: Thank you for Your Attention to this Matter

Posted: November 7, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: #FARTUS, #MAGAnomics, 2024 Elections | Tags: , , , , , , | 7 Comments

“The ultimate photo defining the trump presidency deserves the cartoon that ultimately defines the trump presidency. Thank you in advance for all the accolades. Dozing Don has a bad dream.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Yesterday, the foul-mouthed nickname guy who initiated the slur “Sleepy Joe Biden” spent most of a televised meeting sound asleep. This wasn’t just the usual work meeting where it’s easy to fall asleep listening to the droning tones of your CEO try to explain something that he never fully understood no matter how much data and explanations you gave him when you prepped him through the least technical stuff you had to do to show him the company was going underwater and your next assignment will be explaining it to some Republican Congressional aid so he can beg Congress for some form of bail-out. Oops, sorry, jumped back to me around 1980, didn’t really mean to.

This particular meeting of Big Pharma CEOS included a dramatic medical emergency. Donnie Dotard stood up and just stood there while a few others rushed to examine the fallen. The Secretary of Health and Human Services made a quick break for the door. Finally, a staffer thought about ushering the media out the door. Hopefully, with all that tacky signage and gold gee-gaws, they figured their way out of the Oval Office.

I noticed that Entertainment Weekly covered the story, but decided to go with The Independent instead.

A pharmaceutical executive collapsed in the Oval Office Thursday as members of the Trump administration were announcing a new deal for weight-loss medications.

The man was standing behind President Donald Trump during the event when his knees appeared to suddenly buckle underneath him. Reporters initially identified the man as Novo Nordisk executive Gordon Finlay however the company later denied that it was him.

Reporters who witnessed the incident first-hand said Dr. Mehmet Oz, Administrator for Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, helped the executive to the ground, preventing the man from hitting his head. As reporters were ushered out of the Oval Office, Cabinet members attended to the man, elevating his legs.

Okay, I’m too cheeky today, so fuck all that. Let’s see what Stephen Colbert had to say last night, as reported by TV Insider.  “Colbert Gives Verdict on Trump’s Reaction After Man Collapses in Oval Office.”

On Thursday’s Late Show, Colbert aired a clip of the scary moment, in which the man collapsed at the start of Eli Lilly CEO Dave Ricks’ speech. While several people rushed to help the man, including Dr. Mehmet Oz, the President rose from his desk and stood by nonchalantly.

“As I said, the fella’s okay, but I’m sure that was scary,” Colbert said. “But thankfully, the room was full of exactly who you want in a medical emergency: pharmaceutical executives. ‘Quick! Quick! Someone maximize shareholder value!’”

The late-night host reiterated that the man was “okay” and praised the quick action of everybody who rushed to help him.

“Well, almost everybody,” he added. “Because this photo’s been going around. Take a look at this photo, this viral photo from after the fainting. Look at that.”

Colbert showed a photo that has been making the rounds on social media, featuring Trump standing at his desk looking vacantly ahead as several people attend to the man in the background.

“They’ve got his legs up and everything!” Colbert stated. “That picture is worth a thousand words… none of which I can say on CBS.”

We’re beginning to see some analysis of the voting numbers and outcomes analyzed by political data specialists. Heather Cox Richardson has a good piece on some of that at her SubStack Letters from an American.

“None of this is complicated,” political data specialist Tom Bonier wrote yesterday about Tuesday’s dramatic Democratic victories around the country. “The [Republicans] ran on affordability in 2024. They gave sanctimonious lectures on cable news on election night about how the ‘silent working class majority’ had spoken. Then they governed as reckless authoritarians, punishing the working class.”

For nine months now, officials in the Trump administration have pushed their extremist policies with the insistence that his election gave him a mandate, although more people voted for someone other than Trump in 2024 than voted for him. Tuesday’s elections stripped away that veneer to reveal just how unpopular their policies really are.

Aside from the health of the country, this poses a dramatic political problem for the Republicans. The midterm elections are in slightly less than a year, and Tuesday’s vote, which suggests the 2024 MAGA coalition has crumbled, may spell bad news for the mid-decade gerrymandering Republicans have pushed in states they control, like Texas. Republican lawmakers created the new Republican-leaning districts by moving Republican voters into Democratic-leaning districts, thus weakening formerly safe Republican districts. That could backfire in a blue-wave election.

First thing Wednesday morning, on the day the government shutdown became the longest shutdown in history, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) wrote to President Donald J. Trump to “demand a bipartisan meeting of legislative leaders to end the [Republican] shutdown of the federal government and decisively address the Republican healthcare crisis.” They assured him that “Democrats stand ready to meet with you face to face, anytime and anyplace,” and concluded: “Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

Trump had a different approach to Tuesday’s news. He met with Republican senators before the cameras and admitted that the shutdown had badly hurt the Republicans. But rather than moving to compromise—as all previous presidents have done to end shutdowns—he reiterated his crusade to make sure Democrats can never again hold power. He demanded that Republican senators end the filibuster and, as soon as they do, promptly end mail-in voting and require prohibitive voter ID. “If we do what I’m saying,” he told the senators, Democrats will “most likely never obtain power because we will have passed every single thing that you can imagine.”

Former Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) stopped Bloomberg News Senate reporter Steven Dennis in the hallway to say: “We’re not going to do that.”

The results in the states were not as cheery as they could’ve been. This was especially true for ballot initiatives. This is from Bolts Magazine as reported by Alex Burness. “Five Ways Tuesday’s Results Will Affect Voting Rules and Democracy. From felony disenfranchisement and mail voting to mid-decade gerrymanders, Tuesday delivered verdicts on election law across these five states.”

On Tuesday, mostly in the shadow of the Democratic Party’s headlining triumphs, were a series of state and local elections that carried high stakes for election law and voting rights.

Conservatives failed to restrict mail-in voting in a state key to next year’s battle for the U.S. Senate. Voters in two states boosted Democrats’ mid-decade redistricting aspirations. And voters made sure that a plan to unwind one of the nation’s harshest felony disenfranchisement schemes can proceed.

Here, we tour these results, and some others, from five states where the rules of elections were most prominently on the line—California, Maine, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

We’ve heard a lot about candidates, but it’s essential to read this information and consider what else was at stake.

Now that a Federal Judge ordered the Trump administration to continue to pay SNAP benefits for the month of November, we see the usual Trump move. Take it to court. This is from the AP.  “Trump administration seeks to block full SNAP payments for November.” Starving the elderly, children, and the poor is such a Republican Holiday Tradition!

President Donald Trump ’s administration asked a federal appeals court Friday to block a judge’s order that it distribute November’s full monthly SNAP food benefits amid a U.S. government shutdown, even as at least some states said they were moving quickly to get the money to people.

The judge gave the Trump administration until Friday to make the payments through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. But the administration asked the appeals court to suspend any court orders requiring it to spend more money than is available in a contingency fund, and instead allow it to continue with planned partial SNAP payments for the month.

The court filing came even as the U.S. Department of Agriculture said in a memo to states that it’s working to make funds available Friday for full monthly SNAP benefits.

California and Wisconsin said some SNAP recipients already received their full November payments overnight on Thursday.

“Food benefits are now beginning to flow back to California families,” Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement. A spokesperson for Democratic Gov. Tony Evers of Wisconsin also confirmed that full SNAP payments had gone through.

Forbes reveals that the Trump Family’s Grift is still strong and growing. “Trump Wine Hits Government Shelves. This is reported by Zach Everson.

Topline

The Trump Organization’s second-term push to monetize Donald Trump’s presidency has reached the aisles of military exchanges, as Coast Guard-run stores, which provide service members and their families with access to tax-free consumer goods, have stocked Trump-branded wine and cider.

Key Facts

Coast Guard Exchanges at its headquarters in Washington, D.C., and in Centreville, Virginia, recently stocked Trump-branded wine and cider, according to a photo posted on Instagram and confirmed by Forbes from calls to the stores.

Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin confirmed the exchanges were carrying Trump wines in a statement to Forbes, saying, “The brave men and women of the USCG are pleased to be able to buy Trump wine and cider tax free.”

While there’s been no shortage of Trump’s businesses capitalizing on the presidency—from using the presidential seal on golf markers at his courses to selling a $75 coffee table book showcasing pictures by his official White House photographer—these wines are among the few times Trump products have been sold at a government facility.

The White House referred inquiries to the Coast Guard and Department of Homeland Security, the Coast Guard deferred to DHS and the Trump Organization did not respond to requests for comment.

Representatives from the government watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington had this to say.

“This is one of those things where there probably isn’t any legal issue, but there is an optics and an ethics issue,” said Jordan Libowitz, a spokesperson for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a government watchdog.

It’s just one scam after another with this group. Jacqueline Sweet writes this at her SubStack Disaster Girl.   “FBI Informant Who Lied About Bidens Quietly Released From Jail Sparking Trump Pardon Fears. Alexander Smirnov was quietly furloughed from prison months ago.” For a guy obsessed with crime and criminals, he sure puts a lot of them back on the street.

An FBI informant convicted of lying to the Bureau about a fake bribery scheme involving the Bidens has been quietly released from prison just months into a six-year sentence—raising concern he could be pardoned by Donald Trump any moment.

Alexander Smirnov, who has multiple business ties to Trumpworld, was sentenced on January 8, days before Trump became president. He had pleaded guilty to fabricating a story that former President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, had received millions in bribes from Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, as well as to a $2 million-plus tax evasion offense.

Yet despite Smirnov being judged a flight risk, with ties to Russian intelligence and foreign assets, the U.S.-Israeli citizen has been mysteriously missing from prison for at least the past four months, Disaster Girl can reveal. Following reports in April that the Trump administration was reviewing the case, concerns have now arisen that the president is considering an imminent pardon.

Smirnov had been serving his sentence at FCI Terminal Island, a low-security prison in Los Angeles. He is still listed at FCI Terminal Island on the Bureau of Prisons website, with a release date of February 2029. But while no filings on the docket for his appeal indicate how or why his release was ordered, he has not been there since at least July.

His absence became apparent when a process server attempted to serve Smirnov with papers for a civil lawsuit related to Smirnov’s time working as a confidential informant for the FBI on a securities fraud case involving California man Andrew Hackett. The process server hired by Hackett told Hackett he had been unable to locate Smirnov at Terminal Island. The prison confirmed to the process server that Smirnov is on “furlough,” according to emails and court filings reviewed by Disaster Girl

The server said that the person responsible for processing service at Terminal Island FCI had “confirmed that Alexander Smirnov is affiliated with the facility, but is not currently housed there,” but that they had declined to provide his current location or any further details. “I was advised to call back in approximately 15 days, as [Smirnov] may or may not return to the facility by that time. The representative was notably guarded and provided minimal information beyond that,” an email from the server to Hackett states.

By October, after repeated attempts to locate Smirnov at the prison, Hackett finally received an answer from the local Sheriff’s Department, which said: “They’ve confirmed that Mr. Smirnov has been furloughed, but no forwarding or new address has been provided.”

Trump’s lies are still making Broadcast news.  This is from NBC News. “Trump touts cost of Walmart’s Thanksgiving meal to vindicate his policies — ignoring a key detail. Since Tuesday’s elections, Trump has repeatedly boasted that Walmart’s Thanksgiving meal bundle is cheaper than it was under President Joe Biden. But there’s also less food in it.”

In the wake of Republicans’ heavy election losses on Tuesday, President Donald Trump has responded to voters’ growing concerns by insisting the economy is actually experiencing a “golden age.”

As tangible proof, he has pointed to the cost of Walmart’s Thanksgiving meal bundle, which is roughly 25% less expensive this year than it was last year.

“Grocery prices are way down, and Walmart just announced that the cost of their standard Thanksgiving meal — this is the greatest, their greatest,” Trump said in a speech to the American Business Forum on Wednesday, adding: “It is 25% lower than one year ago. That’s a big deal.”

Trump is right — but the 2025 Thanksgiving bundle is also smaller than the 2024 package.

This year’s package, at less than $40, contains 23 items; last year, there were 29. The missing items this year include onions, celery, sweet potatoes, chicken broth, poultry seasoning, muffin mix, marshmallows, whipped topping and pecan pie.

This year’s meal comes with standard dinner rolls and fresh cranberries, which both currently cost less at Walmart than the sweet Hawaiian rolls and cranberry sauce in last year’s edition.

The 2025 meal also includes just one can of cream of mushroom soup, down from two in 2024.

Walmart did make some additions to its new package, including a twin pack of turkey stuffing, baby carrots and three boxes of macaroni and cheese. Last year, Walmart included ingredients to make stuffing from scratch.

I’m eager to see the Black Friday sales numbers. The only thing booming in the economy is AI-related stocks. They are bubblelicious.  And the news and demand for the Epstein files just keeps on building.  This is from The New Republic. “DOJ Admits to Republicans That Epstein Files Are Even Worse for Trump. Details in the files are reportedly even more damning for Donald Trump than previously indicated—and it was already bad.” Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling has the byline.

Rumors about Donald Trump’s connection to Jeffrey Epstein have gripped the Republican Party.

A few conservative representatives with ties to the FBI and the Justice Department have spilled that the true details of the Epstein files are “worse” for Trump than previously reported, according to journalist David Schuster.

Michael Wolff, a longtime chronicler of Trump’s White House who conducted extensive interviews with Epstein prior to his death, told The Daily Beast last month that Epstein had shown him photos of Trump with half-naked “young girls” in his lap.

These rumors have galvanized into a legitimate movement among Republicans, who are now, Schuster wrote on X Wednesday night, clamoring for the files’ full release.

For months, just four Republicans had penned their signatures on a discharge petition demanding transparency into the investigation of the pedophilic sex trafficker and his potential associates. Those conservative lawmakers include Representatives Thomas Massie, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Nancy Mace, and Lauren Boebert.

Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva, who won the special election in Arizona in September, has also vowed to sign the bipartisan petition. She’s the last signature that the House needs to force a vote on the issue—and Speaker Mike Johnson has conveniently refused to swear her in for more than a month.

But the disturbing new rumor has dredged up far more support, with “more than 100 Republicans” planning to vote alongside Democrats in an effort to “get in front of what’s coming,” reported Schuster.

The Trump administration has failed at every turn to mitigate anxieties about the president’s longtime friendship with the child sex criminal. The typically bombastic Attorney General Pam Bondi was silent when asked about the photos during a Senate hearing last month, a choice that further “spooked” several GOP lawmakers, with many interpreting her nonresponse as a very vocal “yes.”

Karma can be a bitch after all. Here are a few other suggestions as a close-out to this post.

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blog lists today?

Mostly Monday Reads: I come to Bury CBS, Not to Praise It

Posted: November 3, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: #We are so Fucked, Cheater in Chief, Journalism, kakistocracy, Our Media is Complicit with Autocracy, Televising Propaganda instead of News | Tags: , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

“How can we tire from all this winning?” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

60 Minutes premiered on September 24th, 1968, with Harry Reasoner and Mike Wallace. I was barely a teenager when it premiered, but even then, I was growing into fully all the fringed suede and tattered blue jeans I could find with my guitar set filled with the likes of Dylan and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. However, I realized that I was watching something I’d watched for a very long time. Next year, I would buy that Woodstock Guitar strap and cut my first real studio audition. My best friend and I recorded a cover of “One Tin Soldier,” which was requested by Billy Jack for his second movie. Music and the News were the only things that got me through the banality of my life at that point. (Omaha, UGH!)

I spent my entire childhood watching and reading the news with my Dad, through the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, and all those crazy times in the 1960s. It was a pivotal moment that led me to become the social justice activist I am today. Reasoner described 60 Minutes as a type of News Magazine, and we had just about all of them that went from our house to the customer service area of my Dad’s small Ford Dealership in a small town in Iowa. It was difficult to get the Washington Post during Watergate, but 60 Minutes was there in living color.

I haven’t really watched in a long time because so much has gone missing. Ever since I got my first newspaper subscription to the Manchester Guardian in High School, I have to say it was part of my education, right through to Graduate School. Now, during the time when I have ever been the least sanguine about our country’s future, I can only say RIP 60 Minutes. These are indeed bleak times. The U.S. Media has a grand old tradition dating back to Benjamin Franklin. It has lost its way to the same evil it sought to expose during World Wars and other events. It has a history of struggle between the powerful entities that seek to control the narrative and the writers who research and reveal the truth. In the age of Techbros and MAGA, Crypto and Virtual Cash, we see a barren landscape destroyed by greed.

I’ll start with the offending program, then offer some perspectives from a number of folks who used to have a place on TV news and are now relegated to the New Deal Blogosphere. I should mention that during that same period of becoming who I am, I wrote for both an underground Newspaper (The Aardvark) and two school newspapers. This blog is an extension of those of us who became very interested again in discussing the news during Dubya’s adventures in the Middle East and the hope we had of simply seeing a woman become president.

This is from CBS News, the former home of everyone’s Uncle Walter, and my personal favorite, Edward Bradley, who always showed up for the New Orleans Jazz Fest, sat with me in monitor world to hear his beloved jazz after I’d put all the microphones in their proper places and dealt with the talent. He always remembered to ask about my daughters by name. It hurts that the overseers used a woman to do this. “Read the full transcript of Norah O’Donnell’s interview with President Trump here.”

Editor’s note: On October 31, 2025, correspondent Norah O’Donnell spoke with President Donald J. Trump at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, FL, and this is a transcript of that conversation. They started by discussing the president’s recent meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, first of all, we get along great, and we always really have. We had the COVID moment, which was not– attractive as far as I was concerned. I wasn’t so happy. But outside of that, we have always had a great relationship. He’s a powerful man. He’s a strong man, a very powerful leader.

And– we’ve always– had the best of relationships, probably the best of– I could– I think I could speak for him, just about as good as it gets from his standpoint and from my standpoint. And having that is important because of the power of the two countries.

NORAH O’DONNELL: What did you get out of this deal that you wanted?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, I got sort of everything that we wanted. We got– no rare earth threat. That’s gone, completely gone. We have tremendous amounts of– dollars pouring in– ’cause we have– very big tariffs, almost 50%. We never had anything in terms of tariffs, although I put tariffs on China, but Biden let it lapsed by the– by the fact that he gave exemptions on almost everything, which was just ridiculous.

By this time, the fact-checking should’ve begun, and some good old-fashioned interrupting with follow-up questions. It went on with none. Instead, we got mealy-mouthed clarifications.

But– we have– billions and billions of dollars coming in, and we have a very good relationship. I mean, we have– a great relationship with a powerful country. And I’ve always felt if we can make deals that are good, it’s better to get along with China than not, if you can’t make the right kind of a deal than not, because, you know, China, along with many other countries (they’re not alone in this), they’ve ripped us off from day one.

They’ve ripped us so much. They’ve taken trillions of dollars out of our country. And now they’re– it’s the opposite. I mean, we’re doing very well with China, and hopefully they’re gonna do very well with us. But I do think it’s important that China and the U.S. get along, and we get along very well at the top.

NORAH O’DONNELL: This trade war, though, was hurting Americans. I mean, our soybean farmers. China had stopped buying the soybeans.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Yeah.

NORAH O’DONNELL: As you mentioned, they were– China was withholding these rare earth materials that you need for everything from smartphones to– to build submarines.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Sure.

NORAH O’DONNELL: What– what was the crucial thing? I mean, how tough of a negotiatior–

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, when you say hurting–

NORAH O’DONNELL: –is President Xi–

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: –it was a temporary hurt. It was a hurt because– I was takin’ in a lot of money from China. We’re doing very well against China. And all of a sudden they said, “You know, we have to fight back.” And so they used their powers. The power they have is rare earth because of the fact that they’ve been accumulating it and– and really taking care of it for a period of 25, 30 years.

Other countries haven’t. Now we are. I mean, we have tremendous rare earth, and it’s going to be– you know, it’s going to be– it’ll be a strength, but it won’t really be a strength if everybody has it. Everyone’s gonna have it pretty soon.

`I would call this full-throated propaganda allowed air time for way too long.  Here’s another example before I start telling Norah there’s something brown growing on her nose. It’s further on down the page. I’m just glad I didn’t watch it.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I think in two years, we’ll start opening up plants and we’ll have a very substantial portion of the chip market. Right now we have almost none. We should have had a hundred percent. If we had par– if we had presidents that knew anything about business or knew what they were doing, because, frankly, they didn’t.

We lost 50% of our automobile business. It’s all coming back. We lost a hundred percent of the chip– you know, it used to be all Intel and other companies. And what happened is other countries came in, and they stole our chip business, and we didn’t charge tariffs.

If we would have charged let’s say a 100% tariff, none of those companies would have left. But they all left. Now they’re all coming back, Norah, because the only way they avoid the tariffs is to build in our country. If they build in our country, make their plant and make their product in our country, then it’s a very simple thing. They– they don’t have any tariff to pay.

NORAH O’DONNELL: Uh-huh.

Well, she’s certainly not an heir to the Murrow Boys. Like so many, Medhi Hassan left a big desk on a 4-letter network because someone saw him as being a bit too much of a journalist and one of color. He has his own spot out here on his own website.

It’s similar to the choice of my first Newspaper: The Manchester Guardian, which I still read daily as The Guardian. His site, named Zeteo, can be found on Substack on the web, alongside other banished reporters and what used to be known as “Public Intellectuals” rather than influencers. Today’s offering is ” Factchecking Trump on ’60 Minutes’.” He’s taken the place of the major legacy newspapers. The lede is divine. ’60 Minutes’ of Shame and Submission.’

Having watched the whole ‘60 Minutes’ interview and read the entire transcript, too, I genuinely can’t decide what was worse: Trump’s endlessly dishonest answers or O’Donnell’s non-stop softball questions.

I kid you not, here is a short selection of some of the questions this award-winning, highly-paid, veteran news anchor chose to ask the most powerful man on Earth in her limited time with him:

  • “Have some of these [ICE] raids gone too far?”
  • “Who’s tougher to deal with, Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping?”
  • “Why won’t Putin end this war?
  • “Do you worry about an AI bubble?”
  • “What do you hope to accomplish in the next three years?”

Ooooohh! Tough stuff! The new owner of CBS, David Ellison, and the new head of CBS News, Bari Weiss, must both be so proud. This is the kind of ‘balanced’ coverage I’m sure they were waiting for. Then again, to be fair to them, O’Donnell has a long history of softball interviewing that predates the recent takeover of her network by a MAGA billionaire. Remember her love-in with Saudi crown prince MBS in 2018?

But this isn’t just about O’Donnell or CBS. The ‘60 Minutes’ interview with Trump showcased everything that is wrong with US political interviews in general. The deferential tone. The lack of preparation. The failure to ask follow-up questions or dig deep into an interviewee’s answers. The inability (unwillingness?) to fact-check in real time.

At one point, Trump asked O’Donnell whether she knew “how many presidents have used the Insurrection Act,” to which the CBS anchor simply responded: “Tell me.” Trump then proceeded to lie about the proportion (“Almost 50% of ‘em,” he said, when the real proportion is 38%) and the absolute number (“some of the presidents, recent ones, have used it 28 times,” he said, when the most was actually only six times, and back in the 1870s).

But O’Donnell said nothing. She just moved on.

There were so many falsehoods and half-truths, and so little pushback, that after a while, I gave up. I stopped counting. Here’s what I did manage to catch, in terms of brazen lies, all of which were left unrebutted, uncorrected, unchallenged, by O’Donnell:

  • “We had nine wars on our planet. I solved eight of ‘em.” I have debunked this nonsensical claim before.
  • “We have no inflation.” Inflation is at 3%.
  • “It’s at 2%. It’s– it’s the perfect inflation.” Inflation is at 3%.
  • “Right now [grocery prices are] going down.” Grocery prices are up 1.4% since Trump came to office.
  • “A year ago, we were a dead country.” Not only did the US have the fastest-growing economy in the G7 in both 2023 and 2024, but the Economist magazine called it “the envy of the world.”
  • “11,888 murderers were let into our country.” Not only is this number inaccurate, but many of the non-citizens convicted of homicide either here or abroad came in during Trump’s first term.
  • “Washington, DC, was… almost like a crime capital of the world.” In 2023, per PolitiFact, “at least 49 other cities in the world had higher homicide rates.
  • “[Biden] hardly went anywhere. Guy couldn’t leave his bedroom.” Not only did Joe Biden visit roughly as many countries in his term of office as Trump did in his first term, but Biden was the first US president to visit an active warzone – Ukraine – not under the control of US forces.
  • “I made Middle East peace. For 3,000 years, they couldn’t do it.” There is no peace in Palestine, no peace deal in place, and it isn’t a 3,000-year-old conflict.
  • “Communist, not socialist. Communist. He’s far worse than a socialist.” Zohran Mamdani is not a communist.
  • “I can’t give them $1.5 trillion so that they can give welfare to people that came into our country illegally.” The Trump/GOP claim that Democrats want to give free healthcare to undocumented immigrants has been repeatedly debunked.
  • “They emptied their mental institutions and their insane asylums– into the United States of America.” Asylum seekers don’t come from “insane asylums.” Obviously.
  • “One thing I can tell you, the 2020 election was rigged.” It wasn’t. The courts agreed.
  • “And a lotta people say when it’s rigged you’re allowed to do it again.” A lot of people don’t say this. The US Constitution doesn’t, for sure.

Please read it. The next section lists the questions O’Donnell should have asked as a follow-up. I will say that I believe Mehdi’s follow-up questions in every interview I’ve watched him do are stellar. He points out exaggerations and falsehoods, zeroes in on exactly what the issue with the response is, and just delivers it deliciously. I’m a Fan grrrl. And me, the teenage girl who had to sneak her friend Cathie into the Journalism workspace so she could lust after Kurt Anderson to keep her from going on about him all lunchtime long.

CNN had a more traditional take on said Interview by Daniel Dale. “Fact check: 18 false claims Trump made on ‘60 Minutes’.”

Trump told his usual lie that the free and fair 2020 election was stolen from him. He lied again that grocery prices “are down” even after CBS’ Norah O’Donnell informed him they are up. He declared once more that there is now “no inflation,” though there certainly is, and then that inflation is 2% or “even less than 2%,” though the most recent available Consumer Price Index figure is now up to 3%.

The president also deployed multiple other fictional numbers during his exchanges with O’Donnell, which were recorded Friday and released by CBS on Sunday.

And Trump made a variety of additional false claims on several subjects, including the government shutdown, the artificial intelligence boom, tariffs, his first impeachment and his former legal battle with “60 Minutes” itself.

I really wonder how many people besides you and me actually read this stuff and bring it up in normal conversation. I know that the MAGATs will never read or hear it.  I saved the best for last. This is from my precious Guardian reporting about the heavy-handed editing given to this latest 60 Minutes interview with Trump. Quelle Suprise, y’all! “CBS News heavily edits Trump 60 Minutes interview, cutting boast network ‘paid me a lotta money’. Trump said Paramount’s sale to David and Larry Ellison was ‘greatest thing that’s happened in a long time’ for free press.” This is reported by Jeremy Barr.

The CBS News program 60 Minutes heavily edited down an interview with Donald Trump that aired on Sunday night, his first sit-down with the show in five years.

Trump sat down with correspondent Norah O’Donnell for 90 minutes, but only about 28 minutes were broadcast. A full transcript of the interview was later published, along with a 73-minute-long extended version online.

The edits are notable because, exactly one year before Trump was interviewed by O’Donnell at his Mar-a-Lago resort on Friday he had sued CBS over the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, which he alleged had been deceptively edited to help her chances in the presidential election.

While many legal experts widely dismissed the lawsuit as “meritless” and unlikely to hold up under the first amendment, CBS settled with Trump for $16m in July. As part of the settlement, the network had agreed that it would release transcripts of future interviews of presidential candidates.

At the beginning of Sunday’s show, O’Donnell reminded viewers that Paramount settled Trump’s lawsuit, but noted that “the settlement did not include an apology or admission of wrongdoing”.

During the interview, in a clip that did not air on the broadcast, Trump needled CBS over the settlement and repeated his claims against the network.

“Actually 60 Minutes paid me a lotta money. And you don’t have to put this on, because I don’t wanna embarrass you, and I’m sure you’re not,” Trump said. “But 60 Minutes was forced to pay me a lot of money because they took her answer out that was so bad, it was election-changing, two nights before the election. And they put a new answer in. And they paid me a lot of money for that. You can’t have fake news. You’ve gotta have legit news. And I think that it’s happening.”

During another un-aired portion of the interview, Trump praised the sale of CBS to the Ellison family and said the network’s new editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, was a “great new leader”.

The US president said he didn’t know Weiss, but told O’Donnell: “I hear she’s a great person.

Well, this is getting long for a meager WordPress blog post.

 

“And that’s the way it is.” Can you believe he signed off when I was getting my first graduate degree? Wow!  I’m old!

 

 What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging List today?

 

Finally, Friday Reads: A Trumpy Halloween!

Posted: October 31, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: #FARTUS, #MAGAnomics, #We are so Fucked | Tags: , , , , , , | 9 Comments

“We are so blessed to have a businessman in charge.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Well, if you need to be scared out of your wits, no need to rewatch those Freddy Krueger Movies. Just pick up a newspaper or two and be prepared to be chilled to your bones, if the weather isn’t already doing that to you. I’m a lot on the late side today because Temple snuggled up so close to me last night she nearly shoved me off the bed several times. The furnace is already on, but I’ve also brought out the space heater to try to warm her up and then lower the temperature back to the foot of the bed.

It appears the New York Times may have gone woke. My jaw dropped reading the Editorial Board headline. Cue the Jaws Shark theme song.”Donald Trump has wielded power as no previous president has, often in open defiance of the law. His actions have raised a chilling question.” Oh, really? Finally, starting to notice that, are we? “Are We Losing Our Democracy?” (The link is shared for you to read.)

Countries that slide from democracy toward autocracy tend to follow similar patterns. To measure what is happening in the United States, the Times editorial board has compiled a list of 12 markers of democratic erosion, with help from scholars who have studied this phenomenon. The sobering reality is that the United States has regressed, to different degrees, on all 12.

Our country is still not close to being a true autocracy, in the mold of Russia or China. But once countries begin taking steps away from democracy, the march often continues. We offer these 12 markers as a warning of how much Americans have already lost and how much more we still could lose.

The first section is on authoritarian speech, which seems a fitting place for reporters to start.

Authoritarian takeovers in the modern era often do not start with a military coup. They instead involve an elected leader who uses the powers of the office to consolidate authority and make political opposition more difficult, if not impossible. Think of Vladimir Putin in Russia, Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela and, to lesser degrees, Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, Viktor Orban in Hungary and Narendra Modi in India. These leaders have repressed dissent and speech in heavy-handed ways.

Over the past year, President Trump and his allies have impinged on free speech to a degree that the federal government has not since perhaps the Red Scare of the 1940s and 1950s. His administration pressured television stations to stop airing Jimmy Kimmel’s talk show when Mr. Kimmel criticized Trump supporters after the murder of Charlie Kirk; revoked the visas of foreign students for their views on the war in Gaza; and ordered investigations of liberal nonprofit groups. Mr. Trump so harshly criticizes people who disagree with him, including federal judges, that they become targets of harassment from his supporters.

The Bottom Line
Many forms of speech and dissent remain vibrant in the United States. But the president has tried to dull them. His evident goal is to cause Americans to fear they will pay a price for criticizing him, his allies, or his agenda.

Emily Atkin has a blog post up at HEATED describing the incredible firings of reporters at CBS News who were covering Climate Change. “The fall of the CBS News climate team. David Ellison, the new pro-Trump chief executive of Paramount Skydance, has dismantled the best climate change reporting team in cable news.”

As Hurricane Melissa raced toward Jamaica on Monday, CBS News senior coordinating producer Tracy Wholf sent an email to the newsroom, detailing the historic storm’s scientific connection to climate change.

In the message obtained by HEATED, Wholf explained how an overly-hot Atlantic Ocean supercharged Melissa, fueling its rapid 70-mph intensification in a single day, boosting winds by about 10 mph, and turning what might have been a category 4 storm into a category 5. Wholf suggested a simple sentence CBS News reporters could use in storm-related stories to make the connection.

Wholf usually sent emails like this in the wake of deadly extreme weather events, two CBS News staffers told HEATED. But it was the first such email Wholf had sent under the company’s new pro-Trump billionaire chief executive David Ellison, and its new anti-“woke” editor-in-chief Bari Weiss.

It was also the last. Two days later, as Hurricane Melissa smashed into the Caribbean, Wholf was laid off, along with the majority of the five person team supporting CBS News’s climate coverage.

Today, the only person remaining at CBS News to cover climate change is national environmental correspondent David Schechter, who no longer has a dedicated producer. In addition to Wholf’s layoff, two producers supporting the climate team were let go, and another dedicated climate producer was reassigned.

The cuts were part of a larger layoff on Wednesday that affected nearly 100 other CBS News staffers, including the network’s race and culture team, and around 1,000 staffers across newly-merged parent company Paramount Skydance.

Two days ago, CNN reported on other areas that have lost staff, which may be seen as areas that likely offend Trump, as Paramount Skydance plans more mergers. Under any functional Justice Department, these mergers would be viewed as leading to excessive concentration in a single industry. A high concentration of markets is non-competitive and detrimental to the economy and consumers. There are numerous laws, starting with the Sherman Act, that block such mergers. Brian Stelter reports that “Paramount begins steep layoffs as David Ellison reshapes the media giant.”

The new Paramount is laying off about 10% of its workforce, achieving some of the cost savings that CEO David Ellison promised investors when he took charge of the media company over the summer.

Many divisions of Paramount Skydance will be impacted, from the iconic movie studio to CBS News to Comedy Central.

About a thousand jobs are expected to be cut this week, and another thousand in the near future, as a new management team reorganizes the company.

Ellison, who headed the production company Skydance and merged it with the much larger Paramount, said in a memo on Wednesday morning that “these steps are necessary to position Paramount for long-term success.”

“In some areas, we are addressing redundancies that have emerged across the organization,” he said. “In others, we are phasing out roles that are no longer aligned with our evolving priorities and the new structure designed to strengthen our focus on growth.”

Steep cuts and sweeping changes are common after mergers, but Paramount has gone through multiple rounds of layoffs in recent years, so employees have been especially on edge about this fall’s expected terminations.

At CBS News, nearly 100 positions will be eliminated, a person familiar with the matter told CNN on condition of anonymity.

The person said the CBS News cuts were already in the works before Ellison appointed Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief earlier this month, following the purchase of her startup outlet, The Free Press.

The reorganization comes as the wider media industry waits to see Ellison’s ambitious plans for Paramount. In recent weeks Ellison has been pursuing Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent of CNN, HBO Max and the Warner Bros. studio.

The WBD board has rebuffed those initial offers and started a strategic review, which could result in a sale of the entire company, a continuation of the current plan to split WBD into two, or some other outcome.

The impact on reporting and free expression could be huge.

There are indications that “U.S. poised to strike military targets in Venezuela in escalation against Maduro regime.” This is reported by Antonio Maria Delgado writing for the Miami Herald.”

The Trump Administration has made the decision to attack military installations inside Venezuela and the strikes could come at any moment, sources with knowledge of the situation told the Miami Herald, as the U.S. prepares to initiate the next stage of its campaign against the Soles drug cartel. The planned attacks, also reported by the Wall Street Journal, will seek to destroy military installations used by the drug-trafficking organization the U.S. says is headed by Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro and run by top members of his regime.

Sources told the Herald that the targets — which could be struck by air in a matter of days or even hours — also aim to decapitate the cartel’s hierarchy. U.S. officials believe the cartel exports around 500 tons of cocaine yearly, split between Europe and the United States.

While sources declined to say whether Maduro himself is a target, one of them said his time is running out. “Maduro is about to find himself trapped and might soon discover that he cannot flee the country even if he decided to,” the source said. “What’s worse for him, there is now more than one general willing to capture and hand him over, fully aware that one thing is to talk about death, and another to see it coming.”

Well, aren’t we the rogue nation now? The Associated Press reports that the “UN human rights chief says US strikes on alleged drug boats are ‘unacceptable’.”

The U.N. human rights chief said Friday that U.S. military strikes against boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean allegedly carrying illegal drugs from South America are “unacceptable” and must stop.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, called for an investigation into the strikes, in what appeared to mark the first such condemnation of its kind from a United Nations organization.

Ravina Shamdasani, a spokeswoman for Türk’s office, relayed his message Friday at a regular U.N. briefing: “These attacks and their mounting human cost are unacceptable. The U.S. must halt such attacks and take all measures necessary to prevent the extrajudicial killing of people aboard these boats.”

She said Türk believed “airstrikes by the United States of America on boats in the Caribbean and in the Pacific violate international human rights law.”

President Donald Trump has justified the attacks on the boats as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs into the United States, but the campaign against drug cartels has been divisive among countries in the region.

Orange Caligula is insisting that the United States Senate nix the Filibuster. This is reported by Politico. “Republicans quickly push back on Trump’s call to nix filibuster. Both Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Speaker Mike Johnson poured cold water on the idea Friday.” We’ll have to see if the two leaders will hold to that.

Republicans are quickly tamping down President Donald Trump’s call to eliminate the Senate filibuster as they try to keep pressure on Democrats to end the 31-day government shutdown.

GOP leaders believed Thursday they were on track to reopen agencies as soon as next week. Then Trump threw a fresh complication into their laps overnight when he revived calls for Republicans to invoke the “nuclear option” and eliminate the 60-vote threshold for passing most legislation. Without it, Republican senators could reopen the government on their own.

But many GOP senators have vocally defended the filibuster, including Majority Leader John Thune, calling the 60-vote rule a fundamental feature of the Senate and one that works to conservatives’ benefit in the long run.

Thune has defended the filibuster multiple times during the shutdown, calling it a “bad idea” to suggest eliminating it. “The 60-vote threshold has protected this country,” he said earlier this month.

More news on Epstein is keeping the scandals on the front page. This is from The Independent, as reported by Harry Cockburn. “JPMorgan Chase alerted Trump admin to over $1B in ‘suspicious’ transactions involving Epstein and prominent Wall Street figures: report Over 4,700 transactions, including wire transfers to Russian banks raised red flags in 2019, new documents reveal.”

Just weeks after Jeffrey Epstein died in jail in 2019, banking giant JPMorgan Chase alerted the Trump administration to more than $1 billion in potentially suspicious transactions involving several high-profile U.S. business figures, as well as wire transfers to Russian banks.

The report, which JPMorgan filed – and which was released this week among hundreds of pages of previously sealed court records – flagged over 4,700 transactions, amid concerns they could potentially be related to human trafficking operations involving Epstein.

Among the names highlighted in JPMorgan’s suspicious activity report are: Leon Black, co-founder of private equity firm Apollo Global Management and former MoMA chairman; billionaire hedge fund manager Glenn Dubin; celebrity attorney Alan Dershowitz; and trusts linked to retail magnate Leslie Wexner.

Though each man appeared in connection with financial dealings tied to Epstein, what those transactions involved, and precisely how Epstein fits into the picture, remains unclear. None of them has been charged with crimes in connection with the disgraced financier.

According to The New York Times, which – alongside The Wall Street Journal – requested the documents to be made public, the report alerted authorities to wire transfers to Russian banks, while also mentioning sensitivities surrounding Epstein’s “relationships with two U.S. presidents.” Epstein is known to have been close to President Trump and former President Bill Clinton.

The report offered few specifics about the suspicious transactions or why they raised red flags, other than their apparent ties to Epstein.

Key points it highlights include $65 million worth of wire transfers linked to trusts controlled by retail billionaire Wexner. The transfers, dating back to the mid-2000s, appeared to pass through multiple banks.

Epstein served as a trustee for some of Wexner’s trusts and acted as a close financial adviser for nearly 20 years.

Julia Ainsley has the Halloween Cruelty story at NBC News. “‘Happy Halloween!’: DHS spokeswoman responds to report of immigration agents wearing horror masks in L.A.. The story by a local news site featured images posted to social media showing what the outlet says were agents in unmarked cars donning Chucky and Momo masks.”

A Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman offered a two-word reply Friday in response to a local news report that said immigration agents were seen wearing Halloween masks in the Los Angeles area.

“Happy Halloween!” DHS assistant secretary for public affairs Tricia McLaughlin wrote to NBC News when asked about the report.

The story by the local news site LA Taco featured images posted to social media showing what the outlet says were agents in unmarked cars donning Chucky and Momo masks. It said a member of the Harbor Area Peace Patrol, which monitors federal activity in the area, spotted the vehicle with the Momo mask-wearing driver at an immigration raid on Tuesday.

An activist with Harbor Area Peace Patrol told NBC News that he observed cars previously used on immigration raids leaving an ICE staging area on Tuesday, as they typically do ahead of raids. Two people in the cars were wearing masks – one Momo, the other Chucky.

“We are out there six days a week,” said the activist, who only wanted to be identified as Victor. “We take pictures of the cars as they leave. We put information out for the community to be aware.”

Between this immigration nightmare, the incredibly increasing costs of health insurance and food, and the lack of any nutrition support to many families, I think this will be the scariest Thanksgiving ever.

Additionally, Thanksgiving may have few tangible blessings to be thankful for. It’s time we stand up against deliberate cruelty and exploitation.

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?

Finally Friday Reads: Waking up to?

Posted: October 24, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: #We are so Fucked, American Fascists, Breaking News, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Psychopaths in charge | Tags: , , , , | 4 Comments

“So, a supposed desperately needed huge ballroom that seats anywhere from 650 to 1K people doesn’t include necessary parking for that kind of crowd? Seems a real estate genius would have thought of that. If only he hadn’t sold the hotel next door.’ @repeat1968, John Buss

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Each news cycle brings us to yet another fresh hell. Considering the breaking news cycle is now endless, we’re suffering ongoing PTSD. I admit that I’ve always been a night person. However, I now sleep away as much of the morning as possible. Given that I teach in the evenings, it’s easy for me to hand over the morning to the Poland Avenue Rooster and the commuters from Chalmette bound for whatever the sons of overseers have planned for them on any particular day. So, yes, I’m late. It’s lucky my dog is very patient with me about morning walks.

The news from today is just as full of shock and awe as usual. We’re still blowing up fishing boats and watching the people’s house being turned into a tacky midcentury modern whore house. Who can be auctioned off next? Who is losing their livelihood and next meal today?  Today’s attack on hapless South Americans in boats is another demonstration of how far the illegal, expensive, murder of innocents will be allowed by rapists Trump and the Drunkard Secretary of “War” will go to attempt to overcompensate for their lack of true manhood. This is from the AP as reported by Konstantin Toropin. “US is sending an aircraft carrier to Latin America in major escalation of military buildup.” We’re a rogue, terrorist country now demonstrating that the rule of law is no longer our guiding North Star.

The U.S. military is sending an aircraft carrier to the waters off South America, in the latest escalation and buildup of military forces in the region, the Pentagon announced Friday.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the USS Gerald R. Ford and its strike group to deploy to U.S. Southern Command to “bolster U.S. capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities that compromise the safety and prosperity of the United States,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a social media post.

The USS Ford, which has five destroyers in its strike group, is currently deployed to the Mediterranean Sea. A person familiar with the operation told The Associated Press that one of those destroyers is in the Arabian Sea and another is in the Red Sea. At the time of the announcement, the USS Ford was in port in Croatia on the Adriatic Sea.

The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military operations, would not say how long it would take for the strike group to arrive in the waters off South America or if all five destroyers would make the journey.

Deploying an aircraft carrier is a major escalation of military power in a region that has already seen an unusually large U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean Sea and the waters off Venezuela.

Hours before Parnell announced the news, Hegseth said the military had conducted the 10th strike on a suspected drug-running boat, leaving six people dead and bringing the death count for the strikes that began in early September to at least 43 people.

The move to deny Americans and bully them away from their ability to vote has begun. This move was announced by the JustICE department today. We are dismantling our democracy in plain sight. “Justice Department to Monitor Polling Sites in California, New Jersey.” All we need now are fierce dogs and ‘literacy’ tests.

” Today, the Department of Justice announced that it will monitor polling sites in six jurisdictions ahead of the upcoming November 4, 2025, general election to ensure transparency, ballot security, and compliance with federal law.

The Department, through the Civil Rights Division, enforces federal voting rights laws that protect the rights of all eligible citizens to access the ballot. The Department regularly deploys its staff to monitor for compliance with federal civil rights laws in elections in communities across the country.

“Transparency at the polls translates into faith in the electoral process, and this Department of Justice is committed to upholding the highest standards of election integrity,” said Attorney General Pamela Bondi. “We will commit the resources necessary to ensure the American people get the fair, free, and transparent elections they deserve.”

So, we can find funds to demolish the East Wing of the White House, carry out bombing of fishing boats, and harass voters, but we can’t pay any of our Federal Workers or Soldiers. How can this be? Charlie Savage has this political analysis of our current situation in the New York Times. “The Peril of a White House That Flaunts Its Indifference to the Law. The White House has made no legal argument explaining its bald claim that the president has wartime power to summarily kill people suspected of smuggling drugs.” It’s been a few foreign atrocities ago since I read the term “summary executions” used. If any of our rogue soldiers were caught doing this, they would be hauled in to a military tribunal immediately. What do we do with a rogue President?

Since he returned to office nine months ago, President Trump has sought to expand executive power across numerous fronts. But his claim that he can lawfully order the military to summarily kill people accused of smuggling drugs on boats off the coast of South America stands apart.

A broad range of specialists in laws governing the use of lethal force have called Mr. Trump’s orders to the military patently illegal. They say the premeditated extrajudicial killings have been murders — regardless of whether the 43 people blown apart, burned alive or drowned in 10 strikes so far were indeed running drugs.

The administration insists that the killings are lawful, invoking legal terms like “self-defense” and “armed conflict.” But it has offered no legal argument explaining how to bridge the conceptual gap between drug trafficking and associated crimes, as serious as they are, and the kind of armed attack to which those terms can legitimately apply.

The irreversible gravity of killing, coupled with the lack of a substantive legal justification, is bringing into sharper view a structural weakness of law as a check on the American presidency.

It is becoming clearer than ever that the rule of law in the White House has depended chiefly on norms — on government lawyers willing to raise objections when merited and to resign in protest if ignored, and on presidents who want to appear law-abiding. This is especially true in an era when party loyalty has defanged the threat of impeachment by Congress, and after the Supreme Court granted presidents immunity from prosecution for crimes committed with official powers.

Every modern president has occasionally taken some aggressive policy step based on a stretched or disputed legal interpretation. But in the past, they and their aides made a point to develop substantive legal theories and to meet public and congressional expectations to explain why they thought their actions were lawful, even if not everyone agreed.

I keep seeing that Monty Python skit in my mind. “Nobody expects …” The stacking of the Supreme Court, the complete cowardice and compliance of all Republican elected officials, and the responses of the Democratic Party, which seems lost in Wonderland at times, is something no one from the founders forward ever completely expected. Even when we’ve seen things inch towards totalitarianism, the institutions of governance would eventually pull through. Now we seem to capitulate on all fronts except with lawsuits brought by private lawyers to key judges. Even when we win the lawsuits, however, Trump just ignores things. It’s hard to see the impeachment remedy even being discussed with the current, feckless Speaker of the House. Please take time to read that article.

The Department of Homeland Security has turned into the Gestapo.  I always had a problem with the creation of that Department and felt it would be likely open to abuse at some point, but I never had this on my dance card.  “DHS Tries To Unmask Ice Spotting Instagram Account by Claiming It Imports Merchandise.”  Again, the most interesting information comes from alternative media sources these days. In this case, it’s 404 Media. The big media companies are too busy paying for the Ballroom Atrocity.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is trying to force Meta to unmask the identity of the people behind Facebook and Instagram accounts that post about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity, arrests, and sightings by claiming the owners of the account are in violation of a law about the “importation of merchandise.” Lawyers fighting the case say the move is “wildly outside the scope of statutory authority,” and say that DHS has not even indicated what merchandise the accounts, called Montcowatch, are supposedly importing.

“There is no conceivable connection between the ‘MontCo Community Watch’ Facebook or Instagram accounts and the importation of any merchandise, nor is there any indicated on the face of the Summonses. DHS has no authority to issue these summonses,” lawyers with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) wrote in a court filing this month. There is no indication on either the Instagram or Facebook account that the accounts are selling any type of merchandise, according to 404 Media’s review of the accounts. “The Summonses include no substantiating allegations nor any mention of a specific crime or potential customs violation that might trigger an inquiry under the cited statute,” the lawyers add.

A judge temporarily blocked DHS from unmasking the owners last week.

“The court now orders Meta […] not to produce any documents or information in response to the summonses at issue here without further order of the Court,” the judge wrote in a filing. The move to demand data from Meta about the identities of the accounts while citing a customs statute shows the lengths to which DHS is willing to go to attempt to shut down and identify people who are posting about ICE’s activities.

We know the Trump Criminal Syndicate is all about the grift. Here are some thoughts by Sidney Blumenthal writing at The Guardian.  “Donald Trump has built a regime of retribution and reward. The president’s purges and attacks on his enemies have developed into a system in which injustice is made routine.” Nice use of alliteration there!

Donald Trump’s voracious desire for retribution has quickly evolved into a regular and predictable system. In the year since his election, the president’s rage and whims have assumed the form of policies in the same way that Joseph Stalin’s purges could be called policies. Figures within the federal system of justice who do not do his bidding are summarily fired and replaced by loyalists. Leaders who have called him to account or are in his way may face indictment, trial and punishment. Opponents have been designated under Presidential National Security Memorandum No 7 as “Antifa”: “anti-American”, “anti-Christian” and “anti-capitalist”, and threatened with prosecution as a “terrorist”. Meanwhile, many aligned with him escape justice, whether through the hand of the Department of Justice (DoJ) or the presidential pardon power. Now, he demands compensation for having been prosecuted to the tune of $230m from the DoJ budget.

Each of the cases involving prosecution of Trump’s enemies and, on the other hand, the leniency extended to his allies has its own peculiarities of outrage. But whatever their unique and arbitrary perversities, they are expressions of what has emerged as a technique. These episodes are not isolated or coincidental. Trump’s purge of DoJ prosecutors and FBI agents, accompanied by his installment of flunkies in senior positions, started in a rush and quickly assumed a pattern, but has now been molded into a regime. The justice department and the FBI have been remade into political agencies under Trump’s explicit command to carry out his wishes. Injustice is made routine. It is the retribution system.

The origin of this system has been exposed in the complaint of three former senior FBI officials filed on 10 September in the US district court in DC against the FBI director, Kash Patel, and the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, for illegal termination in “a campaign of retribution against Plaintiffs for what Defendants deemed to be a failure to demonstrate sufficient political loyalty”. In the complaint, Brian Driscoll, the former acting FBI director, describes a conversation in which Patel “openly acknowledged the unlawfulness of his actions”.

Driscoll had tried to shield FBI agents from being fired, the complaint alleges. Patel told him that “they” – understood by Driscoll to be the White House and justice department – had directed him to fire anyone whom they identified as having worked on a criminal investigation against Trump. The complaint continues: “Patel explained that he had to fire the people his superiors told him to fire, because his ability to keep his own job depended on the removal of the agents who worked on cases involving the President. Patel explained that there was nothing he or Driscoll could do to stop these or any other firings, because ‘the FBI tried to put the President in jail and he hasn’t forgotten it.’” When Driscoll told Patel he was violating the FBI’s own internal rules, Patel allegedly said “he understood that and he knew the nature of the summary firings were likely illegal”.

Read more and weep at the link. Orange Caligula’s favorite presidential power is that of the pardon. He’s been going wild recently, letting white guys who commit high crimes out for no particular reason other than he relates to them and the crimes.  Plus, he loves the power. This is from AXIOS’ Steve Neukam. “Exclusive: Senate Dems move to condemn Trump’s Binance pardon.” This is the case where the evidence and crime were so obvious that the guy copped to the crime. Evidently, saying you’re actually guilty doesn’t count as being actually guilty in TrumpLandia.  That doesn’t even count the amount of the Bribes that bribed Trump for the pardon by throwing crypto at Trump Klan’s plan.

Senate Democrats are moving to officially condemn President Trump’s pardon of Changpeng Zhao, better known as CZ, the founder of crypto exchange Binance, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: Some Senate Republicans have already criticized the pardon, with Democrats eyeing rare bipartisan pushback against the White House.

  • Trump’s pardon of CZ, who was facing four months in prison related to money laundering, likely provides a path for Binance to operate in the U.S. after more than a year of lobbying from the president.
  • Democrats argue the pardon is blatant “corruption,” urging Congress to take steps to avoid similar acts in the future.
  • The resolution was led by Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), two longtime Trump foes.

The big picture: The Trump family’s crypto empire has drawn the ire of Capitol Hill this year. Their connection to Binance is only intensifying the scrutiny.

  • In May, World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s crypto venture, announced that an Emirati state-backed venture fund would use World Liberty’s new stablecoin to complete a $2 billion investment in Binance.
  • “We thank President Trump for his leadership and for his commitment to make the US the crypto capital of the world,” a Binance spokesperson said in a statement.

What they’re saying: Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said this week that the pardon “is a bad signal.”

Let me know when “officially condemning” actually works with this asshole. He wears that label like a tribute. Another Democratic Governor has stepped up to the fight to contain the Trump Regime. This time it’s Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer.  Her latest speech on the audacities committed by Trump is highlighted in this article in The Hill. “Whitmer: ‘No one is worried about building a ballroom’.” This is reported by Ryan Mancini.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) brushed off debate over the demolition of the East Wing of the White House and President Trump’s plans to build a ballroom, saying Thursday the focus should instead be on the government shutdown’s impact on federal workers in her state.

Whitmer appeared on MSNBC’s “The Briefing with Jen Psaki” to talk about the shutdown when the host shared an “insane split screen” that featured the East Wing’s demolition “happening while the shutdown is leaving so many workers without pay and critical benefits.”

“I just wonder, from your vantage point as a governor of a state, what are you making of that split screen?” Psaki asked.

“Well, as I have talked to people, I’m telling you right now, no one is worried about building a ballroom in Washington, D.C.,” Whitmer replied. “What they want is to make sure that they can feed their kids next week. And the longer the shutdown goes, the more precarious it gets for people.”

The governor said most Americans are “never going to step foot in a ballroom over the course of their lifetime.”

“But what they do every single day is try to feed their kids, make sure that they get a job to show up to, make sure that they don’t hit a pothole on their drive to work and they have to take money out of their rent or their child care to pay to fix their damn car,” she continued. “That’s why we got to stay focused on the issues that matter to people.”

On Thursday, excavators completed the demolition of the White House’s East Wing. Set to replace is a ballroom the Trump administration expects will be finished before the end of the president’s second term in 2029. Trump said this week the project would cost roughly $300 million, and the administration released a list of donors Thursday who it said it funding the project.

I’m really getting tired of these obvious steps back to Kings, autocracy, and huge wastes of money. Who the Fuck voted for this?

What’s on your Reading, Blogging, and Action List today?

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