I am in shock. Over the photo in this Anthony Orrico report for IRISH STAR.
I don't advise anyone to have plastic surgery unless they are really
serious about it. That's friends, that's patients. I also always
caution that you can not skim on it if you're going forward with it.
You can't do it on the cheap.
If you do?
Look at the photo in that article.
One
side of her face is pulled back further than the other side. That's
also impact the size of one eye. They've overdone the fillers and the
lips are like a Joker mask Jack Nicholson would wear in BATMAN.
I have never before seen Jeanine Pirro so I am in shock.
This woman has been on TV looking like that?
I
just put her name in GOOGLE and typed "p" and before I could follow
with the word, auto suggestion brought up "plastic surgery." This is the first article listed for that search.
Good. I was wondering, when I had the reaction, what was wrong with
me? I have seen plenty of bad plastic surgery in my lifetime. I have
never written about it here or even in a letter to a friend. I have
talked to friends about it. I'm not trying to pretend I don't gossip
and dish in real life. But, as a general rule, you have bad plastic
surgery and I'm honestly sympathetic unless I know you to be a jerk and
then I think, "Well you got the face that matched your soul."
But
I saw her face and my mouth just dropped. I had to study THE IRISH
STAR article quickly to make sure she was on TV. How did she go on TV
looking like that? It's bad. But there's bad that can't be fixed and
then there's bad that you can fix. Her plastic surgery is bad but it
could be fixed. Does she not make a lot of money from FOX "NEWS"? That
might be why she went cheap to begin with? Also true, she might have
really thin skin and, if so, she can't afford another procedure --
afford it physically. Because it can take forever to heal if you have
really thin skin. I know a friend of C.I.'s who is a TV actress and make up and lighting had to work overtime for three months with make to try to hide
her plastic surgery. It wasn't botched. But she has very thin skin.
She had it done during the hiatus and for most people? It would have
healed by the time shooting on the TV show started back up. But it took
an additional three months.
From THE IRISH STAR article:
President
Donald Trump announced on Thursday that he would appoint Fox News host -
former county prosecutor and elected judge Jeanine Pirro to be the top
federal prosecutor for the nation’s capital.
Trump announced this late Thursday afternoon via his social media site, Truth Social.
[. . .]
Pirro
is the second Fox News host Trump has tapped for a high-profile
appointment, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth being the first. Given
Hegseth's limited experience in national security and defense matters,
the administration has received sharp criticism for his nomination.
Trump
is already receiving similar criticism for his appointment of Pirro to
lead one of the Justice Department's most important districts, given
that she has only served as district attorney and judge on a local
level.
"We need to acknowledge the
uncomfortable truth that the number one qualification for getting a top
job in the Trump administration is defending Trump on Fox," journalist
Aaron Rupar wrote on X.
Is
she qualified? I can't even register an opinion. I keep going back to
that face and how wrecked it is. She really needs to see someone.
Make up does not help, it only makes it look worse.
Friday, May 9, 2025. Two -- count 'em -- two Chump nominees flame out
in the same day, Chump admits how weak and tired he truly is yet pulls
it together long enough to try to con people on 'deals' he's making, and
much more.
Lawrence O'Donnell broke down reality last night on MSNBC.
Lawrence
O'Donnell: And today Donald Trump surrendered and withdrew his choice
for confirmation of that position. And while he was at it, Donald Trump
admitted that, in effect, that he's just too old and too weak to do his
job.
Donald Chump: I can only lift that little phone so many times in a day
Lawrence
O'Donnell: That's how Donald Trump explained his inability to get the
fifty votes he needs from Republican senators plus the vice president to
achieve the senate confirmation. And, you know, he only had to make
one phone call to get that nomination through the Senate. That would be
a phone call to Republican Senator Thom Tillis on the Senate Judiciary
Committee who publicly came out and defied Donald Trump as we reported
to you here last night. Because Donald Trump is now so politically weak
among Republicans in the United States Senate, Thom Tillis said no
publicly -- "I will not vote for Donald Trump's choice." And today,
Donald Trump just publicly and meekly surrendered to Thom Tillis -- to
that one Republican senator who stood in his way with Donald Trump
saying "I can only lift that little phone so many times in a day." The
singelest stupid explanation a president has ever for being unable to
achieve a Senate confirmation.
To be clear, Lawrence was not talking about Janette Nesheliwat. That was his nominee for Surgeon General. Was.
Because yesterday, he withdrew her nomination and is currently going with Casey Means.
That
move resulted in low-rent courtesan Nicole Shanahan crawling out from
under her semen encrusted mattress to rail at Chump and Robert Kennedy
Junior. See the group humor post from last night:
What made Chump and Junior think she would just swallow this?
Past behavior?
Well
not this time, fellows, this time she's spitting it out of her mouth.
And she's accusing Junior of lying to her -- his former running mate
from his failed presidential bid. He lied to her. She explain that
there was a deal in place: Janette Nesheliwat gets named Surgeon General
and she, Nicole, uses all of her 'power' to back Junior for Secretary
of Health and Human Services.
All of her 'power'?
Oh,
Nicole, did you learn nothing from Heidi Fleiss? Please, please tell
us you didn't also keep a black book with clients' names in it.
Janette, like Matt Gaetz before her, is now a failed Chump nominee. And, as Lawrence O'Donnell was noting, so now is Ed Martin.
Martin’s remarks at the community meeting justified these actions as
merely the GOP-version of what Democratic prosecutors did under Biden. I
don’t know if Martin really believes that, but it’s not true.
US attorneys do pursue the policies of presidents who pick them, but
within legal and normative limits set by the Constitution, Congress, and
longstanding practice. No US attorney, until Martin, volunteered
to use his office against critics of government policies, including
those who “acted simply unethically” and “chase them to the end of the
Earth to hold them accountable.” No other US attorney has reportedly attempted
to present a grand jury with evidence for a criminal case against the
Minority Leader of the US Senate based on five-year-old criticism of the
Supreme Court. Nor has a US attorney personally attempted
to use criminal investigative power to seize money from environmental
groups awarded contracts by the past administration without having any
evidence of a crime.
Martin’s Democrats-did-it-first rationalization for debasing his
office is not just his. It is the lie justifying Trump’s broader effort to weaponize the Justice Department and turn the entire federal government into an instrument of his personal interest.
Martin, though only an acting US Attorney, got a torrent of negativepress coverage
in part because he loudly volunteered himself as the leader of Trump’s
crusade to use the DOJ against his political enemies. As we wrote
in a March: “In a new administration defined by a mixture
of malevolence and ineptitude, Martin has emerged as an avatar: a
typo-spewing henchman of the moment, eager to help Trump transform the
Justice Department into a political tool—and unable to shut up about
it.”
The evident defeat of Martin’s nomination is a loss, though by no means a death knell, for proponents of the unitary executive theory’s claim that Justice Department prosecutors are the president’s lawyers, and have always been.
Meanwhile,
the economy remains in the toilet where Chump dropped it. So Chump's
lied about a deal with the UK. Stephanie Ruhle addressed the reality
last night on THE 11TH HOUR WITH STEPHANIE RUHLE.
Only a fool, radical Socialist, MAGA or idiot -- or a
working of multiples of the prior listing -- would look at DOGE as a
good thing. It has destroyed so much and it did not achieve anything
but destruction. Bryan Metzger (BUSINESS INSIDER) notes:
Bill
Gates sharply criticized Elon Musk in an interview with The New York
Times published on Thursday, calling out the Tesla cofounder's role in
cutting foreign aid as part of his Department of Government Efficiency
initiative.
The Microsoft
cofounder said that cuts made to foreign aid, particular programs
administered by the now-shuttered US Agency for International
Development, were "stunning."
"He's the one who cut the USAID budget. He put it in the wood chipper, because he didn't go to a party that weekend," Gates told the Times of Musk. "The world's richest man has been involved in the deaths of the world's poorest children."
Gates
also referred to an instance early in President Donald Trump's term in
which administration officials said that the US had been sending condoms
to Gaza via foreign aid. In reality, the US had been providing
contraceptives to a province in the African country of Mozambique.
"They
cut the money to Gaza Province in Mozambique. That is really for drugs,
so mothers don't give their babies HIV," Gates said. "But the people
doing the cutting are so geographically illiterate, they think it's Gaza
and condoms. Will they go meet those babies who got HIV because that
money was cut? Probably not."
This is what Ben Cohen is applauding. See Marcia's "MAGA and Jerry ice cream? Pass and pass on the hideous Ben Cohen"
and grasp how disgusting Ben Cohen has become. DOGE was a fake ass
scheme to destroy jobs, to destroy needed government oversight, to
destroy the economy and to allow Chump to go after the safety net. It
was all smoke and mirrors. Jessica Riedl (THE ATLANTIC) notes realities on 'savings' from DOGE:
Musk
initially promised that he would eliminate $2 trillion of the $7
trillion federal budget, before scaling back his ambitions to $1
trillion, and then $150 billion. Even that revised target is highly
improbable.
Precisely measuring the budgetary
effects of the Musk experiment remains difficult, but we can begin by
looking at the claims made by DOGE itself. In late February, its website
claimed to have achieved $55 billion in annual-spending reductions.
However, its “wall of receipts” detailed only $16.5 billion of this
total. Half of that figure came from a typo claiming $8 billion in
savings from terminating an $8 million contract. As The New York Times
has reported,
that was far from the only accounting error. Once such mistakes as
false contract cancellations, triple counts of the same reform, and the
inclusion of contracts that expired decades ago were fixed, verified
budget savings stood at just $2 billion.
The
DOGE website now claims $165 billion in savings. However, it still
details only a fraction of the supposed cuts, and earlier accounting
errors have given way to new ones. A common sleight of hand is canceling
a “blanket purchase agreement”—in which the recipient had been given
the equivalent of a credit limit to incur necessary costs on a
project—and then claiming savings of the full credit limit rather than
the (in many cases substantially lower) amount that was actually spent.
Even assuming that the website’s stated savings have become twice as
accurate as they were in February, annual savings would reach perhaps
$15 billion, or 0.2 percent of federal spending.
Fortunately,
more reliable sources than DOGE’s self-reported figures exist. The best
is the Treasury Department’s monthly accounting of spending by agency
and program. Any true DOGE spending reductions should show up in these
budget totals, as should the results of other White House initiatives,
including cuts to public-health spending and the ongoing efforts to
eliminate USAID and the Department of Education.
These
spending data do not flatter the Musk project. Total federal outlays in
February and March were $86 billion (or 7 percent) higher than the
levels from the same months a year ago, when adjusted for timing shifts.
This spending growth—approximately $500 billion at an annualized
rate—continues to be driven by the three-quarters of federal spending
allocated to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, defense, veterans’
benefits, and interest costs. These massive expenses have been untouched
by DOGE’s focus on small but controversial targets such as DEI
contracts and Politico subscriptions.
We can
see this by looking at Treasury’s breakdowns of monthly spending by
agency. Short-term program spending can fluctuate greatly, and sustained
trends might not be fully apparent for several months, but the early
data are nonetheless revealing. Perhaps the highest-profile cuts under
the Trump administration so far have been to public-health spending and
foreign aid. And yet, even here, the numbers are rounding errors in the
context of the federal budget. Public-health spending, previously about
$8.2 billion monthly, fell to $7.1 billion in March, led by cuts to the
National Institutes of Health and the Health Resources and Services
Administration, the latter of which funds state and local health grants
to serve underprivileged families.
Monthly
spending on targeted foreign-assistance programs has fallen from $2.4
billion to $1.4 billion. This includes spending on “Global Health and
Child Survival” programs—which includes highly effective funding to
combat HIV, malaria, tuberculosis, and other illnesses in less developed
countries—falling in half to $400 million a month. Payments to
“International Organizations and Conferences,” such as the United
Nations, have fallen to zero. And monthly USAID spending has fluctuated
wildly but overall declined by one-third in the first quarter of 2025.
These
cuts have already been highly disruptive to beneficiaries, contractors,
and employees, and they threaten immense long-term harm. And yet, their
total monthly savings have totaled just $2.1 billion. At the Department
of Education, another shutdown target, spending has remained steady
aside from the early termination of post-pandemic funding that was
already scheduled to phase out over the next year.
Cost
reductions from laying off federal employees have been too small to
show up in the data. This is not surprising, because even laying off one
quarter of the 2.3 million federal civilian employees would shave off
just 1 percent of federal spending. To be fair to DOGE, more savings
will materialize in October, when the salaries of the 75,000 federal
employees who took a buyout come off the books. That should save
Washington $10 billion a year, or 0.1 percent of federal spending—except
even that is an overestimate, because Washington will surely end up
hiring contractors to perform at least some of the work previously
handled by those civil servants, and many contractors cost more than
employees.
DOGE was
destructive and it destroyed many people's lives. DOGE motivated
Americans across the country to take to the streets and protest. That
is the strength of democracy. I point that out -- and do so at the
start -- to remind those of us on the left that Socialist Ben Cohen is
not our friend. See Marcia's "." Grasp that he's gone to the other
side. He was a believer in The Politics of Destruction so it was easy
for him to turn around and hop onto The Politics of Destruction and
praise DOGE at his Twitter side, at the Twitter handle he created just
for DOGE and at the pro-DOGE website he started. He is not our friend.
He is not a friend of democracy.
In
2024, The Politics of Destruction made the call that it was more
important that Kamala Harris lose. So you got those working against We
The People like Jill Stein going on any outlet that would have her and
attacking Kamala non-stop while going easy on Donald Chump. Amy Goodman
was part of that campaign and played footsie with her in a ridiculous
interview. Mehdi Hasan did actual journalism and those who
attacked him for that exposed themselves for the fake asses that they
were. The people who worked to stop Kamala are not to be trusted.
This
country is in crisis right now because Chump is back in the White
House. I try to dole out a little reality at a time here because it is
overwhelming. The midterms matter so much. Democrats need one house of
Congress. I am pulling for both. Donald Chump is a threat to the
country and those of you on the left who refused to pull together better
STFU about us pulling together for your pet cause. You don't matter
right now if you worked to put Chump in the White House. You made that
choice. So Palestine or whatever you've lept onto in the minutes since
the election? Doesn't matter.
What matters is saving this country. To do that we need control of at least one house of Congress.
I
don't care that you want universal healthcare. I want that too. But
that's not what 2026 is about. 2026 is about getting control of at
least one House so that we can push back against Chump.
That's all it's about.
Rashida Tlaib and her groupies betrayed this country.
We
don't have time for their right now. People of color are under attack
in this country. People who are immigrants -- with the paperwork or
without -- or look like they could be immigrants are under attack.
LGBTQIA+ people are under attack.Seniors are under attack. You betrayed
all of those communities by working to put Chump back in office. You
had the gall to object to Adam Kinzingler and Liz Cheney campaigning for
Kamala. The gall. As we in the Black community have repeatedly noted
you got a different standard for Bernie. You had your pet issue and you
screwed the whole damn country.
Guess
what? Everything's on hold now. This is not Poppy Bush is in the
White House, this is not Ronald Reagan is in the White House. This is
not about someone we disagree with on basic issues. This is a deranged
convicted criminal who openly defies the Constitution and the court
system.
The
house is on fire. This is not the time for you to worry where you'd
like to put the new couch. This is the time to put out the fire. And
we do that only by taking control of at least one House.
So if that means incumbent Center Centerist who is in love with the Israeli government gets re-elected, that's what it means.
The house is on fire. We do not have time right now to focus on renovations. We have to stop the fire.
You
didn't take the threat of Donald Chump seriously in the lead up to
2024. So sit your ass down now because we can't afford more of your
'help' or more of your 'brilliance.'
Wasting
20 million dollars to defeat Democratic Party incumbents? We can't
afford your bulls**t, White boy. You're putting us a risk, not
yourself. Sit your ass down.
All
money going to the Democratic Party should be about defeating
Republicans. That means you take that 20 million and you donate to
incumbent Dems and you take that money and you donate to people like the
Democratic candidate in Arizona's sixth district. They will be running
against a weak Republican incumbent.
Arizona
has six districts. Four of those districts went to Republicans. Andy
Biggs won with 60.4% of the vote, Eli Crane won with 54.5% of the vote,
David Schwelikert won with 51.9% of the vote and Ciscomani won with
50.0% of the vote.
He
is the easiest to pick off. Until the Democratic incumbent decided not
to run for re-election in 2022, the seat was held by a Democrat. He is
the weakest Republican Arizona has in the House. He got even less
votes than Chump. Mid-terms are usually change elections if the same
party controls the House and the White House.
Currently
the candidates for 6th district's Democratic Party primary are
Johnathan Burma, Chris Donat, Mo Goldman, JoAnna Mendoza and Samantha
Severson. You want to weigh in on a primary, you can help with that
one. That's how the money needs to be spent. Not challenging incumbent
Democrats but picking off the weakest Republicans and pouring money
into their opponents.
Again,
the house is on fire. I think David Hogg's strategy is a losing
strategy but get Chump out of the White House and you can do whatever
you want and I honestly won't care. If you hadn't screwed us all over
in 2024, I wouldn't care now. If we had Kamala in the White House, you
could do whatever crazy scheme you wanted no matter how many times it
has failed in the past. But we don't have that luxury, you ensured that
when you didn't vote for Kamala in 2024.
We
can't afford you right now. In 2023, I announced here that I would be
voting for the Democratic Party's presidential candidate whomever it
was. And that's because some of us are smart enough to know that a
convicted felon who has already attempted an insurrection in his first
term is a clear and present danger to our country. You weren't smart
enough to grasp that or you just didn't care. So you really need to sit
your asses down because 'all you did' in 2024 (which was more than
enough) was hurt the country. In 2026, you might hurt yourself -- yes,
even you White Karens -- male and female -- could be harmed. Most of
you haven't been yet which is why you can be so cavalier to think that
the best use of campaign donations would be to target incumbent
Democrats. But we lose in 2026 and even the various privileges your
White skin brings you might get revoked.
In the meantime, AP reported yesterday, "Russia
and Ukraine both reported attacks on their forces Thursday on the first
day of a 72-hour ceasefire called by Russian President Vladimir Putin,
and Ukrainian lawmakers unanimously approved a landmark minerals deal
with the U.S." Don't know what to tell you there except when you
put a Chump in the White House, Putin's going to make a chump of the
Chump.
The
world laughs at Donald Chump and his terrible twos -- one crying fit
after another as he does his second term as president. Waaah! Waaah!
cries Chump and the world responds, "Just let him wear himself out.
We're using the Ferber method."
Unlike
David Hogg, I'm not the queen of tiddly winks. While I'm not a sports
fan, I did go to my children's games and root for their teams. So I
know at least that you don't decide in the middle of the game to toss
out all the plays that you've practiced and instead just have everyone
do whatever they feel like.
Hogg
has no plan. He has only a sketch and he wants to ignore reality and
past performance and history because he just knows he's right. We can't
afford his lack of education or lack of experience. He needs to go
find a closet, hide in there and text and make videos. He can handle
that, if nothing else.
ZorrolittoTheElder / Melissa
@zorrolittotheelder.bsky.social
Dear David Hogg, white men, ProHammies, SJD, far left populists and antisemites:
“Now isn’t the time for infighting! We need to join together!”
Wait, so before anything affected you, that was the time for infighting? You felt no need to join together until you needed help, and now that the impending crisis is here, we should all pile in the back of our own car so you can drive?
May 6, 2025 at 7:51 AM
We'll wind down with this from Senator Elizabeth Warren's office:
Trump administration abused Death Master File to purge at least 6,300 Social Security numbers, including children and seniors
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren
(D-Mass.), along with Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden
(D-Ore.) and 11 Senate Democrats, slammed the Social Security
Administration (SSA) for transferring thousands of Social Security
numbers associated with immigrants to the SSA’s Death Master File,
marking them as dead to pressure “self-deportation,” and demanded the
agency’s watchdog launch a full investigation into the decision.
Exploiting Social Security’s Death Master File to terminate the SSN
of living individuals without full due process violates bedrock
constitutional rights. The Trump administration’s actions, which amount
to falsifying government records, also violate the Privacy Act. Even
Trump’s lawyers reportedly agreed.
“This decision will result in the ‘financial murder’ of living
individuals improperly placed in the file, with everything from their
credit cards and banking to their ability to access healthcare and
housing being ripped out from under them,” wrote the senators.
The senators also called on the SSA Office of the Inspector General
to launch a full investigation into the agency’s decision to begin using
the Death Master File for this purpose, including how an individual
gets targeted, who at the agency has decision-making authority, and how
those who have had their SSNs nullified through this process can get it
fixed if there is a mistake.
The Trump administration’s abuse of Social Security and its flagrant
violation of constitutional guarantees of due process set a precedent
that could endanger the rights of all Americans. It also
undermines the accuracy of the Social Security Administration’s data,
which could lead to more mistakes that limit a person’s access to
benefits, regardless of their immigration status.
“The purpose of SSA is to provide for the welfare of
number-holders
and their dependents, not to serve as an arm of President Trump’s
immigration enforcement agenda. This move degrades the solvency,
reliability, and accuracy of SSA systems and programs. It is as cruel as
it is thoughtless—the impact will be felt in communities across the
country and in the future of SSA programs themselves,” concluded the
senators to Acting Social Security Commissioner Leland Dudek.
The letter was signed by Senators Peter Welch (D-Vt.), Mazie Hirono
(D-Hawai’i), Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.),
Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Angus King (I-Maine), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Ben
Ray Luján (D-N.M.), Patty Murray (D-Wash.), and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.).
During
a hearing on trans athletes, Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX) slammed Rep.
Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) for using trans people to distract from
her own alleged financial malfeasance.
Greene
held the hearing—“Unfair Play: Keeping Men out of Women’s Sports”—as
chair of the House Oversight Subcommittee on Delivering on Government
Efficiency. It’s not clear how banning trans people from participating
in school sports relates to the subject of government efficiency, which
is usually about grants and spending.
She
opened the hearing by denigrating trans people, declaring that “female
athletes should never be forced to compete against mentally ill
biological men who parade around in women’s clothes.”
But Casar revealed what he believes to be Greene’s real motivation for bullying the trans community.
“I’ve
knocked on thousands of doors, and talked to thousands of Republican,
independent, and Democratic voters in my career,” he said, “and not a
single time has someone flung open their door and said, ‘Thank God
you’re here, Congressman. I want to ask you about transgender people
fencing.’ It’s just never happened… What the hell are we doing here?”
He
then answered his own question, explaining that Greene is merely trying
to distract Americans from her and her party’s indiscretions.
“We
are here because Chairwoman Marjorie Taylor Greene thinks that if she
picks on vulnerable people like trans folks, she can avoid having a
discussion about the allegations of insider trading against her.”
He
added that she thinks she can distract people from the fact that “MAGA
Republicans are raising your costs every single day, suppressing your
wages every single day, stealing your taxpayer dollars every single day,
and threatening your health care. That’s the reason we’re at this crazy
hearing today.”
In a perfect world,
Casar would have then pantsed Marjorie in front of everyone and we
would have seen her penis and she would have been exposed as a
self-hating transwoman -- you know, like Caitlyn Jenner.
“What
the hell are we doing here? Seriously?” asked Casar of the GOP-majority
panel’s “Unfair Play: Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” hearing.
“We
are here because Chairwoman Marjorie Taylor Greene thinks that if she
picks on vulnerable people like trans folks, she can avoid having a
discussion about the allegations of insider trading against her.”
Casar
made a nod to the congresswoman’s disclosure that she’d bought
somewhere between $21,000 and $315,000 in stocks on the day before — and
the day of — Trump announcing a pause to most of his widespread tariffs
last month.
Democrats have since accused
Greene of violating insider trading laws, suggesting that she knew about
the trade policy change-up prior to the president’s announcement, which
sent markets soaring.
Rep. Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), as part of a push to ban members of Congress
from trading individual stocks, claimed that Trump’s approach to tariffs
was “all about manipulating the markets so that he could quietly enrich
his friends who bought the dip.”
US
House Rep Jasmine Crockett was the same hearing. She had questions for
the CEO and president of the National Women's Law Center Fatima Goss
Graves. In a separate report, Ben also notes that exchange:
Crockett
called on Graves to determine if transgender people or President Donald
Trump — who, like other Republicans, has made trans athletes a focus of
attacks in recent years — bore responsibility for any action she named.
Her first category? Someone who “gutted medical research.”
“Trump,” Graves promptly replied.
“Kidnapping Americans and sending them to foreign countries, a.k.a. ‘deportingthem,’” Crockett continued.
“Trump,” Graves again responded.
Crockett
went on to give further clues as she described someone “driving”
Americans into a recession, “waging an idiotic tariff war,” “ignoring
the Constitution,” “cutting health care,” firing government workers who
“keep our country safe” and “encouraging an environment of hate and
divisiveness.”
Graves gave Trump’s name for all
her answers before the congresswoman continued, noting that the
“Delivering On Government Efficiency” subcommittee — instead of focusing
on an anti-trans agenda — could instead look at “actual” instances of
“waste, abuse and mismanagement” in the federal government.
Thursday, May 8, 2025. The Politics of Destruction is about
destroying the system which includes the safety net. Grasp what Chump's
ultimate mission is and grasp that Ben & Jerry's Ben Cohen has gone
to the dark side and there can be no welcome back in his future.
Let's start with Lawrence O'Donnell.
That's Lawrence on MSNBC last night dealing with reality.
I'm
sure that gets tiring for Lawrence. Doing reality, addressing what's
going on not just bulls**ting and wasting everyone's time.
Judging by the e-mails, you know who was the photo negative of Lawrence yesterday on YOUTUBE.
David
Hogg is where grifting money is. They're hoping to peal off some off
that grift money. I'm not that worried about David because he's being
curbed as we speak. His plan was insanity to begin with but right now
he's finding out that Big Daddy may continue to fund him but those
second tier donors -- who weren't grassroots -- they aren't funding
him. But look at the grifters online hoping they can suck up that
money.
They're idiots and they prove it every day.
Let's
talk about harassment. It's real. It exists. Women and men have been
harassed. But let's also be clear that everyone who claims they were
harassed were not. The same is true of rape. A friend right now is
being accused of assault. Did he do it? I don't believe so, it's not
his nature. But he could have. Here's the thing, though, if you say
you worked for him and you say he raped you multiple times over multiple
months, I'm not getting it.
If someone rapes me, I'm
getting justice. Okay, maybe the person doesn't want it to be known
publicly. Okay. Then let's say I don't want to be known as a rape
victim. Then I quit. I don't wait around for another rape.
I don't go back to work and get raped a second time. Or a third. Or a fourth. But the woman wants us to believe that.
Maybe it happened, maybe it didn't.
I believe everyone has a right to tell their story. I do not believe everyone is owed belief in the claims that they make.
We
weren't there. We have to come to a conclusion based on the evidence
before us. I loathe Donald Chump. That didn't mean that I had to
believe every woman who came forward with an assault claim. Ava and I
did a piece ahead of the 2016 election where we reviewed the stories of
the women coming forward and explained why we found some believable and
others we did not find believable.
Bring on the fembots or bring on the bimbos, call it whatever you want.
But the grifter brought on bimbo supreme.
She
claims she was harassed. That's what she's made her name on -- that
and falsely implying that she was an educator for two women in Congress,
she was not.
Roger Ailes is disgusting (is he dead, was, if he is). He harassed women.
But Bimbo?
No.
The timeline is not one of harassment. The timeline is one of a woman
who thought she could play the game and win. She's let him be out of
line because he was going to give her a big promotion. She came forward
only after other women had gone public and only after she wasn't
advancing. We're not talking one year or two years. Look at the
timeline.
And grasp that bimbo is responsible for some
of the women harassed. She played the game. She thought she was going
to win the game. By playing the game, she normalized it. She put other
women at risk.
When bimbo wants to apologize for that
and get honest about it, I'll applaud her. But if you dangled sex
repeatedly with an employer, if you played that game with him, you don't
get to come back and whine and you certainly don't get to act as though
your actions didn't put other women at risk.
So the
bimbo and the grifter are on together praising the Hogglet and the
'expert' -- bimbo -- wants to explain the problems to you.
And being an expert, she knows facts right?
Wrong.
Nancy Pelosi. She's 85 years old.
Bimbo says Pelosi needs to retire.
Does she?
I don't think that's bimbo's decision. It's my decision because I live in her district and she's my representative.
If
she were a US senator, I would be wary of electing her to a six year
term in 2026. If she runs, she'll be up for re-election, she'll be up
for a two year term. If she was primaried tomorrow, I'd vote for her.
She's competent, she's still on the ball and I actually think her move
into mentorship has been effective. I am not a blind supporter of Nancy
as anyone who's read this site for any number of years knows.
So I
don't think Bimbo's judgment skills were strong. Her analytical powers
didn't lead her to name Bernie Sanders who is planning to run for
re-election despite the fact that his would be a six year term and
that's his personality becomes ever more prickly. Usually an indication
that someone's not aging well.
But again, those are calls. Let's deal with facts.
Bimbo attacked Nancy because she's not stepping aside and she's a Baby Boomer and this is the problem with Congress and --
STFU.
I am so damn sick of these charlatans being presented by grifters on YOUTUBE as experts.
Bimbo chose to make that attack.
It was incumbent upon bimbo to know what she was speaking of.
What
is the baby boom? That's a question with many possible response and
entire books have been written on the topic. But the most simplified
explanation is that after the end of WWII, there was an increase in the
population creating the baby boom.
Do you see the problem with Bimbo's argument?
If I tell you Nancy was born in 1940, do you get the problem?
Do I need to explain to you that WWII ended September 2, 1945?
Nancy is not a baby boomer. No one qualified to be a guest would ever make the claim that she was.
Only a bimbo. And only a grifter would sit across from her and nod as the bimbo went on and on about Nancy and her baby boom.
I've never called Bernie a baby boomer because he was born one year later in 1941 which, again, is not part of the baby boom.
Garbage in, garbage out.
I'm
being kind. That's the grifter's one kindness from me. The next time I
catch him working the con, I will rip him and his con apart. And
please understand that the above happened in the first minutes of the
YOUTUBE video. It never got better. I could do a series of snapshots
to cover all the lies and distortions told in that one video.
Garbage in, garbage out.
That's his only pass. Next time, we're going to Stacy Lattisaw him.
For
now, we'll just say thank you to Lawrence who does real work every day
and acknowledge that his work has to be exhausting for him and that we
appreciate all he puts into it.
Speaking of fake asses, Ben Cohen. Please read Marcia's "MAGA and Jerry ice cream? Pass and pass on the hideous Ben Cohen"
to grasp the right wing turn that Cohen has made. And, no, there's no
excuse for it. And when you look at all the damage DOGE has done, to
grasp that Cohen has cheered them on and has set up a pro-DOGE website?
This is why DSA can't be trusted. Ben was a Socialist. He was not a
Democrat. And it's so very easy of those two factions -- MAGA and DSA
-- to flip. Look at Naomi Wolf, for another example.
Ben Cohen is not our friend. He is part of The
Politics of Destruction. And his eagerness to see the system torn down
allows him to applaud DOGE which has left and will leave millions of
Americans suffering. But that's okay to these freaks. That's why they
didn't rally you to vote for Kamala Harris. They're okay with the
suffering, they're okay with the destruction Chump is carrying out.
And
that's why you need to be suspicious when Socialists are brought on air
and not identified as such. Their little circle jerk where they
protect each other and put one over on you put Chump back in the White
House. Journalism requires disclosure but their circle jerk opposes
it.
Ben's revealed himself and only an idiot's going to listen to him ever again.
Grifters
don't do work, they're lazy. If you doubt look to the Oval Office and
you'll see how lazy grifters truly are. And the inability to actually
work results in really poor choices. We see that in his Cabinet. Steve Benen (MADDOW BLOG) offers:
In
the abstract, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Defense Secretary
Pete Hegseth seem like the kind of Cabinet officials who’d get along.
They’re both middle-aged Republicans from the Midwest. They’re both
former Fox News personalities. They’re both married to women who also
used to work at Fox News. They were both confirmed to important jobs
they’re unqualified to hold.
Two peas in a pod, right?
As it turns out, no. The headline in Politico read, “Duffy vs. Hegseth: Friction over air safety erupts in Trump’s Cabinet.”
The
trouble appears to have begun in earnest on Monday night, following an
incident in which a military helicopter caused two commercial flights to
be diverted near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. Fox News’
Laura Ingraham pressed Duffy on who was responsible, and the secretary
replied, “The FAA doesn’t know, we asked the DOD.”
In
an apparent rhetorical shot at Hegseth and his Pentagon team, Duffy
added, “The DOD has promised radical transparency, they should tell us
who is qualified to take a helicopter out of the Pentagon. I don’t know,
but they have to tell us.”
A
day later, Duffy returned to Fox News and took a softer tone, but he
nevertheless reiterated that the Defense Department hadn’t provided him
with the details he requested.
Two TV
personalities who never should have been put into any presidential
Cabinet. This is a Cabinet built to dismantle everything. Every one is
at risk. MAGA will put aside any pretense of support for veterans so
even veterans are at risk. Ashley Murray (INDIANA CAPITAL CHRONICLE) notes:
Veterans
and Democratic lawmakers on Capitol Hill Tuesday protested the Trump
administration’s planned cuts for the Department of Veterans Affairs
that include slashing some 80,000 jobs, which many worry will affect the
massive agency’s delivery of medical care and benefits.
The
group rallied outside the U.S. Capitol shortly after VA Secretary Doug
Collins finished lengthy questioning before the Senate Committee on
Veterans Affairs, where he defended the cuts as necessary to improve the
department’s efficiency.
Holding signs that
read “Veterans Healthcare Not For Sale,” a crowd of former service
members joined by senators and representatives decried that argument as
“nonsensical,” as Sen. Richard Blumenthal, top Democrat on the Veterans
Affairs Committee, put it.
“We’re not going to
allow veterans to be betrayed by this administration,” Blumenthal, of
Connecticut, said. “I’ve just come from a hearing with the VA secretary,
and to say it was a disappointment is a huge understatement. That
hearing was a disgrace.”
Chump
is the destruction of the system. And some Socialists want to pretend
like that destruction doesn't mean the destruction of the safety net but
it does.
The economy's
in the tank and it's only getting worse and the administration is okay
with that -- it will give them the perfect excuse to call for the
gutting of Social Security. So all the havoc Chump's delivered? It's
not by happenstance, it's not by accident.
Other
damage he's doing? The United States makes a lot of money from
foreigners traveling here for various events, conventions and sight
seeing journeys. Dallas, TX? A magnet for people around the world who
want to remember President John F. Kennedy. And a ton of people do
because President Kennedy was a monumental and historical figure --
unlike his nephew Tiny Balls Junior who is an embarrassment. Florida?
The incredible beaches. Key Largo, Key West. DISNEY WORLD, UNIVERSAL
STUDIOS FLORIDA THEME PARK, Daytona Beach, The Dahil Museum, etc, etc.
California? DISNEYLAND Park, the wineries, the film studios, the Golden
Gate Bridge, Golden Gate Park, Alcatraz Island, Pier 39, the beaches,
the San Diego Zoo, Catalina Island, Big Sur, Joshua Tree, Big Basin
Redwoods State Park,
Hollywood Walk of Fame, Santa Monica Pier, San Francisco Museum of
Modern Art, Mission San Juan Bautista . . . New York has the Statue of
Liberty, the Museum Of Modern Art, Central Park, Empire State Building,
Time Square, Grand Central Terminal . . . That's just a few things in a
few states. Most of the states have major tourist attractions. And
tourists from outside the US coming here accounts for a lot of money
each year.
Do you get how
much money that is? How many industries that impacts? You've got the
airline industry, you've got the car industry if the visitors rent a
car, you've got taxis and Ubers, you've got hotels and motels, you've
got eateries, you've got bars, many of the points of interest have fees
visitors have to pay, you've got the clothing industry since travelers
often purchase an outfit or two (or a t-shirt or two) in addition to
what they've packed, you've got shops -- souvenir and regular shops.
Or it did.
Do we grasp how much money Chump's running off?
In
2023, international travelers poured an estimated $213 billion --
billion -- into the US economy. That amounted to approximately $584
million a day.
And now
Chump's making us pariah around the world. See, sending people to a
gulag in El Salvador doesn't really argue for freedom and democracy.
And since Chump declares these deportations and imprisonments require no
trials, if you're in Paris, you really think Las Vegas or whatever is
worth seeing when, while you're visiting the US, you might accidentally
get caught up in one of Chump's dragnets and end up being taken not back
to France but a to prison -- one where the are no rules or guidelines
and people are tortured.
At BOING BOING, Jason Weisberger observes, "JD Vance doesn't understand how tourism works and
is doing his level best to ensure the 2025 World Cup is a failure.
Threatening people with creepy, puppy-killing Kristi Noem
like the boogeyman will only encourage tourist dollars to stay in their
home countries, and watch the football games from the safety of their
own, clean couch. Tourism is already crashing; there have been too many stories of people disappearing into our brownshirted Customs and Border Protection system." Morgan Music (LATIN TIMES) elaborates:
Vice
President JD Vance noted that visitors from around the world would be
coming to the US for the 2026 World Cup, then warned of consequences for
anyone who fails to leave "when the time is up."
FIFA
World Cup 26 is scheduled to kick off in June of 2026, with games
played in 16 cities across Canada, Mexico and the United States. It will
be the first World Cup hosted by the US since 1994, when the record was
set for the most financially successful and best attended World Cup in
history.
The
worldwide tournament's return presents a tremendous economic
opportunity as fans from around the world flock to host cities. Vance
acknowledged the tourism boom in a presser with President Donald Trump's
World Cup planning task force.
"We'll have
visitors from close to 100 countries," Vance told the group. "We want
them to come, we want them to celebrate, we want them to watch the
games."
"But when the time is up," he continued, "They'll have to go home, otherwise they'll have to talk to Secretary (Kristi) Noem."
Vance
chuckled and gave the table a satisfied smack as he turned the floor
over to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Noem. "That's true,"
she replied, punctuating a polite laugh.
On X, users were unimpressed by the quip.
"The
Trump Administration is completely squandering a generational
opportunity for the American tourism & hospitality industries," a
comment read. "US about to set the record for worst World Cup attendance
in World Cup history," one user predicted.
"These
people are going to ruin international tourism in this country for at
least a decade or more," lamented one comment. "Tourism just took
another 25% hit," added another.
"They've somehow managed to turn an international celebrating into a threatening deportation PSA," said another.
According to Charisma Madarang (ROLLING STONE),
it wasn't just Miss Sassy telling 'jokes.' No others wanted to join JD
in competing in the new reality show SO YOU WANT TO BE AN ASSHOLE.
Chump himself offered, "Pam will come after you, and you're going to
have a big problem" while the nation's Trans Secretary Sean Duffy felt
the need to offer, "If you're coming to see some soccer, go on a road
trip. See America. Don't overstay your visa. Don't stay too long."
The jokes aren't funny. Especially in light of all the countries that are warning their citizens not to travel to the US. Per Rachel Chang (CONDE NAST TRAVELER),
those countries would include France, Canada, Denmark, Germany,
Finland, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Portugal, Belgium and
Ireland.
The
jokes aren't funny. But, again, part of The Politics of Destruction.
And Ben Cohen is now part of that. Let's wind down with this from
Senator Patty Murray's office and grasp that this is a harm that DOGE is
responsible for:
Trump administration abused Death Master File to purge at least 6,300 Social Security numbers–including children and seniors
ICYMI:
Senator Murray on Vote Against Social Security Nominee, Releases New WA
State Report on How Trump and Elon Are Breaking the Social Security
Administration
Washington, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray
(D-WA), Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, joined Senate
Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-OR), and 10 Senate
colleagues in slamming the Social Security Administration (SSA) for
transferring thousands of Social Security numbers associated with
immigrants to SSA’s Death Master File, marking them as dead to pressure
‘self-deportation’ and demanded the agency’s watchdog launch a full
investigation into the decision.
Exploiting Social Security’s Death Master File to terminate the SSN
of living individuals without full due process, violates several federal
laws and bedrock constitutional rights. The Trump administration’s
actions violate their due process rights enshrined in the Constitution,
falsify government records, and violate the Privacy Act, wrote the
senators. Even Trump’s lawyers reportedly agreed that Social Security’s actions violated the Privacy Act.
“This decision will result in the ‘financial murder’ of
living individuals improperly placed in the file, with everything from
their credit cards and banking to their ability to access healthcare and
housing being ripped out from under them,” the senators wrote
in the letters to Acting Social Security Commissioner Leland Dudek and
Social Security Assistant Inspector General for Audit Michelle
Anderson.
The senators also called on the SSA Office of the Inspector General
to launch a full investigation into the agency’s decision to begin using
the Death Master File for this purpose, including how an individual
gets targeted, who at the agency has decision making authority, and how
those who have their SSNs nullified through this process can get it
fixed if there is a mistake.
The Trump administration’s abuse of Social Security’s centerpiece
role in America’s economy sets a dangerous precedent of allowing the
government to rip away workers’ access to their earned Social Security
benefits while threatening the security of all Americans.
“The purpose of SSA is to provide for the welfare of
number-holders and their dependents, not to serve as an arm of President
Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda. This move degrades the
solvency, reliability, and accuracy of SSA systems and programs. It is
as cruel as it is thoughtless– the impact will be felt in communities
across the country and in the future of SSA programs themselves,” the senators concluded in one of their letters to SSA.
In addition to Murray and Wyden, the letter was signed by Senators
Peter Welch (D-VT), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL),
Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Angus King (I-ME),
Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Ben Ray Luján (D-NM), and
Jeff Merkley (D-OR).
A PDF of the letter to SSA Acting Commissioner Dudek is available HERE.
A PDF of the letter to SSA Assistant Inspector General for Audit Anderson is available HERE.
Yesterday, Senator Murray released a new report
featuring testimonials from Washington state residents—including
employees at the Social Security Administration who were recently fired
through no fault of their own—and detailing how the Trump
administration’s wide-ranging attacks on SSA risk depriving
Washingtonians of the Social Security benefits they have earned and
deserve. More than 73 million Americans, including 1.4 million—or one in
six—people in Washington state rely on Social Security benefits. Half
of seniors nationwide rely on Social Security for most of their income,
and a quarter of seniors rely on Social Security for at least 90 percent
of their income.
Senator Murray has an extensive record of protecting Social Security
benefits and fighting to secure essential funding for the Social
Security Administration—and she has been tirelesslyraising the alarmaboutthethreat Elon Musk’s DOGE poses to Americans’ hard-earned benefits. In March, Senator Murray held a press conference to
lift up the stories of SSA employees who are being pushed out by Elon
Musk through no fault of their own and hear from Washington state
residents who rely on Social Security. In February, Murray released a fact sheet warning
of the Trump administration’s plans to make it harder for Americans
who’ve paid into Social Security to get the benefits they have earned.
Under Senator Murray’s leadership as Chair last Congress, the Senate Appropriations Committee advanced a draft Fiscal Year 2025 Appropriations Bill that
would have provided a $509 million increase for SSA this year. Millions
of Americans rely on Social Security and have earned benefits over
lifetimes of work. Senator Murray also helped pass the Social Security Fairness Act at
the end of 2024, which restored full Social Security benefits for
public servants, including firefighters, law enforcement officers,
teachers, and other state and local government workers—in January,
Murray held a roundtable discussion in Everett with local union members on the implementation of the law.
