So, Donald Trump looked at the calendar last month and panicked. The statute of limitations was running out on one of his least favorite people, James Comey. But the chief prosecutor didn’t want to bring charges because he recognized the case Trump was braying about just didn’t hold water. So Trump fired that guy and hired a Playboy bunny prosecutor instead. His choice looks fine if we’re looking for Page Six material, but this bunny has never prosecuted a single case. She’s the perfect choice if you want to lose in court.
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On the last day of September, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth gave a speech to over eight hundred of our military leaders. He never said anything wrong. He just implied a plethora of dangerous points of view that, while left unsaid, were the point of the whole speech.
He wasn’t all wrong. His speech was just dangerous because he was basically saying that the military is a mess, that it’s not ready to perform, and that we have to change all the progress that has been made over the last century and bring our military back to the medieval mess that existed before WWII.
Whoever wrote the speech was very good because it sounds like Hegseth is saying what the nation needs to hear while he is really saying what Trump wants him to say. He is saying that right now the military is failing because there are enough leaders there that listen to their conscience rather than the insane babbling of a cowardly president or his inept appointees.
Trump wants a military with the goals and structure of the Gestapo or the NKVD because he wants to lead a country with the goals of Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia. After years of being Putin’s best friend, he has recently become aware of the fact that the Russian leader is driving his country into financial ruin by his ill-chosen attempt at expanding its borders by military means.
It has finally been explained to him in simplistic enough terms that Russia is on the brink of financial collapse and that Ukraine, if supported correctly, has a real shot at taking them.
So, of course, Trump now wants to build a military that can be easily controlled, one that will blindly follow a leader rather than the constitution. One that will engage with its own people if its leader demands it. I don’t know about you, but it sounds very much like a fascist state to me.
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Watched Rep Dusty Johnson babble about the government shutdown and why it’s the Democrats’ fault. It seems he feels that way because the GOP will use it to kill Americans’ medical insurance, which he sees as a good thing.
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Secretary of State Marco Rubio was all over the airwaves this week with a message that makes a lot of sense. Trump’s plan for Middle East peace sounds nice but it is still, even with everyone involved appearing to agree on hostage freedom and letting some really bad Hamas killers out of jail, a long way from actually happening. In the first place, there is still no one to govern Gaza even if Israel wants to give it up, and until that happens, the pieces will not come together.
Trump can babble all he wants about being the only one able to stop the centuries old war in the Middle East, but once he stops bragging, there is still a whole peace negotiation that has to happen before we even get close to peace. The Israelis will never allow a Palestinian takeover of Gaza until they can be presented with proof that Hamas will have absolutely no position in its new government. But who will that new government be? The Palestinians have already proven, over and over again, to be non-functional and incompetent. Hamas is a non-starter. Will one of the Arab nations, like Qatar, be willing to step in and run the place, at least until it can establish a functional leadership of its own? And even if one is found, who will provide the security necessary to ensure that such a government has a real shot at success? The Arabs would never accept an Israeli force even if Israel wanted to provide one, which they don’t.
So, it’s a long process ahead with no guarantee of success. It’s obvious that Trump gets off making believe that he has accomplished something. The reality is that peace in Gaza is still a long way off.
Of course, if you watched Trump’s “I just won the war” speech to the Knesset on Monday, you would think that Gaza was already up and running. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t a horrible speech. In fact, there were some parts that were actually good, almost. It’s just that Trump cannot pass on a chance at attacking his enemies, even when they are former U.S. presidents. He’s just a low life who can’t walk away from the cheap shot.
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The real estate market in NYC is still a mess. The misconstrued concept of affordable housing has been so politicized that it no longer has any practical meaning for the people who need it in order to lead constructive lives. Sixty and seventy percent of incomes are now going for housing that should cost no more than thirty percent, and small landlords are being forced into bankruptcy by property taxes, insurance, and repairs going through the roof even as income is cut by controls. There are many causes for this, but monumental greed is foremost among them.
Yes, renters taking advantage of the city’s inability to police high income individuals living in stabilized apartments is a big problem, but the real problem is the idea that small real estate owners should be stuck with the responsibility for supporting the whole program. In fact, this should be a universal responsibility of the people of the city of New York and should be created in such a way that the citizens of the whole city share it.
How would that work. Simple. Small landlords would be able to total up the difference between the market rent for their stabilized apartments and what they actually collect under stabilization and then receive a property tax credit for that amount, thereby spreading the burden across the whole population and putting the responsibility of maintaining the affordable housing programs where it belongs, on the shoulders of the entire population of the city.
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Gorge Stephanopoulos interviewed VP Vance on This Week, and it was really fun to watch. George went straight to the bribe money that border czar and Trump ass kisser Tom Homan was filmed taking from FBI agents,
Vance tried to play dumb, which should have been very easy for him, but it still didn’t work. Despite the fact that it was on tape, and everyone had already seen it, Vance continued to deny its existence. Why was Vance trying to protect this dumb stooge and why hasn’t the FBI charged him?