Earl Stephens

1124

MERRI OK

hmmn kinda over the top?

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AN 9 26

Kavanaugh left a clever trap that changes everything

D. Earl Stephens September 16, 2026

I am not here to rain on your parade, pop all your balloons, or scrape the frosting off of your celebratory cake today, but I am here to tell you that the Supreme Court’s decision Monday night to block Donald Trump from getting his fat, little hands on our mail-in ballots was the absolute very least they could do in the face of his latest attack on America.

The fact is, Trump accomplished nearly everything he set out to during his ongoing authoritarian power-grab by sowing yet more doubt in our election process.

Be honest, despite Monday night’s ruling, who is going to feel 100-percent confident about voting by mail right now?

Once again, Trump set out to break something that was never broken, and is telling us only he can fix it. The examples of this are endless during his reign of terror, but has anybody seen his terrific, tremendous healthcare plan he promised us 10 years ago …?

I was actually relieved this morning when The New York Times tied this accompanying piece to their coverage of the Supreme Court’s decision:

“With Trump’s Plans Blocked, States Work to Restore Trust in Voting by Mail”

I can’t help you with the paywall if you aren’t a subscriber, but the story accurately depicts the trouble we are still in, despite that ruling.

(And hey, wouldn't it have been great if the NYT tackled this relentless Republican attack on our country as the national emergency it most certainly is, instead of dutifully showing up after whatever institution Trump has threatened to burn to the ground is already in flames? Sorry, but I am a dog, and the mainstream media is the bone I will never stop shaking for their absurd and inadequate coverage of the greatest threat to America since the Civil War. )

From the Times:

With the legal question now settled, election officials at the state and local levels will now shift their focus to communicating to voters that they can trust that they can securely continue to vote by mail without federal restrictions.

“We’ve actually been working all weekend to figure out the different scenarios for the outcomes of the decision,” said Francisco Aguilar, a Democrat who is Nevada’s secretary of state. “And one of them was, Hey, if we are in a position where we get a favorable ruling from the courts, what are we going to do to educate voters and to build that confidence that their ballot is going to get counted?”

“What are we going to do to educate voters and to build that confidence that their ballot is going to get counted?”

There it is.

Trump’s multi-pronged attack on America has been so effective that many Democratic officials and activists are telling people not to vote by mail, and to do everything possible to show up in person at the polls, or if you are lucky enough, to use a drop box to place your vote.

Of course, the challenge there is that Republicans have also been doing everything they can to make it as hard as possible to vote at these locations by restricting them, removing them, and threatening the people who work in these places.

Even I am inclined to suggest you get to a polling place to cast your ballot if you can, unless of course your only option is to vote by mail. By the way, voting by mail has already begun in here in North Carolina and my old state of Wisconsin, which are two crucial battleground states.

And if you are asking the obvious question as to why Trump and his Republicans are going so hard after mail-in voting, it’s simply because Democrats (37%) use this method more than Republicans (24%). I mean, aside from the fact that the convicted felon, Trump, would be only too happy if nobody ever voted again anywhere.

I am also going to pop yet another balloon by pointing out that the Supreme Court made sure to keep Trump’s fever dream of eliminating mail-in voting in play, when the perjuring Conservative justice, Brett Kavanaugh, laid in this clever concurring opinion to the 7-2 decision, writing:

"… applying the rule in the 2026 elections would be arbitrary and capricious in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act because state and local election officials do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule before the elections."

That sounds a lot like the Radical Right court loudly hinting it will go along with Trump’s attack on mail-in voting in 2028 because it will have allowed him sufficient time to take a nuclear-powered blowtorch to our vote by then.

Despite this, America’s 80-year-old baby was shaking his rattle and lambasting the court this afternoon, leaving this steaming pile of you-know-what on his social media feeds:

“(This is) a Court that is costing the United States Trillions of Dollars with shockingly bad rulings that are of such magnitude that it won’t be easily possible for our Country to recover or heal. It is a Court that will go down as having rendered some of the most destructive, hurtful, and damaging decisions in our Country’s history.”

For once, Baby Blowhard had something right, because this is the court that has denied women control of their bodies; has allowed unlimited dark money into our elections; and granted total immunity to him, so that he can do or say pretty much anything he wants.

I have talked to a few Democrats today, and despite Monday night’s ruling, every one of them is predicting two things about this looming election:

Democrats are going to do well ( I believe they are going to do historically well).

Trump and his Republican Orcs are going to do everything they possibly can to throw out the results and/or prevent Democrats from being seated in office.

This is exactly how corrupt third-world countries operate. We have become one of the very countries we used to warn people about.

I don’t have to remind you that there are still troops in our capital, and they are there for one reason: to act in the event Trump declares martial law following the elections.

That is how I see it going right now. You might have other guesses for what will go down, but we can all agree that it is extremely sad, and absolutely GALLING.

Because HOW DARE THEY.

There are not enough adjectives to describe my absolute contempt for the people in America, who knowing all this, will still vote for people who will go along with another attack on our country.

Yes, the Supreme Court did the very least it could to minimize the attack, but it is up to the people of this country who truly respect the rule of law and our democracy to vote in numbers so big Nov. 3, even Trump’s bought-off court won’t dare touch them, and he is seen as nothing but a whining baby who needs a diaper change, and a long, long nap.

Lord knows, the people who truly care about our country are plenty exhausted.

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and was an award-winning journalist at ancient places called “newspapers.” You can find all his work here.

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AN 9 26

Making excuses for the millions of Americans who still support a maniac

REUTERS/Callaghan O'Hare

D. Earl Stephens September 14, 2026 | 07:07AM ET

This article was paid for by AlterNet subscribers. Not a subscriber? Try us and go ad-free for $1. Prefer to give a one-time tip? Click here.

Donald Trump hates the same people his supporters do.

Any time I spend a portion of my day considering the dark, noxious cloud that has become a part of the American landscape, and more specifically, the origins of this man-made disaster, I arrive at this place.

It’s as sad, simple, and as hideous as that.

Trump is a terrible president, and an even worse person. He’s certainly not smart, and is obviously ill-bred. He has done nothing to make anybody’s lives better but his own, and the billionaires who are carving us into pieces. He is using our White House to launder our money to fill his bottomless pockets, while spending hundreds of millions more to celebrate himself with arches, ballrooms, and tacky golden trinkets.

This isn’t even in dispute.

He’s a liar, a cheat, a pervert, and a complete clown. He tapes stringy fir to his head each day, and slathers his face in orange goo. He looks absolutely ridiculous, but nobody in his inner circle dares say a word.

Thank God this emperor at least has clothes.

He doesn’t know what he is talking about in almost any conversation, and just spits out random words and sentences that often make absolutely no sense. The minute somebody calls him on this, which is generally a woman in our press corps, he lashes out with the venom of a convicted felon and serial woman-abuser.

Our air and water is being poisoned. Prices are skyrocketing, and we are in a war with no way out, because he has turned our Pentagon into a bumbling mess, where cowards in uniform salute the crown or else.

And of course, he is doing everything he can to wreck our vote. Even that we talk about in all-too-casual tones, which really should blow all of our minds on a regular basis.

As I’ve written before, Trump’s ongoing attack on America is a national emergency and should be addressed this way. Right now, we are being forced to make plans for what might happen if our very own president violently comes after OUR vote in November.

Can we stop right there for five seconds to consider THAT?

Instead, we are fixated on all the other preposterous things he is into each and every day. Why just yesterday he traveled to Ireland to duck in some golf, and insult and divide the people there. The day before that he talked about bribing Republican voters, and then there is the never-ending projectile vomit about renaming lakes and attacking places like Greenland and Canada.

So what is there to recommend him? Why does your aunt, or best friend, or husband support this sickening maniac?

It’s the bigotry, stupid.

Plain and simple.

Again: He hates the same people they do, and for that he gets their undying allegiance.

Trump’s bigotry has always been the redline for me, and why I avoid anybody who voted for this bigot. It’s easy for me: If you vote for a bigot, you are one.

Maybe I have this wrong, but I really don’t think so.

Trump has always been a bigot, and like so many things, this isn’t reported near enough. It’s not just a part of his brand, it IS his brand. Without his endless bigotry, he wouldn’t have gotten within three states of the White House.

I am not wrong about this.

It was his overt bigotry that separated him from the other 17 Republicans on that ridiculous debate stage 11 years ago. Trump went right out and said what so many white people think, including many of the phonies on that stage, and the majority of the white people in America loved him for it — including, and mostly, all those radical, right-wing Christian Nationalist churches.

When he initially made his move to run for president, the man who likes to think of himself as a builder did so by erecting a platform to spread the repellent Birther controversy. Barack Obama was not born in this country, you see, and needed to produce papers to prove he had a right to be here.

This was gross and disgusting of course, but many white people gobbled this up, like sharks go for so much greasy chum in the water.

Like those sharks, your Uncle Bud ate this up. “Now THERE’S a guy telling it like it is!”

FINALLY, an old white man who was as mean and miserable as he was — even if he has a weird orange tint to him ...

Instead of disqualifying him from the presidency the Birther assault jump-started it, and Trump and all that bigotry are still humming right along to this day.

I’m not wrong about that, either.

Even today, after all his overt bigotry, you will not come across anything in the mainstream media that refers to him this way. No real surprise, because most of these worthless outposts still won’t call a guy who is incapable of telling the truth a LIAR.

He has become completely normalized.

While I was researching this heated rant, I came across an AP story this morning addressing the Black male vote.

It has been reported to death that Kamala Harris got less support from Black men than Joe Biden did.

Statistics show 25 percent of Black men went over to Trump in 2024, and away from Democrats. But so did younger voters. So did white women. So did Latino voters. I don’t have to tell you what white men did … because I have enough to do calling them into account, which I do on a regular basis much to the chagrin of many people in my life who wish I was happier these days.

I will never get in the business of judging Black voters, when the vast majority of these voters have picked the better, more humane candidate during every election in my lifetime. This also means, among other important things, that they picked the candidate who was nearly always better on the economy, because almost without fail, Democratic presidents are far, far better on the economy than Republicans.

I’m not wrong about that, either.

Turns out the only sector who didn’t move toward Trump in 2024 were Black women. Black women have seen a few things. Black women have felt a few things. Black women know what’s up.

It has to be completely MADDENING for them that so many of us don’t.

Can you imagine where we’d be right now, if even HALF of white men didn’t vote for this racist, orange ghoul?

One of the passages I was struck by in that AP sorry was this:

“A Federal Reserve survey of 2022 data found that Black families had a median wealth of $44,890 compared with the median white family wealth of $285,010. In 2023, Black men’s imprisonment rate was about 5.5 times the rate for white men, according to the latest figures from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.”

Read that one again.

And again.

Now try to tell me there is no institutional racism in America, when it is completely baked into our screwed up system.

For every 100 dollars a Black person has, a white person has 700.

I’ll never get my head around this. We are very obviously a racist country being dragged through the dirt by such an obviously racist president, and an administration that is stuffed to overflowing with rich white men.

And they don’t want us talking about that. In fact, they are ordering places like our universities not to. Our government is under attack. Our museums are under attack. And our schools are under attack.

Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) have become evil words that will not be discussed in Trump’s racist America.

Well they will be here, dammit, because DEI was never about favoritism, it was and is about FAIRNESS.

We are not a just and fair country. Not even close … and it is vital for white people to start doing a whole helluva lot better, and start speaking out about what is so obviously wrong.

When I go to the polls on Nov. 3, my issue will be supporting candidates who support EVERYBODY, and not the few.

I will go to my grave working to build a country where all men and women are created equal, and “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

I am begging you to do the same.

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It looks like Graham Platner is gone — but the Dems real problem isn't going away

(REUTERS)

D. Earl Stephens

July 08, 2026 | 08:40AM ET

This article was paid for by AlterNet subscribers. Not a subscriber? Try us and go ad-free for $1. Prefer to give a one-time tip? Click here.

Well, the dog finally caught the car in Maine.

Since Graham Platner burst on the scene a year ago announcing his candidacy for the U.S. Senate, he has crisscrossed the Pine Tree State telling uncomfortable truths about America’s broken political system, and making enemies on both sides of the spectrum doing it.

Controversy has followed the combat vet for the past year, but so too, have thousands and thousands of supporters in Maine who nominated him to run against the despicable Republican, Susan Collins, in a key Senate race in November.

Since ascending to the Senate in 1996, the oily Collins has been clobbering one establishment Democrat after another in a state that has a proud history of distrusting the establishment. You have to live in Maine to understand Maine, and the problem is that too many people don’t.

From their rooftop perch in the northeast corner of the country Mainers literally look down on the rest of the United States. This doesn’t make them haughty, it makes them properly suspicious.

Either you are from Maine or are from Away.

It looks like the latest allegations that Platner sexually assaulted a woman five years ago, are going to be the end of his run, but I promise you that the voters I have talked to there the past 24 hours, want more information on this before they drop their support — no matter what the people from Away say.

And look, I’m not going to sit here and try yo have my cake while wolfing it down, too. I endorsed Platner last October, but I believe the time has come for him to drop out, because men have to stop thinking they can assault women and suffer no consequences for it.

I hung on with Platner for as long as I could because he and people like him are the answer to greatest political question of our times in America: How in the hell do we get rid of all this money polluting our election system?

We have to do that, of course, because even our radical Right “Supreme” Court majority has proven it is completely bought and paid for by America’s oligarchy.

Which is why it needs to be blown to smithereens — which is another answer to another vitally important question we can talk about another time.

Platner connected with the people of Maine, who were not going to just blindly say yes to Chuck Schumer and the Democratic elites’ from Away foisting the state’s 77-year-old governor, Janet Mills, on them to take on and lose badly to Susan Collins.

Those elites can say they were right about Platner now, but that is a lot of double-talking coming from people who say they want change, but have rolled out of the rack each day for the past three decades or so doing exactly the same thing.

This started with Bill Clinton, and because life is often a circle, Clinton was elected as president in 1992 when I was working at a newspaper in central Maine. Just four years later, Collins was elected to the Senate in the state.

Clinton’s mostly gone, but Collins has stayed … and stayed … and stayed …

God only knows how many people Bill slept with outside his marriage, but at the time that wasn't much of an issue to the giggly party establishment who still rule the party now. Hell, back then they were only too happy to normalize a 49-year-old man copping a blowjob in the Oval Office from a 22-year-old intern.

I don’t think myself a prude, but any guy who did this to one of my daughters would be eating through a straw for the rest of his life.

I admittedly never liked Bill Clinton because I don’t like most politicians, and because it was just so easy to see he was completely full of it. He was a gifted speaker, smart as a whip, had a boatload of charisma, and most importantly: was a contrast to the stodgy Republican dinosaurs like George Bush Sr., and Bob Dole who no longer fit into anything in America. Both men served their country honorably and in war, but even that has an end date in politics.

Or used to …

Long way of saying the Democratic Party long ago turned into something they used to warn everybody else about, and are stale as month-old bread these days.

They say they want change but have absolutely no idea how to get it. So when a guy like Platner comes along … or another guy like Zohran Mamdani comes along … or a woman like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez comes along … they say, “Yeah, yeah, fine. But NOT them.”

This is exactly what happened in 2016 when Bernie Sanders burst on the scene.

Let me tell you where I was politically in 2016 as Barack Obama was wrapping up his two terms: Feeling proud I had supported him twice, pretty good about the country, but worried the future would go into some recycling machine.

In fact, I remember distinctly saying this when the field was getting settled for the 2016 race: “Anybody but another Clinton or another Bush, please. We don’t have royal families in America.”

Well, a decade later there are No Kings marches, and for once this old guy was ahead of his time.

And look, I like Hillary Clinton OK, and think she would have been a good president. She is even smarter than her husband, but was a terrible candidate, and most of America knew that. Her time was 2008, but went onto run one of the stupidest campaigns in American history, and the young up-and-coming candidate with a real message, and the outside lane all to himself blasted past her and into the White House.

Even Obama, for all his talent, was turning into an establishment Democrat toward the end of his term, and was convinced that it was important to keep the club together. If it wasn't Hillary’s time in 2008, it would have to be in 2016, whether he or anybody else liked it or not.

So he gave her a high-profile job as Secretary of State, and that settled things, even if it was unsettling to millions of people in America, who weren’t so sure. The real irony here of course is that the guy who should have had the inside track, Vice President Joe Biden, was tackled by the party establishment, and told to wait his turn.

Biden publicly said the tragic loss of his son, Beau, in 2015 led to his decision not to run, but it was clear the decision was not his to make. Hillary was the nominee.

I’ll go to my grave believing Biden would have won in 2016, not because he was smarter than Clinton, but because America is plenty misogynistic enough to have ensured that.

Once again Hillary was stuck running in the middle lane, while the Republicans grudgingly gave way to a maniac who was connecting with white Americans, who were bruised from all the good Obama did.

Because the irony runs deep today, it was none other than Bill Clinton who might have given the best explanation for his wife’s defeat when he said in 2012: “Democrats want to fall in love; Republicans just fall in line.”

Democrats desperately need a new club, but mostly a new message and coalition, which brings us full circle back to Platner in Maine.

I guarantee you 90 percent of the Democratic Party establishment, their elitist bosses, and the mob on social media who were calling for his head never heard him speak. The man has a gift, just as Bill Clinton did when he burst on the scene in Arkansas 40-plus years ago. And think of that: A Democratic governor in Arkansas.

Nothing lasts forever in America, and I type that with hope today.

Platner understands Maine, just as Clinton understood Arkansas. These men knew what the electorate wanted and didn't want, and how to address it. Like so many in this country, Mainers are sick and tired of the head-in-the-sand, do-nothing establishment, who are so ineffective at communicating to the American public that they can’t even preach patience anymore.

The problem isn’t that a guy like Platner was running in Maine, the problem is that a guy like Chuck Schumer is running the Democratic Senate.

Platner for all his warts was offering change and solutions, while Schumer is offering nothing but we’ve been getting for the better part of three decades, which has helped lead to the greatest divergence in income in American history.

Too few people have too damn much in America, and I swear to God, if we don’t get a hold of this pronto, we are done.

OVER.

This is the biggest issue facing America, and second isn't close.

These billionaires don’t care whether you can afford to eat or not. They don’t care how much you are paying for health insurance. They don’t care about clean air and drinking water. They don’t care if the current president is the biggest lowlife in American history, and the most dangerous man on Earth …

Like that lowlife, they care only about themselves and accruing as much wealth as possible, and anybody who dares speak out about this will be crushed. And if you have a problem with that you can take it to their bought-off Court.

For all of our problems in this boiling country, most Americans can actually see this. The candidates who also see this, and can speak to them will thrive. The candidates that want to tell us the answers lie somewhere in the mucky middle are sentencing us to more of the same, and again I am telling you we won’t survive that.

Platner was onto something, and whether you want to say the messenger was shot or that he shot himself, nobody in the Democratic Establishment can say they didn’t hear his message.

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.

AN 4 26

NO LNX

The troubling truth about the White House Correspondents' Dinner

D. Earl Stephens April 21, 2026

The 2026 White House Correspondents' Dinner is this Saturday, so let me be blunt: If you fancy yourself a journalist, and I hear you were within a mile of this event I will cut you off cold.

Anybody who decides to share the stage with the greatest threat to a free press and the United States of America in my lifetime, the appalling Donald J. Trump, should never be allowed to carry a press pass again.

I’ve had more than enough of these phonies disgracing what was once one of the most important vocations in the world. By checking their backbones and credibility at the door to self-serving events like these, they are going out of their way to make a mockery out of the profession.

Before cutting them to pieces, and laying them bare, I will make exceptions to any so-called journalist who attends this nauseating event and makes a loud point of standing up, turning his or her back, and walking out of the place the minute Trump begins to run his big, fat mouth.

Otherwise, the rest of them can all go straight to hell.

Truth is, many people who have worked for and with me in the business over the years will know I never had a soft spot for this sort of stupid back-patting gala of me-first media elites, but tolerated it through clenched teeth.

Every person who attends this event knows full well they are doing so to make news, instead of cover it. They know that this is one of journalism’s highest crimes.

Unfortunately these days, too much of the attempted journalism I see from our corporate media is nothing but a series of high crimes.

Most of the people who will be shoving their mugs in front of the cameras Saturday night are the same lost souls who were unable to spot one of the most significant news stories in United States history — the attack on democracy — in the run-up to the 2024 election, and instead covered it like some meaningless, back-and-forth horse race.

Even they should be able to see where that has gotten us now, as our democracy teeters on the edge of extinction.

It’s absolutely perfect then, that Weijia Jiang, is the current president of the stupid association hosting this spoiled dinner. Jiang works as a correspondent at CBS “News” — the place that has made a pathetic spectacle of itself by surrendering to the man and his administration they have invited to spit all over everybody, and the notion of free speech in America.

Here was Trump’s noxious, public response to Jiang’s insane invitation last month:

“The White House Correspondents Association has asked me, very nicely, to be the Honoree at this year’s Dinner. It will be my Honor to accept their invitation, and work to make it the GREATEST, HOTTEST, and MOST SPECTACULAR DINNER, OF ANY KIND, EVER!”

Oh, well, since they asked him “very nicely ….”

How is it they STILL can’t understand they are dealing with a spoiled toddler holstering nuclear codes in his soiled diaper, who needs consequences, not coddling?

Jiang continued to outdo herself with this quote:

“(The dinner) reinforces the importance of the First Amendment in our democracy. Our choice to gather as journalists, newsmakers and the president in the same room is a reminder of what a free press means to this country and why it must endure.”

Sorry, and excuse my French, but what the f--- does that even mean?

Because gathering together in a ballroom and rubbing greasy elbows with a man who has called you “the enemy of the people” and your work “fake” has to be one of the weakest, most pathetic things I have ever seen.

You know what really exhibits the meaning of a free press? Holding power to account, Weijia.

Good God.

You are making it crystal clear you have zero respect for the business that I, and thousands of others gave our professional lives to. You are making fools of the journalists who paid the ultimate sacrifice by laying their lives down to tell us all what was happening on the battlefield, the storm-ravaged country, or myriad other dangerous places of upheaval around the globe.

And what of the journalists who covered the attack on the United States Capitol January 6, 2021, by the man you are honoring Saturday? The very man who has since pardoned the thugs who stomped law enforcement officers to near death and threatened to murder politicians that day.

Unless, as the ace reporters you somehow fancy yourselves, you really don’t think Trump had anything to do with the violence that day …

What is wrong with you people? Does it mean THAT much to you to fall at the fat, little feet of a sick, demented man who is trying to end us just as sure as I am typing this?

How about getting to the bottom of that, instead of some overpriced, dirty martini.

Among other heinous things, Trump has relentlessly attacked, and banned the Associated Press from the White House, defunded Public media, defended the Saudis for their brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, pulled credentials from news organization that have covered the Pentagon for years, and raped one of the most important papers in the world, Stars and Stripes, where I spent 11 years of my career.

He has called women reporters like Weijia Jiang “horrible” “stupid” “ugly” and “piggy.”

And it somehow gets worse …

From reporting in the Daily Beast Monday:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who last week compared the media to the Pharisees, a vilified sect cited in the Bible, is expected to sit at a table with CBS News.

This is almost too appalling to type.

I see more than 250 former broadcast journalists, including Dan Rather, Ann Curry and Sam Donaldson, delivered a letter Monday urging the dinner’s organizers “to forcefully demonstrate opposition to President Trump’s efforts to trample freedom of the press.”

The letter starts this way:

“We, the undersigned, call upon the White House Correspondents’ Association to use the occasion of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, to forcefully demonstrate opposition to President Trump’s efforts to trample freedom of the press.”

It goes onto to say:

“These are not normal times, and this cannot be business as usual with the press standing up to applaud the man who attacks them on a daily basis.”

And:

“Continuing in that spirit, we believe the White House Correspondents Association should take stronger action by issuing—from the podium—a forceful defense of freedom of the press and condemnation of those who threaten that freedom, followed by a standing toast to the First Amendment and a pledge to continue upholding such a critical cornerstone of our democracy.”

I respect them, and appreciate their efforts, but doing my best folksy, deep-voiced Rather impersonation I inject this:

“Do not let the truth get in the way of a good story.”

The truth is, the normalization of the abominable Trump by our corporate media has had a more devastating consequence to our democracy than just about anything I can think of.

They have normalized racism, abuse, toxic dishonesty, and even treason.

On Saturday they will normalize authoritarianism, by standing alongside a fascist thug, who has spent the past year-plus taking a wrecking ball to our White House, erecting statues carrying his repulsive name, and hanging banners of his ugly face from our public buildings to honor himself instead of America.

He is treating Washington D.C., like it is just another one of garish country clubs.

Or did the White House “working press” somehow miss all that on their way to honoring themselves Saturday, and forgetting who they are really supposed to serve: the American public.

(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.)

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AN 4 26

America is in the middle of national emergency — and our gaslighting media is to blame

D. Earl Stephens April 01, 2026

I was triggered by The Atlantic yesterday morning, and simply have to fire back for the record.

This screenshot might read as a minor offense, but when piled like kindling onto the red-hot embers of countless other examples of our corporate media soft-pedaling the most dangerous, corrupt regime to ever visit our White House, it’s no wonder we have a fire burning completely out of control in the United States.

Here’s the assaulting item:

“Mixed” messages. THAT’S what The Atlantic headline writers have assigned to Donald Trump’s incoherent lies, pontifications, insults, threats, backtracks, rage, double downs, doubles backs, and abhorrent treatment of the entire world because of the chaos that bangs around inside his fat head.

When will this gaslighting stop from media organizations that have catastrophically failed us the past decade?

Just what in the hell is going on here?

Trump is a human dumpster, a collection of the foulest character traits ever piled into one man.

His mouth is a sewage pipe.

He is a racist, a misogynist, an unrepentant liar, an autocrat, and a convicted felon. Nothing I typed there should be in any dispute by now, and would easily survive the most strident fact-check.

So why isn’t this included in all the reporting about him for necessary context?

The Atlantic is hardly the only member of the corporate media who has normalized the abhorrent, and incapable Trump.

The corporate media has failed us to the point that our Democracy is now hanging by a thread. I have typed extensively about this for years, and will say again as a man who spent 30 years around newsrooms that it galls me to no end.

I have concluded that either the editors in these newsrooms are incompetent, or they need Trump around to keep their enterprises profitable.

I will readily concede, it is probably both.

But back to this piece in The Atlantic, which framed their video this way:

“Joining the editor in chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, to discuss this and more: Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent at The New York Times; Susan Glasser, a staff writer at The New Yorker; David Ignatius; and Missy Ryan, a staff writer at The Atlantic. Watch the full episode here.”

This was a polite, meaty discussion that for the most part was critical in a pinkies out sort of way about this asinine war. Being from the polite, upper-crust media elite, all five of the panelists successfully avoided calling the war exactly what it is: an utter and complete cluster----.

Essentially, they spent the better part of the show trying to do what Trump has so far proven completely incapable of: explaining just what the hell it is we are doing in Iran.

It was the kind of discussion you might get when the grownups discuss what to do with Uncle Billy, who simply can’t stop wandering into traffic with his pudding.

Trump is easily the most dangerous man in the world, and this is what needs to be reported with urgency.

The time for polite avoidance simply has to be over by now.

I have argued that if they had covered him this way the first time around, there would have never been a second or third time.

Here’s what needs to happen right now:

Our media needs to stop reacting to what Trump is doing, and start anticipating the worst before it happens. It does little good to tell us the house is burning out of control when you could have told us an arsonist with a blowtorch was roaming the neighborhood beforehand.

Starting now, every single piece on him should include the following for proper context and accuracy:

-He is a serial liar, who cannot be trusted to tell the truth about anything.

-He is a convicted felon, who was protected by the Supreme Court from being held accountable for crimes like his attack on America.

-He is a racist.

-He is a misogynist, who has attacked women verbally and physically. Start calling him that.

This is how any story about Trump should read: “President Trump, who is a serial liar, misogynist, racist, and convicted felon alleged this morning that … [fill in the lie].”

They could also stand to start working into their stories about the fact that Trump appears in the Epstein Files an astonishing 38,000 times. These are just the files his lawless, crooked Justice Department has allowed us to see.

Read that again.

All of these things are relevant, and provide the much-needed context to remind and inform us all of the sociopath who is in a position to finish us off.

STOP NORMALIZING HIM.

That we aren’t already at this place, speaks to the media’s shoddy job covering this deviant since he started blocking out the sun in 2015.

Either you believe we are in a national emergency or you don’t.

If you don’t, then kindly surrender your press passes, because you are incompetent as hell and unable to identify the most important story in America since the Civil War.

If you can’t see what is happening you are stupid, unserious people that shouldn’t read a news story, much less type one.

If you do see it that way, but refuse to report it that way, then you are aiding and abetting the end of our Democracy, and no better than Trump himself.

What never came out of that damn Atlantic roundtable was a much-needed, urgent discussion about removing this tyrant from office, which is most certainly going to need to happen.

We cannot survive three more years of this nuclear-powered assault on our country.

Removing Trump from office, and holding the monsters to account who are appeasing him, should not be seen as a stretch, or some faint hope, but completely necessary.

Does anybody think Trump is capable of taking a deep breath and reassessing the hell he is inflicting on the entire world right now, starting with his own citizens? Or is it more likely he will escalate and put us on the brink of extinction, and the point of no return?

Again: The arsonist is roaming the neighborhood with a blowtorch. Are you going to report it this way, or wait until we are all engulfed in flames?

Our mainstream media needs to sit with this, and consider how they go forward with their coverage.

There’s only one correct course of action, and they better get it right, because there will be no second chances.

This is a national emergency.

Report it that way.

---

Democratic party wonks grapple with a disconnect from reality

Photo by Bradley Andrews on Unsplash

D. Earl Stephen March 08, 2026

Americans troops are starting to return home in coffins because of Donald Trump’s insane, illegal war in Iran, but today I wanted to touch on Tuesday’s primaries, that will go a long way in determining the candidates who will oppose this bloodthirsty felon, and his ruthless party of anti-American, anti-humane Orcs in November’s elections.

Once again, Tuesday’s primary results showed us that generalities and traditional assumptions are our enemies, and reality is our friend.

Left-leaning, and anti-Republican voters are also proving a helluva lot smarter than they’ve been given credit for, and are finally starting to realize their power in tuning out the tired, out-of-touch establishment in both of our unpopular political parties.

Take heart. I say again: People, not parties, will lead us out of the wilderness.

One size does not fit all on the Left, and man, it’s about time.

Zohran Mamdani is a generational political talent, who danced on the heads of the New York Democratic Party establishment led by Andrew Cuomo to win going away in the New York City mayoral race in November.

As mind-blowingly good as Mamdani is, he would not have been elected in neighboring New Jersey in that November race for governor, because the electorate and the issues are simply different in these places, which are separated only by a river.

So a very talented and able woman, Mikie Sherrill, a former federal prosecutor and Navy helicopter pilot, demolished her Republican opponent by 14 points in a race that was supposed to be close in New Jersey.

Again, the Democratic Party needs to return to the days when it kept the flap to their big tent wide open, and allowed candidates to run races their way in their backyards without toxic influence from the overblown Democratic National Committee (DNC).

This will also be true in a place like Maine and it’s absolutely critical Senate race in June. I will touch briefly on that one, too, after getting to a few of Tuesday night’s key results.

Starting deep in the heart of Texas, I send congratulations to the upstart James Talarico for his convincing win over Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett in that U.S. Senate primary. Polls were all over the place leading up to this one, but it looks like Talarico over-performed in his 6%-to-8% victory.

On the morbid Republican side, incumbent John Cornyn will be taking on the despicable Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in a runoff for the right to face Talarico. I don’t have the time nor the inclination to type much about that disgusting race, but there is some pretty good stuff here, if you are interested in reading about train wrecks.

I believe the moderate Cornyn will prevail, but it would probably be best for Democrats if the abhorrent Paxton came out on top. Word has it Trump will be endorsing Cornyn.

Before going further, I want to direct my wrath at racist Republicans in Texas who seem to spend all their time figuring out ways to disenfranchise Black voters. I loathe them with everything inside my being.

The unmitigated c--- they pulled in Dallas, to screw with voters in that city was creatively monstrous even by their dirt-low standards.

Here is the lede in a Texas Tribune story this week:

DALLAS — Veronica Anderson walked 2 ½ miles Tuesday afternoon to the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center because she wanted to vote.

When she arrived, election workers told her she was at the wrong polling place and would need to cast her ballot at a different precinct — one she said she had never heard of. Unsure where it was or how to get there, she stood outside trying to sort out her options.

“I walked up here because I want to vote so, so bad,” she told a reporter for the Dallas Free Press and Votebeat, adding that it felt like “your self-esteem and everything is torn down.”

It felt like her “self-esteem and everything was torn down …”

This is exactly how Texan Republicans like it, and they can all go straight to hell.

Our anger should be at a simmering boil at what Black Americans continue to deal with at the polls all across America, and at what certainly happened in Texas yet again Tuesday.

NOBODY deserves better than Black voters — the true patriots in America — yet time and time again they get our worst.

I am still dubious a Democrat can win a statewide race in Texas, but am positive they can’t without the Black vote.

Crockett, who is no doubt hurting today, is still the most important person in Democratic Texas politics. If she can align with Talarico and help drive out that vital Black vote, the Republican candidate will have their hands full in the state.

In North Carolina, where I will be a resident starting next month, as my family moves away from Wisconsin after 15 years, Democratic Governor Roy Cooper will take on Trump-endorsed Michael Whatley in that key Senate race.

Now an ironclad prediction: Cooper will win this race and flip that seat blue. “Governor Roy” like Sherrill and Mamdani, is the perfect candidate for the Tar Heel State and has plenty of crossover appeal.

And get this: More than 200,000 voters participated in the Democratic primary than in the Republican primary. This is stunning.

That said: We must vote like hell in November, fellow North Carolinians! (It was fun typing that.)

This was a very bad election for moderate Democrats in purple North Carolina. The four moderates who lost to more progressive candidates have actively worked AGAINST Democratic Governor Josh Stein to defeat his vetoes on terrible Republican legislation.

Here was longtime North Carolina political observer and Catawba College political science professor Michael Bitzer’s take on these Democratic Party defectors:

"The biggest surprise was the absolute blowout in terms of the percentages, and what this really says to me is that not only are the voters party loyalists now, but the parties are expecting their elected representatives to be party loyalists — to be allegiant to the party — and when you buck the party, the party can kick back."

Takeaway: The Left-leaners in North Carolina have had more than enough of Trump-appeasers in the Democratic Party.

On the Republican side the headliner is that Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page holds a razor-thin lead over North Carolina Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger in Senate District 26. Berger might be the most evil person in North Carolina, and has singlehandedly led Republicans in their quest to undermine every good thing Democrats have tried to accomplish in the state. His loss would be seismic, and it looks like that race will go to a runoff.

Very briefly in Arkansas … A Democrat won a special election for the State House in a district north of Little Rock Tuesday night. Alex Holladay, smashed Republican Bryan Renshaw to flip that seat. Democrats have now flipped 27 state elections across America since 2024. Republicans have flipped ZERO.

Finally Maine …

The Pine Tree State’s primary is not until June, but all the races that have come before it across America are instructive. Whoever emerges as the Democratic candidate MUST BEAT SUSAN COLLINS for the party to have any chance of taking back the U.S. Senate.

I have written pretty extensively about this race, and know a little about Maine having worked at a newspaper there for six years. My ex-wife also lives in the state, also works at a paper up there, and provides occasional on-the-ground intel.

Mainers are a hearty, independent lot, who take great pride in not falling in lockstep with the other 49 states in our rattled union. From their rooftop perch in the northeast corner of the country they literally look down on the rest of the United States. This doesn’t make them haughty, it makes them properly suspicious.

You really can’t get they-uh from he-yuh, and they like it just fine that way.

Maine voters have repeatedly told us they prefer the progressive oysterman and veteran, Graham Platner, to line up against Collins in this vital election. He will be running against the state’s Democratic Governor Janet Mills.

Ever since emerging as a heavy favorite in the race, Platner has been lighting up arenas and town halls, but has also been dogged by controversy. Some of his errors have been self-inflicted, while others have been generated by heavy fire from the national Democratic machine, which has reflexively supported Mills.

Despite that, in a recent University of New Hampshire poll Platner led Mills by an astonishing 64 percent to 26 percent margin. His strength is increasing, not decreasing.

Read that again.

To be clear: I like Mills, and thank her for her service.

This is not an attack on her or her record, only what reeks of incredible hubris by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), which is sinking tons of money into the state to get rid of Platner, and set the party up for yet another fall. Democrats have not won a U.S. Senate race in Maine since 1988, when George Mitchell was reelected.

I am long past sick and tired of old career candidates running for office over and over again. Mills, who would be the oldest freshman senator ever at 78, simply will not beat Collins, 73, who will somehow look young by comparison if they were to go head to head in November.

Running Mills would be self-defeating and absolute madness in a race Democrats have to have.

Democrats have had a tremendous run since the disastrous November, 2024 elections, because they have fielded candidates who are listening to their constituents and not pointy-headed DNC wonks who are forever trapped inside the Beltway, and counting money.

That is the reality, and as we steam toward November, it’s vitally important that we continue to remember that reality is our friend.

---

NO LNX

Republicans' new agenda could make America's 250th birthday her last

:{:{D. Earl Stephens February 11, 2026}:

As the repulsive Trump regime makes America a far more dangerous, inhumane place by the hour, I have a common-sense solution that would make us far safer immediately:

Ban guns.

Make it so only our military can carry weapons on their bases or in a theater of battle.

That’s it.

Picture it: an America with no guns.

Our children would be safe in school. Our neighborhoods would be positively dreamy. Life expectancy would rise, and America might just get a shred of respect from the rest of the world, which looks at us these days as the complete maniacs we most certainly have become.

But you think I’m the one who has completely lost his mind.

Never happen, Earl. Guns are here to stay.

You know, it wasn’t so long ago, that some sort of meaty gun control actually looked doable. Back then, when America was at least semi-sane, gun control was my No. 1 issue.

I railed about it. I marched for it. I joined gun-control groups, and put some of my limited treasure in furthering this noble cause.

Hadn’t we seen enough of our children brutally slaughtered in all those classrooms?

Enough Already is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

I used to tell people at the time that I was a reasonable man, and because I was a reasonable man, I would entertain compromise on this vital issue.

Since I wanted ALL guns banned — every damn one of them — and you wanted all guns legal — every damn one of them — we could meet somewhere in the middle.

We could adopt common-sense legislation. Both sides might not be completely happy, but we would be safer.

Guns kill people. No guns, no deaths. Fewer guns, fewer deaths.

Well, we all know what happened.

America’s biggest killer, BIG MONEY, got involved, started threatening lawmakers at a gunpoint, and they all but surrendered on the issue.

Oh sure, a few things got done to make us minimally safer, but there have never been more guns in America than there is right now. There are so damn many of them that it has become impossible to count them all, much less track them.

Most experts have it in the 500 million range.

I look at that astonishing number and wonder why I come bouncing in here with hope about anything sometimes …

The guy who wants no guns, is living in a country with more guns than people.

Tell me again how great we are …

And because this is America, and the only thing we know for certain these days is that things can always get worse …

They have.

On the year of Lady Liberty’s 250th birthday, we have unnamed, armed, roving government agents marauding through our streets. They are caging and murdering us with absolute impunity.

Land of the free?

You are kidding me, right?

Since ICE has been unleashed by its fish-lipped, dead-eyed, puppy-killing leader, Kristi Noem, there have been 16 shootings by on-duty, unidentified federal agents patrolling U.S. cities and towns during the past year. This includes, of course, the cold-blooded murders of Minnesota protesters Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

There have been beatings, gassings, and human beings being disappeared in concentration camps. It has all blown past appalling, and into the dark realm of the unimaginable.

ICE needs to go, because short of getting rid of guns in America, the elimination of a federal agency that treats people like targets on some shooting range or Noem treats a puppy, would be a step toward decency.

But since eliminating ICE completely is close to an impossibility unless and until Democrats take back the White House, the party of good and decency should do everything it can to pull the fangs from these grotesque agents’ masked, dirty mouthes.

This starts by putting demands on Noem’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) before it gets a drop of OUR money.

The following is a list of the 10 guardrails on ICE that Democratic leadership presented to Trump’s grotesque Republicans before DHS funding expires Friday:

Targeted Enforcement – DHS officers cannot enter private property without a judicial warrant. End indiscriminate arrests and improve warrant procedures and standards. Require verification that a person is not a U.S. citizen before holding them in immigration detention.

No Masks – Prohibit ICE and immigration enforcement agents from wearing face coverings.

Require ID – Require DHS officers conducting immigration enforcement to display their agency, unique ID number and last name. Require them to verbalize their ID number and last name if asked.

Protect Sensitive Locations – Prohibit funds from being used to conduct enforcement near sensitive locations, including medical facilities, schools, child-care facilities, churches, polling places, courts, etc.

Stop Racial Profiling – Prohibit DHS officers from conducting stops, questioning and searches based on an individual’s presence at certain locations, their job, their spoken language and accent or their race and ethnicity.

Uphold Use of Force Standards – Place into law a reasonable use of force policy, expand training and require certification of officers. In the case of an incident, the officer must be removed from the field until an investigation is conducted.

Ensure State and Local Coordination and Oversight – Preserve the ability of State and local jurisdictions to investigate and prosecute potential crimes and use of excessive force incidents. Require that evidence is preserved and shared with jurisdictions. Require the consent of States and localities to conduct large-scale operations outside of targeted immigration enforcement.

Build Safeguards into the System – Make clear that all buildings where people are detained must abide by the same basic detention standards that require immediate access to a person’s attorney to prevent citizen arrests or detention. Allow states to sue DHS for violations of all requirements. Prohibit limitations on Member visits to ICE facilities regardless of how those facilities are funded.

Body Cameras for Accountability, Not Tracking – Require use of body-worn cameras when interacting with the public and mandate requirements for the storage and access of footage. Prohibit tracking, creating or maintaining databases of individuals participating in First Amendment activities.

No Paramilitary Police – Regulate and standardize the type of uniforms and equipment DHS officers carry during enforcement operations to bring them in line with civil enforcement.

They ended their proposal this way:

These reforms should apply to all federal activity, whether funded by FY26 appropriations, the OBBBA or any other act.

Furthermore, there are steps that the Trump administration has the power to take right now to show good faith, including fully ramping down the surge in Minnesota and removing Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem from her position.

These are common sense solutions that protect constitutional rights and ensure responsible law enforcement.

Short of eliminating ICE altogether, I fully endorse this proposal.

Now we see just how serious Democratic Senate and House Leaders Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries are about standing behind their words.

I have been hard on both of these men, and think Democrats are overdue for new leadership. But I also know Republicans are horrid, disgusting people, who will continue doing everything in their seemingly unlimited power to back a lawless regime that by words and deeds is intent on incinerating our Democracy, and the notion that all men (and women) are created equal.

Democrats must hold the line here.

If you somehow still aren’t convinced about the danger we are in right now, consider that on this date in 1936 — exactly 90 years ago — Nazi Germany passed a law investing the Gestapo secret police with absolute authority exempt from any legal review.

Here’s a word from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on the Gestapo. The parallels to ICE are absolutely chilling:

The Gestapo’s mission was to “investigate and combat all attempts to threaten the state.” In the Nazi view, threats to the state encompassed a wide variety of behaviors. These behaviors included everything from organized political opposition to individual critical remarks about the Nazis. The government even defined belonging to certain categories or groups of people as threatening. To combat this wide array of potential threats, the Nazi dictatorship gave the Gestapo enormous power.

One way in which the Gestapo carried out its mission was by enforcing new Nazi laws. Some of these laws broadly defined criticism of the regime as a security threat. For example, a December 1934 law made it illegal to criticize the Nazi Party or the Nazi regime. Telling a joke about Hitler could be categorized as a “malicious attack against the state or the Party.” It could then result in an arrest by the Gestapo, trial before a special court, and even imprisonment in a concentration camp.

But the Gestapo went much further than monitoring individual behaviors. They implemented Nazi ideology, which defined entire groups of people as racial or political enemies. Membership in the Communist Party or a Jewish background was enough to make someone a threat to the state and subject to Gestapo attention.

The Nazi regime gave Gestapo agents a great deal of power to decide the fate of the people they arrested.

The Gestapo had the final word.

Nobody in America can say they haven’t been warned.

Nobody in our government should ever be allowed to murder Americans and say, “they were just following orders.”

If Republicans continue to get their gruesome way, America’s 250th birthday will be her last.

We must fight for her, and US with everything we have.

That starts with putting guardrails on murdering ICE right now — unless you want to tell me a country with 500 million guns can’t be wrong …

---

AN 12 25

Why I'm done being silent about Trump's supporters

:{:{D. Earl Stephens December 04, 2025 | }:

I have cut back on the time I spend on social media since last year’s terrible elections. It might be the only good that’s come from one of the worst days in American history.

A once thriving Twitter account is now dead and buried. I simply can’t be anywhere the ghastly Elon Musk and his phony hate-mongers. The place is an overflowing trashcan full of so many lies, and awful things, it’s a wonder it hasn’t self-combusted.

These days, I kick around Bluesky, and Substack’s Notes when I feel like I need to get something off my chest in a hurry.

Last week, white people’s support for Donald Trump and his revolting Republican Party was eating away at me as it often does, so I let go the this blast:

The very direct point, of course, was that without white people, there’d be no President Trump.

“Most white people” got that point, but too many didn’t for my taste, and were indignant that I would type such a thing. Many white commenters made it clear that they didn't vote for Trump, and/or scolded me for scapegoating them.

Here’s a few examples:

“Wow. What a massive generalization. Lots of brown and black people voted for him too but it’s really irrelevant because it’s not a race thing. It’s a stupid thing. There are lots of dumb people in this country who have zero critical thinking skills. That’s the problem. Not all the bad white people.”

“Uh, I don’t know where you got your stats from … but I’m not so sure. Certainly not this white person …”

“It is not most white people. It’s a select few f------ idiots.”

Thankfully, more got it, than didn’t. This one wins a trophy:

“As white people who personally did not vote for him, let’s acknowledge that OUR DEMOGRAPHIC did vote for him. The collective “We” must OWN that, and work harder to engage those who voted for him, or who didn’t vote at all.”

Listen to me: You don’t get credit for simply doing the right thing by not voting for a bigot. It’s the very least that should be expected of you. Voting against a vulgar racist like Trump should be as easy and reflexive as putting on a warm jacket to ward off the bitter cold.

The terrible fact is that in all three elections that the appalling Trump was on the ballot, a majority (most) of white people in America voted for him.

Is everybody a racist who supports Trump? Maybe not, but everybody who did vote for him is a hardcore racist, or best case, ignored his long history of hate, to knowingly put a racist in our White House.

Many of these morally bankrupt people are probably some of your friends and family, or in my case, and as I made clear, ex-friends and family.

Here’s the breakdown of the last three presidential elections from the Pew Research Center. I am not sure why the 2016 numbers are incomplete, but you’ll want to concentrate on the white men and white women columns.

In all three elections that Trump was on the ballot, “most” white men and women voted for him. Hence, my post above.

Now that you’ve had a chance to look at these dreadful numbers, let’s also acknowledge that America mostly has a terrible white man problem, and that there is still a mountain of work to do scouring out the terrible misogyny that still pervades too many households, workplaces and the current White House.

Misogyny goes hand in hand with racism, and is a destructive disease eating away at millions of weak, impressionable minds.

This past week or so alone, Trump, who is rotting from the inside out right in front of our eyes, has called female reporters, “Piggy” and “stupid, horrible and ugly.” This follows a long pattern over his morbid lifetime of disparaging women, and mostly their appearance.

HE, an orange mess of a man, who tapes a dead ferret to his head each morning, is mocking other people’s looks.

But back to the eyesore of a graphic above …

Please take a hard look what Black voters did. I have typed before, and will type until my last breath, that they are America’s true patriots, and the only voting bloc that overwhelmingly and consistently gets it right.

I make it a point of walking in their shoes and at least trying to see things through their eyes whenever I can. How incredibly sad it must be to see white people fail so catastrophically at the polls each year, by electing lowlifes who see white supremacy in America as a virtue, instead of a plague.

I try to imagine how many people would have been shot dead on the spot Jan. 6, 2021, if Black people had dared attack our Capitol and beat and stomped law enforcement officials into the curb, as all those lawless, violent white people did on one of America’s darkest days.

Would Trump have told these thugs that he loved them after that horrific day?

It defies logic that anybody could have watched what happened at our Capitol, and what has happened to the criminals who attacked us since, and not see the rampant, odious white privilege in this country.

I try to imagine how Black people must feel as schools, universities, and corporations recklessly abandoned their Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) efforts in the terrible wake of Trump’s win last year.

These important initiatives, many, decades in the making, now lay in the rubble because of the weak, submissive white people, who either never believed in what they were doing, or worse, are too cowardice to stand up for what is most certainly good … and right … and FAIR.

Because DEI has never once been about favoritism, it is about fairness. If you think Black people have gotten a fair shake in this country, then in addition to your bout with bigotry, you have a terrible case of lying to yourself.

As a white man, who has had every advantage in life, I will not stop hammering these points home. I will not surrender to bigots like Trump, and the horrible people who support him, and like the commenter said above, will “work harder to engage those who voted for him, or who didn’t vote at all.”

This is my core issue — the one that courses through my veins and gives my life real meaning.

I cannot think of men like Martin Luther King Jr. or John Lewis without getting a lump in my throat. These were giants, who endured beatings and even death to take America to a better place. We honor them, by standing on their broad shoulders and rising ever higher.

I will continue to speak up about racial equity, and down against people who do everything possible to prevent it. I will never stop talking about it, because that is exactly what these racists want.

Everything must be done to eradicate racism in America, because until it is dead and gone, we can never dare to say or believe that all men and women are created equal.

Right now, that is simply another lie, and shame on us for not doing everything in our power as caring humans beings to finally correct it.

---

This could end the galling stupidity that keeps Trump in power

(REUTERS)

D. Earl StephensSeptember 09, 2025

One of the most significant developments in what was another ear-shattering, soul-crushing week in American politics transpired quietly last Monday evening, when Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) announced he was stepping down.

Nadler, 78, has been a liberal force during his three decades in Congress, and by finally throwing in the towel signaled that maybe — just MAYBE — Democrats are starting to listen to their angry constituents, who are not at all pleased by the way the party has comported itself leading up to, and after, the most consequential election in American history this past November.

“Watching the Biden thing really said something about the necessity for generational change in the party, and I think I want to respect that,” Nadler said, before grudgingly adding, that a younger replacement “can maybe do better, can maybe help us more.”

Using the word “maybe” was Nadler’s ego talking, but it was the “Watching the Biden thing …” that really interested me. I’ll have more on that in a minute, but for now, it’s instructive to listen to how news of Nadler’s departure was received in Democratic circles. Put it this way: I have not heard from ONE person of note who thought this was a bad decision.

Basically, this is what I have been hearing:

“Thank you, sir, for your many years of service. I wish more Democrats would do the same.”

To put it kindly, the Democratic Party has become a stale, useless brand. It is a party crying for a new direction, and new leadership. It needs fresh faces, and new ideas. Again: Nobody I have talked to disputes this.

One only needs see what is transpiring in Nadler’s haunts in New York City for a vivid illustration of the party’s self-destructive clash of cultures.

Up-and-comer, Zohran Mamdani, 33, handily won the New York City Democratic Mayoral Primary in July, but instead of celebrating his victory, the Democratic old guard, led by Andrew Cuomo, are fighting hard against him.

This is grotesque, it really is, but is serving to expose all that is wrong with a party that refuses to get out of its own way.

Even Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has not been able to bring himself to endorse his fellow New Yorker, most likely because his campaign has accepted upwards of $1 million from the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (which loathes Mamdani) in just the last year alone, and because Jeffries has proven himself to be too cute by half.

Once an up-and-comer himself, Jeffries has lately fallen flat, and is out of tune with the majority of his party these days, who see him as a lurker, not a leader. Sadly, he seems to be one of the only people who doesn’t see this.

Mamdani’s stunning victory in the July primary was a repudiation of the old guard, their failed ideas, and all that old money. Mamdani has proven he can reach the voters that Democrats must have to win elections, which begs the question:

Why then are so many old guard Democrats throwing rocks at him?

The easy answer is all that damn money, but there is also something else at play here: Sheer stupidity, as well as that ego even Nadler has found so hard to shelve.

Listen to me:

If there was just ONE thing Democrats could do to enhance their chances in every election for the next 20 years it would be this: Throw out that old guard, swap out your so-called leadership, and make good and damn sure every person in America knows you’ve done it.

REPEAT: Throw out the old guard, swap out your so-called leadership, and make good and damn sure every person in America knows you’ve done it.

Nothing would signal you are listening to your terrified and angry electorate more than that. Further, it would serve notice to the growing number of Americans who don’t see a difference between our two major parties that this version of the Democratic Party isn’t serving up just more of the same old bull----.

Politics is a competitive, bottom-line sport. And in every sport except politics, winners are rewarded with a second chance, while losers go home. When a team wins, coaches, players and general managers are rewarded for their efforts. When a team loses, coaches, players, and general managers are sent packing.

At least this is how the perennial winners do it …

Fans of these teams expect nothing less. Why would they pour their hard-earned money into the pockets of losers? Are these fans any different than the constituents of the Democratic Party? Why should the people who do all the heavy lifting, volunteering, door-knocking, and rallying and marching until their feet hurt keep showing up if their party is just going to trot out the same old, tired-a-- losing team?

If you’ve read even a little of my stuff, you know how I feel about the revolting, racist, misogynistic, anti-American Republican Party.

That this group of bought-off goons has been able to garner the support of something called the “working-class American” is not only patently insane, but speaks to the massive failures of the Democratic Party, which has allowed for the greatest heist in American history.

How can the party that stands with unions, workers’ rights, increased minimum wage, wages overall, healthcare, childcare, social security, Medicaid and Medicare be losing the working-class voters?????

And, by the way, have you seen the latest job reports, showing Trump’s predictable and massive failures?

We’ve heard a lot about Democrats’ inability to communicate to the American public, but I’m not sure if that messaging is as much of a problem as the people who are doing it — those losing players I was talking about.

Like it or not, most Americans are sick and tired of the Cuomos and the Clintons, the Chuck Schumers and Hakeem Jeffries, the Amy Klobuchars and the Steny Hoyers, the Mark Warners and the Cory Bookers …

The list is really long, and growing.

None of these people should be in leadership any longer, and none of them will ever become president despite all their unbridled ambition, so they need to finally get that out of their hard heads.

Like it or not, they are the faces of a failed brand. I am not saying they all need to go, but they do need to learn to lead from behind, while pushing new, aspiring leaders forward.

THAT is how you truly serve your country, and thank you in advance.

It was bad enough the party lost the House, the Senate and the presidency in the most consequential elections in American history last November, but they somehow made it even worse by the way they completely and callously mishandled their beating.

It was almost as if they couldn’t wait to surrender.

It was as if they didn’t give a good goddam about the people who spent their time and treasure working their tails off to get them elected, and were now terrified about what was coming down the pike in a second, vengeful Trump dictatorial term.

A term, by the way, that should have never been allowed to happen if we had a damn Justice Department that acted with the urgency Trump’s January 6, 2021, attack on our nation most certainly demanded.

Joe Biden himself was absolutely appalling in Kamala Harris’s defeat, what with his warm welcome to America’s dictator in front of that damn fire in the White House only days after the election. I will never be able to unsee or un-hear that grotesque spectacle.

Then there was the cheery Klobuchar handling the inauguration festivities of the fascist dictator as if hosting some terrible, pinky-out cocktail party, while Schumer took it all in doing his worst impression of Chuck Schumer.

The gall of these people …

Within months, polls started reflecting Americans distaste for this out-of-touch, ineffective group. As I type this, the Democratic Party’s approval ratings are at roughly 20 percent.

Four out of five Americans don’t like what they are being served by Democrats.

It almost makes Trump’s 40 percent approvals look stellar by comparison.

But maybe Democrats are finally opening the door a crack, to let the fresh air in.

In the past few weeks I have seen hints of a different party, with different tactics, even if I am still seeing the same galling stupidity out of too many selfish dimwits like the odious, women-groping Andrew Cuomo.

Maybe Jerry Nadler’s resignation is a sign Democrats really are beginning to listen to their bosses in the field. We need more of this, people.

FAR MORE OF IT.

We need to hear from the new politicians, with new voices and ideas, who are advancing all the good Democrats have done and are doing, while forcefully standing against the most dangerous party in our nation’s history.

And we need to see them competing in our Red States as well as the Blue and Purple ones. Quit conceding turf to these fascists, who offer nothing to their voters but vitriol and death.

WE are the good guys, dammit.

WE need fighters.

These are the people who I will support. I am done getting my a-- kicked by backing the same old losing team with the same old losing players.

NOW READ: Arkansas farmers are facing catastrophe — and Trump is the reason why

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9 25

A dangerous group of whacko militants threatens to destroy Florida as we know it

:{:{D. Earl StephensSeptember 07, 2025 |}:

Florida announced plans this week to become the first state to end all vaccine mandates, INCLUDING FOR SCHOOLCHILDREN.

Read that again.

I had intended to write about the Epstein files today, and the incredibly brave survivors of alleged child rape, who gathered on Capitol Hill to tell their stories. They were there because it is beginning to look like our president who ran on releasing those files, instead has a starring role in them, and will do everything possible to make sure they never see the light of day.

That would generally would be a banner story. In a sane, just world, it would have the potential to end Donald Trump's presidency, and ultimately land him jail for the rest of his miserable life.

But because you hang around places like this and pay attention, you don’t need me to tell you that we are not living in a sane, just world.

Just how insane and unjust is the world? Consider that the possibility of the president being accused of sexual abusing underage women was by far only the second-biggest story of the day ...

Truth is, this vaccine news might be one of the most significant stories of the century, because of its gruesome ramifications on the future of our rattling civilization.

Bluntly: If Florida goes through with this death plan, it could potentially result in one of the largest losses of human life ever.

Look, vaccines have been a life-changing discovery, and one of mankind’s greatest achievements. The advent of vaccines has saved hundreds of millions of lives the past 100 years or so.

That we are reversing our thinking on the use of vaccines in America is almost too absurd to contemplate. The profound stupidity and danger this presents really can't be overstated.

MILLIONS of lives are at risk if Florida out-Floridas itself and actually puts this deranged plan into action.

We need only look at COVID to see this.

Despite what you’ll hear from many ghoulish, anti-life Republicans, millions of lives were saved thanks to COVID vaccines. Maybe even more startling, an estimated 317,000 lives in the United States alone would have been saved during the COVID outbreak had everybody just done their civic duty and gotten vaccinated.

If Florida goes ahead with this insane plan, just as sure as I am typing this, all kinds of otherwise preventable diseases will begin reappearing all over the place — measles and polio just to name a couple. And while our children will be most vulnerable, because Republicans never saw a kid whose life wasn’t worth jeopardizing, Florida’s huge population of retirees will also be under direct threat.

We will ALL be under threat.

Today’s gruesome news comes in the backdrop of the insane vaccine guidance being shoveled out to the American public by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., our secretary of Health and Human Services, who listens to everybody but professionals in the medical and scientists communities, ignores a century’s worth of vaccines’ positive results, and has been a vocal vaccine skeptic.

Last month, after Kennedy proudly announced the rollback of nearly $500 million in vaccine funding, I typed this:

“Instead of answers and more science and discovery to make sure we are ready for the next mass-medical emergency, Trump instead has inflicted us with this gruesome stray from the Kennedy dynasty, who is quickly becoming a one-man pandemic.”

Last week, Susan Monarez, the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was forced out by Captain Death less than one month into her job for refusing to go along with this maniac’s plans to end us.

Four other leading officials at the CDC resigned because they too had come under extreme pressure from the sickening Kennedy. One of those officials said Kennedy’s team asked him to “change studies that have been settled in the past” to fit Kennedy’s anti-vaccine views.

Yep, “change studies.” Just make stuff up. I mean, it’s only people’s lives we are talking about …

So who are the players down in the Sunset State, who are putting this latest death plan into action?

Let’s start with Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo, the Florida surgeon general, who made the announcement standing beside the state’s grotesque and Trump-slobbering Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Ladapo is a COVID vaccine-denier. A quack. A nut. A complete moron.

And dangerous as hell.

He has associated withccalled “America’s Frontline Doctors,” which is led by Texas physician Stella Immanuel, who has put forth the theory out loud and often that sperm from alien or demon sexual visitations are responsible for much of what ails us.

With qualifications like that, there is a good chance Ladapo has the inside track to the 2028 Republican Presidential nomination …

In announcing what will henceforth be known as the “Florida Death Plan” Ladapo said this:

“Who am I to tell you what your child should put in their body?”

Who are YOU to tell us??? You are allegedly a doctor, sonny. Should we be going to an exterminator to get advice on medical issues?

Er … That actually might be advisable in Florida.

He added that the administration would be “working to end” all vaccine mandates, because “every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery.”

I’m not making this up.

Not a single word about the lives vaccines have saved, just lies and conspiracy theories, because that is the Republican way in 2025.

And then, of course, there’s DeSantis himself. A dumb man’s idea of a smart person. The ultimate Florida Man. A guy, who says, “Watch this!” while playing with matches and gasoline, as is the case with this maniacal, evil vaccine plan.

While standing next to Ladapo with that beachball-sized smirk on his face, Trump’s willing punching bag announced that his wife, Casey DeSantis, will head the commission on the Florida Death Plan, because if we are going to kill hundreds of a thousands of children best we have a dreadfully unqualified ghoul doing it.

Her beaming husband, Ron, ended the press conference by bragging:

“We’ve already done a lot. I don’t think any state has come even close to what Florida has done.”

He’ll get no argument there.

---

7 25

Behind the real reason Americans voted for Trump

FILE PHOTO: Supporters of Republican presidential nominee former U.S. President Donald Trump react as Trump speaks from the Palm Beach County Convention Center, as they attend an election watch party at Maricopa County Republican Committee during the 2024 U.S. presidential election in Chandler, Arizona, U.S., November 6, 2024. REUTERS/Go Nakamura/File Photo

D. Earl StephensJuly 31, 2025 | 05:49AM ET

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I am going to start today, by actually giving the America-attacking Trump credit for something: He understands far better than any politician in America that the majority of the American public is comprised of complete morons.

The sooner Democrats figure this out the better. And by sooner … I mean RIGHT NOW.

It’s a national emergency.

We’ve all been tortured by these dreaded political operatives, experts, analysts and partisans endlessly ranting at us about Democrats’ inability to craft a message that resonates with the American public. The party is viewed by roughy 80 percent of America as out of touch and irrelevant. I’m sure I have punished you by writing about this 15 times myself.

And while this is no doubt true, it’s actually far worse than that, because even if Democrats could communicate like Abraham Lincoln, they’d have absolutely no idea how or where to reach the people who need to hear what they have to say.

The Democrats have become expert at going high and talking to each other in the clouds, instead of going low and reaching the tens of millions of morons out there who could stand to hear what they are saying, despite themselves.

Since bursting on the scene like a racist hand grenade in 2015, Trump has proven beyond all doubt he understands the American electorate better than anybody. The man is so sure of himself that he went right out there and said he could shoot one of his supporters in the middle of the street and not lose their vote.

Now, there’s confidence, folks.

When you reckon with the fact that most Americans are morons as Trump has, and start expecting less instead of more, the way forward will seem less daunting.

We don’t have an over-thinking problem in America, we have an under-thinking one.

I’m not wrong about this.

Look, the most important issue facing America, and the entire world for that matter, is climate change. In addition to costing us trillions of dollars, our overheating planet will eventually end all of us if it is not addressed with the urgency it demands.

Spoiler: It won’t be.

It’s hard to get a moron worried about something that they either don’t believe is happening, or if it is, most likely won’t affect them in any meaningful way during what’s left of their moronic lifetime.

When the world ends, they’ll be long gone anyway, so why bother?

I was standing on a beach in North Carolina quietly taking in the breathtaking Atlantic Ocean last summer — true story — when a friendly chap my age approached. We made some small talk before he said quite unprompted that all this talk about climate change was “a bunch of bull----.”

According to him none of it was happening. It was nothing but political hooey designed to get us all worked up.

I’m certain he thought the old, white guy he was talking to would be a sympathetic ear for his moronic denialism, so when I told him that the ocean we were staring at was going to swallow us all whole someday, he said again: “No. That’s just bull----.”

And then just like that he tipped his cap, told me to genuinely have a nice day, and skipped away to assault the next unsuspecting beachgoer with his pale-full of ignorance.

In the year since I was mentally assaulted on that beach, the pyromaniacs in the new administration are doubling down and literally throwing gasoline on our heating planet.

What the hell are we supposed to do with that, Democrats?

I mean we can’t ignore climate change, and must do what we can to mitigate it, but continuing to make it a central campaign issue is worthless because of all the damn morons out there.

I was sure democracy was a pressing issue, too, especially after the violent attack on January 6, 2021. Well, not only don’t most people much care about it, the morons who perpetrated the attack have been hailed as heroes by millions of other morons, and are back out on the street and free to try it again if and when necessary.

So I ask again: What we are we supposed to do with that?

And don’t even get me started about vaccines, a woman’s right to choose, or myriad other issues that are killing all of us …

I began typing this on Monday afternoon and was scratching my head after watching a press gathering in Scotland, where the Prime Minister of UK had just surrendered himself at Trump’s golf course.

You read that right: the leader of Great Britain was a visitor in his own country.

Can you imagine if Sir Keir Starmer roared into the United States and promptly summoned Trump to meet him at his beach house?

That place would be flattened by a tomahawk missile, with Starmer in it, five seconds later.

I actually felt embarrassed for my British family and friends over there, until I remembered that as bad their leader just looked, we are getting the moron who emasculated him back in our White House in a couple of days to water his racist house plant, Stephen Miller.

Anyway, Trump said more stupid things in 30 minutes, than Joe Biden has said in 30 years. Words just came out of the guy’s mouth that meant absolutely nothing. We’ve all seen him do this. On Gaza, for instance, he breathlessly said this:

“We’ll be helping with the food. We have a lot of access to food. We have a lot of food ourselves. So we’re going to get them some good strong food.”

Strong food …

Go ahead and watch if yer brave enough.

And it’s always the steadfast confidence and determined stupidity in which he addresses the world’s most pressing and obvious issues as he discovers them all for the very first time. He’s the 2-year-old who bashes his head with a rock, and earnestly brags to his mother how hard it really and truly-ooly is.

His head, I mean.

And let’s not forget the fact that he was double-dipping by doing business (playing golf) on one of his properties on our dime. But it’s the public servant studying climate change that needs to be run out of her job …

And, hey, I am the guy who wrote the book on this stuff back when I thought it was all just some terrible anomaly and America would get back on track in 2020 after four years of word salads, and 250,000 needless deaths.

I simply underestimated how big our moron problem in America was at the time.

It’s staggering, it really is.

Now, seven years later, Trump’s complete idiocy and lack of command about anything resembling policy have been completely normalized, and I have grudgingly come to understand most average Americans are just fine with it.

Taking somebody’s healthcare away might be serious, but eating their dogs and cats?! Well now … we need to have a serious talk about that one, buster.

So Democrats need to start meeting the majority of Americans where they are: most likely staring at their phones and communicating with each other in Emoji.

Healthcare for all: smiley face

Billionaires are bad: grumpy face

Stop worrying about people like me, Democrats. As a haughty independent who pays attention, you most likely have my vote for the foreseeable future, just as long as voting is still a thing in this country, or you decide to eat my cat.

It’s the disaffected out there you need to start reaching with alacrity by hitting them where they’re at, and preferably with a dumbed-down message any moron can understand.

NOW READ: The one man who has the strength to finish off Donald Trump

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no lnx

Corporate media still hasn't learned that Trump isn't just a complete and total moron

(REUTERS)

:{:{D. Earl Stephens June 27, 2025}:

]Once upon a time, an endless seven years ago, I accidentally wrote a book about Donald Trump.

Actually, the book pretty much wrote itself, because I used Trump’s very own best words to satirically annihilate him. We were into the second year of his [gulp] first presidency and it was clear to anybody paying attention the guy was so far out of his element and out over his skis that it was only a matter of when he’d crash, not if he’d crash.

The man was a complete moron, and anybody who couldn’t see that was, well, a …

Anyway, gaining inspiration from his death-defying Mr. MaGoo act of careening around the country making a moron out of himself wherever his fat, little feet had landed, I hit my computer one Saturday morning and started penning a letter to America that would come off the desk of the Moron in Chief, Donald Trump.

But this letter couldn’t be just any letter, my friends. No, this letter had to be Jeffersonian in weight. This letter had to be a Very Important Letter.

So I wrote the thing, had a laugh, loaded it on my website, and then shared it on Twitter.

I did the same thing the next week, and the next week, and the next week …

Turns out they were quite a hit. When a publisher contacted me cold one day and approached me about turning all those letters into a book, I laughed, and she said, “exactly.”

Just about a year later, Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters was born.

I’m not here to sell you that book today, my friends, I’m really not. But I lament that since that book was published, there has been enough material to fill the pages of three more books.

This was all supposed to be over in November, 2020. America’s greatest mistake was supposed to have been shoved away in some padded locker in his seedy country club.

By the time the carnage had ended with his violent attack on America just two months later, I figured like any half-sane person we were finally done with the dangerous moron for good.

Better yet: He’d be behind bars where he belonged.

Even after the three-dimensional, chess-playing law-and-order expert, Merrick Garland, managed to put himself in check by disgracefully failing to prosecute America’s No. 1 enemy, I figured his subsequent tarring as a sexual-abuser by a civil court jury and conviction of 34 counts of falsification of business records simply had to end it. I mean, America wasn’t really going to elect a “law-and-order candidate” who was an America-attacking convicted felon, were they?

So here we are into the 150 most destabilizing days in American history and the moron is somehow back in our White House breaking things like our government into a million pieces, glueing them back to together, and bragging that only he could perform this magnificent black magic. We are being gaslighted like never before, and the sane among us are back to banging our heads against the wall.

We don’t deserve this cruel and unusual punishment, we really don’t …

And of course, where there’s Trump, there’s a social media account that he is absolutely obliterating. And where there’s a Trump social media account that he is absolutely obliterating, there are enough moronic words to write several books.

Yesterday, the moron outdid himself, which is like saying he somehow got even oranger.

Just after 6 p.m. local time, he decided to share this take on what was happening in the Mideast inside his moronic, overly crowded head, no matter what was really happening in the Mideast

And God bless the entire f------ galaxy, with the hope you have the Stamina and Courage not to go into orbit after reading whatever the hell that mess was supposed to be.

I mean, holy hell.

And, yes, I get it. He used the word “God” 40 times to appease the dangerous Christo Fascists, who have put the moron back in power, to beat the rest of us to death with a gold-plated hammer. That’s a column for another day. This one has to do with dealing with the moron who is right front of our eyes.

Look, if your 10-year-old son wrote something this preposterous, you'd be on the phone with his teacher the very next morning begging her to adopt him. Short of that, you’d demand she hold him back a few years so he could catch up to the 6-year-olds.

You needn’t wonder why his parents shoved him in a military boarding school, because they simply couldn’t stand to be around him anymore …

Except this is the President to the United States. Wait: THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!!! And the only people on the Right who can do anything about him right now are either feeding him warped Bible stories to encourage him, or are scared to death he is going sic his cult on them and have them blown to smithereens.

It really is this bad right now.

And if Republicans have a pathetic excuse for their pathetic inaction to curb this man-child’s worst instincts, what is our damn media’s excuse?

Because after The Moron barfed out whatever that was supposed to be above, The New York Times decided to deal with it this way in an email blast just an hour later:

Trump’s Washington

How President Trump is changing government, the country and its politics.

Tonight, I’m covering the unusual way President Trump is posting through the war in Iran.

President Trump offered an olive branch to Iran after a response to America’s weekend strike that appeared calculated to ramp down the tensions. Below, I examine the curious way he did it.

Read all that again …

Saying that Trump is “changing government” is like saying Hitler “changed” immigration. Describing how Trump is dealing with the dangerous mess in Iran that he created as “unusual” is like describing his violent attack to overthrow our government on January 6, 2021, as simply “a day of love.”

Oh, and as I publish this? Iran and Israel are still bombing the bejesus out of each other.

Nine years after Trump asked Vladimir Putin to help get him elected — “Russia, if you’re listening” — and it was subsequently normalized, our corporate media still hasn’t learned its lesson when dealing with this dangerous moron.

People who deal in words, still somehow don’t understand that how you use those words matter.

They still haven’t learned that Trump isn’t just a complete and total moron, he is also the President of the United States.

And that happens to make him the most dangerous man on Earth.

God help us.

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NO LNX

Home | Donald Trump's gaslighting has gone on long enough

:{:{D. Earl Stephens June 15, 2025}:

As I was typing a piece on Saturday morning, endeavoring to stitch together Flag Day, our army’s birthday, and the peaceful marches against tyranny that were going off all over the United States of America, I got a chilling news bulletin — that two Minnesota lawmakers and their spouses had been shot in their homes by a madman impersonating a police officer.

This is what I knew as my fingers hit the keyboard:

State Representative Melissa Hortman and husband, Mark, have died in the attack at their home in the Minneapolis suburbs. State Senator John A. Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were also shot multiple times at their house in a nearby suburb, but remain alive.

Minnesota Gov.Tim Walz has called this a “political assassination.”

This will be a developing, gruesome, and very American story for some time to come. I want to be careful to honor the victims while channeling my sadness and rage at the state of things in my country in as precise a manner as possible.

So let me start here:

What happened in Minnesota can surprise ABSOLUTELY NOBODY who has been paying even the slightest amount of attention to the sickly state of America in 2025.

It is perhaps the most predictable thing I have seen coming in the roiling wake of a week in which we have seen a U.S. senator — a son of Los Angeles — tackled and handcuffed for simply asking a puppy-shooting, ineffectual wax figure to explain herself, and to stop lying about the reason for her agency’s invasion of the city he grew up in. There were no apologies for this disgusting incident.

We have watched helplessly while human beings, one after another, have been swept off our streets by masked monsters, who may or may not be impersonating government law enforcement officers.

We have watched as this grotesque president whipped young, impressionable soldiers into a frenzy and made sure to empty their pockets and fill his by selling them his warped MAGA memorabilia on one of our army bases.

We have gone so far past the unimaginable, it is impossible to know where to begin to connect with the normal.

But let me be crystal clear on this: ALL OF IT lies at the fat little feet of the convicted felon, who attacked this country on January 6, 2021, did nothing to stop that attack for hours and instead rooted for its success, and has continued to intentionally throw gasoline on the raging fires he has so eagerly stoked, starting in the vicinity of 2010 when he questioned President Obama’s citizenship.

THAT was the catalyst for everything that has followed, and has lead us to lawmakers and their families now being slaughtered in their homes.

IT IS ALL ON HIM.

Perhaps I am not helping right now, but like so many of you I have grown weary and disgusted waiting for people with heft and alleged status to say what we all know to be true.

The gaslighting has gone on long enough.

My God, this mess of a man stood in our nation’s capital in that odd way he does … ample a-- out, jutted, orange chin forward … and did his best Mussolini impression by keeping the tanks running on time on their way down our streets.

Are you reading this????????

TANKS.

All this to honor himself on his 79th birthday. If there is any good news here, and you have to squint hard to see it, he has climbed another notch on the actuarial life table.

I have said enough for now, my friends. Like you I am aching inside. My fury wringing out tears …

I took part in our march here in Madison, Wisconsin, joining tens of thousands of other hearty souls who love their country enough to assemble peacefully on her behalf.

We are still the lucky ones. Nobody has turned their guns on us — yet.

NOW READ: Trump just got a wake up call as he tries to escalate his war on defiance

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an 6 25

Navy vet shakes with rage over 'grotesque MAGA merchandise'

D. Earl Stephens June 14, 2025 }:

By now, you have most likely heard of the disgraceful appearance by Donald Trump at Fort Bragg in North Carolina on Tuesday.

The convicted felon’s remarks to Army personnel were partisan, incendiary, anti-American and belong in a dumpster and/or Mar-a-Lago, not a United States military base.

Except it was even worse than any of us thought ...

Thanks to some stellar reporting by Military.com, we are learning today that U.S. taxpayers essentially funded a vulgar MAGA rally at a U.S. Army facility.

The appearance by the president of the United States of America had NOTHING TO DO with the morale and good order of our troops and everything to do with HIM, as he stirred these young men and women into a partisan frenzy.

Things were so out of hand, that there were actually booths set up to sell grotesque MAGA merchandise and memorabilia to our troops. This didn’t just cross a line, it obliterated it, and was against myriad Defense Department regulations.

From military.com reporting:

substackcdn.com

I am admittedly shaking with rage as I type this, friends, because as a veteran I could have never conceived of something like this in my lifetime. These are the kinds of things that happen in other troubled countries — many of which WE actually have helped to liberate with our blood in the past.

I want to keep this missive brief, because I encourage you to read and share widely the comprehensive piece that I linked to above. Please do this.

As the retired managing editor of Stars and Stripes, the editorially independent newspaper that serves the troops and their families overseas, I want to commend the continued good work the folks at Military.com are continuing to do stateside. I assure you they are experts on the military, and wedded to top-notch journalism. Their work has never been more important as the U.S. slides toward fascism.

We are in the most precarious moment in our nation’s history since the beginning of the Civil War. Anybody who is not reporting it this way is dangerous, completely out of their depth, and should not be taken seriously.

Since day one of this anti-American administration I have been warning with some precision that we were heading toward this terrible juncture, and I wish nothing more than to report to you that I was wrong.

Turns out, I actually underestimated the pace of our descent into authoritarianism. Unless there is some significant pushback by our military, fellow citizens, the press, the Democrats and the reprehensible Republican Party, it is hard to see how we survive this.

Before signing out, I am again calling on our military leadership past and present, and fellow veterans everywhere, to speak out loudly against this ongoing attack THAT WE KNOW IS WRONG.

For now, stay strong, lean on each other, and call your political representatives (202-224-3121) to make your voices heard.

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an 6 25

How this horrid show ends

:{:{D. Earl StephensJune 09, 2025 |}:

With the nuclear-powered slap fight between the absolutely revoting Elon Musk and even more revolting Donald Trump continuing to fixate America, I’ll tell you how it ends.

This prediction is based on more than a decade’s worth of experience watching these two decadent slobs in the public eye, and is more reliable than any of the 14,000 polls, and 411,000 partisan influencers out there who are generally wrong about literally everything.

In the next few days, and maybe even before I am done publishing this blast, these two narcissistic gasbags will make a very public deal out of hugging it out in a never-ending series of social media posts that will put millions of eyes on their platforms, and millions of dollars in their bottomless pockets, while they heroically tell their tale of two titans of industry who have just battled through and survived a tremendous, spectacular, terrifying, incredible struggle that nobody has ever seen before.

The press will buy into all this hook, line and sinker, and will run endless stories of the fantastic, wild, fascinating terrific struggle, and the rest of us will be back to where we were before, but actually never left: living in a country in historic decline, where human rights are worth as much as a discarded wrapper from a hamburger inhaled by the America-attacking Trump, and Musk will be doing God knows what with all our personal information he has accumulated after being given free rein in our government.

Right-wing media will trumpet “Hail to the Victors” and Democrats will be pointing at the smoking carnage of what was, while what is actually happening is even worse than it was 24 hours before.

Two weeks from now all this will be forgotten, and we will be smack in the middle of the next existential crisis that will demand all of our time, while even more of our rights have been incinerated, and billionaires like Trump and Musk have even more of our money.

In short: all this is a really horrid show, because each of these demented sickos know that bad publicity is better than no publicity at all. Both have been suffering loudly with their self-important approval ratings, and know that most idiots in America love a breakup and reconciliation story — even if it features two of the most ghastly people who have ever been hatched.

As long as they are both being talked about, they can kick their feet up and live comfortably inside their fat, miserable racist heads.

Are you not entertained?

Me?

I miss Joe Biden.

NOW READ: Humiliated Trump targets California

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Here's why OAN's MAGA propagandist was booted out of the Pentagon

Gabrielle Cuccia of OAN

D. Earl Stephens June 05, 2025 | 12:32AM ET

While poking around all the likely news sources this morning, I landed on this piece from the Associated Press: “OAN’s Pentagon Reporter Learns the Limits of Expressing Her Own Opinion.”

Here’s the subhead: “The day the face-eating leopard ate my face.”

OK, the subhead is mine, but the story is bonkers, scary, and one of the most MAGA things I have ever read.

Here’s the lede from the AP’s David Bauder, who did an admirable job of playing this one straight, even if I will predict he typed this beauty through gritted teeth:

“Assigned to cover the Pentagon for the conservative outlet One America News Network, Gabrielle Cuccia didn’t pretend to be an unbiased reporter. She describes herself as “a MAGA girl” who is unapologetically defiant in her support of President Donald Trump.

“Yet days after publicly criticizing a Trump appointee, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Cuccia found herself out of a job.”

To start with, and there are a million points of entry for a bizarre story like this one, let’s just get this out of the way quick: One America News Network (OAN) — and why isn’t it OAN-N? — is a hardcore right-wing propaganda weapon that doesn’t belong anywhere close to the vicinity of anything serious, much less in the halls of our Pentagon. Ditto, the (allegedly) drunken Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who has already shared more secrets with our enemies than Trump on the patio of a Mar-a-Lago all-you-can-eat cookout with half the Russian embassy.

Here’s some background on OAN(N) from Bauder:

One America News Network makes no secret of its allegiance to Trump. When Matt Gaetz’s nomination as Trump’s attorney general fell apart following the election, OAN quickly signed him up as a contributor. OAN faced lawsuits — and negotiated settlements — for its promotion of Trump’s false theories that he did not lose the 2020 election.

So you have a MAGA propaganda network “covering” the Pentagon with a propagandist stooge, who will climb every mountain to proudly proclaim she is completely in the tank for the anti-American Trump Administration, no matter what.

Wipe that grin off your face, Vladimir …

Well, the trouble started for “MAGA girl” when she was reminded that she got her job in the Pentagon not because she is anything resembling a real journalist, but because she is, first and foremost, a power tool.

She was there on behalf of the Trump Administration-OAN(N) partnership to prop Hegseth up, not tear him down. She was there to run errands, not question his decisions.

The minute the power tool started trying to act like a real journalist she would be unplugged, and put away in some box. The last thing OAN(N) wants is any real journalism breaking out at the place.

They have their brutally dishonest brand, and the brutally dishonest White House to protect.

So when “MAGA girl” took against the Pentagon’s restrictive access issues for journalists, and rightwing propagandists like herself under the Trump regime, she wrote an endless Substack piece about it and was promptly removed from her job.

From Bauder’s piece:

“The Defense Department did not pull Cuccia’s credentials, according to a Defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss personnel issues. Cuccia said OAN told her the Substack piece had been “put on their radar,” but she wouldn’t say by who. She wouldn’t speak further about what her employer told her, and OAN president Charles Herring told the Associated Press that it does not discuss personnel issues.”

This is the only part of the AP reporting that rubbed me the wrong way.

HOW can there be any confusion about whether it was the Pentagon who removed “MAGA girl” or OAN(N) when they are the same damn thing? I really wish places like AP would stop being cute about stuff like this, when they know good and damn well that the White House and places like OAN(N) are connected like a toilet to a sewer pipe.

None of the hell we have endured the past decade or so would have been remotely possible without steam shovels like OAN(N) and Fox News spreading their 24/7 manure …

As to “MAGA girl’s” Substack piece that landed her in all this hot water …

I debated whether to link to it here, because it is longer than War and Peace (get that girl six editors, a fire extinguisher, and while yer at it, another martini for Pete), and because thanks to pathetic, bought-off, anti-America power tools like herself our country is teetering on the brink, because there are actually people who swallow her s--- whole, and then spit it out to their friends.

But what the hell, here it is: If you decide you do have about four hours to waste, don’t say I didn’t warn you. It’s truly gruesome, and starts this way:

“I feel like I don’t need to start this by proclaiming my love for America the Beautiful — or by saying that I was (and still am) unapologetically defiant in my support for President Trump.”

Because the first rule for any power tool is to not completely short-circuit your relationship with your true power source.

In fact, I predict it’s only a matter of time before “MAGA girl” finds herself another cushy job as a power tool, featuring far more anti-American screed to plug.

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A clerical slip just exposed the whole damn game of this Republican death cult

D. Earl Stephens

:{:{June 3, 2025}:

The other night, I slept like a bear.

Before the bomb hit November 8, 2016, that would not have merited public mention, but for too many of us sleep has come hard for the better part of the last decade.

We have seen a few things.

We have internalized those things.

And try as we might, many of those things have been impossible to process.

Violent insurrections … vivid and horrid bigotry … attacks on NATO, women, children, human rights, voting rights, and our environment … lies, lies and more lies …

We live in a morally declining country, where the disintegration started in earnest the minute white and orange people started shouting they were going to make the place “great” again.

We saw how great things ended up for the people who lived on our chunk of the earth before “the settlers” arrived, and for so many others since they decided to stay. We saw how these kind of great things started in Europe in the 1930s and climaxed in the 40s.

I’ve typed before that if you are searching for the through line that led to all of this hyper-hate and madness we’ve witnessed the past decade, you need only look at this country’s racist roots that are still being dutifully watered by the deviant in the White House and inside millions of our nation’s households, where bigotry is being spoon-fed to our children with the dark hope it will continue to flourish in the generations to come …

“They’re eating our dogs and cats …!”

As many of you know, I’m in Wisconsin these days. It’s easily the least diverse place I have ever lived. Still, there is an inordinate amount of enlightenment in significant pockets of this Upper-Midwest state, where urban areas teem with outdated things like museums, libraries and concert halls.

The arts flourish in these places. Not because they are great, but because they are honest.

They make us look hard at what we’ve done and where we are as a society. They remind us that people can be beautiful, ugly and imperfect. They paint a candid picture of a nation that has reached hard to achieve its highest ideals — “One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all” — only to be dragged backwards by Republicans every time there’s a shot that “all” of us will ever get that justice.

If you’re looking for greatness then go stare at your bird feeder for five minutes; or lay down on your back and watch the sky. If you are lucky enough to find a wooded trail, quietly sneak through it.

You will encounter truly great things in these places.

And all these things — our wildlife, our air, our water — are under 24/7 attack by many of the very men and women who are blanketing us with all this noxious smoke from the smoldering, racist fires they have so eagerly rekindled …

So one recent morning, fresh from that uncommon night of deep sleep, I cracked open the local paper on my computer screen and was hit with this eye-opening slammer:

Trump, and his puppy-killing, dead-inside Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem have put us "on the list" for "deliberately and shamefully" obstructing immigration enforcement.

How do you spell N-A-Z-I?

I can report to you that as a Madison resident I feel safe in saying we wear our humanity as a badge of honor, and will be toasting our success at making this list just as soon as we can.

And while the story was yet another account of the state of things in this roiling country, it also gave away the whole gruesome Republican game.

From the story:

“The administration on Thursday published a list of more than 500 "sanctuary jurisdictions" that includes the state's liberal bastions of Madison and Dane County, as well as the city of Milwaukee and Shawano County.

The department said it "demands that these jurisdictions immediately review and revise their policies to align with Federal immigration laws."

One of these things is not like the other. So enter Jim Davel, an administrator for Shawano County, who couldn’t wait to point that out. Davel told the Associated Press that the inclusion of his heavily Republican community on this list “must be a clerical error.”

He breathlessly continued:

“We have no idea how we got on this list whatsoever right at this point. I think it was just a big mix-up, probably some paperwork or something.”

Relax, sport.

After digging around a bit in some low places, I’m only too happy to expose you for being even more rotten than you want to be, and remind you that that list is reserved for decent folks, not cowards like you.

Turns out, that in 2021, in the wake of Joe Biden’s 7 million-plus win over the America-attacking Trump, the County Board in Shawano that Davel is so proudly a part of declared by bending over and breaking wind it was something called a “Second Amendment sanctuary county.” Thanks to this insidious declaration, the county sheriffs office could no longer enforce any laws which “unconstitutionally impeded on their fundamental Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.”

Because rather than accepting the results of an election that at least pointed us in the general direction of greatness in 2020, Republicans in places like Shawano went reaching for their guns in 2021.

It sure looks a lot to me like Republicans figure guns, not people, are what truly make America great, and why it’s a damn wonder any sane person can get a decent night’s sleep around here …

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Defamation, capitulation and phonies: Inside this week's wild and disgusting news

D. Earl Stephens April 27, 2025

Tuesday was a banner day in the news business as it continues its transition into authoritarian-controlled propaganda that is sold to the highest bidders, which in this case are our nation’s ever-increasing collection of hideous tech bros — otherwise known as Boosters of Trump (BOTs).

It was nothing if not a wild and disgusting day, and featured some heavy-hitters in the political, entertainment and journalism world, as well as reputable truth-tellers like Larry David, who was the only person proving capable of seeing though all the never-ending BS that has blanketed the United States of America.

Good ol’ Sarah Palin appeared out of the Alaska wilderness and into a courtroom in New York City Tuesday where she once again provided some much-needed, albeit brief comedic entertainment to a starving American public.

You’ll remember Palin, who with the help of John McCain and his slippery handlers was hurled downward into the Republicans’ glass floor 17 years ago, making it possible for literally anything or anybody to lower themselves and land with a thud in the basements of power in Washington.

Before there was Marjorie Taylor Greene, Nancy Mace, Marsha Blackburn or Lauren Boebert, there was Sarah Palin …

The 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, Russia-stalker, second-rate reality TV star, and Hall-of-Fame embarrassment lost in the retrial of her defamation case against The New York Times, because of course she did.

Defamation cases are almost impossible to prove, but you can’t blame her for trying, because as delicious as this loss was by one of America’s all-time fools, the real news here is how bad it made the supersonic losers at ABC-News look by comparison.

Just four months ago, that one-time reputable news outlet flew the white flag in their very public $16M surrender to the America-attacking Trump on similar charges.

This time George Stephanopoulos was the target of the beady-eyed Trump, who was incensed that he was incorrectly referred to as “a rapist” on the air during Stephanopoulos’ questioning of Mace about Trump’s veracity as a serious candidate given his talent for treating women like one of his sand wedges.

Turns out all Trump was technically found guilty of was being a lowly sexual-abuser. Before settling, ABC-News decided to conveniently forget the fact that the very judge who tried the case, said that most people would call what Trump did, and what the jury found him guilty of, was in fact, “rape.”

You say, “potatoes.” I say “rape.”

ABC-News’ capitulation, while weak and embarrassing, also only encouraged lowlifes like Trump, because … also on Tuesday … CBS-News signaled it was about to tell its once-rivals at ABC-News to hold their beer …

The venerable 60 Minutes, which has been one of the few news programs that has continued to righteously pound away on the America-attacking Trump will now be in search of a new leader. Executive Producer Bill Owens, announced his resignation Tuesday saying:

“Over the past months, it has become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it, to make independent decisions based on what was right for ‘60 Minutes,’ right for the audience.”

Owens sudden departure is hinting loudly at yet another surrender by yet another billionaire to Trump.

This time Shari Redstone. The Chairwoman of the Board at Paramount which owns CBS, has been dutifully kissing any inappropriate ass she can find in the White House to ensure her sale of Paramount for gobs of billions to the son of tech billionaire Larry Ellison goes through.

She can’t have Trump mad at her for telling the truth on air, so Owens had to sacrifice herself on the Mar-a-Lago altar first.

No surprise, Ellison is yet another slimy tech bro and the buddy of the sexual-abuser Trump, who some judges refer to as a rapist.

The sexual-abuser, who some judges refer to as a rapist, has sued CBS for $20 billion claiming the network aired two different versions of an answer Kamala Harris gave about Israel and Gaza on the network’s flagship news programs, Face the Nation as well as 60 Minutes.

As if the serial-lying Trump doesn't give 17 different answers to any question every hour ….

Well, rather than fight that one out and win going away, Redstone has apparently figured it is much easier to just hand the whole franchise over to Trump’s buddy, Ellison, and be done with the damn thing. And if and when that deal goes through, if you are wondering if you will ever be able to trust anything from the CBS-News division again, the answer is, no.

While insiders at 60 Minutes like correspondent Scott Pelley are saying, “This isn't something Bill (Owens) is doing of his own volition: There was no choice in any of this," I am saying I’d have a whole helluva lot more respect for him, if he stood in strong and made these grotesque sellouts fire him and drag him out of the building.

Resigning in advance is just weak, Bill. I’ve walked a mile in your shoes during my career, and take great comfort I didn’t cave to dishonest brokers who had it out for me and the truth. Ask me about it. I’d be glad to enlighten you ...

Finally, Larry David arrived on the scene to save Terrible Tuesday when he took to the editorial pages of The New York Times to politely skewer the smarmy, one-time comedian, turned Trump-propagandist, Bill Maher, with some deftly aimed satire in his short and sweet piece “My dinner with Adolph.”

David, the genius behind Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm never mentioned Maher by name preferring instead the roughly 257 million people across the world who will end up seeing or hearing about the piece connect the dots all on their own.

I’ll guess it’s behind a paywall for now, so I’ll treat you to the piece’s conclusion:

“Two hours later, the dinner was over, and the Führer escorted me to the door. “I am so glad to have met you. I hope I’m no longer the monster you thought I was.” “I must say, mein Führer, I’m so thankful I came. Although we disagree on many issues, it doesn’t mean that we have to hate each other.” And with that, I gave him a Nazi salute and walked out into the night ...”

Maher of course accepted an invitation to dine with the America-attacking Trump recently, and through his 500-lb. smirk bragged to everybody that breaking bread with the racist, Lysol-guzzler was actually a very normal and wholesome experience. Hell everybody should try it, but of course they can’t because not everybody can be Bill Maher.

Here in part is how Maher described his dining experience, sandwiched around his usual overcooked, fatty condescending barf:

“Honestly, I voted for Clinton and Obama, but I would never feel comfortable talking to them the way I was able to talk to Donald Trump. That’s just how it went down. Make of it what you will.”

Oh we will, sport, no worries there.

Your foolish capitulation and normalization of a woman-abusing, America-attacking thug should finish you off for good. That you tipped him at the door after being played like Stephen Miller’s used violin was pret-ty, pret-ty, pret-ty, pret-ty pret-ty …pathetic.

You’ve been a damn fool for going on a long time now, Bill. Your once-clever condescension is now full-blown, look-at-me arrogance.

I know you will invariably ignore my advice to just shut up and go away for a period of about six years for some serious introspection, because I have come to understand that guys like you and Trump simply can’t help themselves.

You have the phonies in our billionaire-controlled media to do that for you …

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The sickening secret sauce to Trump's political success

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks with journalists onboard Air Force One en route to Miami, Florida, U.S., April 3, 2025.

REUTERS/Kent Nishimura

D. Earl StephensApril 10, 2025

THE ANSWER: Racism.

THE QUESTION: How in the hell did we get here?

There is no other way to explain the American-attacking Trump’s rise to power, and most important, his ability to hold onto it despite being easily the stupidest, most dishonest, and openly bigoted man to ever step foot in our White House.

Just four years after trying to take a blowtorch to our votes, he is busy incinerating our life’s savings, and making measles great again, yet tens of millions of Americans are still stubbornly standing in his corner no matter what.

And I am not talking about the millionaires and billionaires who have gobs of money to gain while these markets are intentionally shorted, either. I am talking about Joe and Jane America, who are watching their retirement savings go up in smoke. I am talking about farmer Fred, whose Trump sign that he has defiantly planted in his field is now worth more than the crops he is growing at a loss.

I am talking about people who you know, and maybe even live with.

Go ahead and say what you want about this wretched, burnt-orange monster (please), but it's your friends and family who still support him who are to blame for this terrible, terrible mess we are in right now.

Without them, there is no him.

You can pretend this isn’t true if it somehow makes you feel better. You can invent high-minded reasons for them to go so low with their vote. You can make pathetic excuses for their absurd recklessness, but when you do that, you are helping to spread the seeds of hate.

You simply do not get to support a racist without being one yourself, and Trump is the most notorious bigot of our times. It is the sickening secret sauce to his political success, and a decade after he burst onto scene with all the grace of s--- to a shingle, we have completely normalized it.

Like his endless lying, it’s a given.

You seldom see either of these things mentioned in our press anymore.

He has eliminating swaths of important Black history from our government records, and it is being met with a shrug. He is doing away with decades of work aimed at giving EVERYBODY a chance at the American dream and it is being met with surrender.

There is absolutely no need to do any of this, but it is nonetheless happening at a furious rate.

Why?

The truth is, Trump has an endless capacity and craving to hate. His insatiable appetite to stoke racial unrest seems to come from a place deep inside him where the lights went out, presumably after his racist parents made it clear even they couldn’t stand to have him around the house anymore.

His big sister, Maryanne, called him, “a brat,” who has “no principles. A man who is “cruel and can’t be trusted.” A “phony.”

Because nobody knows you better than your big sister ...

The very minute this loudmouth used the shaky platform built for him from his ridiculous reality TV show to attack Barack Obama’s citizenship it should have disqualified him from getting within 500 miles of a pigsty, much less the White House.

Instead, it was his opening, the thing that separated him, and the foundation for every terrible thing that has followed the past decade or so. We are in danger of losing our democracy after 250 years, because Donald Trump is a racist, not in spite of it.

It is the only reason he was able reclaim an office he has completely disgraced, and why I have decided to circle back and underline this sore subject today, as our country descends into the sewer while dragging as many countries as possible down with us.

It is why the very first thing he did upon harrumphing back into the White House for a second term was take a sledgehammer to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) efforts across the United States.

Trump knew that was far more important to his supporters than all this relentless bull---- we were hearing about their phony concerns over the price of gas and eggs. You don’t drag a rebel flag to a rally because you need a job …

Viciously attacking DEI and people of color with alacrity was the art of the deal that put him back in a job he is completely unqualified for. It gave him the capital among his supporters to exact his heinous revenge on the courts and the people, who had the gall to try to hold him to account for assaulting women and our country.

He lied to them that everything would be better on Day 1. They didn't believe that, because what was really important was putting those uppity people of color in this country back in their place.

Sure the 401k they have sweated their lifetime to build is taking a terrible beating right now, but at least they don’t have to hear about those damn Tuskegee Airmen anymore ...

Shortly after President Lyndon Johnson signed the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, he told the venerable journalist Bill Moyers, who was a staffer at the time:

“Well, I think we may have lost the south for your lifetime – and mine.”

He undershot that prediction a bit, but it’s the Johnson comment to Moyers which preceded that one a year or so earlier that hasn’t stopped ringing in my ears ever since Trump was improbably elected the first time in 2016:

"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

Everything starts with Trump’s unrivaled, and professional bigotry.

He, and his revolting party, are so good at it, that lately I am watching Democrats fall all over themselves warning of the use of “identity politics” in their messaging. People are turned off by that, we have been told.

Really now … because “identity politics” are the only thing that have been turning the Republican Party and their supporters on for decades …

NOW READ: The suffering of white Trump voters isn't going to change a thing

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D. Earl StephensApril 07, 2025

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I am not sure how you are holding up right now (I reckon I can guess), but from my sturdy perch here in Madison, Wisconsin, the past week has been one of the longest years of my life …

I hope you’ll give me a few minutes of your time today while I take you through it, because I do believe the battle against cancerous greed and deadly fascism was officially joined.

While Republicans, led by the grotesque anti-Americans Elon Musk and Donald Trump, were busy trying to blow our lights out for good, they were met with a hurricane of resistance that built in strength throughout the week, before finally making landfall Saturday at cities large and small across our country.

The huffing and puffing got started way back on Monday morning when I banged out Battle Cry:

“I’m typing to you today with my left hand on the keyboard, while biting the fingernails on the right one. The grotesque Elon Musk just left my state of Wisconsin after publicly handing out millions of dollars of blood money in a greasy effort to buy our Supreme Court.”

I meant it when I said:

“I honestly don’t know if we are going to make it in America, but I do know there are hundreds of thousands of people here in Wisconsin who understand the stakes, and as long as we do, we will never be beaten.”

Well, beaten was the last thing we were when a day later Judge Susan Crawford battered the candidate the despicable Trump and Musk bought and paid for in a disgusting attempt to rest control of our Supreme Court in Wisconsin.

In Not On Her Watch the following morning, I laid it out this way:

“By walloping Brad Schimel by 10 points in a state where razor-thin margins are the rule, the people of Wisconsin put the America-attacking Donald Trump on notice: You have gone way too far, sport. Back up now, or prepare to be flattened in the future.”

There had been a decided shift in the winds Tuesday evening, as the hurricane gathered strength, and if you stopped just for a moment you could feel it blowing through your town. Never forget, fortune favors the bold, and the patriots on the Left were finally strutting their stuff.

“What happened up here in Wisconsin Tuesday night, and with Cory Booker’s epic speech on the Senate floor in Washington, completely changed the playing field and how we patriots must look at things going forward.

Never underestimate your power as a United States voter, even if Republicans are doing everything they can to take that power away. Our representatives work for us. That has somehow been forgotten. I will expect the battle to be joined by all those gutless Democrats who ran for cover after November 5th. When we fight, we win.

And never underestimate the women in America. No surprise, all four liberal justices on our court in Wisconsin are women. Watching them on that stage last night gave me goosebumps. They-were-feeling-it. THEY DID THIS. They stood up to the patriarchy and all that damn dirty money, and showed them who was really boss.”

After getting some much-needed downtime Wednesday and part of Thursday, on Friday it was time for a reveal. That election had really taken it out of me. My worry had overwhelmed me ...

“By the time the clock had menacingly ticked toward exactly 8:08 p.m. just three evenings ago, I decided enough time had passed to check the results of the Supreme Court Election up here that was going to determine whether everything we had fought for the past 15 years was going to be incinerated by a political party that despises progress and human rights even more than it does the truth.

This was a cruel and unusual election because it simply asked too much from too many up here after that dreadfully close 2024 presidential election just five months before.

We had put our time and treasure on the line, as we knocked on doors, hearts on sleeves, only to come up agonizingly short when enough voting Americans decided they liked being constantly lied to by an American-attacking racist, and a larger group still, who had decided that going to the polls wasn't worth their time at all.

So I took a deep breath and walked the 20-or-so paces into my office, prepping myself — good or bad — to accept our fate as a nation. We simply could not afford to lose this damn election.

In addition to the catastrophe that would ensue here if the grotesque Elon Musk’s candidate won, it would also have emboldened the fascists’ nationally to move with due speed to burn 225 years of progress to the ground. They would have had a mandate for arson.”

That’s when my trouble started. That’s when early results showed that evil was trying to have its day.

That’s when the PTSD set in ...

“I had been at this very spot just 147 days earlier, when I saw in horror that the very good woman, who had done nothing with her professional life except serve her country, losing to the man who had done nothing with his miserable life except take from it, and attack it.

I pushed myself away from my desk, stood up, and walked slowly and unsteadily toward the direction of the kitchen, so I could get some water, and steady myself while I processed this newest straight-line wind of madness.

I was in shock, and simply not prepared for the terrible feeling of losing again.

Maybe the cause had literally become bigger than life. Surely there were thousands of others who were dealing with the severity of this condition ...

Since that terrible evening on November 8, 2016, when we learned again that our country was capable of doing both great and absolutely horrific things, this fight for what is most assuredly right has taken a terrible toll on too many of us.

As a veteran I am not going to tell you that this is like being on the raging high seas, or some battlefield, but I am going to tell you that the future of America is on the line, and the stakes have never been higher.

This war is being waged on our soil.

We try to go about our daily lives in as normal a fashion as possible, but trouble is everywhere. People are being disappeared and caged. Alliances are being torched. History is literally being rewritten. Our life’s savings are being inhaled by hideous billionaires. Books are being banned …

This is coming at us all at once, and even when we try to tune it out, we are but one news alert away from being knocked dizzy again.

When I regained my senses and was ready to brave the confines of my office 10 minutes after my event, I pushed my chair in tight to my desk and called up that website again.

That’s when I saw the tide had turned decisively. First Sauk County fell, and then Green, Door, and Brown. The swing counties were ALL swinging Left, and Crawford was positively blowing him out.

Here in Dane County, home to Madison, we were putting such an epic a---kicking on Trump and Musk’s candidate the final results would be in the neighborhood of 85%-15%.

A wave of relief washed over me, while I watched good overwhelm the forces of evil — if only for a night. I looked to the sky, and said, “thank you.”

Our mental health is nothing to play with, good people. A lot is being asked of us. Like a stalker, worry quietly follows us everywhere we go and is ready to pounce even when we think we are looking.

Worse, it afflicts only those who have the audacity to care …

We must find people we can lean on during these unsteady times, and I assure you, you will find them here.

After penning worry early Friday morning, by nightfall, Trump had completely wrecked the economy. So efficient was he with his dirty work and ghoulish preening that by the time the stock market had suffered its worst intentional crash in U.S. history, he was harrumphing around his golf course in Florida stiffing his caddies.

Yes, he went f------ golfing. But not before writing this to his cult on his nuclear-powered propaganda channel:

“THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO GET RICH.”

I learned long ago to never underestimate this guy’s singular talent for always going lower. Ten of millions of people are in severe financial distress right now precisely because of this slobbering grifter, who bankrupted SIX casinos while playing fast and loose with his daddy’s money.

This country has never seen a poorer excuse for a man …

When Saturday finally rolled around, like you I bet, I was in the ringer. There was but one more thing to do: climb the hill to The Square surrounding our capitol building to join the tens of thousands of fellow patriots who poured in from all parts of Wisconsin to completely give it hell.

We shouted, and defiantly stood against the forces of evil in this country. We smiled and hugged and threw our fists in the air because we knew …

We knew that after Booker’s epic speech and our stirring victory in the Supreme Court election Tuesday night, the wind was once again at our backs.

NOW READ: Trump voters are pretending like they were duped. Don't believe it.

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Trump voters: We told you this was coming — and you have no one to blame but yourselves

U.S. President Donald Trump gives a thumbs up as he returns to the White House from National Harbor following his address to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) annual meeting, on the South Lawn in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 22, 2025.

REUTERS/Craig Hudson

D. Earl StephensMarch 11, 2025

In just seven, short weeks, the traitor, Donald Trump, has crashed the economy, taken us to the brink of recession, wrecked the government, lost the respect of our friends and neighbors around the world, and surrendered to the murderous Vladimir Putin.

It is EXACTLY what was expected from the proven America-attacker by anybody capable of thinking about anything but themselves heading into November’s disastrous elections.

The United States of America is in a free-fall not seen in modern history, and there is absolutely no reason to believe we will ever return to anything resembling respectability, or gain back the trust we lost when a serial-lying, Russia-owned convicted felon was elected by a collection of selfish bigots, idiots, and trolls who whine they’ve been left behind because they can’t figure out a way to excavate themselves from the mud puddle they gleefully slid into.

And rather than wait any longer, because I am Monday Morning furious today, I am going to move right into the “WE TOLD YOU SO” part of this column:

(I wish I could credit the meme-ist here, and will if anybody can credibly put a name to it. But it speaks to me, so I share …)

We told these lopsided people that all this turmoil was coming, if they couldn’t break themselves out of their rut and join the rest of us Americans, who were terrified of what might come only because we were smart enough to recognize demented evil when we saw it.

(I am a bit surprised it has happened this quickly, though. Trump’s suicidal tendencies, and lust for cash were only slightly underestimated in these parts …)

All Kamala Harris did — besides flatten Kid Grotesque in a debate which should have settled things — for four months was warn us about this and him. I needed no convincing, and I know most of you didn’t either, but the rancid corporate media still needed a horse race under orders of the billionaires who are currently eating us alive, and newsroom “leadership” which has so pathetically lost its way, it’s a wonder, they can still dot an “i” or cross a “t.”

The potential end of America was, and is, a front-page story. The ONLY story fit to print, in fact.

As I type this, the stock market is crashing faster than Elon Musk after a ketamine-fueled bender, and is now steaming toward a “correction” phase. The two-ton traitor himself was dragging himself around like Frankenstein’s double onto one right-wing propaganda show after another Sunday, laying the groundwork for a recession that is almost sure to come.

“I hate to predict things like that,” he barfed. “There could be a period of transition,” but eventually “it should be great for us.”

A recession “should be great for us,” he says. You MAGA blinking yet? Hello???

That would be the very recession that the gruesome media warned about repeatedly, but was dexterously avoided for four years by Old Man Biden, who had lost the zip on his fastball, sure, but still understood the game better than just about anybody on Earth.

He left the orange menace plenty to work with, but Trump promptly grimaced hard, and emptied his diaper all over it.

Working families and retirees are losing gobs of money right now, and nobody knows when it will end. Prices are high and getting higher, and the tariffs Trump was told by literally everybody to avoid, are going to make things much, much worse.

Oh, and this update flashed on my screen as I typed this heat: The Black Lives Matter mural that was painted near the White House nearly five years ago? Well, that is being removed as I throw down these words, because THAT is what really matters to MAGA.

Not the price of eggs, or better jobs, or more jobs, or “working class” issues. No, the thing that gets them out of bed in the morning is getting even, and dealing out hurt.

I’m not wrong about this.

I said it once and I’ll say it again: MAGA has illustrated there is no known pain or sacrifice to our civil liberties or pocketbooks that they won’t absorb just for the satisfaction of watching some poor kid of color go without something they don’t think he or she should have.

So sure do away with that mural, and then come back here and explain just how in the f--- that will fix anything that is broken in your meaningless, backward lives.

(And, yes, that’s the great John Lewis, and yes, we have never needed men like him more. Gary D. Williams Jr./Creative Theory Agency gets credit for this beauty.)

Where was I …

Ah, yes, the the hourly carnage, and our loss of respect by anybody in the world who really matters, like Canada, or Mexico for example. What kind of self-respecting half-decent person treats their neighbors this way — I mean, goes out of his way to be just as obnoxious, loud and heinous as Trump?

If he’s doing it to prove he’s tough, then let me remind him that he’s a morbidly obese old man, who wears a diaper, paints himself orange and tapes a dead ferret to his head everyday just to look undead.

Nobody thinks you are tough, sport, they think you need to finally eat that last Big Mac, so we can finally get some f---ing peace and quiet around here and sleep better at night.

So one more blast for you diehard Trump supporters out there before I publish this flame-thrower and pray I don’t lose my retirement savings: There’s not a big difference between our circumstances right now. We are ALL being f----- by Putin’s puppet. WE can plainly see that, while YOU somehow refuse to.

Thing is, the minute you snap out of it, and remove yourself from this cult you are so clearly in, there is actually a half-decent shot WE can fix this, and survive.

But time is quickly running out.

It’s on you.

ALL OF IT.

NOW READ: Could Trump arrest us in the middle of the night for speaking our minds? He already has

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There is no magical way out of this — there will be blood

U.S. Representative Nancy Mace (R-SC) gestures as U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) looks on during U.S. President Donald Trump's speech to a joint session of Congress, in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 4, 2025.

D. Earl StephensMarch 07, 2025

It would be helpful if we stopped pretending this terrible chapter in American history won’t close without bloodshed …

It would be helpful if Americans, and our feeble Democratic politicians in particular, stopped implying by their comatose actions that Democracy is some damn American right and has no end date.

America very well might be arriving at hers, because, yes, it really is that bad right now.

Rather than bringing Ping-Pong paddles and groovy, little signs to a fascist hate-fest disguised as a State of the Union speech, it would be helpful if our meek, out-of-touch Democratic politicians at least pretended they understood the perilous moment we are standing in right now.

We are in deep, deep trouble, and now would be a wonderful, necessary time to step in front of your favorite mirror and honestly ask yourself what you are willing to do to fight for our country’s survival.

We are but six-plus weeks into the repulsive, wannabe-king’s second term and the damage he and his party are causing are already at catastrophic levels.

Our air, water, earned benefits, peace, public safety, civil rights, and human rights are all under immediate threat. Worse? This is only the first course of many that will be served by the vindictive, orange madman, and his pathetic party of supplicants.

The insults, the attacks, endless provocations, and thrashing of our Constitution will continue daily. All this carefully planned evil will be aimed at exactly one thing: breaking us.

Everything he is doing is designed to pound us into submission, and he’s having a grand damn doing it.

This was entirely his aim when he and his pet mutt, JD Vance, double-teamed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the behest of Boss Putin in the Oval Office on Friday. The idea was to publicly humiliate the man who has done more to defend America’s interests across the globe than any Republican in memory.

Because Zelenskyy has tasted gun powder and breathed the odious smell of death on the battlefield, he wasn't about to be pushed around by some morbidly obese, 78-year-old yacht club bully and his toady, who think swinging a sand wedge to free a golf ball from some bunker is dangerous business.

Zelenskyy punched back and wasn't having it. He told the truth, and didn't back down. The future of his country is on the line right now, and he acted like it.

And therein lies the playbook for dealing with this sadistic bastard — if only the cautious, too-clever Democratic Party and their weak leaders, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, bothered paying attention.

While Rome burns, they dither.

They act as if we have all the time in the world, when time is something that is not guaranteed right now. They seem to somehow have no idea how bad things are about to get, or most certainly will be when elections they seem to be pinning their hopes on roll around next year.

Everything changed on November 5th, but by the looks of it, very little has changed in the Democratic Party.

This country will never be the same, and the sooner we come to grips with that, and start acting accordingly the better.

What would you do if everything you had and everyone you loved was threatened? Would you act like Zelenskyy or Schumer?

One of the big mistakes of Joe Biden’s presidency was this notion that everything was going to be OK, and that his idea of America matched the actual circumstances of America.

If I had a dollar for every time he said this, I’d fold up shop and move to Tahiti:

“We are the United States of America – there's nothing we can't do if we do it together. We just have to remember who we are.”

It was a noble statement and magical thinking that would have worked great pre-2016, when we could still believe without being laughed at that our two parties could work together in a crisis to protect America.

When we were attacked by the terrible human being who is now somehow leading us January 6, 2021, that magical thinking needed to go out the nearest window.

Instead, our Justice Department twiddled its thumbs and allowed the America-attacker to build himself back up, so that WE would have to deal with him AGAIN.

I seethe just thinking about this, but it is where we are right now, and the sooner we all understand this the better.

The clock is ticking. The bomb is in place.

Which brings me back around to my original premise: At some point, he will do something so heinous … so anti-America … so dangerous … that the people who truly love our country will be forced into the streets to take a life-or-death stand. Sadly, this is actually the best-case scenario, because the worst case is we just go quietly into the dark, gloomy night and become an authoritarian country, where we have zero rights or say in how we are governed.

Yesterday under the cover of his blankets, the America-attacker shared this with us:

www.rawstory.com

Now read the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; OR THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE PEACEABLY TO ASSEMBLE, AND TO PETITION THE GOVERNMENT FOR A REDRESS OF GRIEVANCES."

He is telling us what he thinks of America and silly things like the Constitution. Kings don’t pay attention to that kind worthless drivel.

And, really, end of the day, it not him who we have most to fear. It’s the stupid, goddam Republicans who are stubbornly in all of our lives. These are the people who have illustrated there is no known pain or sacrifice to our civil liberties or pocketbooks that they won’t absorb just for the satisfaction of watching some poor kid of color going without something they didn’t think she should have.

So the choice is yours: You can continue thinking there is some magical way out of this, or you can begin to take the threat to everything you hold dear seriously, and ACT accordingly.

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Dirty white boys: Why the racist GOP made dismantling these initiatives their No. 1 target

D. Earl Stephens January 29, 2025

This is beyond horrid.”

Those four words were spoken from an old colleague of mine who now works under constant threat inside the Department of Interior. They illustrate better than I can in 1,000 words what we are watching right now as a racist, America-attacking, convicted felon puffs out his blubbery chest and takes a sledgehammer to our government to appease the billionaire oligarchy who are leading him around by his stuffy nose.

The tough guy from the yacht clubs of New York, is going full Mussolini while he saves America from all the pain he and his white collar gangs on Wall Street have inflicted on the working class for decades.

Let’s not confuse what is really going on here, people …

End of the day, this is nothing but a grotesque attack on the poor, and many of the programs that have been put in place to help, shelter, feed, and just give them a little hope that is there is something better. Because if you can take a person’s hope and dignity away, you can hope they’ll just go away, too.

That’s how losers win, and democracies crumble.

Defenseless human beings in Red and Blue States are being scapegoated and blamed for what allegedly ails us, so the broken-heartless in America can feel superior about themselves after coming home from a job each day that never loves or pays them near enough. But, hey, at least while they’re groveling for an extra 50 cents an hour, and a few days of paid vacation, they can crack open a cold one, crank up Fox News, and look down on the “lesser” from their perch in some gutter.

President Lyndon Johnson described it best to then-White House staffer Bill Moyers after encountering overt racism during a trip to Tennessee after the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964:

And because Trump, who banged a porn star just weeks after his third wife gave birth to their only child, knows a thing or two about hurting people — I mean REALLY hurting them — he’s going hard after DEI programs that help good people and hurt complete lowlifes like him.

You see, by their rancid telling, long before we were ever a country, people of color have always been the problem here …

There’s absolutely nothing new in this repulsive, political play, because by definition the orange, little-fingered thug represents the Grand Old Party.

So let’s slam everything into reverse, and drill, baby, drill …

I typed all of this as a warning and a pretext for what’s coming next: A defense of DEI, and why it is absolutely vital we carry on with its worthy mission.

There’s a reason it is No. 1 on the mad king’s chopping block: Nothing threatens him more than an engaged, motivated, informed and diverse electorate.

There was a time I wasn’t fully convinced of the absolute need for DEI initiatives. I wrote about some of this a couple of years ago, so I apologize if you’ve come across it before.

The year was 2000. Bill Clinton was wrapping up his last year of the presidency, and looking back, it seems like we were in the final months of what passed for normalcy in America. The contentious Gore-Bush election was just around the corner (which was ironically and tragically decided by a Conservative Supreme Court), to be closely followed by 9/11, the Iraq War, the Great Recession, unhinged vitriol by the Right over President Obama’s tan suit, and finally ending with the election (and reelection) of a stone-cold traitor …

In the spring of that year, I was privileged to represent Stars & Stripes newspaper at American Society of Newspaper Editors Annual Managing Editors Conference in Reston, Virginia.

I had been with Stripes for nearly two years and had recently been promoted to managing editor of the important, editorially independent newspaper that serves our troops and their families overseas.

I was surrounded by my peers representing daily newspapers from Minneapolis to St. Louis, and from San Antonio to Denver. I reckon there were about 35 or 40 of us MEs at this thing, but it’s been long enough now that I can’t remember for sure.

For some reason I can, however, vividly recall looking at the schedule they handed us for the week while battling with a coffee and donut that first morning. On the afternoon of the fourth day we’d be talking about “Diversity in the Newsroom.”

“Uh-oh,” I mumbled to myself. “This is when we’re gonna catch hell from some well-paid, uninformed “expert” for failing to have enough diversity in our newsrooms. Can’t wait ...”

Before I tell you what happened in that session, and how it radically changed my thinking on the subject, I want to stop right here very quickly and pat myself on the back just a tiny bit.

At the time of this conference, I had 10 assistant managers reporting to me in the newsroom. Here was the makeup of these managers:

Four white women

Three white men

Two African-American women

One Asian-American man

I’m not saying that I was staffing up the United Nations, but I am saying I worked with real intention to make sure my newsroom didn’t look like White Man’s Appreciation Day at the country club.

The overall makeup of our newsroom admittedly wasn’t as diverse, because getting and then keeping diverse journalists was a real challenge.

Because we were located in the National Press Building in downtown Washington, D.C., we were surrounded by two huge national newspapers: The Washington Post and USA Today.

Just as quickly as we were hiring and training up diverse talent, those papers were poaching them away from us. They, too, had diversity initiatives in place, and far bigger budgets at their disposal to lure away ambitious newspaper people from mid-sized papers like Stripes.

While it was a backhanded compliment that these newspapers were interested in our journalists, the constant churn presented a real challenge for us as we tirelessly pumped out seven editions of the paper to our readers all around the world 365 days a year.

By the time the Thursday afternoon diversity session of that conference rolled around I was feeling noble, haughty, and ready for what was coming at me.

The session was led by David Yarnold, the Managing Editor of the San Jose Mercury News. Turns out, I’d heard of Yarnold and his innovative initiatives to make diversity a key pillar in building a successful newsroom, but like any ornery journalist, I was skeptical as hell he really knew what he was talking about.

I was about to be schooled.

Yarnold opened by making light of the skepticism that wafted over the auditorium concerning this diabolical subject. He’d obviously done this a time or two, and slowly began winning us over, before he positively blew my mind.

Yarnold asked us what a good newspaper must do to be successful. There was some mumbling in the audience, before somebody finally piped up and said, “Accuracy! We must be accurate!”

“Good, good,” said Yarnold, “What else??”

Once again there was a murmuring, before somebody shouted, “Credibility! We must be credible!”

“Here, here,” we all shouted in agreement.

“OK, OK,” said Yarnold. “So … If a good newspaper has to be accurate … and a good newspaper has to be credible … Can a newspaper hope to be accurate and credible if the readers in its circulation area are comprised of 35 percent white people, 25 percent Hispanic people, 25 percent Black people, and 15 percent Asian people, while 85 percent of the newsroom is staffed with white people???????”

That’s when I said, “Whoa …”

I never looked at diversity in the newsroom, or any workplace, the same way again.

Look, all people are created equal in America, but not all people are treated equally. This has everything to do with gender, sexual orientation, the color of their skin and/or what station they started at in life.

Systematic and institutional racism abounds, and still holds far too many people down. If the majority of this reprehensible Supreme Court would rather ignore this undeniable fact, they can go straight to hell.

If a hardcore racist who sees “fine people on both sides” of a KKK rally wants to use that obscene ruling to inflict as much pain on people as possible, then he can most assuredly join them there.

How can we we claim to be a credible, caring country, if we won’t do everything in our power to lift all our citizens up to make sure everybody has a chance to shine and contribute to the American Experiment?

How can we claim that we are addressing this seismic issue accurately and get the results all of us deserve, if we can’t even have the decency and awareness to admit there is a problem in the first place?

If we are prepared to surrender this moral high ground, and what is most certainly good and right to the racist, authoritarian tyrants who are stepping on our necks without a fight, we will most assuredly join them in the low places they hide.

There will be no coming back from this, my friends, and it will be beyond horrid.

NOW READ: Trump’s crypto-ligarchy will blow up in his face — and possibly take the financial system with it

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alternet-

Americans get off on hurt, cruelty and revenge — and soulless Trump is just the person to provide it

D. Earl Stephens December 17, 2024

Just two weeks before the most consequential election in American history, I decided I’d finally had enough of the hurt and absurdity associated with once again dealing with a racist, America-attacking slob on our presidential ballot.

I put the blame for this where it squarely belonged: the wobbly, broken people in this country who stand up for the repulsive man, and his odious party.

I led the piece this way:

“I have heard way more than enough of this grotesque garbage that perhaps we should try to understand what makes the Trump voter tick, and somehow sympathize with their support of an unapologetic loudmouth who is so vile he sees “good people” on both sides of a violent white supremacist rally.”

I asked:

“Have you seen or heard this heated drivel that Kamala Harris and other Democrats have done an inadequate job of connecting with Trump voters who see nothing dangerous about a man who refers to human beings as “vermin,” and has adopted Adolph Hitler’s talking points at his odious campaign rallies? Have you seen or heard this absolute high-grade nonsense that we should work to lower the temperature in this country, and maybe not take it so personally when one party has gone completely in the tank for a hideous man who told the people who attacked America on January 6, 2021 that he “loves them?””

I stated:

“It is deplorable, and I’m here to remind you IT IS NOT NORMAL.”

Well, we know how the election turned out, and just five weeks later I am here to tell you I undersold my opinion of just how low these people would go when they crawled into the ballot box and somehow decided that the lying, racist felon, and not the lifetime public servant and law-abiding prosecutor, should inhabit the most powerful position in the world.

This has, in fact, become America’s new normal, and I am typing to you as a proud member of the incensed minority, who cannot believe we are once again being subjected to this disgraceful and dishonorable raw sewage that somehow tries to hold itself up as “leadership.”

I suppose it would be easier to just accept all this, and quietly move through what’s left of my life in bitter submission, but that just feels in many ways to be an early date with the grave.

Besides, we saw how all that went in 1930s Germany. And if you think that’s an overstatement then get in line with the rest of the problem, because I’ll have more on that in one minute.

Personally, I will have nothing to do with a Trump supporter. They have been excised from my life. I learned for good four years ago during their doubling-down period of absurdity, that what truly fuels these people has nothing to do with decency and love of country or fellow man. It has everything to do with lopsided support for an America that believes it can legally drag good people through the dirt, and then have a good laugh about it.

This is from my piece seven weeks ago detailing the truth about the America-attacker’s ardent supporters. Feel free to breeze through it, or ignore it altogether, because there will be some news on the other side. But I am putting it here again, because it was all confirmed November 5:

-You have told me you don’t really believe in “law in order” because in fact you support a convicted felon, who is currently facing scores of other felony charges for all manner of crimes, instead of supporting the career prosecutor who locked cheating lowlifes like Trump away behind bars ...

-You have told me you don’t believe in democracy, because you support the traitor who helped plan and execute the first attack on our Capitol since 1812, and attempted a violent coup that was one corrupt vice president away from possibly succeeding.

-You have told me you don’t believe in truth and honesty, because you support the man who told an astonishing documented 30,573 lies and mistruths during his epically awful presidency, and does nothing but lie from the time his fat little feet hit the deck in the morning until he finally passes out from overexposure at midnight.

-You have told me you don’t believe in our children’s future or the future of our planet, because you support the complete imbecile who is a sworn enemy of science, thinks climate change is a hoax, and that wind turbines cause cancer.

-You have told me you don’t have a shred of respect for the women in your lives, because you support the felon who physically attacks and berates them, and does not believe they should have the same rights men do.

-You have told me you don’t believe in a strong economy because you support the guy who wrecked the perfectly good one he inherited from Barack Obama so magnificently by failing to pass the only real test of his gross presidency. His multi-pronged failures to answer the COVID crisis, was among the greatest failures in American history. He simply couldn’t find it in his dark, empty soul to drum up even a shred of compassion for the millions of Americans who were sick and dying, and even went so far as suggesting that maybe we try drinking Lysol to combat COVID’s terrible effects.

-You have told me you don’t believe all Americans deserve affordable healthcare, because the guy you support tried to do away with that without any plan to replace it, and now pathetically tells us he has “a concept of a plan” to make it better. Can you really be this damn stupid?

-You have told me you don’t really support blue collar, working Americans because you support the guy who passionately hates unions, refuses to support raising minimum wage, and has relentlessly stood up for the corporations, starting with Big Oil, who grease his bottomless pockets.

-You have told me you really aren’t Christian, if I am to understand this religious orthodoxy at all, because I just don’t think Jesus Christ would have much respect for a foul-mouthed, abusive slob, who dutifully avoids church, belittles people who have less than him, and pawns off Bibles online like they are some steak, sneaker, or watch to pay off his endless stream of lawyers, and pad a lifestyle spent behind locked gates, where he cheats at golf and avoids working-class Americans at all costs.

-You have told me you don’t really support the men and women in uniform because you bow to a reprehensible draft-dodger who calls our fallen “suckers and losers” and just weeks ago disgraced the hallowed grounds of Arlington National Cemetery for a cheap, campaign photo op. The last two chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of staff, including one he appointed are telling you that the man you support means our country harm, so kindly save all that phony patriotic garbage you are trying to dump on the rest of us.

So now the gory news, and but the latest bone-chilling example of where this is all headed:

On Friday, we learned that the lawyer, Aaron Siri, helping the certifiably crazy Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pick health officials to staff the Department of Health and Human Services, has petitioned the government to revoke its approval of the polio vaccine.

Read that again.

Does ridding ourselves of a life-saving measure that has protected hundreds ofmillions of people from a virus that causes paralysis and/or death sound at all normal to you?

Did you ever imagine before 2016 that a party running on making polio great again would have success at the polls in America?

I’m sorry, but just what in the f--- are normal people supposed to do with insane information like this???? It blows the mind of anybody with even a shred of sense in their damn head.

This isn’t just dangerous, it is criminal, warped and ghoulish.

It is surprising even for a cult of knuckle-draggers who viewed wearing masks during a pandemic that killed millions of us an affront and inconvenience to their warped way of life.

That one never should have passed for normal, either, but in retrospect almost looks in the vicinity of sane when stacked up against returning polio to America.

This Titanic news, which so far is being treated with a casual shrug in our bought-off press, was just the latest clown car to take to the America-attacker’s fast track toward the cliff since November 5.

He has already nominated one obscene billionaire after another to staff his broken cabinet — all of whom are far more interested in building their stock portfolios than they are building up the lives of average Americans.

Worse, in just the past five days alone, the orange, nuclear-powered blowhard has already admitted that he "can't guarantee" tariffs won't raise prices on goods, and that lowering grocery prices "is very hard."

Go ahead, read that one again, too, because we have been led to believe that those were the chief reasons people voted for Trump again. But as I exhaustively outlined above, they actually had nothing to do with it.

The majority of Americans get off on hurt, cruelty, and revenge and the soulless America-attacker is just the person to provide it.

Kennedy Jr. himself is so sick and unhinged his entire damn family spent whatever was left of their diminishing political capital to warn about the snake in their family to no avail.

They know full well how sick and dangerous he is.

In Hitler’s Germany, there was a SS physician named Josef Mengele who conducted inhumane, deadly, medical experiments on thousands of prisoners at Auschwitz. Mengele, who was infamously nicknamed the "angel of death," conducted most of his heinous experiments on children.

It is children who receive the life-saving vaccines that Kennedy Jr. most abhors.

And if you think I am swerving out of my lane and going too far here, you are in danger of becoming the problem, because here is a passage from a recent CNN story detailing Kennedy’s criticism of the ghastly man and his supporters, who he now curiously can’t wait to work for and with:

But Kennedy’s harshest attacks date back to Trump’s rise in 2016, when on his radio show “Ring of Fire,” Kennedy applauded descriptions of Trump’s base as “belligerent idiots” and suggestions that some were “outright Nazis” and “spineless fellow travelers.” Kennedy also likened Trump to historical demagogues like Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, accusing Trump of exploiting societal insecurities and xenophobia to amass power.

Kennedy himself has repeatedly showed a weird, sickening affinity for Hitler and a callous disregard for the millions who were killed in the Holocaust, likening the Covid policies put forth by Dr. Anthony Fauci this way, as reported in Politico in January, 2022:

“Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could you could cross the Alps to Switzerland. You could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did,” said Kennedy, a nephew of former President John F. Kennedy and the son of his slain brother, former U.S. attorney general, civil rights activist and Democratic presidential contender Robert F. Kennedy.

Kennedy Jr. went on to say that today, “the mechanisms are being put in place that will make it so none of us can run and none of us can hide,” and complained about 5G, the newest generation of wireless communication networks, and about vaccine passports.

An AP investigation published last month detailed how Kennedy has invoked the specter of Nazis and the Holocaust in his work to sow doubts about vaccines and agitate against public health efforts to bring the pandemic under control, such as requiring masks or vaccine mandates.

In a speech to the Ron Paul Institute in October, for example, Kennedy referenced Nazis multiple times, obliquely comparing public health measures put in place by governments around the world to Nazi propaganda meant to scare people into abandoning critical thinking. Last month, he put out a video that showed a picture of Fauci with a Hitler mustache.

So on one hand, Kennedy Jr., is leery of Hitler (even if lucky little girls like Anne Frank could run and hide from him), while on the other pathetically throwing himself at the fat, little feet of a man, who he himself compared to the monster who created the terrible Holocaust.

Everything — EVERYTHING — is wrong with this.

In closing I am saying this: Things are only going to get worse in America — much worse — in the coming days and months. It took us no time at all to get to this terrible place, and the reason for that is that there are millions of people who support the monstrous, America-attacking Trump, and boisterously stand behind him and his grotesque plans — like entertaining the elimination of life-saving vaccines.

In Hitler’s Germany, his gruesome supporters were said to "know about it (his atrocities) but said nothing." In Trump’s America, his gruesome supporters are only too proud to amplify them.

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alternet

A reckoning is coming for the people who didn't care about their country

D. Earl Stephens December 12, 2024

It has been five weeks since we got the unbearable news that the soul of America is, in fact, still in a cancerous state, rotting intellectually and morally from the inside out.

To those of us who deeply care about, and internalize these things, it has been a helluva lot to deal with.

Too much.

Our prognosis has actually gotten worse — much worse — since the disease that started killing our nation was first discovered in early November of 2016.

The terrible news of our possible demise and slide toward authoritarianism came as quite a shock back then, but it also produced a righteous fury that was squarely aimed at proving we were better than all that. With proper care and feeding we would slowly, but tenaciously build ourselves back up to once again become a picture of democratic health worthy of the United States of America.

We had let ourselves go, sure, but were determined to make the most of our second chance.

We connected, we marched, and we flexed. Battles were fought, and most of them were won. We were not going back, but more than that, we were pushing hard toward a place that would be far better than the one we so casually left in such disregard on November 8, 2016.

By the time the 2020 election rolled around we had built ourselves into a muscular, well-organized force that would finally whip the moral turpitude that had ravaged us the previous four, terrible years. Even a once-in-a-century pandemic that the dark forces had heartlessly and disgracefully mismanaged would not stop us from our appointed duty.

By the second week of November 2020, freedom rang, and we were finally able to exhale and take satisfaction in our life-saving actions to rescue a country that was becoming increasingly difficult to love.

But only for a minute … well, 12 hours actually … because the day after Democrats secured the United States Senate thanks to victories by Patriots Warnock and Ossoff in Georgia on January 5, 2021, our country was brutally attacked, and an attempted coup was underway.

Twelve, damn hours is all we got after 1,457 days of dealing with sheer hell, because the repugnant spoiled brat was making his final gruesome play to decertify our vote and end our Democracy for good.

No less was at stake on the terrible, gray winter day.

January 6, 2021, ended any notion that the orange America attacker was anything but a sick and demented criminal who was unable to control his most terrible impulses and would do literally anything to harm others.

In a nation that stuffs its jails full to overflowing with too many people who could use a hand up instead of Barbaric incarceration, there was absolutely no question that this broken man richly deserved one of those jail cells and for whatever was left of his miserable life.

He had led and then rooted on an attack on America.

That’s when we started getting the first signs that the manmade virus that had descended on us only four years before was shamefully and inexplicably going to be allowed to fester.

-First, our Senate refused to do its job to ban the America-attacker from ever even considering holding office again.

-Then our Justice Department repeatedly disgraced itself by incomprehensibly dawdling, and ultimately putting itself in check for close to two years before making any kind of definitive move to address the madman’s attack on America. By then, it was too late.

-Finally, our disintegrating media failed to give weight to the most dangerous internal threat to our country since the Civil War. By the time the 2024 elections were upon us it was painfully clear they were more interested in propping up the money-making horse race, than what menacingly awaited us (and them) at the finish line if the wrong person won.

Now, but five weeks since all hell was allowed to prevail, we, the people who put our hearts and souls into rescuing us, are being asked to carry on when we, the people, know for sure we are living in a place that is barreling downhill toward authoritarian rule, where truth is optional, and cruelty is the point.

What should we, the people, be doing now? What is our best move? How-in-the-hell did this happen again?

I see it as my job to help provide answers to these questions, while chronicling the most precarious times in our nation’s history since Abraham Lincoln was our president, and our nation bled from within.

Since November 5th, I have written a string of columns that I stand behind. I am very proud of a few of them, but I wonder if a few others could have just waited.

Things are still too damned raw.

We all need time to process what just happened. Some people would rather not think about it, some people do nothing but think about it, some people are angry, some people are devastatingly sad, some want to fight, and others are just flat-tired.

All of these feelings are warranted and completely understandable. They are the price we pay for caring so damn much.

Like many of you, I have had difficulty digesting news from many sources that catastrophically failed us the past eight years. In the last week or so, I have spent some time reading speculation dressed up as “after-action reports” from Democrats trying to get a handle on what went down in this tragic election.

There will always be the imperative need to learn what led to the crippling fall with the flickering hope that it will never happen again.

But did we learn anything from 2016?

We are also finding out what voters actually did at the polls, instead of the endless, years-long speculation about what they might do with their votes. These findings are especially hard to process, because in many cases, we are tragically learning that millions of people actually made the decision to vote directly against their own self-interests and for plenty of pain, which defies any cogent explanation.

How are any of these people going to be better off with a vile racist in power who has no plans for them but a world of hurt?

We look to be quickly becoming a country that is now specializing in self-harm spurred in large part by the dirty work of its selfish, grubby billionaires, who stand for nothing but themselves.

After five weeks of wrestling with all this, I suppose I am landing exactly where I did in the wee hours of November 6th, in the choking smoke of the latest electoral bonfire: We did what we could, embraced love over hate, truth over lies, good over evil, and came up short.

We thought our country deserved better than this, and as we pick ourselves up and carry on, that’s a vice we should all be able to live with comfortably.

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no lnx

alternetThere's no 'waiting it out'

There's no 'waiting it out'

D. Earl StephensNovember 23, 2024

I have an admission for you: I never took even a single second to consider the terrible residue of a Democratic loss in this month's elections, precisely because of the terrible things that happened last week.

When others brought it up, I would simply defer and say something that tasted like this: “I can’t allow myself to go there, because the consequences will be too grave to even imagine. My focus and energy need to be on ONE thing: WINNING. We must get Kamala Harris into the White House. Losing is just too devastating to contemplate.”

Now that might sound naive and foolish, and I guess I get that, but I am not built to consider losing. As a half-decent athlete in my younger days, and a high-octane competitor always, there has never been a game, or a contest, or a political battle that I engaged in when I ever considered losing.

I grew up in the days of Hall of Fame football coach and Democrat, Vince Lombardi, who famously said, “Winning is not a sometime thing; it's an all the time thing.”

ALSO READ: How to find hope in a near-hopeless time

I went onto become a sports writer and then a sports editor before shifting to news, so I’ll spare you the 172 clichés that apply to what just happened in America.

And before I leak too much testosterone all over this page, I am not for one minute comparing some football game to the most important election in American history.

What I am telling you is that a lot of people laid their time, treasure, heart, and soul on the line the past eight years, only to end up right back where we started.

This wasn't just some gut-wrenching loss, it was the end of an America that fancied itself a place that doled out liberty and justice for all. Instead of being a beacon for democracy across the world, we now provide safe harbor for murderous fascists.

This could not have been conceivable even 10 years ago.

I am not writing to knock you further into despair today, good people. I’m really not. I have written during the past week that there are ways out of this, because there simply have to be. Namely, we must not submit.

Except that is exactly what many in our Democratic leadership seem to be doing right now, and it is positively blowing my mind.

While we are being steamrolled by Trump and his nuclear-powered propaganda machine fueled by greedy, blood-thirsty billionaires, Democratic leaders are pointing fingers, and climbing over one another to tell us all what went wrong in the election.

While they draw attention to themselves in all the wrong ways, the morbid Trump is settling in to what he hopes will be a long and comfortable dictatorship, and picking one revolting loyalist after another to staff his cabinet and inflict as much pain on us as possible.

Consider what happened on Wednesday alone:

Joe Biden symbolically surrendered to the repulsive Trump in front of a roaring fire in our White House (talk about a terrifying metaphor), and actually said, “Welcome back!” This is the guy Biden himself has warned about in the starkest terms, and over and over again.

This is the guy who instead of gracefully conceding defeat attacked our country, did nothing about it for hours, and then told the people who did it that he loved them.

HE TOLD THE PEOPLE WHO ATTACKED US THAT HE LOVED THEM.

This is the guy who is a convicted felon, and a rapist. But, sure, how do you take your coffee, Donald? Would you like some cookies with your shit-eating grin?

And of course, Trump’s billionaire boss, the absolutely repulsive Elon Musk, was in tow, because, well, that’s completely normal ...

And forget the fact, the America-attacker has NOT yet signed (nor will he) the Presidential Transition Ethics Agreement as required by law ...

He deserves nothing but scorn, not public congratulations and warm welcomes by the fire. And if Biden just HAD to do this, why so damn soon? My God, most of us haven’t gotten over the shock yet.

Some never will.

Then there’s news Special Counsel Jack Smith will be quitting, rather than making Trump fire him, and that is pathetic. And has anybody heard from Merrick Garland since he crawled underneath his bed? He, more than anybody, is responsible for this terrible mess we are in by failing to do the most important part of his job: protecting America.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who I like very much, is literally everywhere saying we need to take the high prices in America more seriously, as if Vice President Harris didn't talk about this endlessly on the campaign trail. Unlike her ghastly opponent she actually had a concrete plan to help correct this, and not some bullshit “concept” of one. Again, why so soon, my good man?

Fully five people in Democratic “leadership” have let it leak that they will be running for president in 2028, as if there will even be an election in 2028. They will get no mention here.

Talk about grave-dancing …

And, hey, go ahead and slam me for not considering the consequences of a Trump win, but at least I got the same memo that Harris did. We both understood Trump is a fascist, and is not really keen on elections.

Frankly, she is one of the few who has accorded herself well though this ordeal, and while I have no proof of this, it is starting to feel to me like she is being hung out to dry. Nancy Pelosi can’t stop letting it be known that Biden should have stepped down sooner, and there should have been a primary to determine our Democratic candidate for president.

She might be right about that, but she is dead wrong for intimating we would have got a better candidate than Harris, who ran just one helluva campaign, and is a top-notch person. I’d still run through a brick wall for her, because she is everything right about the nasty world of politics.

Ya know … I’m not advocating a violent attack on America like Trump did, but I am advancing the fact that the Democratic Party needs to stand up straight and tall, and show some damn backbone and grit.

We are fully capable of doing both a thorough autopsy on our terrible loss, while sending the message loud clear that we still have plenty of damn fight left, and aren’t going anywhere — that fascism has no place in America.

There is a prevailing feeling among many outside the Beltway that our leadership has abandoned us, at the very time we need them most, and this will not be forgotten.

It feels like a catastrophic storm has come ashore, is gaining steam and will slowly and methodically wipe out everything in its path. I cannot tell you how many hardworking and good-hearted Democrats who have told me, “Fuck it. I’m done.”

This is how a bad situation gets even worse.

I talked with one of the smartest people I know about this Wednesday night. Christopher Webb is a Democratic Strategist in California, and he’s seeing and hearing the same things I am among the Black community, who are the greatest patriots among us:

“Black folks are tired right now. Sick and tired! Especially Black women. They do the heavy lifting every election cycle. They always lead the way, and this time we had a supremely qualified Black woman nominee, but we had to watch her torn down by racism and misogyny coming from the right. We constantly had to hear that she’s dumb. Where are her policies? She’s a DEI hire. She’s trash. She slept her way to the top. Black women activists put anger aside and pushed back with the facts: Kamala is supremely qualified, and here’s why. She’s here to fight for us. Here are her policies. But it didn’t matter.

Post-election, there’s a lot of anger, frustration, and even hopelessness within our community.

We love the party, but it feels like the party does not love us back.”

“But it feels like the party does not love us back …”

Man, this makes my blood boil. That Democratic leadership I have been trying to slap some sense into here need to hear this. We ALL need to hear it.

I want to add that Christopher said he’s “more than ready” for the fight ahead.

Me too.

While, I totally get the inclination to bolt, I am not done. I will stand here and fight, but I need to know just who in the hell is with us. I need to know who is out there speaking for our concerns and not capitulating to fascists.

We cannot surrender. There is no “waiting it out.” We must take the fight to these b-------- right now because we — not them — stand for what is most certainly good and right in this country.

Or as Lombardi said: “Winners never quit, and quitters never win.”

NOW READ: America is at a crossroads

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alternet-Home | Corporate media keeps hiding the the truth about madman Donald Trump

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