Cognitive decline & the cult of the blithering idiot: how Trump and his #MAGA mob won infallibility as the world burns

Reuters

{Daily Beast 29 May} Noted speech expert declares that Trump is in cognitive decline.

And where are all the media and general public that were hand-wringing and panicking over President Biden’s (real or perceived) feebleness now? Once again, this orange motherf**ker gets a pass from the American populace. The most privileged American to have ever lived – and who, precisely, is responsible for allowing that? As H.L. Mencken said all the way back in 1920: “On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” Another quote of his: “The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.” Even he’d shudder at today’s cult of a blithering idiot, where white masses worship a conman and rage at any hint of dissent.

Ten bloody years, the remaining sane folks of this country have been harangued and harassed by this conman and his legion of followers. Not one single person in the entire history of this polyglot nation has ever been granted such consistent immunity from accountability. Indeed, no other person would have ever gotten away with fomenting an insurrection. And he got away with it because, I believe, the halls of power are scared to death of a violent uprising by rednecks, hillbillies, theocrats, and other assorted right-wing factions. Nobody has ever been more coddled than Trump, and the ordinary goobers who dominate these former United States, who are all around us, are to blame. When this is all said and done, I pray every last one of them faces some measure of accountability for being so deluded, even if their leader never does. —Arthur Newhook, 29 May 2025. 

Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook. @Sunking278 on X-TWITTER, and at the same handle on FACEBOOK. BLUESKY - @arthurnewhook.bsky.social. REDDIT - https://www.reddit.com/r/StopTheIdiocracy/new/. DONATIONS GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED at https://tinyurl.com/ArthurNewhook.

One in three NCAA men's and women's basketball players faced abuse from bettors, including death threats, during this year’s tournaments

Angel Reese. Photo: Getty Images

NCAA: 1 in 3 star athletes receive abuse, threats by bettors {ESPN 5/18}

Methinks I am not sufficient of a constitutional scholar to know if the federal government hath any legitimate authority to regulate gambling, and I generally do despise any nanny state tendencies I detect in others. All said, I really do hate gambling. Years ago, I laboured in gas station convenience stores and felt like a glorified drug pusher with all the scratch tickets I did sell to Massholes. Most of the folk buying them were downright pathetic, but I digress. Furthermore, I have long turned a blind eye to gambling in my waning enthusiasm for horse racing, knowing that it hath always been the lifeblood of the industry. Yet, for the life of me, I shall never understand why any individual would desire to play with money. It maketh absolutely no sense.

Absolutely nothing of goodly import is emerging from the explosion of legalised sports betting currently taking place. When combined with the endemic, regressive, and all-pervading hatred raging in the United States at this time, it doth create a deadly combination. The ESPN article notes that female collegiate basketball players are about thrice more likely than their male counterparts to receive abuse. One day, somebody is going to get killed, but it will not matter to the puissant interests invested in the commons casting away coin they cannot afford to lose. It ought to go without saying, this is beyond shameful and yet another sign, among thousands, that the people of #Murica are, in laymen’s terms, losing their s**t.

Alito J6 controversy ‘another blow for Supreme Court under fire’ - Lifetime tenure for Justices was a huge error of foresight by our nation’s founders. {AP 5/17}

President Biden signs a significant aviation safety and airline reform bill into law. {Reuters 5/16}

Cost of living crisis. Suze Orman warns ‘If you don’t have at least $5 million or $10 million, don’t retire early’. {Yahoo! 5/16}

Copyright 2024, Arthur Newhook. @Sunking278 and @FloydEtcetera on X, and at the same handles on FACEBOOK. MASTODON - @ArthurNewhook@mastodon.world, BLUESKY - @arthurnewhook.bsky.social, and @arthurnewhook on POST. DONATIONS GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED at https://tinyurl.com/ArthurNewhook.

#OTD 1923: The infamous Beer Hall Putsch unfolded in Munich, a foreshadowing of what is happening to #Murica today

Bundesarchiv

#OTD 1923: The infamous Beer Hall Putsch unfolded in Munich, a Nazi coup d’etat bid against the Weimar government, quelled by the next day. Yet, its chief plotter, Adolf Hitler, was foolishly sentenced to but five years in prison, and freed after a mere nine months. No need to recount what followed, for we all ken the horrors that came to pass when this madman seized power in 1932. Or do we? For in our dear #Murica today, a leader who, in office, too led a failed coup, yet faces no true justice for his sedition and treachery, at most, a mere slap on the wrist. Clearly, America and much of this world hath not well heeded the lessons of history. Willful ignorance and malice that led so many in Germany to embrace Hitler, and the same holds true today in America with Donald Trump and his adherents. In 2024, cast thy vote as if thy lives and nation hang in the balance, for truly, everything is at stake this time.

Copyright 2023, Arthur Newhook. @Sunking278 and @FloydEtcetera on X, and at the same handles on FACEBOOK. MASTODON - @ArthurNewhook@mastodon.world, and @arthurnewhook on POST and THREADS.

Putin's cruelty upon Ukraine backfires onto Russians; Remembering Queen Elizabeth II, and a lot more from September

DEATH OF HER MAJESTY QUEEN ELIZABETH II

Queen Elizabeth dies at 96; Britain’s longest-serving monarch. {NYT 9/08} 

King Charles III says he feels 'weight of history which surrounds us' in first address to parliament as monarch. {Sky News 9/12}

J.D. Tuccille: Maybe a constitutional monarchy can show the way to a less powerful state - ‘Harmlessly satisfying an appetite for pomp while threatening nobody's liberty is a decent attribute for any institution.’ {Reason 9/12}

Prince Andrew heckled by protester along the procession from Holyrood Palace to St. Giles’ Cathedral -  Not condoning what Prince Andrew *allegedly* did (which should go without saying) but that little puke in Edinburgh yelling ‘dirty old man’ during the middle of a funeral procession deserves a good thrashing. Not the time and place. {Sky News 9/12}

Anti-monarchist arrests spark criticism in Britain - Seeing there are some extremely over-the-top fabrications being spread online - best I can tell, mostly by Americans - alleging that British citizens were being arrested for speaking out against the monarchy. Cut the crap: These individuals - of which there were only a scant few out of millions of Britons - were not detained for their precious ‘free speech,’ but for disorderly conduct. A criminal offense even in a country of loud and belligerent imbeciles such as America. Disorderly conduct: Meaning, one is expected to conduct themselves properly and respect others while out in public, especially during a time of mourning. We know that many people have lost all perspective and common sense when acting like a monkey in public is demanded to be a fundamental human right. Crying ‘tyranny’ when there is none is a grave insult to those individuals in this world who are suffering real oppression and deprivation. {France 24 9/13}

WATCH: Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral in full. {Sky News 9/19}

Andrii Marienko

PUTIN’S WAR OF AGGRESSION AGAINST UKRAINE

Putin announces partial mobilization, Russia’s first since World War II, and threatens nuclear retaliation in escalation of his war on Ukraine. {The Guardian 9/21}

Leading Russian economist warns his nation’s economy will ‘die by winter’ as a result of the mobilization - No scenario now where Russia can avoid catastrophe, such is the path their insane leader has taken. {Fortune 9/26}

A ‘bald-faced land grab based on lies.’ Putin announces Russia will be illegally annexing Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia. {AP 9/29}

Open anti-semitism on the rise in Russian state media as war effort falters. {Jerusalem Post 9/29}

Mass grave discovered in the liberated town of Izium; over 400 bodies found. {DW 9/15}

Russians murder civilians out of desperation as they retreat from numerous Ukrainian towns, a direct violation of the Geneva Convention - Declare Russia a state sponsor of terrorism and Putin a war criminal, starting yesterday! {Business Insider 9/13}

Liberated villages describe Russian troops dropping rifles and fleeing. {WaPo 9/11}

Russian reservists 'told to find their own first aid supplies' - Putin cannot even provide basic supplies for his troops, forcing these men to leave home and making them pay out of their own pockets for the privilege. {The National News 9/30}

Leo Correa/AP

Confirmed number of Russian equipment losses in Ukraine greater than the total inventory of the UK, France, or Germany - The key word there being ‘confirmed,’ as real losses are believed to be substantially higher. Ukrainians have captured and repurposed many of these vehicles, and possess intimate knowledge of their workings. Frankly, it is stunning to see what was a feared military being exposed as a paper tiger, while Ukraine is showing itself to be one of the world’s great fighting forces. But a wounded animal is the most dangerous one: Russia’s only chance of winning this war will be to resort to the unthinkable - the only leverage they have left - and Putin flat-out told the world this past week that he will use all means of destruction at his disposal. {Yahoo! 9/23}

Sham referendums calling for annexation to Russia held in four Donbas regions under partial Russian occupation, residents forced to vote at the barrel of a gun. {Reuters 9/23}

Ordinary Russians stuck between a rock and a hard place: Estonia warns Russian nationals they will be banned from the EU if they answer Putin’s draft notices; meanwhile, Finland is set to ban Russian tourists from entry. {Sky News 9/24}

Citizens in the country of Georgia protest against allowing in more Russian dissenters. {AFP 9/28}

U.S. intelligence: ‘Russia is looking to address the shortage of troops in part by compelling soldiers wounded earlier in the war to return to combat, recruiting personnel from private security companies and even recruiting from prisons.’ {AP 8/31}

‘Germany has announced a €65bn (£56.2bn) package of measures to ease the threat of rising energy costs, as Europe struggles with scarce supplies after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.’ {BBC 9/04} 

Despite not having a shred of proof, Russia formally presses for investigation in Geneva on whether the U.S. violated the 1975 Biological Weapons Convention by placing bio weapon labs in Ukraine. {NYT 9/04}

At least twenty-three civilians dead and twenty-eight wounded following Russian missile attack on convoy of cars in Zaporizhzhia. {Reuters 9/30}

Putin always chooses escalation - A quote on the mood in Russia: ‘People are ready to lead their children, husbands and sons to the slaughter. It’s downright evil… People don’t need therapists anymore; they need psychiatrists.’ {The Moscow Times 9/29}

Sergei Supinsky/AFP/Getty Images

Bret Stephens: Ukraine’s achievement is President Biden’s, too - The White House has been ‘providing Ukrainians with the kind of battlefield intelligence that enables them to maneuver, target, strike and evade in ways they otherwise couldn’t.’ Untold numbers of Ukrainian lives have been saved, and much infrastructure spared, because the Ukrainian military is receiving much of the firepower needed to repel the invaders (though more is needed still.) If the Ukrainian military were not composed of some of the world’s fiercest and most determined fighters, and if Western nations were not providing aid and support, Putin *would* have achieved his stated goal of taking over Kyiv in mere days. Just imagine how emboldened Putin would be had his forces secured the quick victory that he was counting on. Poland, the Baltic Republics, and perhaps Finland would all possibly be under attack by now. All of whom are either current or likely soon-to-be NATO countries; meaning all of NATO would be obligated to enter the fray and, with it, the start of World War III. Yet, most #Muricans haven't a clue as to what is at stake, and millions are embracing Putin and Ukrainophobia (funny, since most couldn’t point out Ukraine on a map or know a damn thing about the place other Trump and company told them it is a ‘Nazi’ state ostensibly housing secret U.S. bioweapon labs.). I never cease to flabbergasted these days; but back in normal times (say, prior to the mid-2000s and the backlash against the ‘neocons,’ and before Putin’s propaganda machine was up-and-running in earnest) the country would have understood the stakes and have acknowledged their president is doing his part to prevent armageddon. But #Muricans today are too busy arguing over a cartoon character’s skin color, whining about gas prices, and banning classic novels from school libraries because some lilly white kids may feel bad after learning the actual history of this country. What a disgrace. Glory to Ukraine! {NYT 9/13}

GEOPOLITICS

Mikhail Gorbachev is laid to rest in Moscow; Vladimir Putin does not attend the ceremony. {Times of Israel 9/03}

Putin and the Saudis conspire to prop up global oil prices - Just keep on being the great Americans you all claim to be, #Cult45; blaming President Biden for high gas prices even as all evidence points toward America’s mortal enemies as the culprits. {NYT 9/14}

‘President Biden’s nominee to take over the U.S. military’s nuclear arsenal and missile-defense operations warned on Thursday that China’s rise as a nuclear power poses historic threats and challenges requiring a reevaluation of current policies.’ {WaPo 9/15}

UK: Liz Truss wins Conservative Party leadership race, will take over as Prime Minister - Can this one be trusted to stand up to Vladimir Putin as strongly as Boris Johnson has? Time will tell, but my gut says Labour will be back in power sometime in the near-future. {BBC 9/05}

British Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng announces a controversial tax cut package, and the UK pound sterling promptly falls to a 37-year low. {DW 9/23}

Reuters

Italy elects right-wing populist Giorgia Meloni as its leader - Giorgia Meloni: A name we’re going to be hearing a lot of, and decidedly a bit easier on the eyes than Mussolini. As is the case with just about every neo-Fascist movement in today’s world (including and especially #Cult45 in the U.S.), Meloni and her supporters insist they are ‘conservatives’ and take offense at being labeled for what they really are; even as they lap up and circulate every conspiracy theory thrown out there, and even as they endlessly rage against immigrants and persist in extreme natalism. Likely to become Italy’s first woman leader, and almost certainly its most dangerous since the aforementioned ‘Il Duce.’ Let it be noted that this one is very much on the radar of #Cult45 leaders, having appeared at CPAC and at the National Prayer Breakfast. A severe warning to this duplicitous woman, and to the Italian people: We are not going down this route again, and there are going to be severe consequences if you step out of line. {Ruth Ben-Ghiat, The Atlantic 9/23}

Spanish Foreign Minister on Giorgia Meloni’s victory in Italy: ‘Populism always ends in catastrophe’ - Truer words have rarely been spoken, yet human beings never learn their lesson. {SBS News 9/26}

The European Parliament declares Viktor Orbán’s Hungary is no longer a democracy, but an ‘electoral autocracy’ - Another reminder that this is the model the GOP and #Cult45 openly wishes to impose on the United States. {New Voice of Ukraine 9/15}

Teacher shortages in Hungary and Poland - Borderline theocratic governments that have put so many restrictions on teachers, and pay them so poorly, that nobody wants to teach anymore. Sound familiar? I wonder how these governments, and the GOP in #Murica, are going to explain it to their nativist citizens, in about ten years or less, when they’re being forced to recruit teachers and medical personnel en masse from wherever they can be found - India, the Orient, sub-Saharian Africa - just to keep the schools and hospitals running. {AP 9/03}

The U.S. Treasury places sanctions on Iran’s so-called ‘morality police’ following the death of a young woman in their custody and subsequent mass protests in Tehran. {Reuters 9/22}

Argentina: VP Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner unharmed after point-blank assassination attempt. {Reuters 9/02}

Getty Images

POLITICAL S**TSHOW IN #MURICA

President Biden calls out Trump supporters for conducting themselves as Fascists; Trump supporters so enraged they immediately set out to prove the president correct with death threats, calls for violence - As hard as it for my cynical self to believe, maybe there are a subset of #Cult45 that are being sincere in their rage over being called out by the president. Perhaps they really don’t realize what they’ve become or fully understand what it is they are supporting. Perhaps, as ridiculous as it appears to even consider, they really are naive and haven’t figured out that this whole Trump thing has basically been nothing more than a giant ‘f**k you’ from a large plurality of the nation to the rest of it, right from the moment Donald Trump came on the political scene. Trumpism is certainly not any sort of valid governing philosophy, but merely an endless airing of grievances. Populist types all around us - left and right - run purely on emotion and almost never on logic, and that’s a big part of how we got to this place. It has long been my experience in life that the willfully ignorant, bullies, and other assorted reprobates never appreciate being called for what they are. (Perhaps, to be fair, I’ve even been among those reprobates at certain times and places, but never when it came to Trump: The record shows I recognized he and his cult for what they were well prior to him receiving the GOP nomination in 2016; yes, I am proud of this and will boast, yet am also supremely frustrated and sickened that six f**king years later we are still having to argue with these people over the bloody obvious.) In some cases it is because they haven’t come to terms with reality, but with most of these people it is just plain gaslighting and bullying. ‘I’m not touching you!’ Most of #Cult45 are plenty aware of what they are, but rarely will most any admit it. Maybe some are very internally conflicted, but let me not risk giving anybody too much credit here. The point is, if gaslighting the rest of us wasn’t so much fun and remained so effective, perhaps they would just proudly admit they are Fascists by now. Beginning with Trump himself. Any and all pretenses are disappearing in spite of their denials, and will continue to do so. In the meantime, those of us who don’t need a national daddy figure should nonetheless be grateful we have a man in the White House vowing to defend the constitutional republic at a time when it hasn’t been under this level of internal threat since the 1850s. {Yahoo! News 9/02}

Trump vows pardons, government apology to Capitol rioters if elected - The man is openly and boldly claiming that he is financially supporting some of the defendants (whether that is actually true or not, Lord only knows), that the attack was not a crime or an act of insurrection, and that judges are merely being ‘mean’ to said defendants out of spite. Yet, we’re supposed to believe he did not coordinate January 6, and wanted to call in the National Guard before hand, but Speaker Pelosi stopped him; or that the rioters were far-left agitators posing as ‘conservatives,’ or whatever crap excuse or conspiracy theory any given #Cult45 member is spewing on any given day? When people are going to absurd lengths to defend blatant absurdities, it is because they’re desperate for ‘protection,’ such as it is, against a society they hate and believe has failed them. Virtually all Donald Trump supporters at this late stage know exactly what he is and what they’ve become (Fascists), but they continue to double down and stay loyal because this man gave them license to openly hate you and I - anybody who does not share their populist worldview, anybody who they perceive as weak, anybody who live lifestyles they do not approve of, anybody who is not a white Christian. Hurting the other half of society is paramount to everything, and bullying, intimidation, and gaslighting are their modus operandi. They’ll continue to keep spitting in the face of reality, and they will play up their phony indignation at being called ‘Fascists’ to the hilt, because they have no respect for the majority of their fellow citizens’ intelligence. It cuts a lot deeper than simply a lack of respect: As long as human beings exist, the innate desire to dominate others will be with us. As will charismatic charlatans who stand ready, willing, and waiting to take advantage of malcontents for the sake of self-aggrandizement and personal enrichment. In other words, Trump and #Cult45 really do deserve one another, and deserve to fall together. {WaPo 9/01}

Former AG Barr: No ‘legitimate reason’ for Trump to have had classified documents in his possession. {WaPo 9/02}

Former Trump lawyer Ty Cobb: ‘I believe former President Trump to be a deeply wounded narcissist, and he is often incapable of acting other than in his perceived self-interest or for revenge.’ {CBS News 9/09}

Former U.S. attorney details how the Trump-era DOJ pressured him to bring cases against Trump’s enemies in new book - Good going, #Cult45. You elected a man who, at every turn, used or attempted to use taxpayer dollars to settle personal grudges. That anybody is still conned by such an obvious conman, or wishes to play along with the con, makes my Anglo-Saxon blood boil. {ABC News 9/12}

Trump allegedly offered the West Bank to Jordan’s King Abdullah II, in spite of having no authority to do so. {Insider 9/14}

Author Luke Mogelson on the far-right, the militia movement, and the threat of Trumpism - The pity party never ends. Appealing to grievances and crying oppression are timeless and nearly-foolproof ways tyrants win popular support. Populist movements always collapse in time, but only after causing great damage to their countries. History has shown this repeatedly, but #Muricans are really not very good students of history. {Lit Hub 9/12}

Mass. woman charged with making fake bomb threat to Boston’s Children Hospital, motive being some sort of misinfo and/or disinfo on the hospital’s transgender surgery program - Do not let them or anyone else sugarcoat it: #Cult45 is quite invested in demonizing, and even terrorizing, various sectors of society. Not just liberals, blacks, or illegal aliens, but anybody at all deemed to be a threat to their largely-fictional and feeble-minded conception of the American way of life. They seem particularly determined to make transsexuals and homosexuals the Jews to their Nazis. An ancient prejudice that will never die so long as individuals feel confusion and shame about their personal identities. Or, for that matter, as long as people are incorrigible busybodies and self-righteous moralists. When was the last time we’ve heard these people rage against Islamist terrorists, the murderers who slaughtered close to 3,000 Americans on that fateful day in 2001? Maybe about 2014, 2015 when ISIS was at the peak of its reign of terror and Obama was still in the White House? Not anymore, as now they’re too busy raging against their fellow Americans. Anyone who isn’t completely in lockstep with their nationalist populist pity party and doesn’t march in lockstep with their orange demagogue is viewed as an enemy of the state. A large plurality of society has been radicalized, with their mission being to dehumanize the rest of us. How can such a brainwashed and hate-filled force ever be reasoned with? I fear especially for all of the LGBTQ folks, for they’re in greater danger than even most of them likely realize. Furthermore, a lot of people who are not gay, lesbian, or trans are going to be falsely accused and targeted. All Hades is breaking loose, and if I had the means I would have been gone from this collapsing country several years ago. {WBUR 9/15}

Right-wing media figures claimed bomb threat against Boston Children’s Hospital was a false flag up until the FBI named a suspect - A rudimentary but effective tacit of disinfo agents anytime there is an ‘inconvenient’ occurrence (for lack of a better way of putting it): Just cry ‘false flag’ and ‘fake news,’ and millions will follow your lead. Never mind facts, never mind evidence, the narrative is all that matters to propagandists, bigots, zealots, and hopeless partisans. {Media Matters 9/16}

Sandy Hook parents describe the horrifying impact of conspiracy theories and lies accusing them of being ‘crisis actors’ in alleged government plot to revoke Second Amendment rights - Alex Jones is fortunate he will only have to pay monetary damages, and his acolytes who sent death threats to grieving parents will not face justice. In a sane and moral country, they’d all be in prison, or hanging from the gallows. {NYT 9/29}

Man who pinned D.C. police officer in door frame during January 6 riot convicted of seven felonies. {CBS News 9/13}

Totally not a cult: Man murdered wife, shot daughter after being sucked down ‘Q rabbit hole.’ {Daily Beast 9/12}

Fear of violent crime and mass shootings leads to a massive drop in the number of Chinese citizens planning to visit the United States - And I don’t think the Chinese are the only ones staying away in droves. {South China Morning Post 9/13}

Javier Cruz Acosta/Shutterstock

#Murica: ‘If current trends continue, Christians could make up less than half of the population, and as little as a third, in 50 years’ - Any wonder why people are turned off when 95% of the purported ‘Christians’ in this sick country so gullibly follow a world-class a**hole and decidedly non-Christian conman as their protector? While also working overtime to silence opposition and impose Fascism on the rest of us? If this is supposed to be who ‘Jesus’ is, then naturally normal people are not going to want anything to do with that guy or his followers. No more than they would want anything to do with the Prophet Muhammad after witnessing decades of Islamic Jihad around the world (exactly the path these heretics are going down; J6 was just a start.) {WaPo 9/13}

Louisiana gym teacher accused of offering $5.00 to students to beat up a classmate - A woman, no less. I do not know if this was a Trump supporter (it is the South, so highly possible), but this is a prime example of the atmosphere of cruelty, degradation, criminality, and immorality Donald Trump has - more so than anyone else - made acceptable in the United States. A grown adult putting out a hit on a child, get me the hell off of this sinking ship: The USS #Murica. {Shreveport Times 9/14}

Trump-endorsed election denier wins GOP Senate primary in New Hampshire - Even here in the liberal Northeast, Republican voters are putting on their tin-foil hats and goose-stepping toward Fascism. {NYT 9/14}

Trip Advisor

Planeload of Venezuelan and Colombian migrants arrives at Martha's Vineyard Airport, and Florida’s governor takes credit for sending them - Here’s an idea. Since these yahoos consider all migrants to be dangerous criminals - which some of them inevitably will be; I’m not advocating for wide open borders and universal amnesty here - and whereas simply leaving purported or actual criminals on another state’s doorstep without notice or permission is apparently acceptable now: Alright, let’s send some of the prisoners in facilities across the Northeast to places like Key West, FL, or South Padre Island, TX, and tell the natives, ‘good luck with that, your problem now.’ I don’t think that would be very well-received, would it? Bullies never like getting a taste of their own medicine. The people of Martha’s Vineyard are being very generous, but obviously this is not a sustainable situation. Massachusetts or any other northern state ultimately bears no legal responsibility for these individuals. Take care of your own problems, stop pointing fingers and diverting responsibility, you bellicose hayseeds. {Vineyard Gazette 9/14}

Lee County, FL, Republicans consider branding the World Health Organization as a ‘terrorist’ organization, and barring IRS and FBI agents. {Florida Politics 9/12}

U.S. Army doctor and wife charged with spying on behalf of Russia, allegedly planned to share information on patients at Fort Bragg medical facility. {BBC 9/30}

The U.S. Army ‘saw a 10% drop in aptitude test scores during the pandemic,’ and ‘up to 70% of potential recruits interested in Army service are disqualified in the first 48 hours due to obesity, low test scores or drug use.’ {Army Times 9/15}

South Dakota’s ambitious governor spent $200,000 in taxpayer funds to pay a noted fundamentalist loon to overhaul the state’s social studies standards - Whitewashing the country’s history and promoting the blasphemous notion of ‘American exceptionalism,’ holding that no nation in all of history could possibly have ever been so great and so blessed from on high. Meanwhile, the kids are rendered ever more dumb and void of critical thinking skills, and #Murica becomes ever more of a global embarrassment and laughingstock. Yeah, we’re exceptional alright. {AP 9/12}

COVID-19

President Biden declares the COVID-19 pandemic over - No basis in reality, just simply telling people what they want to hear. Disappointing, but not surprising: The man is a career politician, and is given to expediency. The opposition is just that awful, and most of his own party are utterly inept and useless, so this president looks very good next to them, and he really is our last best hope. I like President Biden, but he is only a man and not without flaws. This is a really bad call and will come back to haunt him. COVID is not going away, no matter how much anybody tries to pretend otherwise. We may not have even seen the worst of it yet.  {BBC 9/19}

Washington University study: Roughly 6.6 million Americans have suffered brain impairments directly linked to COVID. {Reuters 9/22}

Local wastewater tracker shows COVID-19 cases on the rise again in the Boston-area - Department of Public Health: ‘(C)ases are rising the fastest in kids and teens between the ages of 10 and 19 years old.’ {WFXT 9/29}

AP

CLIMATE CHANGE

Portions of Southwest Florida’s electric grid will need to be rebuilt following the Category 4 landfall of Hurricane Ian - Outages are going to last months. Perhaps all these Floridans sitting in the dark may take a moment to ask themselves why their favorite political party did everything in their power to derail and, ultimately, water-down President Biden’s infrastructure reforms, while failing to come up with any viable plan of its own. #JustSaying. {Protocol 9/29}

Jackson, MS: Troops hand out over a million water bottles in less than 24 hours due to ‘long-running water supply issue’ - So many municipalities in this country are struggling to maintain basic services in recent years, and often in these ultra-’red’ states where Republicans hold nearly full sway. Yes, it happens in other poor areas where Democrats continually dominate elections as well. Another sign, perhaps, the mass stagnation we are experiencing is another ramification of the absurd tribalism #Muricans are giving themselves over to more than ever before. ‘If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking,’ as Gen. Patton wisely stated. And when people are not thinking, not much is going to get done, will it? Right at this moment - when one of the two parties is clearly more dangerous than the other, and is boldly attempting to install a ChristoFascist dictatorship (or are in denial of such) while standing behind a clear psychopath and traitor - is not the best time to be talking about a third party, but long-term we damn well better start getting smart and stop acting like herd animals, for we’re seeing right before our eyes that nothing good comes of it. Absolutely nothing. {BBC 9/02}

Maps show where extreme heat shattered 7,000 records in the United States this summer. {WaPo 9/13}

Over 200 pilot whales dead in mass stranding on the beaches of Tasmania. {Canberra Times 9/24}

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

‘NASA’s Perseverance rover is exploring a long-dry river delta on Mars, and it has seen signs that indicate that the region is full of organics – molecules containing carbon that are widely considered to be the building blocks of life.’ {New Scientist 9/15}

‘Scientists at the University of Cambridge have discovered that water in a one-molecule layer acts like neither a liquid nor a solid, and that it becomes highly conductive at high pressures.’ {University of Cambridge 9/14}

Copyright 2022, Sunking278. Stay up-to-date: Twitter – @Sunking278 and Facebook – click here. DONATIONS - click here.

The stark realization that the America and world I came of age in is no longer

Jose Luis Magana/AP

Donald Trump seriously could shoot an entirely innocent person in the middle of 5th Avenue, and his supporters would rejoice, while those who merely just tolerate him and other right-wing extremist GOP politicians out of fervent opposition to the Democratic Party would twist themselves into pretzels trying to downplay, ignore, or justify it. The rest of us would be justifiably furious, as we always are every single time the s.o.b. does or says something rotten; as usual, it’d basically be to no avail. At this point, Trump would not be charged if he were to maliciously, and beyond any shadow of doubt, literally murder another individual. The only reason the DOJ has not and will not charge him with a multitude of crimes is the knowledge that #Cult45 will officially kick off the new civil war in earnest the moment it happens. Know what we are dealing with, for the American people are showing their true colors like never before. America today is 100% unrecognizable from what it was in my post-war childhood in the 1980s and 1990s. Back then, preserving our democratic values was sacrosanct, as was upholding the global order that so many had shed blood to achieve in World War II. Now is a period where Americans have turned exclusively inward and are only - key word - concerned with their grievances against one another. We’re not going to survive; the damage has been done, and was self-inflicted. Maybe someday the tide will turn again toward relative peace and prosperity, but not in this generation or the next, and not before millions are slaughtered.

Poll: About half of Americans say Trump should be charged for his role in the January 6 Insurrection - Major caveats here, starting with the fact that polls are never entirely reliable. But, with the possible exception of Nixon following Watergate, it would have been unthinkable for most any American - let alone 48% of the public, and 58% overall believing he bears at least some level responsibility - to want to see a current or former president of either party put in prison prior to Trump. Paradoxically, what is wrong with the other 52%? To be fair, in this poll ‘only’ 31% actually responded that they do not believe Trump should face any charges for January 6 and another 20% somehow don’t have an opinion. 31% is a large number, just shy of one-third, and to take a ‘guesstimate,’ the ultra-right, nationalist populist bunch probably are roughly a third to 40% of the population. So, this poll may very well be accurate; one-third of the population is more than enough for any tyrannical movement to conquer an already-divided country, and that is exactly what is continuing to happen here. #Cult45 - has been radicalized, and we face a situation here very similar to Iran in the mid-to-late ‘70s: President Biden finds himself in the role of the Shah, while Trump is playing the role of Ayatollah Khomeini; and Ayatollah Trump has millions of acolytes prepared for revolution against modernity, and to serve as enforcers of the crackdown on civil society that is already underway. (AP 6/30)

Win McNamee/Getty Images

Liz Cheney, not mincing words - ‘We are confronting a domestic threat we have never faced before. And that is a former president who is attempting to unravel the foundations of our constitutional republic. And he is aided by Republican leaders and elected officials who have made themselves willing hostages to this dangerous and irrational man.’ (NPR 6/30)

José Luis González/Reuters

Supreme Court rules the president is entitled to overturn his predecessor’s ‘Remain in Mexico’ immigration policy - So, as #Cult45 has itself had a love fest with the high court in the past week, how do they now reconcile with this ruling disobeying their orange messiah? (The Guardian 6/30)

Maxim Shemetov/Reuters

Russia appears to have defaulted on its international debt - Due to a number of factors at play, Russia is not facing certain economic doomsday, but none of this can be making the lives of ordinary Russians any easier. (New York Times 6/27)

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Stop trying to change anybody’s minds: Facts, reason, and logic get us nowhere with the right-wing populist masses of #Murica

All of this - the myriad of (expensive) lawsuits that all went nowhere, the insurrection on 1/06/21, the damage it has done to the office of the presidency itself, the questionable voting laws that have been passed in certain states - could have been avoided had Trump just been a man and conceded defeat like every other defeated incumbent in history had done before him. We know now his own people told him he lost and that it would be futile to fight it. But fought it he did, and many grifters went along while the rank-and-file eagerly embraced any and all efforts to undermine the lawfully elected president. (This has done great damage to Biden’s standing with a worn-out and worn-down general public.) Upwards of 40% of our population *wants* Fascism; that is far more than enough to elect a president given our unique electoral system and the widespread apathy of millions. A plurality is making it plainly clear they want the rest of the population silenced and only *their* constitutional rights matters. After years of being inundated with conspiracy theories and far-right propaganda, they’re lining up behind Trump because they are sincerely afraid, and honestly believe there is a global plot to genocide them out of existence. Few may say it in so many words (some do), but this survival instinct is in overdrive. How does one reason with wounded animals? #Cult45 would still be a bit uppity right now - remember, they’re still angry as hell about the COVID restrictions - but if Trump had just bowed out gracefully, all of this would be a lot more manageable. Sometimes, it feels to me as if America will be lucky to last to the end of the year before civil war begins in earnest …

Above, a Carl Sagan quote that expresses everything I’ve been stressing of late: Nobody is going to say sorry unless they are forced to (and then, they won’t mean it), few are remorseful for the nation-killing evil they helped facilitate, and few are coming to their senses. Trump gave the average American the greatest gift they ever hoped to receive: The license to openly hate and abuse their fellow Americans. No means of keeping these United States together are possible anymore, the irreconcilable differences among us are too great. Nor is there any hope of a peaceful divorce, for millions are hellbent on violence and silencing the opposition. Civil war is coming; if we’re being honest, it has already been in its ‘cold’ phase for years. Now it’s getting hot: The end result and what comes after, I haven’t a clue, except that life will never be the same as we knew in the late 20th century …

It is true that President Biden does not have as big of a fan club as his predecessor maintains. We didn’t vote for the man to make him the center of a cult of personality, or to worship him as some national father figure. Only cultists would do that. Nor does anyone have real cause to demonize the president to the absurd extent being done. #Cult45 is pathetic. They’ve been thoroughly debunked and delegitimized over and over, but - again - they must keep doubling down, for surrender or admitting error is a fate worse than death to me. As with their deity, Donald Trump. Logic and all else be damned, we’re really f**king screwed.

Win McNamee/Getty Images

Jonah Goldberg: Inconvenient truths. Why Tucker Carlson ignored the January 6 hearing - Pussies and sissies, the whole lot of them. Few exemplified the chicken-s**t more aptly than Tucker Carlson. (The Dispatch 6/10)

Liz Cheney leaves Trump and his GOP apologists reeling - Quote: ‘Constitutional democracies are rarely destroyed by a single blow. Their citizens often sleepwalk into catastrophe, discovering too late that a degree of timely vigilance could have preserved their system of self-rule.’ (Washington Post 6/10)

From NPR, March 2, 2021: Antifa didn’t storm the Capitol. Just ask the rioters - #Cult45 needs to make up their minds: Was January 6 an ‘inside job’ to smear Trump and the GOP, or was it just some ‘patriots’ blowing off steam and not that big of a deal?

Cult expert Steven Hassan sees 95% chance of worsening pro-Trump violence. (Salon 6/13)

Members of a white supremacist/terrorist organization arrested after packing into a U-Haul truck with the intent of attacking individuals gathered for gay pride event in Idaho (AP 6/12)

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The decaying United States of America: A lost cause doomed for history’s ash heap? If this past week has been any indication, the answer is ‘yes,’ we are doomed

Edvard Munch

January 6 committee presents new video footage of the U.S. Capitol riot, shares testimony from numerous Trump allies - including Ivanka - that his election fraud claims were bogus - The footage is shocking and ugly. The evidence is damning. Yet, I don’t see anything changing politically, or any of the important players going to prison. In fact, the January 6 attack was just the beginning of much violence to come. We have mass shootings on an almost daily basis in #Murica, and it hardly phases anybody now. Certainly not enough to enact reasonable gun regulation on the federal level. The people of this country really don’t want to be bothered with this, just as they’ve proven they don’t want to be bothered with the war in Ukraine, or with further COVID-19 restrictions. Some are angry about gas prices and inflation, and they blame the old man in the White House; but most are just apathetic and only want to play video games, or watch ‘reality TV,’ or gorge on cheeseburgers, anything but giving a damn. Even without majority support - due to anemic voter turnout - the GOP are going to win large majorities in both houses of Congress, and the march toward total Fascism will move forward. In fact, many who are currently on-the-fence politically or apolitical will come to welcome our Fascist overlords. In no small part because #Cult45 and GOP lawmakers are growing increasingly willing to enforce their positions upon others, and others will be threatened into compliance. #Cult45 are eager for violence. If anything, this new footage is only going to inspire more violence, and fewer and fewer Americans will care unless they’re the victim. Or even ‘if’ (and when) they are the victim. This is a broken country full of broken people, and it does not have the will or the means to defeat this Fascist plague. We’re going full Nazi, and most seem to sense it and are resigned to it. For those of us who will never accept Fascism, the remnant - only God knows what will happen to us. I know what my gut tells me, and better dead than a slave. I’ve been suffering panic attacks for years, fearing a moment exactly as we saw on January 6, 2021. And worse; worse is coming, the current situation is awful enough. I’ve prayed that these premonitions of unbridled hate and warfare in the streets of America were all just my paranoia, but it’s all proceeding in real-time just as I feared. Until I breathe my last, however, I carry on expressing my indignation at what has become of this country and what its people have become. And longing for a better life in a world far from our own. (NBC News 6/09)

I’ve been telling you folks for several years now that the nationalist populist right in America - #Cult45 - are going to stop at nothing in their crusade to destroy liberal democracy and restore Fascism, theocracy, misogyny, and racism. Great, I am glad the hearings are happening, and much respect to Bennie Thompson, Liz Cheney, and the J6 Committee for their work. Know this, however: No matter what is revealed, nobody’s minds are going to be changed. Not a single pro-Trump Republican voter in America is going to be moved by this, bank on that. None of the J6 ring leaders will ever go to prison. Just as with the most recent school massacre in Texas, and the discussion over whether to show the public the images of the slain children: They could do that, and not a single Second Amendment absolutist is going to change his or her mind. Millions of Americans will scorch the earth if widespread gun confiscation were to occur. The anti-abortion lobby is never going to be swayed, the COVID deniers will never be swayed by facts, reason, or logic. Christ Himself could return in the flesh and chastise evangelical Christians for their hypocrisy and the cruelties being done in His name, and none of these Christofascists are going to give an inch. Yes, they would reject Him. The extreme right has grown very large and very powerful, and it will take victory in a long, bloody civil war to ever stop them - do NOT underestimate how determined millions of our fellow Americans are to silence other Americans! And that very much goes for the extreme contingent on the hard-left, but they are not nearly as numerous (or as well-armed) as the extreme right. Fewer and fewer of us are occupying the center, which is really the most dangerous spot an American can occupy when surrounded by blood-thirsty vampires on the left and right. This isn’t the old days, such as in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, when everybody finally comes to their senses and realizes they were supporting a crook. The battle lines have been drawn, hearts have been hardened, humanity has been lost, we are heading for civil war, and the ultimate dissolution of the republic. Not going to sugarcoat it, having faith in people to do the right thing these days is futile.

Americans spending half or more of their time whining about how bad President Biden they believe to be, while simultaneously baffled and angered - just like the idiots and lemmings they are - because not everybody loves the corrupt, orange buffoon who - in four short years - did more damage to the office of the presidency than every one of his predecessors combined in over 200 years of American history. There isn’t any use in even talking to any of them or trying to reason; people only see what they want to see and hear what they want to hear. Trump is their opiate, one of their few comforts in this miserable world, and the one giving them permission to be their true, ugly selves. And to take their idol away from them is something they are not ever going to forgive or forget, and they are very likely to turn more to violence and outright Fascism at ever-faster rates. We are in a dangerous time, and if I have a criticism of President Biden, it is that he is not laying down the law strongly enough, and usually doesn’t defend himself as he really needs to (and is capable of, but I think maybe his handlers are a bit too wedded to this kindly old-man image they wish to project.) This is a man who spent 36 years in the United States Senate, holding some very powerful chairmanships in that time. Eight years as VP. The man is going to be 80 this November, and is undertaking one of the hardest jobs in the world, and 95% of his critics can barely get out of bed each day (not that I’m one to talk about getting out of bed, but I’m not the one talking s**t about the president.) If Biden goes all-out authoritarian, it will be because #Murica has so richly earned it. Seriously, I’m not the smartest man alive, but I knew an obvious con-man when I saw one in the 2016 campaign. And I’ve lived long enough to recognize a mass hissy-fit when I see one. Lord knows there have been plenty in recent years in this ridiculous and stupid nation. You are pathetic, #Cult45. And that also goes to all the grifters in the media - laughing all the way to the bank while America is torn apart, no real care for the preservation of our constitutional republic - and to the hard-left whackos who are the flip side of the same tyrannical coin as #Cult45. To the whole lot of you: Not a single word you say, and nor any of your actions will ever be taken seriously by me, or millions of others around the world, ever again. Bloody fools, you are going to be the death of us all. You are not patriots, but agents of death and misery. Here’s hoping for the president to begin kicking seditious ass, and to explain to the whiners that they are not helping matters with their belligerence and petulance.

Roman Chaly

John Schindler: Military history repeats in Ukraine - ‘Russians will always fight like Russians.’ Ukraine needs our support now more than ever, at precisely the moment where most have stopped paying attention. (Top Secret Umbra 6/05)

U.S. Marine and former prisoner of the Russians, Trevor Reed, warns that hostage Brittney Griner is likely being treated especially harshly by her captors - Quote: ‘There is no justice in Russia. Brittney and Paul will not receive justice in Russia. They're not going to receive a fair trial. They will not receive a fair investigation. They will be there as hostages until the United States gets them out.’ (Axios 6/07)

Getty Images

Vital thread, concerning hygiene in hospitals and other medical settings - Long before the pandemic, there were those who outright refuse to even wash their hands; it has never ceased to amaze and disgust me. The backlash against COVID protocols is only creating more belligerence (Dr. Lisa Iannattone 6/08)

Anti-vaccine film that claimed COVID is ‘a synthetic version of snake venom that evil forces are spreading through remdesivir,’ and makes one ‘a hybrid of Satan,’ is thoroughly debunked by scientists - It is as if we are back in the Middle Ages with some of these people. (Genetic Literacy Project 6/06)

Kash Patel

Trump calls for children’s book where he is fictionalized as ‘King Donald’ to be put in all classrooms in #Murica - Our heads may hurt from the stupid, but know this is a dog whistle for GOP lawmakers on the state level to put forward bills to do precisely that. He, and his disciples, will punish their enemies in any manner they can. (Huffington Post 6/05)

Louisiana State Police/AP

DOJ opens probe into Louisiana State Police over countless accusations of a ‘pattern of looking the other way in the face of beatings of mostly Black men’ - Once the current administration is cast aside and the Fascists achieve complete control, the next AG will, also, be ‘looking the other way,’ and it will be open season on everyone who are deemed as outcasts. (AP 6/09)

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Our darkest days grow colder: Shooting at elementary school in Texas leaves 18 small children dead, Trump wanted to hang his own VP for not cooperating with the J6 insurrection, and the dangerous despot in Hungary seizes more power for himself

Jacob Langston/NYT

Testimony before the House January 6 committee reveals that Trump allegedly stated that Mike Pence needed to hang - Nothing is shocking anymore with Donald Trump, and this revelation is no exception. In normal times this one anecdote alone would have been the scandal of the decade, and there would be widespread outrage. America has undergone a ‘shock treatment’ of sorts for the past twenty-one years, and desensitization has set in for many. And others are embracing the evil lurking inside them, as we will see in the next paragraph. Welcome to Hell. (New York Times 5/25)

Reuters

Another f**king school shooting, another bloody day in #Murica - Mass shootings are now an almost-daily occurrence in this sick country. No hyperbole, people everywhere are cracking. Eighteen kids, and one adult dead; the shooter, probably another one of these teenage incel types, killed by police. Americans are once again horrified, and once again no action will be taken. Guns are only part of the problem, and guns are an effective deterrent when used responsibly and lawfully by qualified individuals - no, many of these kids are being doped up on Ritalin, overstimulated on video games and electronics, most are not reading, they are largely not allowed to play outside. They are no longer taught manners, seeing as so many of the grown-ups around them are rude and stupid individuals, and genuine role models are few and far between. Even most of those in #Murica who present themselves as upright and full of wisdom turn out to be scam artists and charlatans; wolves in sheep’s clothing. I’ve long had a vague suspicion that the new Babylon spoken of in prophecy is the United States of America. At this moment, I am not suspecting anything; this may as well be Babylon, and it deserves to die. All of that good, patriotic stuff about America that people still cling to is simply gone, long past us in all but facade. May the Lord Jesus have mercy on us. (BBC News 5/24)

Olivier Hoslet/AP

Hungarian despot Viktor Orban seizes more power for himself with ‘state of danger’ declaration - Using the war in neighboring Ukraine as a pretense, the populist strongman and Putin ally erodes democracy further. Remember, this is the model the GOP is openly praising and emulating. (AP 5/24)

Sen. Mitt Romney warns that the United States must be prepared for Russia to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine (KSL 5/23)

The U.S. supplies Ukraine with lethal ‘Switchblade’ drones that can target Russian tanks and artillery from miles away (Ukraine 24 5/24)

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