The mind|body|soul always wants more ~ 60yr old He/Him (MAN) 60 is the new 40.. f’k around and find out! I respect all hues, ethnicities, sexual orientation or preferences | Xenophilia (safe space). Live your life as you choose but always respect others.
Exactly five years ago, on July 15, 2021, I wrote:
“Today Americans began to see the concrete effects of the American Rescue Plan show up in their bank accounts, as the expanded child tax credit goes into effect for one year. Through this program, the Child Tax Credit increased to $3,000 per child aged 6 to 17 and $3,600 per child under 6. All working families will get the full credit if they make up to $150,000 for a couple or $112,500 for a family with a single parent. The government sent payments for almost 60 million children on Thursday, totaling $15 billion.
“This is a really big deal. In America, one in seven children lives in poverty. This measure is expected to cut that poverty nearly in half. Studies suggest that addressing childhood poverty continues to pay off over time, as it helps adults achieve higher levels of mobility.”
The American Rescue Plan, passed in March 2021, was an early achievement of the Biden presidency, becoming a signature law as every Republican voted against it. A year later, researchers at the Brookings Institute found that the temporary expansion of the child tax credit lifted 3.7 million children out of poverty before it expired on December 31, 2021.
Family members did not stop working, as critics said they would. Instead, they used the money to cover routine expenses, decreasing their reliance on credit cards; had better nutrition; and made long-term investments in education for both children and parents.
Now, five years later, the results of the Republicans’ signature One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), passed without a single Democratic vote and signed into law last July, are revealing a very different set of priorities.
The OBBBA extended or expanded more than $4.5 trillion in tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations, while cutting more than $1 trillion from social welfare programs. It did increase the child tax credit, but less than it would have if Congress had just adjusted the credit based on inflation since it had set the amount in 2017. And, according to the nonprofit, nonpartisan Institute of Tax and Economic Policy, the benefits from the OBBBA measure went mostly to the richest fifth of Americans, dropping essentially to zero by the time they got to the poorest fifth.
The measure cut $187 billion in federal funding from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and on Monday, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reported that between the passage of the OBBBA in July 2025 and March 2026—the last month for which there is data from all states—more than 4 million people lost access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. At least a quarter of those people are children. Those losses will mount in 2027—after the midterm elections—when states will have to assume much more of the costs of the program.
At the center of the difference between the Democrats’ signature bill and the Republicans’ is how the representatives of those parties see the purpose of the American government. Should it be used for the good of the American people, or to concentrate wealth and power among a few?
On July 9, Carol Leonnig and Ken Dilanian of MS NOW reported that Trump’s appointees in the Department of Justice are overruling the career attorneys in the antitrust division who have called for reviews of how corporate mergers and acquisitions might lead to price gouging for consumers and taxpayers. Trump-appointed officials are pushing ahead without reviews designed to protect the American people from monopoly power and, in what former assistant attorney general Bill Baer called “unilateral surrender,” are not pursuing lawsuits to enforce antitrust laws.
“Consumers are getting really screwed by all of this,” a source told Leonnig and Dilanian. “We’re talking 10 years of consumer harm that can’t be undone.”
On Friday, Trump called a select group of Republicans who sit on the House Budget Committee to Camp David to put together a funding package, primarily for military funding, that they can get past Congress through budget reconciliation, a process that will not need any Democratic votes. Even the invitation to Camp David was controversial, though: Trump extended invitations to members of the far-right Freedom Caucus, but not to the more moderate Republicans on the committee. Invitations were secret, and members’ phones were confiscated at Camp David.
Budget Committee member Erin Houchin (R-IN) told Jake Sherman of PunchBowl News that she was urging committee members to vote no on the package.
Today House Republicans released a $95 billion budget framework to provide another $73 billion for additional military funding for the war on Iran, a $12 billion bailout for farmers hurt by Trump’s tariff wars, and $10 billion to enact aspects of the SAVE America measure Trump has been unable to convince Congress to pass.
Money for farmers was part of a sweetener to try to get Democrats on board with the measure, but it does not appear to be enough to get them to agree to fund an unpopular war and voter suppression. Representative Brendan Boyle (D-PA), the top-ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee, told Kevin Freking and Lisa Mascaro of the Federal News Network, “I’m going to fight like hell to make sure taxpayer dollars are being used to lower costs and make life better for American families, not to bankroll Trump’s giveaways to billionaires and endless wars overseas.”
“This ‘America Last’ budget would add tens of billions more to the national debt to fund the most unpopular war in American history,” Boyle said.
Catie Edmondson of the New York Times noted that spending requests are usually dealt with through the bipartisan appropriations process, but Republicans are, once again, trying to maneuver around the Democrats to fund priorities the Democrats reject: an immigration enforcement surge that has led to two deaths at the hands of ICE agents in the past week, and the war in Iran.
Even Republicans don’t appear to want to throw more money at the Iran War before the midterms, especially as the Pentagon has been opaque about the costs of the war and the White House has refused to confer with Congress about it. They also don’t want to fund the unpopular voter suppression measure Trump wants, as prices for everyday Americans at the gas pump and grocery store are noticeably higher than they were a few months ago.
Representative Warren Davidson (R-OH) wrote on social media that the Republicans’ budget plan was “DOA,” or “dead on arrival.”
The deaths six days apart of two immigrants, neither one of whom was the intended target of the operation during which they were shot and killed, has rekindled the unpopularity of the administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants. As protest broke out in the wake of the shooting death of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine, yesterday, Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), called for Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to “cease all non-urgent vehicle stops.”
Collins, who is running for reelection, is the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee and was a key vote in the June measure that provided an additional $70 billion for immigration enforcement through 2029. As Margy O’Herron of the Brennan Center noted, $70 billion “is more than the budgets for all other federal law enforcement agencies combined, including the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the U.S. Marshals Service.”
ICE issued a memo yesterday ordering agents to prioritize tactics other than traffic stops, prompting praise from Collins.
But at 6:45 this morning, Trump insisted—incorrectly—that the people ICE is rounding up are “Criminals, and we have to get them out. In order to do this, we must be strong, tough, and smart, and we CANNOT give up one of I.C.E.’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP! Once we do, we are playing right into the criminal’s hands. The Radical Left Dumocrats would like to see this done, but it won’t happen on my watch. I.C.E., be judicious, fair and smart, and go back and do your very important job. Keep those Crime Stat Records coming! Remember, you are loved and respected in America.”
The Iran War is also back on the front burner.
On Monday, Trump announced he was reimposing a blockade on Iran and that the U.S. would become the “THE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT”; yesterday he reversed course, claiming that Gulf allies told him they would rather invest directly in the U.S. than pay tolls.
Last night, Barak Ravid of Axios, who often has inside information from the White House, reported that Trump yesterday held a meeting in the Situation Room with his top national security team to discuss “new plans for devastating strikes” against Iran. Those in the room included Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Dan Caine, Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe, White House special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and other senior officials, Ravid reported.
Before the meeting, Trump told the Fox News Channel that after the “hard” strikes this week, “[n]ext week, it gets really bad for them because next week comes the power plants. Next week comes the bridges. We’re gonna knock out all their power plants. We’re gonna knock out all their bridges unless they get to the table and negotiate.”
Attacks on civilian infrastructure are usually illegal under international law.
Nate Swanson, a former member of Trump’s negotiating team, told foreign policy specialist Laura Rozen of Diplomatic that Trump’s escalation was probably a ploy to kick-start further negotiations. “I think it is a very risky and low probability gamble, but nothing else makes sense…. I don’t see a feasible pathway towards military victory, nor do I believe that we can [militarily] open the Strait of Hormuz against Iran’s wishes.”
The more things change, the more they stay the same. When I wrote about the importance of the American Rescue Plan five years ago, I ended my discussion of it with the observation that “this huge achievement of the Biden presidency—every single Republican voted against it—has taken a backseat in the news to two blockbuster stories about the former president.”
Trump’s “success” is due in large part to his preternatural ability to identify men and women who harbor ambition, vanity, and weakness in equal measure. Trump exploits their ambition and vanity by dangling access to power, knowing that their weak characters will look past his corruption, depravity, and malignant narcissism that threaten our democracy. On Wednesday, the bitter fruits of Trump’s sordid recruiting efforts were on sorry display in the US Senate.
At some point in their lives, Todd Blanche and Jay Clayton were respected members of the bar with outstanding reputations among lawyers, judges, and clients. Todd Blanche has trashed his reputation over the last three years by representing Trump in the Manhattan hush-money trial—which ended in conviction on 34 felony counts—and in two federal prosecutions that were abandoned after Trump's 2024 re-election, a result made possible by the Supreme Court's immunity ruling in Trump v. US.
But the jury was out on Jay Clayton. Until today. The damning verdict was delivered by Clayton himself through his sniveling, evasive, shameful appearance before the Judiciary Committee. In the legal vernacular, “Clayton has drunk the Kool-Aid.”
For those not familiar with Clayton, he is currently the US Attorney for the SDNY. He previously served as the Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). He served on the Management Committee of Sullivan & Cromwell, one of the world’s largest and most respected law firms. His financial disclosure showed he drew a salary and bonus of more than $6.7 million from Sullivan & Cromwell in the year before his SDNY nomination, lofty salary that reflects his stellar legal training, his government experience, his purported legal acumen, and his wise counsel.
But in a brief exchange with Senator John Ossof, Jay Clayton demonstrated that either (a) he is willing to lie to a Senate Committee while under oath, or (b) he is functionally illiterate and cannot be trusted to serve as the nation’s chief intelligence officer. I believe the answer is option (a), but I will let you judge after watching the video of the exchange between Senator Ossof and Clayton, below: (Press the “play” arrow at the bottom of the embedded video to watch the exchange.)
If Clayton’s testimony was truthful, he was unaware that his predecessor in the job of Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, was present at the execution of the FBI search warrant that seized the Fulton County, Georgia, ballots. Clayton claims he was also unaware that Tulsi Gabbard testified to Congress that Trump requested that she attend the FBI’s seizure of ballots in Georgia.
Gabbard’s presence at the Fulton County raid was extensively covered by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post, and widely reported on cable news, including Fox News. So, too, was Tulsi Gabbard’s testimony that she was at the raid at Trump’s request.
Again, Tulsi Gabbard is Clayton’s immediate predecessor in the job for which he is seeking a favorable report by the Judiciary Committee. For Clayton to pretend to be unaware of the biggest controversy surrounding his predecessor is (in the words of Jon Ossof) “not credible.”
But Clayton has performed the calculus. He has weighed the stain on his reputation and the behind-the-back whispers that will follow him for life, and concluded, in his weakness and vanity, that access to power is more important than truth, honor, and patriotism.
Such are the men selected by the partners of Sullivan & Cromwell to lead their firm. It is no surprise that S&C never capitulated to Trump. It never had to; instead, it voluntarily aligned with him, serving as the White House’s favored intermediary to coerce other firms into capitulating to Trump.
And, now, Jay Clayton will be our nation’s chief intelligence officer, delivering critical briefings to a president who cannot abide bad news. Jay Clayton is the wrong man for a job that affects the safety and security of every American.
Tell your Senators that Jay Clayton is unfit to hold a position of public trust in the federal government!
As bad as Clayton's confirmation hearing was, Todd Blanche's was worse. Blanche walked into the confirmation room having protected Ghislaine Maxwell, obstructed the production of the Epstein documents, approved the bad-faith prosecutions of James Comey and Letitia James, and approved the $1.8 billion slush fund for January 6 insurrectionists and the IRS immunity agreement for Trump. It is difficult to see how it could get worse. But it did.
One of the first questions posed to Blanche was whether he was Trump’s friend. He replied, “I am his lawyer . . . was his lawyer.”
There you have it! For two seconds, Todd Blanche spoke the truth before he caught himself. But in that momentary candor, he explained why he was unfit to be the Attorney General of the United States. He views himself as the president's lawyer, rather than the lawyer for the people of the United States.
The influential New York City Bar Association filed a lengthy objection with the Chair and ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, explaining why Todd Blanche is unfit to serve as Attorney General. See City Bar Opposes Todd Blanche Nomination for U.S. Attorney General (2026).
Senator Adam Schiff released key moments of his examination of Todd Blanche. See Schiff’s notes, Todd Blanche’s Conflicts of Interest. In a key moment in the examination (beginning at the 9:30 mark), Senator Schiff got Blanche to admit that he approved the $1.8 billion slush fund.
Senator Schiff then asked,
What happened to the Todd Blanche who was a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York? What happened to the prosecutor people had respect for?
What happened to the prosecutor who once respected the rule of law? What happened to the prosecutor who said “there won’t be a whiff of political partisanship” and then prosecutes the president’s enemies over seashells and making a video stating the plain law of the Constitution?
What happened to the Todd Blanche of the Southern District of New York that could convert him into you, someone who is willing to say the president has both the right and the duty to prosecute his political enemies?
[The above quote is my personal transcription from the video; I tried to get it right, but the official record may differ.]
There is more, but you get the point: It was a brutal hearing for Blanche—but cowardly Republicans—like the feckless Susan Collins—will vote for a man who has proven his willingness to ignore the Constitution, federal statutes, due process, the rule of law, and human decency.
Trump reverses order for ICE to “cease non-urgent traffic stops.”
Remember two days ago when Senator Susan Collins was bragging that she had convinced DHS to order ICE to cease all non-urgent traffic stops? Well that cessation lasted less than a day. See The Atlantic, Inside Trump’s Reversal on ICE | Attacks from immigration hard-liners had the president worried about looking weak.
Per The Atlantic,
The president overruled his own administration after getting furious pushback from his MAGA base over the ICE order suspending most vehicle stops. White House officials told us that Trump had heard a litany of complaints from hard-line allies over the past day.
“We CANNOT give up one of I.C.E.’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!,” the president wrote on his Truth Social network. “Once we do, we are playing right into the criminal’s hands.”
Don't let Susan Collins lie about persuading ICE to suspend non-urgent traffic stops. Her plea to MarkWayne Mullin was immediately overruled by Trump. Perhaps she should've waited a few hours before taking credit for a major change in ICE policy. Now, she has proved that she is powerless to rein in Donald Trump.
Concluding Thoughts
Don’t believe anything Trump says on Thursday evening.
Trump will give a primetime speech on Thursday evening. According to reports, he will allege that China attempted to affect the outcome of the 2020 presidential election by attacking Trump on social media. However, Trump apparently has no proof that China affected voting procedures or vote count totals. And, of course, it is well established that Russia likewise attempted to affect the outcome of the 2020 presidential election by attacking Joe Biden.
The most important point is this: Simply because Trump claims the authority to do something does not mean he has that authority. Moreover, if he attempts to exercise authority not granted to him by the Constitution, he will be stopped by the courts.
I had an email exchange with a reader that illustrates why things that “sound bad” may be bluffs designed to frighten or dispirit us. The reader asked,
Trump has fired the remaining EAC commissioners. The EAC is tasked with the certification of voting machines.
Can we predict that Trump will claim votes are invalid because machines were not certified?
Good question—and one that may be causing some people to fear that the firing of the Election Assistance Commission will lead to “chaos.” But let’s look at the facts.
1 The certification of voting machines by EAC does not impose any obligation on states to use those machines. It’s like a “Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval” on a cleaning product; you are free to purchase the store-branded, cheaper version. Some states have laws saying that they must use federally certified machines; others do not (e.g., California).
2 Once a machine is certified, it remains certified forever, unless it is decertified. Every machine that requires federal certification under state law already has it—and thus can be used in 2026. Moreover, the structure of the certification program—which delegates certification decisions to EAC staff rather than requiring a Commission vote—allows the testing and certification to continue despite the vacancies. See Just Security, What is the Election Assistance Commission With No Commissioners?
So, the answer to the reader’s question is, “No,” Trump will not be able to claim that 2026 votes are invalid because “the machines were not certified.” No federal law says anything of the sort.
On the other hand, Trump makes lots of claims that are patently illegal and unconstitutional. Can he make up a rule that, because the EAC doesn’t exist, all votes in 2026 are invalid? Sure, just like he can issue an executive order stating that he can levitate. That doesn’t mean he should jump off a skyscraper.
So, if Trump makes claims about voting machines not being certified for 2026, ignore him. The machines and software have already been certified.
Testing Military Men Over 30 For Testosterone Levels In Order To Put Them On it--
Trump's drunken rageball idiot Secretary Of Blitzkrieg (who is usually blitzed more often than not) is engaging in yet another piece of Fourth Reich Nazi-f__kery this week, announcing his plans to put soldiers with so-called "Low T" on Testosterone therapy.
I'll leave the medical mish-moshery for others with more background to sort out. I want to briefly address just what in the AF this really is about.
Hegseth calls it a part of his "warrior ethos" and is imposing new arbitrary standards of fitness for all personnel. In his mind, being a woman, an ethnic minority of color, or an LGBTQ person makes a soldier unfit, either for duty, promotions, awards for valor, or memorializing. You all know he is a white supremacist, an über-misogynist, and Christian nationalist. But sometimes I grow tired of using so many words to label him, so for the sake of brevity, let's just say he's a Nazi.
So, what is this Testosterone thing really? Is it an attempt to "Rambo-ize" the military, to take a bunch of otherwise relatively healthy and fit men, and turn them into movie action heroes with muscles bursting out everywhere, including inside their craniums? No, it's much worse.
The overall policy is Hegseth trying to recruit, brainwash, and build "Supersoldiers," elite units of what will be a modern version of Hitler's "Einsatzgruppen" which carried out the majority of the mass executions of Jewish and Slavic civilians on the Eastern Front during "Operation Barbarossa" when the Nazis invaded Russia. They were in fact death squads.
Trump and Hegseth are preparing a ground war against Iran. They are likewise planning to invade Cuba, then Mexico, then Greenland, and not too far down the road will target the Brazilian government of Lula DaSilva. They are in a mad imperial war drive to seize raw materials, energy, water supplies, and food, just as Hitler intended through his expansionist war drives for more "Lebensraum." Meanwhile, Trump, Hegseth and ICE will be conducting a ground war against the American population which opposes the entirety of this nightmare.
And yes my friends, Hitler's military prescribed pharmaceutical assistance to enhance their soldiers and sailors.
He and his doctors put them on Meth. And then they put the adult German working population on it in order to speed up war production and "enhance" them too.
Those who have argued that such comparisons of the Trump regime to Hitler's Nazis are hyperbole, exaggerated, paranoid, or simply inaccurate, should think again. The reason they are comparable is because that is their model, and because both Trump and his "Secretary Of Penis Envy" Hegseth admire Hitler's methods and copy them. Those pompous academic loudmouths still living in denial should just step back, take a minute and STFU.
Testosterone is today's drug of non-choice for our military. Which ones might the regime make compulsory next?
So, that said, here is the story from my archives on how Hitler and his quack Doctor Theodor Morrell hooked Germany on Meth.
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