Housing discrimination is cool with President Project 2025

It’s hard not to be distracted by the constant tantrums, threats, rage tweets, flashes of madness, impulsiveness, dementia flights, war on the constitution, criminal abuse of his office, obstruction of justice, contempt of courts (all now legal for him, as long as done in conjunction with a cabinet member, see Trump v. US, 6-3, cucks) searches, indictments, arrests and brilliant AI internet trolling of his enemies by the very stable genius, President Project 2025. Behind him is a trillion dollar network of American fascists who make most of the big decisions, as laid out in detail in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. The blueprint for American fascism Trump lied about knowing anything about as a candidate, though he claimed to disagree with some of it (“the weave”).

Thousands of these true believers (they’ve gone by ‘movement conservative’, ‘alt-right’, ‘neo-con’, ‘John Birch Society’ and many less flattering names) are well-paid political operatives — lawyers, legislators, judges, influencers and lobbyists — acting on behalf of what Sheldon Whitehouse calls the “creepy billionaires” (creepy, in part, because mass death for others is a negligible price, in their collective opinion, to pay for the permanent protection of their vast privileges). There is an entire major political party now in thrall to their united will. Presumably there are also millions of enraged young white men, neither wealthy nor politically sophisticated, ready to follow their charismatic TV star leader into battle, as thousands did on January 6th. For a moment, let’s forget about Trump and look at what the network he works for is having him do.

Just as there was a long game by the American far-right to reverse the limits on presidential criminal audacity imposed by law after Richard Nixon was forced to resign in disgrace, just like the myth that slaveholding states didn’t start the Civil War, or fight for the cause of slavery, MAGA represents a return to the good old days when Blacks, Hispanics, Gays, Women, Voting Rights Advocates and others, innately inferior to white Christian men, “knew their place”. Ultimately, MAGA/Project 2025 is a return to the world the “Originalists” (an infinitely supple legal theory created by the same folks who brought you Project 2025) fondly imagine — a just constitutional order based on the judicious compromises that allowed certain rich people to own others they could treat however they wanted to.

So, while it’s despicable, it’s no shock that President Project 2025 has appointed a pliable puppet/”DEI hire” to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development who will roll back enforcement of the Fair Housing Act, the law that Trump and his landlord father violated for years (before and long after its passage in 1968), in the name of fighting what would later be called DEI — Diversity, Equity and Inclusion– among their tenants. Trump and his father, Frederick Christ Trump, eventually settled DOJ’s discrimination case against them, after a rip-roaring public legal battle in which they were represented by the monstrous Roy Cohn. In the settlement the Trumps agreed not to continue their racist violations of the Fair Housing Act without admitting they had ever violated it. Now, the NY Times reports (read article by clicking on image below):

Got to love the look of the sycophant Trump appointed to head the agency, superficially perfect casting:

HUD Secretary Scott Turner apparently believes, along with Trump, the Heritage Foundation, Charles Koch, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Jared Kushner and MAGA world (not to mention the Ku Klux Klan), that Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is a sickness, like the vaguely defined yet highly contagious “woke mind virus”, that must be eradicated. DEI, we are told, is an anti-American commie myth perpetrated to place unqualified inferior non-white, non-male people in power to bring down White America. To believe this requires a few leaps of faith, or leaps of idiocy.

First you must believe that there is no need for diversity in hiring, that everything is already equal between white men, women and so-called “people of color” in government and in the private sector. There has never been discrimination in the USA (“all men are created equal” — duh!), and racism, if you want to talk about racism, is directed toward persecuted white Christian men only (a claim made by the original KKK, too, protectors of white Christian women). Equity, which means fairness, is another way of accusing beleaguered Christian white men of being unjust and unfair! Inclusion is a sneaky way to manipulate the gullible into believing that some people are being systematically excluded!

DEI is, according to our homegrown fascist movement, just like Critical Race Theory, a divisive and false ideological “theory” that makes the world much more sinister and complicated than it actually is. Those who are in charge are there because of merit, they’ve earned the right to be in charge. Just look at Trump’s cabinet! DEI is filthy anti-meritocracy that needs to be killed!

There has been no substantial push back from Democrats on this simple principle that is it fair, just and decent to remedy historic prejudice by promoting qualified people long excluded by unfair institutional practices.

There is a lot to push back on when dealing with Nazis, granted, and the fascist right, with a four year running start as their front man escaped criminal liability for clear crimes, is spraying their propaganda from high powered hoses 24/7 as heavily armed masked agents from multiple federal agencies terrorize innocent people in various cities. But like the need for Democrats to have a Shadow Cabinet — experts in each field to immediately and publicly respond to the latest policy depredation from the brains behind Project 2025, enacted by their idiot front man — we need to counter the bullshit about the amorphous “danger” of DEI — and ending DEI being somehow a noble goal for government — with facts. No? Otherwise you have bloated fascists like Bill Barr warning Blacks that the cops won’t protect them unless they start to show some fucking respect.

USAID, dead, and mass killing

Speaking of the crazed onslaught of Project 2025’s audacious plan to make America as fascist as the Old Confederacy was, Big Balls and his enthusiastic young friends helped Trump loot and close down USAID, with the estimated 103 HOURLY deaths that resulted from their elimination of claimed “waste, fraud and abuse”. This massive, silent death toll (2,472 DAILY, 17,305 weekly, 74,160 monthly), caused directly by Project 2025 priorities, has not been reported on in months.

Every day the dismantling of USAID creates a silent 9/11 death toll (or twice the number of deaths Hamas terrorists inflicted on Israel on October 7 [1]), directly caused by the actions of the Trump administration, as President Project 2025 wildly, incoherently attacks his enemies, anybody who does not obey his every childish whim. The last reporting on the shuttering on USAID, which is projected to cause the atrocity of 14,000,000 preventable deaths in the next five years, was months ago. Too much horror to process, as there always is when Nazis are on the march, but process it we must if we are to remain human.

[1] or a daily toll of about 3.5% of the estimated 67,099 deaths (as of this post) in Gaza during Netanyahu’s war against civilians to destroy Hamas.

The Short Enemies Within List

The Enemy Within, those living in Bill Barr’s Anarchist Jurisdictions that do not support White Christian Nationalist Autocracy, need to be subjected to lethality by the buffed up all-male, all-heterosexual US military, according to the Commander-in-Chief and Secretary of War. Nothing out of line, it’s totally normal for the American President to urge 800 assembled generals and admirals to use Chicago, New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Portland, LA, etc. as training grounds for “maximum lethality” unbound from the international laws of warfare. There’s no such thing as war crimes when you’re out to destroy evil, according to these two embodiments of the warrior ethos.

“San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, they’re very unsafe places and we’re gonna straighten them out one by one,” Trump told hundreds of senior U.S. military officers packed into a hall at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Va.

“This is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That’s a war too. It’s a war from within,” Trump said.

source

Enemies, after all, need to be punished. Death by military fire power is too good for us.

Meanwhile, here are some of Trump’s top personal enemies, targeted for vengeance

Remember the staged arrest of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka under Acting State Attorney Alina Habba, on charges that were dismissed days later? He was arrested, after a tour of the ICE facility in Newark, for standing on the sidewalk in front of the place. On direct orders from Todd Blanche, Deputy Attorney General, recent Trump criminal attorney and benefactor of convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, ICE agents were instructed to cuff Baraka and their leader told the force, as they went to grab him for not violating any laws “if you have body cams, turn them off.” It’s on videotape, it’s been on television. Representative LaMonica McGiver is facing 17 years in prison for objecting to the illegal arrest as ICE went nuts trying to cuff the mayor in the middle of a crowd of legislators and citizens. She is charged with assaulting heavily armed, masked ICE officers, at least one of whom was yelling “back up or I’ll shoot!”.

Christopher Krebs is a good one. A Trump appointee, his crime was announcing that the 2020 election had been secure and that the results were accurate. An enraged Trump immediately fired Krebs for this statement. I wonder what his alleged criminal liability will be, under an insane and desperately obsequious Trump DOJ. An outline of Krebs’s betrayal of Trump:

As CISA’s director, Krebs was the “administration’s most senior cybersecurity official responsible for securing the presidential election”, held on November 3, 2020.[9] Sidney Powell, an attorney for Trump and Michael Flynn, asserted on the Lou Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo Fox News programs that a secret government supercomputer program had switched votes from Trump to Biden in the election, a claim Krebs dismissed as “nonsense” and a “hoax.”[10] CISA created a website to debunk election-related disinformation, much of which was being promoted by President Donald Trump and his allies.[11] On November 12, it was reported that Krebs expected to be fired from his position.[12][13]

On November 17, 2020, Krebs said in a tweet that “59 election security experts all agree, in every case of which we are aware, these claims (of fraud) either have been unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent.”[14] Trump fired Krebs via Twitter the same day, because the “recent statement by Chris Krebs on the security of the 2020 Election was highly inaccurate, in that there were massive improprieties and fraud”. Trump provided no evidence of this fraud.[14][15]

Wait a second, some of Trump most evil enemies are missing from this short list. Where’s Jack Smith? Fani Willis? Here is Fani’s unpardonable crime:

On February 10, 2021, Willis launched a criminal investigation into Donald Trump‘s attempts to influence Georgia election officials—including the governor, the attorney general, and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger via a telephone call—to “find” enough votes to override Joe Biden‘s win in that state and thus undo Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.[26][27][28] In January 2022, she requested a special grand jury to consider charges of election interference by Trump and his allies.[29][30] In May, a 26-member special grand jury was given investigative authority and subpoena power and tasked with submitting a report to the judge and Willis on whether a crime was committed.[31]

It’s not like there was a tape recording of a phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Raffensperger in which Trump urged him to find 11,780 votes to reverse Biden’s Electoral College victory in Georgia. Oh, wait…

Anyway, righteous white men in Georgia shut down the uppity Fani Willis’s case, removing her office from jurisdiction over all matters Trump-related in the end.

All irrelevant! Tens of millions of sick, dangerous enemies didn’t vote for Trump, who got a mandate in another rigged election he should have won by at least 300,000,000 votes! Treason, bloody treason! (to an insane tyrant, anyway).

Friendship, loss and Yom Kippur

A good friend is a precious thing. It is painful and difficult to live without friendship. Sadly, sometimes friendships die, like every one of us must in the end. There are various reasons why this happens, some are the fault of circumstances and have little to do with the friendship itself. We hope to keep our most important relationships to the end. This is not always possible.

Sometimes a friendship depends on pretending that things your friend does that hurt you are not really a big deal. We justify this forbearance because of the value of the friendship to us, because of our fond memories of the friend. Tolerating these things requires us to accept the unacceptable by pretending not to feel what we feel. This kind of pretend, with someone who takes no responsibility for inflicting pain on you, always ends badly.

You can either remain unhealthily bound to someone who mistreats you, or, if you stop pretending, you will be angrily blamed for heartlessly killing a beautiful friendship. There is no winning in a scenario where someone reserves the right to hurt you (outside of escaping it); everybody always loses in the end.

Tonight at sundown the holiest day of the Jewish Year, Yom Kippur, begins. This is the spiritual deadline every year for Jews to make peace with people they’ve hurt and to forgive those who come to them to make amends. In light of recent Yom Kippurs, and the eternal silence of friends I loved for decades without reservation, people who did objectively unfriendly things with no remorse, I’ve come to see this day the way Frederick Douglass regarded the celebration of July 4th, in his famous 1852 speech, a hollow sham that would disgrace a nation of savages:

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour. Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the every day practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival . . . [1]

I think of the ugliness of the recent endings of lifelong friendships with those who will insist to the death that they are actually my victims because I can’t forgive them for things they did that I claim hurt me, things they are incapable of admitting they did. I picture these moral paragons dressed in white, fasting and praying tomorrow, rising and being seated, having “productive” “meaningful” fasts and experiencing the glory of God’s forgiveness, even if they are not capable of asking for forgiveness from trusting friends they’ve treated badly. One of these old friends, a rabbi/fundraiser I’ve known since high school, told me two Yom Kippurs ago that God has the right to tell a person who lays his heart bare to his friend on Yom Kippur to go fuck himself. Why not?

May their foul fasting breath (they are too religious on Yom Kippur to brush their teeth before they head off to synagogue) continue throughout 5786, and may it be so inscribed in the Book of Life. Amen.

[1] Right now this speech can be accessed at Constitutioncenter.org. I suspect that will not be the case once Big Balls gets back to work.

Comedic genius plays to quiet room

This great opening, comic gold, like the new, real 24 karat ornamentation in the Oval Office, was met with restrained laughter from the 800 top US military leaders forced to assemble at Quantico, from around the world, for a speech/photo op by the newly dubbed Secretary of War and the commander-in-chief himself.

As with any comedian, you really need to hear the bit from the comic’s own mouth. The laugh comes from the music of the delivery.

If I were them, I probably wouldn’t have done more than laugh politely either, although personally, not being a military man myself, I find the gag darkly hilterious.  Got to give props to our Genius-in-Chief, whether those stodgy generals and admirals are cool enough to get his sharp sense of humor, after their long, compelled journeys, or not.

Listen to this brilliant deadpan parody of Joe Biden at the debate Mr. T improvised for his audience of 800 military leaders

The master continues his brilliant work, owning the cucks, as he forces them to shut down the government, with some puckish AI and a nice cut and paste of a sombrero and mustache for the hapless brown skinned guy! 

USA!  USA!!!

Here’s Heather will the full story

The Madness of President Project 2025

Mr. Trump’s agitated, increasingly irrational dementia doesn’t get 1% of the media attention former president Joe Biden’s occasional gaffes, stumbles, age-related hesitations still get.

It’s as if by his longtime assertion of brash incoherence Trump has inoculated himself, perhaps with one of Dr. Brainworm’s non-harmful, anti-scientific health injections, against anyone questioning even the most insane things he says or does. It’s just Trump being himself. Take two Tylenol and call me in the morning, when you have autism.

Heather Cox Richardson, American historian writing for future historians, records some of the latest insane Trump actions, posts and pronouncements, in her most recent Letter from an American. If you don’t subscribe to her free nightly email, you really should, her perspective is super well-informed and often illustrated with fascinating historical parallels. She is also a brilliant writer. Here’s the last paragraph of last night’s impressive inventory of floridly insane actions by the Commander-in-Chief:

Late this afternoon, Trump praised his remodeling of the Oval Office to include copious gold fixtures, some of which match polyurethane appliqué available from the home improvement store Home Depot. On social media, Trump posted: “Some of the highest quality 24 Karat Gold used in the Oval Office and Cabinet Room of the White House. Foreign Leaders, and everyone else, ‘freak out’ when they see the quality and beauty. Best Oval Office ever, in terms of success and look!!! President DJT”

source

Innocuous enough, out of context, perhaps, a vain compulsive old liar bragging about his impeccable 24 karat taste. But read along with everything else this increasingly mad, impulsive, vindictive man has done the last few days, weeks, months and years and the many objectively false things he repeatedly, angrily insists are true, it sends a chill up the old spine.

The good news, such as it is, is that in order to remain the smartest man in the room (always very important to Trump, as he has said, in moments of candor) he’s had to surround himself with fools and spinelessly ambitious people willing to meekly perform being even stupider than old Stupid Is As Stupid Does. To me, that collection of loyal incompetents is one of our greatest advantages in this perilous moment.

The cream of the wealthiest 1% who are dying for a permanent one party government run by a corrupt, pliable authoritarian, to protect their vast, inheritable privileges in perpetuity and screw everybody else, have a very problematic front man for their Project 2025 in America’s President Project 2025.

Stark Raving Mad

Heather Cox Richardson, not AI, describes the speech President Project 2025 delivered at the UN last week:

Trump’s speech went on to depict a fantasy world in which he had single-handedly saved the world. He claimed to have forged peace on two continents during his first term but said that “era of calm and stability gave way to one of the great crises of our time.” He then turned to the United States, claiming that “four years of weakness, lawlessness, and radicalism under the last administration delivered our nation into a repeated set of disasters. One year ago,” he said, “our country was in deep trouble, but today, just eight months into my administration, we are the hottest country anywhere in the world and there is no other country even close. America is blessed with the strongest economy, the strongest borders, the strongest military, the strongest friendships, and the strongest spirit of any nation on the face of the earth.”

And that was the frame for the next hour of rambling boasts and insults.

Trump claimed that he had reversed the “economic calamity” left by former president Joe Biden. He had brought down costs and inflation, he said, and economic growth and manufacturing were both booming. He claimed that in his four years, Biden had attracted less than $1 trillion in investment while he had secured $17 trillion. Tax cuts and deregulation had, he said, made the U.S. “the best country on earth to do business.”

“In my first term, I built the greatest economy in the history of the world,” he said. “We had the best economy ever, history of the world, and I’m doing the same thing again, but this time it’s actually much bigger and even better. The numbers far surpass my record-setting first term.”

Trump claimed: “On the world stage, America is respected again like it has never been respected before. You think about two years ago, three years ago, four years ago, or one year ago, we were a laughingstock all over the world.

source

Take courage, citizens

An insane bully has crippled one of our two political parties, rendered it a mere flapping appendage to his overbearing will.  The incoherence of the crazed leader is fervently embraced by his most ambitious and ardent followers, everybody else in the party simply does his bidding, out of fear of his rage.

He orders criminal acts because the Supreme Court already told him, the 6-3 winner of Trump v. US, that he’s allowed to do whatever crimes he wants as much as he wants and plus he “has his Article II” and no pardon, even if he sells it openly for $10,000,000, can ever be challenged in court  (see Trump v. US).

In spite of all the long-time professional prosecutors at the Department of Justice reporting that there is no righteous case to be brought against James Comey, (and others [1]) leading to the resignation (firing according to Trump) of President Project 2025’s own recent appointee who refused to bring this legally infirm indictment, he will appoint somebody, totally unqualified, to do what he wants them to do and they will do it.  With the cringing blessing of the righteous, blonde attorney general, Pamela Jo Bondi.

So James Comey is indicted the other day on two counts stemming from the same supposedly lying sentence, elicited by supreme weasel Raphael “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz a former debating champion.  The DOJ’s inspector general has already found Comey’s statement to have been truthful. Cruz tried to lay a clever lawyerly trap, during Trump’s first administration, but it didn’t work.  Still, it is good enough for Trump’s latest inexperienced Acting State Attorney. That single sentence of claimed perjury is the sum and substance of two serious, and extremely flimsy, felony counts against James Comey with a penalty of up to 25 years in prison. Yer typical Trump case.

Watch Lawrence O’Donnell explain that all to you in the first minute or two. Then watch James Comey address the country to express his resistance to tyranny and his confidence in the American system of justice and the strength of our democracy. 

Let it add a little bit of steel to your spine during these nerve-wracking days, (talk about the times that try men’s souls.) Let it be a tonic like that top rated Jimmy Kimmel monologue, like all acts of courage and clarity during a time of terror, cowardice and incoherence.

Woof, woof…grrrr!!!!

They’re eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets!

[1] or NY Attorney General Letitia James, Senator Adam Schiff, Fed governor Lisa Cook, NJ  Representative Lamonica McGiver, or anyone else who catches the Orange Polyp’s evil eye.

Lyin’ Ted Goodfella scores one for the First Amendment

It doesn’t seem right to mock despicable hate monger Lyin’ Ted, days after he stood up for the First Amendment, but his imitation of a mafioso is too good to not be enjoyed. I’d hate for anyone to miss it, so I’ll share it with you (in case you missed it), and have it here for future reference. The clip is from John Oliver’s recent show (hence the laughter when Ted goes into his marvelous Goodfellas mode).

A happy, healthy 5786 to my Jewish readers (and to everyone else)

Jewish new year starts at sundown on September 22nd this year. The day before, slain highly influential MAGA promoter Charlie Kirk’s life and work were celebrated by MAGA nation.

Shortly after Charlie Kirk was brutally murdered, the NY Times published where he stood on various issues. They republished it yesterday, when thousands of the faithful are lined up to pay homage to this martyred Christian champion of free speech (to hear some tell it) at a mega-MAGA-rally celebrating his life and work.   Look how mercilessly the super-judgmental New York Times smeared him for exercising his First Amendment rights to express a tiny bit of arguably antisemitic rhetoric! (The preceding sentence is an example of irony).

Antisemitism

Mr. Kirk was repeatedly accused of antisemitism, including by fellow conservatives.

He was a proponent of “replacement theory,” a once-fringe conspiracy theory positing that Jews are trying to replace white Americans with nonwhite immigrants. That ideology motivated the gunman who killed 11 worshipers at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018.

Mr. Kirk also accused Jewish philanthropists of fomenting anti-whiteness by supporting liberal antiracism causes like the Black Lives Matter movement.

“The philosophical foundation of anti-whiteness has been largely financed by Jewish donors in the country,” he said on his show in 2023.

Not long after, he accused Jews of controlling “not just the colleges — it’s the nonprofits, it’s the movies, it’s Hollywood, it’s all of it.”

Allies of Mr. Kirk often sought to defend him against accusations of antisemitism by citing his support for Israel. Mr. Kirk defended Israel’s actions in Gaza. After his death, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel mourned him as “a lionhearted friend of Israel” who “stood tall for Judeo-Christian civilization.”

Heh, takes one to know one, eh, Bibi?!

Read the article for more of the lionheart’s highly commendable free speech views:

Nothing to see here! Witch hunt!

Would I be out of line, on the day thousands of the faithful are lining up for a mega-MAGA memorial service for slain MAGA icon Charlie Kirk, to note that these accidentally publicly divulged messages to his “apolitical” Attorney General come off as the ravings of an even whinier version of history’s own Mr. Hitler?

I hasten to add, to be scrupulously fair, that Bill Clinton got off a plane to speak, secretly, with Obama’s US Attorney General while his wife was a candidate trying to illegally steal the US election for president in 2016 after conspiring with George Soros!

One can’t be too careful these days.