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zoran59
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Posts posted by zoran59
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Najcesce pokusavam da koristim relativno pristojni recnik, da ne iritiram sagovornike ili moderaciju. Medjutim, danas sam naisao na clanak koji bih mogao potpisati, a autor se ne libi koristiti upravo primerene (!) reci.
O Republikancima misli isto sto i ja.
(boldovi u clanku su originalni, autorovi:
Bloodthirsty Republicans need to stop their praying
D. Earl Stephens
July 09, 2025 | 05:20AM ET
More than 60 people, including two dozen children at a summer camp, are dead in Texas because of yet another tragedy that might have been prevented if one of the two major parties in this failing country would come to its warped senses and take the deadly heating of our planet seriously.
You are goddamned right I am going to politicize this gruesome event.
I am absolutely furious and will call this what it is, with the hope that everybody who has a brain in their head will join me. Are you listening, corporate media?
The Republican Party has had it out for America and Americans for decades.
They are a collection of stone-cold killers, who have never seen a single life worth saving just as long as there is enough money involved to allow them to cock their fat heads and look the other way.
Whether it’s climate change, guns, healthcare, a woman’s right over her body, poisoning our air and water, or rounding up hardworking landscapers and shoving them in alligator-protected detention camps, these bloodthirsty ghouls have proven to the world time and time again they aren’t interested in preventing catastrophes, they are interested in causing them.
Vaccines are being wiped away, measles are making a comeback, and more children will die needlessly because the sickly orange ghoul inside in the White House intentionally appointed a complete madman to incinerate our Department of Health and Human Services.
My God, even tooth decay is making a comeback in America because Republicans throughout the country, starting in Utah and Florida (it’s ALWAYS Florida), are removing fluoride from our drinking water.
Here’s a quote from the aforementioned madman, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., on his attack on clean teeth:
''The more (fluoride) you get, the stupider you are, and we need smart kids in this country, and we need healthy kids.”
Are you reading this?
People who wear masks to suppress the spread of deadly disease are the enemy in Trump’s America, and people like Trump who attack our country are praised by the monster as “great people.”
What the hell are we supposed to do with this?
These Republicans aren’t interested in alleviating pain and suffering, they are interested in bringing it.
This heinous disaster along the Guadalupe River this weekend might have never happened if Republicans weren't certifiable monsters.
Flash-flooding due to astronomical bursts of rain are happening with increasing frequency across the globe, and most certainly Texas, where they have become a regular deadly occurrence. In fact, it is the No. 1 storm-related killer across America. This is due to a fast-heating planet caused by burning fossil fuels.
There’s no dispute here. There’s no question.
So what do Republicans do?
They call it all “a hoax.”
THAT’S what they do.
THAT’S what they do.
Oh, and they also do whatever is inhumanly possible to make it worse. Because they ALWAYS make things worse. They attack science, and places like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which is working tirelessly to study our warming planet and sound the alarms to millions of people who refuse to listen.
So what do Republicans do?
They devote pages and pages to it in their roadmap toward the end, Project 2025, where they describe NOAA as the “climate change alarm industry” adding “it should be broken up and downsized.”
Which, of course, is exactly what they are doing.
Public servants are treated as public enemies, and heinous Republicans treat themselves to the spoils by moving money from these vital programs into the bank accounts of the bloated billionaires who then move them around the halls of Congress to do their ghastly bidding.
So, tell me again how the tragedy in Texas and thousands of other places aren’t a byproduct of this sickening, soulless political game.
And when things get bad, I mean REAL bad like they are this weekend, here’s what else Republicans do every single time:
They pray.
Here’s House Speaker Mike Johnson, out Mike-Johnsoning himself in response to the senseless deaths of our children:
"In a moment like this, we feel just as helpless as everyone else does ... all we know to do at this moment is pray."
All the man who laid the groundwork for this massive loss of life knows to do is pray. All the man who degrades science and the people whose groundbreaking work can save lives knows to do is pray.
Johnson is a gruesome, pointy-nosed little man, who has never grown out of his oily smugness. Whenever he has nowhere to go, which is often, the man who would sooner burn a book than read one, leans on his two-ton Bible to keep him in the neighborhood of straight.
Lately he’s been seen on his knees of OUR House floor praying for the passage of a bill that will mean unmitigated holy hell for millions of Americans, who will no longer have healthcare or protections from killer storms like the one we are dealing with in Texas.
His orange idol uses him as a Christian circus prop while he fills his bottomless pockets with money that should be going to hardworking Americans who so desperately need it.
How long will we continue to let them get away with this?
How long will we put up with devils like this who make things easier for killer diseases, killer storms, and outright killers in Minnesota to wipe us out?
When the next ghastly shooting happens in one of our schools, and Republicans hit their knees to pray, we better be crystal-clear that the blood will already be on their clasped hands.
Among scores of poisonous ingredients that are stuffed into their big, brutal bill that are too awful to imagine was the provision that Senate Republicans have eliminated the $200 tax stamp for firearm silencers and scrapped a similar tax for short-barrel rifles.
I guess killing quietly is more palatable to these sickos.
And who was behind this push?
Why TEXAS Senator John Cornyn, of course.
Republicans are killing millions of us out loud, and it is a national emergency.(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes.)
izvor: https://www.alternet.org/thoughts-and-prayers/
Normalno, znamo da Trump nije uzrokovao nevreme i poplave. Samo...
Od 2017. nadalje gradonacelnik Kerrvilla i lokalna/gradska vlast predlazu/zahtevaju instalaciju javnog sistema za uzbunjivanje (one glasne sirene koje se cuju nekoliko milja daleko) koji bi upozoravao na nadolazecu poplavu. I svake godine Republikanci koji vladaju Texasom odgovaraju da je to skupo i nije predvidjeno u budzetu.
100+ mrtvih i jos 160 koji se trenutno vode kao nestali - izgleda da za Republikance nije skupo.
Stavise, i sanacija stete je upitna: 'Remains pending': Texas says Trump is stalling long-term aid after disaster
(izvor, citav clanak: https://www.alternet.org/donald-trump-texas-flooding/
Poserem sa i na Trumpa i Republikance.
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On 7/2/2025 at 8:21 AM, JPM said:
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Realnu volju nemam ni za šta. Dešavanja na ulicama me dodatno samo udaljuju od nekog budnog stanja. Osećam se nevidljivo zapravo.
I tako. Valjda se to zove apatija.
JPM, nije to apatija. Po opisanom,rekao bih da je to klinicka depresija.
Ali, da se zaustavim.
Prvo, nisam psiholog (mada jesam bivsi - tj, penzionisani - zdravstveni radnik).
Drugo, cak i da jesam, nemoguce, neposteno i nemoralno je postavljati dijagnozu na osnovu internetske prepiske. Svakako je potrebna poseta profesionalcu i odgovarajuca anamneza.
A ukljucio sam se u raspravu jer se i sam osecam isto kao i ti. Posecujem psihijatra i psihoterapeuta (dve razlicite osobe) i imam dijagnozu klinicke depresije.
To istovremeno i jeste i nije normalno.
Jeste prirodno i normalno u mnogim zivotnim situacijama. Dobijes otkaz na poslu, umre ti roditelj ili dete itd. - pa bio bi patoloski nenormalan ako te to ne baci u depresiju.
Nije normalno ni pozeljno ako/kad to postane hronicno i dugotrajno stanje, pa se prenese i na druga aspekte zivota. Ti si to u citiranom postu opisao kao "realnu volju nemam ni za šta." Imam isti problem, samo se kod mene zove anhedonija - tj. nemogucnost da osetim zadovoljstvo. I, jebiga, kad me ne usrecuje/zadovoljava, zasto da se uopste bakcem s tim (= nemam volju ni za sta).
Ipak, odnedavno mi pomazu psihoterapija i lek (u mojem slucaju, mirtazapine 45 mg/dnevno). Pomak na bolje je vec i to sto odgovaram na post, osecam neko zadovoljstvo u nadi da mozda pomognem forumskom kolegi, dok bi pre godinu-dve ignorisao ovakvu prepisku (inace, cenim tvoje postove na auto-moto pdf-u).
Okreni-obrni, treba ti pomoc profesionalca. Nekada je to bilo sramota, ali danas je psihicki problem OK kao i upala slepog creva.
@Dragan: skidam sesir, svaka cast za izbor literature! 70-ak % toga sam procitao, a sad cu jos.
Berne je odlican, utoliko sto TA (transactional analysis) daje rezultate u relativno kratkom roku - za razliku od frojdovske psihoanalize koja traje dugo da se uopste nadje koren problema.
Fromm je nenadmasan, mada se u nekim detaljima ne slazem.
Kod Castanede, najvise pamtim anegdotu iz A Separate Reality, kad Castaneda pita Don Juana "a sta ako ne uspem" i ovaj odgovara "it doesn't matter." Citav dijalog se moze shvatiti na dva nacina. Jedan je da nije bitno, nista nema smisla. Drugi je da je bitno uloziti trud jer to daje nadu i svrhu.
Mrzime da komentarisem sva navedena dela, bilo bi predugacko za forumski post, no hvala ti za popis!
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10 hours ago, Dragan said:
1. carine placaju potrosaci i firme u US
2. sabira li neko stetu koje su nanele US privredi (poljoprivreda, turizam...) ?
...
Uf! Kako da odgovorim?
Bice ovo licni pogled. Zivim u Alabami, tzv. "redneck nedodjiji."
Ja sam penzioner. Primam Social Security drzavnu penziju. Srecom, nije mi to jedini prihod, imam i nesto privatno/individualno, ali dosta osetim. Imam Medicare zdravstveno osiguranje. Trump i njegovi hoce da usjebu oboje. Necu ovde detaljno, koga interesuje ima citav internet vesti. Googlaj ko bas hoce.
Carine? Povrce i voce je kod mene poskupelo jer je to vecinom uvoz iz Mexica.
Gorivo je OK - mada to nema veze sa Trumpom nego je zavisnije o Arapima i Izraelcima itd.
Ajde, ekonomija gore-dole, video sam to vise puta tokom godina - ali politika!?!?
Procitao sam puno vesti (jebiga, penzic sa puno vremena a zainteresovan) kako razne ljude odjednom (tj. nakon Trumpovih direktiva otkako je na vlasti) zajebavaju na granici, tj. aerodromima. Vesti o tome ima previse da ih ovde linkujem, vecini forumasa nije bitno. Meni jeste.
Sad vec zajebavaju da li da uzimu drzavljanstvo, da deportuju vodeceg kandidata za gradonacelnika New Yorka.
Ja sam imigrant, legalno/po propisima uselio pre 45 godina. Radio, placao poreze i namete itd. Moj najveci "sukob sa zakonom" je sto su me nekoliko puta ufatili da vozim prebrzo, a i par puta sam pogresno parkirao. Sigurno sam negde u nekoj "datoteci.? I danas, plasim se da me na aerodromskoj kontroli izdvoje i zabrane mi let, tj. uhapse me i odrede deportaciju u Juzni Sudan - posto sam uselio iz Jugoslavije, tj. drzave koja vise ne postoji.
Sta cu onda?
Za par dana je 4th of July (Dan nezavisnosti). Bice feste i vatrometa. No najavljeni su i neki protesti. Zato cu sedeti u kuci. Taman posla da me neko uhapsi i legitimise.
Ja sam Amerikanac vec 2/3 zivota.
Eh, da sam imao pameti, bio bih Novozelanjdjanin. Ili Skandinavac.
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1. Bagnaia
2.M. Marquez
3. Quartararo
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Astrologija
in Razno
Jbm li ga. Kasnim za vecinom forumasa, zivim u drugoj (ispravnije, sestoj) vremenskoj zoni. Ustanem, umijem se, poserem se, operem dupe i ruke, skuvam kafu i (kud me djav'o tera?) navratim na forum i naidjem na ovu temu.
Nemam pojma gde spadam po horoskopu, nikada me to nije interesovalo. Ne bih da ubedjujem nikoga - ko veruje u to, verovace i dalje a ko ne veruje, nece.
Nego, imam pitanjce za one koji veruju ili se cak i razumeju u to.
Koliko sam shvatio, sudbinu, karakter i svasta nesto bi trebalo da ti odredjuje polozaj zvezda na nebu - i onda kad si rodjen i posle. Tako, valjda bi trebalo, neko ko se razume u zvezde moze da predvidi sta ce ti se danas desiti i kakvo ce ti biti raspolozenje.
Nekako mi izgleda da to vredi za one koji nikada nisu mrdnuli dalje od svog sela.
Ali, sta se dogadja kad covek iseli/odseli u Australiju? Zvezdano nebo tamo izgleda drugacije nego na Balkanu.
Da li njemu onda sudbinu odredjuju neke druge zvezde ili je jos uvek odredjen nebom onakvim kako izgleda iznad Bajine Baste?
Zbunjen sam.
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Naisao sam na zanimljiv, odlican tekst. Mada je objavljen danas, ne bavi se napadom na Iran ili trenutnim Trumpovim glupostima nego analizom visedecenijskog skretanja USA udesno. (a to je teza koju sam i ja izneo u jednom od ranijih postova na temi).
Podugacak je ali ga vredi procitati.
America slides into totalitarianism — and it won't be easy to reverse
By Mike Lofgren
Contributing Writer
We’ve seen a spike over the last few years in the use of the word “authoritarianism.” This is the predictable result of the recent rise of authoritarian regimes which, to a greater or lesser extent, work to subvert and dismantle the institutions and practices of democracy and the rule of law.
A survey of more than 500 political scientists found that they believe the United States is headed towards authoritarian rule. A majority of Americans, according to a PRRI poll, now believes Donald Trump is “a dangerous dictator.” (It remains an enduring mystery why this majority didn’t stumble onto this conclusion before the November election).
Authoritarianism and totalitarianism
There is, of course, another term for modern dictatorial regimes, one that gained considerable currency during the Cold War after the 1951 publication of “The Origins of Totalitarianism” by Hannah Arendt, but which has somewhat fallen out of favor.
How does authoritarianism differ from totalitarianism? There is no precise description of either; like other political terms, they are subject to questionable definitions that often depend on the viewpoint of whoever is using them. Marxist writers shunned the word “totalitarian”; Nazi Germany was invariably referred to as “fascist,” while the Soviet Union was a “people’s democracy.” But “totalitarian” was a favorite term of anti-Communists throughout the Cold War.
Based on descriptions of dictatorial regimes over the past century, the distinction seems to be this: Totalitarianism is authoritarianism intensified. Whereas authoritarianism may leave society outside the political realm more or less intact, totalitarianism makes a total claim on civil society. In its most extreme form, as in North Korea, there is virtually no private sphere where persons can gather and exchange ideas outside the regime’s surveillance and control.
Another difference is that authoritarian regimes often have no developed ideology beyond hatred of the political opposition. Totalitarian ideology can be elaborate, if syncretic, and can incorporate disparate, even contradictory ideas (including convoluted and childish conspiracy theories) to produce a kind of comprehensive worldview or substitute religion.
Charismatics and true believers
Totalitarian leaders tend toward charismatic styles and have a genuine bond of loyalty with their followers, who often express extreme, exaggerated enthusiasm for the leader and his movement. The followers are in fact the key to totalitarian movements, without whom the charismatic leader would simply be a barroom bloviator. Whereas the typical authoritarian dictator often comes to power amid economic or political crisis, frequently by way of a coup, the charismatic leader is swept into power on a populist wave.
The “crisis” he exploits is a deep-seated cultural one, but also a personal one in the life of the follower. As Eric Hoffer’s “The True Believer” (published the same year as Arendt’s book) observes, the disposition to follow a charismatic leader was “seeded in the minds” of his true believers long before he arrived on the scene.
These followers may not constitute the majority of a population; indeed they rarely do. But if they reach 30 to 40 percent, their dogmatic persistence may successfully overcome the majority, many of whom are timid or apathetic, and set the political tone for a society. The famous line of William Butler Yeats, “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity” applies to political behavior.
Reaction versus totalitarianism
By contrast, many authoritarian leaders are colorless, possessing little or no charisma: Consider Francisco Franco, Antonio Salazar, the Greek colonels, Leopoldo Galtieri, Augusto Pinochet, Park Chung-hee. They often do not have any coherent or developed ideology, other than opposition to the left. They obtain key support from wealthy interests, but rather than a fervent mass following they count on a divided, apathetic or acquiescent population to gain and hold power.
(Totalitarian leaders tend toward charismatic styles and have a genuine bond of loyalty with their followers, who often express extreme, exaggerated enthusiasm for the leader and his movement.)
In a sense, these are true reactionaries, whereas totalitarianism tends to have a revolutionary element. Authoritarians will of course use violence to preserve the status quo, and their rule over societies is repressive, but everything is designed to keep a lid on things. Whether from a calculation of how best to maintain the status quo or from simple lack of imagination, authoritarians generally do not want to rock the boat. It is difficult to imagine most of them as objects of a personality cult.
This sort of authoritarianism also characterized the last decade or so of Communist rule in eastern Europe. As a student in Europe, I recall encountering Poles, Hungarians, Yugoslavs and other Eastern bloc nationals living in Western Europe — not as exiles, but as contract workers or students. These were not idealists building Communism; it was difficult to be an idealist under the leadership of grey nonentities like Polish Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski or East Germany’s Erich Honecker. Perhaps the lone exception in Eastern Europe was Romania, where Nicolae Ceaușescu — who had broken with Moscow years earlier — maintained a rigid dictatorship and cult of personality up until he faced a firing squad.
On the other hand, the core of the totalitarian mindset is an alienation from the world, and particularly from one’s own society. This alienation breeds a twisted utopian mentality that not only rejects modernity, but also tradition and the actual past in favor of a cartoonish pastiche that misapprehends both the past and the present.
A crisis of modernization
As that description implies, totalitarianism is a crisis of modernization. In the early 20th century, totalitarianism was best known in countries that had superficially been modernized, but remained regressive in crucial ways. Italy and Russia offer textbook examples: Different as they were and are, both nations had rapidly advanced in some industrial sectors and metropolitan regions, while conditions in rural areas were primitive and there was considerable social discord and festering injustice. The horrendous bloodletting of World War I bloodletting removed all inhibitions against a total, violent resolution of social conflict.
Germany was in many ways the archetypal example: It was a world leader in industry (especially chemicals, metallurgy, and machinery), and by some distance at the forefront of scientific research. (Early in the 20th century, Germans were awarded more Nobel Prizes for science than citizens of any other country.) Its universities were the best in the world.
(The core of the totalitarian mindset is an alienation from the world, and particularly from one’s own society. This alienation breeds a twisted utopian mentality that not only rejects modernity, but also tradition and the actual past.)
Yet that impressive modernity was set against a politically powerful but backward agricultural sector, a rigid social structure left behind by petty feudal princedoms of the Holy Roman Empire and, above all, a retrograde political system. The Reichstag, or national parliament, was grossly gerrymandered in favor of the upper classes, and the government was not responsible to its lawmakers, but rather to a capricious monarch.
With one foot at the leading edge of modernity and another in a mythical past, Germany could produce world-class physicists like Werner Heisenberg, but also agrarian-medievalists like the Artaman League, whose backward-looking, völkisch ideas were apparently so congenial to the Nazi party that the league was eventually absorbed it into Adolf Hitler’s movement.
One could fill a library with all that has been written about Hitler as the archetype of the charismatic totalitarian leader, full of violent hatred, reflexive deceit and a taste for destruction that eventually unmasked itself as an annihilating nihilism. But despite the morbid fascination he continues to evoke in our collective historical memory, Hitler is less interesting — and less important in the long run — than the people who voted for him, regarded him as a messianic national savior and fought to defend his rule till their country was in ruins.
Or for that matter, consider Josef Stalin, who was patently less charismatic than the German dictator, yet was worshipped by countless Russians — along with millions of foreigners who should have known better — and whose death occasioned a paroxysm of public weeping that, according to Alexander Solzhenitsyn, even extended to inmates of the Siberian gulag. To this day, an official cult of Stalin endures, deployed today to motivate Russians to serve as cannon fodder in Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine war.
Countries like Germany and Russia suffered a crisis of industrial modernization, with wrenching change, uneven development and the atomization of the individual in a newly created mass society. I submit that the United States is undergoing a similar social process in its transition from an industrial society to a digital society, and is in danger of suffering an extended totalitarian experience rather than a brief bout of Constitution-flouting.
The American paradox
America presents a paradox similar to that of early 20th-century Germany: It leads the world in science and technology (at least until this year), its elite universities are the finest anywhere, and its major cities are hubs of wealth and economic vitality. Yet much of the American interior, as any intelligent foreign visitor would notice, is economically and culturally backward: systematically underdeveloped, with decaying or inadequate infrastructure and limited educational opportunities. Its residents’ lifespans are comparable to people in developing or “Third World” countries.
What’s even more significant is the backward mindset of a significant proportion of the population. No developed country has anything close to America’s population of religious fundamentalists: believers in angels, demons, miracles and prophecies, all wrapped in a determined provincialism. Their perception of reality more closely resembles those of people in Iran or Nigeria than citizens of developed democracies.
This pronounced preference for the mystical and the supernatural, rather than observable fact, among so many Americans — which has enriched generations of televangelists — has rendered an electorally crucial segment of the population receptive to the fantastic promises, nonstop lies and relentless demonization integral to the totalitarian message. As Arendt observed about the supporters of earlier totalitarian systems:
"The effectiveness of this kind of propaganda demonstrates one of the chief characteristics of modern masses. They do not believe in anything visible, in the reality of their own experience; they do not trust their eyes and ears but only their imaginations, which may be caught by anything that is at once universal and consistent in itself. What convinces masses are not facts, and not even invented facts, but only the consistency of the system of which they are presumably part."
The consistency of the system should not be confused with the consistency of the rules of logic; the only “consistency” is that the leader is always right. As I have previously described, millions of potential followers of totalitarianism in America have taken mental refuge in a shallow cynicism that is actually a disguise for extreme gullibility. This allowed Trump to take credit for having developed COVID vaccines, while at the same time encouraging his acolytes to embrace COVID denial and rejection of vaccines. Here is Arendt again:
"In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness."
The rotting of American institutions
What are the systemic factors that have resulted in so many people in the so-called leading country of the so-called free world being so vulnerable to totalitarianism? The short answer is that its institutions rotted from within. Contemporary America has operated under a Constitution that is well over 200 years old, has been substantially unchanged for over a century and under current circumstances is virtually unamendable.
This Constitution has archaic features like the Electoral College — unheard of anywhere else since the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 — and grotesquely gerrymandered electoral districts (a hangover from the “rotten boroughs” of 18th-century England), as well as a Senate that privileges rural states, much as the rural Prussian junker class politically dominated imperial Germany.
These anachronisms and inequities are further exacerbated by the unaccountable malefactors of the wealthiest classes, who are able to thwart any fundamental reforms that might weaken the popular urge for a radical or totalitarian solution. As has been frequently noted, the rise of social media (often controlled by these same malefactors) has operated as an informational Gresham’s Law, with genuine information systematically driven out of existence by disinformation, myth and mindless diversion. Just as earlier totalitarians dominated the first generation of electronic media, the current crop of dictators rule digital platforms.
A fundamental flaw in America’s early development was of course slavery, which functioned as a rigidly totalitarian state within a state. From the beginning, acute foreign observers like Alexis de Tocqueville noticed that beneath all the self-flattery about rugged individualism, Americans had a tendency towards conformity that could lead to a tyranny of the majority (or a sufficiently dogmatic minority). In the 1960s, political scientist Richard Hofstadter wrote that America had periodically been swept by waves of conformist anti-intellectualism:
"One can trace ... the emergence of what I would call the one-hundred per cent mentality – a mind fully committed to the full range of dominant popular fatuities and determined that no one shall have the right to challenge them. This type of mentality is a relatively recent synthesis of fundamentalist religion and fundamentalist Americanism, very often with a heavy overlay of severe fundamentalist morality."
Blueprints for totalitarianism
Political absolutism has been a chronic temptation throughout American history. But its most recent extreme outbreak is unique in that the intellectual ground had been prepared by religious fundamentalist theocrats and white supremacists for more than four decades. This is reminiscent of the fact that while the German-speaking lands had had an authoritarian basis for centuries, the radical, violent nationalism of the Nazis was preceded by 40 or 50 years of writings by failed intellectuals like Paul de Lagarde, Julius Langbehn and Moeller van den Bruck (who coined the term “Third Reich”). They brought authoritarianism to a new and mystical level, paving the way for Hitler.
An internet search of the most influential American political books of the last half-century will reveal such works as Noam Chomsky’s “Manufacturing Consent” or Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine.” But however accurate their depictions of politics and society, how influential were they? I submit that Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins’ “Left Behind” series (which apparently traumatized a generation of adolescents), and William Luther Pierce’s “The Turner Diaries” (the Popular Mechanics of race-war incitement) were vastly more impactful, both politically and culturally. One could also mention Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” although what Atwood intended as a warning has been embraced by America’s ayatollahs as a blueprint.
Crossing the Rubicon
With that ideational foundation already in place on the political right, the current descent into national madness began in the period between the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the early years of the military occupation of Iraq.
The Bush administration’s false pretext for so-called preemptive war against Iraq was thoroughly in the tradition of Joseph Goebbels’ Big Lie or George Orwell’s Newspeak. What was notable, however, was not that the general public, which could hardly find Iraq on a map, readily fell for the Bush-Cheney lie campaign. Erstwhile flagships of liberal thought, like The New Yorker and The New Republic, swallowed the falsehoods like hungry barracudas, and self-styled public intellectuals like Christopher Hitchens sullied their reputations forever by writing propaganda questioning the patriotism and good faith of opponents of the war.
The true Rubicon that Americans crossed was on the question of torture, or “enhanced interrogation,” in the Bush administration’s Orwellian terminology. Torture is a barbaric practice condemned since the Enlightenment, proscribed even in our 18th-century Constitution and condemned in international law. But even after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrated no evidence that torture “worked” in eliciting usable information, nearly two-thirds of Americans supported its use. Now that Trump has asked the Supreme Court to declare both the U.N. Convention Against Torture and its federal implementing statute void, we cannot assume that his position on the matter is unpopular.
The U.S. is now distinctly moving toward the principal goal of the totalitarian project: erasing the distinction between civil society and the state. The Trump regime is eagerly working to insert itself into every facet of American life, from effectively taking over private universities and dictating their curricula to banning books from the Naval Academy, dictating prices to retail businesses, attempting to change cartographic nomenclature (like “Gulf of America”) and vetting exhibits at the Smithsonian Institution, which is not formally a part of government and has had an independent policy on exhibits for the last 178 years.
Another feature of totalitarianism is omnipresent surveillance. Since the 1970s, there have been numerous privacy laws enacted to protect ordinary citizens, and government databases are not systematically interlinked. But the Trump regime has contracted with the notorious tech firm Palantir to do just that. Palantir was of course co-founded by Silicon Valley oligarch Peter Thiel, a Trump supporter and co-conspirator with Elon Musk in the DOGE project.
Some nonfederal entities, eager to curry favor with Trump, have gotten into the act. The University of Michigan hired thuggish private contractors to spy on and harass students (before reportedly retreating). How long will it be until a major university bans the teaching of evolutionary biology, acting in the same spirit as German universities under Hitler, which proscribed “Jewish physics”?
Little Hitlers and little Trumps
Historian Ian Kershaw has written that Hitler had thousands of “little Hitlers,” Gauleiters, district leaders and block wardens throughout the German provinces who were not only happy to do his bidding, but sought to anticipate his will with their own initiatives, a scheme called “working towards the Führer.” Trump has his little Trumps at the state and local level as well; I live in Virginia, a supposed purple state, where 121 books have been banned in the school libraries of various counties. These include such racy and controversial fare as “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” and “Romeo and Juliet,” as well as (irony alert) Orwell’s “1984.” At what point will this ban extend to public libraries, or to Barnes & Noble?
The little Trumps are also present as interpreters for the journalists and social scientists who make the trek to Trump Country to understand the locals. Inquiring as to whether the Trump regime’s cuts to Medicaid and social services, along with the higher retail prices caused by tariffs, might lead overwhelmingly pro-Trump inhabitants of impoverished eastern Kentucky to think again, a visiting sociologist was told by a local mayor that their loyalty was unshakable.
"You know how proud and stoic Appalachians are,” the mayor told Arlie Russell Hochschild. “We know how to take a little pain. People may have to suffer now to help make America great later. Trump's tariffs could raise prices, but that will force companies to gradually relocate to the U.S.” In other words, he was saying that his own community was too stupid to understand their own material interests. A demographic notorious for voting according to the price of gasoline or eggs would gladly further impoverish itself for the sake of Trump’s vision, or so the mayor claimed.
Feudalism sans noblesse oblige
Any well-read person is likely to consider the rise of the modern nation-state to be a distinctly mixed bag, as the history of the last two or three centuries has demonstrated. But it arose concurrently with the Enlightenment, and one of its less remarked-upon features was the idea of the state as an entity above the interest of individuals, a kind of neutral arbiter. There were of course nascent political parties in those days (usually called “factions”), and the usual horde of lobbyists, job-seekers and influence peddlers. But the state and its functions, like the post office, weights and measures, or even the nurturance of science and letters (as with the French Academy) were, at least in theory, above politics and venal ambition.
Only in such an atmosphere could anyone get the idea that the law should nominally treat all people equally (even as economics divided them into classes), or that an abstract notion called human rights might exist and apply to everyone. Only under a neutral state, above or beyond partisan conflict, could dreamers theorize about constitutions and parliaments representing the interests of the nation. Even English monarchs were not above the constitution (if it was an unwritten one), as James II and Edward VIII discovered.
What Trump and his gang are perpetrating is a regression from the modern nation-state to personal rule, in which the autocrat effectively owns everything in the territory he controls, clientelism runs rampant, and ordinary people are subjects rather than citizens. But there are significant differences between then and now: Under the feudal system, the lord had, in principle, certain obligations to peasants in addition to his right to command them. The modern totalitarian leader feels no such duty to law, custom or decency. He represents warlordism in a business suit instead of a thawb.
It has become conventional wisdom that America’s elite institutions – the entities with the most at stake in preserving what’s left of an open society, even one as flawed as ours — have surrendered to the Trump regime with breathtaking (and disgusting) alacrity. From law firms to elite universities like Columbia and Michigan to billion-dollar businesses damaged by Trump’s tariffs to major media organizations, they have chosen capitulation even when resistance seemed both more rational and more effective.
Virtuous Americans and their descent into murder
As I write this in the aftermath of the “No Kings” protests (the same weekend that Trump tried to stage a North Korea-style military parade to his own glorification), it has become equally conventional wisdom that ordinary people are resisting: in congressional town halls, spontaneous demonstrations and other forms of resistance.
This is of course encouraging. But is it enough? For all the failures of our elites, they were not responsible for the 77 million votes Trump received last November. The battle for democracy will not be staged by the elites or against them, but at the mass level. The lesson of Trump’s first term was soon forgotten in the popular mind, and overcoming his second regime will be an order of magnitude more difficult, especially as his followers are more numerous, more deeply entrenched in the governmental system and radicalized to a far greater degree than they were the first time around.
Not long after I wrote the previous paragraph, I learned that a Minnesota state representative and her husband had been assassinated and a state senator critically wounded in a “targeted political attack.” We have accelerated from Trump’s perceived opponents receiving death threats to political murder. How long will it take our so-called thought leaders to recognize what has been staring them in the face since at least the Charlottesville neo-Nazi rally in 2017: Trump and his Republican followers and enablers are only symptoms of something much deeper?
Our national crisis will not be correctly perceived, let alone solved, until we recognize that the root of the problem lies in that supposed repository of virtue, the American people. The prestige media’s rote expeditions to rural diners in Iowa to discover the Real America are wearing distinctly thin at this juncture, because what lies at the core of Trump’s support is a not-insignificant fraction of would-be totalitarians who possess the same mentality as those who lynched Black people in the Jim Crow South, mobbed Jews during Kristallnacht and beheaded professors during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution.
It will be a long, hard road back to decency and sanity.-
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1. Bagnaia
2. M.Marquez
3. Quartararo
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MAGA agenda je uglavnom stetna. No deo koji se odnosi na Medicare i Medicaid ukazuje na dublje probleme u drustvu. Nas "normalne" gradjane ne pljackaju oni koji primaju drzavnu pomoc nego najbogatiji sloj koji preko tih programa svoje troskove poslovanja (plate zaposlenima) prebacuju na budzet, tj. porezne i druge namete koje placamo svi.
Ovde je to dobro i jednostavno objasnjeno (boldovi u tekstu originalni, autorovi):
Don't let GOP billionaires' gripes fool you — this is not ok
by Thom Hartmann
June 15, 2025 3:28PM ET
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mehmet Oz, and two Trump administration colleagues recently published an op-ed in The New York Times justifying the GOP’s attempt to cut Medicaid and SNAP benefits by imposing draconian prove-you’re-working paperwork and hoop-jumping requirements on recipients. In their article titled “Trump Leadership: If You Want Welfare and Can Work, You Must,” they noted: “Our agencies are united in a very straightforward policy approach: Able-bodied adults receiving benefits must work.”
Which raises the question: “Why?”
Why is it that anybody working full-time in the richest country in the history of the world should need any sort of government assistance just to eat and stay healthy? Shouldn’t a full-time paycheck — any paycheck for any sort of work — pay enough that people can live a decent life?
As Senate majority leader John Thune said yesterday, “The best health care is a job…” What he failed to note was that that’s true of Denmark but not America.
What, after all, is the point of a minimum wage if not to make sure that people who are working don’t have to steal just to stay alive? Shouldn’t any reasonable capitalist society be organized in such a way that a single full-time worker can raise a family, put their kids through school, take an annual vacation, and have a reasonable retirement?
This is not a new or novel idea.
Among the developed world, the U.S. stands virtually alone in imposing punitive, bureaucratic work requirements for access to food, housing, and health care, all services that are treated as rights in most other wealthy nations.
Welfare in pretty much every other developed country in the world is limited to the disabled, sick, or caregivers because everybody who’s working is making enough to cover their basic living expenses. In Denmark, for example, McDonald’s workers earn $22/hour, in addition to getting six weeks of paid vacation, generous pension contributions, overtime pay, and paid sick leave. (And a Big Mac costs ~$5.75 there, compared to $5.69 here.)
This “if you work, you can live a good life” notion isn’t even a new or novel idea for the United States. Progressive Republican President Theodore Roosevelt, a quarter-century before his distant cousin Franklin got a minimum wage passed into law, proposed the same in August, 1912, when he told an audience in Chicago:
“We stand for a living wage … [It] must include enough to secure the elements of a normal standard of living — a standard high enough to make morality possible, to provide for education and recreation, to care for immature members of the family, to maintain the family during periods of sickness, and to permit of reasonable saving for old age.”
We got close to this during the golden age of America’s middle class, created by FDR’s New Deal programs in the 1933-1980 era, when about a third of Americans had a good union job which formed the wage and benefit floors other employers had to compete with, causing two-thirds of Americans to be able to live a middle class life with a single paycheck.
I saw this myself. When I was five, my father sold Rexair vacuum cleaners and World Book Encyclopedias door-to-door. We lived in a garage converted to a one-bedroom house and every month visited what my brothers and I called the “cheese store” (the county-run surplus food facility) to get a free brick of American cheese, a big canvas bag of dried macaroni, and a box of powdered milk.
Then, the next year, dad got a job at a unionized tool-and-die shop. Within a year we’d bought a three-bedroom house in a new south Lansing suburb and dad had a brand-new car, the first that didn’t have holes in the floorboard. Every year we took a vacation, driving all over the country. We bought our first-ever TV that year, along with a living room full of furniture to sit on to watch it.
In other words, a good job and the Machinists Union lifted my family from poverty into the middle class. And we stayed there: in 2006, dad died in that same house he’d bought brand-new in 1957, which is now occupied by one of my nieces and her family.
By 1980, about a third of all American workers were represented by a union. Between that and the top 74% income tax bracket, America’s middle class grew faster than any had in world history.
Income and wealth were broadly distributed: the average CEO only took, at most, 30 times his employee’s salaries. The top tax rates made it a waste of time to try to take more out of the company, and stock distributions as compensation and corporate stock buybacks were functionally illegal then.
All that changed, of course, with the neoliberal Reagan Revolution of 1981, which led us to the mess we’re in today.
It’s a moral crime that anybody working full time in America must depend on the largess of government or philanthropy to live a decent life: a minimum wage should provide for a minimum standard of living, not a poverty-filled struggle.
A study published by The Journal of the American Medical Association found that states that raised their minimum wage into the $15/hour range (DC, Washington, California, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland, Rhode Island, and Illinois) had welfare participation rates that were about a third lower than states hanging onto the federal $7.25/hour minimum.
In other words, welfare benefits have become subsidies to cheap-labor employers; without those benefits, people couldn’t afford to work for crap wages and employers would be forced by the marketplace itself to pay their workers better.
Back in 2016, the Economic Policy Institute found that raising the minimum wage from $6.75 to $8.00 per hour back in the day in California decreased state public assistance payments by $2.7 billion. It only makes sense.
Thus, the entire GOP effort to impose draconian, paperwork-rich “work requirements” on Medicaid and SNAP recipients boils down to two things:
1. Cheap labor Republicans want us all to pay taxes to subsidize the lifestyles of people whose employers should be paying them enough to live a decent life.
2. They want to make it harder and harder for those people who are legitimately in poverty because of disability, age, or a lack of local work opportunities to get benefits so they can reduce federal outlays to fund tax cuts for billionaires.
In other words, it’s all about screwing working people to keep taxes low on billionaires and profits high in corporate America.
So, the next time some billionaire-funded Republican mouthpiece like Kennedy or Oz complains about “able-bodied people on welfare,” don’t just challenge the cruelty — challenge the con.
Ask them why they think the richest nation in the history of the world can’t afford to guarantee that a full-time job comes with a living wage.
Ask why they’re hell-bent on protecting low wages and corporate profits instead of working families.
And then ask the real question: Who benefits when work doesn’t pay — the struggling single mom trying to feed her kids, or the billionaire writing the checks to keep this scam going?izvor:
https://www.rawstory.com/raw-investigates/2672256080/?utm_source=opinion-
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Citav video je zabavan/informativan.
Ali, za one bez strpljenja, pogledajte samo od o9:45 do kraja.
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1 hour ago, Angelia said:
Pa vidi, samo mene ubedjujete da ne vidim gde zivim.
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Znas ko samo drvi o tome kako Tramp hoce Marshall law? ...
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Treba da naucis sta je martial law i zasto nema veze sa onim sto se zove Marshall Plan i provodjeno je od 1948. do 1951.
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3 hours ago, Angelia said:
Ali ja zivim ovde, zivot se ne desava na Twitteru. Sorry to burst your bubble.
Stvarno? Well, sorry to burst your bubble, i ja zivim ovde. Malo duze nego ti - uselio sam pre 45 godina. Video sam vise promena. Ziveo sam (imao stalnu adresu) u 4 savezne drzave, a posetio preko 40 (sta ces, lifelong motociklista). Na ovoj temi se javlja nekoliko nas koji zivimo ovde, pa ipak donosimo razlicite zakljucke. Bice da je razlika u kolicini informacija i nacinu kako ih procesuisemo. Otkako je interneta, pitanje je samo koliko neko ima vremena i interesa. Uostalom, mnoga desavanja mozes da pratis uzivo (npr. https://www.earthcam.com/ ).
Adresa nije dovoljna kvalifikacija za kvalitetan doprinos temi. Dokaz za to su neki moji komsije moje dobi koji su rodjeni i odrasli ovde ali svejedno nemaju ni obrazovanje ni interes za svet oko sebe - pa tako ja znam ko je nas guverner i kakve stavove ima a oni ne znaju. U praksi, znam kome da se obratim da zakrpi rupu u nasoj ulici (upravo to sam uradio pre par godina), oni ni to ne znaju - mada placaju iste poreze i namete kao i ja.
Za moj ukus, skretanje USA na desnu stranu je zapocelo dolaskom Reagana na vlast a za vreme Trumpa se ubrzalo (Reagan je zapoceo prvi mandati iste godine kad sam uselio - koincidencija?). Nije ni on prosao bez skandala, mada su se svinjarije u njegovo vreme radile suptilnije. Ovako:
QuoteThe Iran-Contra affair was a major scandal during the Reagan administration where U.S. officials secretly sold arms to Iran, a state sponsor of terrorism, and funneled the profits to the Contras, rebel groups fighting against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, despite a congressional ban. This occurred while the U.S. was seeking the release of American hostages held by Iranian-backed groups in Lebanon. The affair led to a wide-ranging investigation, legal proceedings, and significant damage to the administration's reputation.
(AI overview)
Reagan je izbegao odgovornost, krivicu je preuzeo pukovnik Oliver North.
QuoteA veteran of the Vietnam War, North was a National Security Council staff member during the Iran–Contra affair, a political scandal of the late 1980s. It involved the illegal sale of weapons to the Khomeini regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran to encourage the release of American hostages then held in Lebanon. North formulated the second part of the plan, which was to divert proceeds from the arms sales to support the Contra rebel groups in Nicaragua, official funding for which had been specifically prohibited under the Boland Amendment. North was granted limited immunity from prosecution in exchange for testifying before Congress about the scheme. He was initially convicted on three felony charges, but the convictions were vacated and reversed and all charges against him dismissed in 1991, on the grounds of immunity.
(preuzeto sa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_North ).
Zasto me na ovaj skandal podsetilo tvoje pisanje ovde?
Reagan se pojavio na konferenciji za stampu i rekao, izbegavajuci odgovornost, da pojma nije imao sta neki ljudi u njegovoj vladi rade i da je iznenadjen novim saznanjima o tome. E, onda se u medijima povela citava rasprava o tome da li je on izgledao iznenadjeno. Jedna moja drugarice je kazala da njoj svakako jeste. Moj odgovor na to je bio kratak, u dva dela:
- prvo, on ima visedecenijsko iskustvo kao holivudski glumac i sposoban je da izgleda kako on hoce
- drugo, kad kaze da ne zna sta National Security Council radi: ili laze ili nije sposoban da bude predsednik, a u oba slucaja treba da podnese ostavku
Naravno, nije se desilo.
Tvoji postovi ovde me podsecaju na moju tadasnju drugaricu. Kao sto je njoj Reagan izgledao"iznenadjeno," tako si i ti ovde jos mesecima pre izbora pisala da ne znas sta je Heritage Foundation, a uostalom - sam Trump je izjavio da ne zna sta je Project 2025.
A kad ono - Project 2025 se provodi, a nekoliko autora tog teksta, pripadnika Heritage Foundation, su clanovi Trumpove vlade.
Zato, dozvoli da neki forumasi izlazu argumentovano misljenje drugacije od tvog, mada ne zive ovde.
6 hours ago, 𝓑𝓪𝓫𝔂 said:Bukvalno hoce da naprave haos i izazovu vanredno stanje, ko zna, mozda i pocne civilni rat...
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Ovo nema veze sa imigrantima, ovo je samo nacin da naprave haos u drzavi, proglase vanredno stanje. Jbg imaju okvirni rok od 180 dana da zadovolje projekat 2025, a vec je proslo dosta i nista se nije desilo, sada mora da se ubrza, sto znaci moraju vise sranja da prave da bi izazvali reakciju.
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Dosta se pise i govori o fasizaciji modernog americkog drustva,mrzi da sve prenosim. No, Baby, u prilog ovome sto si napisala, jedan clanak koji to lepo objasnjava. Iza paywall-a je pa cu ga preneti u celini (boldovano u clanku je original, nisam ja boldovao):
LA was a dress rehearsal for what Trump really has planned
QuoteThom Hartmann
June 9, 2025 12:06PM ET
Trump: Well, we’re going to have troops everywhere.
Reporter: What’s the bar for sending in the Marines?
Trump: The bar is what I think it is.
The 2026 and 2028 elections may have just gotten a lot more distant. First, the backstory.
It was around 2 a.m. on July 15, 2020, when Mark Pettibone, then 29, was walking home from a relatively calm Black Lives Matter protest in downtown Portland, Oregon. He hadn’t done anything more provocative than wearing a black shirt: no slogans, no mask, no glimmers of violence. Yet an unmarked minivan pulled up alongside him. Out jumped several armed men in camouflage, with no insignia, to slip a bag over his head and kidnap him.
“I was terrified,” Pettibone told reporters, his voice trembling with the memory. “It was like being preyed upon."
He was shoved into the van, blindfolded, driven to the federal courthouse, interrogated, and held — with no Miranda rights, no paperwork, no explanation — for nearly 90 minutes before being released without charge or citation.
No uniforms, no accountability, no transparency, yet a citizen was stripped of his rights and dignity in a blurry high-stakes operation. And around the same time in Washington, DC, Donald Trump was trying to talk Gen. Mark Milley into having the National Guard shoot at protesters in that city.
This was not some fringe vigilante action. It was federal agents wielding brute force under cover of Trump’s executive order, agents whose silence spoke louder than any badge. The American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon called it an unconstitutional kidnapping. Legal scholars said probable cause was nowhere to be found.
Yet Merrick Garland, U.S. Attorney General under Joe Biden, decided it wasn’t worth investigating or prosecuting. Let’s just move on. And so here we are.
As Trump levels attacks on Los Angeles — sending in federal forces to “restore order” amid unrest provoked by ICE’s illegal tactics — Portland’s secret‑police saga shouldn’t just echo, it should ring alarm bells. If you thought that unmarked vans and invisible state power were confined to dystopian fiction, Pettibone’s story proves they already stalk our cities.
Trump and his neofascist sidekicks sending the National Guard into LA may look, on the surface, like another “law and order” stunt from a man whose political brand depends on hate and fear. But beneath the posturing lies something far darker and far more dangerous to American democracy.
This is not even remotely about suppressing unrest. Instead, it’s about setting an unconstitutional, anti-democratic precedent: that the president of the United States can deploy military force on a whim, against his political enemies, without state or local consent.
It’s about turning a democratic republic into an authoritarian stronghold. It’s about ending federalism — what political scientists and our Founders called our form of government — as we know it.
This is a test and a dress rehearsal. If he gets away with it, he will probably use this exact same formula — create a crisis worthy of television, bring in the feds, declare a state of emergency — to accomplish what he really wants to do.
For example, suspending the 2026 election. Yeah, that. Otherwise, Democrats might take the House and begin investigations of him that could lead to more prosecutions and convictions. And there’s no way he’s going to peacefully allow that.
For nearly 250 years, America has been guided by a simple democratic principle: that power flows from the people upward, not the other way around. When Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, he was unambiguous:
“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”
We elect our sheriffs, our mayors and city councils, our governors and legislatures; those elections are our form of “consent.” They are closest to us, most accountable, and best positioned to determine how and when to protect public safety.
With very few exceptions having to do with the Civil War, World War II, and the defense of Civil Rights protestors, “keeping the order” through law enforcement has always been handled at the most local level possible so the people whose lives and daily activities are directly impacted have a say and can hold police and the people guiding them accountable.
But Trump has never cared for accountability. And now, like the autocrats he so admires — Putin, Erdoğan, Orbán — he is showing us that he sees local government not as a partner in governance, but as an obstacle to be crushed.
Let’s be clear: sending the National Guard into LA, especially when done over the objections of California’s governor and the LA mayor, is a direct assault on one of the foundational principles of American democracy: local control.
This is the classic blueprint for dictatorship — using federal military power to override the will of elected local leaders — and it reflects the way fascism has begun in nearly every nation that has lost their democracy over the past century.
Even more glaring proof that this isn’t about “law and order” is the simple reality that Trump isn’t responding to a rebellion or foreign invasion. He’s responding, instead, to protests against ICE arresting people without warrants, a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment itself that says:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
Trump is attacking the very same protests that are explicitly protected by our Constitution, reflecting the saying so often attributed to Voltaire (it actually came from his biographer) that it’s become an all-America cliché: “I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
As the First Amendment makes explicit:
“Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
That’s what makes this move so chilling. When a president treats constitutionally-protected protest as insurrection and sends in federal troops over the objections of state and local elected officials, he’s not preserving order: he’s causing disorder and, in the process, destroying our democracy.
We’ve seen this movie before; as mentioned, in 2020, Trump deployed federal agents in unmarked military gear to Portland and DC. They tear-gassed peaceful demonstrators, beat and shot journalists, and abducted citizens off the streets. Americans shrugged. The media called it “controversial.” Garland decided other things were more important.
But the lesson Trump took from it was simple: it worked. He faced no consequences. The courts barely blinked and Garland looked the other way. So now Trump’s doing it again, only this time bigger, bolder, and with clearer political intent.
Sending the Guard to LA sends a message to every mayor and governor: If you oppose Trump, he can bring troops to your doorstep. And it sends a message to every American: If you protest, if you dissent, if you organize, you may one day be staring down the barrel of a gun flown in on orders from Washington, DC.
This is not hypothetical. It’s not alarmism. It’s a dry run for the eventual suppression of all dissent that seriously threatens the Trump regime. Just like in Russia, Hungary, or Turkey.
Deploying the National Guard for political purposes chills the First Amendment. Giving them the power to assault and arrest protestors breaks the Fourth Amendment. It tells the American people: stay quiet, or the military might show up.
That’s not democracy; that’s authoritarianism in plain sight.
Yes, Title 10 gives the president the power to federalize the National Guard during times of invasion, insurrection, or to overcome obstacles to enforcing federal law.
But Trump is taking it a step farther, giving Guard members the power to make arrests and point their guns at civilians, a clear and outrageous violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, enacted in 1878 in response to the violations of civil rights being perpetrated on civilians by the military during the post-Civil War occupation of the South.
That law explicitly forbids the military from turning their guns on civilians. Nonetheless, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) is now so concerned that she’s begging Guard troops not to shoot at protesters. This should deeply shock every American.
As California Gov. Gavin Newsom posted to Xitter:
“We didn’t have a problem until Trump got involved. This is a serious breach of state sovereignty — inflaming tensions while pulling resources from where they’re actually needed.”
And let’s not pretend this is about safety. The same man who praised the “very fine people” who marched with torches in Charlottesville in 2017, after counter-protester Heather Heyer was killed; who pardoned violent insurrectionists after January 6; who routinely echoes Hitler when he calls his political opponents “scum,” “animals,” and “vermin”; does not care about public peace. He cares about control.
He wants to exercise domination and revenge against anybody (like Gov. Newsom) who dares stand up to him. And he’s now using federal armed forces to flex his power to lord over the rest of us in ways that would make our Founders puke … or revolt.
If Trump is allowed to normalize the use of federal troops against American cities — particularly progressive cities that vote against him — it won’t stop with LA. Tomorrow it’s Chicago. Next month, New York. Then Seattle, Atlanta, Philadelphia. It becomes a pattern, then a doctrine: the president as enforcer-in-chief, sending muscle into any jurisdiction that refuses to obey.
That’s not federalism or anything remotely resembling law and order. That’s fascism.
And it’s not “coming” or “on its way.” It’s here, now.
And if he gets away with it, future presidents will do the same. The precedent — already weakly established here in Portland in 2020 — will be locked in. The checks and balances will have been destroyed.
That’s assuming there even are elections in the future.
As former Trump insider Lev Parnas said:
“According to my sources, there are discussions happening right now — within Trump’s most trusted circle — about invoking martial law if the protests ‘get out of hand.’ They’re looking for any excuse. Any video. Any act of violence. Any disruption. That’s all they need to justify a crackdown.
“And it gets worse. What I’m being told is that Trump allies — including elements connected to Proud Boys, III Percenters, and other far-right militia networks — are planning to infiltrate the June 14th protests. Not to support them. To sabotage them. Their goal? Create chaos. Spark confrontation. Trigger a response from law enforcement. And then hand Trump the justification he needs to clamp down.”
America is at a crossroads. We can pretend this is just another Trump stunt, something to be laughed at or dismissed, or we can recognize it for what it is: a direct assault on civilian government, an unconstitutional power grab, and a warning shot at the heart of democracy.
It’s time to stop normalizing the abnormal. Troops in the streets of American cities should send chills down our spine, not shrugs across the airwaves or the pathetic cheerleading we see on the billionaire-owned Fox “News.”
When a president uses the military against his own people to score political points, democracy itself becomes collateral damage.
And if Trump gets away with this like he did here in Portland in 2020, every new act of violence against the Constitution and people who disagree with him (Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is now threatening to deploy Marines) will become less scandalous, more “normal,” and more likely to lead to the next crackdown.
And then the state of emergency. And then the suspension of elections.
The time to speak out is now, not after Trump’s seized a dozen more cities and imprisoned thousands of us. Call your members of Congress, and I’ll see you in the streets next Saturday.Izvinjavam se svima zbog podugackog posta...
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Kasno je da editujem/ispravim gresku - mislio sam na VPN, ne na "VPB."
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1. M. Marquez
2. Bagnaia
3. A. Marquez
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@Rex , ne znam gde si... Meni link radi odlicno, ali zivim u USA. Mozda je vic u tome. Probaj da pristupis preko nekog VPB-a, mozda uspe?
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Naisao sam na nesto jos bolje. Dok prvi link koji sam ostavio daje samo tekst clanka koji inace zahteva pretplatu, ovaj noviji pokazuje citav clanak sa originalnom opremom (fotke, ilustracije) itd.
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1. Bagnaia
2. M. Narquez
3. Quartararo
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13 hours ago, Dragan said:
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USA gradjani vec dugo zive preko svojih mogucnosti i misle da im je to bogom dano.
Najava jos veceg smanjenja poreza za bogate + jos veca drzavna potrosnja ==> jos veci budzetski deficit i dug, uz sve ostale indikatore trulog drustva, samo pokazuju neminovni gubitak uticaja u svetu i osipanje standarda njenih gradjana (sto naravno ne znaci da ce US propasti).
Dragane, potrefio si i dao mi inspiraciju da opisem svoju ekonomsku teoriju.
(vec sam vise puta napisao da nisam strucnjak za ekonomiju, ali - nadam se - nisam ni totalna budala)
Jeste, u pravu si, ovde (USA) zivimo iznad objektivnih mogucnosti. Verovatno vredi za citav tzv. "zapadni svet."
Za jednocasovnu platu/zaradu mogu da kupim dve kosulje ili par cipela itd.
Kako je to moguce, kad je moj deda (u predratnoj, tj. pre WW2, Jugoslaviji) radio mesec dana za za jedno odelo ili par cipela?
Moguce je zahvaljujuci medjunarodnoj trgovini i nejednakosti. Globalizacija, na delu i pre nego je izraz smisljen. Ja tu kosulju kupim za pola sata rada samo zato sto Pakistanac ili Indonezanin koji ju je sasio ne moze da je kupi ni za vise dana rada.
Svet nije pravedan i mi (proverbijalni "zapad") zivimo na grbaci tzv. "treceg sveta."
Radnik koji utovaruje robu na brod u Indiji zaradjue $3/dnevno, a radnik koji sa tog istog broda istovaruje tu istu robu naplacuje svoj rad $30 po satu.
Verovatno se ovo moze pismenije/pametnije opisati, pa i uvesti izraz "petrodolar" - no, rekoh, ja sam amater i nisam ekonomista.
Ziveci u USA, ovakva razmisljanja me teraju dalje.
Uvozne carine cena kraju platiti potrosac. A Trump, idiot, je cak lansirao ideju da ce carine zameniti porez na dohodak ("income tax").
Nece se desiti, Trump je kreten.
Zasto?
Porez na dohodak ("income tax") placaju dobrostojeci ljudi. TJ. tako bi trebalo, a u praksi za najbogatije postoje rupe u zakonu (engleski "loopholes"). Ti bogati ljudi manje (proporcionalno) placaju za odrzanje sistema koji im omogucava da bogatstvo jos uvecaju.
A carine ce (kroz povecane cene) platiti svi.
Majko mila, ja treba da platim ekstra X% za glavicu salate da bi proizvodjac tenkova i municije ziveo bolje/lakse(!?).
O ostalim aspektima teme drugde/drugacije.
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Jos malo o Trumpu. Znam, vec je dosadilo i bogu i vragu, no tesko je pobeci od toga kad je 80% vesti o njegovim pizdarijama.
Naidjoh na ovo:
Trump just opened himself up to a racketeering lawsuit: report
Clanak se referise na sledeci koji cu ovde citirati jer zahteva pretplatu:
These Law Firms Should Sue Trump for Racketeering From the Oval Office
By Jonathan Zasloff
Donald Trump has never been exactly shy about his criminal behavior, but now he has taken to proudly proclaiming it. In his recent Time magazine interview, the president basically confessed to extortion:
You’ve used threats and lawsuits, other forms of coercion—
Well, I’ve gotta be doing something right, because I’ve had a lot of law firms give me a lot of money.
Now, extortion is a crime. But who cares, right? Trump isn’t going to prosecute himself. The good news is, he doesn’t have to. Holding him legally accountable doesn’t require prosecution. Trump’s actions open up him and his aides to a powerful form of civil liability that will make clear that they are, in fact, criminals: civil RICO.
Enacted by Congress in 1970 to attack organized crime, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act makes it ‘‘unlawful for any person employed by or associated with any enterprise … to conduct or participate, directly or indirectly, in the conduct of such enterprise’s affairs through a pattern of racketeering activity.”
That sounds intricate, and it is: RICO is a complex statute. But it’s a powerful one. Courts have described civil RICO as “an unusually potent weapon—the litigation equivalent of a thermonuclear device,” because it stigmatizes the defendant as a racketeer, opens them up to treble damages, and allows for vast discovery of their criminal network. And here, it suits precisely what Trump is doing. Let’s look at two critical provisions:
What is an “enterprise,” for the purposes of the statute? RICO defines it as “any individual, partnership, corporation, association or other legal entity, and any union or group of individuals associated in fact although not a legal entity.” What would that be here? Well, it would be Trump and his aides (and potentially Cabinet and sub-Cabinet officials), who have planned and executed his program of extortion and solicitation of bribery. That could be an “association in fact.”
What is “a pattern of racketeering activity,” per the statute? Simply put, it is two or more commissions of “predicate acts,” which are crimes listed in the statute. Trump’s actions fit snugly within these acts. Consider:
Extortion. As I have argued in these pages, Trump has committed state-law extortion felonies through his threats against and coercion of law firms, as well as universities. RICO includes these crimes as predicate acts.
Bribery and its solicitation. Bribery might be the central operating principle of Trump’s second term, from domestic and foreign sources alike. The marketing of a personal meme coin, and the granting of an audience to a select group of the highest contributors, is essentially a way of funneling money directly to the Trump family and to the president himself—as if the buying up of suites at the Trump Hotel, or the paying of millions of dollars to sit near him at Mar-a-Lago, had not already done so. Not to mention a $400 million plane from Qatar.
Obstruction of justice. 18 USC Section 1503 makes it a felony to endeavor to “influence, intimidate, or impede” any officer of the court (this includes judges) and contains an omnibus clause criminalizing the obstruction of the “due administration of justice.” Here, the endeavors are public. Despite the Supreme Court’s order to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States, the administration has declared that he is never coming home. Stephen Miller has recently threatened to (illegally) suspend habeas corpus unless judges “do the right thing,” and Trump himself has threatened judges with impeachment.
For most of these charges, we obviously lack all the precise details. In the bribery charge, for example, we do not know the exact understandings between Trump and those who just so happen to be lavishing him and his family with expensive gifts and sweetheart development deals. But that is what a lawsuit is for. It will permit discovery of key documents and the ability to depose the key players (who could be subject to perjury charges if they lie).
Federal courts have shown hostility to civil RICO claims, and it is not hard to see why. One predicate crime is “fraud,” and that has deluged courts with civil lawsuits alleging fraud in securities sales and marketing, which for the most part is far from what the statute contemplates. As one court remarked, “Plaintiffs wielding RICO almost always miss the mark.” Another court complained, ‘‘Plaintiffs have often been overzealous in pursuing RICO claims, flooding federal courts by dressing up run-of-the-mill fraud claims as RICO violations.’’
A case against Trump and his associates, however, carries none of these problems. Their actions represent classic examples of organized crime activity: bribery, extortion, and obstruction of justice (although discovery might also look into the possibility of purposeful stock manipulation through constant changes in tariffs, as well as money laundering from Russian sources). And it would fit snugly within the traditional contours of the law. Under RICO, federal prosecution has frequently targeted public officials who use their office for personal gain, including governors, members of Congress, mayors, and state legislators throughout the country.
However, like any recent legal attempt to create some accountability for Donald Trump, this would be no slam dunk.
Critically, in 1981 the Supreme Court immunized presidents from civil damages for actions taken in office within the “outer bounds” of presidential authority. What is that outer bound? We don’t know. But we do know that E. Jean Carroll successfully sued Trump for defamation when, as president, he denied her allegations that he had sexually assaulted her, and that was conceivably good enough to beat civil immunity.
More importantly, while SCOTUS immunized presidents against civil damages, it allowed suits for declaratory and injunctive relief. So even if precedent applies, the case should go forward.
And very significantly, even if the president is fully immunized against damages, his associates are not. Attorney General Pam Bondi just opined that Trump’s acceptance of a $400 million 747 from Qatar was perfectly legal: She has thus made herself part of Trump’s bribery scheme. If staffers are found liable, they could be on the hook for treble damages and attorneys fees. And that could make them vulnerable to settling and testifying.
There are two other significant questions about any such lawsuit:
Who is the plaintiff? Trump’s racketeering is so broad that various aspects might appear to have little to do with one another; threatening law firms with extinction does not necessarily connect with threatening judges. But they are linked: His intimidation of and threats against judges make it more likely that they will rule against targeted law firms and thus assist his extortion. Trump’s bribery scheme assists some firms by funneling work to them while blocking others. So Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, and WilmerHale all could be plaintiffs in all three areas. Similarly, Harvard University is hurt by Trump’s extortion and his threats against judges.
Doesn’t Trump always seem to beat these raps? Trump has indeed shown himself to be the Teflon Don. Things that would have obliterated other figures slide off him: A New York court ruled that he raped Carroll, and the story lasted less than a day in the news.
But accepting that is a recipe for passivity. According to that line of thinking, no one should protest, no one should bother to vote, no one should contribute money to campaigns or pro-democracy organizations. If there were a silver bullet, someone would have found it already.
Conservatives have learned this lesson well: continue relentless pressure even if it does not always succeed. America’s new authoritarianism did not spring from nowhere; it comes from a decadeslong movement conservatism campaign to subvert democracy, one that used implacable attacks on a variety of fronts even in the face of crushing electoral defeats. Pro-democracy forces would do well to learn such a lesson and not negotiate against themselves. A civil RICO case against the racketeer in chief should be part of any effort to save this country from Trump’s dictatorial aspirations, which are coming closer to reality every day.link: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/05/sue-trump-oval-office-racketeering.html
Ja bih ovde dodao neke svoje dubioze (dileme?).
Trump i njegova klika vec redovno gube u sudskim sporovima, Ali, ko ce sprovesti odluke suda? Sud nema svoju policiju i vojsku. Za tzv. "represivne organe" (tj. policiju, FBI itd.) je nadlezno ministarstvo pravosudja - kojim (preko svojih poltrona/dupeuvlakaca) upravlja - Trump.
Najebali smo.
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Zasto pisemo da USA vec najmanje par decenija ide u nepozeljnom smeru? I zasto toliko pisemo o Trumpu?
Deo odgovora:
"... But since Trump’s inauguration, Congress has ceded huge swaths of its policymaking responsibility to the president. That makes the media’s focus on Trump unsurprising. And there’s no denying that Trump has had enormous impact during his first 100 days in office. ..."
Congress began losing power decades ago − and now it’s giving away what remains to Trump
Republicans in Congress have been making behind-the-scenes efforts to pass major domestic legislation via the federal budget process. They include potential cuts to Medicaid and extending the 2017 Trump tax cuts.
But even though it’s Congress’ job to pass a budget and set tax policy, most media outlets have been content to frame key elements of the legislation as being driven not by Congress but by the president.
So the news media say that the purpose of the bill is to “deliver Trump’s agenda” or to pass the “Trump tax cuts.” Many have even adopted President Donald Trump’s trademark name for the legislation: his “big, beautiful bill.”
Along with Casey Burgat and SoRelle Wyckoff Gaynor, I am co-author of a textbook titled “Congress Explained: Representation and Lawmaking in the First Branch.” In that book, it was important to us to highlight Congress’ clear role as the preeminent lawmaking body in the federal government.
But since Trump’s inauguration, Congress has ceded huge swaths of its policymaking responsibility to the president. That makes the media’s focus on Trump unsurprising. And there’s no denying that Trump has had enormous impact during his first 100 days in office.
During that time, Congress has been unwilling to assert itself as an equal branch of government. Beyond policymaking, Congress has been content to hand over many of its core constitutional powers to the executive branch. As a Congress expert who loves the institution and profoundly respects its constitutionally mandated role, this renunciation of responsibility has been difficult to watch.
And yet, Congress’ path to irrelevance as a body of government did not begin in January 2025.
It is the result of decades of erosion that created a political culture in which Congress, the first branch of government listed in the Constitution, is relegated to second-class status.
The Constitution puts Congress first
The 18th-century framers of the Constitution viewed Congress as the foundation of republican governance, deliberately placing it first in Article 1 to underscore its primacy. Congress was assigned the pivotal tasks of lawmaking and budgeting because controlling government finances was seen as essential to limiting executive power and preventing abuses that the framers associated with monarchy.
Alternatively, a weak legislature and an imperial executive were precisely what many of the founders feared. With legislative authority in the hands of Congress, power would at least be decentralized among a wide variety of elected leaders from different parts of the country, each of whom would jealously guard their own local interests.
But Trump’s first 100 days turned the founders’ original vision on its head, leaving the “first branch” to play second fiddle.
Like most recent presidents, Trump came in with his party in control of the presidency, the House and the Senate. Yet despite the lawmaking power that this governing trifecta can bring, the Republican majorities in Congress have mostly been irrelevant to Trump’s agenda.
Instead, Congress has relied on Trump and the executive branch to make changes to federal policy and in many cases to reshape the federal government completely.
Trump has signed more than 140 executive orders, a pace faster than any president since Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Republican Congress has shown little interest in pushing back on any of them. Trump has also aggressively reorganized, defunded or simply deleted entire agencies, such as the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
These actions have been carried out even though Congress has a clear constitutional authority over the executive branch’s budget. Again, Congress has shown little to no interest in reasserting its power, even during recent budget talks.
Many causes, no easy solutions
Even so, Congress’ weakening did not begin with Trump. There’s no one culprit but instead a collection of factors that have provided the ineffectual Congress of today.
One overriding factor is a process that has unfolded over the past 50 or more years called political nationalization. American politics have become increasingly centered on national issues, parties and figures rather than more local concerns or individuals.
This shift has elevated the importance of the president as the symbolic and practical leader of a national party agenda. Simultaneously, it weakens the role of individual members of Congress, who are now more likely to toe the party line than represent local interests.
As a result, voters focus more on presidential elections and less on congressional ones, granting the president greater influence and diminishing Congress’ independent authority.
The more Congress polarizes among its members on a party-line basis, the less the public is likely to trust the legitimacy of their opposition to a president. Instead, congressional pushback − sometimes as extreme as impeachment − can thus be written off not as principled or substantive but as partisan or politically motivated to a greater extent than ever before.
Congress has also been been complicit in giving away its own power. Especially when dealing with a polarized Congress, presidents increasingly steer the ship in budget negotiations, which can lead to more local priorities – the ones Congress is supposed to represent – being ignored.
But rather than Congress staking out positions for itself, as it often did through the turn of the 21st century, political science research has shown that presidential positions on domestic policy increasingly dictate – and polarize – Congress’ own positions on policy that hasn’t traditionally been divisive, such as funding support for NASA. Congress’ positions on procedural issues, such as raising the debt ceiling or eliminating the filibuster, also increasingly depend not on bedrock principles but on who occupies the White House.
In the realm of foreign policy, Congress has all but abandoned its constitutional power to declare war, settling instead for “authorizations” of military force that the president wants to assert. These give the commander in chief wide latitude over war powers, and both Democratic and Republican presidents have been happy to retain that power. They have used these congressional approvals to engage in extended conflicts such as the Gulf War in the early 1990s and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan a decade later.
What’s lost with a weak Congress
Americans lose a lot when Congress hands over such drastic power to the executive branch.
When individual members of Congress from across the country take a back seat, their districts’ distinctly local problems are less likely to be addressed with the power and resources that Congress can bring to an issue. Important local perspectives on national issues fail to be represented in Congress.
Even members of the same political party represent districts with vastly different economies, demographics and geography. Members are supposed to keep this in mind when legislating on these issues, but presidential control over the process makes that difficult or even impossible.
Maybe more importantly, a weak Congress paired with what historian Arthur Schlesinger called the “Imperial Presidency” is a recipe for an unaccountable president, running wild without the constitutionally provided oversight and checks on power that the founders provided to the people through their representation by the first branch of government. -
10 hours ago, Angelia said:
Zoki, nemam pojma sta hoces od mene? Jesam rekla da sam protiv da primi avion od Katara? Jesi se bunio kad je Biden saradjivao sa Saudijcima, ili Obama? Tad ocigledno nisi imao neprijatna osecanja.
Ma, necu nista. Samo mi je neprijatno. Citamo/pisemo se na forumu vec dugo i uglavnom sam se slagao sa tvojim misljenjem - sve dok nisi pocela da branis Trumpa i njegove svinjarije. I njegove pseudoekonomske poteze za koje svi vodeci ekonomisti kazu da su losi - sa izuzetkom onih nekoliko koji gostuju na FoxNews, Newsmax i OAN kanalima.
A svinjarija ima vec za citavu enciklopediju.
Slazem se sa Mrdom i ostalima koji kazu da americko drustvo ide u vrazju mater - i dodao bih da je uz Trumpa taj proces ubrzan za par redova velicine.
Gary Hart, vodeci kandidat za predsednika, je odustao i prekinuo kampanju kad su ga paparazzi uslikali na jahti sa ljubavnicom.
Protiv Billa Clintona je pokrenut impeachment proces jer se svalerisao sa Monicom Lewinsky.
A Trump je PRESUDOM SUDA (!) kriv za sexual assault (E. Jean Caroll)- i nikome nista. Stormy Daniels - ma, zanemari.
Toliko o moralu.
Hocemo li o postenju?
Trump ima citavu knjigu neplacenih racuna, ostao je duzan cak i onima koji mu ljube dupe. Najbolji primerje Rudy Giuliani.
Rudolph Giuliani says he was shortchanged as part of Donald Trump’s 2020 election campaign to the tune of about $2 million for legal fees.
Trump University?
... Despite its name, the organization was not an accredited university or college. It conducted three- and five-day seminars (often called "retreats") and used high-pressure tactics to sell them to its customers. It did not confer college credit, grant degrees, or grade its students. In 2011, the company became the subject of an inquiry by the New York Attorney General's office for illegal business practices, which resulted in a lawsuit filed in August 2013. An article in the National Review called the organization a "massive scam" ...
izvor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_University
Svezije, citava klika oko Trumpa je "zaradila" puste pare mesetarenjem na berzi, znajuci unapred kada ce on objaviti carine i kada ce ih ukinuti.
Nikome nista - kome to smeta, taj valjda boluje od TDS (Trump derrangement syndrome) - mada je "insider trading" kriminal.
Ctava frtutma je nastala oko Huntera Bidena i njegovog poslovanja, secamo li se?
A sa Trumpom su u drzavnu posetu Arapima isli i sinovi i Elon Musk. Opet, nikome nista.
O toj poseti procitaj i zanimljiv clanak:
Trump’s remarkable Middle East tour is all about striking megadeals and outfoxing China
Moze se raspravljati koliko je uspesan kao businessman, nema sumnje da je izuzetno bogat. Mada se mogu naci mnogi medijski clanci, pa i knjige, koji tvrde da nije - ali jeste uspesan con-artist (prevarant).
I onda se nadju mnogi koji misle da je dobro da vodi drzavu kao uspesan business.
Tu se ne slazem, pa dolazimo do razlike u filozofiji i principima.
Drzava ne treba da bude uspesan business, drzava treba da bude usluzni servis SVIM GRADJANIMA.
To znaci da obezbedi infrastrukturu, zdravstvo, obrazovanje, obranu zemlje, zastitu od kriminala itd.
I ne treba da na tome zaradjuje - ne samo drzava kao javna institucija, nego pogotovu ne smeju da na tome zaradjuju klike i"elite" nekolicine vec ionako najbogatijih!
A ovo poslednje se upravo dogadja.
Smanjenje poreza najbogatijima i velikim korporacijama - ali, posto negde treba da se nadju/sacuvaju pare, smanjenje ili ukidanje raznih socijalnih programa.
Verujem da ce se to Republikancima obiti o glavu. Najbrojniji korisnici tih programa je upravo krezuba redneck populacija - veliki deo grupe koja glasa za njih...
U stvari, vec je pocelo. Republikanska guvernerka:
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and the state's entire GOP congressional delegation are urging President Donald Trump to reconsider after the Federal Emergency Management denied the state's request for federal disaster relief following a series of deadly storms last month.
Sta ces, usteda...
I onda se ti pojavis na forumu i smejes se nama koji ne razumemo da su carine u stvari genijalna poslovna/pregovaracka taktika.
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Trump's traveling trunk show is backfiring
At least on the issue of putting the USA up for sale, we’re all united against Trump
For the record, there is no truth to the rumor that Donald Trump has an embroidered pillow that reads, “He who dies with the most toys wins.”
That doesn’t mean he wouldn’t like one. He’s just not going to pay for it; apparently, no one has given him one as a gift yet.
Trump has made it pretty clear where his shriveled little heart lies. And it lies often about everything to benefit himself and no one else.
It’s a yard sale, folks, and Trump is selling while the world is buying. A former Trump official clarified it for me further. “If you think Trump is holding a yard sale, I would remind everyone that the United States is the yard that is for sale and everything, including security secrets, defensive initiatives, private data, and secrets most people don’t know about are for sale.” If that doesn’t bother you, my source said, “And no one in this administration is going to call him out. The new Trump regime is becoming increasingly insulated while his activities grow more outrageous. Everything he does is pay to play.”
Most of the world has grown weary of the man, if elections in Canada, the growing resentment of him in Europe, or even the new criticism of him among MAGA circles mean anything. Then again, his latest trip to the Middle East shows that the obscenely rich and powerful potentates who oppress and repress their fellow countrymen while they gain more power and wealth due to their oil reserves are more than willing to hand over hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, to Donald Trump (Not the USA) in a bid to curry favor with him so they can get what they want at his yard sale. They may be sick of him, but they sure know how to manipulate him.
The latest hue and cry from the masses about Donald Trump comes from the announcement that the country of Qatar has gifted him a $400 million Boeing 747. Ostensibly, it is to be used as Air Force One, but it will be Trump’s to use once he leaves – if he ever leaves – office.
So, to recap, the richest and most powerful are willing to bribe the man who wants to be one of the richest and most powerful because Trump nominally represents the world’s largest consumer nation.
Go figure.
Trump, of course, is angry that anyone would question his motives. On Tuesday, he insulted an ABC reporter with a sneer and his usual mangling of the English language and logic when he said, “They’re giving us a free jet. I could say no, no, no, don’t give [it to] us. I want to pay you $1 billion or $400 million or whatever it is. Or I could say thank you very much.” Trump also compared taking the gift to former professional golfer Sam Snead. “He had a motto; when they give you a putt, you say ‘thank you very much,' you pick up your ball and you walk to the next hole.”
It always boils down to golf with Trump. He is more likely to expire on the back nine of a golf course after shanking a par 5 off the tee than any man I’ve ever known. His analogy also carries a deeper meaning. It tells you the extent of his grift. Take any freebie you get – even though in this case it’s not a freebie. A source inside the DOD told me, “Don’t worry it’s never going to be used as Air Force One. By the time they check it for bugs, retrofit it and prepare it, the country will have spent $1 billion and Trump will be out of office. It’ll just stay parked at an airport nearby his so-called Presidential Library so he can use it personally whenever he wants.”
This gets interesting because MAGA boosters like Laura Loomer, Mark Levin and Ben Shapiro have joined the ranks of Democrats and progressives like Bernie Sanders and James Carville in criticizing Trump for making the deal.
“I think if we switched the names to Hunter Biden and Joe Biden, we’d all be freaking out on the right,” Shapiro said Monday on his podcast. “President Trump promised to drain the swamp. This is not, in fact, draining the swamp.” Shapiro also linked the potential airplane deal to other acts of “influence peddling,” like Trump’s cryptocurrency sweepstakes. “The administration’s policy is too important for this sort of activity,” Shapiro said.
Loomer blasted Trump on social media with anti-Hamas posts (Qatar is an ally of Hamas) and said she hoped the deal wasn’t true because she’d take a bullet for Trump. Levin chimed in with a “Ditto.”
Sounds like what James Carville said Tuesday, except for the taking a bullet part, when he urged lawmakers to “jump on this corruption and never get off of it.” Trump is “taking a $400 million jet for lifetime use from a foreign government,” Carville told Chris Cuomo on News Nation. “He’s selling places at a White House dinner for people that buy his meme coin, which goes right into his pocket. And that’s what the tragedy is.”
Trump has been criticized by the left, right, middle and everyone but those in the Middle East who are paying a hefty sum for Trump’s attention. You’d think someone would tell them that Trump’s price tag is a lot less than $400 million. Hell, Elon Musk, the immigrant who criticizes other immigrants, bought Trump for about half that much.
Stop by the White House for Trump’s yard sale, contribute to his cryptocurrency and get a free dinner with him; or if you can’t make it to the White House, he’ll go to you. And while Trump continues to sell out his country, it isn’t the entire story. It certainly isn’t the most egregious part of the story.
Donald Trump stood up in Saudi Arabia and lavished praise on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He called him “an incredible man” and a “great guy” and declared that he liked him “too much.”
MBS, sitting in the first row of attendees while Trump made his speech, smiled and waved. Let the record show that the CIA named MBS as the mastermind behind the murder of Washington Post reporter Jamal Khashoggi. Joe Biden wouldn’t meet with the man, but Trump is making deals right and left with the guy he likes “too much.” The press? We’ve pretty much ignored that unsettling fact. Almost like we’ve been cowered into submission by Der Leader.
So much for free speech and the right to dissent. Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller (who some in the White House refer to as “Pee Wee German”) told us last week the administration is eliminating the Department of Education so we can teach young American children the right way to think. No one is talking about Khashoggi’s right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, however. He’s dead, buried and apparently forgotten.
Presidential Pep Secretary Karoline Leavitt, meanwhile, suffered her latest humiliation as she talked herself into a knot trying to defend Trump’s yard sale. Sure, she said, “The president is abiding by all conflict of interest laws,” but he’s obviously not. She can say that it’s “ridiculous” to suggest that “President Trump is doing anything for his own benefit,” but that’s obviously his first concern. He’s leveraging the Middle East to pad his own pocket. The question remains: Will he change U.S. policy to favor his bottom line? It’s not a question that requires a lot of deep thought. Trump has spent a lifetime in his narcissistic pursuit of doing what’s best for him at the expense of everyone else.
There’s plenty of evidence to show us what the yard sale is doing for Trump.
Within the last month, Eric Trump announced plans for an 80-story Trump Tower in Dubai, the UAE’s largest city. He also attended a recent cryptocurrency conference there with Zach Witkoff, a founder of the Trump family crypto company, World Liberty Financial, and son of Trump’s envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff.
“We are proud to expand our presence in the region,” Eric Trump said last month in announcing that Trump Tower Dubai was set to start construction this fall.
True to form, Trump’s business interests include a business partnership with Qatari Diar, a real estate company backed by the sovereign wealth fund in Qatar, to build a luxury golf resort there. Wonder why Trump got the 747? Come on.
Meanwhile, the Trump family is also leasing its brand to two new real estate projects in the Saudi Arabian Capital, Riyadh. There, they are partnering with Dar Global, a London-based luxury real estate developer and subsidiary of private Saudi real estate firm Al Arkan. What’s the life of a Washington Post journalist compared to those deals? Trump’s in. It’s pay to play, baby.
The Trump Organization has similarly partnered with Dar Global on a Trump Tower set to be built in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and an upcoming Trump International Hotel and luxury golf development in neighboring Oman. Wonder what they got at the yard sale to justify that?
During the crypto conference, a state-backed investment company in Abu Dhabi announced it had chosen USD, World Liberty Financial’s stablecoin, to back a $2 billion investment in Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange. Critics say that it allows Trump family-aligned interests to essentially take a cut of each dollar invested.
“I don’t know anything about it,” Trump said when asked by reporters about the transaction on Wednesday. When he says he doesn’t know anything about the subject, be it Epstein Island, COVID, Project 2025 or hundreds of other subjects he claimed ignorance about, you know he’s lying.
So when Shapiro asked in his podcast, “How does this put America First?” He was echoing the thoughts of everyone from Bernie Sanders, AOC, and your average American auto worker to Trump supporters in the House and Senate.
Perhaps Donald Trump is right: He’s bringing unity to the United States. At least on this issue, we’re united against Trump.
And yet there still remains little hope that there will be a combined effort to stifle Trump or hold him accountable for his actions. As a former insider I know told me Wednesday, Trump is “not worried” about MBS, the trip to the Middle East or anything else because “The Democrats remain floundering.” So busy are they fighting over “David Hogg and how to appeal to American voters without listening to the voters,” that my source is convinced the Republican Party (insert MAGA) will continue to win future elections and Donald Trump will make away with billions while selling out America. The yard sale will continue.
By dealing with MBS, Trump is also telling you that he doesn’t care who you kill to get to the head of the table. Money talks. It may be a profitable way to run a business, but I doubt many of us could sleep soundly knowing innocent people were killed so others could purchase our goods at a yard sale.
Trump?
He’ll sleep just fine. No one sleeps more soundly than a man without a conscience, a heart, or any common sense. Unless he’s not making a profit. Right now, Trump is obviously profiting and in the best position he’s ever been in during his life. It’s doubtful anyone will stop him.
And we will suffer for decades because of it. Just remember what happened to Jamal Khashoggi.izvor: https://www.salon.com/2025/05/15/traveling-trunk-show-is-backfiring/
Naravno, samo nama glupima ovaj tekst izaziva neprijatne osecaje. MAGA genijalcima nece.
Sa'ce mi MAGAngelia objasniti da je to business as usual i (zahvaljujuci Trumpu) moj standard samo sto nije porasao.
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The media needs to stop pretending about Trump's 'conflicts'
Words matter. When the media points out Trump’s “potential conflicts of interest,” as it has in recent days when describing Trump’s growing crypto enterprise, it doesn’t come close to telling the public what’s really going on — unprecedented paybacks and self-dealing by the president of the United States, using his office to make billions.
The correct word is corruption.
Trump holds a private dinner at the White House for major speculators who purchase his new cryptocurrency, earning him and his allies $900,000 in trading fees in just under two days. One senator calls this “the most brazenly corrupt thing a president has ever done.”
He’s doing other things as brazen if not more brazenly corrupt.
He collects a cut of sales from a cryptocurrency marketed with his likeness.
He promotes Teslas on the White House driveway on behalf of a multibillionaire who spent a quarter of a billion backing him during the 2024 election.
He posts news-making announcements on Truth Social, the company in which he and his family own a significant stake. Truth Social thereby becomes the world’s semi-official means of knowing Trump’s thinking and policies.
Trump frequently mentions in his phone calls with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer that he’d like the signature British Open golf tournament returned to Trump’s Turnberry resort in Scotland (its home before Trump’s January 6, 2021, attempted coup). Trump’s team asked the British PM again during his recent visit to the White House.
To describe these as “potential conflicts of interest” misses the point. A “potential conflict of interest” sounds like an unfortunate situation in which it’s possible that Trump might choose his own personal interest over the nation’s. Stated this way, the problem is the conflict.
But Trump isn’t conflicted. He repeatedly chooses his (and his family’s) interests over the nation’s. He is using the authority and trappings of the presidency of the United States to make money for himself and his family. And in his second term, this corruption is more flagrant than it was in the first.
Some legal scholars say “corruption” occurs only after a court so rules. But this isn’t the common-sense definition, and the critical venue for restraining Trump is the court of public opinion. When Trump collects on a favor or engages in a quid pro quo deal for himself or his family — which he’s doing more and more often — the transactions are corrupt.
Trump’s venture into crypto has increased his family’s wealth by an estimated $2.9 billion in the last six months, according to a new report.
This estimate was made before the Trump family crypto firm, World Liberty Financial, announced that its so-called “stablecoin” — with Trump’s likeness all over it — will be used by the United Arab Emirates to make a $2 billion business deal with Binance, the largest crypto exchange in the world. The deal will generate hundreds of millions of dollars more for the Trump family.
We’re not talking about a “potential conflict of interest.” The Trump family is making a boatload of money off a venture backed by a foreign government. Hello? The U.S. Constitution's Emoluments Clause, Article II, Section 1, Clause 7, bars a president from receiving any compensation or other emolument from a foreign government.
The deal also formally links the Trump family business to Binance — a company that’s been under U.S. government oversight since 2023, when it admitted to violating federal money-laundering laws.
Meanwhile, Trump is instructing the government to ease up on regulating crypto. The Securities and Exchange Commission is ending its crypto fraud investigations. The Justice Department is terminating its enforcement actions against crypto.
A potential conflict of interest? Please. This is corruption, plain and simple.
Eric Trump, who officially runs the family business, has just announced plans for a Trump-branded hotel and tower in Dubai, part of the U.A.E.
The Trump family is also developing a luxury hotel and golf course complex in the Middle East nation of Oman, on land owned by the government of Oman. Oman also plays an important role in the Middle East, often serving as a middleman between the United States and Iran.
This project and three others are dependent on a Saudi-based real estate company with close ties to the Saudi government. Saudi Arabia has a long list of pressing matters before the United States, including requests to buy F-35 fighter jets and gain access to nuclear power technology.
In two weeks, when Trump travels to Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. to meet with their heads of government and that of Oman, is this a “state visit” or a business trip? Obviously, it’s both — which underscores the self-dealing.
There’s no “potential conflict of interest” here. It’s pure corruption.
Trump is the most corrupt president in American history. His self-dealing makes Warren G. Harding’s look like a child shoplifting candy.
Why isn’t the media calling this what it is? Americans deserve to know.Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.
Sad cekam da mi MAGA ekipa objasni da sam slep i ne razumem a Trump u stvari sve radi za dobrobit nacije...
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8 hours ago, Angelia said:
Mozda sam nesto propustila, kakve to veze ima?
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Andjo, mnogo si toga "propustila."
Nadam se da ces imati vremena da procitas moj post - jer si toliko zauzeta businessom pa delom slobodnog vremena samo pogledas Fox News propagandu. Ma, zasto proveriti "fact check" kad je vec "veliki vodja" sve objasnio?
Razlicito od tebe i Trumpa, ja fizicki i bukvalno idem u nabavku.
Perverzan sam, sta cu, manijak, pa volEm mladi luk (srpskohrvatski: green onions). Pre dve godine je u meni obliznjem supermarketu (Kroger, lanac sa vise hiljada ducana) bilo $0.99 za dva sveznja. Juce je bilo $1.19 za JEDAN svezanj.
Moja penzija nije toliko porasla. Koliko ce kostati za mesec dana, ne znam i plasim se. Sveze povrce je vecinom uvoz iz Mexica. A moja penzija nije.
Istovremeno, pojavi se Trump na TV i kaze da su cene pale.
Vi MAGA tipovi verujte Trumpu ali ja cu verovati sopstvenom budjelaru.
Znas, "let them eat cake" ce ti se obiti o glavu.
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[USA] SJEDINJENE AMERIČKE DRŽAVE - unutrašnja politika i uticaj na svetska kretanja
in Politika
Posted
Ocigledno nisi procitala clanak koji sam okacio...
Ne, ne optuzujem Newsoma za pozare - kao ni Abotta za poplave.
Ali primecujem da je Newsom za vreme pozara radio svoj posao (da li dobro ili lose, moze se raspravljati).
I da je Ted Cruz (R) otisao na plazu u Mexico kad se Texas smrzn'o pre 4 godine.
Primecujem da FEMA ima direktora koga je postavio Trump (David Richardson) ali se taj nije oglasio, nigde ga nema. Umesto njega se javlja Kristi Noem koja je uvela pravilo da mora licno da odobri svaki trosak iznad $100 000, pa je FEMA pomoc Texasu kasnila 3 dana. Onda dobijes ovakve naslove vesti:
FEMA’s response to Texas flood slowed by Noem’s cost controls ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhVCsXZeXAw )
As FEMA aids Texas flood victims, Noem urges eliminating US agency 'as it exists today' ( https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/us-emergency-agency-fema-should-be-eliminated-it-exists-today-noem-says-2025-07-09/ )
Znam, toga nema na Fox News (ili NewsMax i OAN), a ti nemas vremena da detaljno pratis vesti...
Inace i dugorocnije, primecujem da posle svake vece pucnjave (a nije da ih fali) Dems traze kontrolu naoruzanja i zabranu automatskog oruzja - dok Reps izjavljuju da imaju stradale u svojim "mislima i molitvama."
Dems jesu vecinom zbunjena i zalutala partija.
Ali MAGA Reps su zlocudni kult.