25 years ago today, SCOTUS elected George W Bush president of the United States by blocking completion of a voting canvass in Florida. A subsequent canvass by the AP showed that #Bush's rival, Al Gore, had won the race in Florida—and thus the contest for the presidency—by 700 votes.
#AlGore, who chose the Israeli firster #Lieberman as his VP accepted the defeat the next day and paved the road to the worst crimes against humanity in modern time by GwB.
A tweet from “jordan @JordanUhl” says: “I'm old enough to remember when they at least pretended it was about some abstract goal of ‘freedom.’”
Below is a tweet from “Aaron Rupar” quoting Rep. Salazar saying the U.S. needs to “go in” to Venezuela and that it will be a “field day” for American oil companies.
The attached image shows a Fox News segment with a split screen of Nicolás Maduro and two commentators.
As the direct result of the #sanctions imposed by #Bush & #Obama against Iran, the Iranian #currency lost almost 32% of its value overnight and the price of imported goods jumped up to 45% higher than 2 days ago.
The European union released a list of items covered by the new sanctions, including closing airspace to Iranian cargo planes, restrictions on travellers from/to Iran and stop of repairs of #Airbus planes sold to Iran. #EU#Snapback
The #Republicans ambitions to create political "Dynasty" died in the 1990s with the #Bush family #coup but continues today with the Trump family and #MAGA hyper partisans.
They badly need a political Dynasty to control the US #census over multiple decades as the country skin color changes to a Black and Brown majority.
Mitarbeiter melden Angriff auf Klinik in Gaza-Stadt
Israels Armee hat bei Luftangriffen in Gaza-Stadt offenbar erneut ein Krankenhaus getroffen. Zuvor hatte die Regierung bekannt gegeben, den Einsatz im Gazastreifen auszuweiten. Die UN warnten vor einer Vertreibung der Bevölkerung.
Was für ein Wahnsinn im #Wertewesten: Die Verbrechen der Junta in #Jerusalem macht mich fassungslos:
Die #Nakba - imo deckungsgleich mit dem #Holocaust, der #Shoa - findet JETZT in GAZA an den Palästinensern statt. Für alle sichtbar!
Unsere Medien trichtern uns ein, Putin zu verteufeln. Teufel aus Jerusalem - genauso wie die Völkermörder #Blair und #Bush, die kriminell den #Irak überfallen und Hunderttausende Menschen abgeschlachtet hatten - scheinen sakrosankt morden zu dürfen.
Over the past month and a half, I've encountered a lot of Very Serious PeopleTM in my life, and on my TV, who seem to think that the best way to counteract Trump's fascist regime as it tears everything apart and starts trying to disappear political prisoners, is to "not take the bait" and wait for the courts to handle it. "We are still a nation of laws" these folks have assured me, even though I've spent the past four decades watching US presidents break the law in ways that are more acceptable to Pig Empire society than Trump does. Throughout that time, my question has always been "well what are you gonna do when he just ignores the law? I mean it's not like you can send the local sheriff to evict him from the White House, and the GOP is extremely unlikely to help their inept opposition to impeach him." To the degree that I've been able to actually ask that question in person, I have yet to receive a reasonable reply; which is unfortunate, because completely ignoring the courts appears to be precisely what Downmarket Mussolini and his merry gang of shitposting nazi freaks are doing:
Trump Officials Are Pretending A Judge Didn't Bar His Anti-Diversity Orders
"In at least one case, the senior executive says, a U.S. official told the international organization that they knew about the court injunction and what it meant, but that the senior ranks of the Trump administration had explicitly instructed staff to enforce Trump’s executive orders, to ignore the court’s injunction, and to pressure partner organizations if need be. This official also said that if the nonprofit’s leaders didn’t sign the new paperwork, they’d risk having their funding quickly terminated by the Trump administration, per the senior executive.
“The Trump administration is daring the courts in the United States to do something about this, and thus far, I don’t think most people in America understand that what’s at risk is the fundamental basis that there is fairness and justice and rule of law in the United States,” says the senior executive. “And whatever you think of DEI, we should all agree that running the government based on the rule of law is a requirement. The playbook that is being used in the U.S. is not new; we’ve seen it in country after country where there’s been an increase in authoritarianism. To see it in the modern United States itself is what’s new and disturbing.”
The other two sources, one of whom is a Trump appointee, tell Rolling Stone that the directive to comply with Trump’s DEI orders, despite what the judge said, has gone out to an array of nonprofit organizations and partners around the world."
This is kind of a messy article that spends a lot of words going over the timeline of the Trump administration's attempts to play dumb about what the judge's injunction actually blocks in terms of Trump's anti-diversity executive orders, but the key takeaway isn't that complex. Trump has knowingly, and directly ordered his administration to ignore the injunction and continue enforcing his anti-diversity orders both inside the government and towards outside contractors and partners. This is not speculative, several sources inside the Trump administration have confirmed that the regime knows what the injunction means, and government employees are being ordered to simply ignore the ruling. Borrowing a page from noted genocidal racist U.S. president Andrew Jackson, Trump has effectively declared "Adam Abelson has made his decision; now let him enforce it."
Should this come as a surprise to anyone in the American establishment "opposition?" Well, probably not, because as the article notes Trump and his minions have more or less been actively broadcasting their intentions to ignore court orders designed to block their fascist agenda:
"The episode is part of a broader pattern in which the second Trump administration has operated under the impression that judges’ orders and rulings don’t much matter. Vice President J.D. Vance has publicly argued that Trump can ignore judges’ orders, asserting: “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.” Trump, for his part, has threatened to “look at” judges who rule against Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Over Presidents Day weekend, Trump admitted he thinks he can break any law he wants to — so long as he can loosely define doing so as part of his mission to “save” the country."
Folks, like I've been telling you for a while, the cavalry ain't coming. If a GOP-controlled government won't impeach him, and the regime won't obey court orders, nothing short of an uprising is stopping these nazis anytime soon; no matter HOW much that scares an "opposition" establishment that hates people power.
The more things change, the more they stay the same apparently. Back when I had a little less gray in my hands, one of the many horrifying scandals to come out of the Bush Administration during the War on Terror/9-11/Iraq War era, involved the suppression of intelligence and intelligence officials who refused to support the Bush-Cheney administration's position that Iraq had, or was on the verge of acquiring, weapons of mass destruction. This mattered because although the Bush government employed a "throw a plate of spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks" method of manufacturing consent to invade Iraq, the central portion of their legal and diplomatic argument, revolved around the admin's repeated assertion that US Intelligence had actionable information that Saddam Hussein had WMD's or was about to finish building them. Of course, the entire thing turned out to be a lie; Iraq didn't have WMDs, the intelligence supporting the lie was nonexistent, and warmongers who supported the war crafted a narrative that "bad intelligence" had lead Bush-Cheney to ruin. The fact that even that was a lie, wouldn't come out until later; as it turns out US Intelligence had actively told the White House that they didn't think Iraq had or was capable of producing WMDs, and the administration had ignored, sidelined, and removed anyone in the intel community who told them so. That story was of course small potatoes compared to the original story about "bad intelligence" and to this day many informed observers still believe the spies told lies and the White House was "duped."
I mention this now of course because Trump's Director of National Intelligence, noted fake peacenik, Islamophobe, and cult member Tulsi Gabbard, just fired two high ranking intelligence officials, and moved the National Intelligence Council under her direct supervision. Why? Well it sure does look like it's because a FOIA request turned up a NIC memo confirming that US intelligence disagreed with Trump's fascist propaganda arguing that the gang Tren de Aragua were working for Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro; a central pillar of the Trump regime's argument that they have a right to deploy the Alien Enemies Act to do fascist mass deportations and a bunch of other authoritarian buillshit.
Gabbard Fires Intel Officials After Memo Counters Trump Lies About Migrants Sent to El Salvador Prison
"While an ODNI spokesperson told The Hill that "the director is working alongside President Trump to end the weaponization and politicization of the intelligence community," critics framed the firings as "the DEFINITION of politicizing intelligence."
"I am concerned about the apparent removal of senior leadership at the National Intelligence Council without any explanation except vague accusations made in the media," Congressman Jim Himes (D-Conn.), the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, told The Washington Post. "Absent evidence to justify the firings, the workforce can only conclude that their jobs are contingent on producing analysis that is aligned with the president's agenda, rather than truthful and apolitical."
The NIC leaders were fired after last week's release of an NIC memo confirming that U.S. intelligence agencies never agreed with Trump's claim that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro controls the criminal gang Tren de Aragua. The April 7 document states that "while Venezuela's permissive environment enables TDA to operate, the Maduro regime probably does not have a policy of cooperating with TDA and is not directing TDA movement to and operations in the United States."
Look, I'm not going to ask readers to offer up sympathy for creepy American spymasters; this is a country that engages in offensive espionage, political and social subversion, and activities we would call terrorism if someone we didn't like were doing them, so there are no good guys in this story. With that having been said however, we're looking at clear evidence that the Trump regime itself absolutely knows their fascist "invasion" arguments, on which much of their paper-thin legal justification for doing a host of blatantly unconstitutional activities, are complete bullshit; and they're prepared to politically punish Trump's own intelligence agencies for not agreeing to lie for them. This is, or should be, a major scandal on par with Bush's Iraq War lies; and yet curiously the focus in the media seems to be how bad it is to train your intelligence agencies to not tell you bad news the president doesn't want to hear.
Look, I knew Trump's invasion was a lie, and you knew Trump's invasion was a lie. But now the whole world knows Trump's invasion is a lie and we have the documents and statements to prove it; so why is anyone pretending this isn't just fascism?
"Musk’s fire first & ask questions later approach to purging the federal workforce has created havoc, jeopardized critical #government functions, upended the lives of federal employees, likely incurred large financial liabilities for violating the #law, & has been riddled with outright blunders...
Text from article:
As President Donald Trump’s front man, Musk’s fire first and ask questions later approach to purging the federal workforce has created havoc, jeopardized critical government functions, upended the lives of federal employees, likely incurred large financial liabilities for violating the law, and has been riddled with outright blunders. In short, [Double underlined] DOGE is anything but a department of efficiency. [End double underlined]
At the Department of Agriculture, for example, employees working to respond to the H5NI avian flu outbreak were mistakenly fired, forcing the department to rescind the termination letters. The same thing happened at the National Nuclear Security Administration, the organization responsible for overseeing the U.S. nuclear arsenal, where more than 300 employees were abruptly fired and then called back to work.
"errors still persisted on the site. #DOGE still claimed that it had saved $106 million by canceling two contracts... but in reality, those contracts were completed during the #Bush admn.
This isn’t the first time that this has happened. DOGE’s website... has turned into a hall of humiliation"
The "Costs of War" project, based at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, estimates that the total death toll in post-9/11 wars – including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen – could be at least 4.5-4.7 million:
Stephanie Savell (2023) https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/2023/IndirectDeaths
"The Israel Lobby and U.S. #foreignPolicy" is a book by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, published in 2007. In it, they emphasize that the lobby is not a cabal or a conspiracy but simply a powerful interest group, like the National Rifle Association of America or the agrobusiness lobby.
“Since World War Two, the United States has been involved in every nook and cranny of the world, fighting wars here, there, and everywhere. And to do that, you need a very powerful administrative state that can help manage that foreign policy. But in the process, what happens is you get all of these high-level, middle-level, and low-level bureaucrats who become established in positions in the Pentagon, the State Department, and the intelligence community — you name it. And they end up having a vested interest in pursuing a particular foreign policy.”
Microsoft, Tear Down That Wall! ( pluralistic.net )
https://i0.wp.com/craphound.com/images/15Oct2025.jpg?w=840&ssl=1 ...