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Wednesday, August 27, 2025

Someday, the president may need the American people to believe something he says"and they won't. read more


Tuesday, August 26, 2025

Robert Reich: How to explain the rise of so many incompetent and unprincipled people? Easy. They could never succeed on their own merits. As soon as their incompetence became apparent " which was likely to be as soon as they took the first job that required some degree of intelligence and integrity " they were fired. read more


Friday, August 22, 2025

The woman thought to have the most direct knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein's decades-long sex-trafficking operation claims there was no client list, no blackmail scheme and -- to her knowledge -- no high-profile Epstein associates who committed illicit acts in connection with the notorious sex-offender's crimes. That's according to an account provided by Epstein's convicted co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell to a top official of the U.S. Department of Justice during a highly unusual two-day interview session last month, according to a transcript and audio of the conversation released Friday by the DOJ. read more


Moscow threw Donald Trump's Ukraine peace initiative into disarray on Thursday, insisting it must have a veto over any postwar support for the country as its forces carried out a large-scale overnight missile barrage. In a series of hardline remarks, Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said European proposals to deploy troops in Ukraine after a settlement would amount to "foreign intervention", which he called absolutely unacceptable for Russia. Lavrov said Russia wanted to return to discussing a framework first proposed during the initial peace talks held in Istanbul in 2022, under which Moscow and Beijing would help guarantee Ukraine's security alongside European allies " terms Kyiv considers unacceptable.V


Wednesday, August 20, 2025

When House Republican leaders rushed to leave Washington for a long August break, they seemed desperate to quell the anger among their supporters about the Trump administration's backtracking on a promise to release files related to its investigation of the accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. But halfway through a five-week congressional recess, the clamor shows little sign of quieting. [Meanwhile] Democrats, in some cases with the help of Republicans, have laid a series of procedural traps that will make it all but impossible for the G.O.P. to avoid confronting the issue again when Congress reconvenes in September. read more


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From "Fast Times at Immigration and Customs Enforcement: Flush with cash and soaring with hubris, Trump appointees are supersizing ICE. " Nick Miroff at www.theatlantic.com

New deportation officers at ICE used to receive about five months of federal-law-enforcement training. Administration officials have cut that time roughly in half, partly by eliminating Spanish-language courses. Academy training was shortened to 47 days, three officials told me, the number picked because Trump is the 47th president. DHS officials said the training will run six days a week for eight weeks.

Yup, only the very bestest.

Reich draws on Hannah Arendt's observation in The Origins of Totalitarianism:

Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.

He writes:
People who climb upward by sacrificing their integrity to slavish subservience almost always fall on their faces eventually. Blind ambition trips them up. They cannot explain or defend their behavior by relying on principled competence because, like [Trump's mentor the odious Roy] Cohn, they are unprincipled and incompetent to their cores.

The people they latch onto meet similar fates but for a different reason.

Leaders who value loyalty above all else find themselves surrounded by sycophantic crackpots and fools. As a result, they receive no objective or useful feedback about their actions " no warnings beforehand and no criticism afterward. All they get are commendations " "Wonderful idea, sir!" "Brilliant execution, sir!"

These cocoons of flattery seal off such leaders from the real-world consequences of what they do " which inevitably leads them to make grave mistakes. Some of those mistakes eventually cause their downfalls.

This perverse symmetry " the certain demise of grovelers because they're incompetent and unprincipled and the inevitable downfall of those to whom they grovel because they never get useful and truthful feedback " marks the path of all totalitarian systems. It's the path on which Trump now treads.

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