First term, Trump had Mattis and Kelly and so many other experts trying to keep him from screwing things up, but this time Trump decided to go with hiring people who would kiss his ring, or foot if that was what it took and so now this American empire is falling the same way that the Soviet Union's Empire fell, until it was bankrupt and led by a man, Gorbachev, who didn't believe in the Soviet Union.
Trump clearly only believes in his gangster empire, and he hates the concept of a one person, one vote Constitutional Republic.

Fascism is the final face of almost all far right capitalist regimes, and the US is not an exception. Israel is a fascist regime, though it likes to consider itself democratic...it just keeps millions of Palestinians locked up in the Occupied Territories. Hell, even Xi's China is a far right fascist regime, where a few rule over the many using fear, intimidation, and violence.

Remember when Trump and Hegseth stared down that entire room of flag rank admirals and generals, and Trump dared them to walk away? That was how fascism works, it destroys the will of those in charge to risk opposing the gangsters in charge.

Gee, you would think that there is no one in charge of satellite near earth orbits...
And there isn't.

Well, Trump is in strong competition. I remember when Nixon and Kissinger deliberately destroyed the 1968 Vietnam War Peace Talks, so they could strut into the White House blaming the Dems for the chaos of the war. Many American military people died in that war before Peace was attainable again, and of course, hundreds of thousands of fellow humans, Vietnamese and Cambodian, died just so the traitors Nixon and Kissinger could be in charge.

"Person of the Year", not "Man of the Year", opens up the candidate list quite a bit, at least for me. There are many wonderful people out here in the hinterlands doing great work feeding the homeless, working on finding ways to house those without homes or hope, fighting in Congress for the right of the poor to even have health care.
AI, isn't a person because it is a piece of software dedicated to taking away jobs from doctors, lawyers, teachers, coders...and so on, so the very rich don't even have to pay salaries to actual human beings.
Me, I think I would nominate Greta Thunberg.

We have a Mad King sitting in our White House, given all the keys to the Kingdom by the insanity of the MAGA vote. He is like Reagan was second term, not in charge of much of anything, letting people in the dark corners run America into the ground, and is not competent to do much of anything but run his mouth.

So Russia is appealing to legal authorities that laws need to be followed, they should be given the money...after their mass murdering psychopath of a leader, Putin, had Ukraine illegally invaded and thousands of its citizens killed or wounded.

Lay down with dogs, get up with fleas, and in this case, one also gets up with an inability to show one as being an independent actor in Congress. Once a MAGA, elected by their faithful, always a MAGA. Ask MTG.

If Putin ever was going to directly challenge NATO and take over part of Poland, the time would be now since one really, really distrusts Trump to order American troops into battle in Europe.

We are, in many ways, led by some good people but also a lot of truly criminal human beings.

Can one President override a previous President's pardon? I imagine a lot of people got rich and I imagine that extortion is behind some of the latest pardons, so could a President Newsom, say, override a Trump pardon?

If Congress allocates billions of dollars to be given to states for various funding needs, and Trump "steals" that money to use in his political campaign to somehow win the midterms, then hasn't a law been broken?
We could ask the federal Supreme Court, but of course, most of those people wear knee pads under their robes, so I guess the answer is, no, it is not against the law to use federal funds designated for one thing for one's political payoffs.

And now we find out what happens if a man is President who is losing his mental acumen and he is too powerful within the party to be sidelined. Our economy tanks, but we are all told not to depend on our lying eyes when we go to the store...
The Dems did the hard work, seeing that President Biden, while a thousand times better as President than Trump, was aging fast and wasn't a good person to lead the nation for four more years. But the Republican Party did the opposite, they just covered up the reality that Trump is not capable of running anything, and like Reagan in his second term, was being guided by dark and sinister forces.

And who will protect us? Goodness knows the federal Supreme Court is, thanks to the sold out souls of the fundamentalist far right Catholics on the Court, in the pocket of big money. The First Amendment cannot protect our right to know in a capitalist system since sooner or later an attack on an independent station is successful by buying all of its stocks.

An inevitable concluding phase for capitalism is economic fascism, where the few control the very many using violence, fear, intimidation, and gaslighting. Big money buys the legal system, the educational system, the political system, the medical system...you got it, they eventually own it.

Well, if one tells the truth about Israeli apartheid and its murderous treatment of those in the open air prisons of the Occupied Territories, one is seen as a radical.
If one sees how the very rich have taken it all, and made our democracy, not one person, one vote, but one dollar one vote...one is labeled a radical.
In this America of corruption and division, FDR would have been seen as an enemy of the state, not to mention Reagan and Ike.

For most other politicians, such corrupt hypocrisy would be fatal toward their staying in office. For Trump, it is just another day at the office, since his voters are perfectly ok with anything and everything he does, as long as he keeps on hating on women, poor people not named them, and of course, those with Black and Brown skin.

One wonders if Trump will expand his "brownshirt" army, and find a way to enlist many more people into ICE, to try and gain voters for the midterms. Hitler took a disheartened German people, gave the poorest Germans uniforms and guns and both a homeland enemy, Jews, and an external enemy,Europe ,that had defeated Germany in WWIl.

And of course, the end game is where a few hugely rich members of the billionaire caste own all the media of worth, certainly like Bezos, own the media that could be used by the American people to unite, and turn that media into mewling gelded...Fox News like outlets.

Crypto is one of the biggest enemies of the dollar and American economic security, but it is a great friend to the money laundering nations of the world.

No doubt about it, being the same age as Trump, I wake many mornings with frustration at the toll that aging has taken on my body, but at least I am a nobody from nowhere, not President of the US and so I don't have to attend ten meetings today, I don't have to stay awake when my brain wants me to take a ten minute doze...
I don't envy Trump in the least, they invented retirement for a reason.
And by the way, flag rank officers are generally, in the military, retired before age 64, and that really should be the policy for national politicians. Young people are open to change, we oldsters just want things as they were...which is delusional.

Ah yes, the rule of law under Trump and his gang of grifters....

I still think that the darkest secrets of all in the Epstein files have to do with the big money boys and their utter corruption in money laundering and of course, trafficking.