At its core, the Trump regime is about shutting down programs and defense department assignments, so that the money "saved" can be totaled up and given to Trump's cronies in the form of more massive tax cuts, that will bankrupt America and certainly will make Social Security underfunded.

Well, this 79 year old didn't get access, but then, I don't do the hiring and firing at NIH>

Influence peddling at the Presidential level means that it is open season for such behavior by all those with government positions one imagines.

I am sure that at its core, all this antiscience nonsense from Trump and Kennedy is mostly about ginning up energy to take away useful programs for the poor so the rich can keep getting their huge tax cuts.

These days many of us just see Putin, in effect, standing at Trump's shoulder, advising him how to "alien"ate the entire world to weaken American and its military and its internal security forces. Happened when the Soviet Empire fell as well, the gangsters and billionaires looted everything that wasn't nailed down. We are, as a people, divided one from another and goodness knows our NATO allies have to know Trump won't have their back if, say, Putin insanely attacks Poland or starts to use nukes in Ukraine.

Discovery might actually reveal what "science" Musk used to take that life-giving help away from very poor, mostly black people, to make sure there was enough money to give to the super rich in tax cuts.

One wonders just how many funds of major amounts are out there...hidden away, being distributed for the good or for the gangster class. There is always the possibility that all that money is not being pocketed but is in reality being used to do good things for the people of Florida.

Until the midterm votes are actually cast and counted the criminality of the Trump gang will be on full display. Either the courts protect our right to vote and the rights given to the states in the Constitution, or yes, we become Russia, with a pretend democracy run for the profit of the oligarch gangsters.

One wonders if one day the Republican Party, which today is just the sold out BS party, sold out to the super rich who own them, will find a way to become a collection of patriotic Americans who tell the truth and deal from the "ahem" top of the deck.

Murders all, and those who ordered those attacks, extrajudicial killings of criminal subjects, murderers. And one fears that the greatest murder of them all is the UN and the International Criminal Court...with the rule of law dead and gone, all that is left is gangster goons strutting up the place.

Well, say what you will, Brexit was great for...Putin.
As Trump has been for that same murderous dictator. Divide and alienate and grift to the max...One hopes the UK have another vote on returning to the EU or not.

Once again, our diversity is our strength. I am protected in this case, even though I know none of the participants, because, and this is an oddity perhaps, it was a Trump named judge who defended all our rights to free speech, especially to speak out in defense of Palestinian rights. I got an opinion, I want to express it, no President gets to lock me up saying to oppose American foreign policy is to weaken America.

Hoover is dead and buried...and one day so will I be gone, and so will Trump...so who cares about our legacies? What matters is looking at the American people as a family, who deserve long and healthy lives, and elevating the 1% to incredible economic heights has to inevitably drop the bottom 30 % to the hell of outcasting and hopeless poverty.

Just as Trump and his gang made a bunch from holding a street fight at the White House, complete with lots of blood, Trump held a war for the profit of...not Israel, Not the US...
I think if one looks at whose palms got greased, and it will take a year or two for that to sort out...there will be idiotic golf clubs shining in the desert.

Gee, one could almost think peace was actually in the air, in that insane place called the Middle East. Yeah, give it a bit, blood will flow, Israel will steal more Arab land and increase the apartheid crimes committed in the Occupied Territories, and the Shia/Sunni Civil War will break out somewhere or other. But you can take one thing to the bank, son in law Jared will bank a bunch, as will the rest of the Trump gang. Lots of people in that part of the world quite happy to grease political palms if it leads to death and disorder of their enemy at the moment.

Perversely, I am fascinated by the articles on his life and jobs...the summaries help me understand the complicated economic world he lived in...though not for one second did I see him as a good thing for America and Americans...cutthroat capitalism looks good from a distance some of the time, as the pockets of those "in the market" get fuller, and the paychecks of the poor get smaller. His economic policies were inevitably going to unleash more and more global warming dangers, as regulations on the polluters and the big oil boys...hindered his market theories.

So, we have an incompetent, irrational person in charge of our Presidency..and to make sure he gets it right, he hires Hegseth to doublecheck everything. Hegseth is competent to run the huge American Defense Department, because he...knows to keep his mouth shut in regards to Trumpian planning.
Clearly, Hegseth is in place because he is incapable of being James Mattis and telling Trump the truth of how idiotic some of his plans are.
Delusional people in charge of our nuclear weapons and who apparently are incapable of riding herd on those with their actual fingers on actual triggers, on launch codes...not sure our civilization survives the remaining two plus years of the Trump reign.
And Trump is using shootings in Chicago to try and put boots on the ground...in Blue cities.

Big money owns this country, and that is that. When the idiot Supreme Court "Justice" Roberts let Citizens United pass, the handwriting was on the wall, America changed from a one person, one vote democracy to a one dollar, one vote democracy.

For me, the most scary thing about what is going on in our country is that no one is in charge...it seems that someone put the needs of the 1% over the rest of us, and put all thinking to align with that perspective. Cut taxes for the rich, and when social programs are hurting, blame the poor for their poverty, blame the sick...and so on. We clearly are falling fast to a sort of grand depression for those of us at the bottom and an economic heaven for the Mar a Lago crowd.

Why yes, Rubio is just as corrupt and corrupting as his fascist boss. Important to note that American fascism is the same as Russian fascism, a movement devoted to the rule of the billionaire oligarchs with a dictator with unlimited power running the government.

Well, they are negotiating with a mass murdering psychopath who killed over 80 of their leaders in a sneak attack, a clear war crime, so there is that. One place in the world where strutting about acting crazy doesn't exactly make you stand out.

I get trusting "autopilot" on a highway, with limited access, but on regular roadways, way too many complications and drunk or drugged fellow drivers.

Yeah, time will tell, but the ugly of this second Trump administration sure does seem to be worse than that of the Nixon administration, and Nixon and Kissinger, it turns out, in order to get into the White House, deliberately tanked the 1968 Peace Talks with North Vietnam, so they could get elected in the chaos. Thousands of American troops died from that point on, and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese people died.
Something about the Republican Party and national politics has it allied with the darkest and the deadliest.

If Trump is able to "decapitate" Cuba and just take over that country, one would expect that would play well in Florida and surrounding areas. Perfectly illegal, of course, to murder a nation's leaders but the ICC will not, can not, apparently, do anything to protect Arabs in Gaza, or Iranians, or Venezuelans.