And Richardson has stated that he considers his position as the head of FEMA as being only a part time job as he intends to continue in his role as assistant secretary at DHS' office for countering weapons of mass destruction, which he has implied that he's more qualified for.

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And while Elon Musk and his DOGE minions were failing to find any significant fraud in Medicare, Trump was already plotting to reward the perpetrator of one of the largest cases of Medicare fraud in history.

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What could possibly go wrong...

Now might be the time to heed the warnings of philosopher George Santayana...

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A sign of things to come...

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As someone said on TV tonight, Richard Nixon's worst day in office was better than Donald Trump's best day.

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That's because it was written using AI.

They are literally doing the jobs Americans don't want to do.
Not many American want to go to college.
Even fewer want to go to graduate school.

#4 | Posted by snoofy at 2025-05-29 10:24 AM

Our #4 granddaughter is not only going to college, she's already nearly a senior after finishing only two years of school. She's attending my alma mater and although she's not studying engineering, I'll give her a break as she's going for a double major in Chemistry and Physics, with a minor in Math. She was awarded a full, four-year tuition scholarship and has already started to take graduate level classes in Chemistry. Her GPA is 3.96 and she was awarded a summer undergraduate research fellowship. She also tutors chemistry students during the regular semester, which includes doing a weekly review for undergrads, which technically she is, despite the fact that this job is usually only offered to grad students.

In addition to her academic work, she runs every day, weather permitting (the school is in the UP of Michigan, and considering that she was born in Dallas and raised in Houston, she adapted very quickly). Last fall she ran her first half-marathon and intends on doing it again this fall. She reads the Bible every morning and hardly ever misses church on Sunday (my brother and his wife live just 30 miles from the campus and she attends church with them, again when weather permitting). She also plays the piano (self taught) and has found at least four pianos on campus where she can play anytime she wishes. And speaking of self-teaching, she's learning Japanese in her spare time. She also draws very complex doodle art using pen & ink on small, 5 1/2 x 4 1/4 card stock. She's drawn several especially for me. She's also been elected to chair a women's group on campus.

Anyway, there are kids who are smart and then there are kids who are scary smart. Our granddaughter is scary smart.

And Oh, one other thing, maybe this Asian thing has something to it. Her mother is half Asian (her maternal grandmother was Korean and Japanese and her maternal grandfather was German American). On her father's side, we're Welsh/Polish on my wife's side and Flemish/German on my side. And while she doesn't look all that much Asian, and her mother never really did anything to promote that part of her heritage at home, she did join the Asian student organization, but had to show them a picture of her mother before they would believe her.

Anyway, we're very proud of our granddaughter, as we are of our other five, but because she decided to go to my alma mater, she's kind of special, at least for me.

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Yes, and he bragged about it in front of the Gold Star families at Arlington National Cemetery on Monday, saying that it was God's will that he was serving non-consecutive terms so that he would president these next four years when so many great things were going be happening in America, telling the families who had lost sons and daughters defending America that "I've got everything".

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This is becoming SOP with Trump and his people, make a claim and then try and back it up with evidence that has nothing to do with the subject at hand. This happened dozens of times during his presidential campaigns.

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I guess this is going to be the new norm...

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Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, during her testimony this morning before the Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee, was asked if she knew what Habeas Corpus was, and it became obvious very quickly that she had no idea whatsoever, claiming that it was a Constitutional 'right' given to the president which allowed him to suspend the rights of individuals and remove them from the country, she went on to claim that Lincoln used this 'right' during the civil war. When it was pointed out to her that she had gotten it totally backwards, that the right of Habeas Corpus was a Constitutional right protecting a person from being arrested without the government providing them with a reason for their arrest and allowing them to make a defense, she then claimed that the Constitution allowed the president to suspend that right anytime that he wanted to. She was again told that NO, that that was wrong, that the president would first need the approval of Congress.

Noem has a BA in Political Science, but perhaps the class covering the US Constitution was one that she got 'college intern credits' for while she was serving as a member of Congress in 2012.

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I can see Trump going after organizations like the ACLU or the SPLC, to say nothing of private universities and perhaps even religious organizations, like a Mosque or a Temple.

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I suspect that WalMart's executive team will focus on shareholder value, rather than appeasing a bully. Willingly cutting profits is a great way for a CEO to lose his/her job...

#6 | Posted by catdog at 2025-05-19 01:12 PM

Walmart's CFO said that they might hold off on raising the prices of some products so as to gain more market share as the smaller retailers won't be able to absorb the price increases as well as they can. And yet people still wonder why so many despise Walmart and have sworn to never shop there (I can count on one hand the number of times that I've been inside a Walmart store).

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Thank you...

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I can sympathize with the former president as MY prostate cancer has metastasized to the upper lobe of my right lung and at least one lymph node in my chest.

I was diagnosed nearly four years ago and underwent nine-weeks of radiation treatments, which at the time we thought we had it beat, but this past October my PSA spiked back up to nearly 8.0 and the scans showed that the cancer had moved, but the prostate was clear so the radiation worked, just that some cancer cells 'escaped' before they were killed. The diagnosis is that it's stage-four, incurable and inoperative, but it is treatable, if you can afford it. Thank God for Medicare Part 'D'.

Last year the out-of-pocket cap for prescription drugs was $3,200. This year it's $2,000. The medication that they have me on is $17,296/MONTH. I hit my cap the first month of this year. I also have to have an injection of a hormone suppressant every six-months, which costs close to $7,000, but my Medicare Part 'B' pays for that. This drug regimen has been around for about 10-years now and has been shown to be very effective for at least three to five-years, and perhaps longer if we've caught it soon enough. So far, all of my tests (blood draws every three-months) appears to show that I'm responding well. The real test will come in October when they do another set of scans and then we'll know if the drugs are doing what they're intended to do, keeping it from spreading. If it stays contained, I can live with it for at least the foreseeable future. The goal is to get it to where it's simply a chronic condition, sort of like diabetes, incurable but treatable.

Anyway, I hope that there are treatment options for the former president which would offer him the same sort of prognosis as I've been given. Now there's an age difference, Biden is 82 and I'll be 78 in August, so that might complicate things, so we'll have to see.

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AG Pam Bondi went so far as to claim that allowing this 'device' to be sold, will actually "enhance public safety". I'm not sure how she came to that conclusion, but we'll see what happens the first time one of these 'devices' are found in a weapon used during a mass shooting.

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JPL - up the road from me. If you ever get an opportunity, do a tour

#2 | Posted by LegallyYourDead at 2025-05-17 03:50 AM

Yes, JPL was a customer of ours (for engineering software used to design, test and manufacture their spacecrafts), and I had several opportunities to visit their facilities. In fact, our CEO was invited to JPL to be there during the landing of the 'Curiosity' Mars rover in August 2012.

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After all, Trump's got to get everyone out of Gaza so that Jared and his investors can go ahead with thier plans to turn Gaza into a world-class Mediterranean luxury resort.

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Comer will regret it.

I'm waiting anyday now to hear, "My account was hacked".

#13 | Posted by BillJohnson at 2025-05-16 10:39 AM

His name is James Comey. James Comer is some wacko Republican Congressman from Kentucky.

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OK looks like May 25-29 is a "State work period" when Legislators return to their home districts and states to hold Town Meetings with their constituents.

#4 | Posted by LampLighter at 2025-05-16 06:50 PM

Fat chance of many Republicans holding town halls, at least not anything open to all of their constituents. They'll be calling them 'private gatherings' and checking voter ID cards at the door and only allowing registered Republicans to attend, which may not actually protect them much from the ire of the voters.

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The irony is that the name of this group includes the word 'weaponization', which was exactly what Trump and his people accused the last couple of Democratic administrations of, yet the description of what their charter is going to be, it sure sounds like an attempt to 'weaponize' the DOJ.

That being said, using the vocabulary of one Donald J Trump, this has all the markings of a "witch hut" (I'll leave it to Trump to use all-caps).

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You know, it may be reporting like this which is prompting Trump to try and end federal funding for NPR and PBS.

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Remember when Republicans and the right-wing media attacked Biden for flying immigrants into the US. The claim was that Biden did this in the middle of the night to try and hide what was happening. Of course, Trump would never try to hide these flights bringing in White South African 'refugees'. No, he would do it out in the bright light of day, so as to rub it in the faces of everyone, showing them what he can get away with, to say nothing of trying to ingratiate himself with the far-right/White nationalist crowd.

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The effects of the tariffs are starting to be noticed, if not yet in the stores, it's manifesting itself in other ways...

Our oldest son, and some of his family, drove out from Texas about 10-days or so ago, via the Palm Springs area and eventually ending up in Monterey, CA to visit their oldest daughter and family. They then stopped and spent a couple days with us and then stopped again in the desert to visit our daughter-in-law's sister. They then left on Thursday arriving back in Katy, TX, late, this past Friday evening.

They've driven this same round trip from Texas, perhaps not the Monterey portion, but at least the Irvine, via Palm Springs, route many times over the years.

Our son said that on the way out here he noticed that truck traffic was a bit less but not really that noticeable if you didn't stop and think about it. However, on their way back to Texas this past Thursday and Friday, he said it was like night and day. He had never seen the roads so empty of big rigs. He said it was almost eerie, like some scene from an apocalyptic movie. What really got his attention was that they had driven that same route, at least between Katy and Palm Springs, only a week ago and in that time, things had totally changed.

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And speaking of federal workers leaving their jobs, Republicans in Congress are now talking about reducing the pension benefits for federal employees. They say that they're still looking for places where they can get the money needed to pay for Trump's 'big beautiful bill' that they've been working on for the last couple of months.

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