Hey, older Trump voters: you were lied to.
(Trump’s man Elon wants to gut Social Security next.)
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/elon-musk-social-security-ponzi-scheme_n_67c337cce4b049364f4586a3
Saw a post on Mastodon from someone in Hungary saying that it’s now a soft dictatorship. They cautioned us not to let Trump/Musk get rid of our checks and balances.
https://social.coop/@judell/114091295390017218
Our checks and balances are built in to our constitution, by and large (apart from Congress ceding power to the President over the years and the Supreme Court becoming owned by the Right).
So, we’d need a constitutional convention to erase our checks and balances. Unlikely, right?
Not so much. A number of states have already officially called for a convention over the years, without rescinding their votes. And it’s unknown if recesion is even effective, legally.
So, like Project 2025, there’s a body of people on the right who have planned for a convention for *years*. And they want to make it happen. And that’s where the bad decisions of the Supreme Court could be enshrined permanently or good decisions overturned. Where Congress could be made into a rubber stamp. Where the Federal government could be dismantled with *no* option of rebuilding. Where the right of private militias to own complete military weapon systems could be written into unchangeable law. And on and on. There are no rules for what a constitutional convention can’t do.
We cannot be caught flat-footed. “It can’t happen here” is simply not true.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_to_propose_amendments_to_the_United_States_Constitution
https://kottke.org/25/03/jd-vance-chastised-by-vermont-snow-reporter
Lucy Welch Sugarbush March 1, 2025 snow report actual text.
This feels like… socialism in the heartland. 🙂
https://ladylibertie.substack.com/p/fafo-the-maga-meltdown-is-here-and
«So what do we do when these newly-bewildered GOP voters start realizing they got conned? How do we handle the Great Republican Panic of 2025?
With care.
Yes, it’s tempting to scream, “WE TOLD YOU SO” and let them marinate in their bad choices. But that doesn’t flip votes—it just sends them running back into the arms of Fox News. Instead, we need to be the cool, collected voice of reality.
A little sympathy goes a long way: “Yeah, it sucks that your mom lost Medicaid. Let’s talk about how we fix that.”
Help them connect the dots: “It’s not just bad luck, it’s GOP policy. You deserve better.”
Offer a way out: “You don’t have to stay loyal to people who are screwing you over.”
Because here’s the truth: We don’t need all of them to wake up. Just a few percent. 3.5% to be precise. That’s all it takes to flip an election, dismantle Trumpism, and start rebuilding what these ghouls have burned down.»
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_doctrine
I never liked Ronald Reagan. He did a lot damage to this country, and it’s continuing to unfold.
One of the things I blamed him for was ending the Fairness Doctrine and thus enabling the growth of Fox News.
But… I don’t think the FCC has jurisdiction over cable, and Fox managed to get themselves into the standard cable bundle. And now cable itself is dying (except as an internet service provider). So I wonder if we’d be in the same situation today even if Reagan hadn’t killed the Fairness Doctrine.
One could argue that Fox was able to legitimize themselves before broadcast really died, and that’s how they wound up in the standard cable bundle, but, really, who watches them any more but Boomers and older Gen Xers? Everybody else is on Twitter and Facebook and their favorite far-right podcast or other website.
“You were lied to” is still correct, but I think it might be independent of Reagan.
https://chopwoodcarrywaterdailyactions.substack.com/p/chop-wood-carry-ukraine
«if everyone who voted for Kamala Harris gave $10 we’d raise 750M.»
The EIN for the 501(c)(3) is 872080907. They don’t cover military expenses (which Ukraine definitely needs), but it’s all fungible. Your contribution to hospitals and de-mining frees up more of their funds for things that go bang.
(I just posted this directly to Mastodon because stupid WordPress strips links out of posts. 😡 Not much of a POSSE solution, is it?)
«“Every Republican senator who voted to confirm him as secretary of Health and Human Services knew that this was going to happen,” Schrier said, referring to the child who died from measles.»
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kim-schrier-rfk-jr-vaccines-measles_n_67c0a705e4b0702663293e54
This is a brave, brave woman to let a story like this be written about her.
«Cooper did not want to think about what happened three months prior but her mind went there anyway. To the voting booth in Baldwin’s town hall, where she filled out every part of the ballot before turning to the box that said “Presidential.” She recalled staring at it for 15 minutes.
She did not want to vote for Trump. Cooper hated what he said about women and hated how he treated them. Her family always said the women who accused the president of sexual assault had either made it up or deserved it. Cooper heard them and kept her own experience a secret, thinking that they might feel the same way about her.
She voted for Joe Biden in 2020, her first time casting a ballot in a presidential election. But life felt more complicated these days. Her mortgage was too expensive, groceries were nearly $400 a month, and one single cycle of IVF could cost more than 10 percent of her annual household income.
Trump, at a campaign stop an hour and a half south of her, had promised to make IVF free. She knew that from a video clip she saw on TikTok. And she had believed him.
She also believed him when he said that Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for the next Republican administration that suggested mass cuts to the federal workforce, was not his plan.
So Cooper filled in the bubble next to his name, thinking of the daughter she wanted. She planned to name her Charlotte.»
https://wapo.st/3CYacpv (gift)
Trying to figure out whether I should keep my subscription to the WaPo. I have a subscription to the WSJ even though I know the editorial section is garbage.
«A school-age child has died of measles in West Texas, the first death from the disease in a decade in the United States. The child had not been vaccinated against measles, according to the city of Lubbock’s health department.»
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/person-dies-measles-west-texas-outbreak-rcna193812
So now the family has experienced the loss of a child and, presumably, may experience “a certain amount of social opprobrium.”
🙁
