While Sleepy Donald Lies His Ass Off and Sleeps in the Oval Office, His Family Profits Off the War in Iran He Started

 I miss Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

I miss their steadiness and competence. 

I miss their economy. 

I miss that they left the country better off when they founded it. 

I miss their following the Constitution and Pro Democracy leadership.

I miss them working for the American People and not themselves. 

I am fairly sure most people around the world, including groups that thought he did not care enough about them and gullibly believed his predecessor and successor's serial lying about bringing down prices and ending wars, miss them now, too. 

When Mr. Trump is not dozing off in the White House for all the press and the American People to see, he continually lies his ass off about negotiations with Iran, saying the war is won, he and the Israellis changed the regime, and  they have agreed to all his terms.

That was all before extending the ceasefire, with Trump claiming Iran's leaders need time to consider his terms and "he wants to take time" in coming to a deal with the Persian government. 

Dizzy from all the head spinning, yet trying to organize all the lies and misinformation coming from the Mad King. 

That is a far cry from Mr. Trump, who said that this war would take only five weeks and the people of Iran would rise up and overthrow their government. 

However, this recent act does help one family in this country.

Trump's. 

As numerous outlets have reported, including MSNOW, Trump's two oldest sons (Donald Jr. and Eric) and son-in-law (Jared Kushner) are reaping the benefits of this war, securing defense contracts in drone weaponry and robotics, along with making billions from financial deals with Trump's Arabian soulmates who run countries on the other side of the Persian Gulf. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyudRKso4mE

When Trump talked in an Orwellian fashion about ushering in a new Golden Age, he was not talking about one for the average working and middle-class American who is being shafted and hosed at the gas pump and the grocery store every day. 

He was talking about his family and all his donors in the fossil fuel industry who are seeing record profits. 

It is gratifying that the mainstream press is finally giving more attention to Trump's mental decline and his corruption.

When the Mad King dozes off in front of the White House Press Corps, they can not really avoid it. 

Imagine if Biden did that. No one would ever hear the end of it. 

And Trump's family bilking the government for as much money as it can makes Hunter Biden's paint sales look like a child shoplifting Cracker Jacks. 

The Biden family did not start a war so they could increase the worth of their financial portfolios. 

Affordability and Accountability. 

Those are the issues Hillary Clinton recommended Democrats, after seeing how the Hungarian opposition prevailed over Orban, run on. 

Running on that and a campaign to expand and lift up the Middle Class while bringing the corrupt Trumpists Epstein Class/Mara Largo Mafia, the justice they deserve should be winning issues that will bring public servants who actually care about the American People back into power, and hopefully start to steer the country in the right direction again

On Earth Day, Ansari and Kelly Protest the Trump-Republican Ravaging of Public Lands

 On Earth Day yesterday, one of Arizona's Representatives and Senators, Yassamin Ansari and Mark Kelly, condemned corporatist Donald Trump and MAGA Congressional Republicans for instituting anti-environmental and anti-sustainability policies designed to turn the clock back on clean energy projects while exploiting and ravaging the resources on public lands and national parks.

In a video released by the Congressional Group, Natural Resource Democrats, Representative Ansari, along with fellow Committee members Maxine Dexter, Val Hoyle, Teresa Leger Fernández, and Jared Huffman, showcased how the Trump/Vance Pro Polluter and Land Exploiting Regime is harming the American People.

https://twitter.com/NRDems/status/2047014737624351107

The transcript of their presentation is below:

Representative Huffman: Donald Trump and Republicans are selling off your public lands, your clean air, your clean water. 

Representative Ansari: They promised you lower energy costs. Then they handed over your public lands and your waters to the oil and gas industry. They're making billions while you still pay more for electricity. 

Representative Huffman: The parks your family saves up all year to visit on vacation, the clean air you breathe, the clean water you drink, all of it is up for grabs so that Donald Trump can enrich billionaires and oil executives. 

Representative Dexter: Trump fired a thousand park rangers. Now he wants to cut thousands more. So, when you pull up to Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon this summer with the kids in the back seat, you'll be met with longer lines, dirtier bathrooms, and closed campgrounds. 

Representative Ansari: He killed dozens of clean energy projects and thousands of good-paying jobs along with them.

Representative Dexter: Then he fired thousands of forest service workers.

Representative Hoyle: The people who keep our forests from burning, the people who clear brush, maintain fire trails, keep the fires from becoming the kind that burn down whole towns.

Representative Fernández: Trump is handing our public lands to foreign corporations, including our adversaries like China and Russia. This is land that belongs to Americans. This is land that belonged to tribes. And they must be included in any conversation about what to do with American resources.

Representative Dexter: The worst part is they're doing everything they can to keep you from finding out. Our job is to keep the receipts. Every firing, every sweetheart deal, every dollar that disappears, we are tracking it. And the American people are going to see exactly who cashed in while you paid more of the pump. 

Representative Huffman: Here's the thing. Public lands, clean air, clean water, our parks, these things don't belong to Donald Trump.

Representative Dexter: They don't belong to Donald Trump.

Representative Hoyle: They don't belong to his donors or his billionaire buddies. And they're not his to sell.

Representative Dexter: We're not going to let him get away with this. 

Representative Huffman: We only have one Earth. 

Representative Dexter: And it's worth fighting for.

On the Senate side of Congress, Mark Kelly, along with 34 other Democratic Senators, penned a letter to the Deputy Secretary of Agriculture expressing concerns about that Department's reorganization of the United States Forest Service, writing:

“Given changes to the USFS in the last year and its ongoing, critical work, it is unclear how the announced reorganization will improve the USFS’s ability to deliver on its statutory responsibilities, including mitigating wildfire risk, executing forest and watershed restoration projects, and increasing trail maintenance. In addition, given the potential for an active and extreme wildfire season, the USFS should prioritize preparing for such a wildfire season rather than hastily executing a reorganization that will impact large swaths of its agency. It is likely that this sort of disruption will have lasting impacts on forest management as a whole, and wildfire preparedness and response, specifically...

"The USFS serves a key role in supporting local economies, stewarding natural resources, and performing world-class research. The workforce reductions over the last year have already diminished the USFS’s ability to deliver its mission, and the recently announced USFS reorganization could further exacerbate those losses."

Representative Dexter is right when she says there is only one Earth. 

There is nowhere else for humanity to go in the foreseeable future. 

People had better take care of it and replace the people in responsible positions who will not.

"Iran, Fascism, Corruption, Stupidity, and Affordability," and "Lift People Up and Expand the Middle Class": Two Winning Slogans the Democrats Should Run On

 In 1952, with Dwight Eisenhower at the head of the ticket and McCarthyism in its popular phase, Republicans ran on a simple slogan attacking the Truman Administration on three words: Korea (while the war was going on and Truman had fired conservative darling Douglas MacArthur), Communism, and Corruption.

While most historians concede that the popular Eisenhower would have won that election no matter what slogan he and his campaign employed, Democrats should use that concise marketing strategy to channel voter discontent with the current Donald Trump regime in order to drive them to the polls this November. 

There are many interesting ideas with many examples of Trump and his team's incompetence, fascist mindset, public corruption, with his family and allies enriching themselves, and poor economic, immigration, and policy choices. 

Appearing on Morning Joe after the Hungarian Elections that saw the defeat of Viktor Orban, 2016 Presidential Popular Vote Winner, Hillary Clinton proposed that Democrats emulate the messaging of Péter Magyar running on a simple slogan of Affordability and Accountability. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBqC89okDEA

Clinton had already penned an op-ed suggesting how Democrats could run on the affordability issue. 

Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff has given spirited speeches in Georgia in his re-election (and Presidential???) campaign, calling for the people to rise up against the corruption of the Mara Largo Mafia and the Epstein Class led by Donald Trump, his sons, his son-in-law, and Steven Wyckoff.

Joe Scarborough on his MSNOW show said the Democrats should run on Costs, Corruption, and Chaos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uMXoUpcgJw&t=708s

Arizona Legislative Democrats are running on a slogan, "An Arizona we can afford."

Personally, I think they should add Expanding the Middle Class to that. 

Also, looking at the 1952 Republican Slogan, it would be fairly easy to substitute the words Iran for Korea, Fascism for Communism, add Stupidity and Affordability, and run on two slogans.

The first would be campaigning against the Trump regime with:

Iran, Fascism, Corruption, Stupidity, and Affordability. 

The other would embody what the Democrats are running for:

Lift People Up and Expand the Middle Class.

Another potential slogan one that plays on the World War One Slogan of Hang the Kaiser, would be Arrest the Epstein Class.

Editorial Cartoons for the Week

 

SNL Cold Open from 4/18/26

 

What Could Possibly Go Wrong with the Profileration of AI: Read and Watch Science Fiction and Find Out

Science Fiction writers and filmmakers are sometimes accurate seers and prophets of how humanity and technology will evolve.

Read Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon and see how the NASA scientists learned from it.

Look at Issac Asimov's I Robot and fast forward to a First Lady of the United States walking down a White House hallway with a talking...wait for it...Robot who, as Melania Trump said, could help teach children in the classroom.

From PBS.

Watch Star Trek and take a look at that communicator...cell phone you use every day.

With advances in AI and data centers accelerating at, many would say, alarming rate, many should look to the creative geniuses of Science Fiction writers and filmmakers on what happens when technology runs amuck when no safeguards are in place.

Read stories like Karel Čapek's R.U.R. or Arthur C. Clarke's 2001 A Space Odyssey and Dial F for Frankenstein about robots rebelling against humans and a worldwide web system and supercomputer taking over.

Foolishly relying on supercomputers that think they're God could be found in the underrated 1970 Colossus: The Forbin Project movie, the Matthew Broderick hit War Games, or watch the Star Trek Original Series second season episode, The Ultimate Computer.

Cue the musical theme for The Terminator Series, and people should think about what happens when humanity allows technology to become sentient or eclipse them.

Other examples include Westworld (the original movie and HBO series) and Ultron from The Avengers.

More metaphysical examples would be The Matrix trilogy or Her, starring Joaquin Phoenix.

What could possibly go wrong with the proliferation of AI, especially with aspiring tech overlord Long Termists eugenicists like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel pulling the strings on several AI initiatives?

Watch Bill Maher's New Rules from April 17 and see what can go wrong.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5SYm4J4utQ

Many public servants, including Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, have, while not as dystopian as the science fiction examples above, sounded the alarm on the proliferation of AI and how it could threaten individual prosperity and society as a whole.

Arizona Senator Mark Kelly

Appearing at an American Seed AI Festival in March, Kelly, who last year published an AI roadmap for the country, said:

"Because the truth is that Washington is behind on this stuff, like way behind. This town is just starting to ask questions about the impact of AI on the workforce, on our infrastructure, and on our society. Questions that are already being discussed in places like Silicon Valley, in those Silicon Valley boardrooms, and in offices on Wall Street, and also at kitchen tables across the country.

Now, AI has real promise, more productivity, better health care, faster scientific discovery. But we've got to be honest about something here. If we don't get this right, people across this country are going to be the ones that end up paying the price.

And many of those people are going to be left behind. We can't let that happen. So that's why I put out my AI for America roadmap.

And it's focused on closing the gaps, workforce, and infrastructure. And making sure innovation strengthens the families and small businesses that power our economy, instead of putting more strain on them. Because if America is going to lead in AI, we've got to invest in the people, the workers, the systems that make that leadership possible...

Some here in DC and also in Silicon Valley think that the solution is to just steamroll people and steamroll communities.

Give them no say. That stuff's not only wrong, it's just not going to work. And if you want to build faster, you've got to talk to the local community and work with them on what the project will mean for their jobs, their town, and their cost of living.

You have to make it clear early that they're better off with this project than without it. So the question is, how do we build a better way to get this done? And I've got a proposal. So building on the ideas from my AI for America roadmap, I've been working on a new bill to do exactly that.

And it's pretty simple. Bring developers and communities together at the beginning to work through the details. What a project means for energy, water, infrastructure, and jobs, and put real commitments on the table.

The people building the data centers commit to delivering real long-term benefits for communities, like local hiring, paying for some of the infrastructure, and keeping utility rates low. In return, communities commit to getting projects approved and off the ground. Now, my framework includes public input, clear timelines, and enforceable agreements.

So communities and workers have a real say in how these projects take shape, and developers have certainty that they're going to move forward. Clear expectations, tangible outcome, tangible community benefits, real accountability, no surprises...

...Projects that do this work up front, they get priority access to the federal programs that are already on the books. We also make sure communities aren't going into this process alone. The bill provides local leaders with access to the engineers, the lawyers, and the experts that they need to negotiate these agreements effectively.

Because if we want this to work, it's got to be fair. Local communities need the same expertise as the big companies. This is about speeding things up by reducing the friction that's stops projects today.

When people see real benefits, good paying jobs, stronger infrastructure, lower costs, they're going to get on board. We're not just building data centers or power plants. We're building an economy, an economy that works for people to get, one that creates opportunity, strengthens the middle class, and keeps America leading the world.

Please see all of Kelly's remarks below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Deq2yZqrplY 

Time to Buy an EV and Invest in Clean Energy

 What is that old saying?

Necessity is the mother of invention in times of great need.

Or maybe it should be a new proverb: affordability is the father of forward progress as Donald Trump's war on clean energy, including ending subsidies for electric vehicle purchases and investments in solar and wind projects, coupled with his war of choice against Iran, has created near perfect market conditions for people to...wait for it...buy an electric car and invest in solar and wind energy sources.

With a glut of electric vehicles wasting away on car lots, automotive companies have responded to the law of supply and demand, reducing their asking sales price to roughly what it would have been had the Biden/Harris Era tax incentives for those types of vehicles had been in place.

Another factor to consider is that the average prices of a new electric vehicle ($54,500) compared to a gas-powered one ($49,000) are drawing closer.

According to a guest op-ed in the New York Times, the sales price for the five best selling electric vehicles is less than the average price for a new car.

That is in addition to the $6,000 to $12,000 in average savings on maintenance and fuel costs.

With prices falling on electric vehicles and gas prices, thanks to Trump's war of choice against Iran rising, electric vehicle sales for auto companies like Tesla have risen.

So have electric vehicle sales for General Motors, Hyndai, and Kia.

Hybrid sales for Toyota and Honda are also doing well.

At a time when people are struggling with affordability, buying electric vehicles that are at least comparable in price to gasoline-powered ones, with the added incentive that all they have to do is plug them in at home to power up, rather than spend $5.00 a gallon on gas, is a powerful inducement for the American consumer to consider cleaner energy options.

There is also a nationalist side to consider.

Paul Krugman

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, in writing about the increasing affordability of battery technology and electric vehicles, warned that the United States, under Trump's climate change denialism and anti-science/clean energy agenda, would cede the new emerging cleaner and better energy markets to China.

This writer has also pointed out in several articles that Trump is like a Manchurian Candidate with his reactionary energy and science policies aiding China's emerging clean sustainability sector.

In one of his articles, Krugman wrote:

"...Under President Biden the United States took much needed steps toward developing its own electrotech sectors, notably batteries and electric vehicles. It also sought to accelerate the growth of renewable energy in general. But not only has the Trump administration canceled all of Biden’s renewable energy programs, it is also actively trying to block private commercial investments in renewable energy.

By the time America frees itself from Trump’s fossil fuel obsession, if it ever does, China’s lead in the manufacture of renewables will probably be insurmountable..."

"Given the rate at which the planet is warming, a shift away from fossil fuels can’t come fast enough. Where the equipment needed to make that shift happen was manufactured is a secondary issue.

Yet it’s sad to watch this country sabotage itself and cede the most important industry of the future to China. In doing so, we make ourselves poorer, technologically backward, and less influential in a world that is speeding towards the energy revolution. In the end, we aren’t just burning fossil fuels; we’re also burning our future."

Arizona Senate Democratic Leader Priya Sundareshan. Photo from the Daily Independent.

Arizona Senate Democratic Leader Priya Sundareshan, an advocate for clean energy sustainability as well as safeguarding the state's water supply, commented on the need to better invest in electric vehicles and other forms of clean energy technology, offering:

"Trump's choice to take the U.S. into reckless war with Iran has not only put members of our military at risk but has also dramatically increased prices at the gas pump for Arizonans. Now more than ever, we can see the pressing need for Arizona to take advantage of our sunny days and to invest in solar energy and electric vehicle incentives. Instead, we see both Trump's federal energy and environmental policy and state Republicans in the Arizona Legislature doubling down on policies that prefer fossil fuel use, causing working-class families to see their bills skyrocket ever higher while their wealthy cronies profit. Wiser leadership would help our state electrify and reduce our dependence on foreign oil. "

It would be sweet irony if Donald Trump's war on science, tax policies, and ill-conceived war against Iran would actually create the free market conditions for people, in search of affordability, to purchase the very clean energy automobiles that he abhors, and actually make the United States a major leader in those vital economic and scientific sectors.

This movement would be greatly helped with the election of public policy servants who fight for America's future, traveling the road ahead with solar and wind as opposed to coal and oil.