Tuesday, May 6, 2025

Chump would like to disappear us all

First up, TV.  I loved THE BLACKLIST on NBC and used to watch it all the time.  I would blog about it here.  Stan slid over Matthew Rudoy's "I Knew The Blacklist Had To End As Soon As I Watched The Show's Worst Season" (SCREENRANT) and I really enjoyed it.


Liz dying in the season 8 finale fundamentally changed the story of The Blacklist for the worse. While The Blacklist had many villains and plot twists, the true heart of the show was always Reddington and Liz's relationship, the impact they had on each other, the mystery of his identity, and why he cared so much about her. Even though season 9 was still connected to what happened to her and Reddington's search for truth and revenge, this was not an adequate substitute for having her alive in the show.
Reddington was always more entertaining and mysterious than Liz, but without her, there was an emptiness to the show in season 9. In the previous seasons, Reddington and many other characters, including Mr. Kaplan, Tom, and Harold Cooper (Harry Lennix) made sacrifices to protect Liz and to help her learn the truth. Seeing her die made it feel like some of those sacrifices were now in vain and that there would be no closure to her wanting to know the full story of her past, and season 9 did not change this feeling.

I agree 100%.  The series fell apart when Liz was gone.  I loved, for example, Tom  And when they spun him off, I missed him.  When he came back to the show only to die, I missed him.  I missed a lot of characters.  I loved Samar, for example.  But there was no show without Liz. And that was obvious immediately.  Now they had faked Liz's death once before, you may remember.  All that did was drive home how insane Martha Stewart is.  She went on Chelsea Handler's NETFLIX show and talked about how glad she was that they killed off Liz.  (Even though most of us knew Liz would be back in a few episodes.  I believe the actress who played Liz was pregnant in real life and that's how they handled it.)  I lost all respect for Ms. Stewart 

On TV, please be sure to read Ava and C.I.'s "Media: The glorification of Tina Fey remains unwarranted" which covers the bad film THE FOUR SEASONS which Tina Fey has turned into an even worse mini-series.


Now let me move over to Convicted Felon Donald Chump.  Aviya Kushner (THE FORWARD) reports:

In the tsunami of cuts the Federal government has been making to everything from food banks to public health, it may be tough to find time to mourn the humanities.
But if you have ever searched for something at the National Yiddish Book Center’s website, or if, over the past 20 years, you have enjoyed the translation of a medieval Hebrew poem into English, you may have the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts to thank.

President Trump’s budget proposal includes the elimination of the NEH and the NEA. This is a harsh blow to America, and it will hit the Jewish academic and literary community hard.

It will also hurt individual readers of Jewish history, literature and thought.

These federal agencies have supported some of the transformational cultural projects in recent Jewish American history — and now, one day after the entire literature staff of the NEA was let go, it’s time to talk about it.
The National Yiddish Book Center received a $350,000 grant for its Wexler Oral History Project, which is more than 1000 video interviews on Yiddish language and culture. These oral histories are from 18 countries and were done in English, Yiddish, Russian, French, Portuguese, and other languages.
What the NEH grant did was make everything more accessible — and connect crucial information sources that many at home are enjoying. It paid for the technological stuff that has made it far easier to get information on all things Yiddish.

Betty has rightly and repeatedly noted that Mr. Chump is erasing Black history.  She has also pointed out that Black history is only one of his targets and, sooner or later, he will get to your group.  She is exactly right.  We are all targets. THE SAN FRANCISCO GATE's Timothy Karoff reports:

On Friday, arts organizations across the country took financial hits when the Trump administration cancelled their grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. Those cuts came hours after the president proposed eliminating the agency entirely.

Bay Area institutions, including SCRAP, the Berkeley Repertory Theatre and SFJAZZ lost tens of thousands of dollars in funding. But the timing may have been worst for the San Francisco International Arts Festival, which learned that the NEA had cancelled its $20,000 grant midway through its two-week event. 
"This story is about the cancellation of the arts," Andrew Wood, SFIAF's festival director, told SFGATE. "Or they're trying to cancel the arts when they're not going to succeed. You know, our grant is one tiny, tiny piece of this. But they're on for a fight."

The festival, which has been operating for more than 20 years, has an annual budget of $250,000. That $20,000 grant was earmarked for paying the festival's roster of international artists, who fly in from as far as Ireland and Japan to perform and lecture at arts centers around the Mission District. Some of SFAIF's performers, like the Australian theater troupe Fairly Lucid Productions, learned of the cuts as they prepared to board their planes to the U.S. When Wood spoke with SFGATE on Monday morning, one arts group from Japan was on a flight to San Francisco and hadn't yet heard the news. 


President Donald Trump on Monday escalated his defense of former Mesa County, Colorado, Clerk Tina Peters, who was convicted last year in a scheme to undermine the 2020 election, calling her a “political prisoner” and demanding her immediate release.

In a post to his Truth Social media platform, Trump lashed out at Democratic Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, who he accused of ignoring “Illegals committing Violent Crimes like Rape and Murder in his State,” while targeting Peters, an election denier whom Trump described as “a 69-year-old Gold Star mother who worked to expose and document Democrat Election Fraud.”


The criminals?  That is who he will defend and support.  The rest of us?  He will disappear. 
This is C.I.'s "The Snapshot" for today:


Tuesday, May 6, 2025.  Crazy Chump is endangering us in more ways than we could ever imagine and there's no one in the Cabinet to be responsible and call out the risks he's creating for the American people.



Starting with Lawrence O'Donnell last night on MSNBC.



It's not just me and it's not just you, Donald Chump comes off more and more like the deceased father in the play OH DAD, POOR DAD, MAMMA'S HUNG YOU IN THE CLOSET AND I'M FEELIN' SO SAD?

Maybe it's just due to Chump being brain dead?  David McAfee (RAW STORY) observes:

 
Donald Trump gave a wide-ranging NBC interview, and his various answers led to renewed discussion about his purported "cognitive decline."

Among other things, Trump was asked, "Your secretary of state says everyone who's here, citizens and noncitizens, deserve due process... Do you agree?" The president then replied, saying, "I don't know... I'm not, I'm not a lawyer. I don't know."


He's not a lawyer?  He's also not a first time president.  He was president from January 2017 to January 2021.  Does he not know that? Does he not know that he took an oath to uphold the Constitution back in January 2017 and again in January 2025?  Has he never read the Constitution he took an oath to uphold?

Back to McAfee:

Former Republican lawmaker Joe Walsh, for instance, pointed out that Trump said of the economy, "I think the good parts are the Trump economy and the bad parts are the Biden economy."

"He is a horrible, pathetic human being. He’s everything you teach your children NOT to be," Walsh said before discussing Trump's potential decline.

"There should be coverage of Trump’s cognitive decline. Massive coverage," the ex-congressman said. "Because it’s an issue. A huge issue."

And Walsh wasn't the only one.

Independent journalist Aaron Rupar said that Trump's "Meet the Press interview was just the latest illustration that dude's brain is gone."



This cognitive decline is on full display as REUTERS reports:

President Donald Trump said on Monday he had nothing to do with the production of an image that showed him dressed like a pope but said it was done in jest.

"I just saw it last evening," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. He said his wife, Melania Trump, thought it was cute. Some in the Catholic community have criticized the image.


He just saw it Sunday evening?  Possibly, he's lying.  He is rather well known for his non-stop lying.  But maybe the brain's turned to complete mush and he no longer remember that he actually posted the photo himself to his own social media on Friday?  It was reposted to White House accounts on Sunday.  But he put it up on his social media Friday.  Does he not remember that?  Is he that far gone? 



A federal judge used President Donald Trump's own boastful words against him to halt an executive order that took aim at a major Washington, D.C., law firm, reported MSNBC.

U.S. Judge Beryl Howell issued a permanent injunction to blockTrump from retaliating against Perkins Coie due to the president's political grievances. Trump's order had limited Perkins Coie lawyers' "access to government buildings, revoked their security clearances and ordered federal agencies to terminate contracts with the firm."

But Judge Howell found that the Trump administration had "singled out Perkins Coie based on the content of its speech and actions," which infringed up on the firm and its attorneys' First Amendment rights.
To make her ruling, Howell did something "unusual," according to MSNBC. She "used Trump’s subsequent agreements with other firms — and his boasts about them — as evidence against his administration."

Perkins Coie was one of six law firms Trump targeted for representing his "political opponents or whose lawyers were involved in investigations into the president during his first term," MSNBC reported.
Howell cited a Trump quote from an April event, when he claimed "Have you noticed that lots of law firms have been signing up with Trump? $100 million, another $100 million, for damages that they’ve done. But they give you $100 million and then they announce, ‘We have done nothing wrong.’ And I agree, they’ve done nothing wrong. But what the hell, they’ve given me a lot of money considering they’ve done nothing wrong."


Again, has the cognitive decline become so great that he no longer can remember what he's saying in public and on camera? Cognitive decline would explain his nonsense about two dolls and five pencils.  Elizabeth Crisp (THE HILL) quotes former Mike Pence aid Marc Short:


“I think it’s really damaging messaging,” said Short, who now co-chairs the conservative Advancing American Freedom, Pence’s policy and advocacy organization. “I think everybody understands he’s very financially wealthy, but beginning to tell the American people how many dolls or how many pencils they can have, I think, suggests a little bit of an elitism perspective.”





President Donald Trump's cognitive ability was questioned again Monday after he rambled his way through a simple question regarding the White House's decision to reopen Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary in California.

Trump bizarrely likened the decision to being a "movie maker" when questioned by a reporter in the Oval Office. "Well, I guess I was supposed to be a movie maker. We're talking—we started with the movie making and will end. I mean, it—it represents something very strong, very powerful in terms of law and order," he said.
When Trump first announced the decision Sunday, he said it was aimed at keeping dangerous criminals far away from people they want to hurt, according to a post on his social media platform Truth Social. Trump also mentioned a museum dedicated to the prison as he darted from tangent to tangent.

"Our country needs law and order. Alcatraz is, uh, I would say, the ultimate, right? Alcatraz. Sing Sing and Alcatraz. Eh, the movies. But, uh, it's right now a museum, believe it or not, a lot of people go there. It housed the, uh, most violent criminals in the world, and nobody ever escaped. One person almost got there. But they, as you know the story, they found his clothing rather badly ripped up," he said.

The episode has once again caused Americans to question their leader's cognitive ability. Some even compared Trump's rambling to that of former President Joe Biden.


Edith Olmsted (THE NEW REPUBLIC) offers her take here on Chump's "incoherent explanation."

 
The insanity doesn't end with Chump.

He's got a whole Cabinet of crazy backing him up.  That includes the hideous Junior.  Marcia detailed the dangers of the two last night in "Chump and Junior are destroying America's future."  Junior is crazed.  And he's losing power as a result.

We didn't take a position here re: vaccines and autism.  As I explained many times, in my offline life, I fundraise for autism and it had ripped the community apart, ripped families apart.  So I didn't have that discussion, I focused on fundraising and on science.  Then crazy Junior had to haul his steroid ass into the political arena.  And that's why I had to come out publicly as against the notion that vaccines cause autism.  Grasp that I've fundraised decades and never had to take a stance on that because it had destroyed families, that debate.

And Junior was part of that destruction.

So some good news there is that among families who make large donations -- including one family in particular in the Bay Area -- Junior has no pull. 

What he's done, the totality of it all, has turned people against him.  The nonsense he's pulled has made a large number of people stop embracing him and his con job.  


Autism researchers and advocates are pushing back against the creation of an autism database – meant to track the health of autistic people in a major research study – and pointing to the ways such databases could be misused.

While the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) denies it’s a registry, the agency did confirm a sweeping database of autistic people will power a $50m study on autism. The health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, said last week that he plans to announce results from the study within months.

A petition against the registry gained thousands of signatures in a single day, jumping from 2,500 to nearly 35,000 signatures within 24 hours.

“I’m a quiet person who likes to just be in the background,” said first-time petition creator Ryan Smith, a parent of two neurodiverse children living in Idaho. He also didn’t want to make himself a target.



It's garbage like that move by Junior that's decimated his support, that's driven people who thought he listened to them and cared about their families away from him for good.  Hes a con artist and he's exposed himself.  Some BLUESKY reaction.













The messaging app seen being used by President Donald Trump's former national security advisor, Michael Waltz, is temporarily suspending services following a reported hack.
"Out of an abundance of caution, all TeleMessage services have been temporarily suspended," a spokesperson for TeleMessage's parent company, Smarsh, said.
A recent photo of Waltz indicated he was communicating on TeleMessage with Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and special envoy Steve Witkoff.


The latest news highlights enormous gaps in the Trump administration's cybersecurity measures. Experts have warned that sensitive data could quickly land in the wrong hands, making apps like Signal and TeleMessage obvious — and apparently easy — targets for foreign adversary hacking groups.

Waltz was ousted from his national security advisor role on May 1, alongside his deputy Alex Wong. While it's unclear what the exact reasoning was for the demotion, inside sources told The Guardian last week that the president had briefly considered firing Waltz after he accidentally added The Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg to a Signal group chat that contained discussions about war plans in Yemen.
Given the latest news, the situation could be even worse than we thought. Not only was Waltz previously using an unmodified version of Signal to discuss highly sensitive information — a major deviation from Department of Defense protocol — but the Signal knockoff he was spotted using is incredibly vulnerable to hacking as well.

As 404 reports, the hacker was unable to obtain messages between Waltz and his accomplices. However, they did access to data related to the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency, the crypto exchange Coinbase, and other financial institutions.

The data included names and contacts of government officials, as well as usernames and passwords for the app's backend.

"I would say the whole process took about 15-20 minutes," the hacker told the publication. "It wasn’t much effort at all."

"If I could have found this in less than 30 minutes then anybody else could too," they added. "And who knows how long it’s been vulnerable?"

We have a huge security problem that Chump refuses to address.  Instead he has us all at risk because he won't take the needed measures and fire the incompetents.  That includes the ridiculous Pete Hegseth who continues to wreck the Defense Dept.  Haley Britzky and Natasha Bertrand (CNN) report:

US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has ordered senior Pentagon leadership to cut the number of four-star generals and admirals by at least 20% across the military, according to a memo signed by Hegseth dated Monday and obtained by CNN.

As of 2023, there were 37 four-star generals and admirals across the entire military.
The memo also directs the Pentagon to cut the number of general officers in the National Guard by 20%, and to cut the total number of general and flag officers across the military by 10%. There are currently about 900 general and flag officers — those with the rank of one star or higher — across the military.

In his memo, Hegseth wrote that the cuts are a “critical” step toward “removing redundant force structure to optimize and streamline leadership by reducing excess general and flag officer positions.”

I guess I just don't understand what qualifies a weekend talk show host to make such determinations.  I hope that real events don't bitch slap Hegseth across the face.  I don't care if he gets slapped but I do care if real events pull the US into some conflict and suddenly we're short staffed because a TV personality was convinced that "I would say over a third are actively complicit" (his words) are 'woke' and so he got rid of needed generals.  Did that come to him while he was under the dryer?  While he was getting a blow out?

Hegseth has never been qualified for this job but he remains in it.  


This administration is insane from the top down and they are putting future generations at risk with what they are doing to education, science and medicine.  They are putting us all at risk by refusing to follow basic security protocols.  They are putting us all at risk with the disaster that is now our FAA.

Rachel Maddow outlined that last night on MSNBC.  My hope was to note that.  Despite the fact that MSNBC has posted three segments of her show and one segment in a mix of other shows, they didn't post the FAA segment which was the most important one of last night.  I'm not a MORNING JOE fan and ignore it.  But the FAA story is too important and they've discussed it this morning.


How are there not Congressional hearings regarding the above revelations?

Again, Chump is a menace.  He is not a public servant, he's a greedy crook.  He's is not interested in the public safety, he is only interested in lining his own pockets. 




The following sites updated:




Posted by at