A would be dictator

Trump crossed this line some time back. He’s said it before.

He believes that trying to hold him to account is treason because this shows that they are not personally loyal to him.

He craves the kind of power his idols have: Putin, Kim Il Jong, Bin Salman—even Duterte.

For these views alone he merits removal from office.

Beautiful

Great shot.

Also reared Catholic

I’m right there with Mr. Carlin—I explicitly left the church at 13.

Have not been back except for weddings and funerals. I, of course, didn’t take communion. I’m an apostate not a barbarian.

Overpopulation

Every problem we have is caused by one thing—as this piece says—there are too damn many of us.

The world is several billion over its carrying capacity.
This means that deforestation, global warming, and general ecological destruction will continue.

The economic paradigm we operate under—an economy where unbridled consumption is not only encouraged, but is necessary to forestall economic collapse—is utterly unsustainable.

There will be war for what remains—as all beauty is despoiled and all morality is cast aside—while we fight in the ruins.

Nothing is free

Nothing is free. Just remember that. And don’t sign up for this crap.

I got nailed in the 90s for $800 worth of “free” golf clubs that of course were returnable until I read the fine print and realized that I had missed the return window.
Oh, and the clubs were complete shit. Didn’t know that any golf club could be that bad.

The people running the scam ended up getting charged in federal court and going to jail.

But I didn’t get my money back. No one did.

Since then I made a rule. If anything that is free requires me to input a credit card then it’s not free. And I don’t don't do it.

Of course, I’m drawn to this service or app or whatever it is...

Uh, your caps lock is on...

My post was in no way supporting Reagan. He was a good speaker. His speech writers, at times, put some nice words together.

I’m fully aware that most of the disaster we are living through is due to Reagan successfully putting a genial face on cruel and damaging policy that has led to where we are today.

Thus, the final line, “God curse his soul.”

Regarding the Reagan quote

I am constantly struck by how old Trump’s attitudes and ideas are...walls, tarriffs, Supply-side economics, misogyny, overt racism. Am I the only one that sees this?

Reagan got this one right. God curse his soul.

Yeah, I got it.

I have to agree

We are at this point for a reason. When Nancy Pelosi took impeachment off the table during the Bush regime many of their worst crimes became precedent. Only torture was eventually abjured. The rest--indefinite confinement for unproven terrorism charges, essential elimination of habeus corpus, politicization of intelligence, and the big one the invasion of Iraq--became the norm. So, when Obama took over we saw the results of this--he was unable to close Gitmo because it was now normalized. His administration expanded remote drone warfare against targets that often turned out to be civilians not terrorists. Oh, and one other thing was normalized--stolen elections. I think that history, if it is ever accurately written (remember the winners write the history), will show that the day that the Supreme Court handed the 2000 election to the loser of the election in a stunningly partisan move that was essentially a judicial coup de tat. The stealing of elections was therefore also normalized.

Now we have the logical heir to the amoral Cheney/Bush administration where all norms are being shredded. Trump has no Poppy Bush telling him that he doesn't want to be the one to go down in history as the President that ended the Republic. Trump and his cabal have stolen an election, blatantly violated the emoluments clause in the Constitution, are currently committing crimes against humanity by imprisoning refugees in conditions that have proven fatal to over 50 at this point, seem to be actively trying to destroy our relationships with our key allies etc. The list is endless.

And, again, Nancy Pelosi has taken impeachment off the table.

I think Nancy is a brilliant tactician, but an extremely poor strategist. I think we would be in much worse shape if she was not Speaker, but I think that she is making a terrible strategic error by not supporting articles of impeachment.

Of course

This is what Trump always does.

It is a lie—as is virtually everything he says.

He may ultimately claim that he never met him.