A humble list of 19 impeachable offenses. Trump could not get to two without a complicit House
Thursday, October 23, 2025
Wednesday, October 22, 2025
Danger Zone vs trump
Singer-songwriter Kenny Loggins is asking President Trump to remove the audio of one of his performances from a contentious AI-generated video that Trump posted on his Truth Social account on Saturday evening.
In the fake video, a crown-wearing Trump is in a fighter jet emblazoned "KING TRUMP." Accompanied by Loggins singing "Danger Zone" — a hit single from the 1986 movie Top Gun — the plane dumps sludgy brown material over crowds of protesters carrying American flags and signs in what appears to be New York City's Times Square.
The video was published as an apparent reply to the widespread No Kings protests that took place across the U.S. on Saturday. (On Saturday evening, the official White House account posted a fake image on X of Trump and Vice President Vance wearing crowns, juxtaposed with a fake image of Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., in sombreros.)
In a statement sent to NPR on Monday morning, Loggins wrote: "This is an unauthorized use of my performance of 'Danger Zone.' Nobody asked me for my permission, which I would have denied, and I request that my recording on this video is removed immediately." ("Danger Zone" was written by Top Gun's score composer, Giorgio Moroder, and songwriter Tom Whitlock, with Loggins as the performer.)
Loggins continued: "I can't imagine why anybody would want their music used or associated with something created with the sole purpose of dividing us. Too many people are trying to tear us apart, and we need to find new ways to come together. We're all Americans, and we're all patriotic. There is no 'us and hem' – that's not who we are, nor is it what we should be. It's all of us. We're in this together, and it is my hope that we can embrace music as a way of celebrating and uniting each and every one of us."
There is a long history of musicians objecting to the current president (among other political leaders) using their work to send political messages. However, such use is generally legal, as long as rights holders are paid correctly; the only use that performers and songwriters can specifically prohibit is the use of songs in campaign advertisements. Even so, many artists choose to make such objections public so that a general audience is aware of their stance.
NPR reached out to the White House for a response to Loggins' specific objections and his request that his performance be removed.
In reply, White House spokesperson Davis R. Ingle did not respond to NPR's questions but sent NPR an image from the film Top Gun of stars Tom Cruise and the late Val Kilmer, captioned: "I FEEL THE NEED FOR SPEED."
Various musicians and their representatives, including The White Stripes and the estate of Isaac Hayes, have filed civil suits against Trump alleging copyright infringement. The White Stripes dropped their suit in November 2024. The Hayes suit, which was filed against the president, his reelection campaign and the activist group Turning Point Action, is continuing to wend its way through federal court in Atlanta.
SOURCE: https://www.npr.org/2025/10/20/nx-s1-5580328/kenny-loggins-donald-trump-ai-video
Thursday, October 09, 2025
A National Trauma
Written by Robert Reich
Friends,
I’d like to talk with you about a difficult subject.
A significant number of you are disoriented by what Trump and his lapdogs are doing. Many are deeply anxious. Some of us are depressed.
For years, medical experts have recommended that Americans be screened for “anxiety disorders.”
But what many of us are feeling now is not a personal disorder. It’s a rational response to a nation that’s becoming ever more disordered.
What we’re experiencing is not a sickness or individual distress. It’s a sensible reaction to a society becoming sicker and more stressed.
Trump and the enablers around him aren’t just violating the Constitution and disregarding laws. They’re not merely doing cruel and vindictive things.
They’re also spreading fear and fueling hate.
This fear and hate are harming every one of us, even the shrinking minority who support the regime. Hate is a corrosive that eventually consumes the haters. Fear breeds more fear, which causes everyone to be afraid.
The harm may continue long after the reasons to fear and sources of hate have passed into history.
I have a friend who suffered trauma at the hands of abusive parents. She’s spent much of her life trying to cope with that trauma, trying not to let it rule (and ruin) her life.
Another friend is the child of a Holocaust survivor. He has spent much of his life trying to escape the ghosts of relatives he never knew who were murdered by the Nazis, whose deaths have cast a dark shadow over his own life.
Most of us are fortunate enough not to have suffered childhood trauma from abusive parents or been raised in the dark shadow of the Holocaust or other horrors.
But most of us are now suffering a trauma of a different sort — from an abusive president and his lapdogs, and from the dark shadows of fear and hate they cast.
Just as with my friends, many of us now feel powerless and afraid. We don’t recognize our nation. We’re disoriented, vulnerable, anxious.
Trump apologists call it “Trump derangement syndrome,” but the actual derangement is in and around the Oval Office.
I don’t think we’re talking enough about the national trauma most of us are now enduring.
Some of you may assume there’s something wrong with you when you can’t sleep or awaken feeling anxious. You may feel alone in this.
You should be aware of how widespread, and reasonable, your reaction is.
Trump’s cruelty and vengeance will pass. Years from now we’ll look back on this as a terrible period in America’s history. Our nation will survive.
But the fear and hate he has sown could cause lasting blight.
Recognizing this — being aware of the toll it’s taking and will continue to take on us, even years from now — is important to our eventual recovery, that of our loved ones, and the recovery of our nation and the world.
What are your thoughts?
Monday, October 06, 2025
Friday, October 03, 2025
Newsom Strikes Back
BREAKING: Governor Gavin Newsom fights FIRE WITH FIRE and announces that California will cut off all funding to any college that signs Donald Trump's MAGA loyalty pledge.
This is a brilliant chess move from Newsom...
"IF ANY CALIFORNIA UNIVERSITY SIGNS THIS RADICAL AGREEMENT, THEY'LL LOSE BILLIONS IN STATE FUNDING — INCLUDING CAL GRANTS — INSTANTLY," Newsom wrote on X. "CALIFORNIA WILL NOT BANKROLL SCHOOLS THAT SELL OUT THEIR STUDENTS, PROFESSORS, RESEARCHERS, AND SURRENDER ACADEMIC FREEDOM."
The post included a screenshot of a New York Times report on the Trump administration's new "compact." The administration sent a document to nine major universities asking them to commit to the MAGA agenda in return for preferred access to federal funds.
By signing the compact, the universities would be committing to remaining lockstep on Trump's pet issues including his definition of gender. They'd have to apply that definition to campus bathrooms, locker rooms, and women's sport teams. Schools would have to stop considering, race, gender, and other key demographics in the admissions process (a red meat issue for the white nationalist segment of Trump's base).
International enrollment would be capped at 15% for a given college's undergraduate body and no more than 5% could come from the same country.
More broadly, the unversities would have to aggressively push conservative viewpoints. For example, they'd have to make sure that their campuses are "vibrant marketplace of ideas," which in practice would mean astroturfing right-wing beliefs and suppressing leftist thought. They'd also have to inflate the number of professors who are conservative and would be tasked with “transforming or abolishing institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas.”
According to the administration, signing the compact will grant universities "multiple positive benefits" that include “substantial and meaningful federal grants” and “increased overhead payments where feasible."
“It’s not worth the compromises that they would have to make. This is a Faustian bargain," said Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education.
Newsom's threat to these universities carries real bite. Cal Grants is a massive student financial aid program totaling $2.8 billion. Losing access to it would be disastrous for these colleges. This is what we need from our Democratic leadership. Fight back with concrete threats. Democracy is on the line. Via: Occupy Democrats
What Happened In Quantico
Unfortunately it's not satire.
"Donald Trump walked into Quantico Tuesday expecting a rally. He got a funeral.
The generals sat in perfect silence, faces locked in the kind of grim stillness that comes from years of watching idiots talk and choosing not to react. Trump, of course, couldn’t handle it. “I’ve never walked into a room so silent before,” he confessed, his voice trembling somewhere between wounded pride and panic. Then came the kicker: “If you want to applaud, you applaud.”
This wasn’t leadership. This was a washed-up Vegas act begging the crowd to clap. The Commander-in-Chief turned into the Clapper-in-Chief, reduced to prodding the nation’s top brass like a sad carnival barker who forgot his punchline.
A campaign rally in uniform.
Instead of strategy, Trump delivered his usual medley of grievances: Barack Obama ruined everything, Joe Biden ruined it twice as hard, and only Donald J. Trump, self-proclaimed “two-term, maybe three-term president” could save America. It was less a military briefing than an episode of The Apprentice: Pentagon Edition.
The generals, trained to withstand battlefield chaos, sat stone-faced through the barrage of nonsense. They have endured artillery fire with more enthusiasm.
Enter Pete Hegseth, America’s Pastor-in-Arms. Trump’s “Secretary of War” took the podium with the intensity of a man who thinks Tom Clancy novels are actual military doctrine. He promised “fire and brimstone,” called for purges of “fat generals,” and announced he wants the next war to look exactly like the Gulf War, because apparently it’s still 1991 and CNN is running that same grainy footage of tanks in the desert.
But Hegseth wasn’t done. He led them in prayer. Yes, prayer. The nation’s top generals, summoned by presidential ego, now folded into a forced altar call like extras at a megachurch revival. The separation of church and state? Obliterated. Constitution? Shredded. Jesus, apparently, is now Commander-in-Chief. Trump can play Vice.
Weakness on parade
Trump likes to brag about firing generals who “aren’t warriors.” But on Tuesday, the real firing squad was silence. Not one clap. Not one cheer. Just the steady hum of contempt vibrating off the brass like feedback from a dead microphone.
These men and women have seen actual combat. They’ve buried soldiers. They’ve lived with the weight of real command. And now they’re expected to cheer for a man who brags about moving “a submarine or two” like it’s a toy in a bathtub, or who lectures about “two N-words” as though nuclear strategy were a stand-up routine.
No wonder they didn’t clap.
The pin-drop presidency
What happened at Quantico wasn’t just awkward. It was diagnostic. Trump’s presidency is a hollow shell propped up by applause, and when the applause disappears, so does he.
And Hegseth? He’s the zealot-in-chief, delivering sermons about war and Christ in equal measure, a man confusing the Book of Revelation with the Pentagon’s operations manual. Together, they make quite the duo: one desperate for claps, the other desperate for amens.
The generals gave them neither.
Instead, they gave silence, the most cutting judgment of all." ~ Michael Jochum
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