$153 billion, for what now?

Granted, it is a few dozen bungled policies ago, but remember when we were blowing up fishing boats in the Caribbean as part of the administration's Operation Dude Bro anti-drug strategy? “In a recent assessment reviewed by The Washington Post, DEA analysts found the strikes had failed to affect the supply or price of cocaine in the United States and had led traffickers to diversify beyond go-fast boats and to avoid international waters, opting instead for larger boats and hemming close to coastlines, where U.S. forces are less likely to open fire.” (Esquire)

It was called Operation Southern Spear. It was the beginning of the inept and testosterone-deprived Pistol Pete Hegseth’s desire to DUDE UP the Military, and pretend that Cuba and Venezuela were skinny kids on the beach, and testosterone-deprived Pistol Pete was some kind of muscled guy ready to kick sand in their faces. Trying his best to win the love of the Pedophile Rapist, Trump, the most unqualified person to be the Secretary of Defense, Hegseth, did a whole lot of show and tell, without much to show, and here is the telling part: 

The U.S. military campaign to destroy alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific has cost tens of billions of dollars, with the initial fleet alone costing over $40 billion to purchase and daily operating expenses exceeding $333,000 for the aircraft carrier involved. (PBS)

Why this matters to me is a myriad of reasons, from why the fuck did we do this,  to just how expensive this OPERATION SOUTHERN SPEAR cost me as a taxpayer. And then, as seems the case now regarding the Republican majority in Congress, the same insecure heterosexual dudes have pumped up and preened themselves with the Iran War, calling the first mistake, OPERATION FURY, and then the second blunder of insisting that the US Blockade of the Hormuz Strait was better than the Iran blockade, calling that PROJECT FREEDOM.

As of July 29, 2026, the estimated cost of the Iran war for U.S. taxpayers is over $113.3 billion, which includes approximately $11.3 billion for the first six days and ongoing costs of about $1 billion per day. (csis.org)

So far, we have spent $153.7 billion dollars. And that total does not include the money necessary to manufacture more of our depleted munitions, let alone rebuild our infrastructure across the Middle East. 

We have no idea what is happening in Venezuela, and we have no idea what will happen next with Iran…so please explain, Hegseth/Rubio/Trump, what or who was this actually for?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

HIS morality, come on!

 President Trump said his “own morality” guides his decisions on foreign intervention in an interview published Thursday, following weeks of scrutiny for U.S. strikes overseas.

“Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me,” Trump told The New York Times on Wednesday night when asked if there were any limits on his international power. (The Hill)

I read this interview and, as frightened as I have been, a very hardened chill fell directly all over my body. Here we have Trump proclaiming that it is HIS morality that is the defining factor in any and all decisions he makes. The convicted Rapist, the accused Pedophile, the guilty of fraud conman, the slum landlord, the purveyor of international war crimes, the grifter, the liar, the King of Presidential corruption has admitted publicly that he uses his MORALITY as a basis of action.

Trump then added that it is his own mind. The man who must take cognitive tests after another, the man who slurs his words or speaks jibberish, jumping from one inane topic to another, this aged man who each and every day seems more riddled with one health problem after another, states that it is his mind that makes him the Emperor of the World!

And then Trump admits that within the US and, for that matter, the world, there is no one to stop him. On this point, at least within the United States, there is no one to stop him. The Republican majority in Congress has readily acquiesced to any “checks and balances,” as has the Heritage Foundation Supreme Court. Perhaps worldwide, we witness Iran stopping him, and most likely the secret videotapes in Putin’s vault are a hindrance. 

A madman, a cruel, degenerate narcissistic sick and sad madman pretending that he has a moral compass, but the direction he is moving just leads to death and destruction!

Then and Now...why the same

 THEN: Many people living near concentration camps claimed they were unaware of the true nature of these facilities, often believing they were merely labor camps. However, evidence suggests that the German public had some understanding of the brutal conditions and the likelihood of fatality for those sent to these camps. Many witnesses reported seeing the mistreatment of inmates, which indicated the camps were not just educational institutions as some believed. (Wikipedia)

NOW: ‘Nightmarish’: Report exposes medical failures at California ICE detention center. The court-appointed medical review is the first-of-its-kind for an ICE detention center. It resulted from a November class action lawsuit filed by seven people detained at the Mojave Desert facility, who alleged inhumane conditions and medical neglect. (San Francisco Chronicle)

THEN: The Brownshirts, officially known as the Sturmabteilung (SA), were a paramilitary organization associated with the Nazi Party in Germany. They played a significant role in Adolf Hitler's rise to power by using violent intimidation against political opponents and protecting Nazi rallies from 1921 until the end of World War II in 1945. (Wikipedia)

NOW: ICE/ Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “Of course, the…criminal drug dealers, the rapists, the murderers, the individuals who have committed heinous acts on the interior of our country and who have terrorized law-abiding American citizens, absolutely, those should be the priority of ICE,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean that the other illegal criminals who entered our nation’s borders are off the table.” (Karoline Leavitt).

History is fact. The evidence is in plain sight, even when the Trump Reich, his state-sponsored propagandists like FOX, Newsmax, and the MAGA Podcasters, and the Republican Majority in Congress pretend otherwise.

The names may change from Concentration Camps to Detention Centers, from Brown Shirts to ICE, from Adolph Hitler to Donald Trump, from German Citizens looking the other way to American citizens looking the other way…BUT there is very little difference between THEN and NOW. Ya gotta wonder how the fuck!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The PROOF IS out there

 Proof is a logical explanation or argument that demonstrates the truth of a statement or proposition, often using evidence and reasoning to establish its validity.

In the American political world dominated by a vast majority of Republicans, PROOF seems to be the one and only thing they, as a group, refuse to accept, provide, or share. Imagine just providing PROOF, as in providing all of the hidden papers or tapes, providing person-to-person interaction, or providing facts, not fiction, to prove that what you say and do is real!

Today, Monday, July 27, 2026, there was a new photo of Mitch McConnell and his wife, Elaine Chao. “Senator Mitch McConnell has been absent from Congress for more than a month as he recovers from what he says was a fall. This week, the former Senate majority leader issued a rare new statement on his recovery and a second proof-of-life photo. But he gave no clear timeline for his return to Capitol Hill amid widespread speculation about the specifics of his condition.” (New York Magazine)…Is this Proof that Mitch is alive, or not brain dead, or already buried? If Mitch were just Mitch McConnell, mail delivery person, store clerk, a laborer, the photo shoot alone would not suffice to provide the PROOF that indeed, Mitch is living and functioning. But somehow, we, the people, and especially the people of Kentucky, must assume that Mitch is alive and doing so much better. Imagine inviting a few members of the Kentucky media to visit him in the hospital!

The war that wasn’t a war, until it was a war, and then suddenly became just a skirmish…the embargo of the Strait of Hormuz, which had been open, but now was closed, which was almost opened again, is still shut…the nonexistent fees to travel through the Strait are now in existence, the obliterated arsenal of weapons of war and nuclear abilities, are somehow not obliterated…PROOF is an inconvenient truth for Trump, Hegseth, Rubio, and Vance. What we see and hear is not PROOF of anything but of MAGA/Republican based propaganda of what it is that the Trump Reich prefers to “show and tell!”

Approximately 2.5 million pages of Epstein files have not been released, as the Department of Justice stated that they had fulfilled their legal obligations with the release of over 3.5 million pages, while estimates suggest the total could be around 6 million pages. (CBS News)…Innocence can be proven by providing PROOF. If no harm or no foul had been committed, then open up the remaining files associated with Epstein, look into the camera with a shit-eating “I told you so grin,” provide the American public with your middle finger, and here is the PROOF: I am not either a PEDOPHILE or a RAPIST. PROOF should be as easy as releasing ALL the remaining millions of files.

The TV show The X-Files used the tagline "The truth is out there." Seems to me McConnell and Trump, and Todd Blanche, and Pete Hegseth, and Marco Rubio, and Just Dance Vance could easily dispel any confusion by stating: “THE PROOF IS OUT THERE.”

 

 

Some kinda Golden Rule

 As Trump boosts nuclear power, regulators seek to eliminate a longstanding radiation safety rule. Currently, facilities such as nuclear plants, hospitals or academic institutions that use radioactive materials must ensure radiation exposures are kept “as low as reasonably achievable” — the ALARA principle. The NRC proposal would abandon that philosophy while keeping a separate standard on maximum radiation exposure. (AP News)

The same administration that decided the measles vaccine was just a socialist scheme to control the population… the same administration that decided cuts to food safety were not in favor of the large corporations’ bottom lines…the same administration that has decided wind mills either kill birds or stop the air from actually flowing, and that climate change is nothing but a Left Wing hoax… the same administration that is supported by a band of so called Pro-Life Christian Nationalists has DECIDED that money from the Nuclear Power Industry placed into their pockets is a priority over and above the health and welfare of the citizens of this nation.

No abortions, this administration insists, as do their hypocritical Republican enablers, but once the fetus is outside of the womb, then suddenly it is of no concern, cutting back health care, cutting back nutritional assistance, cutting back almost any governmental program that actually makes living livable!

Profit over people. The Trump Crime Family and his billionaire sycophants prefer to keep the peasantry hungry, homeless, and unhealthy. Public safety is now a form of communism or socialism. Public health is suddenly a very un-Christian machination.

The saying "do unto others as you would have them do unto you," commonly known as the Golden Rule, is found in the Bible in Matthew 7:12 and Luke 6:31.Nope, none of that Biblical storyline is of any consequence with this administration and their enablers; that too just sounds a little too much like Left Wing propaganda! The only Golden Rule Trump is concerned about is the amount of Gold he can own!

His NEW Enablers

 Trump seems to get away with grift, corruption, maybe rape of a minor (think about the inability to access all of the video from the FBI Epstein Files), perhaps even murder (one might wonder about his first wife, Ivana, suddenly falling down a set of stairs in her apartment days before she was to testify against Trump), because he has surrounded himself with willing enablers people from the Republican dominated Supreme Court, to the puppets posing as Republican politicians, the billionaire bros who base their morality and humanity on how much wealth they can accumulate, to the media insurrectionists at FOX. We know this, we witness this, and for many of us, we are pissed that THIS is even a thing.

However, at least for me, one of the most disgusting and self-serving enablers of Trump’s constant scam of the American people, and his profitable distribution of snake oil, comes from a group of people who, once again, as I see it, were supposed to be a part of the checks and balances of our Democracy…CORRESPONDENTS! 

We recently witnessed the White House Correspondents' Dinner, something I would usually not give a shit about, but this one was months after the original, where supposedly an assassination attempt had been planned against Trump. (And remember this, please: this so-called assassination was a hue and cry for why Trump needed his ballroom to keep himself safe and sound.) And once again, as Trump tried at the original dinner, he insulted and harassed the correspondents in attendance. (This time, as an aside, suddenly there was a plethora of Secret Service agents in attendance…I suppose you can only plan an assassination one time only).

Trump lied, as he only knows how to do; Trump demanded and insulted as he only knows how to; Trump pontificated about “FAKE NEWS,” as he always does, and YET, AND YET, knowing that lies and fabrication is all Trump is capable of, these CORRESPONDENTS still invited Trump, and sat there almost as willing idiots as Trump ranted and raved!

Why I give a shit about this IS the fact that once the JOURNALISTS/REPORTERS/ and CORRESPONDENTS provide access to a 34-count felon, a man found guilty of rape, a man found guilty of fraud, as if none of that matters, IS just one more example of normalizing a most abhorrent and criminal President. Is there nothing or no one that will finally say “SHUT THE FUCK UP!”

The last 4 don't count

 The Pentagon reduced the official death toll from the Iran war from 18 to 14 after removing four service members who were killed after President Trump declared a ceasefire in April. This change has raised questions about the transparency of casualty reporting during the ongoing conflict. (CNBC)

Please read the opening paragraph again. Read it, and if your blood pressure did not shoot up, then shame on you, because according to Trump, the 4 Troops who died, as in they no longer are alive, were just unfortunate collateral, and admitting that they died while serving during Trump’s Iran War would make Trump’s DEAD SOLDIERS TOTALS seem a little too ominous and odious.

Following the Trump/Hegseth philosophy if you are a member of the US Military, and died from any Iranian attack, but if you died during the time that Trump and Hegseth and even Rubio decided that the Iran War was not a war but a skirmish or some kind of so called ceasefire, your death was not that important, rather it was a bit too inconvenient to tame Trump’s lies and ego.

And remember this: Donald Trump reportedly referred to fallen soldiers as "losers" and "suckers" during his presidency, particularly mentioning the Marines who died at Belleau Wood and American casualties at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France. These comments were detailed in a 2020 article by The Atlantic.

So to the most recent service members who died during the Trump Iran War, Capt. Cody Khork, Sgt. 1st Class Nicole Amor, Sgt. Declan Coady, and Sgt. 1st Class Noah Tietjens, my sincere gratitude for your service, and to your families my sincere apologies for having Trump in the position of Commander-In-Chief.