Truly sickening. When I read HCR's letter from last night, my stomach went sour. My father was a career diplomat who served under several presidents. I'm so grateful he is not here to witness this travesty. My only hope is that from the ashes of our country's reputation, a new, more vigorous democracy will emerge with restructured guardrails.
That was me last night, close to midnight - referencing your first statement- and I had not read about the NSS until that moment… I knew a flood of news about it would hit the next day, today, and this analysis, Lucian, the racism woven through every aspect, plus the transactional mentality about larger countries ruling over smaller, being granted “business opportunities” to plunder, if we’re honest, within the three spheres of influence, Putin‘s ideal… The America First isolationism actually translates to us not taking on the role Putin would assign, but then we have the treasonous Witkoff/Kushner meetings in Moscow, disguised as peace talks but in reality selling out Ukraine for business deals… Oh, glory be the day when we know we have vanquished all of this!
Thank you, Lucian, for your analysis here. It’s ugly stuff, but you can’t solve a problem till you spread it out and look at it, expose it to sunlight! You’ve done that. Ugly stuff for sure. Spread the word! Amplify!
I just saw a Meidas Touch report about drones in France, visiting or hovering over their nuclear submarine center… Testing the waters re. strength and boundaries of NATO… Suspected Russian drones. Then Ben M. also called this an assassination attempt, that Zelenskyy was flying into Ireland to speak at a meeting and drones showed up, but his plane arrived early so if there was any insidious plot afoot, it was foiled… He remarked that we’re not seeing these stories in mainstream media, and I’ll say that seems to be the case… Just putting this out here in case somebody in the comment section or perhaps Lucian himself has something to say. Really scary stuff going on…… Protecting Zelenskyy is a high order of business because it’s clear he’s a target…
I see these stories in the defense and aerospace media. The EU needs to get tough on these drone incidents. Start shooting them down with shotguns and other weapons. Keep up patrols around installations and airports 24/7 in an attempt to deter or capture the operators. The only thing Putin respects is a smack in the face.
John, I'm with you. I look at history as waves of ups and downs. We are now in a down. Can we get up? I have faith that we can. We cannot give up. Vote. March. Yell. Organize. We can do it!
I agree that when the people get rid of this regime, and by regime I don't just mean Trump, they will need to also change the way elections work, they should be financed by a fixed share funded by our tax dollars and not bought by billionaires.
Here is the take on the new Foreign Security Policy by Ben Meidas.
Lucian - did you forget about the Central Park Five? It isn’t just the birther lunacy. It isn’t just torch bearers in Charlottesville. It isn’t just l calling Somali’s “Garbage”. It goes several steps deeper than that.
For those who don't remember — within two weeks of the crime, DJT took out a full-page ad in the NYT urging that the Central Park Five be executed. This was more than a year before they were tried & convicted. DJT has never apologized for this, even after the convictions were vacated in 2002 and civil suits brought multi-million dollar judgments in favor of the wrongly accused, tried & convicted.
The only ones who remember are those of us of a certain age...that age also being one of hope in America. We are a fading breed. The Greatest Generation is no longer. The Boomers who directed change are elderly. And the younger generations are fixed to their devices for "alternative facts".
First, get Stephen Miller out of there. The felon is not cognizant of what that report represents. Dollars to rubles, Stephen Miller is, most likely played a major rôle in its creation. He's not "protected," start investigating him.
This is the malignant spewings of Project 2025. Not the Congress of the United States. It is the drivel of a totally mad man who is being played for the abject fool he has always been. It is not law, it never will be. If the No Kings movement has showed us anything, it is that there are more of us than there are of them. And they will overplay their hand. They can and will lose. The nodding off nabob of a president may choose to publish his and Stephen Miller's fevered wet dream but it doesn't mean we have to accept it. An awful lot of members of Congress won't. No one should. I won't. This man lives and thrives on our capitulating as he decays before our eyes.
As Shakespeare said, "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,"
Write your Congress Critters and raise pure bloody hell. And....
Carol-ann, your comments exactly reflect my thinking about Herr Miller's role in this horrifying document. Given his massive loss of brain neurons, Felon47 isn't remotely capable of authoring this piece of crap. Miller and some of the Project 2025 creators are clearly behind this. Sadly, Miller will be protected by Felon47, so we should expect to see him around as long as the Felon lives.
I have been pointing out Stevan Millers malign influence for a long time, but this stinks of the forgotten Stevan who slinks off to Europe after upstaging his Highness and continues to poison the political atmosphere world wide from behind the curtain and several layers of shirts.
Stephen Miller is a coward, a misfit, and a very unhappy man who knows only one thing - making or trying to make the majority of people as miserable and nasty as he is. To subject those he considers lesser humans than he is to be taken out of his world. it won't work, he is repugnant and truth to tell, not that bright. And he is not protected by advice and consent. He is a lowly servant who can be replaced. It will happen. It most likely is starting. Write your reps in Congress and urge them to put him to the test.
I don't agree. What enemy is he aiding andf abetting? Unless you consider Trump a traitor and then I will ask you what enemy is Trump aiding and abetting?
There is an excellent chance that Congress will NOT fall in line. The lower courts will NOT fall in line.
Being terrified is exactly what they want. His approval rating - and that means his Cabinet is the lowest in recorded history. You want to give up? You know, if the colonists had done that, we would all be singing God Save the KIng. Sorry, they have not won and thinking they have? That puts us back in the Eeyore brigade and Is capitulating. That makes not sense at all. That kind of attitude is not what this country was built on. Our motto is not "we are terrified." At the time of the Revolution if was "E Pluribus Unum." Out of many, one. We are still that way. They have not won - because they are not "many," they are a few and weak. Yes, they are weak.
It's the anniversary of Pearl Harbor - the country was terrified ,it was grim. Our Pacific fleet took one hellluva blow, we lost over 2400 personnel and for awhile, our major fighting capacity - we fought back. We won.
It is not all about power.....it is about looking past the lies and the liars. No, they have not won. But some people will fall for the propaganda, won't they?
Don't talk to me about not giving up or about falling for propaganda. I'm 75 and have been fighting for social justice for 60 years. I am also a student of history, and what is happening here in this country full of vicious, ignorant assholes is what happened in Germany. Too many of these fools will love the idea of America ruling the world and assaulting the people they hate. Next up: leaving NATO and the UN - "spheres of influence". Then threats to attack Canada and Greenland, probably by waving nukes around. We are in the hands of madmen who will stop at nothing - and yes, it is about power.
I will talk to you about giving up and falling for propaganda when your own words ,"They have won and we have lost." exhibit that very sentiment. Your words, not mine.
So glad to know all that you have done. And now you're giving up. Benjamin Franklin was 70 when he signed the Declaration of Independence. Good thing he didn't fold, isn't it?
And of course, you have been in touch with your representatives regularly to voice your displeasure and ask them what they are doing to stop it? Aren't you?
I contact my senators and rep every week. They are Dems and are on the right side but can do virtually nothing. We are back in the 1930s and the Nazis are in power, right here, right now. Trump has declared war on all dissent. The Supreme Court will give Trump anything he wants.
He is a sick, demented old man. He not vigorous, he is not cognizant. One can not compare him or his cabal with Hitler. He tries to mimic Hitler, but again.....one more time HIS APPROVAL RATINGS ARE THE LOWEST EVER RECORDED. HITLER WAS POPULAR! NO, THIS ONLY BECOMES LIKE NAZI GERMANY IF, IF PROPLE ALLOW IT TO BECOME NAZI GERMANY.
We fight, protest, talk, sue, demonstrate, we win. Abdicating?
No! Don't say these things and do not ever give up - that's suicide pure and simple. Fight back - really we haven't even started to fight in this country and that's the big f'n problem - get off your couch and do something anything but fight back!
You mean Putin's Hoover Institute lap dog? Interesting isn't it? Quacks and cranks who would slip and fall out of windows in Russia are welcomed here with open arms by Stanford's "esteemed" right-wing and seditious Hoover Institute.
An anti-American immigrant, is one of the leaders of those who wishes to annihilate democracy and the country of Ukraine. Funny, being white, being an over bloated male with the credentials of a traitor and the backing of flaccid mendacious lickspittles - here's looking at you Stephen Miller; Pete, not sober yet, Hegseth; craven, adulterous, puppy murderer Noem; and the entire DOJ - the government of the United States cowers and grovels before his vituperative rantings. Everything this nation has fought against for the last 80 years.
Anyone calling for his deportation? No? HUH. White, male, and muttering with a split tongue, what more can a bunch of seditious rabble rousers ask for?
Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) coined, I think, by Kellyanne Conway during Trump 1 is a real 1984ish tactic used by fascists to demoralize and exhaust their opponents. "Flood the zone" with extreme comments, policies and actions, the consequences for which have a long path to future accountability.
As an ALPHA leader you excite your supporters and depress your opponents by making them "see" the darkness of your world view.
We must not become discouraged or depressed by TDS.
We must not give up hope for bringing back Freedom, Equality and Humanity, the ideals on which America was conceived and founded. We can reverse the terrible policies of the Trump Terror.
Reread the Declaration of Independence, a doctrine still worth fighting for.
Once he joined the family business in the early 1970s, after skating through Penn, Donald participated in the racial discrimination that blocked black applicants from renting apartments in their buildings. The DOJ sued both Fred Sr. & Donald Trump for civil rights violations and, IIRC, the Trumps settled out of court..
Donald has long held & expressed anti-semitic attitudes and stereotypes. "I only want short men who wear yarmulkes counting my money" is one of the earliest & most-widely quoted.
FWIW, the notorious Charlottesville rally & march took place in _2017._ Donald's soundbite about "good people on both sides" was uttered within the first six months of his first inauguration.
Please excuse me but there is no way I can read this yet again. What I’ve already read has made me so thoroughly sick and disgusted and the fact that this has happened so close to Pearl Harbor Day makes it doubly so. I didn’t think I could hate someone so deeply as I’m finding I’m hating everyone associated with this abomination of a regime. Believe me when I say that hate is not an emotion that comes readily as I believe it eats into the being of the one who is doing the hating. However, I’m willing to risk it. I’m too old to worry about it now. That scumbag who calls himself any sort of a president is a sell-out to this country and every man, woman and child in it and so deserves all the opprobrium and vilification that he has worked so hard to earn. Same goes for everyone who created the opportunity for him to regain his foothold into that office. Our children and grandchildren, for that matter, none of the future children deserve this evil that we have turned loose in the world. We’ve broken it so now we have to try to fix it.
So, it took the NSS report for you to say we've lost the leadership of the free world? Honestly, I thought his speech at the UN in September was his concession speech. Everything he has done since he took the oath of office again has been to destroy the wealth and power of the United States. And he wants white births? Back in 2017 I was so concerned about the climate crisis that I told my son I'd be glad if he got married, but I did not want grandchildren. This was me, who had been collecting baby clothes for a few years already. Now he calls the climate crisis a fraud. He's the fraud. I don't think my blond, blue-eyed son will have a child. Another loss for t. Of the five babies who have been born on my block, frankly, to my horror, two have been born to a Jewish couple, one to a lesbian couple, and two born to a Muslim couple. I fear for their future, and t will not get want he wants from this street. My ancestors moved to this continent between 1633 and 1754, and have fought in most of its wars since the French and Indian War. No one in his family has ever served in the military and he himself is a convicted criminal. He is determined to destroy this country, and probably this planet, and he may very well succeed.
My ancestors too have been here since the 17th century, and fought in the Revolution, the Civil War, WWI and WWII. One of my uncles fought at Guadalcanal with the First Marine Division, the other landed in Normandy on D-Day. It makes me violently ill to see this trash destroying the country and getting away with it. Do not count on Congress, the courts, or the military to save us.
Let's go from the old sound-on-film ratio of 1.375:1 (military service) to Cinerama (every- or anything). It's never been documented that anyone in the T***p family has served their country, the United States of America, in any capacity whatsoever, not Peace Corps, VISTA, not even volunteering to serve meals for a couple of hours at a local Thanksgiving or Christmas free food operation. Nothing. Okay, how about paying someone else to do it for them? DT47 boasted that he didn't pay any federal income tax. He said it showed he's "smart." Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.: "I like paying taxes. With them, I buy civilization." You want the best visual realization of T***p's "level" of civilization? Do you remember the opening sequence in the movie "2001," where the humanoid ape creature discovers how to use a weapon to kill? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WufKsOhkTL8
Ellen, your passion, intelligence and eloquence jump off the page! I'm right behind you and so are millions and millions of others! We will not bend the knee! We will not falter; we will fight as long and as hard as we must and we will prevail! There is no other acceptable outcome! Never forget the words of Patrick Henry! It may come to that, but not yet!
There are more of us than them, though there are a lot more "thems" than I'd realized. So, everyone, please get active with a democracy group, if you're not already. I love the strategic actions that Indivisible offers and encourages with its 2500+ grassroots groups across the country. www.indivisible.org
There are also other organizations that need your work, wealth, and wisdom. And courage, persistence, and joy. It's going to take all of us! Together, we can do this.
Well, we at least now know it is no longer a secret. One of the major political parties in this nation is all in on a racist and exclusionary future for our people. The GOP by embracing Trump/MAGA and now sitting idly by while this manifesto is publishled as "official" government dictat has fully declared it to be the party of white nationalism. And, no amount of dancing around this document;'s intent and direction should be allowed to help Republicans escape what it means come election time.
I would recommend the Democratic Party immediately begin production of a 30 minute teleivised presentation telling the public what this policy will mean in real terms to any American if you are not white and a practicing Christian. Second and third class citizenship, exclusion from Constitutionally guaranteed rights and, yes, a permanent seat at the back of the bus IF you are allowed on the bus at all.
The GOP will attempt to dodge this travesty and given the sorry state of both broadcast and print jounalism in this nation it will be buried off the front pages. It will be up to the Democrats to keep it alive as living proof of the now obvious plan to turn this nation into a fascist homeland for White Christians at the expense of all the rest of our divese population. That is what is planned. Only an aggressive and widespread information campaing on both tradiitonal and digital media can get the word out. We just went to DefCon 1 on our democracy. Someone needs to ring the alarm bells loud and clear.
I agree that the Democrats need to broadly & continuously publicize this, but I doubt that the older Democrats who've been in office for long terms will do much to help. They don't have a good track record so far in this administration! I'm 69 years old, but I'm convinced that we Democrats need new, younger leadership! BH
Just one thing, they want this country to be for white and practicing Christian males. The only role women have is to serve and if your white to have babies.
Call/write your elected representatives, get out and hold a sign, raise your voice, and most importantly spend your $$ where it has the most impact against the American oligarchy. That last point is the one they understand, above all else.
I live in PA too. Fetterman and his videos with McCormick are disgusting. In reply to my messages to both their offices that they should stop this "war" with Venezuela, they both support bombing boats because they think it is saving us from drugs. McCormick went to West Point, I guess he skipped the day they taught about the oath to the constitution.
Bonhoeffer is remembered as a theologian, pastor, and resistor of Nazism whose moral courage culminated in participation in plots against Hitler and ultimately in his execution.
Less often emphasized, yet crucial to understanding his ethical formation, is how Bonhoeffer encountered and named racism—both the virulent antisemitism of Nazi Germany and the racial injustice he witnessed abroad—and how that shaped his convictions about solidarity, discipleship, and the church’s public responsibility.
Bonhoeffer’s year at Union Theological Seminary in New York City (1930–31) left a lasting impression. There he worshiped and taught in the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, led by Adam Clayton Powell, Sr., and befriended Black seminarians. He contrasted the restrained, lecture-like sermons he had known with the passionate, communal preaching he found in Harlem—sermons that addressed sin, grace, suffering, and hope in tangible terms. That encounter exposed him to a Christianity that understood Jesus as present with the oppressed and that linked faith to concrete resistance. It gave him a sharper sense of what racialized suffering looked like in daily life and furnished an ethic of neighbor-love that could not be comfortably domesticated by a racially exclusive national church.
Back in Germany, Bonhoeffer witnessed how National Socialism weaponized biology, myth, and ecclesial complicity to erase Jews from the life of the nation and the church. He rejected the “German Christian” movement’s theological accommodation of racial ideology and argued publicly for the church’s responsibility to stand with those excluded by the state. His writings and sermons from the 1930s criticize attempts to nationalize the church and to theologically justify persecution; he helped found and support the Confessing Church, which resisted state efforts to remake Protestant Christianity into a tool of racial nationalism.
Bonhoeffer’s critique of antisemitism was not merely political but theological: to follow Christ meant to bear responsibility for the other, to refuse identity politics that made nation or race the ultimate referent, and to let the church’s allegiance to Jesus interrupt loyalties that sanctioned injustice. He denounced theological positions that assimilated the gospel to the Volk and emphasized discipleship as costly solidarity with the oppressed.
As the Nazi regime intensified persecution, Bonhoeffer’s ethic moved from prophetic denunciation to active solidarity. He counseled Jews, helped facilitate escapes, and later joined resistance circles that contemplated tyrannicide as a tragic, last-resort measure to halt mass murder. His willingness to risk—and ultimately to share—the fate of victims signified a moral horizon in which resistance to racist state policy required bodily identification and sacrificial action. In prison, his reflections on “being for others” and the costly nature of Christian love framed racism not as a remote social pathology but as a moral condition demanding repentance, reorientation of communal life, and readiness to act even at great personal cost.
For Bonhoeffer, abstract confession of Christ was insufficient without concrete righteousness toward the neighbor.
Contemporary scholars both celebrate and critically examine Bonhoeffer’s engagement with race. Many emphasize that his time in Harlem helped shape his Christology and ethic of resistance—what some describe as a “Black Jesus” insight—and that encounters with African-American Christianity deepened his sense of solidarity with the oppressed. At the same time, critics note limitations: Bonhoeffer remained a product of his context, and his attention to Jewish suffering developed unevenly; earlier in the 1930s he sometimes absorbed prevailing assumptions before arriving at fuller moral clarity through resistance and suffering.
These critiques complicate his portrait, showing moral growth produced by experience rather than instantaneous perfection, but they do not erase his courage.
Bonhoeffer’s life and thought offer enduring resources for confronting racism today. First, theology must be tested by solidarity: authentic witness takes the form of identifying with and acting for victims of racial oppression.
Second, worship and formation matter: encountering communities that embody prophetic resistance—as Bonhoeffer did in Harlem—can transform theological imagination and ethical commitments.
Third, resistance can require costly action: prophetic speech alone may be inadequate when institutions collude in violence, and moral responsibility can demand sacrifice.
Finally, self-critique is essential: moral agents must recognize their own social conditioning and allow experience and reflection to deepen their commitments to justice.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s struggle against Nazism and his encounters with racism—both in the United States and in Germany—produced an ethic that refuses theological complicity with racial ideologies and insists that discipleship entails concrete solidarity with the oppressed. His life shows how theological conviction, shaped by exposure to racial injustice and tested in action, can become a force for resisting systems that dehumanize.
Though his development had limits and unfolded amid difficult ambiguities, Bonhoeffer’s example remains a powerful prompt to Christian and civic communities to resist the scourge of racism with moral clarity and sacrificial solidarity.
One of my professors and mentors was Dr. Paul Lehman, Bonhoeffer’s friend and colleague at Union. He and his wife drove Bonhoeffer to the wharf to board the ship back to Germany.
Rev. Lehman seared Bonhoeffer’s theology into my brain.
What he called “the intersection of Politics and Prayer”.
I know presidents have always put their stamp’ on the tone and direction of the country through their policies and actions. I‘ve lived under every president since Truman. But this document - this blueprint for altering the entire world order, it seems to me, could never have been formulated without the decades long push towards the unitary executive theory, topped off with the SCOTUS decision in Trump v The United States, giving him carte blanche to tear this country down. I hope Sam Alito is proud of their handiwork; it isn’t every day you can destroy 250 years of the blood, sweat and tears of millions of people (and their sins and frailties). That’s one for the history books alright…..
And King Trump has the backing of 2000 billionaires. And thousands of street Thugs. And male fanatical religious nuts that belive you can rape your female spouse. As a 85 year old pessimist I see little light.
The light at the end of the movie
"All is Lost."
I believe females must lead the charge to destroy Trump and the like.
Now and the future:
Given the current Administration's Putin, FSB methodology will the
Et tu Brutus acts be poison or falling from tall buildings for the "king or My turn followers"?
Truly sickening. When I read HCR's letter from last night, my stomach went sour. My father was a career diplomat who served under several presidents. I'm so grateful he is not here to witness this travesty. My only hope is that from the ashes of our country's reputation, a new, more vigorous democracy will emerge with restructured guardrails.
That was me last night, close to midnight - referencing your first statement- and I had not read about the NSS until that moment… I knew a flood of news about it would hit the next day, today, and this analysis, Lucian, the racism woven through every aspect, plus the transactional mentality about larger countries ruling over smaller, being granted “business opportunities” to plunder, if we’re honest, within the three spheres of influence, Putin‘s ideal… The America First isolationism actually translates to us not taking on the role Putin would assign, but then we have the treasonous Witkoff/Kushner meetings in Moscow, disguised as peace talks but in reality selling out Ukraine for business deals… Oh, glory be the day when we know we have vanquished all of this!
Thank you, Lucian, for your analysis here. It’s ugly stuff, but you can’t solve a problem till you spread it out and look at it, expose it to sunlight! You’ve done that. Ugly stuff for sure. Spread the word! Amplify!
Thanks for your writing.
I just saw a Meidas Touch report about drones in France, visiting or hovering over their nuclear submarine center… Testing the waters re. strength and boundaries of NATO… Suspected Russian drones. Then Ben M. also called this an assassination attempt, that Zelenskyy was flying into Ireland to speak at a meeting and drones showed up, but his plane arrived early so if there was any insidious plot afoot, it was foiled… He remarked that we’re not seeing these stories in mainstream media, and I’ll say that seems to be the case… Just putting this out here in case somebody in the comment section or perhaps Lucian himself has something to say. Really scary stuff going on…… Protecting Zelenskyy is a high order of business because it’s clear he’s a target…
I see these stories in the defense and aerospace media. The EU needs to get tough on these drone incidents. Start shooting them down with shotguns and other weapons. Keep up patrols around installations and airports 24/7 in an attempt to deter or capture the operators. The only thing Putin respects is a smack in the face.
https://www.meidasplus.com/p/europe-sounds-the-alarm-as-the-united?utm_campaign=post&open=false
Thank you, Linda Weide, for the particular broadcast.
John, I'm with you. I look at history as waves of ups and downs. We are now in a down. Can we get up? I have faith that we can. We cannot give up. Vote. March. Yell. Organize. We can do it!
I agree that when the people get rid of this regime, and by regime I don't just mean Trump, they will need to also change the way elections work, they should be financed by a fixed share funded by our tax dollars and not bought by billionaires.
Here is the take on the new Foreign Security Policy by Ben Meidas.
https://www.meidasplus.com/p/europe-sounds-the-alarm-as-the-united?r=f0qfn&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Here is the take from War on the Rocks. Wikipedia says. "Ryan Evans, a former think tanker and Defense Department civil servant, founded WOTR in 2013 as a podcast. It launched as a full fledged publication in July of that year. He sought to re-center experienced voices in a media landscape that was becoming increasingly dominated by more mass-media oriented content and ubiquitous clickbait." https://warontherocks.com/2025/12/ten-jolting-takeaways-from-trumps-new-national-security-strategy/?__s=f1j6y10gd2od1sk6ydr1&utm_source=drip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Ten+Jolting+Takeaways+from+Trump%E2%80%99s+New+National+Security+Strategy
Here is the take from The West Point History Professor. Part 1 of 2.
https://open.substack.com/pub/thewestpointhistoryprofessor/p/trumps-confrontation-with-europe?r=f0qfn&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Lucian - did you forget about the Central Park Five? It isn’t just the birther lunacy. It isn’t just torch bearers in Charlottesville. It isn’t just l calling Somali’s “Garbage”. It goes several steps deeper than that.
For those who don't remember — within two weeks of the crime, DJT took out a full-page ad in the NYT urging that the Central Park Five be executed. This was more than a year before they were tried & convicted. DJT has never apologized for this, even after the convictions were vacated in 2002 and civil suits brought multi-million dollar judgments in favor of the wrongly accused, tried & convicted.
Most of us remember
Trumpism means never having to say you’re sorry, (Apologies to “Love Story”)
We remember.
The only ones who remember are those of us of a certain age...that age also being one of hope in America. We are a fading breed. The Greatest Generation is no longer. The Boomers who directed change are elderly. And the younger generations are fixed to their devices for "alternative facts".
Mark, I remember well. Sickening portent of things that have come to pass.
Some of the Exonerated Five were neighbors and little brothers of friends of mine.
The Old South never died. It just hid.
First, get Stephen Miller out of there. The felon is not cognizant of what that report represents. Dollars to rubles, Stephen Miller is, most likely played a major rôle in its creation. He's not "protected," start investigating him.
This is the malignant spewings of Project 2025. Not the Congress of the United States. It is the drivel of a totally mad man who is being played for the abject fool he has always been. It is not law, it never will be. If the No Kings movement has showed us anything, it is that there are more of us than there are of them. And they will overplay their hand. They can and will lose. The nodding off nabob of a president may choose to publish his and Stephen Miller's fevered wet dream but it doesn't mean we have to accept it. An awful lot of members of Congress won't. No one should. I won't. This man lives and thrives on our capitulating as he decays before our eyes.
As Shakespeare said, "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,"
Write your Congress Critters and raise pure bloody hell. And....
Don't give up the ship.
Carol-ann, your comments exactly reflect my thinking about Herr Miller's role in this horrifying document. Given his massive loss of brain neurons, Felon47 isn't remotely capable of authoring this piece of crap. Miller and some of the Project 2025 creators are clearly behind this. Sadly, Miller will be protected by Felon47, so we should expect to see him around as long as the Felon lives.
I have been pointing out Stevan Millers malign influence for a long time, but this stinks of the forgotten Stevan who slinks off to Europe after upstaging his Highness and continues to poison the political atmosphere world wide from behind the curtain and several layers of shirts.
Stephen Miller is a coward, a misfit, and a very unhappy man who knows only one thing - making or trying to make the majority of people as miserable and nasty as he is. To subject those he considers lesser humans than he is to be taken out of his world. it won't work, he is repugnant and truth to tell, not that bright. And he is not protected by advice and consent. He is a lowly servant who can be replaced. It will happen. It most likely is starting. Write your reps in Congress and urge them to put him to the test.
Miller is a modern day Judas.
That would assume that he was once on the right side of
the cause. He never was. Judas sold out, Miller is where he wants to be, he bought in.
Let's stick with actual history: he's a modern-day Benedict Arnold, betraying the United States of America!
I don't agree. What enemy is he aiding andf abetting? Unless you consider Trump a traitor and then I will ask you what enemy is Trump aiding and abetting?
He is "aiding and abetting" Putin and various other dictators whom he greatly admires and wishes to emulate.
Congress and the courts will fall in line. It's all about power. They have won and we have lost. I've never been so terrified.
There is an excellent chance that Congress will NOT fall in line. The lower courts will NOT fall in line.
Being terrified is exactly what they want. His approval rating - and that means his Cabinet is the lowest in recorded history. You want to give up? You know, if the colonists had done that, we would all be singing God Save the KIng. Sorry, they have not won and thinking they have? That puts us back in the Eeyore brigade and Is capitulating. That makes not sense at all. That kind of attitude is not what this country was built on. Our motto is not "we are terrified." At the time of the Revolution if was "E Pluribus Unum." Out of many, one. We are still that way. They have not won - because they are not "many," they are a few and weak. Yes, they are weak.
It's the anniversary of Pearl Harbor - the country was terrified ,it was grim. Our Pacific fleet took one hellluva blow, we lost over 2400 personnel and for awhile, our major fighting capacity - we fought back. We won.
It is not all about power.....it is about looking past the lies and the liars. No, they have not won. But some people will fall for the propaganda, won't they?
Don't talk to me about not giving up or about falling for propaganda. I'm 75 and have been fighting for social justice for 60 years. I am also a student of history, and what is happening here in this country full of vicious, ignorant assholes is what happened in Germany. Too many of these fools will love the idea of America ruling the world and assaulting the people they hate. Next up: leaving NATO and the UN - "spheres of influence". Then threats to attack Canada and Greenland, probably by waving nukes around. We are in the hands of madmen who will stop at nothing - and yes, it is about power.
I will talk to you about giving up and falling for propaganda when your own words ,"They have won and we have lost." exhibit that very sentiment. Your words, not mine.
So glad to know all that you have done. And now you're giving up. Benjamin Franklin was 70 when he signed the Declaration of Independence. Good thing he didn't fold, isn't it?
And of course, you have been in touch with your representatives regularly to voice your displeasure and ask them what they are doing to stop it? Aren't you?
I contact my senators and rep every week. They are Dems and are on the right side but can do virtually nothing. We are back in the 1930s and the Nazis are in power, right here, right now. Trump has declared war on all dissent. The Supreme Court will give Trump anything he wants.
He is a sick, demented old man. He not vigorous, he is not cognizant. One can not compare him or his cabal with Hitler. He tries to mimic Hitler, but again.....one more time HIS APPROVAL RATINGS ARE THE LOWEST EVER RECORDED. HITLER WAS POPULAR! NO, THIS ONLY BECOMES LIKE NAZI GERMANY IF, IF PROPLE ALLOW IT TO BECOME NAZI GERMANY.
We fight, protest, talk, sue, demonstrate, we win. Abdicating?
Have I made my point?
No! Don't say these things and do not ever give up - that's suicide pure and simple. Fight back - really we haven't even started to fight in this country and that's the big f'n problem - get off your couch and do something anything but fight back!
Excellent
It’s endlessly mind numbing that Stephen Miller is a Jewish Nazi.
Well said and thanks for your insight! Stay strong.
I’ve read that Alexander Dugin had a hand in writing this.
You mean Putin's Hoover Institute lap dog? Interesting isn't it? Quacks and cranks who would slip and fall out of windows in Russia are welcomed here with open arms by Stanford's "esteemed" right-wing and seditious Hoover Institute.
An anti-American immigrant, is one of the leaders of those who wishes to annihilate democracy and the country of Ukraine. Funny, being white, being an over bloated male with the credentials of a traitor and the backing of flaccid mendacious lickspittles - here's looking at you Stephen Miller; Pete, not sober yet, Hegseth; craven, adulterous, puppy murderer Noem; and the entire DOJ - the government of the United States cowers and grovels before his vituperative rantings. Everything this nation has fought against for the last 80 years.
Anyone calling for his deportation? No? HUH. White, male, and muttering with a split tongue, what more can a bunch of seditious rabble rousers ask for?
Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) coined, I think, by Kellyanne Conway during Trump 1 is a real 1984ish tactic used by fascists to demoralize and exhaust their opponents. "Flood the zone" with extreme comments, policies and actions, the consequences for which have a long path to future accountability.
As an ALPHA leader you excite your supporters and depress your opponents by making them "see" the darkness of your world view.
We must not become discouraged or depressed by TDS.
We must not give up hope for bringing back Freedom, Equality and Humanity, the ideals on which America was conceived and founded. We can reverse the terrible policies of the Trump Terror.
Reread the Declaration of Independence, a doctrine still worth fighting for.
RESIST! ORGANIZE! TAKE AMERICA BACK!
Foe some reason I thought TDS was coined by the left to describe MAGATs. I only recently learned it was actually coined by the right.
As usual it's all projection with the magats...they are the deranged ones for sure!
Trump's racism was learned at his father's knee.
Once he joined the family business in the early 1970s, after skating through Penn, Donald participated in the racial discrimination that blocked black applicants from renting apartments in their buildings. The DOJ sued both Fred Sr. & Donald Trump for civil rights violations and, IIRC, the Trumps settled out of court..
Donald has long held & expressed anti-semitic attitudes and stereotypes. "I only want short men who wear yarmulkes counting my money" is one of the earliest & most-widely quoted.
FWIW, the notorious Charlottesville rally & march took place in _2017._ Donald's soundbite about "good people on both sides" was uttered within the first six months of his first inauguration.
Please excuse me but there is no way I can read this yet again. What I’ve already read has made me so thoroughly sick and disgusted and the fact that this has happened so close to Pearl Harbor Day makes it doubly so. I didn’t think I could hate someone so deeply as I’m finding I’m hating everyone associated with this abomination of a regime. Believe me when I say that hate is not an emotion that comes readily as I believe it eats into the being of the one who is doing the hating. However, I’m willing to risk it. I’m too old to worry about it now. That scumbag who calls himself any sort of a president is a sell-out to this country and every man, woman and child in it and so deserves all the opprobrium and vilification that he has worked so hard to earn. Same goes for everyone who created the opportunity for him to regain his foothold into that office. Our children and grandchildren, for that matter, none of the future children deserve this evil that we have turned loose in the world. We’ve broken it so now we have to try to fix it.
So, it took the NSS report for you to say we've lost the leadership of the free world? Honestly, I thought his speech at the UN in September was his concession speech. Everything he has done since he took the oath of office again has been to destroy the wealth and power of the United States. And he wants white births? Back in 2017 I was so concerned about the climate crisis that I told my son I'd be glad if he got married, but I did not want grandchildren. This was me, who had been collecting baby clothes for a few years already. Now he calls the climate crisis a fraud. He's the fraud. I don't think my blond, blue-eyed son will have a child. Another loss for t. Of the five babies who have been born on my block, frankly, to my horror, two have been born to a Jewish couple, one to a lesbian couple, and two born to a Muslim couple. I fear for their future, and t will not get want he wants from this street. My ancestors moved to this continent between 1633 and 1754, and have fought in most of its wars since the French and Indian War. No one in his family has ever served in the military and he himself is a convicted criminal. He is determined to destroy this country, and probably this planet, and he may very well succeed.
My ancestors too have been here since the 17th century, and fought in the Revolution, the Civil War, WWI and WWII. One of my uncles fought at Guadalcanal with the First Marine Division, the other landed in Normandy on D-Day. It makes me violently ill to see this trash destroying the country and getting away with it. Do not count on Congress, the courts, or the military to save us.
Thank you.
Let's go from the old sound-on-film ratio of 1.375:1 (military service) to Cinerama (every- or anything). It's never been documented that anyone in the T***p family has served their country, the United States of America, in any capacity whatsoever, not Peace Corps, VISTA, not even volunteering to serve meals for a couple of hours at a local Thanksgiving or Christmas free food operation. Nothing. Okay, how about paying someone else to do it for them? DT47 boasted that he didn't pay any federal income tax. He said it showed he's "smart." Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.: "I like paying taxes. With them, I buy civilization." You want the best visual realization of T***p's "level" of civilization? Do you remember the opening sequence in the movie "2001," where the humanoid ape creature discovers how to use a weapon to kill? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WufKsOhkTL8
Ellen, your passion, intelligence and eloquence jump off the page! I'm right behind you and so are millions and millions of others! We will not bend the knee! We will not falter; we will fight as long and as hard as we must and we will prevail! There is no other acceptable outcome! Never forget the words of Patrick Henry! It may come to that, but not yet!
Well said!
Pete
I’m with you, sister, and I hope our demographic shit will be toward the color brown.
There are more of us than them, though there are a lot more "thems" than I'd realized. So, everyone, please get active with a democracy group, if you're not already. I love the strategic actions that Indivisible offers and encourages with its 2500+ grassroots groups across the country. www.indivisible.org
There are also other organizations that need your work, wealth, and wisdom. And courage, persistence, and joy. It's going to take all of us! Together, we can do this.
Well, we at least now know it is no longer a secret. One of the major political parties in this nation is all in on a racist and exclusionary future for our people. The GOP by embracing Trump/MAGA and now sitting idly by while this manifesto is publishled as "official" government dictat has fully declared it to be the party of white nationalism. And, no amount of dancing around this document;'s intent and direction should be allowed to help Republicans escape what it means come election time.
I would recommend the Democratic Party immediately begin production of a 30 minute teleivised presentation telling the public what this policy will mean in real terms to any American if you are not white and a practicing Christian. Second and third class citizenship, exclusion from Constitutionally guaranteed rights and, yes, a permanent seat at the back of the bus IF you are allowed on the bus at all.
The GOP will attempt to dodge this travesty and given the sorry state of both broadcast and print jounalism in this nation it will be buried off the front pages. It will be up to the Democrats to keep it alive as living proof of the now obvious plan to turn this nation into a fascist homeland for White Christians at the expense of all the rest of our divese population. That is what is planned. Only an aggressive and widespread information campaing on both tradiitonal and digital media can get the word out. We just went to DefCon 1 on our democracy. Someone needs to ring the alarm bells loud and clear.
I agree that the Democrats need to broadly & continuously publicize this, but I doubt that the older Democrats who've been in office for long terms will do much to help. They don't have a good track record so far in this administration! I'm 69 years old, but I'm convinced that we Democrats need new, younger leadership! BH
Just one thing, they want this country to be for white and practicing Christian males. The only role women have is to serve and if your white to have babies.
Call/write your elected representatives, get out and hold a sign, raise your voice, and most importantly spend your $$ where it has the most impact against the American oligarchy. That last point is the one they understand, above all else.
My Democrat senator betrayed all of us here in Western PA by siding with Republicans as soon as he was able to talk after his stroke.
He’s not taking our calls. That would be Judas Fetterman.
I live in PA too. Fetterman and his videos with McCormick are disgusting. In reply to my messages to both their offices that they should stop this "war" with Venezuela, they both support bombing boats because they think it is saving us from drugs. McCormick went to West Point, I guess he skipped the day they taught about the oath to the constitution.
Everything Trump touches dies, including Democracy in America…
Not yet if all of us have something to do with it.
I turn, again, to Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Bonhoeffer is remembered as a theologian, pastor, and resistor of Nazism whose moral courage culminated in participation in plots against Hitler and ultimately in his execution.
Less often emphasized, yet crucial to understanding his ethical formation, is how Bonhoeffer encountered and named racism—both the virulent antisemitism of Nazi Germany and the racial injustice he witnessed abroad—and how that shaped his convictions about solidarity, discipleship, and the church’s public responsibility.
Bonhoeffer’s year at Union Theological Seminary in New York City (1930–31) left a lasting impression. There he worshiped and taught in the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, led by Adam Clayton Powell, Sr., and befriended Black seminarians. He contrasted the restrained, lecture-like sermons he had known with the passionate, communal preaching he found in Harlem—sermons that addressed sin, grace, suffering, and hope in tangible terms. That encounter exposed him to a Christianity that understood Jesus as present with the oppressed and that linked faith to concrete resistance. It gave him a sharper sense of what racialized suffering looked like in daily life and furnished an ethic of neighbor-love that could not be comfortably domesticated by a racially exclusive national church.
Back in Germany, Bonhoeffer witnessed how National Socialism weaponized biology, myth, and ecclesial complicity to erase Jews from the life of the nation and the church. He rejected the “German Christian” movement’s theological accommodation of racial ideology and argued publicly for the church’s responsibility to stand with those excluded by the state. His writings and sermons from the 1930s criticize attempts to nationalize the church and to theologically justify persecution; he helped found and support the Confessing Church, which resisted state efforts to remake Protestant Christianity into a tool of racial nationalism.
Bonhoeffer’s critique of antisemitism was not merely political but theological: to follow Christ meant to bear responsibility for the other, to refuse identity politics that made nation or race the ultimate referent, and to let the church’s allegiance to Jesus interrupt loyalties that sanctioned injustice. He denounced theological positions that assimilated the gospel to the Volk and emphasized discipleship as costly solidarity with the oppressed.
As the Nazi regime intensified persecution, Bonhoeffer’s ethic moved from prophetic denunciation to active solidarity. He counseled Jews, helped facilitate escapes, and later joined resistance circles that contemplated tyrannicide as a tragic, last-resort measure to halt mass murder. His willingness to risk—and ultimately to share—the fate of victims signified a moral horizon in which resistance to racist state policy required bodily identification and sacrificial action. In prison, his reflections on “being for others” and the costly nature of Christian love framed racism not as a remote social pathology but as a moral condition demanding repentance, reorientation of communal life, and readiness to act even at great personal cost.
For Bonhoeffer, abstract confession of Christ was insufficient without concrete righteousness toward the neighbor.
Contemporary scholars both celebrate and critically examine Bonhoeffer’s engagement with race. Many emphasize that his time in Harlem helped shape his Christology and ethic of resistance—what some describe as a “Black Jesus” insight—and that encounters with African-American Christianity deepened his sense of solidarity with the oppressed. At the same time, critics note limitations: Bonhoeffer remained a product of his context, and his attention to Jewish suffering developed unevenly; earlier in the 1930s he sometimes absorbed prevailing assumptions before arriving at fuller moral clarity through resistance and suffering.
These critiques complicate his portrait, showing moral growth produced by experience rather than instantaneous perfection, but they do not erase his courage.
Bonhoeffer’s life and thought offer enduring resources for confronting racism today. First, theology must be tested by solidarity: authentic witness takes the form of identifying with and acting for victims of racial oppression.
Second, worship and formation matter: encountering communities that embody prophetic resistance—as Bonhoeffer did in Harlem—can transform theological imagination and ethical commitments.
Third, resistance can require costly action: prophetic speech alone may be inadequate when institutions collude in violence, and moral responsibility can demand sacrifice.
Finally, self-critique is essential: moral agents must recognize their own social conditioning and allow experience and reflection to deepen their commitments to justice.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s struggle against Nazism and his encounters with racism—both in the United States and in Germany—produced an ethic that refuses theological complicity with racial ideologies and insists that discipleship entails concrete solidarity with the oppressed. His life shows how theological conviction, shaped by exposure to racial injustice and tested in action, can become a force for resisting systems that dehumanize.
Though his development had limits and unfolded amid difficult ambiguities, Bonhoeffer’s example remains a powerful prompt to Christian and civic communities to resist the scourge of racism with moral clarity and sacrificial solidarity.
One of my professors and mentors was Dr. Paul Lehman, Bonhoeffer’s friend and colleague at Union. He and his wife drove Bonhoeffer to the wharf to board the ship back to Germany.
Rev. Lehman seared Bonhoeffer’s theology into my brain.
What he called “the intersection of Politics and Prayer”.
I am moved by this. Thank you for reading.
Actually the word he used was “conjunction” of politics and prayer.
A subtle but perhaps significant difference.
David, THANK YOU for this brilliant reminder of Bonhoeffer’s heroism. He was a spiritual warrior, a model for us now.
You are more than welcome.
I know presidents have always put their stamp’ on the tone and direction of the country through their policies and actions. I‘ve lived under every president since Truman. But this document - this blueprint for altering the entire world order, it seems to me, could never have been formulated without the decades long push towards the unitary executive theory, topped off with the SCOTUS decision in Trump v The United States, giving him carte blanche to tear this country down. I hope Sam Alito is proud of their handiwork; it isn’t every day you can destroy 250 years of the blood, sweat and tears of millions of people (and their sins and frailties). That’s one for the history books alright…..
This racist idiot should make every rational being vomit. How will we (and I mean every American) survive 3 more years? I try but hope fails me.
And King Trump has the backing of 2000 billionaires. And thousands of street Thugs. And male fanatical religious nuts that belive you can rape your female spouse. As a 85 year old pessimist I see little light.
The light at the end of the movie
"All is Lost."
I believe females must lead the charge to destroy Trump and the like.
Now and the future:
Given the current Administration's Putin, FSB methodology will the
Et tu Brutus acts be poison or falling from tall buildings for the "king or My turn followers"?
He isn't king. Just stop.
I agree
only in his mind
So, Cal, you're putting it on us? Well, I've suggested secession, but no one seems interested.
I give up on men!
It could come to that, but it would set off a civil war. They'll never let their cash cows go without a fight.
Heartbreaking