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Dog Whistles


“Late Term Abortion”

The Washington Post points out there is no precise medical or legal definition of “late-term,” and “many doctors and scientists avoid that language, calling it imprecise and misleading.”

The Daily Beast also notes that only 1.3 percent of abortions are performed after 21 weeks of gestation, and the idea that a woman can get an abortion moments before giving birth is “not how medical care works.”

The use of “dog whistles” aka “coded” labels has been common for many years but until recently has been out of the mainstream of conversation. The current administration aided by a neer do well Congress has brought these “coded” statements and words to common use. Along with this common usage the administration has trashed agreements put in place to prevent war and improve trade. Tariffs (taxes) put in place to offset the “tax” policy that was supposed to benefit everyday Americans and threats to bad actors who were in a state of containment with the approval of our now alienated allies. The administration has in a few years undermined our economy, foreign affairs and put us on an isolation footing all because of “dog whistles”.

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The Truth About Tariffs!


USA TODAY

Americans, not other countries, paid Trump’s tariffs in 2025

Daniel de Visé, USA TODAY

Sun, February 15, 2026 at 1:42 PM CST

American consumers and companies paid nearly 90% of the cost of President Donald Trump’s tariffs through late 2025, according to a new report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

The study adds to a growing body of evidence indicating American families pay a price for Trump’s import taxes, despite the president’s assertion that the financial burden falls entirely on other countries.

Trump’s tariffs equated to a tax increase of $1,000 per household in 2025, according to a Feb. 6 report from the nonpartisan Tax Foundation. Households are expected to pay another $1,300 in 2026.

The tariffs are the largest U.S. tax increase since 1993, according to the Tax Foundation analysis. Tariffs are a tax − but on whom?

On the campaign trail in September 2024, promoting tariffs, Trump told supporters, “It’s not going to be a cost to you, it’s going to be a cost to another country.”

Trump repeated the claim in a Jan. 30 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, writing, “The data shows that the burden, or ‘incidence,’ of the tariffs has fallen overwhelmingly on foreign producers and middlemen, including large corporations that are not from the U.S.”

The New York Fed study, published Feb. 12, suggests otherwise.

President Trump’s import tariffs are mostly a tax on Americans, a new report finds.

Through August 2025, 94% of the import taxes fell on American companies and consumers, according to the study. By November, the “pass-through” rate had dipped to 86%.

“In sum, U.S. firms and consumers continue to bear the bulk of the economic burden of the high tariffs imposed in 2025,” the researchers wrote.

“The study by the New York Fed confirms what most economists expected – U.S. consumers and businesses pay most of the costs from the Trump tariffs,” said Wayne Winegarden, senior fellow in economics at the Pacific Research Institute, a free-market think tank.

The Wall Street Journal seized on the report in a Feb. 13 editorial, opining, “No matter how often President Trump insists his tariffs are taxing foreigners to enrich the U.S., economic studies keep showing that Americans actually pay the bill.”

Through late 2025, tariffs added about 0.7 percentage points to the U.S. inflation rate, according to a November paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research. In other words, without tariffs, the inflation rate for September might have dropped from 3% to 2.3%.

Tariffs have elevated prices on many imported items

Trump’s tariffs have inflated prices across a host of imported items, an effect visible in the January inflation report. The price of household furnishings and supplies rose 3.8% from January 2025 to January 2026. Furniture and bedding prices rose 4%. Prices for dishes and flatware rose 5%.

Tariffs are complicated. The actual costs are typically split between exporters in one country and importers in another.

The New York Fed provided this example:

Imagine a foreign exporter charges $100 for a product, and the U.S. government imposes a 25% tariff. If the exporter doesn’t lower the price, the importer pays a $25 tariff, increasing the total price to $125. That means 100% of the tax falls on American consumers and companies.

In the same example, imagine the exporter responds to the tariff by lowering the price to $80. Now, the importer pays a $20 tariff, and the total import price remains $100. The exporter effectively absorbs all of the tax.

As it turned out, most exporters didn’t lower prices much in response to Trump’s tariffs. A 94% pass-through rate means the typical foreign exporter responded to a 10% tariff by reducing prices 0.6%, or 6 cents for every $10.

As exporters and importers absorbed the impact of Trump’s tariffs, their impact softened at every step. Some exporters trimmed prices. American companies found cheaper products from other countries or absorbed part of the tariff themselves.

In the end, roughly 20% of Trump’s tariffs reached actual consumers, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research paper.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Americans paid the tab for Trump’s tariffs in 2025

All Been Said Before But Nothing Happens!


The United States has again reached a crossroad where good evil meet. The last time much like this one it was about economics- granted that there were and still are personal freedoms involved, and a national split occurred aka a “CIVIL WAR”. There are still remnants of that event remaining after 100 plus years, but many Americans have thankfully moved and some unfortunately have not! Now we have one if not the worst national leaders since Andrew Jackson. The difference is that we as a country have grown up intellectually (mostly) but that intellect has sometimes been rooted in the same biases from long ago. There has been a coopting of certain words and sayings as being Anti American, leftist, rightist or any of several “buzzwords” and sayings. One of the most recent is “DEI” also known as “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion”. I have tried hard to define or find a definition of this as a Radical, left Wing, right wing or Racist trope. It is nowhere close to the names or definitions used behind closed doors of our current Government. The current “Caligula” is as evil and self-centered as the original but multiplied by a cohort of sycophantic power grabbers who will be remembered in history for their evil deeds. How many can name or spell the names of the Nazi perpetrators of the death camp activities that led to millions being murdered? There are similarities to several of those activities to present day that gather people across the country, send them to other cities, state, and counties at the expense of the taxpayer (US!). Now there is a move to create camps (alligator Alcatraz, in Florida) that can house “illegal” migrants. It should be remembered that many migrants work here seasonally only, and many are awaiting asylum hearings but need to work to provide for their families yet they are swept up in ICE raids and incarcerated without due process.

Bottomless Pit of Greed and Stupidity


The U.S. has always been the bellwether for other nations is spite of our past and missteps, now we are looked at with jaundiced eyes from our long-time world partners. Our long-time adversaries are becoming more aggressive as they laugh and shake hands with our mediocre state department. Our titular leader is little more than an adult with infantile thoughts expecting the country to follow him no matter what. There have been leaders like this for ages and all of them underestimated the public’s ability to accept their abuses of power. All despots fail spectacularly!

Greed-Stupidity-political incompetence

Trampling out the vintage= fighting evil


The few words recognizable from the “battle Hymn of the Republic” tell us that we need to keep fighting against the evils of the current Politics and administration. If your elected officials (the ones you voted for) are standing up for you, the next step is vote them out whenever the next election cycles arrive. The voters need to get out of their own way and vote for people who will work for you. You should keep in mind that electing anyone new is a crap shoot, but we have to keep playing since it’s the only game in town, especially if you are unwilling to get informed on facts.

ABEL MEEROPOL


Abel Meeropol

Born     February 10, 1903

New York City, U.S.

Died     October 29, 1986 (aged 83)

Longmeadow, Massachusetts, U.S.

Other names  Lewis Allan

Occupations  Actor, songwriter

Known for         “Strange Fruit”

“The House I Live In”

Spouse               Anne Shaffer​

​(m. 1931; died 1973)​

Abel Meeropol (February 10, 1903 – October 29, 1986)[1] was an American songwriter and poet whose works were published under his pseudonym Lewis Allan. He wrote the poem and musical setting of “Strange Fruit” (1937), which was recorded by Billie Holiday.

Early life

Meeropol was born in 1903 to Ukrainian-Jewish immigrants in the Bronx, New York.[2][3][4] He graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School in 1921 (his classmate Countee Cullen graduated in 1922) and earned a B.A. from City College of New York and an M.A. from Harvard University. Meeropol taught English at DeWitt Clinton for 17 years.[5] During his tenure as a high school teacher, Meeropol taught author and racial justice advocate James Baldwin.[6]

Song writing and poetry

The sheet music for ‘Vote I. for Ben’, written for Communist New York City Council candidate Benjamin J. Davis Jr., 1943

Meeropol wrote the anti-lynching poem “Strange Fruit” (1937), first published as “Bitter Fruit” in a teacher union publication. He later set it to music. The song was recorded and performed by Billie Holiday and Nina Simone.[7] Holiday notes in the book Lady Sings the Blues that she co-wrote the music to the song with Meeropol and Sonny White. The writers David Margolick and Hilton Als dismissed that claim in their work Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song, writing that hers was “an account that may set a record for most misinformation per column inch”. When challenged, Holiday—whose autobiography had been ghostwritten by William Dufty—claimed, “I ain’t never read that book.”[8] Meeropol wrote numerous other poems and songs, including the Frank Sinatra and Josh White hit “The House I Live In”.[9] He also wrote the libretto of Robert Kurka’s opera The Good Soldier Schweik, which was premiered in 1958 by the New York City Opera.

According to his adopted son Robert Meeropol, the songs “Strange Fruit” and “The House I Live In”, along with the Peggy Lee hit “Apples, Peaches and Cherries”, provided most of the royalty income of the family. “Apples, Peaches and Cherries” was translated into French by Sacha Distel and became a number one hit in France under the title “Scoubidou”. Meeropol filed a copyright infringement lawsuit over Distel’s plagiarism as Distel initially had claimed the song as his. After the case was settled, Meeropol started receiving the royalties.[10]

Meeropol published his work under the pseudonym of “Lewis Allan” in memory of the names of his two stillborn children.

Little Golden Story about An Ass.


Trumplestilskin went to Washington riding on a Jackass (and became one)

Upon arrival stabled the ass in the Whitehouse east wing

When the east wing became soiled by the ass, Trumpel tore it down

Trumpel the let the ass out into the Rose garden, once that was destroyed by the ass, Trumpel paved the Rose Garden over.

Trumpel assembled his cabinet from the folks he thought looked good on TV but would kiss his ass on demand.

Trumpel started or attacked several countries (and States) over perceived problems that threatened “national Security” without Congressional approval (ass backwards action)

Trumpel “tariffed” long time trade partners for no gain and made asses of the people who actually paid the Tariffs , (The voters of the United States) while mightily touting how much cash the government and the country is making. Again making asses out of the Congress (the law makers) and the voters.

The gilded cage made and envisioned by a Orange sprayed egotist is fading like the Faux gold created by Trumpelstilskin as his “Midas touch” dissolves into pyrite!

One reminder from the Bible (if true) the Israelites made an idol of Gold while Moses was on Mt. Sinai and brought condemnation on them all.

Trumplestilskin’s Consistent, inconsistencies.


WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Thursday pardoned former NFL players Joe Klecko, Nate Newton, Jamal Lewis, Travis Henry and the late Billy Cannon on Thursday. 

The pardons were announced by White House “pardon czar” Alice Marie Johnson. 

“As football reminds us, excellence is built on grit, grace, and the courage to rise again. So is our nation,” Johnson wrote on social media as she thanked Trump for his “continued commitment to second chances.”

Johnson said Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones “personally” shared the news with Newton, who won three Super Bowls with the team.

The White House did not return a request for comment Thursday night on why Trump pardoned the players.

Klecko, a former star for the New York Jets, pleaded guilty to perjury in 1993 after lying to a federal grand jury that was investigating insurance fraud. A defensive lineman, Klecko was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2023. He was a two-time Associated Press All-Pro and a four-time Pro Bowler.

Newton, an offensive lineman, pleaded guilty to a federal drug trafficking charge in 2002 after authorities discovered $10,000 in his pickup truck as well as 175 pounds of marijuana in an accompanying car driven by another man. Newton was a two-time All-Pro and a six-time Pro Bowler.

Lewis, formerly of the Baltimore Ravens and the Cleveland Browns, pleaded guilty in a drug case in which he used a cell phone to try to set up a drug deal not long after he was the fifth pick in the 2000 NFL draft. The running back was named an All-Pro once, a Pro Bowler once and the 2003 AP Offensive Player of the Year.

What about Colin Kaepernick who did nothing wrong!

After 4 Months, Elon Musk Learned What Every American Already Knows, Says Ross Gerber: ‘No One In Government Wants To Cut Any Budget’


Benzinga

This is a bit outdated but content is still relevant MA

Adrian Volenik

Mon, June 2, 2025 at 3:30 PM CDT3 min read

Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO and former Trump administration adviser Elon Musk is learning a hard truth about Washington, according to investor Ross Gerber. “After 4 months Elon learned what every natural born American already knows. No one in the government wants to ‘cut’ any budget,” Gerber wrote in a May 24 post on X.

Musk has spent the past four months heading up the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, a controversial cost-cutting initiative tied to mass layoffs and agency shutdowns. But even Musk now appears to be frustrated with Washington’s spending habits. On Thursday, he wrote on X that his “scheduled time” as a special government employee had come to an end.

Musk Criticizes Trump’s Big Spending Bill

In a recent CBS News interview, Musk slammed the Trump administration’s flagship tax and spending package—dubbed the “Big, Beautiful Bill”—saying it “increases the budget deficit, not just decreases.” He warned that the legislation “undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing” and criticized the government for ignoring the need for real cuts.

The bill, which passed the House and is now before the Senate, would boost spending on defense and border security, extend tax cuts, and slash clean energy and health care programs. Nonpartisan analysts estimate it could add trillions to the national debt.

“I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful,” Musk told CBS. “But I don’t know if it can be both.”

From Political Ally To Cautious Critic

Musk has been a vocal supporter of President Donald Trump and poured over $250 million into his 2024 campaign. But in recent weeks, he’s pulled back from the political spotlight. During a Tesla earnings call, he said he’d reduce his time with DOGE starting in May to focus more on the company. “The large slug of work necessary to get the DOGE team in place… is mostly done,” Musk explained.

He added in a CNBC interview that he would now be at the White House just “a couple days every few weeks.”

Elon Musk Is Realizing He Made a Huge Mistake

Futurism

Meanwhile, Tesla is dealing with real-world consequences. European sales of Tesla vehicles fell 49% in April, even as overall electric vehicle sales rose 28%, according to data from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association. Analysts blame a mix of factors, including Musk’s political activity, factory shutdowns, and an aging vehicle lineup.

Diminishing Impact Of DOGE

Musk has touted DOGE as a trillion-dollar cost-saving initiative, though watchdogs and fact-checkers have questioned its savings claims. So far, the agency claims $175 billion in savings—a figure under dispute.

Musk posted last week that while DOGE “has and will do great work to postpone the day of bankruptcy of America,” he believes the government’s “profligacy” means that only radical gains in productivity can truly save the country. He said accelerating GDP growth is now essential, possibly hinting at his push for humanoid robots to boost economic output.

Economist Peter Schiff, chief economist and global strategist at Europac.com, dismissed the impact of DOGE, writing on X: “Unfortunately I think DOGE was too little, too late to really move the needle on a sovereign debt and dollar crisis. The process has already started.”

Opinion: The voters who believe in MAGA aka DJT, LOTUS,FFLOTUS, have a rude and expensive wakeup call coming. This will affect most Americans depending on their income, the richest will suffer the least.

Trumpelstiltskin


This is a pass through from Substack, there is an offer to follow the attached article, this is totally your option. MA

Somebody Needs to Tell Trump Everybody Is Laughing at Him

His worst fear has already come true.

Mona Charen

Dec 30, 2025

President Donald Trump on Christmas Eve at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida. (Photo by Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP via Getty Images)

IN THE COURSE OF HIS LOSING RACE with the teleprompter during his Oval Office address on December 17, President Trump returned to a theme that obsesses him—respect. Even before his entry into politics, Trump was convinced that “weak” leaders, including Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Obama, were despised by other nations and that the United States was a laughingstock. As of 2016, according to a Washington Post tally, Trump had fumed at least one hundred times that other nations were “laughing at us.” Between 2020 and 2024, he probably exceeded that total, and in fact, even now that Biden is in the rearview mirror, Trump perseverates about how much Biden was scorned by the world.

After a litany of lies and an extra helping of gibberish (“We had men playing in women’s sports, transgender for everybody, crime at record levels with law enforcement and words such as that just absolutely forbidden”), Trump closed with the respect theme:

When the world looks at us next year, let them see a nation that is loyal to its citizens, faithful to its workers, confident to its identity, certain to its destiny, and the envy of the entire globe. We are respected again, like we have never been respected before.

His speechwriters might want to make a note that the word “of” should follow the words “confident” and “certain,” not “to.” And while we’re offering constructive criticism, the president might profit from a little thought experiment.

Suppose you are driving in a foreign country. It’s late at night and you get pulled over by a policeman. After examining your passport and driver’s license, he narrows his eyes, gives his palm a few smacks with his nightstick, and demands a $1,000 bribe to let your infraction go. You might pay the man, but do you come away from this encounter respecting him? Or do you drive off, shaken and angry, concluding that the cop and maybe the whole country is rotten?

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The president seems genuinely not to grasp the difference between respect and fear, and because he has surrounded himself with fawning toadies, there isn’t anyone available to explain it to him. Accordingly, here is my modest effort to do so:

Dear President Trump,

Of all the wrong ideas you hold in your heart—that tariffs are paid by foreigners, that good looks are the chief credential for cabinet offices, that the 2020 election was rigged, that allies are bloodsuckers we’d be better off without—perhaps the most gobsmacking is your cherished notion that people respect you when they kiss your ass.

Sorry, that’s not true. They despise you on two levels. On the first level, because you’ve managed to get elected president, you do have leverage that nearly everyone must grapple with in some fashion. (Think of Volodymyr Zelensky.) That power comes not from you personally but from the great strength of this country, economic, military, and diplomatic. So yes, when you use that leverage to extort lavish praise from people, they will offer it. But they don’t mean a word of it. Not a word. And in their hearts they hate you for demeaning them in this fashion instead of treating them with respect.

The second level of contempt arises from the knowledge—recognized by the whole world, Mr. Trump, except you—that your extravagant need for attention and praise is evidence of your emotional stuntedness. With every renaming of a building you are sending up a signal that screams “I am so insecure!” And here’s the truth: You cannot piggyback on the respect John F. Kennedy earned by slapping your name on the arts center that was named by statute to be his living memorial. Your name may be side by side with his on the marble for now, but in our hearts, we will never respect you. Quite the opposite—for all of your depredations and twice on Sunday for attempting to hijack someone else’s honor.

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It gets worse. It isn’t just that your ravenous hunger for recognition betrays a personality disorder, it’s that your particular style of seeking it really does provoke ridicule—that’s another word for “they’re laughing at us.”

The “Gulf of America”? Musing about absorbing Canada into the United States whether they like it or not? Decorating the Oval Office in a Saddam Hussein aesthetic? Threatening to expropriate Greenland from our ally Denmark? Truly great nations don’t need to prove their manhood by lording it over smaller ones. Imposing tariffs on islands inhabited only by penguins? Panting after a Nobel Peace Prize so flagrantly that you’re claiming to have settled eight wars? In two of those cases, there was no war. In the other six, the conflicts are either ongoing or were largely settled without you. Offering meme coins for sale to the highest bidder? Auctioning off pardons to criminals and leaders on the take? You bet they’re laughing.

Among the specific nations whose contempt you most often cited against other presidents, the go-to was China. China was, in your telling, always gloating about getting one over on Biden, Obama, etc. Well, just in the past few weeks, you have agreed to give China access to high-end microchips that are crucial for commercial and military use (and that were withheld by Biden), and you have held your tongue as China has pressured our ally Japan over its support of Taiwan. You even soft-pedaled the threat from China in your National Security Strategy. A younger Trump might have demanded, ‘What did we get in return?’ Nothing.

Our traditional allies are not always laughing. More often they’re wringing their hands as you luxuriate in the company of international outlaws like Vladimir Putin and Nayib Bukele, and mouth stupendous lies such as that Zelensky started the war with Russia.

In short, there has never been a president who has made the United States less respected than you have. We are, to borrow a phrase, disrespected like never before. Whether your twisted ego can recognize that is open to question, but what is not debatable is that virtually the whole world knows.

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We Were WARNED!!


It appears that we are dupes or dopes(?). FFLOTUS told us what he would do if reelected and we ignored his factual statements on this. WE forgot what he did and tried to do in his previous administration. We forgot the lessons of history from 90 years ago when an authoritarian regime in Europe made the same types of promises prior to and after being elected. These promises were kept to the devastation of most of Europe and millions of lives lost. The current administration is attempting to follow the same kind of track with the assistance of unelected, uninformed businesspeople (who by many accounts are not very good at what they do in their real jobs?). The “so called” Red States have been deceived in thinking the administration will do great thing for them, however any actions that affect the population at large does not discriminate in red or blue states- all are affected. There are no exceptions to the actions that affect our lives except for those whose income is high enough to absorb the effects of “tariffs” aka taxes. “The proof is in the eating” as the saying goes and right now we are gagging! The ineffectual “leader we have and his minions (the too scared to do anything GOP) are following the same path as 1930’s Germany. While industry was revived, it was revived due to war production, and the population was grateful for the work and wages ignoring the fact that the “leader” was heading them to another war except the idea of not eating drove them forward ignoring the parallels of the previous world conflict’s devastation.

Our current government headed by the least capable leader since Andrew Johnson! Fast forward to now, governing by fiat appears to be the norm with a “damn the Torpedoes” attitude. It will take more effort on the part of the citizenry to ignore the loud and pay more attention to the quiet. History has shown where the current path of governance leads and we as citizens need to find another path!