I say YES. YOU say NO....Numero Tre! Enjoy!

illinoislady · March 29

illinoislady · March 29

They are about making themselves and the corporations rich — a lot of what is mentioned above will detract from that. Got it now.

illinoislady · March 29

illinoislady · March 29

Here's a way a guy named Chris was looking at this:

No, let's play that game. Let's say the government is a business, and they're in the business of governing the economic health and the safety of the American people. Obviously, the first thing any business does when they are in debt and financially struggling is they look for ways to increase revenue. And what is revenue for the government? Well, obviously, that's what taxes are for (the Internal Revenue Service, right?). In other words, they need to study where they can raise more revenue, and tax accordingly to get their books back in better shape. Well, the bottom 50% of Americans only have 2.5% of the total wealth in the US. Obviously, they aren't a valid avenue to raise revenue. But the richest one percent? They have a whopping 43% of the nation's wealth (and rising fast). Clearly, a smart business would raise prices on those with the resources to pay them, right? So if you really want to run America like a business and care that it's struggling financially, why is that business selling its services for next-to-nothing to the people who can most afford to pay for it? Is that smart business strategy?

illinoislady · March 29

And that actually could have started from a faulty battery which these cars are known for. Who knows for sure,

betrayal · March 29

I do not feel pity for Usha Vance. I fear she is another grifter like Melania. I would be concerned because the conservatives are focused on brown skinned people, of which she is one, and her children are half brown. So if she is willing to live and procreate with a blatant racist, she will deserve her just desserts.

Don't know her or much about her, wouldn't describe her as a stupid person, but she married a red neck, a bigoted and warped man who is wreaking havoc on people he regards as lesser than him. So if she supports his way of thinking, then she is no better than him. I wouldn't give either the time of day.

She had no business going to Greenland, there was nothing there for her to really see and she opened a hornets nest. At this point we don't need Greenland for protection because the orange one has managed to piss off the entire EU and all of them would not come to our defense under any circumstances because he has said the same to them. This isolationist posture is hurting those of us who believe in alliances, value friendships and accept others for what they bring to our way of life.

I am hoping they get handed their asses at midterms and can only hope the court systems continue to support the law and order system. The SC needs to revoke the presidential protection they gave him now that they have seen how he intends to use it. No other president has resorted to this and none ever had need for it. He is trying now to have it extended to post-presidency so he doesn't get sent to jail in 2028. This is my wish, that he lives long enough to be sent to prison for life, even if if is a short term.

Illinoislady, Amazon carries the tee shirt you mentioned for just under $20. It would be nice if there was a movement to bring it back to be worn now. It is a quote from Timothy O'Leary.

illinoislady · March 29

I could not agree more about the Vance's, and the huge waste of their NOT needing to really go to Greenland. I do think the missus is bright and capable. Maybe early on she had a thought that he might be going places not realizing WHAT places. She now finds herself in situations where she has little choice in her reactions and behaviors., or participation.

Don't get me wrong — I have not one ounce of any kind of sympathy for her what-so-ever. I do think she leans into grifting as well. It is interesting on the one hand, scary as hell on the other, that all these evil types seek and find each other rather easily.

illinoislady · March 30

There is no physician like cheerful thought for dissipating the ills of the body;
there is no comforter to compare with good will for dispersing the shadows
of grief and sorrow. To live continually in thoughts of ill will, cynicism, suspicion,
and envy, is to be confined in a self-made prison hole. But to think well of all,
to be cheerful with all, to patiently learn to find the good in all—such unselfish
thoughts are the very portals of happiness; and to dwell day by day in thoughts
of peace toward every creature will bring abounding peace to their possessor.

James Allen

betrayal · March 30

"To live continually in thoughts of ill will, cynicism, suspicion, and envy, is to be confined in a self-made prison hole. " Think this is what the orange one should be experiencing. He can't escape his thoughts and they eat at him on a daily basis. No wonder he is in cognitive decline. Well-deserved in my book.

illinoislady · March 30

Betrayal, I never thought of Trump when I put that quote in, but you are so right. I sit here and imagine all the neat things you got to experience on your very recent cruise and the relieved feeling you must have had when your home restoration was done.

In my mind for someone like Trump the deep warm, welcoming and contented feelings we might have are forever denied someone like Trump. His sensations I think must be so fleeing as he is so full of greed, envy, petty and noxiously venomous feelings that it is impossible to retain anything positive. I'm sure part of him spends time making others un-deserving in his mind while he deems himself the rightful party. All we have to do is see a picture or a fleeting thought reminding us of good times and we could spend hours of re-experienced pleasure.

I can't imagine the feeling of emptiness this man runs away from all the time. No wonder he sees himself as the PERFECT male. We tend to take our imperfections in stride. They keep us humble and stiving while we lean into the wonders and pleasures, we enjoy — like standing at my East windows and watching the orange streaks light up the sky, becoming larger and larger until they dissipate with the sun's movement. what could be better than the awe of dawn breaking across the morning sky. Can he ever look at a blooming Redbud or daffodils in Spring and feel a sigh of marvel at nature's pure delights.

Yes, he has earned his disabilities and decline while the rest of us rejoice in everyday miracles and happy times. He will pass on a bitter and unfulfilled person. How utterly awful.

illinoislady · March 30

illinoislady · March 30

I giggled so hard I had to wipe my eyes. Indeed, I do think Nikola would likely say something like that.

illinoislady · March 30

illinoislady · March 30

This has been in before, but it is so apropos. His mental disabilities are the very thing I feel that makes him able to 'sell' his viewpoints to people. He does not have ANY mental constraints like conscience, humility, judgement etc. to get in his way so when he says things they often seem quite possible and obviously probable to a lot of people.

illinoislady · March 30

illinoislady · March 30

He is not only a hater, but also a loser and that makes him totally un-qualified to be where he is.

illinoislady · March 30

This is making me think of all people — Glen Campbell. He had a lot of hits — like Rhinestone Cowboy. He was dx'ed with dementia but was able to perform his songs and music long after expectations.

So, I think ding-dong Don is going to be golfing while drooling because he has gone golfing (for something to do) for so long it is likely the only thing that might (might as in if you're lucky ding-dong) stick in his demented confines of a brain.

No offense in any way towards Glen Campbell who I admired greatly. I feel sorrow for those who come down with this very debilitating medical predicament. Except — not for Trump. He deserves to lose the mind he never used for much of anything anyway.

illinoislady · March 30

illinoislady · March 30

James Brady was from my hometown here. He has since passed on. I was never thrilled about the President he worked for, but I had nothing but true respect for Mr. Brady and his family who truly fought the good fight for gun control and succeeded. James Brady spent the rest of his life in a wheel chair.

illinoislady · March 30

Or letting school age children work all night — or in dangerous places like slaughterhouses. Deranged and horrid and should be offensive to everyone.

illinoislady · March 30

THIS IS A PIECE FROM THOMAS CLAY, JR.

I came late to Literature. I read Gatsby because I had to read it in High School. My first literature was Huck Finn then Tom Sawyer. I didn't get to Papa Hemingway until I was in college and had to read The Old Man and the Sea. I didn't like it much but never give up on an author. I read For Whom The Bell Tolls because I'd been to Spain by then and I loved Orwell and I knew he went to Spain and fought in the war to kill fascists. This is something that always escapes Libertarian morons (all Libertarians are morons to be clear) because they read as much as Republicans. Now as I read Gatsby, I knew Scott toiled hard over every word and that he was a rare genius of the art but I just didn't like him. I didn't like Papa much either and it amused me to a degree when I learned of their quarrel that ended quickly after Scott died in 1940. He said 'the rich are different' and Papa remarked 'yeah they have more money.' This made Scott incensed because he thought Hemingway did not understand what he was saying and was being dismissive. For my part, both of them missed the point.

Yes I have known wealthy people and they are different in that they are more indifferent. I knew a woman in Spain who was one of Picasso's lovers and she had an apartment full of Picassos. She was still a beautiful woman but we were having dinner one night and I went to the bathroom and she was in there drinking a beer as fast as she could. We see this same argument Hemingway and Fitzgerald had except today it is really just few men called the PayPal Mafia.

The PayPal mafia is all Republican/libertarian: Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman (Linkedin), Max Levchin (cofounder PayPal),Jawad Karim (YouTube), David Sacks (Slide) and Elmo the Musk. Now for all of you who did not read about Project 2025 you also did not read about the Dark Revolution and these are the people behind it. It is a hideous movement but since the members have so much money they have a good chance at succeeding in making it.

Peter Thiel is the principal financier of it and what he wants is to build a special camp on Greenland where the PayPal Mafia can live and get blood transfusions from younger people so they can live to be 200. No really this is what Thiel believes and does. You see Vladimir Putin has all the money he could steal and probably is a trillionaire but when you are a dictator you become isolated and you keep people further away from you and you tend to embrace insane ideas like Peter Thiel has. Putin wants to be remembered as greater than Lenin. For him to succeed where Stalin and Khrushchev failed, Putin must do two things; he must destroy NATO and the United States and it is old fascist war technique where when you want to conquer anything, you get the people in your target fighting among themselves and let them destroy one another and to that point Putin along with Rupert Murdoch has been spectacularly successful.

Elmo and Peter have both written essays or given interviews where they say openly that they do not believe democracy can function as a good system of government because he only sees things the way Trump sees them, as transactional. Today Trump said 'we need Greenland' and that we could take it if we wanted. This would do two things for Trump that he cares nothing about. First it would satisfy Elmo and Thiel to get the island so they can turn it into the billionaire paradise they dream of. Trump went to Russia in the 1980s and when he got back he took out ads in the New York Times decrying what a colossal waste of money NATO is.

If we took Greenland by force then NATO would cease to exist and that would make Putin Spectacularly happy. That dunce JD Vance has through Trump told the Ukrainians that if Zelensky wants peace all he has to do is let Russia have the territory they have and that will be that. Imagine anyone trying to broker such a deal here where we carve off the easter seaboard to make someone like Putin happy? If you study history assiduously you can recognize that every so often the planet suffers from a little madness, insanity.

George the 3rd was a clinically insane man afflicted with porphyria and his mental insanity caused the American Revolution. We saw a similar sickness grow when the First World War broke out when Franz Ferdinand and his wife were murdered by a Serbian and that killed about 16.5 million people. Twenty years later we had another malignant narcissist take control of a country and he took it to war as quickly as he could arm it. That killed upwards of 85 million people. We have had two presidents who could be diagnosed as clinically insane. The first was Andrew Jackson which is why I suspect Trump has his picture in the Oval Office because Trump is the second man who could not pass an IQ test or a sanity test.

We know these Dark Renaissance billionaires are not playing with full decks of cards because a better planet is not something they are interested in in the way Bill Gates is. Elon and Peter like fascism because they're the ones who can control Trump and JD Vance and Trump saying he wants Greenland and Canada to be a state while Republicans desperately try to give him this power as James Comer was trying to do on Friday and lying badly about it. "Well what can we do?" We have too many intellectually lazy people who think we can solve all our problems with non-violence and the morons like to say 'violence solves nothing' and they always forget that violence really solved our nazi problem and since this is the language that fascist speak in and understand, then we have to speak it loud and clear especially all of the people being ruined because of Elon Musk.

We are never going to take Greenland from Denmark because that would violate the NATO treaty and both England and France and Canada all have nuclear weapons. So Trump can demonstrate his mental destruction as much as he wants but the reality is that these are the ways he means to impose Martial Law. If he did not tell Louise Stefanik to keep her seat Democrats would have control of the house by the looks of it. Republicans will have a one seat majority come Tuesday.

Trump can't pass legislation to do anything and he has already announced his principle interest is to get another ten year tax cut which will lead to income inequality that is already now far worse than that which took Marie Antoinette's head.

I kinda see these PayPal Mafia guys like Scott Fitzgerald and us as Papa Hemingway and they don't know who wins the argument. To them money trumps everything and in many ways that is true but there comes a point when someone takes too large a slice of pie and then we get a Luigi Mangione rise and do something probative. Now imagine 100,000 Luigi Mangiones loose if Trump tries to take Greenland, Canada or withdraws from NATO which he will do when these other things fail.

Trump desperately needs Martial Law and everything he is doing now is trying to set up the circumstances where he can declare it and that will be the night I wish I could be a fly on the wall in John Robert's house because he will then comprehend that he and his 5 fellow justices loosed the biggest monster The United States has ever thought about fighting.

The United States went a little mad when Andrew Jackson was president. Now we are dealing with the full insanity of Trump, Elon and Peter Thiel and the key here is that everyone remains a good American who conforms to what our Dear Leader says is so. Orwell was right about everything and we are watching this unfold right before our eyes only there aren't any big protests outside the White House. There's some patriots freeing the planet of some of Elmo's cars but the best way to avoid dealing with these lunatics is to take their money from them and to impose term limits on Supreme Court Justices.

Those Republicans avoiding the town halls across the country, they are the same cowards who are going to vote for Martial Law. You will see soon enough. Luckily for us these lunatics are so incompetent that they don't know what they are doing nor the forces they are playing with. Maybe it will be enough to force the political illiterates who always vote Republican to get literate but that can only happen once that thirsty Tree of Liberty has been quenched.

I found this a very interesting read.

betrayal · March 30

It has take me a lifetime to accept compliments, so I could never understand his need to be constantly fawned over or to have a circle of clingy people surrounding me. He has been imprinted with this need since childhood either because he lacked attention and needed it or because his parents set no boundaries so he was free to develop aberrant behaviors that reflect in his adulthood. I use adult loosely because he really demonstrates childish behavior in his narcissism.

Narcissists exhibit a grandiose sense of self-importance and entitlement that only other
special people" can understand; they lack empathy so they dismiss or invalidate the feelings of others (doesn't care that the price of cars will increase significantly with tariffs); they crave constant attention and admiration which helps them sustain their inflated feelings of self-importance; they exploit others without regard for the consequences; they are arrogant, have a sense of entitlement, and thereby worthy of special treatment and privileges; they are vulnerable to criticism and any perceived slights (real or not); they try to manipulate others (read bully) to achieve their needs; and they are unable to form and maintain healthy relationships.

Look how he has married 2 foreign women who were the byproduct of Russian rule and therefore subservient until they realized their power by being married to a grifter. They serve the purpose of being his eye candy so he can feed off what he perceives as the envy of other men when they admire his wives. Therefore, they do have some power over him because he can't afford to lose them. In that sense they are "possessions".

If you looked this word up in a Psychiatric textbook you might find the orange one's face as an illustration. Those who have been brave enough to speak out have classified him as having these traits. This disorder affects males more than females and begins in teens or early adulthood. They are generally unhappy, disappointed. People don't enjoy being around them as well.

I think this fits the deranged one to a "T".