Ya Think So?

Abigail Disney: ‘Every billionaire who can’t live on $999m is kind of a sociopath’

John Harris Mon 7 Apr 2025 00.00 EDTS

She is one of the heirs to the Walt Disney fortune – and has long argued for rich people like her to pay more tax. Now she is working out how best to meet the challenge of Trump, Musk and the politics of chaos

My conversation with Abigail Disney opens with the kind of bog-standard line that starts most chats. But because she is a left-leaning American, with a record of righteous criticism of the man now once again in charge of her country, I suspect it might invite a very long answer indeed.

Still, out it comes: “How are you?”

“It’s a good question,” she says, “because we’re all struggling with it.”

A deep breath. “I spend a lot of time trying to think of reasons to be optimistic, because I don’t know how to function without that. And I want to find the energy and the grit for a really long fight. This isn’t just four years … you know, there’s a whole civilisation-level reset to be done. I mean, I heard the other night when Trump spoke, he mentioned that we would get Greenland one way or another. And then there was laughter. Laughter! I just thought, ‘Oh, we have sunk so low.’”

The film-maker (and the grand-niece of Walt Disney) is speaking to me on video call from her home in Manhattan. She talks with a mixture of speed, eloquence and certainty – partly because her view of Donald Trump and his allies is all about something with which she is well acquainted: wealth, and what it does to people.

“Trump is an inheritor,” Disney tells me. “He never acknowledges it, but he wouldn’t have been able to do any of the things he did without an inheritance. He absorbed the lessons of inheriting money almost unfiltered: ‘You have this money because you’re special.’ If you read about his childhood, it’s like the textbook worst way to raise a person – you know, he was violent, he was a bully and he was rewarded for that, even as a very small child. And the more money he had, the more he exhibited these bad qualities, and the more people told him he was wonderful.”

I then mention something she well knows: that Trump’s sidekick Elon Musk is also from a very wealthy background, having started his first business ventures with money provided by his father, and then becoming rich beyond the dreams of avarice. This, she tells me, partly explains the frazzled morals of someone who has just imposed all those cuts to overseas aid, with apparently no regard for the consequences.

Among the schemes Musk has frozen, Disney points out, was the Pepfar programme, AKA the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief, which is estimated to have saved 25 million lives by supplying medicine to people with HIV and Aids around the world. “There are people suffering and dying today because of that cut,” she says. “There are children who have HIV who shouldn’t because of Elon Musk. Now. As we sit here and talk.”

She exhales. “That natural human proclivity to say, ‘Hmm, that doesn’t feel right’ – he doesn’t have it. Trump doesn’t have it. They’re spending no time in shame, and shame is a righteous emotion. It’s not an emotion you want to live in, but it’s an emotion you want as a motivator sometimes. And where is it? Where’s the shame?” (snip-MORE)

NBC NEWS: Judge’s deadline looms for Trump administration to return man mistakenly deported

Judge’s deadline looms for Trump administration to return man mistakenly deported
The administration has conceded the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a green card holder, was an “administrative error,” but it has resisted a judge’s order to bring him back to the U.S.

Read in NBC News: https://apple.news/AIyJjXEjLT-2mttOeMrwo3A

Shared from Apple News

Best Wishes and Hugs,Scottie

Gazan detainees tell BBC of torture by IDF and Israel Prison Service

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn7vje365rno

Best Wishes and Hugs,
Scottie

Mental Health Break

(Sorry, Scottie, the entire thing is poetic, but there are cats! And dogs. The reading is easy, no worries, and plenty of photos. Just enjoy! -A)

You’ve read of several kinds of Cat, And my opinion now is that You should need no interpreter You To understand their character. You now have learned enough to see That Cats are much like you and me by Worriedman, Read on Substack

THE AD-DRESSING OF CATS – TS Eliot

And other people whom we find
Possessed of various types of mind.
For some are sane and some are mad
And some are good and some are bad
And some are better, some are worse —
But all may be described in verse.
You’ve seen them both at work and games,
And learnt about their proper names,
Their habits and their habitat:
But

How would you ad-dress a Cat?

So first, your memory I’ll jog,
And say: A CAT IS NOT A DOG.

Now Dogs pretend they like to fight;
They often bark, more seldom bite;


But yet a Dog is, on the whole,
What you would call a simple soul.


Of course I’m not including Pekes,
And such fantastic canine freaks.
The usual Dog about the Town
Is much inclined to play the clown,
And far from showing too much pride
Is frequently undignified.
He’s very easily taken in —
Just chuck him underneath the chin
Or slap his back or shake his paw,
And he will gambol and guffaw.
He’s such an easy-going lout,
He’ll answer any hail or shout.

Again I must remind you that
A Dog’s a Dog

— A CAT’S A CAT.

With Cats, some say, one rule is true:
Don’t speak till you are spoken to.
Myself, I do not hold with that –
I say, you should ad-dress a Cat.
But always keep in mind that he
Resents familiarity.


I bow, and taking off my hat,
Ad-dress him in this form: O CAT!


But if he is the Cat next door,
Whom I have often met before
(He comes to see me in my flat)
I greet him with an OOPSA CAT!


I’ve heard them call him James Buz-James —


But we’ve not got so far as names.
Before a Cat will condescend
To treat you as a trusted friend,


Some little token of esteem
Is needed, like a dish of cream;


And you might now and then supply
Some caviare, or Strassburg Pie,
Some potted grouse, or salmon paste —
He’s sure to have his personal taste.
(I know a Cat, who makes a habit
Of eating nothing else but rabbit,
And when he’s finished, licks his paws
So’s not to waste the onion sauce.)
A Cat’s entitled to expect
These evidences of respect.
And so in time you reach your aim,


And finally call him by his NAME.

So this is this, and that is that:
And there’s how you AD-DRESS A CAT

Hungry, Indeed

Hungry Hungry Trumpo by Clay Jones

Trump cuts food banks Read on Substack

This was drawn for the FXBG Advance.

My editor proposed two stories for me to cover last week, and I chose both. The first was on cuts to Friends of the Rappahannock. The other was on cuts to the Fredericksburg Food Bank. Both stories are important to this area, and as it turns out, one of them is important nationwide.

After reading the story about cuts to our local food bank, I did a little search and discovered this is going on nationwide.

For example, it’s happening in Central New York, Stockton, California, York County, New York, in Missoula, Montana, Nevada, Evansville, Indiana, Bozeman, Pittsburgh, Boise, Idaho, Alabama, North Carolina, and many, many more places. Notice that this is happening in a lot of red states.

Think of all the government workers Elon has laid off who can’t afford groceries because of Trump’s recession and inflation, and now they can’t get any assistance from the food banks.

It’s not all bad news. There’s still enough money in the budget for Donald Trump’s golf trips, asshole billionaires and trust-fund babies will still get another huge tax cut, Elon will continue scoring government contracts to add to the $38 billion he’s already got from the government.

I’m so glad I got to experience the Hands-Off protest yesterday. A blog for that is coming later today.

Creative note: I drew this at Starbucks on Friday night. I wanted to complete this week’s cartoon for the Advance so I could focus on covering the DOGE protest in Washington, DC.

Now, I’m writing this blog on the train home.

Music note: I listened to Pete Yorn while coloring.

Drawn in 30 seconds: (snip-go see)

Peace & Justice History for 4/7

April 7, 1979
Thousands protested against the nuclear industry in Sydney, Australia. The country is by far the world’s largest exporter of uranium (and thorium ores and concentrates), the radioactive heavy metal necessary for the power generation and weapons industries.
The marchers were from groups concerned about many related issues: the link between the uranium industry and weapons proliferation; the environmental destructiveness of nuclear power; the impact of uranium mining on Aborigines and workers in the industry; weapons testing in the Pacific, and the secret history of the British nuclear weapons tests in the region; and the Cold War nuclear arms spiral and Australia’s contribution to it through the hosting of U.S. military bases, allowing nuclear warships to use Australian ports through the ANZUS alliance (among Australia, New Zealand and the U.S.); weapons testing in the Pacific, and the secret history of the British nuclear weapons tests in the region.

Sydney anti-uranium protest, Photo: Paul Keig
Today’s Australian Nuclear Free Alliance 
April 7, 1994
Genocide in Rwanda began. Over the following 90 days at least a half million people were killed by their countrymen, principally Hutus killing Tutsis.
This day is commemorated annually with prayer vigils in Rwanda.
Canadian General Romeo Dallaire, head of the U.N. Peacekeeping Force in Rwanda, a tiny African nation formerly a Belgian colony, had warned of impending slaughter, but was ordered not to attempt to intervene.

PBS interview with General Dallaire, what he knew and what he watched happen
  

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryapril.htm#april7

The Benefits of Community

April 06, 2025   |   Read Online
Try that in a small town
Marisa from The Handbasket
ICE disappeared a mother and 3 children. Neighbors of Trump’s Border Czar said hell no.

Principal Jaime Cook describes one of the third graders in her northern New York school as particularly rambunctious. In a phone call with me Saturday evening, she says this particular student loves to sing and loves to dance. But last week this child was handcuffed and taken by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), along with other family members—two of whom are high school-aged kids. While they all remain jailed in Texas, classmates leave cards on the student’s desk and hang a welcome home banner they hope will be seen.
As people across the country assembled Saturday to tell the Trump regime to keep their “Hands off!”, a protest in the tiny town of Sackets Harbor, NY caught my eye. While this one was certainly related to the larger theme of the day, the impetus was much more specific: A worker on a local dairy farm who had no criminal record and was awaiting legal immigration proceedings was disappeared late last month by ICE along with her three children. Agents were executing a search warrant for an unrelated suspected criminal who lived on the same block, and somehow the family was swept up and whisked away to Texas. And around 1,000 people came together this weekend to rally for their safe return and to send a message that this won’t be tolerated there—or anywhere.
“There was the concern in our little small town that if we speak out too loudly, there might be hateful voices from far away,” Cook tells The Handbasket. She wonders: “Are we gonna become the center of something that becomes really ugly?”
But ultimately she and her staff decided anything less than loud and unwavering support was unacceptable. And as a result, the rest of the country has taken notice.


Photos courtesy of Ginger Storey-Welch
The town of 1,300 people has just one school for all children K-12 where they graduate approximately 40 students each year. It’s an affluent and idyllic-looking town on the shores of Lake Ontario in a county that voted 61% for Trump in 2024. And when protesters marched down the streets in solidarity with their stolen neighbors, they made sure to pass by the home of one community member in particular: Tom Homan, Trump’s Border Czar. Homan grew up nearby and still has his primary residence in Sackets Harbor, presumably splitting time in DC to spearhead Trump’s campaign of terrorizing immigrants. 
“This isn’t like a situation where a politician has multiple houses,” Cook told me. “Tom Homan lives in Sackets Harbor. I believe that in the hours when this was unfolding, he was receiving a lot of calls on his personal cell phone.”
In anticipation of Saturday’s march, the Mayor of Sackets Harbor declared a state of emergency. Law enforcement officials from the village police department, the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, state police, and state park police were all called to the gathering to remind protesters of what they would face if they put a toe out of line.
Cook has spent the past 10 days worried sick about her students in the 3rd, 10th and 11th grades at her school. Saturday morning she posted a statement on Facebook addressing the situation head on:
Homan has been decidedly less concerned about his neighbors, vocally supporting the actions of immigration officials. He claimed in a local TV news interview on Wednesday that the children and their mother were potential witnesses to the alleged crime and that they had to be detained for questions. And he was sure to make one thing clear: “First of all, the family is not in a jail. They’re in a family residential center, it’s an open air campus.” 
These types of arrests—known as “collateral detention”—are becoming more common. “What we have been seeing is ICE at random detaining people who are not the people they’re looking for,” Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition, told The Intercept. “They go in allegedly looking for someone else and then they’ll take whoever they can find just so they can meet their quota numbers that Donald Trump has put in place.”
As protesters marched by Homan’s waterfront home on Saturday, a sign on a neighbor’s lawn—a photo of which was shared with me by rally attendee Ginger Storey-Welch—read: “WE NO LONGER HAVE A DIFFERENCE IN POLITICAL OPINION. WE HAVE A DIFFERENCE IN MORALITY.”

Photos courtesy of Ginger Storey-Welch
The contrast between Homan and Cook couldn’t be more stark. Cook says she grew up on welfare and food stamps and says that being “disempowered” and “discarded by the system” has always helped her empathize with people in peril. I tell her that her Facebook statement and comments to a reporter at the protest have people online hailing her as a hero. Then I ask her how she feels about that characterization. 
“I think that’s silly,” she says. “I think anybody who’s been a public school teacher knows that people are doing this stuff all day long. And I think that the only reason that people might think that this is out of the ordinary is because educators are so frequently underestimated and their contribution is not seen for what it is.”
Cook is tackling the situation boldly, despite having only been principal in Sackets Harbor for less than one school year. The California native has lived in the area for 15 years and says the community has welcomed her with open arms—which has made it easier to feel empowered to speak up.
“You just gotta put your money where your mouth is and you gotta live by your conscience,” she says, “and you gotta know that your livelihood cannot overpower your conscience.”
The school has been in touch with ICE since the family’s arrest, and Cook says she feels hopeful about the chances of them being home soon. She says one of her teachers who has been the immigration agency’s main point of contact has been waiting for “the call” letting them know the family is free to go, and believes that call is imminent. But even once they’re freed, ICE will do nothing to transport them back to the home from which they were snatched. Fortunately the town has come together to make sure there are people on the ground in Texas waiting to accompany the family when the time hopefully comes. 
“They can rally and protest all they want, but I’m not gonna be bullied. I’m not gonna be intimidated,” Homan told the local news prior to Saturday’s rally. Meanwhile, Sackets Harbor 10th graders leave flowers on their jailed classmate’s desk in hopes of a safe return.

Ugh! Monday :( Funnies

Here are some pics to help you prepare for Tomorrow. Good Luck!

Sunday cartoons / memes /news. Shit almost forgot to post this. Go read Randy’s post it is better than this.

Also, re: “suit in the Oval”:

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MASSIVE SHIFTPro-democracy channels on YouTube are now growing faster than right-wing channels for the first time.MeidasTouch is proud to lead the way as the fastest-growing YouTube channel in Q1 2025.Keep this momentum going: YouTube.com/@meidastouch

— MeidasTouch (@meidastouch.com) 2025-04-04T02:00:09.253Z

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Almost half of the country’s health insurance now rests in the hands of a man who once sold miracle pills — with zero proof they worked — on daytime TV.

— Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett (@repjasmine.bsky.social) 2025-04-04T03:45:15.845Z

It is imperative that the stories of transgender people real and fictional are told.We cannot allow ourselves to be forced into defending our very human existence at all turns, cornered by baseless accusations and animus from talking heads and politicians.The onus of hearsay is on them. Not us.

— Faith K. Falkner (@faithfalkner.com) 2025-04-04T10:46:02.913Z

Palestine is undergoing a daily mass slaughter event. The Holocaust of Gaza is underway and the US Senate just approved another $8.8 billion in military aid to Israel.The shots out of Rafah that aren't of dead children are nothing short of apocalyptic

— The Serfs (youtube.com/theserfstv) (@theserfstv.bsky.social) 2025-04-04T07:36:05.225Z

I'm no good with patterns. Can someone help me out here?

— Mueller, She Wrote (@muellershewrote.com) 2025-04-03T21:25:33.627Z

Image from Liberals Are Cool

Image from Liberals Are Cool

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Image from Liberals Are Cool

Image from Liberals Are Cool

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#NIH from Liberals Are Cool

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Image from Liberals Are Cool

#due process from Liberals Are Cool

#due process from Liberals Are Cool

He’s tanking the economy, destroying our standing in the world, depriving women and LGBTQ communities of their fundamental rights, attacking the environment, disappearing legal immigrants, gutting Veteran’s benefits and Social Security. And he’s making you pay for his golf trips while he’s at it.

— Bradley Whitford (@bradleywhitford.bsky.social) 2025-04-04T23:48:51.748Z

 

No one has ever been released from CECOT in El Salvador. I imagine Bukele will not allow it simply because this Kilmar will talk to the media in the US and could be a witness for ICC investigations into human rights abuses.

— Alejandra Caraballo (@esqueer.net) 2025-04-04T20:06:19.288Z

The image is a screenshot of a tweet from Neil Stone (@DrNeilStone ). The tweet reads: "RFK Jr has cut Alzheimers research. ALZHEIMERS. One of the most devastating, urgent and increasing health problems we face today. He’s not interested. He’s a nasty piece of work."

 

He’s tanking the economy, destroying our standing in the world, depriving women and LGBTQ communities of their fundamental rights, attacking the environment, disappearing legal immigrants, gutting Veteran’s benefits and Social Security. And he’s making you pay for his golf trips while he’s at it.

— Bradley Whitford (@bradleywhitford.bsky.social) 2025-04-04T23:48:51.748Z

Here he is today, deeply concerned about economic hardship caused by his tariff scheme.

— Ron Filipkowski (@ronfilipkowski.bsky.social) 2025-04-05T01:04:42.386Z

 

Hope it was worth it to stop a few of us from peeing.

— Erin Reed (@erininthemorning.com) 2025-04-04T16:40:13.392Z

 

People couldn't handle pronouns in email signatures so we got this instead.

— Alejandra Caraballo (@esqueer.net) 2025-04-04T17:41:52.473Z

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Image from Liberals Are Cool

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#lithuania from Liberals Are Cool

#lithuania from Liberals Are Cool

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The Cost of Religion in Politics

Hello All. I was going to comment on a post by Scottie (here) of Pastor Ed Trevors, but I runneth off at the mouth. So, I made a post of it. If you have not listened to that 8-minute video yet, it would help to understand this comment post. I apologize if it comes off a bit preachy, that is not my intent.

A good portion of that video is Pastor Ed speaking on how they have taken steps to protect their parishioners but also spoke on how Jesus spoke on hypocrisy quite often. What I know he also knows but didn’t speak on yet struck me as central to the argument is the understanding of judgement and sin in opposition to love and respect.

Scottie and I have had great conversations about belief and faith, and it has taught me that there is a huge variance of people. I believe we very well may find ourselves up for Judgement one day, and so many will be surprised to find someone being told “Well Done” who never went to church but did their very best to be good loving people. But, so many others who claim that they are righteous because they go to church, that they are good people because they are Christians, are so godly because they tithe and demand the Ten Commandments be posted in the schools, are so holy because they shame the sinners – will be disappointed when He says He doesn’t know them.

In recent times, we have seen people laying hands upon Trump and speaking of him as some prophet or good man sent by god. And, while this is not a dump on drumpf post, it very much is a post about Christian Values and how the boundaries are so situationally elastic for far too many.

I recognize that it is human nature to look upon others and judge them harsher than ourselves. The saying “If you can’t dazzle them with your brilliance, baffle them with your bullshit” has more value in the Christian Church than it has any right. I guess it could be said that if we were to look upon our sins honestly we would either become indifferent out of the need to be sane or suicidal in the need to be accountable.

Jesus reportedly spoke on this very thing. He didn’t think we were to be perfect. If you consider the woman accused of adultery that was to be stoned, he didn’t excuse her of what she had done, in fact he told the crowd to throw their stones, but only if they were perfect. When none could, he told her he didn’t condemn her either but to sin no more.

But that huge difference shown in that example is the defining point that I believe is the root cause for so many of our problems in this world; Some believe that “your sin is so very much worse than my sin” and not only should you be ashamed of it but made lesser for it is destroying what we could be for the ability of others to control who we are and what we do. My readings of the Gospels are not about seeking some sort of ‘get out of jail’ card for myself by offering up another for sacrifice, but being honest and seeking to improve.

To say that ‘the sin another committed is proof for judgement while my sin is not’ goes above and beyond any scope of what Jesus reportedly came to teach and modeled for us to follow.

Franklin Graham famously showed his hypocrisy in this, but he did far more: He showed his willingness to publicly judge and shame one sin while all but condoning the same sin from another – and for political purposes at best and personal gain perhaps as well.

THIS is what religion into politics has brought us: This notion that someone is “approved by God” despite what they do, and others should be chastised no matter what they do.

To conclude: I believe “Love your Neighbor as Yourself” means we all will fail, we all will come short, but we all deserve to find love, to find meaning, to be free and whole, to find our way. And just as I have no right to abuse others or force my neighbor to conform his actions to my beliefs, he has no right to force himself upon me or others, for that violation of another’s identity or freedom of personhood is the very worst abuse we can do.

Hugs.

Randy