Dems didn’t get good coverage by larger named media outlets; larger names presented it all as awkwardly as possible for Democrats. As they have for most of my lifetime. Leave it to God-FAIR coverage!🤣 A
THE LORD’S STATE OF THE UNION: Because the president is a psychopath, because the vice president hath the spine of a jellyfish, because the people of this nation are terrorized, the state of the union is strong…ly fucked up.
1. Al Green Shows The Way
Lo, the air was thick with lies, the ground shook with deranged threats, and the halls of power reeked of cowardice. But only one man in that chamber understood the moment and had the courage to stand up to the bully, right to his bloated orange face.
And that man was Al Green. Al Green shouted the truth, he stood against the madness, and he got kicked out for it. He is also unrepentant for this righteous trouble, which I fully support.
God bless Representative Al Green. This is the kind of fire and leadership that people are looking for. PUT HIM IN CHARGE!
2. Little Roadrunner Signs Are Not The Way
On the other end of the protest spectrum, we have Little Roadrunner Signs. What the hell were those sad little signs supposed to accomplish?
“MUSK STEALS.” “PROTECT VETERANS.” “SAVE MEDICAID.” Ooooo, so scary. They might as well have held up “PLEASE DON’T HURT US, SIR” for all the good it did.
The fascists stood and roared, grinning ear to ear like morons, while Democrats meekly raised their tiny placards.
God proclaims this tactic to be WEAK SAUCE.
That said, maybe the signs could have worked if they had better phrases. Here are some other phrases they should have used instead:
“Go to Mars and stay there.”
“Deport Elon Musk.”
“Billionaires shouldn’t exist.”
“Fuck you, Donald!”
“Burn in hell, fascist.”
Ya know, that sort of thing. HARSHER. Keep it going in the comments.
3. God’s Final Word
FOR THE RECORD, despite what he says, Donold was NOT saved by God to make America great again. Also, I categorically reject Donold’s request for Me to “bless America.” I will not be doing that until he is long gone.
Fuck you, Donold!
4. We’re Fighting Back—And It’s Working
How many good people have been fired? How many voices silenced? How many innocent people deported?
About a third of Project 2025 has already been implemented. They’re getting away with it.
You know what’s coming. You’ve seen what they do with power. But you don’t have to sit back and watch.
Here’s how we fight:
Expose corruption that corporate media won’t touch.
Keep people engaged & informed—with truth, hope and laughter.
Rally thousands of voices to push back against fascism.
Build an independent platform where truth can’t be silenced.
Updating German pastor Martin Niemöller’s 1946 poem for 2025 Read on Substack
My Fellow Democracy Defenders,
Martin Niemöller was a prominent Lutheran pastor in Germany. After Hitler seized power in 1933, the pastor became an outspoken critic. For defying a dictator, he spent the last eight years of Nazi rule (1937 to 1945) in prisons and concentration camps. Pastor Niemöller is best remembered for his 1946 poem, which I have updated for our current situation below.
First they came for the refugees, and I did not speak out—because I was not a refugee.
Then they came for the trans children, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trans child.
Then they came for the people of color, and I did not speak out—because I was not a person of color.
Then they came for the abortionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not an abortionist.
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the journalists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a journalist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the civil servants, and I am speaking out—my partner has lost her job, and I am fighting for mine.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Will you speak up for all those who are oppressed by fascists? (snip)
Rachel Maddow runs through an exhausting but by no means exhaustive list of false statements made by Donald Trump in his first address to a joint session of Congress of his second term.
This writer, Crip Dyke, feels about Dems the way many here do; that they’re worthless doing anything except being polite. But when Dems do what they should, this writer publishes it so that people know. It’s what we should all do until someone with money forms a new party if that’s what people really want. (To me, it’d be easier to jump in and participate in the Dem party, and fix it from within. With numbers, it’d be easy and relatively quick to make the desired improvements. Anyway, here is good news about an issue on which we’ve all been writing and calling.)
Democrats Strike At Heart Of GOP Darkness, Kill Anti-Trans Sports Bill by Rebecca Schoenkopf
In the moment Death stepped on the Senate floor to claim S9, Tuberville reportedly whispered, ‘The horror. The horror.’Read on Substack
Let trans kids play. Image by Phil Roeder. Used under CCA 2.0.
In the 19 long, bitter decades since Trump issued Executive Order 14201, “Keeping Men Out Of Women’s Sports,” generations have been born, come of age, and died buried away from the sun, divided by uncrossable rivers. Few could conceive of the darkness of the soul in those times who have not lived them.
And so our forgotten years of hope reflecting off the waters of that most colonial of rivers, the Potomac, produced the most unexpected flicker yesterday: a filibuster victory in the Senate, blocking the codification of 14201 into law and ban trans participation in girls’ and women’s school sports. To quote Erin Reed:
Republicans called it the “Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act.” Democrats dubbed it “The GOP Child Predator Empowerment Act”. The Senate clerk said it didn’t have the votes.
To misquote Joseph Conrad, the Democratic Party is a droll thing, a mysterious arrangement of spineless yes-men for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some acknowledgement of yourself that comes too late, leaving a crop of inextinguishable regrets. But not March 3, 2025!
And not today, Satan!
The vote was not quite so positive as The Hill would have you believe: They reported that “all Democrats voted against” the bill, recorded as S. 9. While zero Democrats voted for it, two Dems known to waffle in the face of anti-trans attacks did abstain. The Senate’s two independents (both of whom caucus with Democrats), Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, both voted against. The final margin of 51-45 included two abstentions from Republicans as well, Shelley Capito (R-WV) and Cynthia Lummis (R-WY). Though Trump hasn’t ruled on the prior state of these Senators as blastocysts, both do appear to be women, curiously enough.
The defeat of S9 marks a rare moment in the 119th Congress in which Democrats hung together. On other votes including prominent Senate confirmations and measures in both the Senate and the House, there have been significant defections. HR 28, the House version of this bill, snagged two Democratic votes (both Texas centrists and both men). In a time when Democratic voters and other lefties have been crying out for principled obstructionism to be waged against Trump and the MAGA agenda, blocking S9 was a largely unexpected win. Calling out trans participation in girls’ and women’s sports has been a particularly effective form of attack by the GOP, even when lying their asses off, as Tommy Tuberville did on FOX:
“We’re getting to a point now where women and girls’ sports and getting ready to be extinct. Because already in states across this country, we have high school teams that are made up of totally boys participating against girls. […And wank, wank, wank.]”
Of course no one other than GOP primary voters have taken Tuberville seriously since his Auburn Tigers lost to 14 transsexual squirrels in Commodore drag. But if you need to hear it from someone who knows better than yr Wonkette, Kate Starbird, former NCAA basketball standout, former professional baller in the ABL and WNBA, and current University of Washington professor, had this to say about Tuberville’s demented lie:
“As a former athlete & current researcher of online rumors & disinfo, today’s atrocious example of the ‘right wing bullshit machine’ in action — anchored on a truly idiotic claim from a football coach turned GOP senator about trans girls making girls sports ‘extinct’ — enrages along both dimensions.”
(Wonkette was so impressed with this quote we are currently reviewing her inventory of dick jokes in preparation for the possible extension of an offer of employment.)
To be clear, under the filibuster rules, which could change if the GOP thinks abandoning this Senate tradition is important enough, the bill needed 60 votes to clear a procedural step — cloture — that would then allow an up-or-down vote on enactment. That final vote would have needed only the barest majority, and a tie can be split by the Vice President. But Republicans are not currently talking about eliminating cloture votes, and as long as the filibuster survives, the Protection of Women & Girls in Sports Act is dead.
Despite this victory depending on the GOP maintaining the filibuster and the fact that Republicans are constantly launching other attacks on immigrants, people of color, teachers, and many others, there’s good reason to celebrate the Dems acting like they know how to win. And many people are celebrating, including another former professional athlete and generally decent person, Chris Kluwe:
“I support and am happy the party came together to stop this.”
Of course the party pooper had to add:
“However, this is what they should be doing on EVERYTHING. I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it – we are in an existential crisis as a country. We’re either going to emerge as Americans, or as something else.”
And that is, indeed, where we are. Like a flash of lightning in the clouds, we are glimpsing an ephemeral brightening of hope. We live in the flicker, may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But darkness was here yesterday. The GOP has lost only the first of the ebb.
Snippet (We can read or watch, on the page linked above.):
Chair Walberg, Ranking Member Scott, and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today.
My name is Heidi Shierholz, and I am an economist and the president of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) in Washington, D.C. EPI is a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank created in 1986 to include the needs of low- and middle-wage workers in economic policy discussions. EPI conducts research and analysis on the economic status of working America, proposes public policies that protect and improve the economic conditions of low- and middle-wage workers, and assesses policies with respect to how well they further those goals. I previously served as Chief Economist at the U.S. Department of Labor.
In considering the topic of “unleashing” America’s workforce and strengthening the economy, I make three main points in this testimony: (1) the Trump-Vance administration has inherited unquestionably the strongest economy for an incoming administration in a quarter-century;1 (2) that strength was driven in large part by economic policy choices by the prior administration and Congress; and (3) the Trump-Vance administration agenda will be profoundly destructive to the incomes and economic security for both the most vulnerable families and the broad middle class. The administration is aiming to gut key income support and safety net programs that provide direct support to tens of millions of working families, and the chaos and uncertainty they are intentionally sowing with reckless power grabs over key economic institutions will likely cause an economic crisis unless it is stopped.
The basic facts about the economy that the Trump-Vance administration inherited
The availability of jobs and the growth in real wages (i.e., growth in the purchasing power of wages after accounting for inflation) are where the rubber meets the road as far as “the economy” goes for working people. On both of these fronts, the economy that the Trump-Vance administration inherited is extremely strong.
In January 2025, when the Trump-Vance administration took office, the unemployment rate was 4.0%, and had been at or below 4.2% since November 2021. The last time the United States saw unemployment that low, for that long, was more than a half century ago. Further, the share of prime-age adults (25–54 years old) with a job was higher during January 2025 than at any time during the business cycle from 2007 to 2019, and near its highest rate in a quarter-century. The labor force participation rate of prime-age adults was also higher than at any time during the business cycle from 2007–2019, and the labor force participation of prime-age women was near its all-time high. Finally, job growth averaged 168,000 per month over the 12 months ending January 2025—a very healthy pace of growth, particularly considering how close the economy is to full employment (when job growth would be expected to slow since there is no longer a large employment gap to be filled).
The purchasing power of workers’ wages, after taking inflation into account, was higher in 2024 than it was at the most recent business cycle peak in 2019 or any point before that. (In other words, real wages were higher in 2024 than they were in 2019 or any point before that.) Further, this was true all across the wage distribution—for low-wage workers, middle-wage workers, and high-wage workers. In fact, bucking the trend of the business cycles of the prior 40 years, wage growth since 2019 has been stronger among low-wage workers than at any other point in the wage distribution. Real wage growth for workers at the 10th percentile, for example, rose by 3.4% annually between 2019 and 2024, for a total increase of 18.2%—the fastest five-year stretch of real wage growth for this group since data started being collected in the 1970s. (snip-MORE)
I had a recorded video to go with this post but I can’t access it right now. But think of what this will let happen giving Russian military free rein over elections and disinformation. The conspiracy shit and hate pitting one group against the other will destroy the country in 4 years. Hugs
Scottie's Playtime 