The reason Mike Johnson and other Republicans are lying is that they know they own this shutdown. It’s ridiculous to believe they don’t when they control the House, Senate, and White House (which Tommy Tuberville thinks are the three branches of government). The truth of the matter is that Republicans can’t govern, probably because their membership contains idiots like Tommy Tuberville.
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Weather: Partly sunny with a chance of showers and thunderstorms. Highs in the mid 80s. East winds 15 to 20 mph with gusts up to 30 mph. Chance of rain 50 percent. Sunday Night: Mostly cloudy with a chance of showers. A chance of thunderstorms, mainly in the evening. Lows in the mid 70s. East winds 10 to 15 mph with gusts up to 30 mph. Chance of rain 50 percent.
- Daily weather briefing from the National Weather Service in Jacksonville here.
- Drought conditions here. (What is the Keetch-Byram drought index?).
- Check today’s tides in Daytona Beach (a few minutes off from Flagler Beach) here.
- Tropical cyclone activity here, and even more details here.
Today at a Glance:
The Creekside Music and Arts Festival, at Princess Place Preserve is postponed to February 7 and 8. See: “Creekside Music and Arts Festival Set for Weekend Is Postponed to February as Precaution Against Storms.”
Palm Coast Farmers’ Market at European Village: The city’s only farmers’ market is open every Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. at European Village, 101 Palm Harbor Pkwy, Palm Coast. With fruit, veggies, other goodies and live music. For Vendor Information email [email protected]
‘Avenue Q,’ at City Repertory Theatre, Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., Sundays at 3 p.m., 160 Cypress Point Parkway (City Marketplace, Suite B207), Palm Coast. Celebrate CRT’s 15th season with the Tony Award-winning hit Avenue Q! This laugh-out-loud musical blends puppetry, pop culture, and catchy songs to explore adulthood, love, and finding purpose. Don’t miss this unforgettable, irreverent journey through the ups and downs of post-college life—CRT-style. Tickets are $32.70 for adults, $17.17 for students (including ticketing fees). Book here.
ESL Bible Studies for Intermediate and Advanced Students: 9:30 to 10:25 a.m. at Grace Presbyterian Church, 1225 Royal Palms Parkway, Palm Coast. Improve your English skills while studying the Bible. This study is geared toward intermediate and advanced level English Language Learners.
Grace Community Food Pantry, 245 Education Way, Bunnell, drive-thru open today from noon to 3 p.m. The food pantry is organized by Pastor Charles Silano and Grace Community Food Pantry, a Disaster Relief Agency in Flagler County. Feeding Northeast Florida helps local children and families, seniors and active and retired military members who struggle to put food on the table. Working with local grocery stores, manufacturers, and farms we rescue high-quality food that would normally be wasted and transform it into meals for those in need. The Flagler County School District provides space for much of the food pantry storage and operations. Call 386-586-2653 to help, volunteer or donate.
Al-Anon Family Groups: Help and hope for families and friends of alcoholics. Meetings are every Sunday at Silver Dollar II Club, Suite 707, 2729 E Moody Blvd., Bunnell, and on zoom. More local meetings available and online too. Call 904-315-0233 or see the list of Flagler, Volusia, Putnam and St. Johns County meetings here.
Notably: A very happy birthday to one of Flagler County’s wonderful treasures. George Hanns, the former county commissioner and permanent ambassador to Princess Place, claims to be celebrating his 79th birthday today. Claims, because really, what 79-year-old looks that boyish? He has the misfortune of sharing the same birth year as Donald Trump, who looks every crag his 79 years and worse–and for whom George voted in 2016: bad, bad George; I couldn’t bring myself to ask him who he voted for the last time around. George would have gotten to celebrate in his favorite place, since the annual Creekside Festival was to be today at Princess Place, but that was postponed to February (the festival, not his birthday). As I may have noted before, I’ve kept a running databases of Hanns’s Yogi Berra-like one-liners: “Healthwise I’m just as active as the next guy that’s healthy.” A couple of years ago when he was considering a run for the Palm Coast City Council, he unloaded this one: “I haven’t even inquired as to the time frame on it. I don’t want to declare too early because then you have to do all that pain in the neck paperwork and I don’t like that part of it.” And there was this gem from his appearance before the City Council last March: “I’ll just mention to you, people on this council, that next time you have a disagreement with your spouse, you tell them they have three minutes to respond.”
—P.T.
The Live Calendar is a compendium of local and regional political, civic and cultural events. You can input your own calendar events directly onto the site as you wish them to appear (pending approval of course). To include your event in the Live Calendar, please fill out this form.
October 2025
Flagler Beach Farmers Market
Coffee With Flagler Beach Commission Chair Scott Spradley
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Palm Coast Founders’ Day
Peps Art Walk Near Beachfront Grille
Thornton Wilder’s ‘Our Town,’ at Limelight Theatre in St. Augustine
‘The 39 Steps,’ at the Daytona Playhouse
ESL Bible Studies for Intermediate and Advanced Students
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Palm Coast Farmers’ Market at European Village
Gamble Jam at Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area
Thornton Wilder’s ‘Our Town,’ at Limelight Theatre in St. Augustine
‘The 39 Steps,’ at the Daytona Playhouse
Al-Anon Family Groups
For the full calendar, go here.
“I didn’t get to talk much this weekend at home so I’m trying to make up for it.”
–County Commissioner George Hanns, chairing a meeting, May 5, 2014.
Laurel says
We all know they are lying. We all also know that Republicans own the House, the Senate, the Executive Office and the Supreme Court, so to cry that it’s all on the Democrats itself is a lie.
So, maybe Democrats should just concede and let Republicans have total responsibility. Then, the American people will see, first hand, how that effects their budgets and health care! The ultra wealthy will be just fine. Meanwhile, derail Trump’s glee of taking advantage of the situation to continue to implement Project 2025.
Right now, Trump threatens to layoff thousands of American workers. No work; no health insurance (not even a concept of a plan). Half the population is the “enemy within.” No other country could crash our country faster than our own President.
Laurel says
“Trump’s former 2016 campaign manager Corey Lewandowski made the remarks on YouTuber Benny Johnson’s podcast, which was shared on X on Oct. 1.
“There is nowhere you can provide safe haven to people who are in this country illegally,” Lewandowski said on the podcast. “Not the Super Bowl and nowhere else. We will find you, we will apprehend you, we will put you in a detention facility and we will deport you. So, know that is a very real situation under this administration.””
– USA Today
The Trump administration is threatening to send ICE to the Super Bowl, as Bad Bunny, an American superstar, will be preforming. They are upset because he is brown, and he is bilingual. His songs are in Spanish. Trump sure knows how to fuck up a party!
2026 Super Bowl ticket prices:
Seating Area Price Range
Upper Level $1,500 – $3,000
Club Level $5,000 – $10,000
Lower Bowl Premium $4,000 – $7,000
VIP Sideline $7,000 – $20,000+
Luxury Suites $750,000 – $2 million
Yeah, ICE presence is important. Do you never tire of stupid?
This is very much the style of Hitler, and his Brown Shirts. Do let us know when you have had enough government overreach.
Ray W. says
This just in.
In a move described by the Wall Street Journal as aimed at restoring market share lost to “U.S. shale producers, Brazil and Guyana, and to reign in other OPEC members that routinely exceed production quota”, OPEC members voted today in Vienna to once again increase crude oil output.
After monthly votes to increase crude oil output starting in March 2025, OPEC pumped out 410,000 more barrels per day in May, then again 410,000 more barrels per day in June, and then again 410,000 more barrels in July. In August and September, crude oil output jumped each of the two months by more than 500,000 barrels per day. With today’s vote matching last month’s vote, October and November will see a increases of 137,000 more barrels per day each month.
The next OPEC vote to determine how OPEC will try to manipulate the international crude oil marketplace takes place November 2nd.
According to the Journal reporter:
“Analysts from JPMorgan expect a surplus of around 2 million barrels a day for the remainder of the year and into next year. The International Energy Agency forecasts that oil supply growth will be 2.7 million barrels a day this year and 2.1 million the next, lifting an earlier estimate.”
Make of this what you will.
Me?
More than four years ago, in March 2021, OPEC announced production curbs totaling 7 million barrels of crude oil output per day, a goal that was to be slowly ramped down over many months. Crude oil prices slowly and inexorably began to rise as the cuts actually took place. Crude oil prices actually hit slightly above $125 per barrel.
Since I knew that energy was one of the issues about which the professional lying class that sits atop one of our two political parties lies, I began more than four years ago posting comments about what was actually happening in the American energy sector. As the professional lying class began producing more and more lies about the energy sector, I already had a track record of informing FlaglerLive readers of what was actually happening in that sector.
When the more gullibly stupid among us attempted to launder lies about rising gasoline prices, it was easy to show them for the lie launderers that they were.
Month after month, OPEC continued to meet and vote and adjust output figures. Month after month, OPEC continued to manipulate the international crude oil marketplace. In time, OPEC began to roll back the original output cuts. But in 2023, another round of OPEC cuts were introduced.
For four years, OPEC kept crude oil prices above $75 per barrel, and for most of that time crude oil prices were above $80 per barrel. We all paid a price for OPEC’s ongoing manipulations.
In March of this year, OPEC voted to roll back its previous output cuts. International crude oil prices began to drop. Both Brent and West Texas Intermediate prices have dropped by more than 13% this year.
Several of the more gullibly stupid FlaglerLive commenters among us continually blame former President Biden for the higher gasoline prices during his administration and they then acclaim President Trump for the slightly dropping gasoline prices thus far during his administration. This is another instance of them laundering lies. They never mention OPEC’s manipulations as being the actual cause of the pain at the pump that we have for so long suffered.
Let me introduce an idea. It’s called “foundation of knowledge”, and this concept is based on the idea that the more one knows about a subject matter, the less likely it becomes that one will fall for lies emanating from the mouths of professional liars.
I grew up in the NASCAR community. My father worked closely with Bill France, Sr., since late in 1952 to further his dream of a building a superspeedway in Daytona Beach.
Before my father took office as a Daytona Beach City Commissioner, he was introduced to Big Bill by a friend. My father decided to make one plank of his policy platform the building of a speedway in Daytona Beach. My father was one of the founding members of the Daytona Beach Racing and Recreational Facilities board, established by legislative act in 1953. He traveled all over the region with Big Bill.
After some four years of effort, the city’s bond package was ready. My mother and father traveled the New York City to represent the city at the signing event. The night before the signing, steel workers went on strike and the bond market reacted negatively, pricing the bonds out of the city’s reach. Bill France, Sr. decided to try and raise the money on his own and the rest is history.
My father represented the International Speedway Corporation in numerous state and federal hearings that paved the way for the building of the track. He served on the board that leased the land to the speedway for 43 years.
From about the age of six or seven I experienced a growing awareness of racing. Interest in the energy sector followed.
At the age of 16, I began racing motorcycles. My father did not want me to race and he refused to help pay for it, but he said that if I was willing to work enough to pay my way, he wouldn’t stop me.
When two of my children began working in the energy and transport sectors, I began focusing even more on energy issues, though I had been reading and studying the sectors for some 35 years before then. I read SAE articles wherever I could find them, though I admit that since the internet became widely monetized, finding free SAE articles to read is less easy than it once was. And, of course, all the while I practiced law.
As an example of building a foundation of knowledge, in the early 80’s, Twins racing rose in prominence. Certain Harley dealers made the effort to compete in the series at a national level. I was already a crew chief on an endurance road racing team that competed on the national level. It was common for crew chiefs to talk among themselves about issues, problems, rules, sponsorship, etc.
In those days, valve seal technology was limited compared to where it is today.
At the beginning of a Twins race, Harley air-cooled engines didn’t smoke on acceleration out of a corner. Because Harley uses a fork and groove design for its two connecting rods, the rear cylinder is not offset; it is directly behind the front cylinder, meaning that comparatively less cooling air strikes the rear cylinder. There is a second issue affecting why rear cylinders on Harley engines overheat, but it is somewhat longer to discuss.
During racing conditions, the extra heat produce by being on full throttle more often overheats the valve seals to the point that they harden and lose elasticity, allowing oil to seep by the seals and down the valve stems. During braking, when the throttle is off, the vacuum in the intake tract from the still spinning engine sucks much more oil past the now-hardened oil seals down the valve stem and into the combustion chamber. When the rider accelerates, the oil burns off and the engine smokes.
You learn these thing by asking a Harley crew chief why his engines smoke so much by the end of each race. When he says the problem is excessive heat in the rear cylinder and resulting failed valve seals, that made sense to me.
After each roughly 30-minute race, the Harley mechanics had to remove the heads, take out the valve train, replace the oil seals, resurface the valve and the valve seats, check parts clearances and then reassemble the heads. On our team, with water cooled engines, that process took place far less often.
There is a reason I do not comment on every subject under the sun. I lack the foundation of knowledge to post a reasoned comment on who should be a city commissioner or a county council member, unless they run on a platform of discord and hate and vengeance. I don’t know whether a proposed planned urban development should be denied or approved. I don’t know whether a city should spend money on a library or not, or spend money to repair a splash pad or not.
I comment about EVs and gas-powered engines, because these are issues about which the professional lying class lies. I comment about solar panels and wind power, because these are issues about which the professional lying class lies. I comment about the law because this is one of the biggest issues about which the professional lying class lies. I comment about the economy because it is one of the many issues about which the professional liars lie.
Liars and lie launders abound on every side. “Pestilential” partisan members of faction will never go away. I have a foundation of knowledge about certain things only because I have taken the time to amass that foundation of knowledge. And because I can always learn more, I continue to take the time to study certain issues.
When I learn that I have been wrong, I apologize to FlaglerLive readers. When I learn that my comments have been less than complete, I apologize to FlaglerLive readers. This is a quality that I admire about Ed P. He, too, concedes things. I seldom agree with him, but so what? He, too, seems to possess a vast store of knowledge about certain things. I respect that. I only oppose him when he maliciously steps out of his depth. I would never have used the term “vomit” in a comment had he not maliciously used that term against another commenter for doing something that he, too, consistently does.
I oppose the vengeful among us. I oppose the liars among us. I oppose the lie launderers among us. The rest?
Ray W. says
Here is an interesting and curious situation.
A contributor posted a letter to the editor of the Tampa Bay Times. In said letter, the writer asserts that Governor DeSantis and the Florida Cabinet recently voted to pay $83 million for four acres of undeveloped waterfront land in Destin. The seller was described as a “wealthy political contributor”. Politicians had “lined their pockets” through an increase in contributions, wrote the author.
So I looked it up.
Robert Guidry, a Louisiana businessman and reported political donor, bought the four acres some 9 years ago for $8 million. According to a Tallahassee Democrat story, Mr Guidry, in 2018, donated $250,000 to Governor DeSantis’ election campaign.
On September 30th of this year, Governor DeSantis and the Cabinet, with one dissenting member who did not vote no on the purchase, bought the land as part of a bigger package of land purchases, but the individual cost for the parcel was $83 million.
Per a statement issue by Cabinet staff, also published in the Tallahassee Democrat:
“Once acquired, the park area will expand to nearly 16 acres, offering an expansive beachfront, over 100 parking spaces, and excellent outdoor recreational opportunities for boating, fishing, and swimming.”
Make of this what you will.
Me?
I am out of my depth. Maybe the property is worth every penny of the $83 million we all are going to pay. Florida already owns 12 acres that adjoin the new property. Maybe someone smarter and better informed and educated than me can help. It strikes me that people can park on the adjoining 12 acres just as easily as they can on the new property and they can launch boats in order to fish and swim from the adjoining 12 acres. Maybe not.
Ray W. says
Here’s another interesting article on economics.
Perhaps some FlaglerLive readers will recall that I posted a number of comments on Fed Chair Powell’s assertion that it is not too late to grow the American economy out of a trap caused by our $37 trillion and growing federal debt. Powell’s assertion was based on an economic history that America experienced from about 2010 to 2019. During that roughly 10 year span, the American GDP grew on average at a rate faster than the rate of inflation. There occurred periods of time when the inflation rate was below the 2% target rate and GDP growth averaged more than 2.5%. Since a commonly accepted economic measure is the ratio between the total federal debt and the total GDP, when GDP rises faster than the debt, the ratio between the two drops.
According to a just published Fortune story, today’s ratio is that the federal debt is at 100% of total GDP and that it is anticipated to grow to 118% by 2035.
According to that same story, on Thursday, President Trump told a One America News interviewer that his “Big Beautiful Bill” and his tariff policies will deliver “record growth” and an “unprecedented fiscal windfall.” He added:
“We are becoming a country that is so rich, so powerful. … With that kind of growth we have now, the debt is very low relatively speaking. You can grow yourself out of that debt.”
Sounds to me as if President Trump is channeling Fed Chair Powell.
The Fortune reporter pointed out that America’s federal debt was $37.4 trillion and that tariffs are estimated at bringing in an additional $300 billion per year, making it difficult to quickly bring down the debt.
The reporter then pivoted to delving into a 2018 book written by the economist, Ray Dalio titled “Principles for Navigating Big Debt Crises” in which book Mr. Dalio put to use his study of dozens of (nearly 50) “major debt cycles”.
From that book, the reporter wrote that “lending supports spending and investment”. Spending and investment then “supports incomes and asset prices”. This then “temporarily” pushes economic growth “above the consistent productivity growth of the economy”. But, “eventually income will fall below the cost of the loans.”
Mr. Dalio concluded that “debt burdens only ease when ‘nominal income growth is higher than nominal interest rates.'” But excessive stimulus risks “unacceptable inflation and currency declines.”
The problem is that current CBO forecasts have the debt growing faster than the underlying economy and the government’s net interest costs are expected to continue to grow relative to GDP.
At its best, according to Mr. Dalio, “a beautiful deleveraging” can occur, during a time in which a government balances fiscal and monetary policies “so that growth outpaces interest costs, but without tipping into runaway inflation.”
This beautiful deleveraging, he says, is a narrow economic path, i.e., a form of walking on a razor’s edge.
Too much stimulus can trigger runaway inflation. Permanent tax cuts and “tariff-driven” stimulus does not fit easily this narrowly defined beautiful deleveraging ideal.
If easy credit boosts spending and if asset prices rise, and if unemployment falls, misleading economic signals can form. Should debt growth get dissociated with income growth, the process can lead to a “vicious, self-reinforcing contraction.”
In other words, Mr. Dalio writes that “[w]hen promises to deliver money (i.e., debt) can’t rise any more relative to the money and credit coming in, the process works in reverse and deleveraging begins.”
Make of this what you will.
Me?
Fed Chair Powell made no secret that the process he thinks can occur requires a balanced budget in which no new federal debt is added to the existing debt. In this scenario. GDP growth that outstrips inflation can bring down the ratio between GDP and the federal debt. I sense that this is the same narrow path that Mr. Dalio describes in his book. I might be wrong. I am not an economist. At best I am a curious student.
But if I am reading the story accurately, Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill and his tariff policies need to balance the federal budget, something that hasn’t happened since the years of the second Clinton administration. If the federal debt keeps rising at the $2 trillion per year clip that it has been rising since 2017, then it seems to me a fantasy that we can suddenly bring the federal debt to heel, particularly since GDP growth for the first six months has averaged just over 2% and inflation, year-over-year has grown to 2.9%.
But we need to wait to see how everything turns out. Yes, if the federal debt continues to skyrocket, the most gullibly stupid among us will claim that the Biden administration is solely responsible for the damage that type of debt brings to an economy. But this type of federal debt rise has been going on for almost nine years now.
This is why I have lon been arguing that the pandemic is responsible for the initial damage to our economy and that both Trump and Biden adopted risky policies, based on Congress ordering both to spend trillions of unfunded stimulus money. Fed Chair Powell’s independent decisions, also risky, contributed their share, too.
In summary, any FlaglerLive commenter who presents as a person gullibly stupid enough to say that only Biden is responsible for the economic damage initiated by the pandemic and furthered by policies adopted by both administrations and by the Fed is a fool.
Whether the pandemic is responsible for 30% of the economic damage and Trump responsible for 10% of the economic damage can be debated, but no one can refuse to accept that the pandemic occurred and that the entire world shut down in response to it.
Every nation in the world adopted shutdown policies in response to the pandemic’s damage. We came out of the shutdowns with a recovery over time that has been called the “envy of the world” but our response was not perfect and we have yet to address the rise in the federal debt that came with those responses.
Ray W. says
Benzinga report that in the time since President Trump imposed a 50% tariff on imports of Brazilian goods, including coffee (a position that he has since backed away from), more than 180 Brazilian coffee exporters have applied to receive Chinese export licenses.
A person identified as an “global coffee trader”, Hugo Portes, told a reporter:
“If the tariffs are meant to weaken Brazil, in reality, it is pushing sellers closer to China.”
Indian seafood and tea producers, also hit with a 50% tariff, are seeking to diversify their options.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
We can’t grow coffee except in a small region of the Hawaiian Islands that is suited to the crop. So why are we pushing away the producers who have been exporting to us for many, many decades? Once the Brazilians devote market share to other markets, can we get them back when we are the ones who forced them away?
As for India, we don’t grow tea. They do. We farm very little in the way of seafood products. They do. Again, why are we pushing away the producers of what we consume. Is there a more narrowly targeted way of imposing tariffs to get out way? What happens if Indian tea growers or seafood producers decide they have other options.
The issue if market share. OPEC is now willing to cut profits in order to regain market share it lost over the past four years.
Despite all the sound and fury, the Trump administration has yet to conclude a comprehensive trade deal with any country. There are many frameworks of a comprehensive deal, and there are individual concessions, like giving Japanese care a 15% import duty on vehicles where other nations have a 25% duty, but that does not comprise a comprehensive trade deal. NAFTA was a comprehensive trade deal. So, too, was CAFTA. President Trump negotiated a comprensive trade deal with Canada and Mexico during his first administration. Nothing thus far in the second administration comes close.
My hope is that Trump is able to conclude many comprehensive trade deals with numerous countries and that a resulting level of healthy and increasing trade can result that benefits each country. I have long advocated for narrowly targeted tariffs that have a single purpose and that tariffs should end when the purpose has been reached. Broad-based tariffs just to tariff, to my understanding, are commonly ineffective.
Ray W. says
Moneywise presents an interesting conundrum about Trump’s tariff and economic policies.
Here are some bullet points from the article:
– According to Shai Akabas, vice president of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, told the reporter that:
“Historically, tariff revenue has never accounted for more than 2% of total federal government revenues in the modern era. And with the tariffs that are in place today, that could go up to 5% or perhaps even higher.”
– The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) concurs:
“We project that increases in tariffs implemented during the period from January 6, 2025, to August 19 will decrease primary deficits (which exclude net outlays for interest) by $3.3 trillion if the higher tariffs persist for the 2025-2035 period.”
– Should the CBO projection hold accurate for that 11-year period, interest costs on the federal debt will drop by $0.7 trillion, for a total benefit of $4.0 trillion over that span.
– Should that sum be directed to the existing federal debt of $37.4 trillion, it will reduce the federal debt.
– The CBO reports that the Big Beautiful Bill will cost $3.4 trillion in federal revenue over the next decade.
– According to the Center for American Progress, tariff policies are driving up consumer costs of living in four major categories:
1. New cars.
2. Health insurance.
3. Products for children.
4. Cookout staples and other foods.
– According to the Yale Budget Lab, tariff costs will total $2,400 per American family per year.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
The tariff picture remains muddled. First of all, I have difficulty believing that today’s tariff rates will remain unchanged over the next 10 years. Who knows how many times tariff policies have been changed over the past eight-and-a-half months. Second, no one knows how future economic events will shake out. 10 years is a long time in an economy that seemingly changes week to week.
Sherry says
What is this S#$% ?! trump is now trying to go around a Federal Judge’s Orders? Maga, when are you going to realize you elected a “Criminal”?
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Updated 4:19 PM PDT, October 5, 2025
Leer en español
California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Sunday he would go to court to fight the move by President Donald Trump to send National Guard members from his state to Oregon, where protesters have gathered near a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Portland.
Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek said 101 California National Guard members arrived in her state Saturday night by plane and more were on the way. Kotek said there has been no formal communication with the federal government about the deployment. A day earlier, a judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from deploying 200 members of Oregon’s guard to Portland.
“There is no need for military intervention in Oregon,” Kotek said Sunday.
The Pentagon said Sunday that 200 Guard members were sent from California to Oregon. Kotek’s office said it could not verify the current location of Guard members who arrived in Oregon on Saturday.
Skibum says
You are, of course, right on the money, Sherry. The false statement from the orange-faced occupier of the WH that “Portland is burning” and in need of federalized troops is totally ridiculous. The protests against the overreach of ICE is confined to a tiny 1-square block area in downtown Portland.
If the federal officials would call off their rabid dogs and make ICE officers comply with the normal legal procedures that have governed federal ICE officers in the past, NONE of the protests or violence would have occurred in the first place! Besides that, Portland PD, Multnomah County Sheriff’s Department and the Oregon State Police have way more than enough law enforcement personnel available in the surrounding Portland area to handle any protest that might get out of hand. Certainly, without a doubt, local officers are very capable of dealing with protesters confined to a 1-block area!
But none of that matters to the idiot in the WH because he is focused on dividing Americans, fomenting anger and increased violence in American cities specifically so he can try to justify sending in more and more federal troops. Why? He wants his maga sheeple to be duped enough to believe our cities are burning down, Americans are rioting in the streets, anything to distract from more and more undemocratic and unconstitutional actions he and his corrupt administration is taking.
He doesn’t want Americans to think about the healthcare subsidies he has directed the GOP congress to get rid of in order to give billionaires more tax cuts! He thinks Americans are stupid enough, or in his words “uneducated” enough not to realize that everything he does is screwing the average Joe so he can further enrich himself, his contemptable family, and his rich buddies.
He wants our minds on ANYTHING other than his lies and inaction to release the Epstein files which are “sitting on the desk” of his AG, Pam Bondi… gathering dust!
Don’t people realize and understand that, not even 12 months into drumph’s second term, his increasingly militaristic actions against American states and cities are his orchestrated plan to stoke so much discord and violence between American citizens so he can declare martial law just before the midterm elections and try to suspend elections all together? Am I the only one who can see through his increasingly unhinged and illegal effort to corrupt our nation’s federal elections once again?
This man is EVIL! He is an anti-democracy, dictator wanna-be that already has the republican congress in his pocket and is hard at work to destroy all semblance of this nation’s historic democratic government and institutions.
If we wait until he has accomplished his goals, what do you think will be his coup d’ gras? The renaming of the USA to the “United Maga States of Trump”? WAKE UP, AMERICA!
Laurel says
No, Skibum, you are not the only one who sees through this plan to divide us all up, and overthrow the United States of America. There are a lot of recent videos on YouTube showing, not only masked, rifle carrying and uniformed troops rolling into our cities on war vehicles, but also, masked men jumping out of unmarked cars, wearing tee shirts and blue jeans throwing people to the ground and trying to zip tie them, while cars are honking and angry crowds are gathering. Protestors, wielding signs, not weapons, are being tear gassed and beaten. The local police are upset with the government overreach. Trump, Vance and Miller are stirring the shit up, and are about to start a civil war. Americans aren’t putting up with it, and the current administration is showing these videos claiming the protestors are the problem.
This is deeper than Trump. The tech billionaires are gathering up all the data they can on each and every one of us. They want to know everything we do, and just what we think. Using controversial bullshit, like a transgender arguments in the Supreme Court is more distraction, as if that takes priority over the country being able to afford food and healthcare, or our democracy, for that matter.
Wow, the Republican House is on vacation. Gee, the Democrats are mad.
The tech oligarchs donate large sums of money to campaigns, that we cannot keep up with.
What was that jobs report?