Trump 2025

[Markiii]

  Mannen med ljåen skrev (På 23.3.2025 den 13.33):

Demokratene og venstreekstreme startet lovløsheten, med BLM, defund the police, manglende grensekontroll osv.

Ekspander  

Nei, de gjorde ikke det. Repugnikanerne og høyresiden gjorde det. Følg med.  

  Mannen med ljåen skrev (På 23.3.2025 den 17.00):

Flott. Mer kansellering av alt som ikke er politisk korrekt i ekkokammeret.

Ekspander  

Ingen er større snøflak og kansellerer mer enn høyresiden.

Endret mandag kl 13:52 av Markiii

[obygda]

  Mbappe09 skrev (På 24.3.2025 den 8.10):

Ikke bra.

Ekspander  

Det er galskap dette usa forsøker med Grønland..Dersom USA fotsøker å annektere Grønland håper jeg Norge trekker alle diplomatiske relasjoner til USA.

[Apathy]

  obygda skrev (På 24.3.2025 den 14.04):

Det er galskap dette usa forsøker med Grønland..Dersom USA fotsøker å annektere Grønland håper jeg Norge trekker alle diplomatiske relasjoner til USA.

Ekspander  

Eller i det minste selger seg ut av Amerikansk økonomi....

Edit: Noe vi burde ha gjort da det ble klart hvem som vant valget. Eller i det minste før 20.01.25. Nå kan vi angre over at USD har tapt seg i verdi til alle andre valuta. Men men. Tangen om det...

Endret mandag kl 14:06 av Apathy

[Apathy]

Nuff said...

[sedsberg]

  Mbappe09 skrev (På 24.3.2025 den 12.37):

Det skal være mulig å se videoen uten å ha bruker. Alle videoer, selv Youtube har en kategori der det står navnet på musikken som spilles av hensyn til copyright osv. 

Ekspander  

Det er nettopp det jeg synes bare blir støy. Når det postes musikk, musikkvideoer etc. Spesielt når det er kamuflert som TitCock-videoer.

[Rune_says]

Får håpe Trump/Vance ikke har planlagt to fluer i en smekk. 

Skilsmisse for Vance og påskudd for Trump til å ta Grønland.

[Mr.M]

  SilverShaded skrev (På 24.3.2025 den 11.13):

Det er jo flere som ikke er så fornøyde om dagen. Rubio er ikke bare grinete over Musk og har hatt hissige krangler med ham, han er også misfornøyd med at eiendoms-billionæren Steve Witkoff har tatt over rollen hans ved at Trump har innsatt ham som "utsending til Midt-Østen". Stakkaren føler seg nok tilsidesatt, han også... 🤡

Ekspander  

blir nok frafall etterhvert i persongalleriet rundt Trump denne gangen også. Enten fordi "you're fired", eller fordi de hopper av galskapen for å redde ryktet sitt.

[Snikpellik]

Dette er helt ellevilt, så utrolig flaut og amatørmessig - og ikke minst ekstremt urovekkende for USAs nasjonale sikkerhet. 

Jeffrey Goldberg, sjefredaktøren i storavisa The Atlantic ble ved et uhell inkludert i en Signal-gruppechat med tjenestemenn i Trump-administrasjonen, der topphemmelige krigsplaner knyttet til Jemen ble diskutert. I gruppechatten finner vi blant andre forsvarsminister Pete Hegseth, visepresident JD Vance, CIA-sjef John Ratcliffe og Trumps nasjonale sikkerhetsrådgiver Mike Waltz.

The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/trump-administration-accidentally-texted-me-its-war-plans/682151/?gift=J_CNpt7Ar1nKEXqJWVh1ulEUSzqbExa4Kxm41rX0EQA&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. I didn’t think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling.

The world found out shortly before 2 p.m. eastern time on March 15 that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen.

I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming. The reason I knew this is that Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted me the war plan at 11:44 a.m. The plan included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing.

This is going to require some explaining.

Endret mandag kl 16:59 av Snikpellik

[Imaginacíon]

  Snikpellik skrev (På 24.3.2025 den 16.56):

Dette er helt ellevilt, så utrolig flaut og amatørmessig - og ikke minst ekstremt urovekkende for USAs nasjonale sikkerhet. 

Jeffrey Goldberg, sjefredaktøren i storavisa The Atlantic ble ved et uhell inkludert i en Signal-gruppechat med tjenestemenn i Trump-administrasjonen, der topphemmelige krigsplaner knyttet til Jemen ble diskutert. I gruppechatten finner vi blant andre forsvarsminister Pete Hegseth og visepresident JD Vance.

The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/trump-administration-accidentally-texted-me-its-war-plans/682151/?gift=J_CNpt7Ar1nKEXqJWVh1ulEUSzqbExa4Kxm41rX0EQA&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. I didn’t think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling.

The world found out shortly before 2 p.m. eastern time on March 15 that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen.

I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming. The reason I knew this is that Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted me the war plan at 11:44 a.m. The plan included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing.

This is going to require some explaining.

Ekspander  

Merkelig. The Atlantic har vel et høyt renomé, eller?

[rabler]

  Mannen med ljåen skrev (På 23.3.2025 den 17.00):

Flott. Mer kansellering av alt som ikke er politisk korrekt i ekkokammeret.

Ekspander  

Du har ikke helt forstått hva et ekkokammer er skjønner jeg… 🙄

 

[Snikpellik]

  Imaginacíon skrev (På 24.3.2025 den 17.02):

Merkelig. The Atlantic har vel et høyt renomé, eller?

Ekspander  

Det har de.

—

Nå bekreftet av Det hvite hus:

Det hvite hus bekrefter mandag kveld at de ved en feiltagelse har sendt hemmelig militær informasjon til en journalist. Det melder AFP.

https://www.nrk.no/nyheter/trump-administrasjonen-delte-hemmelige-angrepsplaner-med-journalist-ved-en-feil-1.17353888

Dette er helt sinnsykt, og etter normale standarder er dette på gå-av-nivå for en forsvarsminister. Men Trump-administrasjonen opererer ikke etter noen standarder i det hele tatt.

Endret mandag kl 18:13 av Snikpellik

[Mr.M]

  Snikpellik skrev (På 24.3.2025 den 16.56):

Jeffrey Goldberg, sjefredaktøren i storavisa The Atlantic ble ved et uhell inkludert i en Signal-gruppechat med tjenestemenn i Trump-administrasjonen, der topphemmelige krigsplaner knyttet til Jemen ble diskutert. I gruppechatten finner vi blant andre forsvarsminister Pete Hegseth, visepresident JD Vance, CIA-sjef John Ratcliffe og Trumps nasjonale sikkerhetsrådgiver Mike Waltz.

Ekspander  

oppsiktsvekkende historie.

eneste jeg funderer over er, kanskje han skulle forholdt seg helt rolig/vært "flue på veggen" videre fremover, og ikke meldt seg ut av gruppen? slik han gjorde?

hvem vet hva som kunne dukket opp av ulike interessante saker etterhvert? Må da ta forbehold at jeg ikke er inne i hvordan disse skjulte/hemmelige gruppene administreres, altså hvorvidt hvert nye sakskompleks evt. fortsetter i samme "tråden/gruppen" som han kunne lese, eller om det blir nye tråder som fordrer at man må bli invitert (igjen). hvis det siste, så var det selvfølgelig bare å publisere det han satt på pr. nå.

[JK22]

  Snikpellik skrev (På 24.3.2025 den 17.50):

Det har de.

—

Nå bekreftet av Det hvite hus:

Det hvite hus bekrefter mandag kveld at de ved en feiltagelse har sendt hemmelig militær informasjon til en journalist. Det melder AFP.

https://www.nrk.no/nyheter/trump-administrasjonen-delte-hemmelige-angrepsplaner-med-journalist-ved-en-feil-1.17353888

Dette er helt sinnsykt, og etter normale standarder er dette på gå-av-nivå for en forsvarsminister. Men Trump-administrasjonen opererer ikke etter noen standarder i det hele tatt.

Ekspander  

Det blir verre. Etter Trumps folk deaktiverte det amerikanske cyberforsvaret uten forsvar betyr det at både kineserne og russerne er i stand til å spionere på det interne kommunikasjonsnettverket for regjeringsmakten i USA! Denne ufattelige feilen i seg selv er et meget alvorlig sikkerhetshull som journalisten tilfeldigvis oppdaget ved å bli feilaktig kontaktet, slik at uvedkommende fikk innblikk i fortrolige meldinger (som avslørt en sterk mistro mot USAs allierte og total mangel på anstendighet!). Det mene at det ikke er mulig å forveksle hemmeligholdte informasjon med Trump-regimet uten å risikere fiendtlig oppsnapping. 

Og hva gjør Trump? Alle kunne se hvor ekstraordinært uegnet han er som maktperson. Truslene om 25 % toll på disse som kjøpt olje fra Venezuela som nå ligges under totalblokade (som Latin-Amerika ikke ønsker...) har kommet som et meget stort sjokk på alle, spesielt Modi i India. For det viser alle at dette er en mann som ikke respektere noe som helst. Og som Roberts nå girer seg opp for å konfrontere, han hadde avvist en forespørsel omkring Sullivan-saken (om fri mediedekning) og vil ikke respektere denne galningens forlangelsene. 

[JK22]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/opinion-in-trump-versus-the-constitution-congress-is-backing-the-wrong-side/ar-AA1ByrL4?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=2c3ef7fa9b244647fb54117b161f3769&ei=11

Congressional Republicans have repeatedly failed a simple test: Choose between President Trump and the Constitution.

An upcoming vote will give Senators another chance to make a better choice. 

It shouldn’t be so hard. After all, senators took an oath to uphold the Constitution. But then, so did Trump, and we see how little it means to him.  

Trump has repeatedly claimed that the Constitution gives him the power to do whatever he wants. That’s dead wrong. Our presidents are not kings. Under our Constitution, no person, including the president, is above the law. 

Yet Trump and his chainsaw-wielding sidekick Elon Musk have repeatedly broken the law in their zeal to gut federal agencies that serve the American people and protect us from wrongdoing by corporations. Trump has issued orders that are unconstitutional according to rulings by the Supreme Court.  

Trump seems to hope that the current majority on the Supreme Court will rewrite the Constitution in line with his policy preferences. After all, those justices already made up a sweeping theory about presidential immunity that has likely encouraged Trump’s lawless behavior.

As Trump and his team dismantle checks and balances, use the government to attack his personal enemies and impose his will on universities, media, private businesses and federal courts have repeatedly stepped in to defend the rule of law — and the lives of Americans. 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/there-s-only-one-way-out-of-this-mess-opinion/ar-AA1ByNX5?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=ed92f3665fbc4dd0e28c1ae3cc1c9611&ei=19

The history of America is the history of fits and starts of progress followed by oligarchic backlash leading to periods of pain and stagnation (except for the morbidly rich).

Our first eighty years started with the American Revolution against an absolute monarch and the world’s largest corporation. But the Founders’ idealism was rejected by the Southern oligarchs, who saw the end of slavery as a threat to their wealth and power; they’d already turned the South into a neofascist hellscape and then launched the war against America that Abraham Lincoln won.

Lincoln then embarked on a series of progressive reforms including the 13th Amendment, the Homestead Act, the National Banking Act, the Pacific Railway Acts, creation of the Department of Agriculture, and the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act that gave federal land for the creation of more than fifty colleges that would provide free educations to America’s young people. He was also the first president to favorably use the word “unions” back when they were so rare that newspapers put the word in quotes.

Our second eighty years saw the rightwing backlash to Lincoln’s reforms, starting with the corrupt deal to end Reconstruction in the election of 1876. As President Grover Cleveland proclaimed in his 1887 State of the Union address:

“As we view the achievements of aggregated capital, we discover the existence of trusts, combinations, and monopolies, while the citizen is struggling far in the rear or is trampled to death beneath an iron heel. Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people’s masters.”

The response was the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1891, which progressive presidents Teddy Roosevelt and William Taft enforced ruthlessly, breaking up giant corporations and monopolistic conspiracies including Standard Oil. Another example was the Tillman Act of 1907, which forbade corporations from giving any money or thing of value to any candidate for federal office.

States across the nation also took on corporate power; here’s an example from a 1905 Wisconsin Law that five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court struck down when they decided that corporations are people and money is speech (Section 4489a, Sec. 1, ch. 492, 1905). It explicitly said:

“No corporation doing business in this state shall pay or contribute, or offer, consent or agree to pay or contribute, directly or indirectly, any money, property, free service of its officers or employees or thing of value to any political party, organization, committee or individual for any political purpose whatsoever, or for the purpose of influencing legislation of any kind, or to promote or defeat the candidacy of any person for nomination, appointment or election to any political office.” (emphasis added)

The penalty included a substantial fine, years in prison for individual executives, and the political death sentence of the corporation itself being forbidden from doing business in Wisconsin:

“Any officer, employee, agent or attorney or other representative of any corporation, acting for and in behalf of such corporation, who shall violate this act, shall be punished upon conviction by a fine … or by imprisonment in the state prison for a period of not less than one nor more than five years, … and … its right to do business in this state may be declared forfeited.”

Two years later, efforts to control bad behavior by rich people and corporations went federal with the Tillman Act of 1907. That law explicitly forbade any corporation from making “contributions in connection with any election to any [federal] political office.”

The rightwing reaction to that era (and the introduction of the estate tax by Teddy Roosevelt and the income tax by Woodrow Wilson) came with the 1920 election, when Republican Warren Harding became president and immediately dropped the top income tax rate from 90% down to 25% and began deregulating the banking and investment industries (among others).

That, of course, led straight to Black Tuesday of 1929 and the start of what was then called the Republican Great Depression. Out of that Republican disaster, Franklin Roosevelt kicked off a new progressive era in 1933 with Social Security, unemployment insurance, the legalization and protection of unions and workers’ rights, and the minimum wage.

Our third 80 year period began with the end of World War II and is ending now. Because Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt (and Congress and the Courts) had severely limited the power of big corporations and the morbidly rich from owning politicians, we got a lot done during the first 60 years.

President Eisenhower was re-elected on a platform of expanding Social Security and unionization, Kennedy called for a national healthcare system which led to LBJ passing Medicaid and Medicare, along with solidifying civil and voting rights.

The third great backlash to this progress began in the 1970s with the Powell Memo and Lewis Powell himself authoring the 1978 Bellotti decision, which confirmed that corporations are “persons” with rights under the Bill of Rights, including the right to free speech, which Powell defined as the ability to use money to buy campaign commercials.

That was amplified by the 5-4 Citizens United decision in 2010, which fully and finally rejected over a hundred years of congressional reforms that limited the power of billionaires and corporations; as a result, we’re now facing this existential crisis of democracy.

That decision, as I lay out in The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America, was a breach of the trust of the American people on a level with their Dred Scott decision in 1856, which arguably led us straight into the Civil War.

This third backlash has reached its peak with the Trump/Musk administration gutting most of the institutions that were created by Teddy, Franklin, and Lyndon, kneecapping the ability of the IRS to hold rich tax cheats to account, and rewriting American history to exclude the accomplishments of women and Black and queer people.

Will this third 80 year period wrap up with a return to the progressive values on which America was founded like the first two did? Or will Trump and Musk succeed in ending our democracy, replacing it with an autocratic “illiberal democracy” like in Hungary and Russia?

Democrats in Congress came damn close three years ago to rebooting us into a new progressive era with the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act of 2022.

The former would have rolled back large parts of the Citizens United decision and its predecessors, putting limits on corporate and billionaire money in politics, ending gerrymandering, and solidifying multiple good government reforms. The latter explicitly said every American citizen has a right to vote, so we could only be purged from voting rolls by court order.

Both passed the House and had enough votes to pass the Senate, but were stopped by a Republican filibuster. Democrats had enough votes to break the filibuster, until Republicans reached out to two corrupt Democratic senators (Sinema and Manchin) who sided with them and killed the legislation. (Now they’re working on Fetterman.)

As a result, Elon Musk is expanding his use of his billions to threaten Republican politicians and defeat Democrats in ways that, prior to Citizens United, would have been crimes.

Americans are waking up and starting to fight back; Bernie and AOC drew 86,000 people to a handful of rallies in the Midwest last week, and more are planned. As the courts struggle to restrain Trump’s authoritarian impulses, there’s a very real possibility that his and Musk’s attacks on American institutions have so horrified voters that they’ll hand power back to Democrats in 2026 and 2028.

If so, reprising even more forceful versions of the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act is an urgent priority. Money in politics has been — from the earliest days of our republic to today — a cancer in our political system. Musk is a symptom of that, although he’s only one of many rightwing billionaires who’ve effectively seized control of the GOP and, through it, our government.

But there is still hope. Abraham Lincoln told us:

“In this age, in this country, public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail; against it, nothing can succeed.”

Because our only salvation lies in again outlawing billionaires from buying politicians and political parties, the most important thing we can do right now is to participate in the kinds of demonstrations and support the politicians who are leading progressive public opinion.

They will give judges, law firms, and politicians who know what Trump is doing is wrong the backing they need to stiffen their spines and hold the line until the electoral process can return sanity to America.

Denne artikkelen forteller oss at det er en oligark-vers-folk konflikt helt fra begynnelsen, som skyldes grunnlovsfedrenes mistro mot demokratisk ideologi og vektlegning av et valgbart oligarkistyre, dette gjør 1789-konstitusjonen helt unik i sammenligning med alle andre konstitusjonene inkludert den norske hvor ideen om at makten utspringer av folkerepresentasjon etter likhetsidealet er dominerende. Gang på gang hadde korrupte krefter tatt ledelsen, som fulgt til motreaksjoner gang på gang - for selve grunnfeilen, den utdaterte konstitusjonen basert på 1600-tallets tanker, forbli ved kraft. Det bli en evig trekkekamp uten stans, hvor folket tilsidesettes i et politisk system som har feilfungert i flere tiår. 

Det er svært tvilsomt det vil bli valg med Trump og MAGA ved makten; det er min tro at systemet vil endelig falle fra hverandre slik at det vil ikke bli en tredje rekonstruksjon eller en progressiv justering til det bedre, så man må begynne helt fra grunnen av - dvs. en ny og mer tidsriktig konstitusjon basert på folkerepresentasjon som et ideal. Artikkelen forklarer oss at det Trump og republikanerne/MAGA gjør i dag er å ødelegge 200 års tradisjoner. 

[:utakt]

Inkompetanse i alle ledd. Helt vanvittig.

[Imaginacíon]

  JK22 skrev (På 24.3.2025 den 19.47):

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/opinion-in-trump-versus-the-constitution-congress-is-backing-the-wrong-side/ar-AA1ByrL4?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=2c3ef7fa9b244647fb54117b161f3769&ei=11

Congressional Republicans have repeatedly failed a simple test: Choose between President Trump and the Constitution.

An upcoming vote will give Senators another chance to make a better choice. 

It shouldn’t be so hard. After all, senators took an oath to uphold the Constitution. But then, so did Trump, and we see how little it means to him.  

Trump has repeatedly claimed that the Constitution gives him the power to do whatever he wants. That’s dead wrong. Our presidents are not kings. Under our Constitution, no person, including the president, is above the law. 

Yet Trump and his chainsaw-wielding sidekick Elon Musk have repeatedly broken the law in their zeal to gut federal agencies that serve the American people and protect us from wrongdoing by corporations. Trump has issued orders that are unconstitutional according to rulings by the Supreme Court.  

Trump seems to hope that the current majority on the Supreme Court will rewrite the Constitution in line with his policy preferences. After all, those justices already made up a sweeping theory about presidential immunity that has likely encouraged Trump’s lawless behavior.

As Trump and his team dismantle checks and balances, use the government to attack his personal enemies and impose his will on universities, media, private businesses and federal courts have repeatedly stepped in to defend the rule of law — and the lives of Americans. 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/there-s-only-one-way-out-of-this-mess-opinion/ar-AA1ByNX5?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=ed92f3665fbc4dd0e28c1ae3cc1c9611&ei=19

The history of America is the history of fits and starts of progress followed by oligarchic backlash leading to periods of pain and stagnation (except for the morbidly rich).

Our first eighty years started with the American Revolution against an absolute monarch and the world’s largest corporation. But the Founders’ idealism was rejected by the Southern oligarchs, who saw the end of slavery as a threat to their wealth and power; they’d already turned the South into a neofascist hellscape and then launched the war against America that Abraham Lincoln won.

Lincoln then embarked on a series of progressive reforms including the 13th Amendment, the Homestead Act, the National Banking Act, the Pacific Railway Acts, creation of the Department of Agriculture, and the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act that gave federal land for the creation of more than fifty colleges that would provide free educations to America’s young people. He was also the first president to favorably use the word “unions” back when they were so rare that newspapers put the word in quotes.

Our second eighty years saw the rightwing backlash to Lincoln’s reforms, starting with the corrupt deal to end Reconstruction in the election of 1876. As President Grover Cleveland proclaimed in his 1887 State of the Union address:

“As we view the achievements of aggregated capital, we discover the existence of trusts, combinations, and monopolies, while the citizen is struggling far in the rear or is trampled to death beneath an iron heel. Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people’s masters.”

The response was the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1891, which progressive presidents Teddy Roosevelt and William Taft enforced ruthlessly, breaking up giant corporations and monopolistic conspiracies including Standard Oil. Another example was the Tillman Act of 1907, which forbade corporations from giving any money or thing of value to any candidate for federal office.

States across the nation also took on corporate power; here’s an example from a 1905 Wisconsin Law that five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court struck down when they decided that corporations are people and money is speech (Section 4489a, Sec. 1, ch. 492, 1905). It explicitly said:

“No corporation doing business in this state shall pay or contribute, or offer, consent or agree to pay or contribute, directly or indirectly, any money, property, free service of its officers or employees or thing of value to any political party, organization, committee or individual for any political purpose whatsoever, or for the purpose of influencing legislation of any kind, or to promote or defeat the candidacy of any person for nomination, appointment or election to any political office.” (emphasis added)

The penalty included a substantial fine, years in prison for individual executives, and the political death sentence of the corporation itself being forbidden from doing business in Wisconsin:

“Any officer, employee, agent or attorney or other representative of any corporation, acting for and in behalf of such corporation, who shall violate this act, shall be punished upon conviction by a fine … or by imprisonment in the state prison for a period of not less than one nor more than five years, … and … its right to do business in this state may be declared forfeited.”

Two years later, efforts to control bad behavior by rich people and corporations went federal with the Tillman Act of 1907. That law explicitly forbade any corporation from making “contributions in connection with any election to any [federal] political office.”

The rightwing reaction to that era (and the introduction of the estate tax by Teddy Roosevelt and the income tax by Woodrow Wilson) came with the 1920 election, when Republican Warren Harding became president and immediately dropped the top income tax rate from 90% down to 25% and began deregulating the banking and investment industries (among others).

That, of course, led straight to Black Tuesday of 1929 and the start of what was then called the Republican Great Depression. Out of that Republican disaster, Franklin Roosevelt kicked off a new progressive era in 1933 with Social Security, unemployment insurance, the legalization and protection of unions and workers’ rights, and the minimum wage.

Our third 80 year period began with the end of World War II and is ending now. Because Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt (and Congress and the Courts) had severely limited the power of big corporations and the morbidly rich from owning politicians, we got a lot done during the first 60 years.

President Eisenhower was re-elected on a platform of expanding Social Security and unionization, Kennedy called for a national healthcare system which led to LBJ passing Medicaid and Medicare, along with solidifying civil and voting rights.

The third great backlash to this progress began in the 1970s with the Powell Memo and Lewis Powell himself authoring the 1978 Bellotti decision, which confirmed that corporations are “persons” with rights under the Bill of Rights, including the right to free speech, which Powell defined as the ability to use money to buy campaign commercials.

That was amplified by the 5-4 Citizens United decision in 2010, which fully and finally rejected over a hundred years of congressional reforms that limited the power of billionaires and corporations; as a result, we’re now facing this existential crisis of democracy.

That decision, as I lay out in The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America, was a breach of the trust of the American people on a level with their Dred Scott decision in 1856, which arguably led us straight into the Civil War.

This third backlash has reached its peak with the Trump/Musk administration gutting most of the institutions that were created by Teddy, Franklin, and Lyndon, kneecapping the ability of the IRS to hold rich tax cheats to account, and rewriting American history to exclude the accomplishments of women and Black and queer people.

Will this third 80 year period wrap up with a return to the progressive values on which America was founded like the first two did? Or will Trump and Musk succeed in ending our democracy, replacing it with an autocratic “illiberal democracy” like in Hungary and Russia?

Democrats in Congress came damn close three years ago to rebooting us into a new progressive era with the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act of 2022.

The former would have rolled back large parts of the Citizens United decision and its predecessors, putting limits on corporate and billionaire money in politics, ending gerrymandering, and solidifying multiple good government reforms. The latter explicitly said every American citizen has a right to vote, so we could only be purged from voting rolls by court order.

Both passed the House and had enough votes to pass the Senate, but were stopped by a Republican filibuster. Democrats had enough votes to break the filibuster, until Republicans reached out to two corrupt Democratic senators (Sinema and Manchin) who sided with them and killed the legislation. (Now they’re working on Fetterman.)

As a result, Elon Musk is expanding his use of his billions to threaten Republican politicians and defeat Democrats in ways that, prior to Citizens United, would have been crimes.

Americans are waking up and starting to fight back; Bernie and AOC drew 86,000 people to a handful of rallies in the Midwest last week, and more are planned. As the courts struggle to restrain Trump’s authoritarian impulses, there’s a very real possibility that his and Musk’s attacks on American institutions have so horrified voters that they’ll hand power back to Democrats in 2026 and 2028.

If so, reprising even more forceful versions of the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act is an urgent priority. Money in politics has been — from the earliest days of our republic to today — a cancer in our political system. Musk is a symptom of that, although he’s only one of many rightwing billionaires who’ve effectively seized control of the GOP and, through it, our government.

But there is still hope. Abraham Lincoln told us:

“In this age, in this country, public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail; against it, nothing can succeed.”

Because our only salvation lies in again outlawing billionaires from buying politicians and political parties, the most important thing we can do right now is to participate in the kinds of demonstrations and support the politicians who are leading progressive public opinion.

They will give judges, law firms, and politicians who know what Trump is doing is wrong the backing they need to stiffen their spines and hold the line until the electoral process can return sanity to America.

Denne artikkelen forteller oss at det er en oligark-vers-folk konflikt helt fra begynnelsen, som skyldes grunnlovsfedrenes mistro mot demokratisk ideologi og vektlegning av et valgbart oligarkistyre, dette gjør 1789-konstitusjonen helt unik i sammenligning med alle andre konstitusjonene inkludert den norske hvor ideen om at makten utspringer av folkerepresentasjon etter likhetsidealet er dominerende. Gang på gang hadde korrupte krefter tatt ledelsen, som fulgt til motreaksjoner gang på gang - for selve grunnfeilen, den utdaterte konstitusjonen basert på 1600-tallets tanker, forbli ved kraft. Det bli en evig trekkekamp uten stans, hvor folket tilsidesettes i et politisk system som har feilfungert i flere tiår. 

Det er svært tvilsomt det vil bli valg med Trump og MAGA ved makten; det er min tro at systemet vil endelig falle fra hverandre slik at det vil ikke bli en tredje rekonstruksjon eller en progressiv justering til det bedre, så man må begynne helt fra grunnen av - dvs. en ny og mer tidsriktig konstitusjon basert på folkerepresentasjon som et ideal. Artikkelen forklarer oss at det Trump og republikanerne/MAGA gjør i dag er å ødelegge 200 års tradisjoner. 

Ekspander  

Det er bedre at USA starter med blanke ark og lager seg en ny konstitusjon enn at de humper videre med den de har nå. De får innkalle til et grunnlovskonvent, det som er igjen av USA når den tid kommer.

[Mannen med ljåen]

https://www.vg.no/nyheter/i/o3QA2m/donald-trump-rasende-over-forsinket-air-force-one

  Sitat

President Trump er frustrert over forsinkelsene med nye Air Force One-fly, og har satt Elon Musk på saken. Nå senkes kravet om sikkerhetsklareringer.

Ekspander  

Hvor klokt er det å senke standarden i Boeing ytterligere? Selskapet som lot to fly styrte under nesten identiske omstendigheter på grunn av en udokumentert modifikasjon som skulle dekke over at flyet var fremtungt, som slo inn uten grunn. 

Selskapet som glemmer å sette skruer i dørene, så de faller av i fart. 

Og Trump vil selv sitte i dette flyet? Det vil ikke jeg.

[^fmj]

Interessant å se på dialogen, det lyser ikke akkurat intelligent konversasjon av det. 

Har tenkt på de akademiske gradene til disse folkene, lurer på hvor mange av disse som er tatt uten juks og fanteri?

[Filmvenn]

Er det mulig. 

Pete Hegseth er den verste DEI-ansattelsen i historien. Den alkoholiserte klovnen sammen med disse andre amatørene. 

Er det faen mulig. Og disse folka har de siste 8 årene levd på BUT HER EMAILS!!!! 

[Mannen med ljåen]

  rabler skrev (På 24.3.2025 den 17.38):

Du har ikke helt forstått hva et ekkokammer er skjønner jeg… 🙄

 

Ekspander  

Jeg har absolutt forstått hva ekkokammer er. Woke har infiltrert alt fra Hollywood, alle kjendisene, alle massemediene, skolesystemet, sporten og politikken. Venstreekstreme er selvsagt enige i woke, så de forstår ikke at dette er galskap. Alle andre ser det, og det kokte over. Trump hadde ikke slått demokratene om de ikke hadde mistet vettet.

Newton lover: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Musk kjøpte Twitter for å gi høyresiden en stemme. Det fungerte. Så fikk de et eget ekkokammer.

Etter valget fremstår høyresiden som så rablende gale at det hadde vært bedre om Harris vant. Og vi trodde hun var uegnet.

Trump er en skummel kombinasjon av fornuft der Harris sviktet, så folk stemmer på ham, og rablende gal på andre områder.
En politiker som klarer å være fornuftig på alle områder er tydeligvis for mye å be om, av 300 millioner innbyggere.

Jeg har lenge advart mot ekstremisme. Jeg savner et politisk sentrum.