2025: The Worst Year in America's History

Some are saying that Trump has become an obsession for many Americans. But when you have a dangerous, corrupt, vulgar, racist and criminal clown in the White House, shouldn't your patriotism make you obsess about whether your country will survive this idiot's wrecking of America after 250 years of its history?

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Opinion

Trump’s “Animal House” is floundering
Brian Karem
Fri, November 28, 2025


President Donald Trump, flanked by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Attorney General Pam Bondi, announces his takeover of Washington, D.C. on Aug. 11, 2025. ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images

Happy Thanksgiving. Stop doom scrolling. Try some sweet potato pie.

My daily trip to the White House, when I make it, is to take the Washington, D.C., Metro red line. I get off at the Farragut North station and walk two blocks to the White House.

Wednesday afternoon it was the site of gun violence aimed at members of the National Guard — part-time soldiers, ordinary people stationed there because Donald Trump said it was making the city “safer.”

“People are going to restaurants again,” Trump has said often about D.C. As recently as two days ago, he mentioned how his actions are making the District a place of mirth and virtue. “It’s now a world class city,” he says nearly as often as he claims that he’s “solved” eight wars. “You know that, you live there,” Trump told reporters. 

When the shooting happened on Wednesday, the president was on a golf course in Florida, but we were told via pool reports that he was “actively monitoring the situation.”

On Thursday, Trump announced one of the troops, 20-year-old Spec. Sarah Beckstrom from West Virginia, had died. The other guard member, Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, remains in critical condition. The suspect, who is in custody, has been identified as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national who had worked in Afghanistan for a CIA-run counterterrorism team. Despite Trump’s claim that he was “flown in by the Biden administration,” Lakanwal was granted asylum under Trump.

With Trump, facts never matter as much as whatever appearance he wishes to project. He bears responsibility for this violence because the guard was never needed in D.C. Now, due to one act of violence, Republicans began screaming for more troops, and Trump is sending 500 reinforcements into the city he previously told us was world class.

This Thanksgiving, while we pray for those who’ve been injured or killed in gun violence all across this country, I remain optimistically thankful. More and more of us are seeing just how deranged Trump is.

And we still have a lot more for which we can be thankful, all evidence to the contrary when considering the national political scene, the economy, international relations, the horrid state of the National Flag Football League and how the Trump administration bears a striking resemblance to the Omegas in “Animal House.” 

The president is Dean Vernon Wormer. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is a ringer for Doug Neidermeyer. I can definitely see him kissing a horse with a carrot in his mouth. White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller is smarmy Greg Marmalard and is destined to end up with Babs, played by White House Pep Secretary Karoline Leavitt. All the Democrats in Congress remind me of Kent Dorfman — except for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. He’s an aging Stork. It would be nice if there was just one John Blutarsky in the bunch. Sadly, no senator has shown such leadership. Not one could rally the troops to fight the Germans after they invaded Pearl Harbor (forget it, he’s rolling) like Blutarsky did.

Then again, maybe Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly fits the bill. He recently called out Hegseth as a bully, refusing to assume the position for the fraternity paddle and saying, “Thank you sir, may I have another?”

A naval aviator who flew combat missions during the Gulf War and a former astronaut, Kelly found himself on double secret probation last week after he participated in a video with other Democratic veterans aimed at active-duty military personnel. “Our laws are clear,” he said in the video. “You can refuse illegal orders.” The message brought out the Neidermeyer in Hegseth, who called Kelly and the other veterans “despicable and reckless.”

Imagine being upset that a veteran is reminding members of the military that it’s not a good idea to break the law. Only criminals would complain like that. Or horribly incompetent men. Hegseth is both.

I am thankful Kelly denounced him as a bully. I am thankful for all the arcane references to pop culture I have at my disposal to frame the workings of a true coward like Hegseth. And I am thankful for the growing number of people who understand the truly acidic nature of the most feckless presidential administration of my lifetime.

On that point, I am also thankful for soon-to-be former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who in her resignation letter told her QAnon supporters about Donald Trump’s callous grifts. “There is no ‘plan to save the world’ or insane 4D chess game being played,” she said.

She told MAGA, QAnon and the world that the emperor has no clothes. I am very thankful someone inside the Trump tent finally said it. More people may tend to believe her because of her inside status. That, alone, gives me renewed hope.

Believe it or not, I am also thankful Donald Trump is not in Washington this week. As noted in Wednesday’s pool report, since returning to office in January, Nov. 26 was his 16th trip to Mar-a-Lago, the 29th day spent at his West Palm Beach golf course — adjacent to the county jail — and the 82nd day on a golf course he owns.

I am thankful for all of this because while Trump has been in office more than 310 days, he apparently hasn’t worked for close to a third of that time. My Thanksgiving wish is that he, and by extension his entire administration, do not work more often. After all, when they do work, what they do doesn’t work. Does that work for you?

After Trump soared out of D.C. on Air Force One, the press office assured me, “He earned it. He works very hard.” Everyone in that group lies as often as everyone else draws breath.

I am also thankful people are questioning Trump on the economy and the price of eggs. He says gas prices are hovering “near $2.00 a gallon.” We all know that’s a lie. He also claims the economy is “the greatest. Many people are saying that.”

Actually no one is, and I am thankful people are beginning to believe their own eyes and not Trump’s lies. He damn sure doesn’t want to hear about how bad you’ve got it. If he did, perhaps he’d spend less time golfing and more time concerned about the people in this country.

On Monday, the Bureau of Economic Analysis announced it had officially canceled the release of the advance estimate on gross domestic product for the third quarter of 2025. The administration had previously delayed the release, which was initially slated for Oct. 30, due to the government shutdown — but now I guess Trump is determined to hide the numbers all together. Last week, the Labor Department called off releasing its monthly jobs report for October, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics scrapped its own report on inflation.

Leavitt blames the Democrats and the government shutdown for everything, but she doesn’t say much else. I’m thankful for that. Every time she opens her mouth I swear a swarm of horseflies and pestilence are released to consume the countryside.

Meanwhile Trump, still claiming he has “solved eight wars,” now believes he’s got the Russia and Ukraine war figured out — again. During a gaggle aboard Air Force One, on the way to his vacation, he told reporters he has a special relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. That much is obvious. Asked what concessions the Russians would have to make to achieve peace in Ukraine, Trump proudly declared, “They’re making concessions. They’re going to stop fighting and they’re not going to take any more land.”

Gee, I guess the people who’ve lost their land and their homes in Ukraine should be thankful that’s all they’ve lost. I am also thankful someone thought to ask Putin what he thought. He contradicted Trump and said there is no peace deal. I guess he still wants all of Ukraine. The country’s chief negotiator, Andriy Yermak, told the Atlantic in an interview published Thursday that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would never exchange land for peace.

Meanwhile, Trump is also apparently thankful U.S. federal workers could lose whistleblower safeguards due. According to documents reviewed by Reuters, the administration is close to implementing a rule that would end long-standing legal protections for whistleblowers who are senior federal employees, which has prompted backlash from lawyers representing government workers.

Former Trump official Miles Taylor summed up the move this way: “We will ruin your lives if you tell people we’ve broken the law.” I am thankful for Miles Taylor.

I am also thankful for people like attorney Mark Zaid, who has represented whistleblowers on both sides of the political aisle in battling the federal government for the last 30 years. “This is not good,” he said of Trump’s plan. “But, it’s what you’d expect from them.”

Wait. We’re not done. A doctor critical of vaccines was quietly tapped as the Center for Disease Control’s second in command. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Dr. Ralph Lee Abraham promoted discredited treatments like ivermectin and, as Louisiana’s surgeon general, he halted the state’s mass vaccination campaign. Abraham declared that Covid vaccines were “dangerous.” The CDC didn’t announce his appointment, but an internal database lists him as the agency’s principal deputy director, with a start date of Nov. 23. I am thankful someone reported that. But I’d be more thankful if the good doctor got fired and went back to his medieval medical malpractice.

As always, I am thankful for friends, family and a sense of humor. And so far, I am very thankful for the criminal justice system. Putting aside Wednesday’s dismissal of election interference and racketeering charges against Trump in Georgia during the 2020 election, the courts are the only place that continues to push back against the president while the entire legislative branch sits in a MAGA stupor, watching the action and offering little in the way of resistance. I am exceptionally thankful that U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie ruled that Lindsey Halligan, an attorney with no prosecutorial experience, was illegally appointed as an interim U.S. attorney.

I am also thankful for remembering the efforts of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who taught us in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” What he said remains relevant today.

King wrote, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial ‘outside agitator’ idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.”

Finally, I am thankful for Arlo Guthrie who, many Thanksgivings ago, taught us about the true meaning of this wonderful vacation and about Americans being blind to justice, going to jail, violent crime, military stupidity, government corruption and the importance of helping out your neighbors, including Sasha the dog.

Remember, you can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant. Well, except Alice.

The post Trump’s “Animal House” is floundering appeared first on Salon.com.

Newsom's Thanksgiving Wishes to America

 

More Crime, not Less, After National Guard Deployment

Trump's MAGA morons raise hell when a foreigner kills Americans, but they never say a word when Americans kill Americans. This is what Arabs do with Israel. They raise hell when Israel kills Palestinians, but they never complain when Sudan kills millions of its own people.

Crime continues to spike across the US depsite Trump's claims that he is deploying the National Guard to combat crime. If anything, last week in Washington DC, those who were deployed to fight crime fell victims of the crime they are supposed to fight.

American killings are kosher - mass shootings at schools, racist burning of Black churches, random mass shootings by deranged Americans .... - all are OK. No we don't want to ban guns. But one foreign assassin and it's the end of the world, and overcompensating barbaric policies are enacted. It's xenophobia, pure and simple. Which is strange because all Americans, save the ethnically cleansed genocided indigenous nations, are or descend from immigrant foreigners. Americans have a very bad and selective memory of who they once were. They even hate Canadians who are an exact copy-paste of themselves, except Canadians chose to be a civilized people by acknowledging their past whereas Americans don't even want to talk about their ugly past.

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4 dead, 10 wounded in shooting at California banquet hall: Sheriff's office
JACK MOORE
Sun, November 30, 2025


[LI: America's identity with violence]

At least four people were killed and 10 others wounded in a shooting at a banquet hall in Stockton, California on Saturday evening, local authorities said.

The San Joaquin County Sheriff's Office said it happened shortly before 6 p.m. in the 1900 block of Lucile Avenue in Stockton.

Heather Brent, a public information officer for the sheriff's office, told reporters the gunfire came as people were at the banquet hall for a family gathering, calling the shooting "unfathomable."

She said the victims of the shooting range in age from juveniles to adults.

There was no update provided on the conditions of those wounded. Several people were hospitalized, the sheriff's office said earlier.

She said early indications are that it may have been a targeted shooting, although authorities have not yet identified a suspect or made any arrests.

"Our No. 1 priority right now is identifying the suspect in this incident," Brent said.

Speaking to reporters at the scene, Stockton Mayor Christina Fugazi noted the timing of the shooting, just a few days after the Thanksgiving holiday.

"Families should be together instead of at the hospital standing next to their loved one praying that they survive," she said.

Ethan Swope/AP - PHOTO: California Shooting

San Joaquin County District Attorney Ron Freitas said, "Tragedy of this nature is unthinkable. And it absolutely breaks our heart. Right now, we are doing everything possible to bring the individual that's responsible for this to justice."

Among the law enforcement agencies responding to assist are the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Stockton, a city of about 320,00 residents in central California, is located about 45 miles south of Sacramento.

The office of California Gov. Gavin Newsom said the governor had been briefed on the "horrific shooting."

Womanizer Drunkard US Secretary of Hore Pete Hegseth is potentially a War Criminal

The drunkard womanizer whose own mother once accused him of being an abuser of women (https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hegseth-mother-accuses-abusive-women/)....

The drunkard womanizer who once, on an normal day of drunkenness duty at a seedy bar, yelled "Kill all Muslims" ....(https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/pete-hegseth-trump-allegations-history-b2657456.html)...

...that upstanding citizen, by the name of Pete Hegseth, was recruited by Donald Dumb, a.k.a. Dozy Don, to lead the Department of Hore (renamed from Dept of Defense because he couldn't defend himself against accusations of perpetual drunkenness and harrasment of women).

That man is now on another drinking binge in which he is yelling things like "Kill them all" about fishermen plying their trade on boats in the Caribbean Sea. Like his demented boss Donald Hump, he lies with every breath he takes. He has presented not one single piece of evidence to justify his targeted assassination of ordinary fishermen on the pretext that they were smuggling drugs, while his demented senile boss - Dozy Don - is pardoning one of the kings of drug smuggling in Central America, the former president of Honduras and "friend" of Donald Dumb, one Juan Orlando Hernandez, who is currently serving a 45-year federal prison sentence in the US for drug-trafficking conviction. (https://lebanoniznogood.blogspot.com/2025/11/trump-pardons-drug-trafficking.html). 

This is typical Republican mode of operation: Born in the historical violence of the southern US, Republicans think that violence can solve all problems. But they never learn from their own history of failures at using wanton violence. Donald Dumb is now preparing the country for a military intervention in Venezuela despite its illegality and his failure to notify Congress as the constitution requires him to do. He promised his herd of MAGA morons that he doesn't want to drag the US into foreign wars, but like every other promise he made to the mentally disturbed half of the country (peasants, rednecks, hillbillies, inbred Appalachians, southern secessionist racists and lynchers of Africans, and other ignorant idiots who believed his lies), he is breaking that promise. 

It seems evident by now that Donald Trump's plan has always been as follows:

- He is simply a criminal without any ethical or moral compass.

- Someone like him, presented as a candidate for office to the American people, would normally fail because the vast majority of Americans (i.e. Democrats, Independents, and moderate Republicans) are not racists and criminal-minded.

- Knowing he doesn't stand a chance at getting elected by the majority, he decided to run a campaign of lies and false promises specifically targeting both the "deplorables" (radical right wing nativists and xenophobic fringe of the Republican party, ) AND the dissatisfied  independents and moderate republicans. He promised them everything they wanted to hear (lower prices, less crime, prosperity, backward religiosity, etc.) and they believed him 1- because deplorable ignorant people are usually illiterate and have no references (intellectual, educational, etc.) with which to judge actions other than their primal emotions, and 2- because moderates and independents had been brainwashed into believing that democracy doesn't work (thanks in no small part to Russian propaganda). In voting for Trump, the latter thought that a "strong super-hero populist" could override common sense and history and discard democratic principles and replace them with "only his personal charm and strength of character" that may have a chance at fixing non-existent problems. They seemed to provisionally ignore the racism and hatred IF substantive issues can be fixed.

His strategy was to fool all these people long enough for them to vote for him, knowing that once elected he can give them the middle finger, discard them, and get on accomplishing his real goal: Enriching himself from his new position of power. He still throws them easy crumbs, like racism and xenophobia, but on issues of real susbtance he is screwing them big time and asking them to be patient. When asked today whether they are disappointed, most MAGA morons will say yes, we are disappointed because he has not delivered on substance while ramping up the hatred and warmongering - they keep saying " I didn't vote for this" - but a small minority (his base) still backs him because of his racism and hateful stance on immigrants.

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Phillip M. Bailey, USA TODAY
Sat, November 29, 2025

U.S Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is lashing out at a report that he ordered military officials to "kill them all" during one of the Trump administration's strikes in the Caribbean aimed a boat allegedly carrying drug cargo.

"As usual, the fake news is delivering more fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting to discredit our incredible warriors fighting to protect the homeland," Hegseth, 45, said in a Nov. 28 post on X.

The defense secretary was responding to a Washington Post story citing two anonymous sources that claimed he ordered troops to leave no survivors after a missile struck the vessel, which was traveling off the Trinidad coast, as two individuals were clinging to the smoldering wreckage.

Since September, the Trump administration has attacked at least 21 boats traversing international waters, killing 83 people. Trump and other officials defend the boat strikes as an attempt to crackdown on illegal narcotics flooding into the U.S., but lawmakers from both parties have criticized the administration for providing no intelligence briefings or other evidence about what the vessels are carrying.

"At this point, I would call them extrajudicial killings," Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said during an Oct. 26 appearance on Fox News Sunday. "This is akin to what China does, what Iran does with drug dealers − they summarily execute people without presenting evidence to the public. So it's wrong."

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who shared the story about Hegseth's alleged order, raised similar concerns about the constitutionality of the strikes in an Nov. 28 post on X.

"If you want to know why Hegseth is panicking about reminders that there is accountably for giving or carrying out illegal orders, it’s likely because he knows he has given illegal orders to murder people," Murphy said.

The report comes amid a U.S. military buildup near Venezuela, which Trump has argued is necessary to combat gangs, such as Tren de Aragua, and others like Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel. A Venezuelan criminal organization known as Cartel de los Soles, for example, was designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. on Nov. 24.

Under the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which are at the center of humanitarian rules and international standards, any wounded or sick combatants are to be retrieved and receive care by either side in a conflict.

But in his Nov. 28 post slamming the report, Hegseth argued that each "trafficker we kill is affiliated" with a terrorist group and the current U.S. operations in the Caribbean are lawful under both U.S. and international law.

"The Biden administration preferred the kid gloves approach, allowing millions of people — including dangerous cartels and unvetted Afghans — to flood our communities with drugs and violence," he said. "The Trump administration has sealed the border and gone on offense against narco-terrorists. Biden coddled terrorists, we kill them."

[LI: Not one word is ever uttered by Trump administration officials on WHY DO AMERICANS USE TONS OF ILLICIT DRUGS? WHY DO AMERICANS ENCOURAGE SMUGGLING OF ILLICIT DRUGS WITH A SKYROCKETING DEMAND? WHY DO TRUMP AND HIS MISCREANTS NOT TRY TO CONVINCE AMERICANS THAT DRUGS ARE BAD, OR ENHANCE MEASURES OF DETERRENCE AND PUNISHMENT FOR DRUG USERS? IF TRUMP CAN REDUCE OR CUT OFF THE DOMESTIC DEMAND, THEN ALL DRUG SMUGGLING WOULD COME TO A STOP AND THE DRUG CARTELS WOULD GO OUR OF BUSINESS. But then Trump would lose the pretext of drug trafficking to violate laws and the territorial integrity of other countries, and to topple unfriendly regimes and prop up friendly ones.]

Legal scholars and others continue to raise questions about the legality of the boat strikes and spokespersons for the White House, Justice Department and the Pentagon have not responded to USA TODAY requests for comment on what laws the administration is using to justify the attacks.

Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in an Nov. 28 statement that his powerful panel has directed inquiries to the defense department about the strikes, "and we will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances."

Wicker, along with Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., the ranking Democrat on the committee, have sent Hegseth multiple requests for basic information including legal justifications and intelligence underpinning individual strikes.

Several legal experts have spoken out, too, saying Trump and his administration's rationale marks an unprecedented step by U.S. using the military, rather than law enforcement, to enforce the drug war with congressional approval.

During Trump's first term he expressed admiration for foreign leaders who instituted the death penalty for drug traffickers, including former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte who is facing crimes against humanity charges at the International Criminal Court for war on drugs policies.

Trump said last month he saw no reason to involve Congress when asked about the boat strikes, suggesting lawmakers and voters wouldn't mind such actions in the name of stopping illegal narcotics.

"I don’t think we’re necessarily going to ask for a declaration of war," Trump said. "I think we’re just gonna kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. We’re going to kill them. They’re going to be, like, dead."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Hegseth slams 'kill them all' report on Caribbean boat strikes

What Would Saint Charlie Kirk Say About Trump's Incivility to Women?

I wish someone in heaven could ask Saint Charlie Kirk - and report back to us - what he thinks of  Donald Dumb's uncivil and definitely un-Charlie-like vulgarities. Saint Charlie was a racist, a white supremacist, an extremist MAGA influencer who fooled credulous religious young people ... but he was civil and courteous. 

I think the creep Donald Dumb should be clinically diagnosed as "demented". His recent spell of unnecessary and increasingly abusive language towards women is consistent with his long history of misogyny and degradation of women (African women are "low IQ", women are to be grabbed by the pussy, his fornication with porn actresses and prostitutes, his sexual harassment and alleged rape of various women, his abuse of teenage girls under the guidance of the Child Sex Supreme Guide and friend Jeffery Epstein, etc.).

But what is particularly striking is the increased frequency of these spells of abuse to women. It seems that his sick brain is losing the self-control that normal people have in social settings. 

Last Thursday, CBS News chief White House correspondent Nancy Cordes asked the loser Donald Dumb about the suspect in the shooting of two members of the National Guard in Washington, D.C. The suspect, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, is an Afghan national who was granted asylum by Trump's own supposedly strict immigration program. Cordes pointed out that the inspector general of the Justice Department found that Afghans who entered the U.S. after the fall of Kabul in 2021 had been thoroughly vetted by Trump's own administration (the dictator's own incompetent slaves Kash Patel and Pam Bondi). Cordes asked the president: "So why do you blame the Biden administration —"

"Because they let him in. Are you stupid? Are you a stupid person? Because they came in on a plane, along with thousands of other people that shouldn't be here, and you're just asking questions because you're a stupid person," the Jerk-in-Chief responded.

Not only that, but the fact that the National Guard troops the dumb imbecile-in-chief deployed in Washington DC (as a MAGA marketing ploy under the guise of fighting hypothetical crime) have themselves become victim of that crime means that Donald Dumb's policies are pathetically failing. Donald Dumb is creating crime where none existed. The troops have been mowing lawns, picking up garbage, helping the elderly cross the streets.... because there is no sufficient crime to warrant their presence. National Guard troops are trained for war combat, not community policing.

This complete disaster, which was bound to happen, is all Donald Dumb's making. He knows it but he refuses to take the blame, as per his usual megalomaniacal character. While it might look good for his herd of MAGA morons that he is doing something about crime, this episode falls under the category of the unintended consequences of superficial, not well-thought through, off-the-cuff actions that one sees taken by "heroes" in bullshit American Hollywood movies which I am sure inspire Trump. And that is at the heart of the problem. Americans in general, and the Idiot-in-Chief in particular, live in a ficitional world fabricated by their own movie industry: Americans do tailor their lives to match the fictions, they believe that hapless but testosterone-laden action, rather than deliberate thought, is sufficient because "it looks good". For Americans with little culture, life imitates art. They live their lives according to what they see in silly, cheap, violent movies and games. That is why Americans have been losing every single war since WWII. 

The posturing, the show, the patriotic bullshit, the theater.... are primary when the US decides to go to war. The depth of intellectual preparedness by the US government and armed forces always appears to be shallow on substance but heavy on appearance, PR, and other superficial metrics. It's that American business invention called "marketing" that has taken over serious, and yes academic, inquiry into major decisions like going to war. Didn't George W Bush like an idiot roost himself on an aircraft carrier and declare "mission accomplished" even as his soldiers were being mowed down in Iraq by improvised explosive devices? 

Instead of looking back at history to try and comprehend present actions and their consequences, Americans worry more about the "looks" of their actions. Which is why there is often an emphasis on quantity and less on quality in American undertakings. American invasions are by the millions of troops deployed, millions of tons of materiel and equipment, massive disinformation campaigns (again, Bush's lie that Saddam Hussein has WMDs as a reason for invading Iraq)... all generally ending in disastrous failures with millions of people dead. During the Vietnam war, which the Americans like morons inherited from the French, stupid patriotism clashed with sensible opposition. Net outcome? Patriotism failed, the opposition won, the Communists won, the Americans lost with 50,000 dead US soldiers, and all of that heartache and torment to see Vietnam become a perfectly functioning Communist country and a "friend" of the US.

On Wednesday, the president assailed New York Times correspondent Katie Rogers, who co-authored an article on his age and physical stamina in his second term. He called her "third rate" and "ugly, both inside and out." The president's insults at Cordes and Rogers are just the latest in recent weeks that have targeted female reporters. While speaking to members of the press on Air Force One earlier this month, the president snapped at Bloomberg White House correspondent Catherine Lucey, telling her "Quiet. Quiet, piggy."

Earlier, while hosting the journalist-chainsaw-chopper Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) in the Oval Office, dumb Trump berated ABC's correspondent Mary Bruce because she "dared" ask about the 2018 chopping-off murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. A US intelligence report at the time concluded that MBS personally ordered the murder of Khashoggi. Incidentally, I think the French should offer MBS a few of their vintage guillotines because they retired them; Guillotines work on heads, but also on hands, legs, torsoes, etc.

Donald Dumb lashed out at Bruce of "embarrassing" the crown prince with her question and then called her a "terrible person and a terrible reporter." He said her question was "horrible" and "insubordinate." How dare a journalist ask difficult questions of entitled dictators and autocrats like himself?

The Society of Professional Journalists condemned Trump's attacks on Bruce and Lucey, which it said were not isolated and instead "part of an unmistakable pattern of hostility — often directed at women — that undermines the essential role of a free and independent press."

"Journalists are not props at a photo op — they are watchdogs for the public," Caroline Hendrie, executive director of the group, said in a statement. "When reporters ask hard questions about the murder of a fellow journalist, that is not an embarrassment. What's embarrassing is a leader trying to silence those questions."

Did Trump's Deployment of National Guard Expose the Troops to Danger?

The Afghan killer of National Guard members in DC: Wasn't he vetted by the CIA when he worked for the agency? What kind of vetting could the Biden Adminstration have done when he was clinging in panic to the last plane leaving Kabul with thousands of people? Once in the US, the man applied for asylum: It was Kash Patel and Pam Bondi 's job to vet him, and they did and he was granted asylum. The only excuse is NOT to blame Biden but to blame Trump's minions for granting him asylum instead of deporting him right away IF they knew he was a potential danger. Finally, the man we now learn is a mentally ill person, just like ther hundreds of school mass murderers - who are not asylees or refugees or immigrants, but US-born dimwit nuts to whom Trump and his gun-toting imbeciles refuse to deny them access to weapons.

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Did Trump’s ‘political’ stunt of deploying that National Guard unnecessarily endanger the National Guard members’ lives?

The Atlantic colmunist and national security analyst for TV media, Juliette Kayyem, thinks so. She says that it was an unnecessary stunt that culminated in the shooting of two Guard members Wednesday.

"There are costs to performatively deploying members of the military — one of which is the risk of endangering them," she says. They basically have nothing to do all day other than hang out in the streets like stitting ducks in a non-combat zone, simply so the senile Moron can claim he's fighting crime. With him, it's the image that counts, not the substance. But in a country where any asshole can buy a gun and walk into a school and mass murder children, the Guardsmen and Guardswomen become easy targets.

Just like his targeted assassinations of fishermen in the Caribbean under the guise of combating drug smuggling. No one knows if these murdered people in the open sea are fishermen or drug smugglers, as no evidence is presented. But the black-and-white images of boats getting blown up in the ocean are welcomed by his moronic MAGA followers.

The Atlantic contributing writer Juliette Kayyem said Trump endangered U.S. National Guard soldiers when he deployed to Washington, D.C., for a political stunt.

Trump called the shooting of the two members in DC a "crime against the entire country" and said the "animal" who committed the murder would pay the "steepest possible price." This highly charged comment on the killing of guardswoman Sarah Beckstrom, while her fellow guardsman is fighting for his life, reflects Trump's feeling of guilt for causing their tragedy. Since they are not really fighting a war - they are rather trying incompetently to play police - it is difficult for the Moron to justify his deploying them. In fact, relatives of the slain Guardswoman, say that she had confided in them her thought that the deployment was "pointless".

Kayyem argued the tragedy was avoidable because Trump was warned not to station troops in the city in the first place. "The troops, deployed in an effort to reduce crime, are untrained in law enforcement; their days are spent cleaning up trash and walking the streets in uniform. Commanders, in a memo that was included in litigation challenging the high-visibility mission in D.C., argued that this could put them in danger," she wrote.

Kayyem added that Trump’s decision was merely a way to attack his "political" opponents and not a good use of U.S. military members.

"The National Guard has been deployed as part of the White House’s political attacks on cities run by Democrats, and the Guard members are vulnerable because politics is not a military mission," Kayyem continued... Morale is low among part-time volunteer soldiers, who have had to leave home to patrol the streets of an American city that Trump doesn’t like."

The "animal ", as it were, would’ve never been here if not for incompetent Kash Patel's FBI dereliction in granting asylum to the killer because of improperly vetting Afghan refugees who escaped Kabul with US troops. Patel is very busy flying his girlfriend on FBI and government planes all over the country to attend concerts, football games and parties. The combination of "marketing" deployment of troops on US soil and the incompetence of the Trump administration is a very dangerous mix that allowed unvetted criminals to cause harm to US troops. The killing in DC is no different from the mass killings in schools, churches, bars, etc. that take place every day in America, perpetrated by US-born Americans. Blaming refugees is disgusting racism and xenophobia.

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[a.k.a. Fochs Ewes] 

Rep. Wasserman Schultz says Trump should blame self for putting National Guard in harm’s way with DC crackdown
Alexander Hall
Sat, November 29, 2025

Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., former chair of the Democratic National Committee, suggested Friday that President Donald Trump is to blame for the death of a member of the National Guard.

Multiple left-wing commentators argued that the ambush-style shooting of National Guard member Sarah Beckstrom and Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe Wednesday only happened because of Trump’s orders to station the National Guard in U.S. cities.

On Friday, as the nation was still reeling from the shooting, CNN host Sara Sidner spoke to Schultz about the tragic incident.

The shooting, Schultz said, "begs the question, would an individual have flown across the country to target law enforcement officers in Washington, D.C.? And, I mean, the answer is likely no. So, why wasn‘t the president‘s first thought, 'Wow, you know, maybe I should reconsider deploying military troops in the nation‘s capital or in any city?'

"Particularly not when they haven‘t coordinated closely with the leadership of these cities and when we have law enforcement that are quite capable of handling the criminal justice issues that are — that we need law enforcement to focus on, and not our military."


Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., blasted President Donald Trump, arguing he should blame his own choices for putting National Guard members in harm's way.

Trump said he launched the crackdown because local law enforcement had failed to handle the amount of crime in some of America’s most famous cities.

Since the shooting Wednesday, carried out by an Afghan national, according to authorities, Trump has called to halt mass migration from the "Third World" and to initiate a "reverse migration" plan.

Even before that, Sidner noted that "days before the shooting, the public learned through reporting that the Trump administration had planned to review and reinterview refugees that came in during the Biden administration."

"I just think that any administration needs to be careful about making sweeping generalizations," Wasserman Schultz responded. "If there were gaps that admitted this person, they would have failed over multiple levels of gaps. And this individual was trusted enough to participate in assisting our military during the war in Afghanistan."


National Guard members stand together behind yellow tape, after two National Guard members were shot near the White House in Washington, D.C., Nov. 26, 2025.

Trump should blame himself for putting the National Guard in harm’s way, Schultz argued.

"The president looks everywhere except inward to blame his own policies. We need to make sure that we don‘t have our military deployed in our cities, doing — handling law enforcement responsibilities," she said. "We certainly need to make sure we always have the proper and appropriate and tight, tight vetting processes, and those should be reviewed. But it‘s never the president‘s fault or his policies when it comes to his reaction, and it‘s pretty disgusting."

Have You Expressed Your Gratitude to the Senile Demented Moron for Thanksgiving?

 

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been taking courses and workshops to learn how to express "gratitude" to the convicted senile old felon geezer in the Outhouse. Many people and institutions - "free" and brave" Americans included - continue to climb down from their golden or ivory towers in fear and terror to pay their coerced respects to the dozy dick-tator.

Have you done your duty? Have you managed to send a letter, a text, a tweet, a phone call to the Outhouse for Thanksgiving to express your eternal gratitude for all the bountiful love that Dozy Don has been giving all of us lately?  

Love in so many words for doing your job, like "stupid person", "quiet! piggy", "ugly inside and out", "terrible person", "seriously retarded", etc.; love in targeted killings of Caribbean fishermen in the open Caribbean Sea; love for a crashing economy on the verge of a recession due to his Dumb Majesty's tariffs; love for deploying the army against us on our streets while cowering to his powerful foreign and billionaire friends; love for deporting a Babson College student who was flying to spend Thanksgiving with her family; love for all the uncertainties we're all living through; love for increasing his and his family's wealth while we continue to sink in the cesspool he has created... So much love. 

 

I think His Dumb Majesty is scoring big points with the "man upstairs", and believe it or not, his plans to earn the Nobel Peace Prize will be hastened by our very own personal Savior Jesus-Christ who sees all the good that His Dumb Majesty is doing on earth. In his own modesty, His Majesty doesn't think he'll make it to Heaven after he leaves this earth, but I disagree. I think His Majesty is negotiating with God, Jesus and the Holy Ghost on a deal to build Him an exclusive copy of Mar-a-Lago up there - to be named "Golden Paradise Trump Cloud" - where he can surround Himself with the guys (Hegseth, Patel, Rubio, Vance...) and gals (Leavitt, Noem, Bondi, ...) and also with fluttering angels like Jeffrey Epstein and his coterie of underage grils ... for eternity. 

So much to be thankful for.

 

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A CIO says consumer sentiment has 'collapsed,' and US households are flashing a major warning sign

Samuel O'Brient

Fri, November 28, 2025

• Consumer sentiment is in the dumps and sources say it's a signal worth watching.

• Market pros say the Fed won't be able to ignore the red flags being raised by US households.

• "Sentiment isn't wobbling at the edges or drifting lazily lower. It has collapsed," one CIO said.

Worsening consumer sentiment might be among the biggest red flags in the economy right now, according to one CIO.

It's hard to open a newspaper or turn on a TV without seeing an expert making grim predictions for why the US economy is teetering on the brink of recession. Top economists such as Mark Zandi have repeatedly emphasized that the US is on the brink, with just a few things holding back a downturn.

Even as delayed economic data is finally released and the economy moves on from the recent government shutdown, other experts say the data tells a grim story, particularly when it comes to the health of the consumers.

After the University of Michigan's consumer sentiment survey dropped to one the lowest levels ever earlier this month, the Conference Board on Tuesday showed similar results from its survey. It's confidence gauge fell to the lowest level since April, on a mix of inflation and labor market anxieties.

While few companies are hiring, many have opted to lay off significant chunks of their staff, leaving large groups without an income as the holiday season approaches. And according to multiple experts, confidence in the economy is reaching dangerously low levels.

"Consumer sentiment is at its lowest level ever," stated Mark Malik, CIO of Siebert Financial. "Sentiment isn't wobbling at the edges or drifting lazily lower. It has collapsed. It has broken through historical floors."

Siebert added that the Federal Reserve needs to start paying attention to this trend before things worsen. He noted that, monetary policy, which is intended to stabilize prices, is not working as intended.

"When consumer sentiment across all cohorts is flashing deep red, that is not nothing. It means households feel squeezed. It means the labor market doesn't feel as strong from the inside as the headline numbers suggest," Malik added.

Tie Lasater, CEO of Lasater Capital, also sees waning sentiment as a warning sign that markets and economists should be paying attention.

"Historically, sentiment alone doesn't cause recessions, but sharp, sustained collapses in confidence often precede or accompany economic slowdowns," Lasater said. "When households lose confidence, they shift into defense."

He added that when consumers adopt a defensive mindset, they scale back spending, negatively impacting businesses, and potentially spurring layoffs. The negative feedback loop reinforces the initial pessimism, pushing consumer sentiment down even further.

Noah Yosif, chief economist at the American Staffing Association who previously served at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, echoed the sentiments. He highlighted the concerning trend of employees at all levels exhibiting clear caution.

"Consumer sentiment is often a noisy predictor because feelings about the state of the economy vary substantially across different income levels and generations; so uniform pessimism across multiple demographics suggests a rare alignment of multiple economic pressures that cannot be dismissed as a temporary mood or isolated hardship," he stated.

Read the original article on Business Insider.

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Moody's Chief Economist Mark Zandi Warns Stock Market Downturn Could 'Knock the Wind Out of' the Wealthy and Trigger Recession
Fahad Saleem
Fri, November 28, 2025



An increasing number of company executives and economists have recently pointed to a widening gap in the economy, where the wealthy drive most economic activity and low-income Americans continue to struggle financially.

A potential stock market downturn could affect wealthier households and trigger a broader economic slowdown, Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, recently told Bloomberg.

Zandi said high-income households are the "last pillars" of strength in the economy, and a stock market downturn would "knock the wind out of" them, raising the risk of a recession, according to Bloomberg.

The top 20% of earners in the U.S account for almost two-thirds of all spending, a record, Bloomberg said, citing data from Moody's. Before the pandemic, the bottom 80% made up nearly 42% of spending, but that share has fallen to 37%.

The U.S. economy could face a "big problem" if wealthy Americans become cautious in spending, Zandi said in a September post on X.

"The 20% of households that make more have done much better, and those in the top 3.3% of the distribution have done much, much, much better," Zandi wrote. "The U.S. economy is being largely powered by the well-to-do. As long as they keep spending, the economy should avoid recession."

Growing worries about an AI bubble and high tech stock valuations are raising concerns about a potential stock market downturn, which could affect wealthy households in the U.S., who hold the bulk of market investments.

The richest 20% of U.S. households own nearly 93% of all stocks, CNBC reported, citing data from New York University economics professor Edward Wolff.

"It's hard to overstate the significance of the soaring stock prices of artificial intelligence companies to the economy," Zandi said in a post on X earlier this month. "Spending by well-off Americans, driven by their surging stock portfolios, is the single most significant driver of growth."

Crime Rates Not Dropping Despite Trump's Massive Crackdown on Immigrants

US-Born white Iowa man uses illicit drugs then kills four people by beating them to death with a metal pipe.

Luke Truesdell is a white American murderer from Iowa. 


He  was found guilty on three counts of first-degree murder and one count of second-degree murder on Monday, Nov. 17. But he is white and US-born, so he is not disposable or deportable. 

In June 2024, Truesdell used a metal pipe to fatally beat Romondus Lamar Cooper, 44, Keonna Victoria Ryan, 26, Amanda Sue Parker, 33, and Brett Anthony Brown, 34. The fatal beatings occurred in a detached garage in Marion, Iowa.

The cherry on the savagery cake is that Truesdell was motivated by Hollywood possibly making his crime into a movie. This is when life imitates degenerate art coming out of America's movie industry and its extreme violence which is exported to all countries around the world. America is indeed teaching violence not only to its own people - who are by far the highest perpetrators of mass killings and mass shootings - but to other countries. Violence is America's top export.

Truesdell told police he believed the people he attacked were involved in sex trafficking, though there was no evidence to support that belief. The paper further reported that Truesdell said he was high on methamphetamine and had not slept in two days.

Meanwhile, police in California evacuated a shopping mall yesterday Friday after a shooting left two people with gunshot wounds. The shooting was an "isolated" incident, the San Jose Police Department said. 

The day after Thanksgiving, known as “ Black Friday,” marks the official start of the "holiday shopping season" in the U.S. and is the biggest shopping day of the year. Americans are brainwashed like a herd of cattle to spend their hard-earned money - or indebt themselves beyond their means - as if it were a tradition or a patriotic duty. Squandering one's money on non-essential junk is now associated with "holidays" (a positive association) and encouraged to be a repetitive behavior by labeling it a "season", which implies an obligatory regular recurrence. 

Trump Pardons Drug Trafficking President but Kills Fishermen

Trump has so far pardoned close to 2,000 criminals, including his 1,500 MAGA mobsters who savaged the Capitol in their attack on Congress in January 2021. Many of his other pardoned criminals are "elite" people (financiers, politicians, etc. https://lebanoniznogood.blogspot.com/2025/11/trump-keeps-pardoning-criminals-like.html) and even spies (https://lebanoniznogood.blogspot.com/2025/11/trump-to-pardon-jonathan-pollard-jewish.html). He is expected to soon pardon Ghislaine Maxwell, the child sex pedophile associate of feu Jeffrey Epstein, a long time close pedophile friend of Trump himself. 

Is there any logic in assassinating innocent fishermen in their boats in the Caribbean Sea claiming they are drug traffickers and smugglers, while pardoning a former president of Honduras who was sentenced for drug trafficking? The only explanation is that a former president is a VIP like Trump, a member of the elite whose crimes should be ignored, while lowly fishermen are disposable human beings that may be sacrificed in order for the Great Moron to say to his MAGA herd of morons that he is fighting crime. Note that he doesn't hold his own American morons responsible for using the illicit drugs and driving the drug smuggling into the US.

One way to cut the supply of drugs into the US is to hold the American people responsible for the highest demand for illicit drugs in the world. 

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Trump says he will pardon former Honduran president serving sentence in drug-trafficking case

Alejandra Jaramillo, CNN

Sat, November 29, 2025 

Juan Orlando Hernandez in Guatemala City, January 14, 2020. - Moises Castillo/AP/File

President Donald Trump said Friday he intends to grant a “full and complete pardon” to former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, a move that would erase a major US drug-trafficking conviction for a onetime US ally who is currently serving a 45-year federal prison sentence.

“I will be granting a Full and Complete Pardon to Former President Juan Orlando Hernandez who has been, according to many people that I greatly respect, treated very harshly and unfairly,” Trump announced on his Truth Social platform.

“This cannot be allowed to happen, especially now, after Tito Asfura wins the Election, when Honduras will be on its way to Great Political and Financial Success. VOTE FOR TITO ASFURA FOR PRESIDENT, AND CONGRATULATIONS TO JUAN ORLANDO HERNANDEZ ON YOUR UPCOMING PARDON.”

President of Honduras from 2014 until 2022, Hernández was sentenced last year and given an $8 million fine by a US judge for drug trafficking offenses.

Prosecutors had accused Hernández of conspiring with drug cartels during his tenure as they moved more than 400 tons of cocaine through Honduras toward the United States. In exchange, prosecutors said, Hernández received millions of dollars in bribes that he used to fuel his rise in Honduran politics.

During his years in office, the Justice Department said, Hernández “protected and enriched the drug traffickers in his inner circle.” Prosecutors cited his use of executive power to support extraditions to the US of certain drug traffickers “who threatened his grip on power,” while “promising drug traffickers who paid him and followed his instructions that they would remain in Honduras.”

The president’s announcement comes as his administration has focused in recent months on what it has said is a counter-drug operation in the Caribbean and the Pacific, with US military activity ramping up there.

The former Honduran president, who denied the chargers against him, had been extradited from Honduras after the US Department of Justice filed three drug-trafficking and firearms-related charges against him in 2022.

Following the announcement, Hernández’s attorney thanked Trump and said “we look forward to President Hernandez’s triumphant return to Honduras.”

“We are so grateful to President Trump and everyone who supported President Hernandez. We believe he was the victim of lawfare and a political prosecution. A great injustice has been righted and we are so hopeful for the future partnership of the United States and Honduras,” attorney Renato Stabile said in a statement.

Trump also used his Truth Social post Friday to strongly back Honduran conservative National Party presidential candidate Nasry “Tito” Asfura, tying US support to the outcome of the election.

“If Tito Asfura wins for President of Honduras, because the United States has so much confidence in him, his Policies, and what he will do for the Great People of Honduras, we will be very supportive,” the president wrote.

“If he doesn’t win, the United States will not be throwing good money after bad, because a wrong Leader can only bring catastrophic results to a country, no matter which country it is. Tito will be a Great President, and the United States will work closely with him in order to ensure the success, with all of its potential, of Honduras!”

On Sunday Honduras will hold its general elections.

CNN’s Maria Santana and Jack Guy contributed to this report.

For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com

 

Alabama Priest Hired a 17-year-old Concubine and Kept Her 'Employed' for 16 Years

Catholic "Father" Robert Sullivan made a vow of chastity after he "heard the call" to vocation and was ordained. But he hired 17-year old Heather Jones to be his paid concubine for the next 16 years, which makes him an even greater sinner than his fellow protestant reverends, pastors and other "shepherds" who can marry but still find enough excess libido to screw around with parishioners, prostitutes and such behind their spouses' backs.

Alabama's age of consent is 16, not 18. Alabama law also admits that sex between two people with a power imbalance between them (e.g. a priest and his parishioner, or a teacher and his/her student) is consensual. 

We hear that shepherds in mountaineous countries fall in love with their ewes but there is no money involved. It's not love when money is involved, so shepherd Robert Sullivan engaged Heather Jones when she was only 17 years old to be his "private companion", a business arrangement that lasted 16 years until the "employed companion" changed her mind, as often happens with women who regret their own misadventures in the realm of the forbidden.

I am always impressed by the pedantic lies with which religious institutions explain themselves when caught in fornication scandals. I remember when, as a student at a religious-run school, a night supervisor priest was caught diddling with one of his boarder students in the showers. The news broke out the next day and everyone knew what had happened. But the principal announced the departure of the fornicating priest by explaining that "the priest had to leave the country to be with his dying mother". Needless to say, but the offending priest never returned to the school after "burying his mother"; the church must have appointed him to another school where he probably continued plying his shepherding trade in shower stalls late at night.
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Alabama priest leaves clergy after woman alleges ‘private companionship’ beginning when she was 17
Ramon Antonio Vargas
Fri, November 28, 2025 

Robert Sullivan told his congregation he was taking a leave of absence on 3 August 2025.Photograph: Youtube

A longtime Roman Catholic priest in Alabama has voluntarily left the clergy after a woman alleged to his superiors that he provided her financial support in exchange for “private companionship” including sex beginning when she was 17.

Robert Sullivan’s self-imposed removal from the priesthood – known as laicization – was announced Wednesday, the day before the US holiday of Thanksgiving, in a public statement from Birmingham, Alabama, by Bishop Steven Raica.

The woman who accused Sullivan, Heather Jones, filed her allegations in a formal written statement to the Birmingham diocese that she then shared exclusively with the Guardian in August. Jones, now 33, also maintained that Sullivan had paid her hundreds of thousands of dollars to remain silent about their arrangement, backing up her claim with financial and email records, along with a copy of a legal agreement.

Raica’s letter said a subsequent church investigation into “the significant payments alleged to have been made by then-father Sullivan … found no link between the allegations and any diocesan, parish or school funds”.

“These four months since the allegations surfaced have been challenging in the life of our local church,” Raica’s letter added. “I am grateful for the patience and resilience of all who have been affected directly or indirectly by this matter.”

Members of the priesthood from which Sullivan, 61, chose to resign promise to be abstinent and teach that sex out of wedlock is sinful. Furthermore, people younger than 18 are classified as minors –and sexual contact with them considered to be abusive – under policies which US Catholic bishops adopted in the early 2000s amid the worldwide church’s decades-old clergy molestation scandal.

However, there is no indication Sullivan has drawn scrutiny from lay authorities. The legal age of sexual consent in Alabama is 16. And law enforcement investigators have in some cases been reluctant to act in cases of religious clergy accused of having improper sexual contact with teens who had reached the legal age of consent.

Alabama also is not among the US states with laws that say a power imbalance makes it impossible for there to be consensual sex between clergy and legal adults who are under the clerics’ spiritual guidance.

In her statement to Sullivan’s superiors as well as in an interview with the Guardian, Jones recounted growing up in foster care after being removed from her mother’s custody “due to severe neglect”. She wrote that she lacked reliable “adult support” during her formative years and therefore tried to make ends meet by working as a dancer at an “adult establishment” outside Birmingham.

Jones said she was 17 when she met Sullivan at that establishment, where she managed to land a job despite being under an applicable age limit. Sullivan was a regular patron, made it a point to tip her during her shifts and soon offered to “help change [her] life” if she called him on a phone number he slipped her, she wrote.

Sullivan then proposed “to form an ongoing relationship that would include financial support in exchange for private companionship”, Jones wrote. Jones said Sullivan went on to take her shopping, dining, drinking, and to hotel rooms in at least six different Alabama cities in part to engage in sex – beginning when she was 17 and over the course of several years.

He was said to have initially presented himself as a medical doctor, though Jones later learned he was a priest.

“At the time, I was a minor, with no experience navigating adult relationships, and no understanding of how power and influence could be used to manipulate someone vulnerable,” Jones wrote in her complaint. “I was hesitant but ultimately agreed due to his persistence and the desperate state I was in.”

Jones said she grappled with depression, addiction and emotional instability during her arrangement with Sullivan. She said she eventually spoke out against him because Sullivan had continued working closely with families and their children as the otherwise popular pastor of Our Lady of Sorrows church in Homewood, Alabama, leaving her worried “others may be vulnerable to the same type of manipulation and exploitation” that she described enduring.

Additionally, in 2020, Raica had appointed Sullivan to serve as one of the Birmingham diocese’s vicars general, meaning he held a high-ranking administrative position.

Sullivan told congregants at Our Lady of Sorrows’ 3 August mass he was taking “personal leave”. He did not provide a reason, but Jones by then had filed her complaint against him with the diocese.

Raica issued a letter to his diocese’s congregants informing them of the allegations against Sullivan and the reason for his leave on 13 August, the same day that the Guardian reported Jones’s story. That letter also said the diocese had forwarded Jones’s allegations to the Vatican entity which investigates cases of clergy misconduct.

Sullivan later asked Pope Leo XIV to “be dispensed from all the obligations” of the priesthood, Wednesday’s statement from Raica said. The pontiff granted the request on Monday, Raica’s missive said.

Jones did not immediately comment on Sullivan’s laicization.

Sullivan was ordained a priest in 1993, according to a previous Our Lady of Sorrows social media post.

Even Swiss Corporations Crawl with Bribes at King Donald the Dumb's Feet

The king's "favorite", botoxed Laura Loomer, has declared the installation of King Donald the Dumb on the American throne as in inevitability. Without an absolute (-ly moronic) Monarch, the white supremacist inbred hillbillies and rednecks of backwoods America face extinction.

Medieval-thinking Swiss sycophants and court jesters had to stop humping their sheep on their Alpine slopes, rush down from their backward mountains and yodel at the American King's feet while offering him golden gifts in exchange for favors, such as avoiding or lifting such inconveniences as tariffs that the King placed on their products. They did the same thing during WWII: Under the cover of neutrality, their secretive banks funded the Nazi war machine. 

What this whole saga of corporations, banks, newspapers and media bending the knee and kissing the ring of the imbecile dictator is telling us, is the abolute lack of ethics and self-respect by the world of greedy capitalist corporations. They have no shame first surrendering their dignity, then buying it again from a hallucinating deranged and senile moron. Remember this, people: You are feeding the monsters by buying their stuff.

 

King Donald the Dumb of America

Trump’s Giant Gold Gifts Trigger Demand for Urgent Bribery Probe

Tom Latchem

Thu, November 27, 2025 

Swiss lawmakers have urged prosecutors to assess whether gold gifts received by Donald Trump broke the country’s anti-bribery laws.

Parliamentarians Raphaël Mahaim and Greta Gysin have asked the nation’s Office of the Attorney General to examine whether presents reportedly given to the U.S President by Swiss business leaders—among them a Rolex watch and a gold bar—breached the criminal code on offering an “undue advantage” to a foreign public official, according to Reuters.

The request follows a U.S.–Swiss framework deal this month, lowering Trump’s 39 percent tariff on Swiss goods to 15 percent. This deal was announced 10 days after the Oval Office meeting where the gifts were given, the outlet reports.

The Swiss Green Party politicians wrote that “the end does not justify all means,” asking prosecutors to decide if criminal proceedings are warranted under articles that carry penalties of up to five years’ prison—or a fine, Reuters said.

Executives from MSC, Rolex, Partners Group, Mercuria, Richemont and MKS PAMP were listed as attendees to the meeting. Rolex declined to comment when approached by the Daily Beast, and the White House didn’t immediately respond.

Alfred Gantner, a Partners Group co-founder who attended the Oval Office session, told Reuters the collaboration helped resolve the dispute. A company spokesman declined to make any further comment to the Beast, as did MKS PAMP.

A person close to the group who visited the Oval Office told the Beast: “The gifts were presented to the Presidential Library, on behalf of the Group who attended the meeting, in full compliance with both U.S. and Swiss law, and were cleared with the White House ethics counsel.”

The gifts of a clock and bar of gold have been sitting on the Oval Office desk since Nov. 4. / Win McNamee/Getty Images

After the meeting, a Rolex Submariner desk clock, which retails for five figures, could be seen in the Oval Office, alongside the gilded accents and signage that now fills the room. A similar model—although made of stainless steel rather than gold—costs around $10,000. Axios reported the one-kilogram bar was valued at around $130,000.

Swiss outlets and European media have dubbed the saga “gold bar diplomacy,” with criticism across Switzerland’s Green and Social Democrat ranks and a formal probe request now on the table. The government has defended the public-private push while denying any quid pro quo.

Under Swiss procedure, anyone can report an alleged offense, and prosecutors then decide whether to open a case, Reuters said.

A spokesperson for the Federal Prosecutor’s Office told the Daily Beast that the department generally does not comment on media reports, but confirmed it had received three criminal complaints “against persons unknown” in connection with the meeting between the Swiss delegation and the U.S. President.

“The Federal Prosecutor’s Office is reviewing these complaints as usual. It is important to note that the receipt of a criminal complaint does not automatically mean that a criminal investigation has been opened,” the spokesperson added. “No further information is currently available.”

The Daily Beast has also contacted Mahaim, Gysin, MSC, Rolex, Mercuria, and Richemont for comment.

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Two lawmakers from Swiss Green Party have formally asked Switzerland’s public prosecutor to investigate whether luxury gifts including a gold bar and a Rolex watch offered to President Trump by Swiss business leaders violated the country’s anti-bribery laws.

The gifts came during a November delegation to Washington by executives from firms including MSC, Rolex, Richemont and MKS PAMP, among others. Ten days later, the U.S. and Switzerland agreed to a framework deal that slashes U.S. tariffs on Swiss goods from 39% to 15%. Critics in Bern are now calling the timing and the gifts themselves deeply suspect.

In their letter to prosecutors, the two lawmakers argued that the gifts may have constituted an “undue advantage” under Switzerland’s criminal code. Under that statute, offering or giving a foreign public official an advantage in return for favorable treatment can trigger criminal charges, potentially carrying prison time or fines.

Representatives for the businesses involved say the gifts were legitimate diplomatic gestures, and sources close to the delegation maintain the visitors cleared the presents with White House ethics counsel, claiming the items were handed over to the Presidential Library rather than kept personally by Trump.

For now, the probe remains in its earliest stage: prosecutors have received the complaint, but have not yet opened formal proceedings. Meanwhile, political critics in Switzerland are framing the episode as a glaring example of elite influence-peddling and a warning sign for global trade-diplomacy norms.

The post “Gold bar diplomacy”: Swiss politicians call Trump gifts a possible bribe appeared first on Salon.com.

 

Trump's Failures are Making Him Increasingly Irritable and Vulgar Toward Women

We already know he doesn't think much of women. He surrounds himself with incompetent, obedient and submissive blonde bimbos. He qualifies every African woman as a "low IQ" person. He attacks almost exclusively women reporters who ask him tough questions as being "ugly", "piggy" and "stupid". 

Last Thursday, the criminal asshole attacked a journalist for asking a question during a Thanksgiving event.

“Are you stupid? Are you a stupid person?” he asked the reporter during a tense exchange about the suspect in Wednesday’s attack on two National Guard members in Washington, D.C.

The senile idiot again railed at President Joe Biden's immigration policies because the Afghan shooter on the National Guard in DC, who had worked with the CIA in Afghanistan, was allowed into the United States as part of a resettlement program in 2021.

But it was the Trump administration that vetted him over the past 5 years and granted him asylum last April. So when a female reporter pointed out to the Moron-in-Chief that the shooter “...was vetted and the vetting came up clean” by his own administration, the know-it-all imbecile first blamed psychiatry, “He went cuckoo ... I mean, he went nuts, and that happens too. It happens too often with these people.” The same criminal explanation by the violence-loving Radical Right and the NRA that guns don't kill, but sick people do.

Trump held a photo of the chaotic withdrawl of US forces and their Afghan collaborators from Kabul airport, and declared “There was no vetting or anything, they came in unvetted”. Of course, you can't be vetting thousands of panicked US-friendly Afghans trying to flee the Taliban along with the US soldiers. The cases should be studied one by one and carefully after these people land in the US. That is the job that the DOJ, the DHS, and the FBI should have done once the Afghans landed in the US. But they either all failed or no one should be blamed for someone turning "cuckoo". Many US-born morons go cuckoo every day and commit dastardly mass killings. 

But the female reporter persisted, “Actually, your DOJ IG just reported this year that there was thorough vetting by DHS and by the FBI of these Afghans who were brought into the U.S....So why do you blame the Biden administration?”

The Moron-in-Chief did not like the question: “Because they let ’em in,” he fired back. “Are you stupid? Are you a stupid person? Because they came into on a plane along with thousands of other people that shouldn’t be here, and you’re just asking questions because you’re a stupid person.”

Trump said “it’s almost impossible” to remove the people who came in via this program.

Trump's long history of attacking the media, and female reporters in particular, is well known by now. But his utter failures in recent weeks is causing him to be much angrier and especially vitriolic toward the women who cover him.

He called Katie Rogers of the New York Times “ugly”. He chastised ABC’s Mary Bruce for asking what he called “a horrible, insubordinate, and just a terrible question” about Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman's responsibility in the assassination of Washington Post columnist Jamal Kashoggi. And when Bloomberg’s Catherine Lucey asked about the Jeffrey Epstein files, he fired back: “Quiet, piggy!”

Clearly Trump is increasingly coming off the rails as he witnesses his own political demise for failing to deliver on many of his outlandish promises. Neither the economy is healthy, grocery prices are skyrocketing, inflation remains hanging over his head like the Sword of Damocles, his pretenses to making peace around the world are faltering. Russia's barbarity in Ukraine continues, so does Israel's barbarity in Palestine. 

And... he is getting old, tired, sleeps during press conferences, makes incoherent rants, and may even be seriously ill. But he's a dictator, and old senile dictators often face the dilemma of leaving the stage with some dignity (and fade away from public life) or persist in their attachment to power (and become a laughable puppet to be manipulated by all the vultures around him).

Trump and Putin Administrations have a Cozy, Incestuous Relationship

When he meets with his Russian despot counterpart, the senile demented Trump listens, absorbs, adopts then blurts out whatever inanities Putin tells him. With Trump it's Alzheimer's in reverse: Whereas patients have a bad short-term memory (they don't remember what they did 5 minutes ago), Trump remembers ONLY what he's told 5 minutes ago.

We now learn that his "special" envoy to Russia, the highly incompetent real-estate charlatan Steve Wit-off, is so cozy with his Russian interlocutors that, instead of working to secure a deal that remains within the bounds of legal international relations, he gives workshops in Moscow in which he instructs the Russians on how to approach and psychologially deal with the difficult, unstable, degenerating old monkey in the White House. 

Trump wants the Nobel Peace Prize at any cost. He wants a deal, ANY DEAL, on Ukraine regardless of whether the deal will hold or ensure permanent peace, stability and sovereignty for Ukraine. Trump doesn't want peace. He just wants the announcement of a deal so he can claim, like the intellectual beggar that he is, that he made peace between Russia and Ukraine. Again, "form over susbtance", "perception is everything"... are the principles of crooked American business that Trump claims to adhere to and put in practice in the world of politics. 

"I don't care if Russia invades Poland, the Baltic states or even Ukraine again... Just get me any fu - - ing deal with Putin so we can make the announcement", I can hear him yell at Witkoff. 
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A Stunning Leak Just Shed New Light on How Cozy the Trump Admin Really Is With Russia
Fred Kaplan
Wed, November 26, 2025



The transcript of a leaked phone conversation between President Donald Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, and a Kremlin adviser—published in Wednesday’s Bloomberg News—might stand as the most remarkable security breach of the year, in several ways. And the document proves, once and for all, that in the negotiations to end the war in Ukraine, Witkoff is acting as a Russian tool.

First, Trump is left with two choices: to either fire Witkoff, who is not a formally appointed official anyway, or essentially confirm that he is acting as a Russian tool as well. The fact that Trump has decided to send Witkoff to Moscow for further talks in the coming days suggests the latter.

Second, the transcript of a follow-on phone conversation between two Kremlin advisers discussing the Witkoff call—also published by Bloomberg—confirms that the 28-point “peace” plan, which Witkoff put on the table last week, was in fact largely a Kremlin product designed to favor Russia’s position. (After everyone noticed that this was the plan’s effect, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, along with European and Ukrainian diplomats, greatly revised the plan to make it more balanced.)

Finally, the leak is extremely unusual and possibly unprecedented. The National Security Agency and several foreign intelligence agencies routinely intercept and often record phone conversations with Russian officials. But I cannot think of a single instance when a transcript of such a conversation—which, by nature, is very highly classified—has been leaked to the press. (Some transcripts have been declassified years or decades after the fact, and, even then, only long after the issue being discussed is no longer relevant.)

Whoever leaked this—and it could have come from any number of places—clearly had an agenda: to expose, and thus help build opposition to, the dominant pro-Russia faction within the Trump administration (especially Witkoff and his most outspoken allies, Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth); or to embarrass Trump himself, either for its own sake or as a way of pushing him into a more pro-Ukraine stance.

The first conversation, between Witkoff and Yuri Ushakov, a top Kremlin foreign-policy adviser, took place on Oct. 14, soon after Trump wrapped up the ceasefire in Gaza. The chat opens with Ushakov congratulating Witkoff and Witkoff saying he wants to use that settlement as a model to end the war in Ukraine.

Witkoff says, “I told the president that you—that the Russian Federation has always wanted a peace deal. That’s my belief. … You know I have the deepest respect for President Putin.” He then suggests that the two of them line up a phone conversation between their bosses. Witkoff advises that in the call, Putin should butter up Trump as “a man of peace.”

He notes that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky is coming to the White House three days hence, then says, “I think, if possible, we have the call with your boss before that … meeting.”

Ushakov seems surprised by the suggestion but agrees—and, in fact, Trump did talk with Putin before his meeting with Zelensky, which put the Ukrainian president in a somewhat reactive, even defensive position.

Witkoff then returns to the topic of writing some sort of peace deal: “Me to you, I know what it’s going to take to get a peace deal done—Donetsk” (i.e., Ukraine giving up the eastern province of Donetsk) “and maybe a land swap somewhere.” He adds that Trump “will give me a lot of space and discretion to get to the deal.”

It has since been reported that Witkoff, along with Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and a Kremlin advisor named Kirill Dmitriev, wrote the 28-point plan over the next few days in Florida.

Bloomberg’s transcription of the second phone call tells us that the plan was largely a Kremlin concoction. The second phone call, made soon after the Witkoff call, was between Ushakov and Dmitriev. (The transcript, as reprinted, is in the original Russian and in English translation.) It reveals the two Russians plotting how to draw up the plan.

Dmitriev says that he’s about to pass on a draft of a peace plan to Witkoff and Kushner. Ushakov says, “Well, we need the maximum, don’t you think? … Otherwise, what’s the point of passing anything on?”

Dmitriev suggests handling it a bit more subtly. “No, look,” he says, “I think we’ll just make this paper from our position, and I’ll informally pass it along, making it clear that it’s all informal. And let them do it [as if it’s] their own. … I don’t think they’ll take exactly our position, but at least it’ll be as close to it as possible.”

Ushakov says he’s nervous that they might not agree with it or that they “might twist it later …there is that risk.”

Dmitriev replies, “Yeah, it seems to me that you can talk later with Steve about this paper. We will do everything neatly.”

And that’s how Witkoff and Kushner—working entirely on a back channel with Dmitriev, having no formal input from Rubio or any professional diplomats or Russia specialists inside the administration (if there are any remaining)—presented the 28-point plan, which was denounced by everyone as a recipe for Ukraine’s surrender.

The plan, as they wrote it, would have required Ukraine to give up Crimea and the eastern provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, to withdraw its troops from those and all other contested areas, to reduce the size of its army by one-third, to change its constitution to forbid ever joining NATO, and to stop firing missiles into Russia (with no reciprocal restraint from Russia). Meanwhile, it would have let Russia rejoin the G8 (from which it had been expelled after invading Ukraine) and be reintegrated into the world economy, with most sanctions dropped. It also noted that Russia would be “expected not to invade neighboring countries” but did not explicitly bar it from doing so.

If Trump, Witkoff, or anyone else is embarrassed by the Bloomberg leak, or even shocked by the implied security breach, they aren’t showing it. The White House neither disputed the transcript’s authenticity nor saw anything wrong with Witkoff’s actions. Trump himself said of the report, “It’s a standard thing. … This is what a dealmaker does,” adding that he likely made similar comments to Ukrainians.

But in fact, Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll was dispatched to speak with Ukrainians, and, according to a report in the Financial Times, Driscoll spent his meeting in Kyiv presenting the 28-point plan as an ultimatum. At the time, Trump was doing the same in the White House, giving Zelensky till Thanksgiving to take the deal or to keep fighting “his little heart out.” After the plan came under heavy criticism, Trump changed his tune, saying the draft wasn’t final and the deadline wasn’t firm.

Still, Trump is sending Witkoff to Moscow, and Driscoll to Kyiv, for more talks, and has decided to stay out of any negotiations personally until a deal is ready to be signed. Putin has said that he liked the original draft (no surprise, since his own men drafted it) but has rejected the revision.

The war rages on, peace is not at hand, Team Trump is in shambles, and, for better or for worse, the highest secrets in the land are not secure.