I had a job as a sort of butler who’d just bring stuff around to various rooms and put them on tables there.

Every room was a different D&D-type roleplay group, some for Earth, others for other worlds, and there were a lot for subsections, like for the specific parts of Earth wars was related to them, their environments, etc.

I was going to the American politics one often and overheard something like, “Well then, because someone decided there has to be four presidential impeachments, we’ll have to get rid of one.”

I watched as they whispered what that even meant and who it was about and then soon enough there was this Billboard of every US president, real, current, and possible future, with some faces being covered in static.

Jimmy Carter’s face also turned to static, and I felt the memory of him dripping away. Then I spent the next day wondering who the president between Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan was.

pat robertson joining ronald reagan on the list of homophobic conservatives to die during pride month….we love to see it

On This Day In History

March 30th, 1981: John Hinckley, Jr. shoots (but fails to assassinate) US President Ronald Regan, attempting to impress actress Jodie Foster.

Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity and institutionalized for over three decades. Today, he sells paintings on Etsy and releases music on Youtube.

Portrait of Queen Elizabeth II one by Mara McGregor (one standing, two sitting in different chairs, wearing different royal orders?) The Queen is wearing the Girls of Great Britain and Ireland tiara.

Photos of Queen Elizabeth II in 1983 on a U.S. State visit with President Regan. The Queen is wearing the Vladimir Tiara with pearl option.

Ooh, seeing all the atrocities that Ronalfld Reagan has committed has made me even more pissed off at him. Now I know why he is called the devil. He really is a horrible monster. If only this damn country can just overturn the damage that he caused.

I usually don't like to point to one person as being "the cause" of systemic issues but the damage Ronald Reagan did to the US and other countries really is catastrophic. He and his best buddy Margaret Thatcher really did hasten the declines of the US and UK with their bullshit neoliberal policies (at least the UK still has the NHS.... for now).

It also really doesn't help that the Republican Party and conservatives in general still deify him as the second coming of Jesus basically. So good luck criticizing him or saying that Hinckley should have gotten a better shot

Fuck Grombrindal Maybe.....Maybe the Asur were right about the dwarfs?

A recession is when your neighbor

loses his job. A depression is when

you lose yours.

(Ronald Regan)

"Science reconfirms what we've all known" is a common headline, but rare in politics.

So, anyone complaining about tax hikes is a rube at this point.

The new grimace shake is his milk. Grimace's frothy, thick milk is collected by ronalds soft, supple hands. 👍

New Post has been published on Books by Caroline Miller

New Post has been published on https://www.booksbycarolinemiller.com/musings/is-trump-more-to-be-pitied/

Is Trump More To Be Pitied?

Watching a reporter interview historian Timothy Snyder one evening, I sat up in my chair when he laid out his thoughts about  Donald Trump’s strategy for the current 2024 Presidential election.  Snyder presumed the former president knew he would lose the contest and was taking unpopular positions against Social Security and the Affordable Care Act not to secure victory but to lay the groundwork for a second insurrection. Insane as the idea sounded, I couldn’t dismiss it out of hand.  A distorted mind might seize upon the claim of being victorious in defeat. Trump had tried it before.  The fear that history might repeat itself set my little grey cells spinning.  The media has paid little attention to the state of Trump’s mind, choosing to focus on the age of his opponent, Joe Biden. Those who speculate that the incumbent is too old to run for a second term forget that a scant three-year difference lies between the two contenders.  Reporters would serve the public better by exploring the difference between an aging brain and a demented one. Biden’s speech gaffs, which many hold against him, aren’t entirely due to his age.  As a child, he stuttered. The impediment reasserts itself on occasion. But it is also true that as a man of 81 years, he speaks slowly and takes mental pauses. These are signs of a brain aging normally, not evidence of one that has lost its reason. Bidne’s verbal mistakes are a far cry from Trump’s failure to distinguish Nikki Haley from Nancy Pelosi or for him to speak as though he were running against Barack Obama. Ronald Reagan’s conduct during his final years in office might be a better measuring stick with which to compare  Trump’s behavior.  The  40th U. S. President also exhibited memory gaps and confusion during public appearances.  Alzheimer’s was never confirmed during his time in office, but members of his staff did report they saw signs of the disease before he returned to private life.    Psychologist, Dr. John Gartner makes no bones about Trump’s mental illness.  He warns that the former president’s outbursts aren’t those of a strong leader flexing his muscles.  They are the tantrums of a diseased brain.    Though he was never Trump’s doctor, Gartner insists what he offers is not an opinion but a diagnosis based on reality.  Others in his field agree but few have spoken out so publically. Gartner believes his colleagues have failed to do so because they are intimidated. Like physicians practicing in anti-abortion states, they’ve come to fear there is a good chance they would lose their jobs if they went on the record, not to mention other forms of retaliation… Some journalists may have remained silent for the same reason. Gartner points out that they make little of Trump’s slurred words, invented words, unfinished sentences, and blank, expressionless pauses. Instead, they characterize the Presidential election as a competition between two old men.  When Regan took office at the age of 73, he was the oldest President to that date. Whether the early stages of Alzheimer’s had set in, we shall never know, but he was wise enough to surround himself with honorable men and women. By contrast, the roll-call of Trump’s many cohorts is a list of disreputables. Should Trump return to power, that number is likely to grow, boding ill for the country. Nor can we overlook the many felony counts against the former president. His legal woes have left him strapped for funds. Winning re-election, he could erase the federal charges against him with a presidential pardon, but he has no power to absolve himself from state charges.  Without sufficient funds to defend himself, Trump is vulnerable to opportunists who are ready to give him cash in exchange for undue influence.    Opportunists are the people we should fear, not members of the Christian Right as many have assumed.  The latter’s objectives are too out of step with the majority of voters.  Their brief hour on the stage will be less than a hiccup in the course of history.    When money and the levers of government become too cozy, says John Grey in his book The New Leviathans, it threatens democracy and encourages the rise of more and not less totalitarianism.   ( “Who’s Afraid of Freedom?” by Helena Rosenblatt, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2024, pg. 154.) The dynamic is simple, the author explains.  Like other animals, humans are addicted to pleasure. Money satisfies that addiction but the pursuit of it has consequences. Those with the most wealth imagine they are better than others–a perspective that encourages them to imagine people in lower economic circumstances are less human. From there, Grey posits, it’s a short hop to inhumanity, a place where the poverty of others is a justification for eliminating them.   (Ibid, pg. 154)  Whether that causal connection between money and tyranny is direct, I don’t know.  But, science has affirmed that wealth and compassion exist in an inverse ratio.  In a capitalist society, greed, if left unchecked, could end in a tug-of-war between those with enough money to influence the government and the majority who are governed by it. A 2019  Gallop Poll confirmed that dynamic.  Concerning the federal budget, the wealthy preferred to see service cuts to social security to sustain it.  A majority of Americans disagreed. Money has a loud voice in politics, though most of us wish it weren’t true.  Nonetheless, we must accept that Trump’s financial setbacks put him at the mercy of oligarchs. No longer able to pose as one of them, he suffers the humiliation of a man stripped of his theater.  His delusions are exposed, and he stands naked before us.  The only words to suit the occasion are these. Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hast been wise.   (King Lear, 1, v.)

How Reagan's GOP Impacted America

From Facebook

Jonathan Zucker

  · 

I have long been positive that the Republican party prolonged the Iran Hostage crisis in 1979 to ensure Jimmy Carter's defeat.

The theory was based on the fact that the hostages were released the day Reagan was inaugurated, far too quickly for any legitimate negotiation to have occurred. Furthermore, the Iran-Contra scandal (in which the Reagan administration violated a US arms embargo to covertly sell arms to Iran) always seemed to be the perfect quid-pro-quo for holding the hostages until Reagan was President.

However, multiple credible investigations--focused on Bill Casey (chairman of Reagan's campaign and later director of the CIA) as the intermediary--had been unable to substantiate the theory.

However, we now have proof.

The problem, as it turns out, is that these investigations focused on the wrong person as the intermediary. Casey was smart enough not to do take the trip himself or to use any foreign relations expert as a surrogate.

A blockbuster article in the New York Times yesterday revealed that, in 1979, John Connally (former Republican Governor of Texas) went on a tour of middle east capitals with one message to be passed to the revolutionaries in Iran: "If you reject any deal Carter is offering and hold the hostages past the election--all-but-ensuring Ronald Reagan would win the election--Reagan will give you a much better deal than Carter is offering."

Accompanying Connally on this trip was a little know political aide named Ben Barnes.

Yesterday Barnes came clean (50 years later) and, in a detailed interview with the Times, revealed where Connally had travelled and to whom he had spoken. And, that, upon his return, his first stop was to brief Casey on his trip.

What this means is that:

(a) the Reagan campaign condemned 52 American diplomats to months of unnecessary (additional) captivity with the express purpose of influencing a Presidential election;

(b) the illegal Iran-Contra arms sales were, as suspected, the quid pro quo to the religious dictatorship of Iran for holding America's hostage to ensure Reagan's victory.

Just another reminder that the contemporary Republican party--focused on winning at all costs, damn the republic--is nothing new.

It's the same Republican party we have had since FDR broke their hold on power in 1932. It is just that from 1932 to 1980 they only managed to win Presidential elections.

But, starting in 1980 when they took control of the Senate (for the first time since 1955), and began their campaign to

(a) take control of the judiciary to undo the New Deal regulatory state (abortion, gun rights, and so-called "religious freedom" are window dressing issues to secure votes from White evangelicals) and

(b) pile up debt by engaging in tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the wealthy (eventually forcing, in their view, a radical downsizing of federal programs).

This has been the agenda of the wealthy elite that funds the Republican party since--literally--1932.

With Trump's Supreme Court appointments and tax cut (which built upon the Reagan and both W. Bush cuts), they succeeded.

It took them 90 years, but they won.

Tax rates on the wealth are lower than at any time since the 30s and the Supreme Court is systematically hamstringing the 20th century regulatory state. And, as a result, concentration of wealth has returned to the pre-New Deal levels of the "Gilded Age."

While I do not think it was their intent, I don't think they care that our very democracy may be a casualty of their efforts.

Anyway... clear evidence that Reagan's victory in 1980 is severely

tainted, if not completely illegitimate.

BREAKING NEWS: THE QUEEN IS SENT TO SUPERHELL FOR HER CRIMES

They Live (1988) poster by Jason Edmiston