What is wrong with the Dems? Hakeem Jeffries' latest campaign solgan for the midterms, "Strong Floor, No Ceiling", typifies the mealy-mouthed, vague and largely inoffensive rhetoric from Jeffries and Schumer - "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory".

FUN FACT: Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is in custody at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, awaiting trial on three counts of 'crimes against humanity', specifically non-judicial murder in his 'war on drugs' including strikes on "drug boats".

We are being conditioned for another fabricated war, like Vietnam and Iraq, with lies and propaganda to prepare us for war in Venezuela. A flotilla of ships, planes & 15,000 US troops assembled for a land & air assault. It's not about fentanyl or cocaine. It's about the world's largest oil reserves.

Beyond "affordability", we need a party dedicated to Quality of Life - education, healthcare, freedom of expression, celebration of diversity, an optimistic, benevolent, dynamic vision of the future.

After fifteen years of trying to kill ACA ("Obamacare"), the GOP offers only "concepts" and "ideas" designed to go nowhere, revealing their true healthcare philosophy: "If you can't afford it, you don't deserve it"

Beyond "affordability", we need a party dedicated to Quality of Life - education, healthcare, freedom of expression, celebration of diversity, an optimistic, benevolent, dynamic vision of the future.

All dictators scapegoat "others", "barbarians at the gates", "animals", and by dehumanizing them justify deportations, incarcerations, and murder. What sets Trump apart, the sheer number of groups he finds undesirable. Those not rich, white, male, straight and Christian unwelcome in Trump's America.

INSTANT POLL Would you support a Constitutional Amendment that would enshrine Education and Healthcare as "inalienable rights" of American citizenship?

What's a cartoonist to do in the Age of Trump?

Any discussion about the following of illegal orders needs to factor in the chaos, brutality, stupidity, absurdity, and moral ambiguity leading to corruption inherent in war. "War doesn't determine who is right, only who is left." - Bertrand Russell

Today marks the 62nd anniversary of the day that changed my life and my view of the world. In many respects, I have judged everything that has happened since that day as the dawn of cynicism, the loss of innocence. Yet the date is now slipping into history, little remembrance, as remote as Lincoln.

Enormous funds were being transferred, far beyond expected for sex-trafficking, and the money didn't move in ways typical of blackmail. But it's bigger than "leverage", money-laundering or bj's for rich guys. If "the girls" were the icing on the cake, we don't yet see the cake... or who baked it?

Not just about bj's for rich guys. Follow the $, the patterns of a financial conduit or intel asset, rather than a solo predator. • State-sponsored compromise ops (CIA, Mossad, MI6) • Corporate espionage, sex as bait for leverage • Political blackmail, ties to campaign financing and lobbying

The Democratic Party: "Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory" for fifty years.

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States... The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge." -Isaac Asimov, 1980

Dirty Secret: America faces a rapidly evolving technological triad that will profoundly change all our lives & work in ways we can't predict: Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and Virtual Reality. An ever-greater portion of human experiences and relationships will be virtual. We're not prepared.

"Who's On The Ballot? Trump's On The Ballot!" The bears ate his Big Mac. They must have cheated. They're not real Americans, anyway. Radical deviants. It can never be his fault, so perfect, so adored. "Who's your Baddy...?"

For a sociopath savvy in messaging and optics, his recent impulses prove he's now totally bonkers.The optics could not be more appalling. The East Wing? A ballroom? The Oval? A "Gatsby" party? He's fully blind to the symbolism, the destruction, to contempt for history, values, traditions, people.

Once-mighty CBS News has become a sad casualty of Trump's war on reality, coerced into "scribe journalism", dictated (in at least two meanings) by America's 'Dear Leader'. After extorting $16 million to approve the Paramount/Skydance merger, he praised Bari Weiss and the MAGAfication of the news.

In case anyone was wondering why Trump, shortly before his meeting with China's Xi, ordered immediate nuclear testing by his "War Department"? The answer may be 'Poseidon', a Russian nuclear-capable underwater drone that challenges nuclear defenses reminiscent of "The Hunt for Red October".

Thugs R Us/The Gravy Seals: Satire has become difficult in the Age of Trump, when the everyday reality seems so implausible, preposterous as to defy belief. What to do when "outlandish" isn't? Only manly men need apply, no girly behind the burly. Matricide counseling is available.

In the 'vision' of tech billionaires, a reliance on AI, including non-human 'friendships', serve a greater proportion of human experience via virtual-reality. In that paradigm, we live more 'simulations' than personal experience. And simulations can be designed for the agendas of power and control.

Harvard's Avi Loeb on 3I/ATLAS: • Trajectory: 0.2% chance of it occurring naturally. • Planetary Flybys: Path grazes Venus, Mars, and Jupiter - 0.005% chance. • Perihelion Timing: Closest approach while hidden behind the Sun. • Non-gravitational acceleration: Suggests propulsion or active control.

Two stone bas-relief sculptures high on the façade of the Bonwit Teller Building under demolition on Fifth Avenue – pieces that had been sought with enthusiasm by the Metropolitan Museum of Art – were smashed by jackhammers yesterday on the orders of a real estate developer. - NY Times June 6, 1980

Trump provokes a war with Venezuela and picks a fight with Colombia, bent on regime change. He re-names it the "Gulf of America", but what is he really after? His sales & marketing mind and his only two remaining motivations - ego and greed - see opportunity. Venezuelan oil and Colombian cocaine.

Ten years of Trump has taught us “projection is confession” and that speaking the quiet part out loud is the flip side of incessant lying. So Trump speaks truth about an “enemy within”: a right-wing, anti-democracy, authoritarian, racist aggressive cancer that requires emergency surgery.

It's part of his psychopathology, the quiet part out loud - a reflex, the flip side of perpetual lying. The sociopath treats his vices as virtues; the imperial president rewards criminals and embraces a value system in which there are only grifters and suckers. And evil serves a greater good.

Facial-recognition software is now being tested on immigrants, for wider application later in their crackdown on "crime". As Stephen Miller insists: opposition = terrorism, protest = insurrection, DEI = unconstitutional. We just became criminals.

For the rest of us it will be a crime to wear a mask, regardless of future disease outbreaks because it interferes with their facial-recognition software. When our constitutional rights of privacy are vacated by the Supremes, their ability to track us, in an attack on "crime", will become critical.

When he says he knows everything, he knows nothing. When he says he knows nothing, he knows everything.

Just to be clear: Trump wants to train elements of the United States military to kill Americans in our cities. Excuse me, to "take them out". Like the small boats off Venezuela, summary execution, presumption of guilt. Provocations for war at home and abroad.

I'm not a baby boomer, I'm a "war child". Old enough to remember what anti-fascist means. And like books, the music of our generation is under attack be the new purity police. Many of the '60's "British Invasion" were children of the blitz. American folk and rock voiced protest. And we remember.

"In Trump We Trust"?

"Fool's Gold" Trump's kitschy decor would look gaudy in the Palace of Versailles.

Trump's Kryptonite “Trump is acting like Putin. But he doesn’t have Putin’s resources. The only way he wins is if you surrender.”

The Most-Banned Books 2024-2025 PEN America released its list of the most-banned books of the 2024-2025 school year on Wednesday – and warned that the number of books challenged or banned in public school districts across the country has risen exponentially in the past two years.

And now, the bill comes due...

Only 3+ years ago we were bewildered by Fla Gov Ron DeSantis' attack on Disney, his golden goose, for "wokeness". After Disney's mild statement of support for their LGBTQ+ employees, DeSantis took his cue from Trump to co-opt and demonize the term "woke", successfully turning it into a pejorative.

Last week's Trump memo NPSM-7 orders the federal government to investigate and prosecute any person, nonprofit, or entity displaying “indicia” of political violence: anti-capitalism, anti-Americanism, anti-Christianity, and “extremism” on race, gender, and migration. Will we be on the watchlist?

The saddest part with 'Trump the Transactional' is that, based on previous behavior, this completely unfounded attack on Tylenol might magically go away if the manufacturer were to give Trump a hefty donation, maybe buy some of his junk crypto? Memecoins...?

Trump hates New York too, a kid from Queens never embraced by the Manhattan elites, always the outsider, the con man and crook, the tacky nouveau riche social climber with vengeance issues using racism and legal warfare to avoid accountability.

Preparing To Dismantle Constitutional Rights If Thomas’s remarks are anything to go by, the conservative majority is set to flip major precedents during the upcoming session. He's already teed up rights of privacy as being on the chopping block.

Despite Trump's cornucopia of distractions...

Pete Hegseth, newly-minted Secretary of War, has called together a meeting next week of hundreds of senior military officers from all over the globe, purpose unknown. It's unclear how many will attend the event, but it is exceedingly rare to have so many senior officials in the same time and place.