June 4, 2026

This melted my heart!

June 4, 2026

This melted my heart!

June 4, 2026

No, they can't. That's why the paramedic didn't diagnose him.

Early on, he acknowledges the fact that, despite his extensive training and experience, he can't give a formal diagnosis of Trump: "It comes down to one single thing I can’t do. I cannot diagnose. I can know what is wrong. I can treat what is wrong. I can even fix what is wrong. I just cannot officially tell you what is wrong."

Later, he says this:

He then proceeds to describe the things going on with Schlump that he's seeing with his own eyes (just like the rest of us) and what those things mean to a highly trained health care professional.

I highly recommend reading the article. It's highly informative and amusing, and it'sa gift link, so it doesn't cost anything to read it.

He starts out by describing the things he is trained to do, then says, "It comes down to one single thing I can’t do. I cannot diagnose. I can know what is wrong. I can treat what is wrong. I can even fix what is wrong. I just cannot officially tell you what is wrong."

Later, he says this:



He then proceeds to describe the things going on with Schlump that he's seeing with his own eyes (just like the rest of us) and what those things are telling him. No official diagnosis, just the observations of a highly trained health care professional.

As someone who has been following Schlump's decline pretty closely, I learned a lot from this article. It confirmed a lot of my personal suspicions and also greatly added to my understanding of what I've been seeing. I highly recommend reading it. It's highly informative, it's a fast read, and it's a gift link, so it doesn't cost anything to read it.

June 4, 2026

All righty then.

Your disdain of protesters and the events they organize take part in are duly noted. You have expressed your opinion, as is your right, and some of us beg to differ, as is our right.

Some of us derive inspiration, strength, and encouragement from making our voices heard out on the streets, in chorus with likeminded others, and we will continue to do so. Will we change many voters' minds thereby? Gee, I don't know. But who said that was the main purpose of these activities? I've always thought of protesting as a way for people to, as I said above, make our voices heard, in a much more powerful way than any of us could ever do on our own.

When a whole crowd of people gathers on a busy street to hold up signs and shout slogans together, interesting things happen. There's the affirmation and reassurance each of us gets from knowing we're not alone, something that we all need as much of as we can get these days. There are the reactions of passers-by, the honks, and the waves, that tell us there are many others who care about what's going on, beyond those of us who showed up with our signs. There's an energy that flows through and among all of us, protesters and passers-by alike, that is reviving and invigorating and gives us the strength we'll need to go on fighting in the weeks and months ahead.

Afterwards, we go home physically tired but mentally uplifted and recharged, cheered to know that we're not as isolated as we feared, that we actually have lots of company, and resolved to plunge with renewed vigor into the work that needs to be done. Work like talking to voters and working to change minds, which is very important, as you pointed out.

Showing up at a protest doesn't mean we're not going to do anything else. Some of us will be writing postcards, knocking on doors, phone banking, ir fund raising. And many of us will be talking to our friends and neighbors. Some will be doing all of the above. Some of those things may reap more tangible results than others, but all of them reinforce and support each other as well as those of us who do them.

Of course protesting alone doesn't win elections. What a silly idea! But to imply that they have no value at all seems like an equally silly idea to me. Protests are just part of the picture, but they have legitimate purposes, not the least of which is to support and reinforce our determination to continue with all of the other tasks that are necessary to win elections. If you don't get anything out of them, fine. You do you. Just please find a way to do you without raining on everybody else's parade, and don't make assumptions about what else we protesters may or may not be doing. And don't forget we ALL want the same thing, to save the country we love before it's too late!

June 3, 2026

The Republican Party, and (unwittingly) NBC TV.

I will always believe, unless someone can provide evidence to the contrary, that The Apprenctice, which aired on NBC, is what launched his political career. He was just a washed up, multiply bankrupted, wouldbe real estate mogul until that TV show came along and presented him as the smart, savvy businessman he had never been and positioned him to acquire a nationwide base of fans who were primed to gobble up whatever he served them.

He had threatened to run for potus many times in the past but never acted on it until that show made him a "star" (as in "When you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything." *gag* ) His deep resentment of Obama lit the fuse, but The Apprentice provided the fuel.

Was the network or anyone associated with the show aware that they were creating a political monster? I don't think so, but that is what they did nonetheless. And it sucks beyond belief.

June 1, 2026

I am lucky enough not to have any Trumpers in my immediate life.

I imagine my ex bil is a Trumper, but I never really liked him anyway, and I wrote him off as a loss when he let my sister die abandoned in a nursing home after she left his ignorant ass. I have a nephew who is a semifamous RW activist, but he lives in another state and cut off contact with me years ago. So there are no Trumpers with whom I currently have a personal relationship.

That said, my attitude toward the faceless mass of red hatted peabrains who voted for him is that if the country survives this, I'll be willing to put this behind me and move on. If one of them should express their regret to me personally, I'll be civil to them. However... if they expect our side to apologize for being "mean" to them, they will have a VERY long wait.

They are the ones who owe a huge apology to everyone in the US and around the world who has been harmed by their poor choices. That includes but is by no means limited to the following:
- all of our erstwhile allies that Orange Satan has alienated
- all of those who have died, been injured, or lost loved ones due to his actions in waging unnecessary wars, blowing up boats in international waters (which he claimed to be drug smugglers with no evidence whatsoever), etc.
- the millions around the world who have lost their lives or will lose them due to the defending of USAID
- the entire nation of Ukraine, who he has turned his back on and left to the "tender mercies" of Vladimir the Terrible Putin
- the citizens of every country he has threatened to invade or otherwise take over, including Canada, Greenland, Cuba, and/or any I have may have forgotten
- and too many others to mention

I could go on for days, but I'm tired, so I'll stop here and let you all use your imaginations to fill in the blanks. My point is that everyone who voted for him, ever, owes so many apologies to so many millions of people that the idea of any of them ever expecting to receive an apology from any of us is absoputely laughable.

Another thing I will not do is pat them on the head and say, "There, there, you did your best, what a shame that you were taken in by that Orange Hellbeast." When I hear Trumpers proclaim in YouTube videos that they voted for him because he promised no wars or said he would lower gas and grocery prices, all I can do is stare in bafflement that anyone would still believe one word he says.

To sum up, I have nothing to apologize to them for, and they have everything to apologize to everybody for.

May 30, 2026

History will remember the Roberts Court all right.

Chief Justice John Roberts will be remembered the way chief Justice Roger B. Taney is remembered for the Dred Scottt decision, the way Chief Justice Melville Fuller is remembered for Plessy v Ferguson, and the way Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone is remembered for Korematsu v. United States.

In other words, he will be remembered not in his own right as a great or even particularly good Chief Justice, but as the Chief Justice who presided over a court known for disastrous rulings. Only in Roberts" case, he will be known as the Chief Justice who presided over over a court known not for one catastrophic decision but for a whole string of historically bad rulings. One of these, Citizens United v. FEC, is already enshrined in numerous lists of historically bad Supreme Court cases such as this one: https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/supreme-court/13-worst-supreme-court-decisions-of-all-time/

His name is one that will live in infamy as generations of law students study the many terrible rulings rendered by the Roberts Court.

May 29, 2026

Oh, I had reasons for putting that in! 😉

I included "able-bodied" in that list because it's the opposite of disabled. I don't believe disabled people are any safer in Trump's America than brown skinned immigrants or trans people. He has made it abundantly clear that he doesn't think much of people who have disabilities. Here are a few examples.

+ Mocking a disabled reporter at one of his rallies:
New York Times slams Trump's mocking of reporter as 'outrageous'
https://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/donald-trump-mocks-new-york-times-reporter-serge-kovaleski-216219

+ Expressing disdain for disabled veterans:
STATEMENT: Trump Should Apologize for Disgraceful Comments on Soldiers and Wounded Veterans
https://www.americanprogress.org/press/statement-trump-apologize-disgraceful-comments-soldiers-wounded-veterans/

+ Cutting medicaid benefits that many disabled Americans (among others) rely on for health care:
Medicaid Cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act Leave 3 in 10 Young Adults Vulnerable to Losing Health Care Access
https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/medicaid-cuts-one-big-beautiful-bill-act-leave-3-10-young-adults-vulnerable-losing

+Telling his nephew that disabled people (including the nephew's son) "should just die":
My Uncle Donald Trump Told Me Disabled Americans Like My Son 'Should Just Die'
https://time.com/7002003/donald-trump-disabled-americans-all-in-the-family/

I have very little doubt that Trump would be euthanizing disabled Americans right now, like tbe Nazi that he is at heart, if he thought he could get away with it.

May 25, 2026

I have several thoughts on this.

To begin with, I don't think people calling Trump "low IQ," "stupid," etc, has anything to do with how any of us feel about people with developmental disabilities. Imo, it's a mistake to interpret insults leveled at Trump in that way. (Stick a pin in that, as I'll be coming back to it later.)

I agree with what twodogsbarking said up thread, that Trump constantly uses the phrase "low IQ" to insult others, and that has led to people using it against him. In other words, he started it. That doesn't make it okay, of course, but "so and so has a low i.q." is an insult I don't ever remember hearing come out of anyone's mouth before Trump started hurling it at everyone who does anything he doesn't like (especially poc).

I think he normalized that expression to the point that it was inevitable that people would start using it against him. We all got acclimated to it (along with all the other insults he constantly spews) whether we wanted to or not. As much as we all hate his rudeness and the constant stream of invective he spews, I think he has created a culture of insults that we have gradually gotten desensitized to, willingly or not, and "low IQ" is just one piece of a larger and very ugly picture.

Remember the way he insulted all the other candidates in the early Republican debates? I watched those debates with my mouth literally hanging open. I had never heard a grown adult dish out schoolyard level insults at other adults in such a fashion, and I couldn't believe what I was hearing. You could tell that his opponents were equally taken aback. They didn't know how to respond, and as a result, he was able to get away with it. Again and again.

Those of us with a sense of decorum and an awareness of how people are supposed to behave in such situations were baffled and horrified, but a sizeable segment of the country got a kick out of his childish behavior, lapped it up like kittens drinking milk, and begged for more. Those were the people that gave him the Republican nomination and elected him potus twice.

While he went on his merry way insulting people right and left, he also, constantly bragged about his "very large brain" and claimed to know more about anything and everything than anyone else. There are video montages on YouTube of him saying things like, "I know more about X than anybody!" and "Nobody knows more about Y than me!" over and over and over again. He seems to think that if he says, "I'm really smart!" eough times, that will magically make it so.

In addition to all of the above, I truly believe that he is not an especially bright guy. Smart people have traits like intellectual curiosity, rational thinking skills, and the ability to understand complex issues, NONE of which Trump has ever displayed. I have called him stupid on many occasions, because I believe he IS stupid, in a way that has nothing to do with IQ points. He has ZERO emotionally intelligence, and his understanding of any issue he has ever opined on is demonstrably and distressingly shallow, especially for someone in the position of power snd responsibility he has managed to worm his way into.

To bring this back around to where I started, I want to say that I would be absolutely appalled if I saw anyone insulting developmentally disabled people at DU or elsewhere, but as I said at the outset, I don't believe deriding Trump's intelligence has anything to do with them or our attitude towards them. I'm very much aware of the issues those people face and would never want to add to them. But I think we all need to be free to say the things we need to say about the manchild who currently holds all of our futures and possibly the future of our whole species in his hands, while we watch powerlessly and helplessly and those who actually have the power to do anything about him pretend there's nothing wrong. I really, really believe we need that.

May 24, 2026

"You know what Socialism looks like? It's when the government comes in and tells you what you're gonna do!"

Oh, do you mean like when the government comes in and tells you that you can't get an abortion or get gender affirming health care for your trans kid?

If that's the case, I'd say there's a lot of that there socialism stuff going on down there in Oklahoma!

Narrator: The state of Oklahoma has a complete ban on abortion at all stages of pregnancy with no exceptions for rape or incest. Gender-affirming health care for minors is also banned in Oklahoma. Efforts have also been made (as yet unsuccessfully) to ban this care for people under the age of 21.