Featuring: Jen Rubin with Ilan Goldenberg; Brian O'Neill; Eric Blanc; Sherrilyn Ifill; Julie Zebrak; Jen Rubin with Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand; Jamie Schler; and our Contrarian Pet of the Week, Mo
This was authored by Tom Nichols, a staff writer for The Atlantic, and Tom’s article is spot-on, worth sharing with everyone you know. Speaking frankly, both Trump and JD Vance are utterly disgusting people. To put it succinctly:
• TRUMP IS A LIAR, A CON AND A FRAUD.
• TRUMP IS PUTIN’S PUPPET.
• TRUMP IS A RUSSIAN ASSET.
• TRUMP IS A TRAITOR.
• TRUMP IS AMERICA’S DISGRACE.
“A SET UP”
Leave aside, if only for a moment, the utter boorishness with which President Donald Trump and Vice President J. D. Vance treated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House today. Also leave aside the spectacle of American leaders publicly pummeling a friend as if he were an enemy. All of the ghastliness inflicted on Zelensky today should not obscure the geopolitical reality of what just happened: The president of the United States ambushed a loyal ally, presumably so that he can soon make a deal with the dictator of Russia to sell out a European nation fighting for its very existence.
Trump’s advisers have already declared the meeting a win for “putting America first,” and his apologists will likely spin and rationalize this shameful moment as just a heated conversation—the kind of thing that in Washington-speak used to be called a “frank and candid exchange.” But this meeting reeked of a planned attack, with Trump unloading Russian talking points on Zelensky (such as blaming Ukraine for risking global war), all of it designed to humiliate the Ukrainian leader on national television and give Trump the pretext to do what he has indicated repeatedly he wants to do: side with Russian President Vladimir Putin and bring the war to an end on Russia’s terms. Trump is now reportedly considering the immediate end of all military aid to Ukraine because of Zelensky’s supposed intransigence during the meeting.
Vance’s presence at the White House also suggests that the meeting was a setup. Vance is usually an invisible backbencher in this administration, with few duties other than some occasional trolling of Trump’s critics. (The actual business of furthering Trump’s policies is apparently now Elon Musk’s job.) This time, however, he was brought in to troll not other Americans, but a foreign leader. Marco Rubio—in theory, America’s top diplomat—was also there, but he sat glumly and silently while Vance pontificated like an obnoxious graduate student.
Zelensky objected, as he should have, when the vice president castigated the Ukrainian president for not showing enough personal gratitude to Trump. And then in a moment of immense hypocrisy, Vance told Zelensky that it was “disrespectful for you to come into the Oval Office and try to litigate this in front of the American media.” But baiting Zelensky into fighting in front of the media was likely the plan all along, and Trump and Vance were soon both yelling at Zelensky. (“This is going to be great television,” Trump said during the meeting.) The president at times sounded like a Mafia boss—“You don’t have the cards”; “you’re buried there”—but in the end, he sounded like no one so much as Putin himself as he hollered about “gambling with World War III,” as if starting the biggest war in Europe in nearly a century was Zelensky’s idea.
After the meeting, Trump dismissed the Ukrainian leader and then issued a statement that could only have pleased Moscow:
I have determined that President Zelensky is not ready for Peace if America is involved, because he feels our involvement gives him a big advantage in negotiations. I don’t want advantage, I want PEACE. He disrespected the United States of America in its cherished Oval Office. He can come back when he is ready for Peace.
Trump might as well have dictated this post on Truth Social before the meeting, because Zelensky didn’t stand a chance of having an actual discussion at the White House. When he showed Trump pictures of brutalized Ukrainian soldiers, Trump shrugged. “That’s tough stuff,” he muttered. Perhaps someone told Zelensky that Trump doesn’t read much, and reacts to images, but Trump, uncharacteristically, seems to have been determined to stay on message and pick a fight.
Vance, for his part, fully inhabited the role of a smarmy talk-show sidekick, jumping in to make sure the star got the support he needed while slamming one of the guests. The vice president is an unserious man who tries to insert himself into serious moments, but this time the stakes were much higher than the usual dustups with the media or congressional Democrats. He chuckled as Brian Glenn, a journalist from the right-wing channel Real America’s Voice who is reportedly dating Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, asked Zelensky the tough and incisive question of why he had not worn a suit in the Oval Office. (Perhaps he’ll ask Musk why he wore a hat and T-shirt to a Cabinet meeting, but I doubt it.)
The sheer rudeness shown to a foreign guest and friend of the United States was (to use a word) deplorable as a matter of manners and grace, but worse, Trump and Vance acted like a couple of online Kremlin sock puppets instead of American leaders. They pushed talking points that they either knew or should have known were wrong. Even if Zelensky were as fluent and capable in English as Winston Churchill, he would never have been able to rebut the flood of falsehoods. No, the U.S. has not given Ukraine $350 billion; yes, Zelensky has repeatedly expressed his thanks to America and to Trump; no, Zelensky was not attacking the administration. The Ukrainian leader did his best to stand up to the bullying, but Trump and Vance were playing to the cameras and the MAGA gallery at home.
Vance showed how dedicated he was to point-scoring rather than policy making with an observation so shallow that he was lucky that Zelensky was too off-balance to call him out for it. To emphasize Ukraine’s perilous situation, Vance noted that Zelensky was sending conscripts to the front lines, as if this was an unprecedented policy that only the most desperate regime would dare enact. Zelensky said that all nations at war have problems, but he might have pointed out to Vance that Ukraine is fighting for its very existence, while the United States has dragged conscripts to places far from home—including Korea and Vietnam—to fight against troops supported by the Kremlin.
Today’s meeting and America’s shameful vote in the United Nations on Monday confirmed that the United States is now aligned with Russia and against Ukraine, Europe, and most of the planet. I felt physically sick watching the president of the United States yell at a brave ally, fulminating in the Oval Office as if he were an addled old man shaking his fist at a television. Zelensky has endured tragedies, and risked his life, in ways that men such as Trump and Vance cannot imagine. (Vance served as a public-relations officer in the most powerful military in the world; he has never had to huddle in a bunker during a Russian bombardment.) I am ashamed for my nation; even if Congress acts to support and aid Ukraine, it cannot restore the American honor lost today.
But no matter how disgusted anyone might be at Trump and Vance’s behavior, the strategic reality is that this meeting is a catastrophe for the United States and the free world. America’s alliances are now in danger, and should be: Trump is openly, and gleefully, betraying everything America has tried to defend since the defeat of the Axis 80 years ago. The entire international order of peace and security is now in danger, as Russian autocrats, after slaughtering innocent people for three years, look forward to enjoying the spoils of their invasion instead of standing trial for their crimes. (Shortly after Trump dismissed Zelensky from the White House, Putin’s homunculus, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, postedon X: “The insolent pig finally got a proper slap down in the Oval Office.”)
Friday, February 28, 2025, will go into the history books as one of the grimmest days in American diplomacy, the beginning of a long-term disaster that every American, every U.S. ally, and anyone who cares about the future of democracy will have to endure. With the White House’s betrayal of Ukraine capping a month of authoritarian chaos in America, Putin, along with other dictators around the world, can finally look at Trump with confidence and think: one of us.
Not to be too paranoid, but could the canceling of the February meeting of the FDA's Vaccines ... Advisory Committee have anything to do with the fact that, absent an up-to-date flu vaccine for winter '05-'06, many thousands more vulnerable senior citizens will die from the disease and thus no longer collect Social Security, which will save money that can go toward the Musk-Trump tax cuts for billionaires and corporations?
Zelonskyy played Trump and his flunkies like a superb Trout fisherman: Once he surveryed the play of the water, he cast into the flume just above the pool where the fish lurked, aand when the fish mouthed the fly, he gave him a litttle lene, ghen a slight tug so the fish bites et voila. Now Trump looks weaker than Putin, a low-life deserting a friend in crisis, and leaves without having to sign away mineral rights to very, very valuable rare earth metals. Zelonskyy, also, united the rest of the Euroopeans together with Ukraine and against the United States.
Why is the Orange Demon known for "The Art of the Deal?"
Zelonskyy left with far much more thanhe entered the Oval with. And I don't see how Trump can survive this;
In addition to Trump/Vance's humiliation of American global statesmanship, the public facing meeting we saw was a clear and classic lesson in how our fragile, adolescent leader uses word. We know well his words are never aligned with explaining the "truth" or even an attempt to tell the truth. His words a usually lies when held up to reality. Trump only uses words to further his political agenda. In the case if Ukraine, his agenda is:
1. Publicly belittle Zelensky for Putin's entertainment.
2. Act like he's trying to be a fair and neutral negotiator for the purpose of saving Ukrainian lives. (This is particularly crazy considering the facts)
3. Look to the American public like he's just using "common sense" to settle a spat between two neighbors in a little local fight. Why does the US need to carry this water?
4. Shift responsibility for giving up Ukraine to Putin by blaming Biden for the war.
5. Demonize Zelensky for not thankfully kowtowing to his eminence HRH Trump for all the support His Royalness has given him (this one is directed at his MAGA base)
Any reasonable person, living in the reality of Ukraine's current situation, know that everything Trump/Vance spewed at Zelensky was lies and propaganda. His purpose is to abandon Ukraine for Russia. IMO, the reason is simple, Trump can grift much richer personal deals out of Putin than Zelensky.
A mass movement to free America from Putin's agent, the traitors Trump and Vance, and the mad megabillionaire treating the U.S. government as his private property, ripping it apart like he did with Twitter.
We are dealing with a real sicko in mind and body. Reports of the heavily bruised hand that djt has was covered with makeup, but there are plenty of pictures where you can plainly see it. Bruises like this are connected to blood thinners for people with a heart condition. He goes to FL and NJ to play golf, the Super Bowl, other sports events and car races. Musk is running the government along with Russell Vought. djt is a puppet consumed by his own lies. djt, a Putin worshipper, probably had an agreement with Putin to abandon the Ukraine. He speaks to him from Mar-A-Lago with no accountability, he may still have documents there that he uses to make financial deals with foreign governments.
Now Republicans are canceling their town halls because they are afraid of their constituents. Dems must unite and refuse any cooperation on any funding until Musk ceases his unlawful and unconstitutional conduct & interference with the functioning of the federal government, discloses all his activities fully to Congress and Immediately hires the independent inspectors general at each federal agency from which they were terminated and given a clear mandate to perform their duties.
We can thank the Supreme Court for helping to create a monster.
Thanks for your comments Dr. Schlesinger. Yes. We can go back to the nastiness of McConnell, but we have to more forward. The choices are slim. Live with a techofascist government or save the democracy we fought so hard for. So many people are hurting now and many of them don't fully understand how the government worked before, taking a lot for granted, never participating by voting in every election, local or federal, and they own weapons. Anger can spill over into violence if it's left unchecked. I'm sure you have the same thoughts.
Agree, Joy!! When I allow myself to think about it, l get terrified at the combination of ignorance, rage, and guns. So I try not to think about it...
Meanwhile, I think too much energy is being spent on peoples' versions of how we got here, who's to blame, and inventing clever new nicknames for Rump and his gang, instead of what we can DO about it all. Perhaps that's because there isn't much... but I have to believe that even my little stone makes a difference to the ocean, or I will go mad. Like this weekend I'm writing 100 postcards to Wisconsin voters urging them to fight against muskrat's choice of justice in their imminent election. If you want to participate in such a campaign, I got my kit at Blue Wave,
BTW, you can call me Judith. :-D That PhD is in psychology, which makes all of this even more flabbergasting - how psychologically clever they've been for maximum impact. They had years to prepare project 2025, so it was easy to apply right away and bombard us with its cruel confusion.
We will come out of this. Eventually. We need a new party - the Contrarian Party???
I'm glad we're having this conversation and getting these thoughts out to others.
I wish there was a way to get these messages into the still sane Republicans. Almost everyone who reads & subscribes to the Contrarian, listens to Bryan Tyler Cohen, reads The Atlantic, The Nation, etc. They are people who agree with us. The news that is broadcast over mainstream media is now being dismantled, AP isn't being allowed to attend press conferences.
I wrote post cards to Wisconsin weeks ago with a local group that gets their lists from the Dem. party in Santa Rosa.
Right after the election I had proposed the idea of forming a new party. I think we should have one, but my friends and others said it would be too difficult. I believe that there are enough people who would agree and would be up for the challenge.
We all need to be doing something beside reading or listening to
the insanity coming out of DC. I work on a project with my daughter. She is the U.S. Representative and Fund Raiser for Parkinson's disease. It's very satisfying. There are many articles being published about maintaining a balance in our lives now, and in order to maintain our perspective it's so important.
As far as a new party, I agree that it could be difficult. But the Dems have no cojones, and the Republicans have no morals. Maybe the Independence Party could just change its name?
Today I got my 100 Wisconsin postcards from Blue Wave. Last time I wrote 50 cards to Pennsylvania, splitting them with a friend, and didn't know from whence they came. This time Blue Wave provided stick-on address labels and a shorter message to hand-write, which is good for those of us, um, of a certain age, whose handwriting may be less than perfect...
Agree completely about the balance. As always, my go-to is music of all kinds, but if climate change allows, gardening season is approaching!
And one more thing: I was so impressed with the dignity of Zelenskyy as he was under assault by those 8th-grade playground bullies. At least Rump is showing his hand early, so we can do something about it!!!
Absolutely embarrassing. So you invite an ally into you country for a public meeting in front of all your citizens and then berate and bully him. You have your attack complete idiot VP show just what class he comes from (he hasn't any class) AND then you tell him he hasn't said THANK YOU. Give me a break. How much time has the idiot Trump got left in his term? Slippery slope folks.
Can Contrarian authors and editors please inform us about mass protest marches, which are being organized in DC re Opposition to US support for Russia and Against the vile, arbitrary, illegal and deleterious personnel and fund cuts to the federal bureaucracy? We need to have massive marches very soon (acknowledging that meaningful smaller ones are occurring in other regions) in DC to show our unity across party lines against the attack on our administrative state and on American interests and values. Thank you.
thank you for the news today. I am hoping the boycott was big enough to be noticed. It is awful watching our country being degraded by DT and his cronies.
Great idea!! Come on Contrarian we will support it along with 10’s of 1,000’s of others! No donation too large or small 👍 let’s do what our government is too nasty to do. Trump showed his mob boss style to the world today!
The response to the NAOPOP initiative has been encouraging. I find myself thinking about Arlo Guthrie and Alice’s Restaurant. To quote:
You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and they won't take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're both faggots and they won't take either of them. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. They may think it's an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. And friends they may thinks it's a movement.
And that's what it is, the Alice's Restaurant Anti-Massacre Movement, and all you got to do to join is sing it the next time it come's around on the guitar.
I am reposting the original NAOPOP post here along with an official NAOPOP membership card. Please feel free to share both.
So, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m officially announcing the formation of NAOPOP. The National Association of Pissed Off People. NAOPOP does not accept monetary contributions. It is an essentially an inverted pyramid scheme. One Pissed Off Person finds two other Pissed Off People, listens to their stories and works with them to formulate an action plan. Central to the action plan is for each of them to find two more Pissed Off People and further refine the action plan. Then they each find two more Pissed Off People and so on and so forth until all the Pissed Off People are on the same page. Then we make sure all the Pissed Off People are eligible to vote and that they vote in every local, state and national election. Then we throw the bums out, repeal Citizens United, renew the public’s faith in vaccination, and work hard to maintain a balance between freedom from and freedom to. PS. Since we have no funding you have to design your own NAOPOP membership card. Welcome to the struggle.
Before the election I subscribed to People Power United, started by a woman in FL, Laurie Woodward Garcia. As I recall they sent out prestamped post cards, with messages that required only a few short hand written sentences to add to what they already had on them. I also wrote letters for Vote Forward but they were non partisan. I wanted to tell people to vote for Dems so I stopped spending time writing for them. I think that the group Moms Rising also has free cards with paid postage. (Momsrising.org)
Again, before the election, I had organized a group in my community to write post cards. We exchanged information, one of our member brought fresh veggies she grew in her garden, and we all met people who we never knew before. We did it once a month.
Just read a great column by Bill McKibben, the champion of climate change, about a young woman's reaction to Vance & family arriving at Sugar Bush in Vermont. We need to hear from this next generation of voters. There were a lot of them in pictures I saw at Kamala Harris' rallies. I think she gave them hope for their future. So many of them stopped paying attention to what's happening in DC and are disgusted by both parties; rejecting the Republicans for everything they are doing and have done, the Dems for not being aggressive enough and not taking action sooner. We will need and want them to participate in all upcoming elections, starting in April. I'm speaking about 18-25 year old people. This young woman is 25 and she politely expressed her thoughts about this government.
There have been declarations of support for Zelensky and the people of Ukraine all over the country and nations across the world. Now everyone in the world can see the lunacy of Rump and Vance. We need a "Blue Wave" even before April!
This was authored by Tom Nichols, a staff writer for The Atlantic, and Tom’s article is spot-on, worth sharing with everyone you know. Speaking frankly, both Trump and JD Vance are utterly disgusting people. To put it succinctly:
• TRUMP IS A LIAR, A CON AND A FRAUD.
• TRUMP IS PUTIN’S PUPPET.
• TRUMP IS A RUSSIAN ASSET.
• TRUMP IS A TRAITOR.
• TRUMP IS AMERICA’S DISGRACE.
“A SET UP”
Leave aside, if only for a moment, the utter boorishness with which President Donald Trump and Vice President J. D. Vance treated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House today. Also leave aside the spectacle of American leaders publicly pummeling a friend as if he were an enemy. All of the ghastliness inflicted on Zelensky today should not obscure the geopolitical reality of what just happened: The president of the United States ambushed a loyal ally, presumably so that he can soon make a deal with the dictator of Russia to sell out a European nation fighting for its very existence.
Trump’s advisers have already declared the meeting a win for “putting America first,” and his apologists will likely spin and rationalize this shameful moment as just a heated conversation—the kind of thing that in Washington-speak used to be called a “frank and candid exchange.” But this meeting reeked of a planned attack, with Trump unloading Russian talking points on Zelensky (such as blaming Ukraine for risking global war), all of it designed to humiliate the Ukrainian leader on national television and give Trump the pretext to do what he has indicated repeatedly he wants to do: side with Russian President Vladimir Putin and bring the war to an end on Russia’s terms. Trump is now reportedly considering the immediate end of all military aid to Ukraine because of Zelensky’s supposed intransigence during the meeting.
Vance’s presence at the White House also suggests that the meeting was a setup. Vance is usually an invisible backbencher in this administration, with few duties other than some occasional trolling of Trump’s critics. (The actual business of furthering Trump’s policies is apparently now Elon Musk’s job.) This time, however, he was brought in to troll not other Americans, but a foreign leader. Marco Rubio—in theory, America’s top diplomat—was also there, but he sat glumly and silently while Vance pontificated like an obnoxious graduate student.
Zelensky objected, as he should have, when the vice president castigated the Ukrainian president for not showing enough personal gratitude to Trump. And then in a moment of immense hypocrisy, Vance told Zelensky that it was “disrespectful for you to come into the Oval Office and try to litigate this in front of the American media.” But baiting Zelensky into fighting in front of the media was likely the plan all along, and Trump and Vance were soon both yelling at Zelensky. (“This is going to be great television,” Trump said during the meeting.) The president at times sounded like a Mafia boss—“You don’t have the cards”; “you’re buried there”—but in the end, he sounded like no one so much as Putin himself as he hollered about “gambling with World War III,” as if starting the biggest war in Europe in nearly a century was Zelensky’s idea.
After the meeting, Trump dismissed the Ukrainian leader and then issued a statement that could only have pleased Moscow:
I have determined that President Zelensky is not ready for Peace if America is involved, because he feels our involvement gives him a big advantage in negotiations. I don’t want advantage, I want PEACE. He disrespected the United States of America in its cherished Oval Office. He can come back when he is ready for Peace.
Trump might as well have dictated this post on Truth Social before the meeting, because Zelensky didn’t stand a chance of having an actual discussion at the White House. When he showed Trump pictures of brutalized Ukrainian soldiers, Trump shrugged. “That’s tough stuff,” he muttered. Perhaps someone told Zelensky that Trump doesn’t read much, and reacts to images, but Trump, uncharacteristically, seems to have been determined to stay on message and pick a fight.
Vance, for his part, fully inhabited the role of a smarmy talk-show sidekick, jumping in to make sure the star got the support he needed while slamming one of the guests. The vice president is an unserious man who tries to insert himself into serious moments, but this time the stakes were much higher than the usual dustups with the media or congressional Democrats. He chuckled as Brian Glenn, a journalist from the right-wing channel Real America’s Voice who is reportedly dating Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, asked Zelensky the tough and incisive question of why he had not worn a suit in the Oval Office. (Perhaps he’ll ask Musk why he wore a hat and T-shirt to a Cabinet meeting, but I doubt it.)
The sheer rudeness shown to a foreign guest and friend of the United States was (to use a word) deplorable as a matter of manners and grace, but worse, Trump and Vance acted like a couple of online Kremlin sock puppets instead of American leaders. They pushed talking points that they either knew or should have known were wrong. Even if Zelensky were as fluent and capable in English as Winston Churchill, he would never have been able to rebut the flood of falsehoods. No, the U.S. has not given Ukraine $350 billion; yes, Zelensky has repeatedly expressed his thanks to America and to Trump; no, Zelensky was not attacking the administration. The Ukrainian leader did his best to stand up to the bullying, but Trump and Vance were playing to the cameras and the MAGA gallery at home.
Vance showed how dedicated he was to point-scoring rather than policy making with an observation so shallow that he was lucky that Zelensky was too off-balance to call him out for it. To emphasize Ukraine’s perilous situation, Vance noted that Zelensky was sending conscripts to the front lines, as if this was an unprecedented policy that only the most desperate regime would dare enact. Zelensky said that all nations at war have problems, but he might have pointed out to Vance that Ukraine is fighting for its very existence, while the United States has dragged conscripts to places far from home—including Korea and Vietnam—to fight against troops supported by the Kremlin.
Today’s meeting and America’s shameful vote in the United Nations on Monday confirmed that the United States is now aligned with Russia and against Ukraine, Europe, and most of the planet. I felt physically sick watching the president of the United States yell at a brave ally, fulminating in the Oval Office as if he were an addled old man shaking his fist at a television. Zelensky has endured tragedies, and risked his life, in ways that men such as Trump and Vance cannot imagine. (Vance served as a public-relations officer in the most powerful military in the world; he has never had to huddle in a bunker during a Russian bombardment.) I am ashamed for my nation; even if Congress acts to support and aid Ukraine, it cannot restore the American honor lost today.
But no matter how disgusted anyone might be at Trump and Vance’s behavior, the strategic reality is that this meeting is a catastrophe for the United States and the free world. America’s alliances are now in danger, and should be: Trump is openly, and gleefully, betraying everything America has tried to defend since the defeat of the Axis 80 years ago. The entire international order of peace and security is now in danger, as Russian autocrats, after slaughtering innocent people for three years, look forward to enjoying the spoils of their invasion instead of standing trial for their crimes. (Shortly after Trump dismissed Zelensky from the White House, Putin’s homunculus, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, postedon X: “The insolent pig finally got a proper slap down in the Oval Office.”)
Friday, February 28, 2025, will go into the history books as one of the grimmest days in American diplomacy, the beginning of a long-term disaster that every American, every U.S. ally, and anyone who cares about the future of democracy will have to endure. With the White House’s betrayal of Ukraine capping a month of authoritarian chaos in America, Putin, along with other dictators around the world, can finally look at Trump with confidence and think: one of us.
We need to start a mass movement to support Ukraine, with millions of people, contributing millions of dollars, and aid
Perhaps the good offices of 'The Contrarian" can assist, accounting, easy donations. & other administrative tasks. BRYAN MCKOWN Active ABA
Not to be too paranoid, but could the canceling of the February meeting of the FDA's Vaccines ... Advisory Committee have anything to do with the fact that, absent an up-to-date flu vaccine for winter '05-'06, many thousands more vulnerable senior citizens will die from the disease and thus no longer collect Social Security, which will save money that can go toward the Musk-Trump tax cuts for billionaires and corporations?
This actually crossed my mind, as well. I put nothing past this admin.
Also crossed my mind
Zelonskyy played Trump and his flunkies like a superb Trout fisherman: Once he surveryed the play of the water, he cast into the flume just above the pool where the fish lurked, aand when the fish mouthed the fly, he gave him a litttle lene, ghen a slight tug so the fish bites et voila. Now Trump looks weaker than Putin, a low-life deserting a friend in crisis, and leaves without having to sign away mineral rights to very, very valuable rare earth metals. Zelonskyy, also, united the rest of the Euroopeans together with Ukraine and against the United States.
Why is the Orange Demon known for "The Art of the Deal?"
Zelonskyy left with far much more thanhe entered the Oval with. And I don't see how Trump can survive this;
Sorry for the typing. Im old and nearly blind
In addition to Trump/Vance's humiliation of American global statesmanship, the public facing meeting we saw was a clear and classic lesson in how our fragile, adolescent leader uses word. We know well his words are never aligned with explaining the "truth" or even an attempt to tell the truth. His words a usually lies when held up to reality. Trump only uses words to further his political agenda. In the case if Ukraine, his agenda is:
1. Publicly belittle Zelensky for Putin's entertainment.
2. Act like he's trying to be a fair and neutral negotiator for the purpose of saving Ukrainian lives. (This is particularly crazy considering the facts)
3. Look to the American public like he's just using "common sense" to settle a spat between two neighbors in a little local fight. Why does the US need to carry this water?
4. Shift responsibility for giving up Ukraine to Putin by blaming Biden for the war.
5. Demonize Zelensky for not thankfully kowtowing to his eminence HRH Trump for all the support His Royalness has given him (this one is directed at his MAGA base)
Any reasonable person, living in the reality of Ukraine's current situation, know that everything Trump/Vance spewed at Zelensky was lies and propaganda. His purpose is to abandon Ukraine for Russia. IMO, the reason is simple, Trump can grift much richer personal deals out of Putin than Zelensky.
072
Mo is Exactly what I needed!!!! Thank you! So healing, especially since I’m having just about the darkest day ever as a “homelander”. Go, Mo!!!
Now that Trumpsky has done Putin's bidding. Is he going to vacation at Mira Moscow? He better not bring that murderer to Washington DC.
A mass movement to free America from Putin's agent, the traitors Trump and Vance, and the mad megabillionaire treating the U.S. government as his private property, ripping it apart like he did with Twitter.
We are dealing with a real sicko in mind and body. Reports of the heavily bruised hand that djt has was covered with makeup, but there are plenty of pictures where you can plainly see it. Bruises like this are connected to blood thinners for people with a heart condition. He goes to FL and NJ to play golf, the Super Bowl, other sports events and car races. Musk is running the government along with Russell Vought. djt is a puppet consumed by his own lies. djt, a Putin worshipper, probably had an agreement with Putin to abandon the Ukraine. He speaks to him from Mar-A-Lago with no accountability, he may still have documents there that he uses to make financial deals with foreign governments.
Now Republicans are canceling their town halls because they are afraid of their constituents. Dems must unite and refuse any cooperation on any funding until Musk ceases his unlawful and unconstitutional conduct & interference with the functioning of the federal government, discloses all his activities fully to Congress and Immediately hires the independent inspectors general at each federal agency from which they were terminated and given a clear mandate to perform their duties.
We can thank the Supreme Court for helping to create a monster.
We can go even further back and thank McConnell, who managed to block Obama's nomination of M. Garland for the Supreme Court. In broad daylight.
Thanks for your comments Dr. Schlesinger. Yes. We can go back to the nastiness of McConnell, but we have to more forward. The choices are slim. Live with a techofascist government or save the democracy we fought so hard for. So many people are hurting now and many of them don't fully understand how the government worked before, taking a lot for granted, never participating by voting in every election, local or federal, and they own weapons. Anger can spill over into violence if it's left unchecked. I'm sure you have the same thoughts.
Agree, Joy!! When I allow myself to think about it, l get terrified at the combination of ignorance, rage, and guns. So I try not to think about it...
Meanwhile, I think too much energy is being spent on peoples' versions of how we got here, who's to blame, and inventing clever new nicknames for Rump and his gang, instead of what we can DO about it all. Perhaps that's because there isn't much... but I have to believe that even my little stone makes a difference to the ocean, or I will go mad. Like this weekend I'm writing 100 postcards to Wisconsin voters urging them to fight against muskrat's choice of justice in their imminent election. If you want to participate in such a campaign, I got my kit at Blue Wave,
BTW, you can call me Judith. :-D That PhD is in psychology, which makes all of this even more flabbergasting - how psychologically clever they've been for maximum impact. They had years to prepare project 2025, so it was easy to apply right away and bombard us with its cruel confusion.
We will come out of this. Eventually. We need a new party - the Contrarian Party???
Dear Judith,
I'm glad we're having this conversation and getting these thoughts out to others.
I wish there was a way to get these messages into the still sane Republicans. Almost everyone who reads & subscribes to the Contrarian, listens to Bryan Tyler Cohen, reads The Atlantic, The Nation, etc. They are people who agree with us. The news that is broadcast over mainstream media is now being dismantled, AP isn't being allowed to attend press conferences.
I wrote post cards to Wisconsin weeks ago with a local group that gets their lists from the Dem. party in Santa Rosa.
Right after the election I had proposed the idea of forming a new party. I think we should have one, but my friends and others said it would be too difficult. I believe that there are enough people who would agree and would be up for the challenge.
We all need to be doing something beside reading or listening to
the insanity coming out of DC. I work on a project with my daughter. She is the U.S. Representative and Fund Raiser for Parkinson's disease. It's very satisfying. There are many articles being published about maintaining a balance in our lives now, and in order to maintain our perspective it's so important.
Good for her! I've seen what Parkinson's can do.
As far as a new party, I agree that it could be difficult. But the Dems have no cojones, and the Republicans have no morals. Maybe the Independence Party could just change its name?
Today I got my 100 Wisconsin postcards from Blue Wave. Last time I wrote 50 cards to Pennsylvania, splitting them with a friend, and didn't know from whence they came. This time Blue Wave provided stick-on address labels and a shorter message to hand-write, which is good for those of us, um, of a certain age, whose handwriting may be less than perfect...
Agree completely about the balance. As always, my go-to is music of all kinds, but if climate change allows, gardening season is approaching!
And one more thing: I was so impressed with the dignity of Zelenskyy as he was under assault by those 8th-grade playground bullies. At least Rump is showing his hand early, so we can do something about it!!!
Absolutely embarrassing. So you invite an ally into you country for a public meeting in front of all your citizens and then berate and bully him. You have your attack complete idiot VP show just what class he comes from (he hasn't any class) AND then you tell him he hasn't said THANK YOU. Give me a break. How much time has the idiot Trump got left in his term? Slippery slope folks.
I keep counting on his weight, diet, lack of exercise, and arteries. But that would only be the beginning of our problems!
Yes.
we can’t afford to take the weekend off and relax. Keep up the pressure in anyway you can!
Can Contrarian authors and editors please inform us about mass protest marches, which are being organized in DC re Opposition to US support for Russia and Against the vile, arbitrary, illegal and deleterious personnel and fund cuts to the federal bureaucracy? We need to have massive marches very soon (acknowledging that meaningful smaller ones are occurring in other regions) in DC to show our unity across party lines against the attack on our administrative state and on American interests and values. Thank you.
thank you for the news today. I am hoping the boycott was big enough to be noticed. It is awful watching our country being degraded by DT and his cronies.
Great idea!! Come on Contrarian we will support it along with 10’s of 1,000’s of others! No donation too large or small 👍 let’s do what our government is too nasty to do. Trump showed his mob boss style to the world today!
The response to the NAOPOP initiative has been encouraging. I find myself thinking about Arlo Guthrie and Alice’s Restaurant. To quote:
You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and they won't take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're both faggots and they won't take either of them. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. They may think it's an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. And friends they may thinks it's a movement.
And that's what it is, the Alice's Restaurant Anti-Massacre Movement, and all you got to do to join is sing it the next time it come's around on the guitar.
I am reposting the original NAOPOP post here along with an official NAOPOP membership card. Please feel free to share both.
So, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m officially announcing the formation of NAOPOP. The National Association of Pissed Off People. NAOPOP does not accept monetary contributions. It is an essentially an inverted pyramid scheme. One Pissed Off Person finds two other Pissed Off People, listens to their stories and works with them to formulate an action plan. Central to the action plan is for each of them to find two more Pissed Off People and further refine the action plan. Then they each find two more Pissed Off People and so on and so forth until all the Pissed Off People are on the same page. Then we make sure all the Pissed Off People are eligible to vote and that they vote in every local, state and national election. Then we throw the bums out, repeal Citizens United, renew the public’s faith in vaccination, and work hard to maintain a balance between freedom from and freedom to. PS. Since we have no funding you have to design your own NAOPOP membership card. Welcome to the struggle.
Dear Judith,
Before the election I subscribed to People Power United, started by a woman in FL, Laurie Woodward Garcia. As I recall they sent out prestamped post cards, with messages that required only a few short hand written sentences to add to what they already had on them. I also wrote letters for Vote Forward but they were non partisan. I wanted to tell people to vote for Dems so I stopped spending time writing for them. I think that the group Moms Rising also has free cards with paid postage. (Momsrising.org)
Again, before the election, I had organized a group in my community to write post cards. We exchanged information, one of our member brought fresh veggies she grew in her garden, and we all met people who we never knew before. We did it once a month.
Just read a great column by Bill McKibben, the champion of climate change, about a young woman's reaction to Vance & family arriving at Sugar Bush in Vermont. We need to hear from this next generation of voters. There were a lot of them in pictures I saw at Kamala Harris' rallies. I think she gave them hope for their future. So many of them stopped paying attention to what's happening in DC and are disgusted by both parties; rejecting the Republicans for everything they are doing and have done, the Dems for not being aggressive enough and not taking action sooner. We will need and want them to participate in all upcoming elections, starting in April. I'm speaking about 18-25 year old people. This young woman is 25 and she politely expressed her thoughts about this government.
There have been declarations of support for Zelensky and the people of Ukraine all over the country and nations across the world. Now everyone in the world can see the lunacy of Rump and Vance. We need a "Blue Wave" even before April!