Dale is taking a break.

Have you decided which bit of news — from the Freaky Freedom 250 Flag Day Ultimate Fighting  Fiasco on the White House grounds or, at last, word of a ‘settlement‘ in the Iran War-Not-War-Excursion best floats your boat? The disgusting, grifting, pay-to-play manosphere fascists debasing the People’s House with the bloody cage matches is deeply troubling, even beyond the millions spent from the taxpayer’s treasury. And the Memorandum of Understanding with Iran still puts the nation 60 days away from any settlement in the Trump/Netanyahu conflict, particularly if Bibi is not on board with pausing his aggression. The “fully transparent Trump administration” refuses to release any details of the MOU, but from leaks it appears we are on the hook to pay billions of dollars to Iran to rebuild their infrastructure — on top of the billions we’ve already spent in destroying it. What a deal!?

The Ultimate Fighting extravaganza was portrayed as part of the country’s 250th birthday celebration, but we all saw it for what it really was — we just paid an exorbitant sum to recognize Donald Trump’s 80th year — at Donald’s behest. Praising the president, GOP Representative Troy Nehls of Texas, crowed, “Donald Trump is the very best thing to happen in this country in 100 years. He was born a very special baby. I bet you the doctors said, ‘I can tell this is a very special baby.‘” Michigan Senate candidate, Mallory McMorrow, called the UFC spectacle “wildly tone-deaf” on MS NOW, saying, “It’s not like the economy is roaring or everybody is doing well…he’s throwing himself a birthday party in the middle of it. It just rings ‘let them eat cake.‘” Wow! Birthday cake with Special Baby Frosting? Did you get yours?

Uh-oh! Looks as if NBC’s Meet the Press host, Kristen Welker, has made it onto the White House’s Media Offenders page on whitehouse.gov after her Sunday interview with President Trump blew up with a walk-off by the president. That is, if she wasn’t already on the government maintained enemies list already — but, surely to be added to the Media Offender of the Week at the bottom of the page which invites visitors to ‘Scroll for the Truth.’ Without doubt, FCC Chair Brendan Carr had a hand in this list of offenders, to ‘encourage‘ broadcasters they need to watch their steps or risk losing their licenses.

After Welker got a bit too insistent with her questioning regarding Trump’s claims on January 6, 2021, election fraud, and the anti-weaponization fund, our thin-skinned president called Welker and NBC “crooked” and “one-sided‘ before pulling the plug to go home and sulk on Truth Social, making it clear that if journalists ask hard questions they need to watch their backs. The CBS Network was hardly a threat to the Trump administration, but news division head Bari Weiss, and the new 60 Minutes executive producer, Nick Bilton, made sure they stay within the good graces of Brendan Carr by firing Scott Pelley and several staffers of the Sunday night news magazine. It has been evident that Weiss and Bilton were brought onto CBS by oligarchs Larry and David Ellison to destroy CBS News, after purchasing the parent company, Paramount Skydance.

Elliot Kirschner wrote on Through the Fog of the firings, “This is a group of seasoned journalists who had just seen their popular leadership wiped out for no reason other than to crush their independence.” So, Pelley was fired for supposedly creating a hostile work environment after standing up to Bilton in an all-hands meeting, accusing Weiss of having no qualifications for her job, and telling Bilton he has slender qualifications for his job. The following day, Bilton “stepped on his first rake,” says Kirschner, by firing Pelley, writing in his letter, “Yesterday’s performative display of hostility enacted in front of the staff instead of in a civil, private conversation demonstrated that you have no interest in contributing to the future success of the show.”

Kirschner’s summation of Pelley’s approach is that “it is not only about the past. It is about calling out and framing the future. By honing in on Weiss’s hatred of 60 Minutes, her lack of experience, her incompetence, and Bilton as an empty suit, he is establishing the narrative for what is likely to come next. He has cast a dark and unmistakable shadow over everything they and their oligarch overlords now do. Any dip in the ratings. Any loss of trust and the audience. Any violation of journalistic ethics. They will own it. And Pelley’s warnings will echo as context.” Kirschner says the story is far from over, but there is a long way to go before that 60 Minutes stopwatch starts ticking again.

Scott Pelley released a statement on June 2, in which he says, “There has never been anything in America like 60 Minutes. The Sunday tradition is the most successful program of any kind in history…Now, the new owner of our network is casting this legend aside, apparently to curry a moment of favor with the Trump administration. The waste is heartbreaking…For my part, new management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story. I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified. To date, in every case, I have managed to ignore these instructions or refuse them…But now the collapse of values at the top has become untenable. The leadership of 60 Minutes is no longer recognizable. The principles I hold dear are gone, and so I must leave as well…I depart after 37 years at CBS with one emotion — a heart brimming with gratitude for the men and women of CBS News who encouraged and enriched my work, very often at the risk of their own lives. I pray for a day when those people and their ideals are honored again — a day when sanity, competence, and courage return.”

As might be expected, satirist Andy Borowitz contributed to news of this fiasco: “Embattled CBS News chief Bari Weiss abruptly left the network on Wednesday to accept a new role as general manager of North Korea’s state-run media. ‘I was a big fan of her work at CBS,’ said the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong Un. I’ve spent years trying to purge all the news from our media and she pulled it off in a matter of months. Plus, her willingness to do David Ellison’s bidding proved she can debase herself to a leader who got his position purely from nepotism,’ he added. But Bari Weiss’s tenure at the North Korean network DLT (Dear Leader Television) got off to a rocky start as staffers quit en masse, complaining about her lack of television experience.”

In Thom Hartmann’s post on Raw America from June 5, he tells of his teenage days as a reporter for WITL-AM/FM in Lansing, Michigan, later being a writer/reader of the morning newscasts. The owner of the station was a hardcore Goldwater Republican, the news director was a Libertarian-curious Democrat and Thom was a long-haired anti-war hippie and SDS member. In his experience at WITL, nobody ever told him how to spin the news or what to insert or delete, all the while knowing that the news was sacred, with no thought of reflecting his own opinions — the broadcast license being subject to the Fairness Doctrine. The Fairness Doctrine was respected as the price of freedom, of democracy in our republic. As Hartmann writes, “When Thomas Jefferson said he’d rather live in a country with newspapers and no government than in one with a government but no newspapers, he wasn’t knocking government; he’d helped create ours and was its president for 8 years. He was talking about the vital importance of an honest and free press.”

Left up to the Republicans and Reagan, the Fairness Doctrine was ended in 1987, opening the path for Trump and his oligarch enablers to bury the entire concept of honest, straightforward news. Over the past eighteen months or so, Trump hitman at the FCC, Brendan Carr, has bragged about how he’s going to assault stations that say things he and Trump dislike. Success in taking down Stephen Colbert has now shifted to targeting ABC and Jimmy Kimmel, as they also celebrate Scott Pelley’s firing at CBS. Assuredly, Pelley is being watched like a hawk for any utterances of speaking ill of his former employer in violation of the standard contractual non-disparagement clause — the vultures would love to pick over his bones in a lawsuit. Facing us are Trump, the Ellisons, Weiss, and the billionaire owners of Sinclair, the billionaire Murdoch family’s Fox News, and 1000+ billionaire-owned radio stations across the USA, the billionaire podcasters, and billionaire-owned social media sites like Facebook and X that have been algorithmically slanted toward Trump’s neofascist movement.

All of the above are following the ancient scripts of Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo and Franco who seized control of the news in their countries in their first year in power. Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orbán took a different path by suing the various news outlets and reporters into bankruptcy for “defamation” or “slander,” then having friendly oligarchs take control. Orbán attended CPAC in Dallas encouraging Republicans to follow his example by turning America’s media over to rightwing billionaires. “Have your own media. It’s the only way to point out the insanity of the progressive left. The problem is that the Western media is adjusted to the leftist viewpoint. Those who taught reporters in universities already had progressive leftist principles. My friend Tucker Carlson is the only one who puts himself out there. His show is the most popular. What does it mean? It means programs like his should be broadcasted day and night.”

Hartmann raises the alarm that Trump is 18 months into his project and has already taken down the Voice of America, defunded PBS and NPR, seen the Washington Post and LA Times acquired by sycophantic billionaires, and turned CBS over to a nepo-baby billionaire who is now going after CNN as his next prize. Combining these tactics with the capture of the police and prosecutorial agencies within the government, Putin has set a good example for harassment and prosecution of anyone who dares to speak up against the destruction of democracy — a classic formula for turning a democratic republic into an oligarchic dictatorship. Ancient Rome, and emperor Caligula in particular, are classic symbols of authoritarian governments using violence as entertainment as we will soon see with the president’s much-ballyhooed UFC 80th birthday extravaganza on the White House grounds.

Hartmann calls our attention to his 2020 ‘The Hidden History of American Oligarchy,’ when he warned of the destruction of America. Trump has packed the courts and thousands of lawyers have been purged from government; the FBI is weaponized against Americans, with Blacks and women being pushed out of senior military commands by our white supremacist Secretary of War; our history is being whitewashed in national parks, museums, and every federal property; and Trump’s face adorns multiple federal buildings peering from 60 foot tall banners.

According to Bernie Sanders, nepo-baby David Ellison owns, controls, or soon will control: “Tik Tok, Warner Bros., Paramount, DC Studios, The Discovery Channel, CNN, CBS, HBO, BET, Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes, Nickelodeon, MTV, Cartoon Network, Food Network, Travel Channel, Investigation Discovery, Animal Planet, Comedy Central, Showtime, TBS, TLC, HGTV, and on and on.” Always tied together are oligarchy and monopoly — the two sides of the same anti-democratic fascist coin. “Monopolies are destructive, but media monopolies are pure Putin-style poison,” says Hartmann. “Trump is following the Orbán playbook of consolidating media ownership among his right-wing billionaire friends. And what we’re seeing unfold at 60 Minutes is only the latest example, WE ARE ALL SCOTT PELLEY!” Perry Bacon writes in The New Republic: “We can’t take 60 Minutes back from Bari Weiss. All we can do is scream and yell that an unqualified right-wing hack is in charge of 60 Minutes now. That’s what Scott Pelley is doing. The rest of us should heed and then repeat his words.”

Daily Dose of Democracy has summed up the Welker/Trump stand off on Meet The Press, calling Trump’s blow-up a furious, demented rant about how crooked the media is before storming off the set. Prior to his exit, the president yelled at Welker, “They’re crooked! Just like you’re crooked. Your press is crooked. Meet The Press is crooked. You’re crooked or you’re stupid. You play right into their hands with this crap. You know these elections are rigged. Your network knows that they’re rigged. You know I won an election in a landslide and I got 94% bad press. You know why I got that? Because you have no credibility.” DDoD says Trump’s delusional volatility is increasing exponentially with each passing day, and it couldn’t be more obvious that he is entirely unfit to hold office — 25th Amendment now! Podcaster Hemant Mehta pronounced that Trump’s “brain is broken and if you vote for any Republican at any level, this is what you’re supporting — that’s what the party is.”

Heather Cox Richardson wrote on ‘Letters from an American,’ how conspicuous it was that as Trump addressed Welker, he kept referring to “your country,” or “your elections,” as if he was a foreign observer criticizing the US. Was he speaking for Russia, North Korea, or China? Richardson points out that Trump “spat at Welker that ‘a country can never be great with a dishonest press,’ illustrating that he was accusing his opponents of what he is doing, a classic authoritarian technique to muddy the waters, so people stop trying to figure out what is real and cease to believe anything. Despite his administration’s insistence that he doesn’t need congressional approval for his war on Iran because IT’S NOT A WAR, Trump repeatedly referred to it as a WAR.”

On The Warning, Steve Schmidt compares Scott Pelley’s appearance on The New York Times podcast, The Daily, with Donald Trump’s appearance on Meet The Press, “because when viewed together, the two interviews tell a larger story about America in 2026,” as portraits of character. The Pelley interview, conducted by Lulu Garcia-Navarro, was in Schmidt’s opinion thoughtful, allowing the fired CBS newsman to show his courage, decency, and politeness because he understands that strength and dignity are inseparable. Schmidt calls Pelley one of the greatest journalists in history, up there with Murrow, Sevareid, and Cronkite, who understands that responsibility accompanies privilege, that leadership means standing between danger and the people you serve.

“When CBS News entered its period of surrender and humiliation, Scott Pelley refused to participate in the lie. He refused to pretend that what was happening was normal. He refused to look away, while colleagues were sacrificed on the altar of corporate greed and political fear. He stepped forward because duty required it; he stood up because conscience demanded it — that’s what gentlemen do,” writes Schmidt. He goes on to say that the corruption is now so obvious it barely bothers to conceal itself, because the firing of Pelley wasn’t an isolated act, but the inevitable consequence of a chain of corruption that began when Paramount chose accommodation over principle, and surrender over resistance. His conclusion is that in dark periods of history, character becomes easier to see with masks falling away, pretenses disappearing, with people revealing themselves, as did both Pelley and Trump — “history will remember them accordingly.”

250 FOR 250, THE GOAT, BLOWN HONOR, TIP OFF TO TIP OVER

Katherine Stewart, author of ‘The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism’, and ‘Money, Lies and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy’, has written an interesting take on Trump’s plans for the country’s 250th birthday celebration. “In another world with a better government in power, Americans might well have looked forward to an authentic celebration of the remarkable achievements of the American Revolution. In this world, under the Trump administration and the Republican rubber-stamp chorus in Congress, we are being asked to settle for a festival of corruption, lies, bigotry and divisiveness,” she begins.

The Rededicate 250: A National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving, billed as “part of the broader Freedom 250 initiative,” was held on May 17 on the National Mall, with a relatively sparse gathering to see and hear Christian nationalist “faith leaders, public servants, music, prayer, and testimony to honor God’s hand in America’s story.” Hosted by a private foundation in partnership with the White House, it brought together those dedicated to replacing American democracy with a supposedly Christian autocracy. Speaker Paula White-Cain, senior faith adviser to Trump, said the event was “about the history and the foundations of our nation, which was built on Christian values, on the Bible. This is really truly rededicating the country to God,” she remarked. Stewart’s observation is that Freedom 250 was fundamentally about rededicating the country to outright corruption, flying in the face of America’s Founders who attempted to avoid the kind of extractive and imperial system of government seen in the British Empire, as the program “diverted tens of millions in taxpayer funds to a nakedly sectarian and partisan festival,” going further by inviting corporate and foreign donors to contribute.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the president also proposes offering 250 pardons to celebrate the 250th — a real triumph for the rule of law! Any predictions on who might be a recipient in Trump’s pay-for-play freedom pardon scam? “But there’s a higher order of corruption at work here, not unlike that practiced by the remaining ‘clean’ ‘conservative’ justices on the Supreme Court — not the ones who won’t accept free camper buses, school tuition, and luxury holidays from their conservative patrons. This is where officers of the United States, even while paying lip service to the Constitution, flout their responsibilities and instead pervert our democratic system for power and aggrandizement. When a political leader directs government to reward a particular band of extremist supporters and disenfranchise the rest of the population, that is corruption, not democracy,” insists Stewart.

Stewart remarks, “On this semiquincentennial, one might have hoped for some expressions of unity. America’s Founders, after all, prized unity almost too much. That is why they made so many compromises in their quest to create a United States of America. But Freedom 250, like everything Trumpian, is about dividing America, not uniting it. It’s there to tell us that there are ‘good’ Americans and ‘bad’ Americans. The good ones are Bible-believing Christians. The bad ones include media that reported accurately on the fiasco of the Iran war, for example; anyone who criticizes Dear Leader; and, of course, those who fail to adhere to the nation’s supported founding faith.” The Founders understood that the surest way to divide the new nation would be to introduce a national religion into a country that was even then incredibly diverse in its mingling of faith traditions — some things they may have erred on, but on this point they were absolutely correct. Thomas Jefferson famously and correctly celebrated the First Amendment as a means of erecting ‘a wall of separation between church and state’. Now Trump’s plan is to ‘celebrate’ the Founders’ achievement by demolishing that wall.

By rejecting the aristocratic pretensions of the Old World, the Founders felt it to be vital to give the new democracy a certain kind of dignity, making a determined effort to prove that a government of the people could also rise to worthy levels of cultural achievement. So what is Trump giving us? The Ultimate Fighting Championship to entertain us with the spectacle of bare-knuckled men punching one another in the face within the unsightly arena that we now see rising on the White House lawn! Stewart concludes, “We can be sure that the Trump administration and its MAGA supporters will deride critics of Freedom 250 as somehow anti-American. We should not let them get away with it. We should oppose this kind of squalid, divisive festival of grift, not because we despise America but because we continue to support the ideals upon which the nation was founded. Maybe the most American thing we can do in this sad and degenerate moment in history is to find a way to celebrate American principles of equality, pluralism, and justice — independent of this partisan rally, which the present malefactors in government are using to destroy democracy itself.”

Discovered is President Trump’s purchase of $15,000 to $50,000 worth of TKO Group Holdings as he began his promotion of the UFC birthday event on the lawn outside the People’s House. The Daily Dose of Democracy group says they are willing to give him a pass on this one if he will put his money where his mouth is and hop into the ring with the fighters. The company will see its star rise with all the free publicity spouted by the president. Jordan Libowitz of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington says, “Grifting has always been an issue in Donald Trump’s presidency, but now the mask is off. Using the White House to promote a company whose stock you bought while promoting it is one of the worst conflicts of interest you could imagine. The agenda of this administration seems to start and stop with how to make Donald Trump richer.”

Since Trump’s announcement last summer about hosting the UFC Championship at the White House, he hasn’t shut his mouth about it, even inviting UFC fighters to the Oval Office to show off the AI-generated images of the octagon arena. “We’re going to have 4,000 seats in front of the door of the White House. The hardest ticket I’ve ever had, too. This will be the greatest show on earth,” bragged the president. The spectacle is touted as part of the nation’s 250th birthday, but the arena will be completed for scheduled use on June 14 — coincidentally, the President’s 80th birthday. Attorney Norm Eisen calls the brutal event an “extravagant waste of money and government time, serving not only to distract from the real work of the government but now may result in a pecuniary benefit to the president. That is a far uglier White House spectacle than anything that the UFC will exhibit.”

UFC chief executive Dana White, a Trump supporter, claims the UFC 250 event will not be an inherently political event. “You can make anything political if you want to,” he says, confident that the fight will “positively deliver” for the president and his group. But some in the mixed martial arts and pro fighting world are less than enthusiastic about the prospect of the event — onetime ally of the president, podcaster Joe Rogan not holding back. In his estimation the idea of outside fighting is problematic, and there is no weather contingency plan, especially since Washington, DC can reach temps of 100 degrees by June. Rogan would prefer an inside, air-conditioned venue, calling Trump’s extravaganza a “gimmick” and a “security nightmare“.

John Byrne of Raw America posts that as the country turns 250, Trump wanted to have “a concert worthy of an emperor. What he is getting instead is a punchline.” Or a punch in the face. His plan was to have a star-studded musical extravaganza on the National Mall running from late June into July, but a steady stream of artists who were previously announced are now giving notice that they no longer showing up, claiming they were misled regarding the partisan nature of the Freedom 250 concerts — entitled Great American State Fair. It looks as thought the hangers-on are Milli Vanilli, and Vanilla Ice, who said, “I don’t even vote, so I don’t even care.” Byrne says, “There’s something almost perfect about all of it. A president who governs through spectacle planned a spectacle, and the actual artists of the country looked at the invitation and said ‘no’. The founders built a republic, not a monarchy, specifically so that no one man’s birthday became a national obligation.”

In his attempt to recover from the musical snubs, Trump announced that he plans to hold a political rally to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary, posting, “I understand Artists are getting ‘the yips’ having to do with their performance, so I am thinking about bringing the Number One Attraction anywhere in the World, the man who gets much larger audiences than Elvis in his prime, and he does so without a guitar, the man who loves our Country more than anyone else, the man who some say is the Greatest President in History (THE GOAT!), DONALD J. TRUMP, to take the place of these highly paid, Third Rate ‘Artists,’ and give a major speech, rallying the Country forward like I have done ever since being President!”

Robert Reich posted on Substack, “Beware of Trump’s 250th Rally on the Mall — he’s given up on the ‘talent’ except for You Know Who.” Reich says that Trump often confuses himself with America, and America with himself; so not surprisingly, his plan for celebrating the nation’s 250th anniversary is looking more and more like a celebration of Trump. In addition, Trump’s face will be engraved on a new $250 bill; it will be etched onto both sides of a celebratory gold coin; it’s already on passports issued this year. His signature is on dollar bills. If you still fail to get the point, his visage will soon be draped over all federal buildings. Reich finds it difficult to read the president’s THE GOAT! post without laughing, but it’s no joke as his malignant narcissism ramps up even higher than its usual galactic level.

In a follow up post on Truth Social, Trump writes, “I am ordering my Representatives to look at the feasibility of doing an AMERICA IS BACK Rally on Wednesday, Washington, DC, same time, same location. Only Great Patriots invited — It will be a Wild and Beautiful Celebration of America!” Reich reminds us that the ‘Great Patriots’ and ‘will be wild’ phrasing harkens back to Trump’s encouraging his rioters preceding the January 6, 2021 insurrection. We shouldn’t expect another attack on the Capitol — just attacks toward immigrants, Muslims, Democrats, trans people, RINOs, judges and anyone ‘woke,’ as Trump stars in his own hate rally.

Reich explains that our 250th anniversary events, commemorating America’s founders’ refusal to be bound by a tyrant, were supposed to be planned by a nonpartisan, nonprofit group created by Congress in 2016, called ‘America250.’ The bipartisan congressional caucus made up of over 350 members, with honorary co-chairs George W Bush, Laura Bush, Barack Obama, and Michelle Obama, plus ex-officio members to include present and former government officials, have had no hand in planning the anniversary events with the circumvention by Trump/MAGA and their ‘Freedom250‘ committee. This renegade group is bankrolling events to promote Trump and his political agenda which lists its ‘core theme‘ of boosting Trump’s supposed ‘achievements.’ And as might be expected the group is designed to make money for Trump, with his personal business trademarking the term ‘Trump 250,’ along with a logo similar to that of the ‘America250’ logo.

In fact, several trademark applications in connection with the upcoming celebration feature Trump’s name as the centerpiece for use on bumper stickers, tote bags, drink ware, clothing, and golf balls, with Trump’s online store already selling sweatshirts, golf balls, and a blanket. Mimicking the ballroom project’s pay-to-play scam, people and companies with financial interests affected by the administration are encouraged to make tax-deductible donations to gain access to, and seek favors from, the president. Those corporations paying between $500,000 and $10 million become “sponsors” and those giving $1 million or more will be invited to a “private Freedom 250 thank-you reception” hosted by you-know-who. Major donors contributing $2.5 million or more will qualify for a speaking role at the Fourth of July celebration in Washington, so we can expect to hear leaders of Lockheed Martin, ExxonMobil, Oracle, Palantir, Mastercard, and United Airlines — so far. Stay tuned.

Count yourself in as a contributor to Trump and his ‘Freedom 250‘ extravaganza, because in last year’s ‘One Big Beautiful Bill‘ was a Congressional allocation of $150 million for observances of the nation’s birthday. The Interior Department chose to dole out $100 million to the Trump organization, with only $25 million going to the official nonpartisan ‘America250‘ group. Stay tuned on disclosure of expenses in this siphoning of taxpayer funding — only if you stay attuned until 2027! Reich says, “This is exactly what Trump did to the Kennedy Center, the Smithsonian Institution, the National Capital Planning Commission, and every other semi-public body Congress established for the common good. This is the way authoritarianism substitutes for democracy — slowly and incrementally, until the whole system suddenly tips over.”

Elliot Kirschner writing on Substack’s Through the Fog, asks if anyone really feels like celebrating America’s 250th, even though it’s only a month away? He imagines what could be taking place if only we had a unifying president, with participation by American musical giants, to inspire a soaring sense of pride, and a belief that despite all our differences and the dark chapters in our history, that we are part of an ambitious experiment in multi-racial, multi-ethnic democracy. He says that America loves a good party, but that notion is now a “casualty of our troubled times — another opportunity for good feeling and unity lost to the boorish squatter in our nation’s capital as he tracks mud of corruption, vindictiveness, and divisive autocracy across our national fabric.” Instead of proceeding with this fiasco, he suggests we give ourselves a raincheck until this nightmare is over, waiting a few years to find a way to celebrate our democracy. “Then, we can have the biggest party ever, bringing together artists and teachers, immigrants and veterans, scientists and musicians, people from every corner of this sprawling and complicated country. A party about the best of America. A party that is joyful instead of angry. Inclusive instead of exclusionary. A party to which everyone is invited,” concludes Kirschner. “Well, almost everyone.”

Satirist Andy Borowitz writes, “In a last ditch attempt to salvage his ‘US Freedom 250’ concert, Donald J. Trump announced Monday that the only remaining musical act  will be Secretary of State Marco Rubio playing a kazoo…According to sources, Rubio is taking his new assignment extremely seriously, spending hours practicing the kazoo in the Situation Room. In an official statement, Rubio declared, ‘I am honored to blow anything President Trump asks me to.'”

[Last week’s piece below… ~Webmistress]

MARCO, PAYDAY FOR POOPERS, MARCO, FRAUD BUFFET, MARCO

The ensnared federal government ‘agreed’ to drop the tax claims against President Donald Trump last week according to a settlement document that also resolves Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns, along with a public apology from the agency. The agreement reads that the US is “forever barred and precluded” from examining or prosecuting Trump, his sons and the Trump organization’s current tax issues, simply a one-page document posted to the Department of Justice website. An adjunct to this agreement allowed the administration to create a nearly $1.8 billion fund to compensate allies of the president who believe they have been unjustly investigated and prosecuted, which brought howls from the Democrats and government watchdog groups as “corrupt” and unconstitutional. Formally called the “Anti-Weaponization Fund“, it provides an avenue for those “wrongly targeted” for political purposes — particularly by the Biden administration’s Justice Department — to apply for payouts, which acting Attorney General Todd Blanche terms a “a lawful process for victims of lawfare and weaponization to be heard and seek redress.” The 1600 rioters who were charged, then fined or imprisoned, could see a payday of about a million bucks each!

The Late Show host, Stephen Colbert, during his last week on his canceled CBS show, had some thoughts on the newly-created “slush fund,” and how “one group of lucky slushies could be the people prosecuted in connection with the January 6 Capitol riot.” “We may be canceled, but apparently The Late Show has outlived the Constitution of the United States, because yesterday, without any congressional or court approval, completely unilaterally, Donald Trump gave himself a $1.8 billion taxpayer-fueled slush fund,” said the comedian to begin his show. Colbert noted that in January, Trump and Sons filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS, alleging that the bureau willfully failed to safeguard his tax information from unauthorized disclosure by a former IRS contractor during the president’s first term. The judge involved in the case was “highly skeptical” of its validity, prompting Trump and Sons to drop the suit in exchange for establishment of the “slush fund” by Todd Blanche.

[ click here to continue (link expands, click again to collapse) ]

[Last week’s piece below… ~Webmistress]