Thursday, December 04, 2025
Trump's Job Approval Is Still Very Low
The chart above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between November 28th and December 1st of a nationwide sample of 1,628 adults (including 1,456 registered voters). The margin of error is 3.2 points for adults and 3.1 points for registered voters.
Democrats Have A 6-Point Advantage On Generic Ballot
The chart above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between November 28th and December 1st of a nationwide sample of 1,456 registered voters with a 3.1 point margin of error.
Public Says Political Parties Have Gone Too Far With Inflammatory Language
The charts above are from the Gallup Poll -- done between October 1st and 16th of a nationwide sample of 1,000 adults, with a 4 point margin of error.
Wednesday, December 03, 2025
Hegseth Should Be Impeached And Arrested For Murder
On September 2nd, Pete Hegseth ordered the U.S. military to kill all the people in a small boat in the Caribbean. The stated reason for the attack was that the boat was carrying narcotics destined for the United States. No proof has ever been offered by Hegseth (or Donald Trump) that the boat was carrying narcotics, but the attack was carried out.
After the smoke cleared, it was observed that two of the boats inhabitants were still alive and clinging to the sides of the damaged boat. Admiral Frank M. Bradley then ordered a second strike on the boat to kill the remaining helpless men.
That second strike against the survivors was against international law. It was also against the U.S. military law. If we had been at war (as Trump claims), it would have been a war crime. Since we are not at war, it was just an inexcusable murder of two helpless people.
It's now looking like Trump and Hegseth are throwing the Admiral under the bus. The Admiral deserves to be punished. He had to know that issuing that order for a second strike was illegal (whether he did it on his own or at Hegseth's command). But he is not the only guilty party.
Hegseth openly admits that he was in contact with the military forces carrying out the attack, and watched the attack taking place. That means he had to have heard the command given for a second strike - and did nothing to stop it. That makes him as guilty as Admiral Bradley. Hegseth should be impeached and arrested for murder.
Was Donald Trump also watching the strike take place? It is likely that he was since he loves watching the military blow things up (and he was in Washington that day). If so, then he is also guilty for hearing the order for a second strike and not taking action to stop it.
The Trump administration seems to think it can do anything it wants and get away with it - including murder. But this attack (especially the second strike) was far beyond the pale. They must be held accountable for this illegal and immoral action.
Tuesday, December 02, 2025
Public Wants All Epstein Files Released (But Doesn't Think It Will Happen)
The charts above reflect the results of the Yahoo / YouGov Poll -- done between November 21st and 24th of a nationwide sample of 1,684 adults. The margin of error is 3 points.
Even Republicans Are Beginning To Balk At The Trump/Hegseth Murders
The following post is by Steve Benen at MS NOW:
After three months of deadly U.S. military strikes against civilian boats in international waters, the Trump administration has generated a great many questions, though a simple one has hovered near the top of the list: Are these operations legal?
A great many experts have argued that the White House policy of extrajudicial killings is plainly illegal. Evidently, the senior military lawyer for the combatant command overseeing the lethal strikes came to the same conclusion, as did a variety of other legal voices within the administration.
These questions grew considerably louder late last week, with striking reporting from The Washington Post. In an article published on the day after Thanksgiving, the Post reported that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive to military personnel to kill everybody on a vessel carrying 11 people. From the piece:
A missile screamed off the Trinidad coast, striking the vessel and igniting a blaze from bow to stern. For minutes, commanders watched the boat burning on a live drone feed. As the smoke cleared, they got a jolt: Two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck. The Special Operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 attack … ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions, two people familiar with the matter said. The two men were blown apart in the water.
The Post’s report, which has not been independently verified by MS NOW, emphasized the fact that the men targeted in the second strike posed “no imminent threat of attack” and were not in an “armed conflict” with the United States. . . .
Todd Huntley, a former military lawyer who advised special operations forces for seven years at the height of the U.S. counterterrorism campaign, told the Post that this second deadly strike “amounts to murder.” This is not an uncommon reaction to the allegations.
Ryan Goodman, a former special counsel at the Pentagon, described the allegations as a “textbook” example of a war crime. Jack Goldsmith, who led the Office of Legal Counsel under George W. Bush, added that if the Post’s reporting is accurate, “it appears that Special Operations Forces committed murder.” A group of former military lawyers issued a joint statement that concluded that the allegations raised in the Post’s report “constitute war crimes, murder, or both.”
This, among other things, also adds fresh context to the hyperaggressive response to Democratic veterans who advised service members not to follow illegal orders.
Complicating matters for the White House, some congressional Republicans have raised related concerns.
Late Friday, Republican Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, issued a statement with Democratic Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the panel’s ranking member, noting that the committee was aware of the reporting and adding, “we will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances.”
A day later, Republican Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, issued a related statement with Democratic Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the panel’s ranking member, which added, “This committee is committed to providing rigorous oversight of the Department of Defense’s military operations in the Caribbean. We take seriously the reports of follow-on strikes on boats alleged to be ferrying narcotics in the SOUTHCOM region and are taking bipartisan action to gather a full accounting of the operation in question.”
Appearing on CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” Republican Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio, the former chair of the House Intelligence Committee, also said, “Obviously if that occurred, that would be very serious, and I agree that that would be an illegal act.”
For the administration, this is not good news. Donald Trump has grown accustomed to GOP lawmakers simply turning the other way in response to scandalous allegations. That the bipartisan leadership of the Armed Services committees, in both chambers, plan to put these allegations under the microscope will lead to scrutiny the White House would likely prefer to avoid.
"The Great Secession Of The Morbidly Rich"
The following post was written by Thom Hartmann at The Hartmann Report. It should be read by everyone who wants to live in a democracy instead of an oligarchy.
In a recent Wall Street Journal report, “The Ultrarich Are Spending a Fortune to Live in Extreme Privacy,” reporter Arian Campo-Flores pulls back the curtain on a disturbing new reality: our country’s wealthiest citizens now inhabit a parallel America of private jets, members-only restaurants, “sky-garage” condos, and luxury wellness centers they can rent out entirely for themselves.
These aren’t just perks; they’re a full-blown escape from public life. The ultrawealthy no longer wait in lines, navigate public institutions, or share community space with ordinary Americans.
And that’s the real danger: once the richest begin living outside the civic sphere, they stop caring whether the rest of society works at all. A nation where the wealthy secede into a private realm is a nation confronting oligarchy.
America has experienced this crisis before. Every few generations, a class of greedy oligarchs rise to power who are so intoxicated by wealth, so determined to hoard more, more, more, that they become a threat not just to our economy but to our democracy itself.
— It happened in the 1850s when the plantation aristocracy rose up, destroyed democracy in the South, and then tried to conquer the entire nation.
— It happened again when the Robber Barons of the Roaring 20s crushed unions and helped trigger the Republican Great Depression.
— And it’s happening today in the aftermath of the Reagan/Bush/Trump Revolution, as billionaire fortunes have exploded over the past 44 years and the American middle class has collapsed.
What’s different now is that modern oligarchs aren’t just accumulating money; they’re disappearing into a privatized world where only the ultrawealthy (and their servants) exist.
The WSJ article shows us how: private jet portals that bypass public airports and the TSA, restaurants where only the chosen enter, wellness centers rentable like personal playgrounds, condos where your car rides up the elevator with you, curated social clubs guaranteeing you never encounter an unfamiliar (or less wealthy) face.
This isn’t luxury. This is withdrawal, an intentional retreat from democratic society.
But beneath the marble floors and private butlers lies something even more sinister: wealth hoarding as a form of pathology. As I’ve argued before, extreme wealth accumulation often mirrors a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder called “hoarding disorder” in the DSM-5.
Ordinary hoarders afflicted with this mental illness fill their homes with newspapers and empty tin cans; billionaire hoarders fill offshore accounts and investment portfolios with billions they can never use, driven by the same compulsive “more, more, more” impulse.
Historian Michael Parenti described this perfectly: wealth becomes an addictive, monomaniacal hunger that consumes every other human concern.
When people suffering from this pathology then also use their wealth to seize vast political power, society pays the price. And thanks to Supreme Court decisions like Bellotti and Citizens United (as I lay out in The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America), these damaged hoarders can now use their fortunes to buy politicians, distort laws, functionally stop paying taxes to support the public good, and reshape our entire society just to serve their addiction.
They construct or acquire vast media properties solely to convince ordinary people that deregulating toxic businesses and cutting taxes on billionaires will somehow benefit them. They then invest millions in politicians who repay them with billions in tax cuts, deregulation, and subsidies.
As a result, Americans suffer the consequences: collapsing wages, millions without healthcare, skyrocketing poverty, underfunded schools, rampant gun violence, crumbling infrastructure, deadly pollution, poisons and chemicals in our food and water, and a middle class that’s been gutted and left gasping.
The WSJ article then reveals the final stage of this sickness: once the morbidly rich have extracted so much from society that it begins to crumble, they abandon society entirely.
When the richest Americans want nothing to do with public spaces, those spaces begin to deteriorate. Public airports, public hospitals. Public lines. Public restaurants. Public parks and neighborhoods. Public transportation. Public institutions of any kind.
A democracy can’t survive when its wealthiest citizens refuse to share a common world with the people they govern.
We’ve defeated oligarchs before. President Grover Cleveland warned of corporations using their “iron heel,” to become “the people’s masters.” President Teddy Roosevelt condemned the “invisible government” of the morbidly rich. FDR denounced the “economic royalists” who tried to overthrow democracy for profit.
All confronted their eras’ mentally ill hoarders, broke their power, taxed their fortunes, and built the foundations for a middle class that became the infrastructure of American stability.
Now that responsibility falls to us.
Members of today’s billionaire class are richer than any kings or pharaohs in history, and — thanks to decades of Republican deregulation, four corrupt Supreme Court rulings, and Reaganonics tax-slashing — are far more politically powerful.
They’ve used corrupt Supreme Court rulings to twist America’s laws so that their wealth is protected, their taxes are minimal, their influence is enormous, and their responsibility to the public is nonexistent.
This WSJ article isn’t just a window into their private world, it’s a warning flare. A democracy where the powerful live above and beyond the public realm is no democracy at all.
The path forward is the same one that saved us in the 1890s and 1940s:
name the crisis, confront the hoarders, break up monopolies, end billionaire-funded political corruption, restore progressive taxation to put the country back together, and rebuild the middle class.
We can do it. We’ve done it before. In future posts I’ll be detailing many of the steps that have worked in the past here in America and succeed today in other countries.
Tag, we’re it. Spread the word.
Monday, December 01, 2025
Most Americans Say The U.S. Economy Is Getting Worse
The chart above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between November 21st and 24th of a nationwide sample of 1,677 adults (including 1,511 registered voters). The margin of error was 3.4 point for adults and 3.0 points for registered voters.
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