Here's a statement of the obvious: The opinions expressed here are those of the participants, not those of the Mutual Fund Observer. We cannot vouch for the accuracy or appropriateness of any of it, though we do encourage civility and good humor.
Does the cessation of howling mean acceptance is coming? Pass! It’s your house … Gag me.
As the message of a professor, who teaches Propaganda, I am 100% certain that is not what was implied. Only that we proceed with more rationality, less emotion. Not let the terrorists win.
Don't self-throttle, simply up your game. Like China is doing in the trade war they are controlling. Your opinions are well received here.
despite the gerrymandering war, there is a lot of positive things at almost any level outside the current trump admin. its too easy to get bogged down only in whether dems will fail again at the executive level.
i expect to see a lot more of that everywhere. the odds look good when putting effort into lower levels of government.
speaking for me only, the positives are fragile and futurist when relying on the track record of american voters, while the dominant ability of the gop to act now is a reality. and the reality part more emotionally affects longterm interests when there is any human in humanity.
The part in bold is a very important consideration. We are looking at a situation where the dog caught the car. It is guaranteed that many who desired certain changes, will be flabbergasted when those realities hit them right where they live.
We can count on self-interest to rule the day. It always does. Some will pretend they are good with being battered about in pursuit of bad policy, but they were lost causes anyhow. Swing voters, and newly-engaged voters, will not be so forgiving.
@David_Snowball. Back in the sixties,at a small university in the Midwest, I was a participant in a noisy and disruptive action against the war. One of my professors from the department where I was a bit of a student leader, admonished me to chill. He did not use words like “vituperation “ “ or howl because he taught History, not rhetoric. He told me I would never get into graduate school if I kept up that behavior. I did. And I did. What we need is to howl louder and more often, before it’s too late. And let the world know about your president every chance we get. It’s really the most important thing citizens and patriots can do today and everyday until he is condemned to the dustbin of history or is in jail or exile in Moscow. Thanks for hosting this board. I will happily take my opinions elsewhere.
President Donald Trump announced that Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife had been captured and flown out of the country as part of “Operation Absolute Resolve.” Another decisive and brilliant operation.
And, as usual, Democrats rush to defend a gangster who tortured his own people and flooded the U.S. with drugs.
despite the gerrymandering war, there is a lot of positive things at almost any level outside the current trump admin. its too easy to get bogged down only in whether dems will fail again at the executive level.
i expect to see a lot more of that everywhere. the odds look good when putting effort into lower levels of government.
speaking for me only, the positives are fragile and futurist when relying on the track record of american voters, while the dominant ability of the gop to act now is a reality. and the reality part more emotionally affects longterm interests when there is any human in humanity.
The part in bold is a very important consideration. We are looking at a situation where the dog caught the car. It is guaranteed that many who desired certain changes, will be flabbergasted when those realities hit them right where they live.
We can count on self-interest to rule the day. It always does. Some will pretend they are good with being battered about in pursuit of bad policy, but they were lost causes anyhow. Swing voters, and newly-engaged voters, will not be so forgiving.
despite the gerrymandering war, there is a lot of positive things at almost any level outside the current trump admin. its too easy to get bogged down only in whether dems will fail again at the executive level.
i expect to see a lot more of that everywhere. the odds look good when putting effort into lower levels of government.
speaking for me only, the positives are fragile and futurist when relying on the track record of american voters, while the dominant ability of the gop to act now is a reality. and the reality part more emotionally affects longterm interests when there is any human in humanity.
The part in bold is a very important consideration. We are looking at a situation where the dog caught the car. It is guaranteed that many who desired certain changes, will be flabbergasted when those realities hit them right where they live.
We can count on self-interest to rule the day. It always does. Some will pretend they are good with being battered about in pursuit of bad policy, but they were lost causes anyhow. Swing voters, and newly-engaged voters, will not be so forgiving.
@David_Snowball. Back in the sixties,at a small university in the Midwest, I was a participant in a noisy and disruptive action against the war. One of my professors from the department where I was a bit of a student leader, admonished me to chill. He did not use words like “vituperation “ “ or howl because he taught History, not rhetoric. He told me I would never get into graduate school if I kept up that behavior. I did. And I did. What we need is to howl louder and more often, before it’s too late. And let the world know about your president every chance we get. It’s really the most important thing citizens and patriots can do today and everyday until he is condemned to the dustbin of history or is in jail or exile in Moscow. Thanks for hosting this board. I will happily take my opinions elsewhere.
It is after all why Amendment One is the first. @LarryB
You need to stick around, else what is the point of your words? Those who will spread misinformation, will not leave. They will carry out their duties.
Mr. Trump has directly ordered the Justice Department to investigate and charge people he has singled out. Attorney General Pam Bondi has sought to comply, abandoning the post-Watergate norm that department officials should make prosecutorial decisions independently.
In his first term, Mr. Trump repeatedly tried to do so, but his efforts were informal, sometimes furtive and, to his frustration, met with only limited success. But out of office, after he was twice indicted in federal court, Mr. Trump claimed that those charges had stemmed not from law enforcement officials evaluating his actions, but from political weaponization by President Joseph R. Biden Jr. He vowed to get revenge by doing the same if re-elected.
In his second term, after filling the upper ranks of the Justice Department with his former lawyers, Mr. Trump began carrying out that threat. In April, he signed executive orders requiring the department to scrutinize two people from his first administration he viewed as disloyal.
In September, Mr. Trump pushed out the U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia after the prosecutor decided there was no legitimate basis to indict James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, and Letitia James, New York’s attorney general. He told Ms. Bondi to move “now” to indict them.
Ms. Bondi then installed a former personal lawyer to Mr. Trump who had no prosecutorial experience, Lindsey Halligan. Days later, she obtained grand jury indictments of both. A judge later dismissed the cases on the grounds that Ms. Halligan had been improperly appointed. The Justice Department is still trying to prosecute them.
And in Miami, a Trump appointee has opened an investigation into what Trump loyalists deem a grand conspiracy conducted by the officials who led the Russia inquiry and the two criminal cases against Mr. Trump.
Let us not forget that they have taken steps to silence the Special Prosecutor over trump's felony investigation.
Their practice is not to deal with facts and evidence, but to hide them from the light of day.
His henchman are on record as trying to implement a conspiracy to wipe the video evidence of their intentional act to steal classified documents. Not to mention that trump was shown to have provided a foreign official with top secret nuclear submarine secrets.
So no, he was not being unfairly prosecuted. He was being held accountable. Grand juries, regular juries, judges, prosecutors, appeals courts, all found the case against trump to have merit and allowed it to continue. These prosecutions ended by default, not vindication, or a finding of "not guilty".
"...newt and mitch are the architects of today's gop."
Don't forget Ralph Reed and Ronny Ray-guns. Gingrich the Newt deserves the most credit, I suppose, for stubbornness becoming a policy plank and using his position to radicalize the agenda, including the rejection of compromise and reasonableness.
Currently, Dr. Heather Cox Richardson offers daily appraisals of events. If she is guilty of any bias, I think it is that she may be too optimistic with regard to upcoming elections and current protests' effectiveness in battling the anti-constitutionalist foundation of the Orange agenda.
"Today was the legal deadline for the Department of Justice to submit to Congress a written justification for any documents from the Epstein files that the department had redacted or withheld. But it seems unlikely the Justice Department met this deadline because it has missed the December 19 deadline for releasing the files themselves. Both of those deadlines were established by the Epstein Files Transparency Act, passed overwhelmingly by Congress on November 19, 2025."
"Information from those files continues to trickle out. Those that have been released suggest the Department of Justice considered charging 'co-conspirators' and that Trump traveled on Epstein’s private plane with Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, along with alleged victims, on several occasions. Mar-a-Lago routinely sent employees to perform massages and other spa services at Epstein’s home, where he exposed himself to those employees."
"Trump has taken a hit on his domestic policy lately, as well. After the Supreme Court on December 23, 2025, rejected the administration’s argument that it had the power to deploy federalized National Guard troops in and around Chicago, Trump announced on December 31 that the administration is removing National Guard troops from Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland. Then he claimed that the troops had 'greatly reduced' crime in those cities and vowed to 'come back, perhaps in a much different and stronger form, when crime begins to soar again—Only a question of time!'"
"'Donald Trump’s lying again,' Democratic Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker posted on social media. 'He lost in court when Illinois stood up against his attempt to militarize American cities with the National Guard. Now Trump is forced to stand down.' 'If President Trump has finally chosen to follow court orders and demobilize our troops,' said Democratic Oregon governor Tina Kotek, 'that’s a big win for Oregonians and for the rule of law.'"
"And then, on New Year’s Eve, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee released a 255-page transcript of former special counsel Jack Smith’s December 17 closed-door testimony before the committee. The fact they chose to release it at a time when most Americans are not paying attention to the news tells you all you need to know about what Smith said. Republicans have insisted that Smith’s indictments of Trump were a sign that former president Joe Biden’s Justice Department was 'weaponized' against Trump and MAGA supporters, but in his testimony—under oath—Smith said Trump was guilty."
"As Parker Molloy covered in The Present Age, Smith said that his office had 'developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power. Our investigation also developed powerful evidence that showed that President Trump willfully retained highly classified documents after he left office in January of 2021, storing them at his social club, including in a ballroom and a bathroom. He then repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents.' Smith told the committee that the evidence for the indictment came not from the president’s enemies, but from Republicans who had worked for Trump, campaigned for him, and wanted him to win in 2020."
"After World War II, the United States and its allies and partners put in place a rules-based international order to prevent future world conflicts. Under that order, the members of the United Nations agreed they would not threaten or attack another country. Russian president Vladimir Putin has sought to replace that rules-based order with the idea that powerful countries will create spheres of influence in their regions. That new world order would justify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Now the U.S. invasion of Venezuela with the promise that the U.S. is going to 'run' the country from now on, as part of its quest to dominate the Western Hemisphere, means the U.S. has abandoned the post–World War II international order and is siding with Russia’s vision."
"'By proceeding without any semblance of international legitimacy, valid legal authority or domestic endorsement, Mr. Trump risks providing justification for authoritarians in China, Russia and elsewhere who want to dominate their own neighbors,' wrote the New York Times editorial board. That justification seems to be the point."
"That lack of preparation appears to be in keeping with the overall post-raid planning. Trump told reporters today that administration officials were 'designating various people' to 'run' Venezuela, 'and we’re gonna let you know who those people are.' Tonight Robbie Gramer and Juan Forero of the Wall Street Journal said the administration is 'racing to assemble an interim governing structure for Venezuela' but noted that '[t]he lack of details about what comes next led some U.S. officials to question why there was no detailed plan in place well before deposing Maduro.'"
"Gramer and Forero noted that Venezuela is twice the size of California and has 28 million people in it, millions of whom continue to support Maduro, whose government remains largely intact. Those supporters include armed cocaine-trafficking groups, some of whom fought as guerillas in Colombia, and an army of more than 100,000 soldiers."
Current and former U.S. officials told the reporter that the next phase of Trump’s operation in Venezuela is full of risks and the potential for blunders.
"At Strength in Numbers, G. Elliott Morris noted that military intervention in Venezuela is even more unpopular with the American people 'than Trump’s tariffs and health care cuts.' In September, only 16% of Americans wanted a 'U.S. invasion of Venezuela,' with 62% against it. A December poll showed that 60% of likely voters opposed 'sending American troops into Venezuela to remove President Maduro from power.' Only 33% approved. Even support for strikes against the small boats in the Caribbean could not get majority support: 53% opposed them while only 42% approved."
"'By the time American forces touched Venezuelan soil early Saturday morning,' Morris writes, 'Trump had already lost the public.'"
"But officials in the administration no longer appear to care what the American people want, instead simply gathering power into their own hands for the benefit of themselves and their cronies, trusting that Republican politicians will go along and the American people will not object enough to force the issue. The refusal of the Department of Justice to obey the clear direction of the Epstein Files Transparency Act seems to have been a test of Congress’s resolve, and so far, it is a gamble the administration appears to be winning."
"Morris notes that a December CBS poll showed that 75% of Americans, including 58% of Republicans, correctly believed a president must get approval from Congress before taking military action against Venezuela. The president did not get that approval. By law, the president must inform the Gang of Eight before engaging in military strikes, but if an emergency situation prevents that notification, then the president must inform the Gang of Eight within 48 hours. The Gang of Eight is made up of the top leaders of both parties in both chambers of Congress, as well as the top leaders from both parties on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees."
"Representative Jim Himes (D-CT) who as ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee is a member of the Gang of Eight, told CBS’s Margaret Brennan this morning that neither he nor House minority leader and fellow Gang of Eight member Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) had been briefed on the strikes. Himes said: 'I was delighted to hear that Tom Cotton, Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has been in regular contact with the administration. I’ve had zero outreach, and no Democrat that I’m aware of has had any outreach whatsoever. So apparently we’re now in a world where the legal obligation to keep the Congress informed only applies to your party, which is really something.”
Comments
Don't self-throttle, simply up your game. Like China is doing in the trade war they are controlling. Your opinions are well received here.
We can count on self-interest to rule the day. It always does. Some will pretend they are good with being battered about in pursuit of bad policy, but they were lost causes anyhow. Swing voters, and newly-engaged voters, will not be so forgiving.
“ or howl because he taught History, not rhetoric. He told me I would never get into graduate school if I kept up that behavior. I did. And I did. What we need is to howl louder and more often, before it’s too late. And let the world know about your president every chance we get. It’s really the most important thing citizens and patriots can do today and everyday until he is condemned to the dustbin of history or is in jail or exile in Moscow. Thanks for hosting this board. I will happily take my opinions elsewhere.
Another decisive and brilliant operation.
And, as usual, Democrats rush to defend a gangster who tortured his own people and flooded the U.S. with drugs.
The part in bold is a very important consideration.
Indeed it is.
You need to stick around, else what is the point of your words? Those who will spread misinformation, will not leave. They will carry out their duties.
Mr. Trump has directly ordered the Justice Department to investigate and charge people he has singled out. Attorney General Pam Bondi has sought to comply, abandoning the post-Watergate norm that department officials should make prosecutorial decisions independently.
Their practice is not to deal with facts and evidence, but to hide them from the light of day.
His henchman are on record as trying to implement a conspiracy to wipe the video evidence of their intentional act to steal classified documents. Not to mention that trump was shown to have provided a foreign official with top secret nuclear submarine secrets.
So no, he was not being unfairly prosecuted. He was being held accountable. Grand juries, regular juries, judges, prosecutors, appeals courts, all found the case against trump to have merit and allowed it to continue. These prosecutions ended by default, not vindication, or a finding of "not guilty".
The "buck" most certainly does not stop "here".
Don't forget Ralph Reed and Ronny Ray-guns. Gingrich the Newt deserves the most credit, I suppose, for stubbornness becoming a policy plank and using his position to radicalize the agenda, including the rejection of compromise and reasonableness.
Currently, Dr. Heather Cox Richardson offers daily appraisals of events. If she is guilty of any bias, I think it is that she may be too optimistic with regard to upcoming elections and current protests' effectiveness in battling the anti-constitutionalist foundation of the Orange agenda.
a written justification for any documents from the Epstein files that the department
had redacted or withheld. But it seems unlikely the Justice Department met this deadline
because it has missed the December 19 deadline for releasing the files themselves.
Both of those deadlines were established by the Epstein Files Transparency Act,
passed overwhelmingly by Congress on November 19, 2025."
"Information from those files continues to trickle out.
Those that have been released suggest the Department of Justice considered charging 'co-conspirators'
and that Trump traveled on Epstein’s private plane with Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell,
along with alleged victims, on several occasions.
Mar-a-Lago routinely sent employees to perform massages and other spa services at Epstein’s home,
where he exposed himself to those employees."
After the Supreme Court on December 23, 2025, rejected the administration’s argument
that it had the power to deploy federalized National Guard troops in and around Chicago,
Trump announced on December 31 that the administration is removing National Guard
troops from Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland.
Then he claimed that the troops had 'greatly reduced' crime in those cities
and vowed to 'come back, perhaps in a much different and stronger form,
when crime begins to soar again—Only a question of time!'"
"'Donald Trump’s lying again,' Democratic Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker posted on social media.
'He lost in court when Illinois stood up against his attempt to militarize American cities
with the National Guard. Now Trump is forced to stand down.'
'If President Trump has finally chosen to follow court orders and demobilize our troops,'
said Democratic Oregon governor Tina Kotek, 'that’s a big win for Oregonians and for the rule of law.'"
released a 255-page transcript of former special counsel Jack Smith’s December 17
closed-door testimony before the committee.
The fact they chose to release it at a time when most Americans are not paying attention
to the news tells you all you need to know about what Smith said.
Republicans have insisted that Smith’s indictments of Trump were a sign that former president
Joe Biden’s Justice Department was 'weaponized' against Trump and MAGA supporters, but in his testimony—under oath—Smith said Trump was guilty."
"As Parker Molloy covered in The Present Age, Smith said that his office had 'developed proof
beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme
to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power.
Our investigation also developed powerful evidence that showed that President Trump
willfully retained highly classified documents after he left office in January of 2021,
storing them at his social club, including in a ballroom and a bathroom.
He then repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents.'
Smith told the committee that the evidence for the indictment came not from the president’s enemies,
but from Republicans who had worked for Trump, campaigned for him, and wanted him to win in 2020."
to prevent future world conflicts. Under that order, the members of the United Nations agreed
they would not threaten or attack another country.
Russian president Vladimir Putin has sought to replace that rules-based order with the idea
that powerful countries will create spheres of influence in their regions.
That new world order would justify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Now the U.S. invasion of Venezuela with the promise that the U.S. is going to 'run' the country
from now on, as part of its quest to dominate the Western Hemisphere,
means the U.S. has abandoned the post–World War II international order
and is siding with Russia’s vision."
"'By proceeding without any semblance of international legitimacy, valid legal authority
or domestic endorsement, Mr. Trump risks providing justification for authoritarians
in China, Russia and elsewhere who want to dominate their own neighbors,'
wrote the New York Times editorial board. That justification seems to be the point."
Trump told reporters today that administration officials were 'designating various people' to 'run' Venezuela,
'and we’re gonna let you know who those people are.'
Tonight Robbie Gramer and Juan Forero of the Wall Street Journal said the administration
is 'racing to assemble an interim governing structure for Venezuela' but noted that
'[t]he lack of details about what comes next led some U.S. officials to question
why there was no detailed plan in place well before deposing Maduro.'"
"Gramer and Forero noted that Venezuela is twice the size of California
and has 28 million people in it, millions of whom continue to support Maduro,
whose government remains largely intact.
Those supporters include armed cocaine-trafficking groups, some of whom fought as guerillas in Colombia,
and an army of more than 100,000 soldiers."
Current and former U.S. officials told the reporter that the next phase of Trump’s operation
in Venezuela is full of risks and the potential for blunders.
is even more unpopular with the American people 'than Trump’s tariffs and health care cuts.'
In September, only 16% of Americans wanted a 'U.S. invasion of Venezuela,'
with 62% against it. A December poll showed that 60% of likely voters opposed
'sending American troops into Venezuela to remove President Maduro from power.'
Only 33% approved. Even support for strikes against the small boats in the Caribbean
could not get majority support: 53% opposed them while only 42% approved."
"'By the time American forces touched Venezuelan soil early Saturday morning,'
Morris writes, 'Trump had already lost the public.'"
"But officials in the administration no longer appear to care what the American people want,
instead simply gathering power into their own hands for the benefit of themselves and their cronies,
trusting that Republican politicians will go along and the American people will not object enough
to force the issue. The refusal of the Department of Justice to obey the clear direction
of the Epstein Files Transparency Act seems to have been a test of Congress’s resolve,
and so far, it is a gamble the administration appears to be winning."
correctly believed a president must get approval from Congress before taking military action
against Venezuela. The president did not get that approval.
By law, the president must inform the Gang of Eight before engaging in military strikes,
but if an emergency situation prevents that notification, then the president must inform
the Gang of Eight within 48 hours. The Gang of Eight is made up of the top leaders of both parties
in both chambers of Congress, as well as the top leaders from both parties
on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees."
"Representative Jim Himes (D-CT) who as ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee
is a member of the Gang of Eight, told CBS’s Margaret Brennan this morning that neither he
nor House minority leader and fellow Gang of Eight member Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY)
had been briefed on the strikes. Himes said: 'I was delighted to hear that Tom Cotton,
Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has been in regular contact with the administration.
I’ve had zero outreach, and no Democrat that I’m aware of has had any outreach whatsoever.
So apparently we’re now in a world where the legal obligation to keep the Congress
informed only applies to your party, which is really something.”