Bondi will return to the private sector, according to Trump. (CBS had reported she would remain in the Administration in another capacity.)

Many are speculating that the reasons for the firing are her mishandling of the release of files in the Jeffrey Epstein case. There's also her failure to fulfill his personal vengeful agenda and file charges against Adam Schiff and Letitia James.

He starts with a lie and will just keep going.

We are working with Venezuela and getting along incredibly well. We are now totally independent of the Middle East.

He says he has been planning to decimate Iran since 2015 when he first decided to run for office. This has been going on for 47 years and someone should have taken care of this before then.

We're winning and winning big.

He trashes Obama. They laughed at him. His deal would have been disasterous.

He's now praises himself. No one has ever seen anything like it. We "totally obliterated" their ability to build nuclear weapons with the first attack. They were right at the doorstep of having nuclear weapons.

Our objectives are dismantling Iran's ability to launch a weapons outside their borders. We've destroyed, annihilated, obliterated their navy, their air force and almost all the other branches.

All the families of those who have died have asked him to finish the job. He thanks the other countries in the Middle East and we will not let them get hurt.

Every plague will fall on us if we don't finish off Iran. Iran is a dead and crippled country. He touts his economic record at home, no inflation, greatest amount of investments in the U.S., we are #1 producer of oil on the planet. We produced more thant Saudi Arabia and Russia combined.

We don't need the oil coming through the Hormuz Straight. The other countries that take oil through the Straight have to protect it. He has a suggestion -- buy oil from the U.S. The Straight will open up naturally. They will be able to buy oil. U.S. citizens are getting bigger than ever from his big beautiful bill.

We are on track to fultfill all our military objectives. We have not hit their oil but we could and they would be gone. We are going to hit their electrical generators real hard in the next few weeks. We have all the cards and they have none.

He compares the time it took for every other war since WW1. This took a shorter time. The whole world is watching and can't believe the brilliance of the U.S. military.

No more nuclear blackmail. We wil be greater than ever.

Good night.

***************

What did you think? Will his speech increase support from his base? <> Foreign news outlets have a different view of the global consequences of the U.S. actions in Iran. ]]> Jeralyn 2026-04-01T21:03:53-05:00 http://www.talkleft.com/story/2026/3/18/135237/940 Our last open thread is full. Here's a new one, all topics welcome.

The "war" in Iran continues. Israel is picking off Iranian leaders, one by one. Iran continues its drone attacks, and the number of wounded American service people grows.

Social security is going to run out of funds at least a year ahead of schedule. Why? I think it's because of the mass immigrant detentions, and the voluntary and forced deportations. Immigrants, whether here lawfully or not, work using a real or fake social security number. Their employers pay into social security for each one of them on the payroll. The reduction in the immigrant labor force means the amount paid into Social Security is less.

In less than a year, the second Trump Administration stripped 1.6 million immigrants of their legal status, upending the lives of immigrants who came into the United States “the right way,” severely damaging our economy and national security, and only growing the undocumented population in pursuit of its anti-immigrant agenda.

[More...]

Don't buy into Trump's twisted (mis)representations. It's pointless even to listen to him because he either doesn't know what he's talking about or he just lies with impunity.

Our stagnant Congress is a travesty. But a worse travesty would be giving Republicans another seat in the front row of history either this November or in November, 2028.

As to fired Kristi Noem, she's already a has-been, a grain of sand -- Democrats should not repeat the mistakes of Trump and his cronies by using the criminal justice system to exact revenge on an opponent. There are too many bigger fish to fry, like coming up with a feasible plan to avoid a reduction in our social social security benefits.

On a lighter note, Donald Trump doesn't seem as angry over Melania not winning an Oscar for her "supersized-me" documentary bankrolled by Amazon, as he was when he did not win a Nobel prize. Who thinks Melania will stay in the marriage until his term ends?

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

Mr. Trump’s decision to snatch Mr. Maduro from his bed, but keep the rest of the Venezuelan leadership in place, is an experiment in remote-control occupation. After the Delta team landed by helicopter that early January night, killed Mr. Maduro’s Cuban and Venezuelan guards, and seized him seconds before he could lock himself in that safe room, Mr. Trump blessed the installation of Vice President Delcy Rodríguez as acting president. She will stay there, he has said, as long as she follows Washington’s instructions.

...In a brief conversation with The New York Times on Sunday, on the second day of the American and Israeli attack on Iran, he cited the Venezuela experience as a model for what he was trying to accomplish in Iran. “What we did in Venezuela, I think, is the perfect, the perfect scenario,” Mr. Trump insisted. “Everybody’s kept their job except for two people.”

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

The photo above is of the burning Fairmont Hotel in Dubai, which Tehran hit with drones this past weekend in retaliation for the strikes on Iran. The Wall St. Journal, (free link) which posted a video of the burning hotel, reports:

Missiles and drones rained down on Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, targeting bases and other strategic sites and scattering debris from intercepts. The attacks marred the business-friendly reputation Gulf countries took years to build.

The retaliations continue (free link).

The State Department [has] urged Americans to immediately leave 14 countries, and closed U.S. embassies in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait after they were hit by drones.

[More...]

Iran and Israel both say Iran's Supreme Leader, 86 year old Ali Khamenei, in failing health for years, is dead, allegedly struck down in the Royal compound. The night of the attacks, Iran media reported Khamenei had been evacuated before the strikes. It seems somewhat bizarre that with Trump hinting all week the U.S. would be taking military action against Iran, that Iran would not evacuate him. But as late-night host Jon Stewart said on the Daily Show Monday night (at 7:40' in), sometimes old people so stubborn and certain they are correct, you can't convince them of anything, especially danger and maybe Iran couldn't convince him to leave.

No matter how horrible Ali Khamenei was, Donald Trump has yet to make the case that Iran represented an imminent danger to the U.S. or U.S. interests, or that its success at developing nuclear bombs or ballistic missiles that could reach the U.S. was on the immediate horizon.

Anger at Trump for engaging in a personal war of choice is growing.

On Monday repeated his assertion that the US needed to take action because of concerns that Iran was aiming to build ballistic missiles that could reach the United States.

Iran hasn’t acknowledged it is building or seeking to build intercontinental ballistic missiles. The US Defense Intelligence Agency, however, said in an unclassified report last year that Iran could develop a militarily viable intercontinental ballistic missile by 2035 "should Tehran decide to pursue the capability".

....Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, on Monday reaffirmed that Iran has an "ambitious" nuclear programme but doesn’t have a programme for building nuclear weapons currently.

This is reminiscent of the colossal mistakes of Dick Cheney and his fellow neo-cons in dragging us into war in Iraq based on faulty intelligence.

Trump, never one to believe law applies to him, did not seek authority from Congress to join Israel's war. Nor did he have the decency to personally address the American people of his dragging us into war in prime time. Instead, at 2:00 am on Saturday morning, he posted a prerecorded, after-the-fact video announcement on his social media channel, almost nobody other than rabid Trump followers would see. (While wearing a baseball cap that is too large for his head.) In case you haven't seen it or read the transcript, here are some snippets with a few of his outlandish statements. (The U.S. Embassy in China has a transcript:

.... the United States military is undertaking a massive and ongoing operation to prevent this very wicked, radical dictatorship from threatening America and our core national security interests.

We're going to destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground. It will be totally again obliterated. We're going to annihilate their navy. We're going to ensure that the region's terrorist proxies can no longer destabilise the region or the world and attack our forces, and no longer use their IEDs, or roadside bombs as they are sometimes called, to so gravely wound and kill thousands and thousands of people, including many Americans. And we will ensure that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon. It's a very simple message. They will never have a nuclear weapon.

This regime will soon learn that no one should challenge the strength and might of the United States armed forces. I built and rebuilt our military in my first administration and there is no military on earth even close to its power, strength or sophistication.

I once again urge the Revolutionary Guard, the Iranian military, police, to lay down your arms, and receive full immunity or face certain death. It will be certain death. Won’t be pretty.

I call upon all Iranian patriots who yearn for freedom. to seize this moment, to be brave, be bold, be heroic, and take back your country. America is with you. I made a promise to you, and I fulfilled that promise. The rest will be up to you, but we’ll be there to help.

....The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties. That often happens in war. But we're doing this not for now. We're doing this for the future. And it is a noble mission.

American service people are now collateral damage to Trump? What comes next? A military draft so the U.S. has enough recruits to put boots on the ground in 14 countries?

By irresponsibly joining Israel's bombing of Iran, arrogantly calling on the protesters to seize the moment for regime change to free themselves, and promising immunity to members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard who join the effort to topple Iran's Government, Donald Trump has alienated almost the entire world and turned the middle east upside down. This is not a war of necessity, it is a war of Trump's personal choice.

Hopefully, our do-nothing Congress will grow a spine, commence impeachment proceedings against Trump and the third time will be a charm. ]]> Jeralyn 2026-03-03T18:13:00-05:00 http://www.talkleft.com/story/2026/3/3/71327/92776 The House Oversight Committee has released the videos of Bill and Hillary Clinton's depositions on Jeffrey Epstein. You can watch Bill here and Hillary here.

Hillary was feisty and her opening statement is well worth watching.

BBC has this summary of their depositions.

Rep. Lauren Boebert published on her social media account,

According to the New York Times (free link here),

In a secret deportation arrangement, the Trump administration flew nine people, nearly all of whom had been granted U.S. court protections from being sent back to their home countries, to the African nation of Cameroon in January.

None of them are from Cameroon, according to government documents obtained by The New York Times and lawyers for the deportees, and the United States has not made any public deal with Cameroon to accept deportees who hail from other nations.

How much of our taxpayer money did Donald Trump offer Cameroon to take these detainees?

To make matters worse, they have been held for the past month in a "compound" in Cameroon's capital, and have been told they will only be released to their home countries, despite the U.S. having granted 8 of the 9 of them protection against being returned to their home countries due to risk of torture or persecution.

“Sending people to a third country where they are coerced into deportation to the country that we cannot deport them to is flatly illegal,” said Scott Shuchart, a former ICE official who worked in the Biden administration.

[More...]

On Friday, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee released a report, "“At What Cost? Inside the Trump Administration’s Secret Deportation Deals,” showing Trump has authorized payments of more than $32 million to various countries in exchange for taking custody of deported individuals who it claimed couldn't be returned to their home countries.

This report finds that the Trump Administration has expanded and institutionalized a system in which the United States urges or coerces countries to accept migrants who are not their citizens, often through arrangements that are costly, wasteful and poorly monitored. It catalogs the ...waste of taxpayer funds through unnecessary removals, ...the lack of oversight on U.S. funds to foreign governments and secret deals that do not serve American interests.

Taken together, these actions have created an expensive and dangerous form of shadow diplomacy that prioritizes the appearance of toughness over the security of Americans.....For an Administration that claims to be reigning in fraud, waste and abuse, this policy is the epitome of all three.”

The full report is available here.

I may not care for football but I will be watching this afternoon to see Bad Bunny's half time show, which he'll sing in Spanish. He is probably the biggest global performer in the world right now.

Close behind is Shakira, who just began her weeklong residency in El Salvador where she had her first concert last night. Tens of thousands of her fans crossed El Salvador's borders (legally) to be able to see her in person. Every hotel room in the country is reserved and she's expected to bring many millions to the local economy. El Salvador's gang-crushing President, Nayib Bukele, said he was determined to make sure everyone was safe and thus has deployed 3,000 military and civil guards to the venue. Here's a photo of what they look like.

Bad Bunny brought $400 plus million to Puerto Rico's economy during his music residency which just ended.

At the Grammy's last week, Bad Bunny began one of his acceptance speeches with:

"Before I say thanks to G-d, I'm going to say ICE out,"... "We're not savages, we're not animals, we're not aliens – we're humans," he added from the stage after his win for best musicá urbana album.

"The hate gets more powerful with more hate. The only thing that's more powerful than hate is love, so, please, we need to be different. If we fight, we have to do it with love."

Wouldn't it be wonderful if he could make it so?

The intense globalization of music and culture continues next month when k-pop super band BTS embarks on its first tour in five years. The pomp and circumstance in Seoul will be enormous. I could watch then dance for hours. But their tickets are going like wildfire all over the world:

BTS has made history in the UK after selling out London’s Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, setting a new record for the highest seat occupancy ever achieved for a single concert at the venue.

....The group is scheduled to perform at the 62,000-seat stadium on July 6 and 7, with total attendance expected to reach about 120,000 over the two nights. Both dates sold out completely after BTS announced a fully immersive 360-degree stage, allowing audiences to view the performance from all directions.

Their new album, the first in five years, is already at the top of the charts and it hasn't been released yet:

A day after the album’s release, on March 21, BTS will hold a live comeback performance at Gwanghwamun Square in central Seoul. The event will be streamed live to more than 190 countries via Netflix.

Yes, they will be touring in America, and all 42 shows are already sold out. After that, it's on to Europe and Asia.

The only place where global tourism may not rise is the United States, because of Donald Trump. Foreigners don't want to spend money or time here. How embarrassing that the Vice-President got booed at the opening winter games ceremony in Milan. I wonder how many years it will take the U.S. to shake the tawdry image the world now holds of us thanks to Donald Trump.

I'll put up an open thread this afternoon.

U.S. District Court Judge Eric Tostrud granted a temporary restraining order against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Saturday, barring the department from altering or destroying evidence connected to Pretti's killing.

How about a restraining order banning ICE from conducting enforcement operations in Minnesota?

The Wall St. Journal (free link here) says the videos don't support the claims of law enforcement. I'm not surprised, are you?

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

Donald Trump went to Davos and came out guns blazing, saying the U.S. would take over Greenland. If any country disapproved, he said, he'd slap new tariffs on them. He even mocked Europe's leaders on social media:

He trolled European leaders with a social media post that showed him planting an American flag on Greenland territory, near a sign that read, “Greenland, US Territory, Est. 2026.”

Turns out, he didn't get the reaction he expected. In fact, he ended up capitulating and saying ok, we won't take over Greenland, and ok, we won't impose new tariffs. In other words, Trump caved.

Trump’s reassurance that America’s military won’t seize Greenland at gunpoint settled the financial markets, as did his pledge to forgo tariffs on Europe as a prod to relinquish Greenland.

[More...]

In other words, Trump ran to mama bear and cowered under her like a scared pup.

When it was all said and done, Trump got what we already had under our treaties: The ability to put more U.S. military troops, bases and equipment on Greenland.

For now, Greenland has been spared from Donald Trumps self-aggrandizing but delusional view of his power.

As for us back here in the U.S. watching this horror show unfold: The damage to our nation's reputation as a trustworthy ally has taken a big hit. And of course it won't be the last time while Trump has a seat at a desk in the oval office.

There's a lot to break down, from the Golden Globes to Venezuela and its Oil to Minnesota, ICE, Iran, Colombia, Greenland, and the Trump family's unstoppable (so far) greed, sticking its dirty, small fingers in every pie it can get a slice of.

Have at it, this is an open thread, all topics welcome.

P.S. "Dead Flowers" is from the Stones album "Sticky Fingers". One of my top three favorite Rolling Stones song ever. ]]> Jeralyn 2026-01-11T21:32:21-05:00 http://www.talkleft.com/story/2026/1/1/153118/1819

Happy New Year to all! Photos of the celebrations around the world are pretty awesome.

Still, the world is not a happy place today. America has watched in disbelief as Donald Trump has chipped away bit by bit at the very core of our democracy. Even prominent hard-core MAGA supporters are scratching their heads at his latest actions, and refusing to stay silent.

Trump's primary game plan has always been deflection. Change the subject, provide false facts, promote conspiracy theories and juxtapose the victim and aggressor.

Since it worked for him the first time around, he's been back at it every day during his second term. How do we encourage more of his MAGA supporters to jump ship, and also remain engaged and vote for Democrats in the mid-term elections?

How do we turn Trump's deflection game on its head? Democrats Abroad has some ideas. I'll just quote one section: [More...]

Combatting Misinformation and Propaganda

The Trump administration was notorious for spreading misinformation, labeling legitimate journalism as "fake news," and promoting conspiracy theories. This tactic undermined public trust in the media and led to widespread confusion. Combating misinformation requires critical thinking, fact-checking claims before sharing them, and encouraging others to seek verifiable information. Social media platforms can be breeding grounds for disinformation, so promoting digital literacy is essential.

In other Trump news, the New York Times has a mind-mapping feature on Trump and his family's myriad of questionable financial dealings during his second term that has reaped them millions (if not more).

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

I've tuned out Trump and the Epstein files drama and already started cooking tomorrow's lasagna.

Wishing all of you a very Merry Christmas Eve, this is an open thread for everyone, celebrating or not.

He blames life being unaffordable due to the Democratic Biden Administration.

25 million people, many of whom were criminals, drug dealers with no border control.

[Comment: He is batsh*t crazy, he really believes what he is saying]

Biden crushed the dreams of the American people: Flooded your cities with crime, preying on the innocent.

After one year, he has achieved more than anyone can even imagine. He stopped people coming over the border. In a few short months, we went from the worst to the best. DC is

We busted the drug cartels, drugs coming in by sea are down 94%.

Under Biden, gas, airfares, hotels were much higher. A Thanksgiving turnkey was done 38%.

Wages are rising up must faster than inflation. More . 100% of all jobs have been in the private sector rather than the government.

He secured 18.3 trillion investments in the U.S.

Much has been accomplished by his favored word: Tariffs. Countries know if they build in the U.S. there are no tariffs.

450k service members will receive $1776. before country.

[Comment: I think he got a huge B-12 shot before coming on. He's talking way too fast, like a motormouth.]

Last year we had the worst military recruitment rate in history. Now we have the best.

He's lowered the cost of the prescriptions by as much as 600%.

[Comment: Does that solve the problem of the massive insurance premium hikes Americans are paying starting in January?

He wants to privatize insurance, claiming the money will go to the people, who can buy their own insurance. He blasts Obamacare.

The radical left Democrats exploited the green energy scam. That's why so many people saw their electric bills soars.

He's going to bring gas down to $1.99 a gallon (Comment: How, by stealing Venezuela's oil?).

We're going to get a new chairman of the Federal Reserve who will reduce mortage rates.

We have never been invaded. The worst thing Biden did was the invasion of the border. The undocumented flooded our country and got health care at taxpayer expense.

As the thousands of foreign migrants and undocumented leave, jobs will be available to Americans. [Comment: Are these jobs Americans will want?]

One year ago, our country was dead and ready to fail.

Our country is back, stronger than ever. When the world sees us next year, they will see a nation faithful to its people.

Have a merry Christmas. [Comment: Thank goodness it's already over. There's virtually no debate on the cable news stations. Right wing networks like News Nation have one guest on, some shill for Trump. MSNBC had one host who used to be Biden's press secretary with a single boring guest. Time to turn back to the Survivor finale, and tonight's new episode of "Dinastia de Casillas" on Telemundo, where even the rival, warring cartel leaders and corrupt military generals are more honest with both their own people and their enemies than Trump is with the American people.] ]]> Jeralyn 2025-12-17T21:08:36-05:00 http://www.talkleft.com/story/2025/12/9/15190/1890 I am having serious computer issues. Every browser is limiting what I can access, and when I write a post and hit "save", it disappears down the rabbit hole.

So instead of reading my thoughts on Alina Habba's (temporary) resignation from the NJ US Attorney's office, or Juan Orlando Hernandez's sudden pardon, only to now face an arrest warrant issued in Honduras, you get another open thread.

Have at it, this is an open thread, all topics welcome.