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Trump wants to create a political system in which he is the undisputed leader dictating, directly or indirectly, how it operates and who it favors. Since his re-election in November 2024, he has been haphazardly trying to consolidate his power. Elon Musk, Trump’s partner so far, is advancing this self-serving agenda partially through DOGE, the unofficial and inexperienced but powerful young team endorsed by Trump to reduce or privatize government programs that benefit average and poor citizens.
Tens of thousands of federal jobs have already been eliminated. Trump’s tariffs are further undermining the economy and alienating allies. One huge effect is that the dollar may cease to be the currency that undergirds international trade and investments.
There is now a threat of an economic recession, or, worse yet, both rising unemployment and rising inflation. On top of it all, congressional Republicans are geared up to pass a budget, with Trump’s encouragement, that includes a huge tax cut that disproportionately benefits the rich and big corporations.
Attempt to Reverse 1976 Moratorium
Despite multiple earthquake faults surrounding the three California nuclear reactor coastal sites harboring huge amounts of radioactive waste in tsunami zones, with no plan to deal with the tons of waste, a bill has been introduced in the state legislature to increase nuclear use in our state. This also despite the devastating fires that occur regularly in California increasing the already staggering risks of nuclear reactors and the lethal long lived waste they produce.
Assemblymember Dr. Juaquin Arambula (D - Fresno) with main co-sponsors Assemblymember Diane Dixon (R - Orange) and Assemblymember Josh Hoover (R- Sacramento) introduced AB 305 . It would overturn California’s longstanding nuclear moratorium to allow for the construction of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs).
I need some help here. The Trump presidency and the “America only” future he’s hawking to the public like the world’s most arrogant snake-oil salesman feels beyond my ability to address right now, even though I consider doing so my life’s work.
But sometimes the news of the day simply feels too absurd, too strange, to seriously address, like Trump’s comment the other day as he sat next to Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House: “You know how I feel about the Gaza Strip. I think it’s an incredible piece of important real estate.”
Many Americans will be relieved to learn that US Embassy employees and their families in China can no longer have “romantic or sexual relations” with local Chinese. It is certainly a move long past due which will keep us safer together with those 125% tariffs that we will be hitting the Chinks with. But beyond that good news, it has been another interesting week in the fantasy world created and sustained by President Donald J Trump. This week included a not-so-surprise visit by the Chosen Lord of the Universe Benjamin Netanyahu, ruler of a pathetic little country called Israel, which is growing bigger as, with American support, it absorbs all of its neighbors one at a time. Netanyahu was in town to give Trump his marching orders for the next month or so, and it was no surprise that both men agreed that the two million or so hapless Palestinians still hanging around Gaza have to go and the sooner the better.
I recently read an article by investigative historian Eric Zuesse, author of America’s Empire of Evil, that began “One of the core features of nazism (not the German political Party but its core ideology) is racism, which allows some ethnicities (or “races”) to be advantaged by law, and other ethnicities to be discriminated against by the law — it is, at its very core, AGAINST equal rights under law.” Well, I was intrigued by what was packed into one long sentence due to recent developments in the United States and I am sure that none of my regular readers will be surprised by my view that a lot of what has gone wrong in the United States and elsewhere has been due to a racist Israel and its powerful lobbies.
