I'VE ALWAYS BEEN CURIOUS TO KNOW...

 

what a North Korea "cabinet" meeting with Dear Leader Kim Jon Un would look like.

Now I know:

BREAKING: In a bizarre moment, Attorney General Pam Bondi impersonates extreme North Korean praise for Dear Leader, saying "President, you first 100 days has far exceeded that of ANY other presidency in this country. Ever. Ever." Unreal.pic.twitter.com/kiV1QofDze

— Really American 🇺🇸 (@ReallyAmerican1) April 30, 2025

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BREAKING: Marco Rubio just went fully authoritarian at the White House cabinet meeting.

"The conduct of our foreign policy belongs to the president of the United States and the executive branch, not some judge."

This is insaaaane. pic.twitter.com/bBSBx7bial

— CALL TO ACTIVISM (@CalltoActivism) April 30, 2025

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Education Secretary: What I would like, as I'm firing myself, is for Trump to be known as the education president pic.twitter.com/8QKkmrtcNi

— FactPost (@factpostnews) April 30, 2025

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RFK Jr: "We have launched the autism study at your direction. By September we will have some of the first answers. Within six months of that we will have definite answers." pic.twitter.com/gRBbQR0E8R

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 30, 2025

 

BECAUSE AMERICA ISN'T QUITE READY FOR HEADS ON SPIKES. YET.

 

Dear Gawd! What have we become?

THIS IS US:

Like the whiney little man-child that he is, he blames Joe Biden for the tanking stock market and his bad approval numbers. FACT:  Former President Biden left Donald an economy that was the envy of the world

GUEST POST BY DAVE MILLER

 Voter Fraud in the US is a Statistical Myth

The comment from Joe Conservative, frequent blogger and a regular reader of Progressive Eruptions, found elsewhere, was jarring…

“I’m convinced” Joe Conservative said, “that for Democrats, fraud is a feature, and not a bug.”

That’s a big statement, but we frequently hear a version of it, alleging frequent voter fraud among Democrats, from political conservatives supporting President Trump and his MAGA movement. 

Let's unpack some facts.

The right leaning Heritage Foundation gives us nine buckets of potential voter fraud.

• Impersonation fraud at the polls… saying you are someone you are not.
• False registrations… voting under a false, or someone else’s name.
• Duplicate voting… registering in multiple locations and/or voting as such.
• Fraudulent use of absentee ballots… requesting absentee ballots and voting in another person’s name.
• Buying votes… paying voters to vote in a specific way or for a specific candidate.
• Illegal “assistance” at the polls… intimidating or encouraging people to vote a specific way while “assisting” them.
• Ineligible voting… voting by people who are ineligible to vote or not US citizens.
• Altering the vote count… changing the vote count at a precinct or ballot counting site.
• Ballot petition fraud… forging the signatures of other voters to either vote or qualify an initiative for a general election ballot. 

The Heritage Foundation has a database of voter fraud convictions and occurrences. Heritage has logged a total of 1576 proven cases of voter fraud in the United States. If we had every single one of those violations in the elections last year, they would represent a fraud rate of .00001. But we did not. In fact the 1576 proven cases of voter fraud the right leaning Heritage Foundation has logged represents the total of cases since 1982.

Here is a recap of some of the database results Heritage has found in over 50 years of cases…

• 10 cases of altering the vote count, none in the 2020 election.
• 360 cases of voter registration fraud, 7 in the 2020 election.
• Less than 200 cases of duplicate voting, 1 in the 2020 election.
• Less than 400 cases of ineligible voting, 6 in 2020.

The number of cases Heritage cites is so low that statisticians call it statistically insignificant. This means Heritage has no data to support the view of Joe Conservative or any other conservative asserting frequent or election changing voter fraud in the United States.

Statistically none.

And yet, this myth of voter fraud in the US remains and runs deep among those who cannot accept that Joe Biden won the presidency in 2020 in an election that the Trump Administration itself called, and the Heritage Foundation numbers support, the most secure election in US history.

But these results are not just limited to the Heritage Foundation. Noted election fraud believer Kris Kobach of Kansas was the Vice Chair of the Voter Fraud Commission in the first Trump Administration. His commission, like the Heritage Foundation, was also unable to find any significant voter fraud happening in the US.

Likewise, despite frequent assertions of fraud after the 2020 election from conservatives, we have mostly been left with a quote from Rudy Giuliani in an Arizona  courtroom. Here’s what he said in the courtroom, where open lies get you disbarred, far away from the cameras and microphones outside the courthouse.

“We’ve got lots of theories. We just don’t have the evidence.”

In fact, Giuliani was ultimately disbarred for repeatedly making false and misleading statements, as many partisans still do, claiming election fraud in the 2020 elections. 

Evidence is the coin of the realm in a courtroom. It used to be the gold standard when making political points. No more. 

Statements alleging unproven voter fraud, stolen elections and outright political chicanery by Democrats and others have repeatedly been shown to be false. The continued use of these unfounded allegations, while legally protected under the First Amendment, has no other function other than to sow discord in our country as we near our 250th birthday. 

It is incumbent on those alleging and supporting the myth of voter fraud to come clean. For the good of America they either need to show the data which supports their view, that substantial voter fraud exists at a level that can change elections.

Or be honest and admit it doesn’t exist and that they were wrong.

Because anything else will continue to tear at the fabric of our nation.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY DAUGHTER!

 

A California girl!

With her boys:

Can you guess who this is with my daughter?

 

They grew up in the same town in Massachusetts and have been friends ever since. She never misses a show when he and his band are on the west coast.

He and his band just played at the Hollywood Bowl last night.

My daughter's best friend, the mystery rocker, and my daughter.

YOUR SUNDAY MOMENT OF ZEN

 

SATURDAY NIGHT DANCING

 

The evolution of dance:

GUEST POST BY DAVE MILLER

America is not in a post racial phase.

It's 2025 and after seeing so much change and advancement over the years, especially regarding race here in the US, I thought I had gotten to the point where nothing would shock me.

How wrong I was.

Imagine how I felt reading a comment from a supposedly educated man where the term pickaninny was used to describe black people. not once, but a number of times.

Just in case anyone is wondering, the term is a patently offensive, derogatory and racially charged word, akin to using ni**er. Why anyone would use such a term to describe people today is beyond me. Civilized people should be appalled when it is used as a descriptor of a fellow human being, created as a majority of the world believes, in the image of God.

But it gets worse.

Because not only did no one call him out on the offensiveness of the term, it was even applauded by the hosting blogger.

This is why we can't have nice things in America. Because there are still so many people who know certain terms are offensive, yet persist in their usage uncaring about the hurt it inflicts on others.

And lest any be confused, the people who use terms like this typically argue that we've overcome our race problems in this country. 

Sadly, their words, the evidence and their hearts say otherwise.

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

Dave did NOT ask me to post where this racist term was used and published; but since this is my blog, I choose to publish it here to show Dave's claim is authentic and to call out Americans who believe it is still okay to demean  people through racial slurs. It's not. It's wrong. It's disgusting.

Sam Huntington says:

April 25, 2025 at 7:41 am

Voting is a responsibility of the states. If you have a state plagued by the cancer of stupidity, don’t expect any changes in how the state conducts its business. California is one of those states, but not the only one.

As Joe said, fraud is a primary feature of the progressive/communist party, not a by-product.

I maintain that slavery still exists, but in a different form. Today, it is possible to keep the Pickaninny’s on the plantation by promising them goodies in exchange for their votes — no one thinks anything of it. But it is slavery, and all it’s cracked up to be. In this sense, the Pickaninny’s don’t have to be blacks. The Democratic Party mirrors its counterpart in their mother country — Коммунистическая партия (Коммунисты России) — where only the inner circle benefits from any of its policies and programs, but they do have a great public relations program. One should also note that this filth has been going on now since the in-your-face racism of the Wilson Administration.

This Sam character appears to be angry and woefully misguided. Trumpers usually are.

THE GOLDEN AGE OF TRUMPIAN CORRUPTION

 

FROM DAVE MILLER:

 

"Former Trump Secretary of Defense, Marine General James Mattis, has famously said... "if you haven't read hundreds of books, you're functionally illiterate." 

So share with us a couple of books you've read lately or are reading now. 

 I'll go first. 

One, "Anarchy and Christianity" by Jacques Ellul is a reread. 

The other is "Caste" by Isabelle Wilkerson.

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

Shaw:  

I'm currently reading "The Robber Bride" by Margaret Atwood.

Previously, I read  "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari

My next book:  "On Tyranny" by Timothy Snyder

THE FELON OF THE UNITED STATES, DONALD J. TRUMP, IS A RAVING LUNATIC

"A lunatic is someone who is either clinically insane or just acting really crazy."

IMO, Trump is acting crazy. No other president in the history of our country EVER spoke about or wrote anything with the sort of irrational language Trump is using in his social media posts. 

It. Is. Crazy.

 

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The present president of Harvard University, Alan Garber, is Jewish. Harvard University has had three previous Jewish presidents: Neil Rudenstine, Lawrence Summers, and Lawrence Bacow.

FAUX NOOZ presented the facts on Trump's tanking approval numbers last night, and this is what Trump wrote about his once favorite cable news outlet this morning. Also, the Wall Street Journal has called Trump's tariff wars "the dumbest trade wars in history."

Trump's a genius at foreign policy, especially getting murderous dictators to stop killing people:

REALITY CHECK FOR MAGA

 

"President Trump’s job approval rating has fallen steadily during his first three months in office, according to a New York Times average of polling. 

Mr. Trump’s approval rating has sunk to about 45 percent, down from 52 percent one week after he took office. Around half of the country now disapproves of his performance, the polling shows. American presidents typically enter office with a groundswell of support that wanes over time. But Mr. Trump’s approval has been dropping slightly faster than that of his predecessors. 

 Mr. Trump started his term with the second-lowest approval rating for a president in modern history. The only recent president to have started in a worse position was Mr. Trump the first time he took office."

AND THIS:

"As Donald Trump approaches the 100th day of his second term, a Fox News survey finds voters pleased with the job he is doing on border security, but displeased on most other issues -- including inflation. 

President Trump receives his best marks on border security, as a 55% majority approves. That’s the only issue where his ratings are in positive territory. 

On immigration, a record high of 47% approve of Trump (48% disapprove), while a new low of 38% approve on the economy (56% disapprove). 

His worst ratings are on inflation (33% approve, 59% disapprove), followed by tariffs (33-58%), foreign policy (40-54%), taxes (38-53%), and guns (41-44%)."

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

Hmmm. I wonder what could be the cause of Trump's tanking approval numbers. Is it the idiocy of Trump's tariffs? The incompetence at DOD leading to a less secure USA? Or maybe it's Trump's taking every step he can to destroy our relationships with our allies and trading partners? Maybe it's Trump's disregard for the Constitution and the rule of law. Will the GOP wake up and fix the shameful mess they've created?

That 45% still approve of his job performance reveals more about their cruel mentality and narrow mindedness than anything else.

"We’re going to be making money with everyone, and everyone’s going to be happy," Trump told reporters outside the White House on Wednesday. That quote highlights part of the problem. Making money doesn't make everyone happy, but cruelty, incompetence, revenge politics, and destruction of the government itself, make quite a few people unhappy.

DEAR AMERICA,

That the Trump Regime is even SUGGESTING this should set everyone's hair on fire: 

Putting critics of the administration's policies in jeopardy. 

"Some officials say U.S. citizens who criticize administration policies could be charged with crimes, based on the notion that they're aiding terrorists and criminals. 

'You have to ask yourself, are they technically aiding and abetting them, because aiding and abetting criminals and terrorists is a crime,'  White House senior director for counterterrorism Seb Gorka said in an interview with Newsmax. 

Trump's team also has questioned the legality of civic groups providing immigrants with 'know your rights' trainings on how to respond to federal agents. Border czar Tom Homan suggested that such seminars help people evade law enforcement. 

'They're trying to use terrorism laws to attack people for their speech and for their political activism, and that's an authoritarian effort,' said Kerri Talbot, co-executive director of the Immigration Hub, an immigration advocacy group."

"TRUMP IS TRUMP"

 

Good advice for opposing an inept, bungling, weak FOTUS:

Trump has managed to make himself an object of ridicule and mockery around the world. His approval numbers are under water. He's managed to take a thriving economy that was the envy of the developed world and ruin it in only three months. 

And the worst of it is his failures:  To "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed," creating a Constitutional crisis.

What did those who voted for him think would happen when they decided that a convicted felon and sexual assaulter, cheater, liar, and fraud would be a competent, honest, and decent leader?  Trump is the opposite of all that is good and honorable.

This is all on those who betrayed America by putting this pile of garbage into the Oval Office.    

CONSERVATIVE BRET STEPHENS, NYTIMES:

"Trump is Trump. Let’s think of him on his own terms. 

When the president completed his extraordinary political comeback in November, he was at the summit of his political power. He has eroded it every day since. With Matt Gaetz as his first choice for attorney general. With the needlessly bruising confirmation fights over the absurd choices of Hegseth, Robert Kennedy Jr., Kash Patel and Tulsi Gabbard. With making an enemy of Canada. With JD Vance’s grotesque outreach to the German far right. With the Oval Office abuse of Volodymyr Zelensky. With the helter-skelter tariff regime. With threats of conquest that antagonize historic allies for no plausible benefit. With dubious arrests and lawless deportations that can make heroes of unsympathetic individuals. And now with threats to the basic economic order that sent gold soaring to a record high of $3,500 an ounce and the Dow on track to its worst April since the late Hoover administration.

Democrats wondering how to oppose Trump most effectively might consider the following. Drop the dictator comparisons. Rehearse the above facts. Promise normality and offer plans to regain it. And remember that no matter how malignant he may be, there’s no better opponent than a face-plant president stumbling over his untied laces."

NOTE: FDR famously said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” 

Today, America has to fear Trump himself. His completely, unhinged, uncalculated actions are destroying America's economy and moral standing in the world.  

*ETTD: "Everything Trump Touches Dies." Or, in Tesla's case, is damaged!

 

I have an interest in what is happening to Tesla. 

Both my children own Teslas.

Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives is sounding another loud alarm bell for Tesla Inc., warning that CEO Elon Musk faces his own fork in the road as the electric vehicle maker prepares to report first quarter earnings Tuesday. 

 “Musk needs to leave the government, take a major step back on DOGE, and get back to being CEO of Tesla full-time,” wrote Ives in a report to clients Sunday. 

“Tesla is Musk and Musk is Tesla....and anyone that thinks the brand damage Musk has inflicted is not a real thing....spend some time speaking to car buyers in the US, Europe, and Asia...you will think differently after those discussions.” 

 “Tesla has unfortunately become a political symbol globally of the Trump Administration/DOGE,” wrote Ives on Sunday. He then ticked off several points: Tesla’s stock has been crushed since inauguration, the company’s first quarter delivery numbers were terrible, and protests against Tesla continue. Tesla faces “potentially 15 percent-20 percent permanent demand destruction for future Tesla buyers due to the brand damage Musk has created with DOGE,” Ives said.

[skip]

Tesla shares have fallen 43 percent since January 17. When the company reports earnings Tuesday, it will face questions about volume sales for 2025, progress on autonomous driving and plans for a robotaxi network, and how tariffs will impact profitability. Looming over everything is Musk’s role in the White House. 

 [skip] 

 “We view this as a fork in the road time: if Musk leaves the White House there will be permanent brand damage, but Tesla will have its most important asset and strategic thinker back as full time CEO,” wrote Ives. “If Musk chooses to stay with the Trump White House it could change the future of Tesla/brand damage will grow.”

 

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

TRUMP MAKING AMERICA HATED AGAIN:

No countries in Europe hanged effigies of former President Biden when he was in office. Look at what Trump has done to US:

The festival's annual 'Burning of Judas' tradition opted to put a certain president in the line of fire this year...

[image or embed]

— The London Economic (@thelondoneconomic.bsky.social) April 22, 2025 at 4:01 AM

MEXICO:

  

RUMOR IS THAT TRUMP WILL NAME THIS GUY TO REPLACE HEGSETH

 

IS HEGSETH ON HIS WAY OUT?

 BREAKING: Exclusive: The White House is looking to replace Pete Hegseth as defense secretary April 21, 20251:22 PM ET  

‪Amy Siskind‬ ‪@amysiskind.bsky.social‬

· 4m

NEW: White House begins search for new defense secretary. Shame on you Republicans senators for your cowardice in confirming Hegseth, putting our country and safety last!

‪Stephanie Kennedy‬ ‪@wordswithsteph.bsky.social‬

· 27m

NEW: MORE BOMBSHELLS The Pentagon’s former chief spokesman is warning that more “bombshell stories” about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are coming — set to leak within days, and that members of Hegseth’s own inner circle will applaud his inevitable ouster.

   ‪

Stephanie Kennedy‬ at the Pentagon, Pete Ullyot — who resigned just days ago. Ullyot: “It’s hard to see Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth remaining in his position for much longer.”

Former Pentagon official warns department’s dysfunction could topple Hegseth www.politico.com/news/2025/04...

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— Stephanie Kennedy (@wordswithsteph.bsky.social) April 20, 2025 at 9:36 PM

 

New York Times

Hegseth Said to Have Shared Attack Details in Second Signal Chat

The defense secretary sent sensitive information about strikes in Yemen to an encrypted group chat that included his wife and brother, people familiar with the matter said.

This screenshot is the smoking gun. The Defense Secretary—on Signal—live texting classified strike times to people without the proper clearance. Hegseth’s defense? Blame a “disgruntled employee” and bash the media. And the White House is still standing by him. 1/2

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— Christopher Webb (@cwebbonline.com) April 21, 2025 at 10:18 AM

YOUR SUNDAY MOMENT OF ZEN

 

SATURDAY NIGHT MUSIC

 

This song has been going through my mind since last week:

LAST NIGHT, PROJECTED ONTO THE OLD NORTH CHURCH, BOSTON, MASS.

 

April 18, 1775 - April 18, 2025

 

Paul Revere's ride enactment last night in my neighborhood in Boston's North End: 

Paul Revere walks from his home in North Square to Hanover Street down to the Charles River, after seeing "two if by sea" in the Old North Church bell tower. He then took a boat to Charlestown, where he mounted a horse and rode to every Middlesex village and town, warning that "the Regulars are coming!"

I'm squashed in there among my neighbors watching it all.

Light show view from East Boston, over the channel toward Boston Town:

Revolutionary reenactors Otto McGann, left, and Jayden Song hold a flag bearing the Lexington Minutemen insignia during commemorative events in Boston's North End on Friday, ahead of the 250th reenactment of Paul Revere's midnight ride. Erin Clark/Globe Staff