Friday, September 25, 2026

The Republican Party has a huge Ivanka Trump problem — and it could end in class warfare, a leading Democratic Socialist warned. “The anger and rage is building,” India Walton told Raw Story. “As we begin to raise our class consciousness and realize that racialized capitalism and the institutions that uphold it are the real enemy, and not one another, that will be the day that you'll see people in the streets.”

The headlining is from here, about Ivanka Trump ostentatious display of what slanted capitalism means to her in several tone-deaf scenarios. Excerpt -

What began as a one-issue outcry has developed into an organized movement as thousands of Albanians demand their government resign over concerns of corruption in the hands of oligarchs.

Ivanka Trump sparked this “Flamingo Revolution” when she bragged, again on her social media, about how she dived off a friend’s boat, swam to what she claimed was the barely known Sazan Island, took a barefoot hike to its peak and decided to “realize its potential.”

“It’s not even a business for me, despite the scale of it,” Ivanka told interviewer David Senra in May. “For me, it feels more like a challenge than anything else… a lot of reflection on how I want to live.”

How she wants to live? How I'd want to live, how I do live, absent wealth, clashes with priviliged ones such as Ivanka and Jarad.

My fault? Know my place? Viewpoints such as these fell the Bastille.

The people of Paris have no bread to eat.  * * *

 

 

Digby jumps in on Trump with spurs on.

 A Salon item carried by MSN begins with an unequivocal opening sentence -

On Tuesday, Donald Trump stood before the United Nations General Assembly to give a speech in which he made it clear that the United States has now fully abandoned its last remaining fig leaf of decency and morality on the world stage, and has embarked on an imperialist model not seen since the 19th century. Since this was a Trump speech, filled with his usual bombast and braggadocio, it didn’t have quite the shock value it might have carried in the past. But there was a new atmosphere in the room. The world sees America as a threat now, and countries are making new arrangements.

The speech was the worst he’s given, and that’s saying something. Delivered with a bored, desultory tone, the obviously tired president spent 40 minutes rambling on and on with his usual litany of grievances and lies. He made it clear that he sees no limits on his power. Looking directly at the Iranian president, he mused aloud, “I have a big decision to make. Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild? Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic? Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival, and no hope of future greatness for generations?” It was outrageously provocative and insulting, and on Wednesday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian responded in his own U.N. speech [...]

She did not think the speech appropriate, and included an image -


Face-palming on that speech likely was widespread, while it's hideousness got at least the Cuban and Iranian delegations to walk out. That level of speech, at the UN, is, euphemistically, "provocative." One might also say, "presumptive." 

 

 

 

Houti missel attacks against Saudi targets and ground war in Yemen - "Amid the fighting, the Saudi, Pakistani and Turkish foreign ministers met within the framework of the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, which was signed in August. They condemned attacks targeting Mecca and other civilian sites, while affirming Saudi Arabia's right to defend itself.

MSN carries a Reuters news item The headline quote is an early paragraph -

The Houthis have launched strikes on the Saudi-backed government in Yemen and repeatedly fired into Saudi Arabia, disrupting oil flows from the world's largest energy exporter, as part of a wider Middle East war that began with US and Israeli strikes on Iran in February.

The Houthis said they had fired dozens of missiles and drones at Saudi targets on Thursday, while authorities in Saudi Arabia said they had intercepted six ballistic missiles fired by Houthi fighters. 

Saudi Arabia had earlier issued emergency alerts for areas including the holy city of Mecca, as well as Jeddah and Yanbu, the main Saudi Red Sea oil port.

Saudi Arabia's Grand Mufti, the kingdom's top religious authority, called on soldiers to be ready to lay down their lives to fight the Houthis until the group is ousted from power, according to a statement late on Thursday.

[...] "The ministers also discussed arrangements for holding an urgent meeting of the chiefs of staff of the three countries to discuss ways to support Saudi Arabia under the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, which stipulates that an attack against any one of the parties constitutes an attack against all parties," a Saudi statement said.

The meeting was announced shortly after Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian sought to distance Iran from the Houthis in an American television interview on Thursday.

"The Houthis are responsible for their own actions," Pezeshkian told the Fox News program "Special Report with Bret Baier" a day after he appeared before the UN General Assembly in New York.

Turkey's defence ministry said Chief of General Staff General Selcuk Bayraktaroglu would travel to Saudi Arabia on Friday to meet his Saudi and Pakistani counterparts.

Ankara has previously said it could help meet Riyadh's military needs, especially on technical issues, but officials have said any support at this stage would be largely bilateral and in the spirit of their alliance, since the joint defence agreement has not yet been ratified by Turkey's parliament. 

The item also discusses a current Iranian statement that negotiations could resume in seven days if the US agreed to talk under the terms of the earlier MOU. Crabgrass sees this as unlikely.

 

 

 

Thursday, September 24, 2026

Life in a klepocracy is hard, where someone had to say, "Being honest in politics means you don't have to sweat remembering what you said last time your were asked the question." That is short of encouraging to regular people.

 The post below this one focuses upon factual reality that makes democracy largely absent in the U.S. of A.

It is a duopoly, with two business groups selling competing products. Then the major media cover a carping contest between the two factions as if it mattered. Most of what this blog examines is tied to the fiction of a democracy, and against the fiction by promoting progressives as the sole hope of reform.

It is sad because of the truth that the Chinese are better organized and will eat the USA's lunch, it being handed to them by empire destruction, done now by money divorced from anything the USA stood for after WW II where stability worries actually mattered.

Consider, the big time spenders, they front Trump and control the nukes that can destroy the planet.

And, readers, guess the likelihood that nuclear war is always near a brink, and those brinks involve very unstable self-centered posturing people in the U.S. such as Trump and Hegseth. 

Not to say those governing Iran are super stable. Or that the Chinese are and will remain sane enough to not ever start a nuclear war. They have the weaponry. Trump spoke at the UN General Assembly and was so grotesque that numerous delegations had to walk out and others such as Venezuela should have.

The Irranians are resilient, which is something different than wise. Shia theocracy is an Iranian bedrock, regardless of what the Iranian people may want, just as a duopoly of wealth is US bedrock. 

The Iranians appear to be winning Bibi's war, Trump having been conscripted by Bibi, while Trump blusters for his crowd as if the scenario were different. Oil interests bolster Trump, silently so, it seems.

Those sobering numbers that WaPo had courage to confront can gag a maggot, they are so gross and all that money goes to vile people called DC consultants, gumming up the works insufferably while paying out to who, Larry Ellison's child, who is scarfing up U.S. big media.. 

It is fucked. Tell me I am wrong.

UPDATE: One novel way to view those putting all that cash into hopelessly biasing the system - they are actually terrorists, causing more harm and terror to the bulk of the populace than a few somebodys randomly shooting up a street. The scale and kind of their harm to the nation, the suffering at their hands, the Angst and loathing caused, dwarfs all other "terrorist" actions.

Thinking them terrorists helps, but they'll never admit it other than maybe discussing their spending with cohorts, coordinating their great pecuniary raids and deeds.  What you get, however, from calling them worse terrorists than conventional terrorists is attention, being noticed and giving a name to actions, and that is a first step toward wider awakening of a human will for reform. Luigi got that point across about UnitedHealth, and big media has since ceaselessly belittled him on behalf of their own status within the  status quo.

If enough people would view wealth's war on everybody else as active terrorism, a need to rebut might be generated, vs an asleep public as now exists with wealth loving the lulled. 

And at least a discussion may result. 

Votes may look beyond duopoly politics, for redemption options. DSA or whatever. A true new third way. One beyond DSA, which in some tenets ignores human nature. 

Whatever property ownership norms govern, elites will COALESCE to manipulate their way into a collective control power. It is in the DNA. Widespread property ownership has an inertial argument given that aspect of human beings. 

All means of production owned by the proletariat, because of how humans have animal mid-brains has when tried segued into a more powerful and focused elite than if property is initially more stably spread and inherited. It is a conundrum socialists need to somehow resolve. 

The midterm U.S. elections are about 40 days away. Which party do you think will be the bastion in opposition to money in politics?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/interactive/2026/06/25/these-are-biggest-individual-donors-2026-election-cycle/  -- headlined

Meet the megadonors pouring more than $1.7 billion into the 2026 elections

Billionaires and Elon Musk, who recently temporarily achieved trillionaire status, make up the top individual donors.

The 50 biggest donors have contributed a combined$1,775,999,110 during the 2026 midterm cycle so far

From the item -
 
 Major political donors lean Republican, and cash could prove critical for the GOP to maintain control of Congress in November. Republican-leaning donors gave $1.07 billion, compared with $450 million from Democratic-leaning givers and $250 million from bipartisan and special-interest groups.

Most of the money, regardless of affiliation, was given to super PACs that can legally accept unlimited sums.

That means the consultants selling shit about the election are in a league with Apple and Walmart as to  the load on the economy. They are leeches. They are the reason politicians are intimidated into status quo posturing, and not reform of a very sick system.
 
The question posed in the headline has a simple answer. Neither fucking one. The game is rigged, the people get fucked. The progressives get hung out to dry by the evil investment in politicians where the more you buy the better your corporate and personal wealth interests prosper. It is totally fucked.
 

 

Wednesday, September 23, 2026

A video coherent argument about a worldview that is perverted, under the argument. View it, and note how coherent the presentation is, and how the ideas, call them that, which she critiques are not on solid ground. There is the biblical myth about feet of clay, and she's looking at feet in her commentary.

Heather Cox Richardson on would-be dictatorship musings spoken boldly in a quite pubic place.

It seems her historical factual assertions are not open to sensible debate. She recites how a world order was conceived after a devastation worldwide by war - one fought then with weapons well beyond those available to nations now, vs then.

Her underlying premise is giving up the world order in place is a bad idea unless done as an improvement, and whether that or backsliding is a question of looking at today and judging.

Her quotations from Trump's speech before the UN, are on record, there can be no debate over the words he spoke. They are all over the Internet, in video, and transcription is easy to show HCR nails the exact words Trump used. 

The HCR analysis hangs together to where everyone should hear and see it through, and then think it over. To Crabgrass, no problem saying, "She nails it," but others might see grounds to argue she's wrong.

 

 

The Minnesota Health Plan = Download the "book." For readers in Minnesota, it's what we need without being yet entitled to federal Medicare for All. For others it informs how one State's Dem Party insiders envision a sound plan and sound legislation implementing that plan. Arguably, a cookbook for other States wanting healthcare financing reform. (Fixing how health industry providers may overcome detailed counterproductive bottlenecks and practices is its own separate push of a big, big, separate rock uphill.)

 

The 148p item: https://mnhealthplan.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Healing-Health-Care.pdf 

Proposed legislation - the actual bills: https://www.hca-mn.org/legislation/  linking to here to search bill text and history from the legislation ID links on the identified web page. Bill lead authors are identified, and are known to Crabgrass to be top rate excellent. As people and as active minds.

There is nothing like getting down in the weeds for anyone advocating health care policy, here and abroad. 

Those above links permit it. Other site items -

FAQ - https://www.hca-mn.org/single-payer/ 

An Intro page -https://www.hca-mn.org/#about-us  

This is a well constructed website, well thought out and well presented. It is worth whatever time a reader invests in study.. 

Crabgrass grades it A+ 

If you believe you have identified further thinking beyond that of the website creators, the site footer has a contact form. The bet is it covers all you think necessary.