The Boss had something to say about things in America during a concert in Manchester, England. Seems a true patriot got under Dear Leader’s diapers.
GO BRUCE ! ..Thank you Bruce !!!
In my home, the America I love, the America I’ve written about, that has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration.
Tonight, we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experiment to rise with us, raise your voices against authoritarianism and let freedom ring!
…
They are abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those struggling for their freedom. They are defunding American universities that won’t bow down to their ideological demands.
They are removing residents off American streets and, without due process of law, are deporting them to foreign detention centers and prisons. This is all happening now.
A majority of our elected representatives have failed to protect the American people from the abuses of an unfit president and a rogue government. They have no concern or idea for what it means to be deeply American.
If you listen to Donald Trump, you will hear him repeat his keep-’em-happy phrases, “We are winning!”
DON’T BELIEVE IT!! The only ones who are ‘winning’ are corrupt plutocrats and our adversaries. Ordinary Americans are worried. Bond holders are worried.
In today’s news, reality hits. We are in a recession a of Trump’s own making. His tariffs and assaults on government hit home.
The proposed tax cuts for the rich are warmed over, debunked Supply Side nonsense from the 1980’s, when Reagan started us on the road to unsustainable debt. The ratings agencies have something to say about the proposed Trump party budget and taxes.
Way to go, Dear Leader!
So this is what Make America Great Again means??
Chaotic and incompetent governance
Disregard for the Constitution and rule of law
Punishing and harassing enemies (politicians, universities, media)
Extension of tax cuts for the wealthy
Endless lies
…and the list goes on and on
From the Financial Times today…
The US has been stripped of his top-notch triple-a credit rating by Moody’s on concerns about rising levels of government debt.
The agency on Friday afternoon cut its credit rating on the US to Aa1 form Aaa .. Fitch and S&P, the other main agencies, and previously removed the US’s pristine rating.
From Moody’s
“If the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is extended, which is our base case, it will add around $4 trillion to the federal fiscal primary (excluding interest payments) deficit over the next decade. As a result, we expect federal deficits to widen, reaching nearly 9% of GDP by 2035, up from 6.4% in 2024, driven mainly by increased interest payments on debt, rising entitlement spending and relatively low revenue generation.” – Moody’s
“Relatively low revenue generation” means …the rich and corporations not paying their fair share! DOGE is not going to fix this. The ‘big, beautiful tax bill’, which is a laundry list of bad policy and gifts to special interest, is not going fix this —it will add to the debt. The markets have spoken: they don’t like what they see in America and in Trump’s ‘big, beautiful budget’.
The truth is: Republicans have be WRONG about deficits for 45 years!
The Republican Party (once the party of fiscal responsibility) sold the public supply side / deficit snake oil, which created an uber-rich class with the public picking up obligations for future payments on debt for irresponsible, unneeded tax cuts. It is probably the biggest political con in American history.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent dismissed the downgrade, saying it reflected conditions already in the market (although Moody’s explicitly said it was concerned about the potential passage of the Republicans’ Big, Beautiful Bill). House speaker Mike Johnson said that the credit downgrade just proved the need for the measure with its “historic spending cuts” to pass (although Moody’s named that bill as its reason for the downgrade).
What has driven rising deficits are the George W. Bush and Donald Trump tax cuts, which had added $8 trillion and $1.7 trillion, respectively, to the debt by the end of the 2023 fiscal year.
But rather than permit those tax cuts to expire— or even to roll them back— the Republicans continue to insist Americans are overtaxed.
In fact, the U.S. is far below the average of the 37 other nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, an intergovernmental forum of democracies with market economies, in its tax levies. According to a report by the Center for American Progress in 2023, if the U.S. taxed at the average OECD level, over ten years it would have an additional $26 trillion in revenue. If the U.S. taxed at the average of European Union nations, it would have an additional $36 trillion.
Discretionary spending has fallen more than 40% in the past 50 years as a percentage of gross domestic product, from 11% to 6.3%.
At some point, deficits really DO matter. We · are · there !
Markets have spoken.
Canada, Denmark (with Greenland as its territory) and 8 other nations all have AAA credit ratings. America is now second tier.
Maybe THAT is why Trump is so interested in Canada and Greenland?? Maybe ‘winning’ is paying for good assets with debt, and when it doesn’t work out, declaring bankruptcy …or in this case defaulting on US Debt. Rating agencies see a Donald Trump patter. Markets see a pattern.
A wag on the internet said mockingly of the self-styled ‘King of Debt’, “Everything he touches goes bankrupt…“
The lies will just keep coming, cover for ineptitude, mistakes and self-dealing.
In the 2024 campaign, Trump insisted that foreign countries would pay for further tax cuts through tariffs, no matter how often economists said that tariffs are passed on to consumers.
…you mean, just like Mexico paid for the border wall??? One of the big lies of the 2016 campaign, for which Trump is never held accountable.
DO NOT BELIEVE THE LIES FROM TRUMP AND HIS STOOGES IN CONGRESS AND IN THE ADMINISTRATION. MARKETS ARE TELLING US THE HARD TRUTH.
WE · ARE · NOT · ‘WINNING’ !!
We will pay more to service our debt in the future because of diminished confidence in ability to meet out obligations. Trump’s recklessness and stupidity have reduced confidence in America and sent a message to the markets that America is not serious about managing its fiscal affairs (as well as its political affairs). Executive orders to other nations and rating agencies demanding their restore our credit rating will not change spooked bond markets requiring a higher premium for American debt. Markets don’t take orders from Trump –even though American corporations seem to…
The responsibility for the failing economy and debt downgrade rests with MAGAts and MAGA voters, who will never admit their responsibility for electing chaos, corruption and despotism …and failure.
We had a choice in 2024, perhaps not the choice we wanted, but we had a choice between responsible government and vengeful mayhem. Still incredible to me that we chose Trump and his party –when we KNEW what we were getting. The destructive consequences of that crazy choice have just begun.
If only our dogs could save us…
…but they can’t.
So, if live in a state/district that has a MAGA party representative, act up and make your voice heard. Tell them to stop the “big beautiful budget bill”. It is the ultimate con from the ultimate con man and his party.
…and remember, while Trump and his party lie, markets do not. We are not winning. And the ‘big beautiful budget bill’, like Trump himself, is a loser.
Gail’s pups are thriving! They turned 7 weeks over the weekend. I really cannot imagine letting pups go at 8 weeks. The next 4 weeks with their littermates exploring the farm are very important to their development. This is probably the easiest litter ever. A true delight.
L-RL Belle, Anne, JamesAn afternoon snooze on the ‘dog sofa’ with me in attendanceThis must be what it is like ‘working from home‘
Tick season is here in Vermont! For the second time in 3 days after being out with the dogs in the AM, I sad down the sofa with my laptop and there was a tick crawling across my keyboard and screen.
This is actually a ‘dog tick’, which does not carry Lyme disease, but does transit other nasties. No tick is safe!
Bravecto is an effective anti-tick treatment, an oral dose lasts 12 weeks. And all the dogs are vaccinated for Lyme disease. That does not stop them getting tick-borne anaplasmosis, which all my older generations have had, and which led to the death of poor Bryn, after he contracted it for a second time. It supercharged is genetic arthritis.
I use the same 4DX snap test to test that veterinarians use for tick and heart worm testing.
At 6 weeks, the three young pups were transferred to the group kennel in the barn. More space for them and less mess for me. All I need to do is change the shavings every few days. They miss being close to the action, so I get mobbed when I enter the kennel and they cry when I leave. A very affectionate litter!
Here they are dining on egg-foo-young, sheep dog style. I have been enjoying experimenting with recipes for this litter. Favorite meal is turkey chunks and juices with their normal kibble, chicken is a close second.
With the arrival of springlike weather, Gail’s three 5-week-old pups are now out part of the day enjoying the a new world. The pups turned 5 weeks 4 days ago. The sudden bit of affection at the end of the video is a request (granted) to put them back inside their kennel for breakfast.
Absolutely lovely natures. No shyness. Confident with the older dogs. Litters of 3 form a unit that tends to be quite tightly bonded.
Looney-Tunes villainous extraterrestrial Marvin-the-Martian‘s primary goal is to eliminate Earth because it obstructs his view of Venus. He often launches missiles and engages in other destructive schemes to achieve this, with Bugs Bunny as his main antagonist, whose resistance makes him ‘very angry‘.
Ant-like and dressed like the Roman god of war, Mars, Marvin suffers from a psychotic, delusional disorder of the grandiose type, bearing an uncanny resemblance to…
Spring arrived late here in Vermont. Happily, March and April have relieved our ‘abnormally dry’ spell. We bucked the global trend here in the Green Mountains, March being the warmest on record globally. Another year, another global heat record.
Every springtime is eerily quieter now, fewer birds. Sterile. Earth Day (April 22) passed almost without notice. Americans are focused on other things. Nature is an afterthought.
From the Washington Post
Two books that have shaped my view of nature and never fail to invoke melancholy and anger at what we have done and fail to do. I keep them in the area I sit to thumb through them from time to time. I usually have to put them down after a few minutes, the guilt and outrage inside bubbling up for what we have already lost and will never recover.
This sign came to me in a message this morning. Clever. Impactful. Definitely, a ‘sign of the times‘. This is not the America I grew up and took pride in. We had other issues, racial inequality and Vietnam and pollution, but the overall system of government worked as it was supposed to. ‘Hate’ existed, but it was not championed by the president or a major political party.
Historian Heather Cox Richardson had an interesting analysis in her daily post.
Trump was the logical outcome of the myth of cowboy individualism embraced by the Republicans since President Ronald Reagan rose to the White House by celebrating it. In that myth, a true American is a man who operates on his own, outside the community. He needs nothing from the government, works hard to support himself, protects his wife and children, and asserts his will by dominating others. Government is his enemy, according to the myth, because it takes his money to help undeserving freeloaders and because it regulates how he can run his business. A society dominated by a cowboy individual is a strong one.
Leaders who pushed this ideology knew it attracted voters. Once they were in power, they could slash government programs and cut taxes and regulations that kept wealth and opportunity accessible to poorer Americans. They argued that a society works best if wealth and power are concentrated among a few elites, who can direct capital more efficiently than government bureaucrats can. Their rhetoric worked: from 1981 to 2021, $50 trillion moved from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%. But those same people talking about individualism to secure votes also knew that the world has never worked this way. In the twenty-first century, U.S. security and the economy depended more than ever on coalitions and government investment.
China won the battle for global leadership in less than 100 days without firing a shot …thanks to Trump and his MAGAts. America is no longer reliable or attractive as a global partner. China has moved in to fill the vacuum.
