Lefties Must Pay

In my younger years, after Vietnam, I was an anti-war protester and as such I was a target of the government’s program, COINETPRO….a program that targeted protesters….I wrote about the program many years ago….

COINTELPRO: The Ghosts Of Protests Past

Thanks to this government program once I finished college I could get a good job….I settled for shoe store clerk then a bookkeeper the went to work for the state but thanks to the government that did not last long….then there was a string of similar jobs….all because the government used my anti-war stance against me then I got a good job as the manager of a pub that lasted 11 years but all that time I continued my protests against the government on many issues.

Sadly in today’s world the government has many ways of spying on protesters….from social media to phone conversations to face recognition….which makes their job so much easier than in the 70s.

That program never really went away they just used other terms to describe it and now with all the protests that is across the country the government is at it in a big way again…

Newly disclosed records reveal the US government extensively spied on prominent leftwing organizations and on protesters as part of a vast operation into groups opposing the immigration crackdown in Minnesota earlier this year.

Internal investigative reports show the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sent undercover agents to community meetings in the Twin Cities and New York City, infiltrated Signal chats and obtained financial records of mainstream unions and left-leaning non-profit groups.

Nearly 30 internal law enforcement reports were released on Thursday as part of a criminal case the Department of Justice has filed against 15 Minneapolis protesters. The defendants are accused of a “conspiracy” to “impede” US immigration officers during the Trump administration’s surge in the region.

The DHS investigative reports were disclosed by the government and submitted to the court by an attorney for one of the defendants. The records show that in January, DHS launched an inquiry called “Operation Puppet Master” to identify a “network of conspirators” organizing against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The operation came as community organizing against ICE was swelling in the region in response to the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/13/us-government-spied-anti-ice-protesters

Us so called ‘pinkos’ may not be the only targets of our government….you could be ….

The rapid spread of public surveillance cameras represents something far more consequential than a new piece of police technology. It represents a fundamental change in the relationship between the individual and the state.

These cameras allow government agents to record, identify, catalog and retroactively track the movements of people who have committed no crime, are suspected of no wrongdoing and have done nothing to invite government scrutiny. That’s not public safety. It’s an assault upon individual privacy.

Privacy is not a privilege granted by government. It is an aspect of personal liberty that the government exists to protect. It is a natural human right protected from the government in the Bill of Rights. The fact that a person leaves his home and travels upon a public road does not mean that he has surrendered that right.

There is an enormous moral and constitutional difference between a police officer who happens to observe a person in public and government surveillance that automatically and systematically records that person’s vehicle, location and movements; and stores that information for future use.

A free society doesn’t just protect people from crime; it protects them from arbitrary government. The presumption is liberty. Government is the negation of liberty. A person should not have to establish his innocence before the government leaves him alone. The burden always belongs to the government to justify all intrusions into personal liberty. Police cameras reverse that principle. They collect information about everyone the camera views and leave it to individuals to challenge the collections afterward.

A State of Surveillance

Be on your best behavior….Big Brother Is Watching.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

That’s Right–40 Trillion

The news has come up that the deficit has risen to $40 trillion….up from about $29 trillion….what the Hell happened?

Of course the Repubs will blame policies and somewhere it will be Biden and the Dems to blame….after all there is an election coming and what better time to try and sway the more economically ignorant?

But the truth is more in-line with reality……

Congressional Republicans have seized upon news that the US national debt reached $40 trillion to bash what they described as “unaffordable socialist policies” and out-of-control spending.

But economists and policy analysts say Republican policy decisions—from massive tax cuts for the rich to disastrous wars of choice in the Middle East—are primarily responsible for the explosion of the national debt over the past quarter-century. President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly promised to eliminate the national debt, has so far overseen an $11.6 trillion debt surge across his two White House terms.

“I have never been a deficit hawk, and I’m not about to change my religious affiliation now,” Dean Baker, senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, wrote Thursday. “But whatever we think of debt and deficits, there is one point that should be very clear: It has been run up almost entirely due to Republican tax cuts and their inept management of the economy.”

Economist Paul Krugman similarly wrote that while the $40 trillion figure “has no special significance,” it underscores “the incredible irresponsibility of the Trump administration, with its unfunded tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy, billions in wasteful military spending—redesigning aircraft carriers because Trump doesn’t like the way they look!—and more.”

“As Jared Bernstein and Bobby Kogan have shown, our deficit would be far more manageable if first [George W.] Bush, then Trump, hadn’t rammed through tax cuts that hugely favored high-income Americans,” Krugman added.

Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, estimated in 2023 that tax cuts enacted during the Bush administration and Trump’s first term were “responsible for 57% of the increase in the debt ratio since 2001, and more than 90% of the increase in the debt ratio if the one-time costs of bills responding to Covid-19 and the Great Recession are excluded.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/economists-trump-40-trillion-debt

All this deficit some of it can be blamed on our forever wars….I am not talking just about Repubs….Dems are just as damn guilty.

Another chunk of the deficit can be blamed on the constant passing of tax cuts over the years and yes the Dems are just as damn guilty here as well.

Maybe it is time for the American people to wake up to the lies and the reasons for this deficit….if we are to cut this deficit then revenues must be improved and a cessation of these lame ass wars.

And no tariffs will not change anything regardless of what the pseudo genius from Wharton tells you.

The rich have had a free ride for decades time for them to become contributing members of society (other than buying the Congress)….

That is that.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

News From The War

The US mash-up with Iran has all media outlets reporting all aspects of this conflict….the good the bad and the ugly.

I have found very little about the war started by Donny and his Israeli handlers that I can say is good….most of the news is bad and in many ways….then the is the ugly and that is what this post is about….

There are a few situations about this war that get very little coverage and this is one that is seriously lacking in complete coverage….

More than 750 US service members have been wounded since the US launched its war of aggression on Iran on 28 February, according to Defense Department casualty data updated on 19 August.

The update added more than 50 wounded US soldiers to the Pentagon’s war casualty database, bringing the official total to 757 wounded and 18 killed.

Those figures are drawn from two separate entries in the Pentagon’s Defense Casualty Analysis System, combining the totals listed under “Overseas Operations” with those recorded for Operation Epic Fury.

…

The Pentagon has not specified which war the Overseas Operations casualties relate to, nor where or how the personnel were killed or wounded, prompting further questions about the transparency of its reporting.

https://thecradle.co/articles/pentagon-says-over-750-us-troops-wounded-during-war-on-iran

This is a disservice by trying to hide the numbers….these are Americans serving their country and should be treated with more respect.

Is this what society has come to….I thought when we legalized gambling that it would become a frankenstein and so it is….

A small number of gamblers have made $8 million placing military and defense-related bets on the Polymarket prediction site, most placed by about 150 accounts that almost always bet correctly. The researchers say they suspect the accounts are linked to military insiders who could be flagged for law enforcement as “the most likely potential insiders,” researchers said in a new report.

When the most successful of those accounts bet on unlikely military events, researchers found, they won virtually every single time.

“Traders acting on specialized, non-public information possess an edge that is valuable only within a limited set of markets, and that produces win rates difficult to attribute to luck,” researchers with the Anti-Corruption Data Collective said in a new report released Thursday. The researchers studied the small number of bettors who met two criteria: ”The concentration of their betting within less than 100 markets and two topics, and unusual accuracy (over 75%) of their longshot bets.”

The same research group published a report in April that found a high risk of insider trading on military-related Polymarkets after observing that “longshot” bets on military operations won 52% of the time, which was four times more often than other types of markets.

(taskandpurpose.com)

This is getting creepy….we can now bet on cancer patients and now on war….this society is getting sicker by the year.

My stomach is turning….time for a step back….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Congress And AI

I have made it clear that I do not use AI and in truth I do not trust it….I prefer to do my own research and formulate my findings in my own words.

AI has wormed it’s way into just about all aspects of our lives from colleges to medicine to science to reporting and now it has a foothold in Congress.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has quietly wormed its way into drafting American laws, and the people responsible for getting bills right say it’s creating a mess.

According to Politico, congressional staffers and outside advocacy groups are increasingly turning to chatbots like Claude and ChatGPT to write legislative text, forcing the House Office of Legislative Counsel (OLC) to clean up after them.

“AI is good for a lot of stuff,” Daniel Schuman, executive director of the American Governance Institute, explained before warning, “But it’s not capable of drafting legislation that you would want to enact into law.”

One person who advises congressional offices said the OLC now spends “more time trying to fix AI-drafted legislation than it would take for them to draft it from scratch,” noting AI models reportedly stumble over fine legal distinctions, such as whether funding should be structured as “a tax credit, deduction, exclusion or grant.”

According to one congressional staffer tasked with doing a deep read of the proposed legislation, lawmakers have no idea what is coming down the road due to errors and citations that won’t hold up to scrutiny when conflicts arise.

“It’s absolutely terrifying, and no one is thinking about it yet,” they predicted.

The risks aren’t hypothetical, Politico is reporting. Case in point: In June, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna’s (R-FL) office published an amendment summary that still contained the unedited chatbot phrase “Claude responded.” Luna acknowledged on X that “my staff used AI to correct a draft text and didn’t edit,” which raised alarms at the time.

Ari Hershowitz, a lawyer and technologist who has worked with the office to integrate tech tools into the legislative process, admitted that without checks, it’s “a guaranteed way of introducing thousands of bugs into our legal system.”

(rawstory.com)

Just another attempt to not do their jobs…..allow AI to write the bills and then more time with the high dollar donors.

This is what our political system has become….and I find it disgusting and pathetic.

Anything to add?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

8 Million And Counting

What is the scoreboard for you might question….this is just to let the world know what Donny and those slugs that are in his employ are doing to the health of this nation.

The unprecedented healthcare cuts that President Donald Trump and the Republican Party enacted last summer have impacted people in all 50 US states, stripping insurance coverage from around 8 million Americans total and wreaking havoc on hospitals and other providers nationwide.

The advocacy group Protect Our Care on Tuesday released state-by-state fact sheets detailing how many people have lost Medicaid, Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and Affordable Care Act coverage due to Republican policy decisions, including the party’s roughly $900 billion in cuts to Medicaid and decision to let enhanced ACA subsidies expire, sending premiums skyrocketing.

“Eight million Americans have lost their health care because Donald Trump and Republicans decided they would rather hand out tax breaks to billionaires than protect working families,” said Brad Woodhouse, the president of Protect Our Care. “Every day that healthcare becomes more expensive, a family is forced to make an impossible choice between putting food on the table and staying covered, a senior is forced to ration their medication, and an expectant mother has to travel farther to access maternity care.”

(commondreams.org)

I still say let’s give Medicare For All (M4A)…..what have we to lose?

To be honest I want to give you an opposing view….this is from the website Reason….keep in mind their slogan is “Free Minds and Free Markets”….so with that in mind they are basically on the side of for profit healthcare…

“Free healthcare is cool,” comedian Shane Gillis recently said on The Joe Rogan Experience. “We should have that.”

“You should treat the entire country like it’s a community,” Rogan replied. “If you had a community, would you want the sickest person to fucking die who could be very valuable if you could take care of them, and do you have the resources to take care of them?”

While support for “free” healthcare in the United States is not new—Harry Truman campaigned on universal health insurance in 1948, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) has popularized the “Medicare For All” slogan in recent years—the policy has received renewed interest of late. The Democratic Socialists of America have made universal healthcare “at no cost to individuals” a key component of their party’s expensive platform.

But it is not just political hopefuls who like the idea of universal healthcare; academics seem to as well. A recent study by the Yale School of Public Health claims that single-payer universal healthcare would save more than 100,000 lives a year, and would supposedly cost $1 trillion less than the system it would replace. The study, which has not been peer-reviewed yet, appears to come to its conclusions by modeling a scenario that assumes cheaper pharmaceutical prices, less administrative overhead, reduced fraud, and fewer emergency visits.

…

The U.S. healthcare system has plenty of problems. While the promise of “free stuff” may sound tempting, the experience of countries with universal healthcare should make Americans deeply skeptical of the idea that putting the government in charge of the entire system is a panacea.

https://reason.com/2026/08/19/universal-healthcare-sounds-great-heres-whats-happening-in-countries-that-have-it/

The part about long waits for treatment….when I needed a gastro doctor it took me 14 weeks to get an appointment….we have those long waits, maybe not as stark as others but they are there.

If they are against M4A then how about giving Americans the same coverage as Congress people?  It is free and their waits are shorter and their drugs are mostly free….how about that for a solution?

In case there are those that still do not know what M4A is….let me help….here are the basics….

Medicare for All would transform the program into a single-payer health insurance program that would provide all Americans with healthcare coverage.

Single-payer healthcare systems, also called universal healthcare, are currently in place in various countries worldwide. These healthcare systems can have differing elements, such as:

  • how the health insurance is paid for
  • how the healthcare is delivered
  • how the health facilities are owned and operated

So yes I support M4A and will do so as long as I kind breathe on my own.

How about you?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Let’s Blame The “America Hating” Media

When things blow up in Donny’s face he turns to his stand-by excuse….blame the media….and so it is with the problems on the USS Lincoln….

Over the past week, Pentagon officials launched a broadside against reports of dire conditions on the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, which has been deployed in the Middle East for more than eight months.

Less than 24 hours after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth first criticized reporting about the Lincoln as “completely misrepresented,” a seemingly coordinated messaging campaign spread across the Pentagon’s social media apparatus. At least six senior Pentagon and Navy officials and spokespeople, along with official department accounts, published or amplified substantially similar attacks on the reporting across X and Facebook.

Recent reporting by Military Times and Stars and Stripes has drawn significant national attention to alarming conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, the flagship of Carrier Strike Group 3 operating under the U.S. 5th Fleet.

Reporting by Natalie Oliverio, a Navy veteran and award-winning journalist, documented concerns from service members and their families about suicide attempts, inadequate food, shortages of basic hygiene products, and deteriorating sanitation conditions aboard the carrier.

The concerns have since drawn coverage from CNN, NPR and other national news organizations.

U.S. Central Command subsequently placed Oliverio’s reporting prominently in an infographic declaring that “multiple media outlets have reported several false claims” about the Lincoln. While five other reports displayed in the graphic were labeled “FALSE,” Oliverio’s reporting was labeled “MISINFORMED.”

On Aug. 14, Hegseth accused the “reckless & shameless ‘American’ media” of “completely & intentionally” misrepresenting the situation on the Lincoln, later referring to “fake, America-hating news.”

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/uss-abraham-lincoln-news/

That is their answer to any facts that puts them in the spotlight…..Donny and the slime ball Pistol Pete care nothing for the men and women that service and protect this nation.

The only shame is what these fools are doing to our troops….they deserve better than the morons that run their lives and the suck ups that command them.

I believe the horror stories….do you?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Women In Danger

This is a post on something I read the other day about women serving in the US Army.

When I was in the Army, 1967-1970, women were clerks, nurses and other non-combatants but in today’s Army they can do anything a man can do.

There is lots of disturbing reports about what goes on in the military between men and women but this report is just plain horrific.

Twenty-three-year-old Sarah Roque had been in the Army for just over four years when a man fatally shot her in the head.

Roque wasn’t in a war zone, and the killer wasn’t an enemy combatant. It was Wooster Rancy, a fellow soldier stationed at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, who had gone to Walmart for trash bags on the last day Roque was seen alive in October 2024. The Army found her body in a dumpster behind the barracks.

“Even now, I still can’t believe it,” her mother, Ana Roque, told The Intercept. “That murderers could exist in one of the supposedly safest places in the country.”

A first-of-its-kind analysis by The Intercept found that in the Army, women are more likely to be killed by their fellow service members than by enemy combatants, in a reversal of the threat soldiers are trained to face. Between 2011 and August 2025, at least 41 women died by homicide in the Army — more than half of them at the hands of other service members or veterans. Using Defense Department manpower data to calculate per capita death rates, The Intercept found that active-duty Army women face a higher risk of homicide than male soldiers, the opposite of national and global trends

In many cases, women in the Army are killed by current or former romantic partners. Over 70 percent of victims had an intimate relationship with the perpetrator at one point, and the rate of homicides among women soldiers from intimate partner violence is at least three times higher than the national average. In others, like Roque’s case, it’s unclear how male soldiers chose their victims.

 

Women in the Army Are More Likely to Be Killed by Fellow Soldiers Than Enemy Combatants

What is it that fuels these acts?

Is it the culture of violence the military brings?

Or is it just a sign of the times?

Please if there are any thoughts  come forth and share.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

The “Dirt Bag” Wing

With all the success that the DSA is having in the elections the propaganda wing of MAGA pulls out all the stops to trash what is happening.

I want to say that I do not support this type of bullshit reporting I offer it up as FYI and to show just how far the MAGA machine will go to misinform the public.

Most of this is LIES.

 

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/aug/5/beware-dsa-dirtbag-wing-democratic-party/

 

This goes to illustrate just how much afraid of the current trend in voting.

Anything you would like to say?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

 

 

Nukes Next Door

I admit it I am an anti-nuke person….why make all that discharge when there are so many better ways to generate energy–wind, solar, tidal, etc–

I bring this up because that idiot Donny has signed a new nuke waste thing that could well effect my state of Mississippi.

The Trump administration has quietly narrowed its search for new nuclear waste sites to five states. The Energy Department on Tuesday said it has struck preliminary agreements with Utah, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Idaho to study whether they could host long-term storage facilities—so-called “Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses”—for spent nuclear fuel “in exchange for federal help developing nuclear energy,” per the AP. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the five were picked from 28 applications from 26 states, reports the Hill.

  • Nuclear power has enjoyed bipartisan backing, but a permanent answer for high-level waste has eluded Washington for decades, with the long-planned Yucca Mountain site in Nevada stalled amid fierce local resistance. (Indeed, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto hailed the news by saying, “I am glad to see the Trump administration take a step toward acknowledging what Nevadans have known for years: Yucca Mountain is dead.”)
  • More than 95,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste is currently stored at nuclear plants and former nuclear sites nationwide. “The new storage sites would move the radioactive material away from population centers, fault lines, and flood plains,” per the AP.
  • In addition to the waste sites, the campuses would handle uranium enrichment, spent-fuel reprocessing, and fuel fabrication, and may also host advanced reactor deployment, power generation, and data centers.
  • The Energy Department estimates the campuses could generate as much as $10 billion in state and local tax revenues.

“Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses”–seriously?  Put a pleasingly neutral name to something that could devastate–it is what politicians do.

Some of the waste has a half life of 200+ years….so the states will be saddled with this crap forever…..

I do not think this is a good idea for any state.  Here is a better idea…..screw nuclear, stop wasting money on something this dangerous and spend the money where it will do the most good–in wind, solar, tidal, etc.

Just a thought

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Restore Oil Flow Without Hormuz

The big deal these days is Donny and his delusional idea for the Strait of Hormuz but none of them will restore the flow of oil….is there answer to some sort of restoration?

This article covers the possibilities and god knows oil companies do not want to go without their money maker….

The largest global oil shock on record has catapulted U.S. gasoline prices above $4 a gallon, rekindled inflation and set the stage for November’s midterm elections.

It all traces to fighting in a narrow strip of water thousands of miles away. Iran’s near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz choked off a trade route responsible for about 20% of global oil supply, or nearly 21 million barrels of oil each day, according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency. A U.S. blockade of Iranian ships deepened the crude shortage.

On-again, off-again negotiations have shown little sign of a breakthrough, encouraging oil producers and Gulf nations to seek out other trade routes, some of which are already transporting millions of barrels each day.

Those alternatives, in theory, could eventually restore most of the lost oil flow and provide relief at the pump, some analysts told ABC News, but construction would take several years and require major investment. Still, they said, the approach may offer a durable fix, heading off future flareups in the Strait.

“You’ve already got some projects in the works. I don’t see any turning back,” Tom Seng, a professor of energy finance at Texas Christian University, told ABC News. “Nobody wants to get stung without a solution again.”

Shipping traffic in the Strait has declined sharply since the outbreak of war in Iran, according to oil data company Kpler. An average of about 13 ships crossed the Strait each day last week, the firm said in a post on X, down from more than 100 ships per day before the recent conflict.

https://abcnews.com/Business/gas-prices-fall-companies-build-oil-routes-bypass/story

The pipeline idea is a fanciful one….it will go through some unstable areas to make it to market….and then how will they secure the pipeline from attacks that will stymie oil flow?

Let me guess….the US military will provide security for these operations, right?

I think this is a bad idea….and if instigated would come back to bite us in the ass.

What do you guys think of this ‘plan’?

On a side note….there is talk of after the war with Iran that US would draw down its presence in the region….

The US military is considering reducing its military presence in the Persian Gulf, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday, as many of its bases in the region have been badly damaged by Iranian attacks.

Many of the US bases in the Gulf had been evacuated before the US and Israel launched the bombing campaign against Iran on February 28 due to their vulnerability, and some have been essentially abandoned following heavy Iranian attacks.

The Post report said that the damage to US bases in the Gulf has “prompted a once-in-a-generation chance for the Pentagon to reconsider its presence in the region” and that the Pentagon had already signaled it may not rebuild its Gulf bases to how they were before.

Sources told the paper that Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of US Central Command (CENTCOM), has been involved in discussions about the future of the US military presence in the region and supports holding deliberations on potentially moving troops west from the Persian Gulf.

Notably, a pullback of US troops from the Persian Gulf has been one of Iran’s conditions for a deal to end the conflict. Iranian officials have frequently said that they believe this war will lead to a US “retreat” from the region.

(antiwar.com)

Does anyone think oil companies will allow this to take place?

I don’t.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”