Adak, A Ghost Town

A colossal waste!

When my late wife, Sue, was in the Navy she served on an Alaskan island in Adak…..and recently I read an article about the island she served on for awhile….

On an island in the Bering Sea 1,200 miles from Anchorage sits an abandoned house on an abandoned Navy base. There is no furniture, and the wind blows through broken windows. The last people to live here moved away long ago. Yet a bright orange pipe with a black fiber-optic cable inside runs from the outer wall down into the surrounding soil.

The cable was installed to connect the home to the internet after the base closed. It costs more than $340,000 per year to provide this building and hundreds of others — all but a few of them empty — with internet access no one says they use.

The money being wasted is yours.

It comes from a fee added to nearly every American’s phone bill as part of a Federal Communications Commission subsidy program intended to bring fast, affordable internet to remote towns.

Reporting this year by the Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica has found that the multibillion-dollar Universal Service Fund pays for what often amounts to slow internet access for customers who actually no longer use it.

The FCC keeps the money flowing to telecom companies regardless of their owners’ track records. It kept paying a Fairbanks company to provide internet service while its owner served federal prison time for tax evasion. The government kept paying Alaska’s largest telecom, GCI, even after it signed a settlement for alleged fraud related to the subsidy. (The settlement said it was neither an admission of guilt by GCI nor a concession by the Justice Department that the claims were not well founded.)

On This Nearly Deserted Alaska Island, You Pay to Keep Hundreds of Empty Buildings Wired for Internet

Just another story of how the US government wastes countless dollars and yet cannot seem to help people with their problems.

Time for a change of government….we need help….and we need it now.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

The Ghost Of Gramsci

This is my continuing series on the success that the DSA has recently had at the polls and the meltdown that the Right is having dealing with this success…..passing out propaganda like candy to a 6 year old and it is working…..

Gramsci?  If you are not familiar with the workings of socialism then the name means little to Americans and yet the Washington Times invoked his name.

Before I go any further a quick lesson on Gramsci….

Key points:

  1. Historical materialism reworked
  • Society is shaped by material conditions but mediated by culture, institutions, and political practice.
  • Emphasis on how social forces, ideas and institutions interact over time to produce historical change.
  1. Hegemony
  • Core concept: ruling classes secure consent for their rule by shaping common-sense beliefs, moral frameworks, and cultural norms.
  • Hegemony = domination through a combination of coercion (state apparatuses, police, law) and consent (civil society: schools, churches, media, unions, cultural institutions).
  • Hegemony is never absolute; it requires continual work to maintain and is always contested.
  1. Civil society vs. political society
  • Distinction between political society (state, law, coercive institutions) and civil society (associations, culture, education, media).
  • Civil society is the terrain where hegemony is produced and reproduced; control of civil society is crucial for long-term stability of a social order.

Very basic but if you want more…..https://theconversation.com/antonio-gramsci-his-philosophy-explained-286341

That out of the way this is the bullshit article that made me go to this rant….

 

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/jul/14/democrats-embrace-gramscis-marxist-playbook-america/

 

Just another MAGA rag that spread manure like it was real…..

Personally I think Gramsci was an excellent thinker and some of his ideas deserve a second look….but think about this MAGA and the GOP have been using his concepts for many decades….so is he all that wrong?

Questions?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Are We Containing The Wrong Country?

Our worthless wars for the last several decades have been about containing this country or that…..our present conflict is about containing Iran and its influence in the Middle East….but is it possible we are containing the wrong country?

An excellent point comes out of the small country of Oman on the boot of the Arabian peninsula and at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz…..

Omani Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi penned an op-ed for the French outlet Le Monde on Tuesday. The article was a call for a new political and security architecture in the Gulf region, and served as a clear indictment not only for the current, disastrous war of choice that the United States and Israel initiated against Iran, but of forty-seven years of Western policy in the Gulf region.

The attention-grabbing statement comes when al-Busaidi notes the fundamental flaw of international policy in the Gulf was that it treated Iran as an existential threat to the security of the gulf region. In fact, he argues, the real threat comes from “decisions that are made in Tel Aviv.”

Unfortunately, although al-Busaidi is correct in his assertion, he merely states it as fact. He does nothing to support that point. That is a sorely missed opportunity.

Al-Busaidi has some genuine cache in diplomatic circles. He was the negotiator who managed to win a deal between the U.S. and Iran in February that would have significantly limited Iran’s nuclear program and allow for intrusive inspections. Donald Trump chose to blow that deal up by attacking Iran instead, at the behest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

If al-Busaidi had decided to use some of that credibility to elaborate on why Israel is the threat to Gulf stability rather than Iran, it would have been impactful.

Oman’s Foreign Minister to the West: You’ve been containing the wrong country

Finally someone publishing what many of us have been saying for 50+ years.

I totally agree with the foreign minister’s analysis and if you look at the history of the Middle East then a smart person will agree as well.

Israel has been the cause of more civilian deaths than any other country in the region…..they have attacked and destroyed in the name of security, which is a false narrative.

Sadly Israel will always have a free hand as long as the US is controlled by AIPAC money and a lame religious dogma.

I wish to thank al-Busaidi for speaking the truth.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

There Is An Infection Around

I could go on forever with this issue….pandemics, well just about anything could be called a sickness, right?

But for this post I want to address the disease known as MAGA.

You read that right….it is a disease and needs a cure….and soon.

Multiple experts are warning that President Donald Trump is gradually eroding American democracy through his actions since resuming office in 2025. Now, a new study from the American Journal of Political Science explains how so many Americans are willing to go along with his authoritarianism.

To learn this, researchers turned to Norway in order to assess how ordinary people reacted when surrounded by individuals with authoritarian ideologies, reported PsyPost’s Eric W. Dolan on Sunday. In a paper co-authored by Sirianne Dahlum, Torbjørn Hanson, Åshild Johnsen, Andreas Kotsadam, and Alexander Wuttke, the scholars conducted a “field experiment [which] randomly assigned soldiers to different rooms during boot camp, so soldiers lived among peers with varying levels of openness to authoritarian rule. We found that many individuals adjusted their privately reported support for authoritarian rule to align more closely with their peers.”

As a result of their study, the researchers concluded that there are weaknesses in democratic cultures when it comes to combating authoritarian ideas.

“The social basis of regime preferences that we have identified could imply that support for authoritarian rule could quickly spread in a society when citizens realize that these attitudes are more widespread than previously thought,” the authors explained. “It also points to the potential for cascade effects, where initial shifts in attitudes—through exogenous shocks—can spread rapidly through social networks, potentially leading to widespread changes in political norms. Understanding these dynamics is crucial for identifying how authoritarian sentiments might proliferate even in seemingly stable democracies and for developing effective strategies to reinforce and sustain democratic values.”

https://www.alternet.org/beliefs-of-trump-supporters/

There is a cure….but not if you are sitting there shrugging your shoulders and whining about things will always be this way….that is fucking defeatism and it has no place in the democracy.

Time to become the antidote for MAGA’s sick policies….if you cannot do that then maybe sitting around eating a grilled cheese and watching stupid shit is all you are capable of doing.

Me?  I will fight as long as I have breath in these lungs….and that is conditional on the cancer brewing….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

American Socialism–Redux

This is a continuing series that I offer on the post from IST past that cover this hot bed issue of socialism.

With the success and the possibilities of more success on the horizon the fearmongering machine of the GOP has once again started the long sleeping BS about socialism.

First let’s ask….what is a socialist?  A simple enough question yet the answers are anything but simple….

Gertrude Stein famously wrote, “A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose,” meaning everyone knows what a rose is. The same cannot be said of a Socialist.

There are many Democratic politicians who proudly call themselves Socialists or Democratic Socialists, and there are many adversaries who brand those individuals as Socialists. Both sides use the same word, but the word means very different things to the two sides.

https://thefulcrum.us/democracy/socialism-vs-democratic-socialism

Now with that out of the way let’s move on….

Fifteen years ago I posted a history of American socialism and I thought might be helpful for those scratching their heads about the Left turn the voters are trying.

 

American Socialism–A History Lesson

Just my small attempt to show that all the monsters that the Right is predicting is pure fantasy….but if you still want horrors then look at what Trump and his corrupt band of bandits have done to this nation.

We are so much better than Donny and his thugs.

Let’s prove it to ourselves and the world.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Fraudsters Can Run Wild

Yesterday I posted about Donny’s new thing of letting corporate bosses have instant access to his babblings of Truth Social so they can run to the markets and make money before the fact….that is disgusting but there is more disgusting stories….

The DOJ is abandoning the Corporate Crime Enforcement stuff.

US President Donald Trump’s Justice Department is systematically taking a softer approach to corporate crime, letting companies and executives that have admitted to wrongdoing off the hook with no charges.

The Wall Street Journal reported over the weekend that “so far this year, 12 companies have pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges. At least six companies have reached deferred prosecution agreements, including refiner Phillips 66 and medical-waste specialist Stericycle, acquired by Waste Management in 2024.” The Journal added that while Acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche and other officials have signaled that the Justice Department is “focusing on prosecuting employees rather than companies, it has also granted leniency or dropped charges against people it accused of wrongdoing.”

“The Trump DOJ’s grotesque retreat from corporate crime enforcement leaves Americans increasingly vulnerable to tainted food, workplace exploitation, environmental destruction, widespread ripoffs, and all-around illegal corporate predation,” said Rick Claypool, a researcher at the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen who has been tracking the fall of corporate enforcement during Trump’s second White House term—which has been rife with corruption and profiteering at the very top.

Claypool called the Trump Justice Department’s lenient approach to corporate criminals “an absolute outrage” and that the trend is “going from bad to worse.”

The Journal lays out several examples of the Justice Department abandoning enforcement efforts against prominent companies. “In matters involving Alibaba, EagleBank, and Abbott Laboratories, the department declined to charge companies even when prosecutors thought executives or managers were involved in the wrongdoing,” the newspaper reported. “In those cases, the department didn’t charge any individuals.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-corporate-crime-enforcement

This is pathetic that he would allow these pieces of shit have such freedoms…..all this sounds like his buddy Putin’s playbook in Russia for over twenty years.

Where are those elected cowards we call Democrats in all this corruption?

Well most are sitting in their offices counting the cash lobbyists throw at them….what I am saying in case you missed it….the Dems are NO better than the GOP when it comes to corruption.

I have said my piece.

I Read, I Write, You KNow

“lego ergo scribo”

Is This Legal?

Donny done a lot of things that I consider illegal and for the most part got away with it….but his latest idea I think goes a bit too far….

You knbow that our idiot Donny has his own social media, right?  It is called Truth Social and he spends every waking hour on it and degrade something or someone…..now he is giving instant acdcess to certain people….

President Donald Trump’s media company is launching a new product that will allow banks and financial traders to access Truth Social’s data at the “fastest” speed for a fee, giving them exclusive real-time access to posts that may affect the markets, as Trump’s posts frequently do.

The product is known as “Truth API,” and Trump Media & Technology Group, which runs Truth Social plans to leverage it into a “meaningful source of revenue for the company,” said interim CEO Kevin McGurn.

“Markets already move on Truth Social posts,” McGurn said. He also added that the company hopes to “create a lot of friction” for firms that have already been scraping Truth Social data, which the company says is against its terms of service.

The new product comes as the Trump administration faces scrutiny over potential insider trading, spurring the White House to send a warning to staff discouraging them from making bets related to the U.S. and Israel’s war on Iran on prediction markets. This followed reports of unusual activity surrounding bets before the start of the war, which came unannounced, during which traders placed over $500 million in bets on the war starting as well as $950 million in bets on oil prices.

Trump himself is also under scrutiny for questionable trading activity. In an analysis published Thursday, CNN documented over 20 times in which Trump promoted companies just days after buying stock in them. Breaking from prior presidencies, Trump’s assets aren’t in a blind trust, which means that he can see stock trades being made in his portfolio — and could, consequently, be manipulating markets for personal gain. Last year alone, managers of Trump’s assets made over 20,000 stock trades.

“This is why we’ve long said government officials should not be able to trade stock while they’re in office,” said Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, interim vice president of policy and government affairs for the Project on Government Oversight, to CNN. “That definitely applies to the president and the disproportionate power of that office.”

https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/truth-social-is-selling-instant-access-to-trumps-posts-to-banks-and-traders/

This, to me, is basically saying that insider trading is okay as long as you use Donny’s magic site…..

Do you feel me on this or am I being overly critical?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

How Many Communists?

With the popularity of the DSA so far in the midterms the rage by the Right has once again exploded into the usual stupidity about socialist or communists or Marxists and as usual none of it is accurate….

I have been fighting the false narrative for many many years and here we go again….soon the MAGA people will be counting all the communists in the country for exposure….

This is something I wrote about 14 years ago during an earlier attack on the Left….I use to have a feature in IST called the VOMITORIUM……

 

How Many Communists Are There?

 

That movie exposed just how stupid the whole thing becomes when you let idiots define the political landscape….

Enjoy.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Long Live The Fascists

Donny, Little Marco and the little nazi Miller have been pushing to make any opposition to their policies as Leftist terrorists (that would be me)….

For many decades the GOP has hated anyone that will not agree with their authoritarian policies and they now have the control to punish all those that disagree.

Trump administration officials on Thursday hyped up plans to carry out mass political arrests and prosecutions of people whom it deemed far-left terrorists.

In a speech given at the US State Department, Stephen Miller, President Donald Trump’s deputy chief of staff, described left-wing political violence as a “fatal cancer to civilization,” and boasted of plans to use state power to suppress people whom he called “political terrorists.”

Miller said that the administration would be carrying out this operation under the guidance of National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 (NSPM-7), a directive signed by Trump in September that demanded a “national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts.”

Miller bragged that “for the first time in American history,” NSPM-7 would direct “all of our law enforcement and intelligence agencies to work together to disrupt, identify, defund, de-bank, arrest, prosecute these political terrorists that are operating within our country.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/stephen-miller-nspm

Those three are not the only ones to hate other Americans….that demented little toad at ICE is as bad as any of these fascists shits…..

Instead of trigger-happy agents, he said that anti-ICE “rhetoric” from Democrats was to blame for the recent killings.

“It all goes back to the Dems who want to continually attack ICE and tell people to evade them and tell people don’t comply, tell people to resist, and tell people ICE isn’t a real law enforcement agency,” Homan said.

“You and I talked about this a year-and-a-half ago, Laura,” he continued. “I said, if the hateful rhetoric didn’t stop, there would be bloodshed.”

“I’m saying it right now,” Homan said. “There’s still going to be more bloodshed unless they shut their mouth and let ICE enforce the laws that they enacted.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/tom-homan-bloodshed

So no one can disagree with the actions of Donny’s Brown Shirts is that about right?

Anybody that supports this type of heavy handed tactics is as big a fascist as those that commit the deeds.

Is that clear enough?

I Read, I Write, You KNow

“lego ergo scribo”

Last Week At The Sh*t Show–19Jul26

It has been an interesting week at the Donny show….as usual it has been filled with lies, bullshit and chaos….just the way he likes it.

The dildo that leads this country has his name of yet another thing…..

In his second term, President Trump’s image has cropped up in many new places: U.S. passports, national park passes, government building banners and — soon — official coins.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent unveiled designs this week for a commemorative $1 gold-colored coin, which he said the U.S. Mint will start producing in honor of the country’s 250th birthday.

One side features the bald eagle from the distinctive U.S. seal. The other shows a close-up of Trump — wearing a suit, tie and serious expression — encircled by the word “Liberty” and “1776-2026.”

https://www.npr.org/2026/07/17/nx-s1-5897380/trump-coin-face-laws-treasury-250?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us

What an ego-centric prick!

Remember all the crap for about a week ago about the pool and its health….it made the news for days and it was full of accusations from vandals, to terrorists to god knows what else….but now we know the truth…..

The four experts interviewed for the piece say they can’t be positive of a precise cause from afar, but the failures, all of which occurred at seams, bear the hallmarks of improper application by the no-bid contractor behind the work, Atlantic Industrial Coatings. A number of things might have gone wrong. For example, once the work is underway, “they have a window [of time] … to get the next layer down,” says pool operations expert Rudy Stankowitz. “Otherwise, it’s not going to adhere properly unless additional prep is done.” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers disputed the findings of the analysis, again asserting that “deranged individuals made several gashes” in the pool.

Read the full analysis.

So his ranting was what it always is…. bullshit!

Then he gave a speech on ‘sinister election meddling’….it could be about his admin’s control over voting but nope it is China’s turn to be accused….

President Trump used his prime-time address on Thursday to make a series of sweeping accusations about election fraud, saying the US system “falls catastrophically short,” per the AP. He accused China in particular of “sinister election meddling” in the 2020 vote he lost to Joe Biden, and of carrying out “the largest compromise of election data in history.” He further alleged that members of the intelligence community and the “deep state” tried to “actively suppress” reports about China’s actions. And he also pushed Congress to pass the Save America Act to require proof of citizenship and voter ID at the polls, per NBC News.

This is all too familiar from this clown in the White House.

A couple MSM outlets did not carry his lame ass speech and now he wants to retaliate….

President Trump is again training his fire on major TV networks—this time over a speech they didn’t fully air. After ABC and NBC chose not to break into regular programming Thursday night for his address on “election integrity,” Trump accused them, without offering evidence, of participating in a broader scheme to hide fraud, the Washington Post reports. “They and others in the media are part of a plot,” he said, adding that the alleged wrongdoing should cost them their government broadcast licenses.

While Fox carried the speech live and CBS ran portions within a special report that noted Trump’s record of false election claims, ABC and NBC gave no public explanation for their decisions. CNN and MS Now also interspersed the speech with commentary and analysis, the Hill reports. Networks aren’t required to carry presidential addresses in primetime, which earlier presidents tended to reserve for major announcements, Politico reports.

What an infantile response….but that should have been expected.

The site Kalshi, a place to bet on anything, just made some guy happy….

The man who helps put words on President Trump’s teleprompter is now accused of cashing in on knowing them first. Federal commodities regulators found that Gabriel Perez, a longtime Trump teleprompter operator and technical assistant, used advance access to the president’s prepared remarks to place winning bets on prediction market Kalshi, sources tell ABC News. Investigators believe Perez made more than $100,000 by wagering on whether specific words or topics would appear in at least a dozen Trump speeches, including this year’s State of the Union and addresses in Davos and at a Medal of Honor ceremony.

Kalshi says its surveillance team flagged the trades and alerted its regulator, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which has since interviewed Perez; he has reportedly acknowledged some of the bets. Perez, whose salary as “deputy assistant to the president and technical advisor” is $175,000, has worked with Trump since 2016, CNN reports. Trump praised him during a 2024 campaign event in Reno, saying, “I have a guy, Gabe. He’s excellent. I’ve had some real bad ones, but I have Gabe.” Trump is known for going off-script, and Perez would sometimes back out of bets when the president skipped over parts of his prepared remarks, according to ABC’s sources.

Prosecutors in Manhattan declined to open a criminal case, but CFTC officials are said to be negotiating a settlement that would force Perez to return his profits and bar similar trades. Perez remains on the teleprompter team. “The White House has strict ethics guidelines that we expect all staffers and officials to follow,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told ABC. “The staffer in question is fully cooperating with the CFTC.” Kalshi has recently tightened its rules and now requires users to disclose their employers

And that is how it is done.

Donny and Iran have started up again the to sand fro of diplomatic silliness….and you guessed it the Strait of Hormuz is closed again…,not to worry Donny has an alternative….

“Shipping data trackers indicate that just 10 vessels passed through the Strait of Hormuz on Monday — less than 10 percent of what normally goes through this critical waterway,” Yingst stated. “When you say the strait is open, what do you mean?”

“It’s open if people want to go through it,” the president said. “We’re not opening it for Iran. That’s the only one it’s closed for. It’s closed for Iran both in and out. But it’s open now. A lot of things have happened, Trey, in the last few months. Pipelines are being built. We’re coming up with great alternatives, including Texas, including Alaska.”

https://knewz.com/president-donald-trump-texas-alaska-alternatives-strait-of-hormuz-iran-war-strikes/

Great!  Now explain how that helps Middle East oil transfers.

AIPAC retaliates…..

The amendment ultimately failed by a 104-314-10 vote, with Democrats almost evenly split on the issue and Massie as the lone GOP vote, but it highlighted a growing shift among the party’s members toward the U.S.’s closest ally in the Middle East.

Now, when people visit AIPAC’s online campaign contribution portal to donate to “pro-Israel” incumbents, the option is no longer available for members who sided with Massie’s amendment.

That includes House Democratic Whip Katherine Clark (Mass.), former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-Mass), among many others.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5975746-aipac-halts-democratic-donations/

It will cost them for doing the right thing.  I hope more Dems will join and help neutralize the AIPAC’s influence in the party.

I say f*ck AIPAC…..I say put them on the alien agents list.

Finally do you remember DNI Tulsi Gabbard?  Well her brother will be a bit of a bother…..

Batarti Gabbard, the 55-year-old brother of former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, was arrested Friday for allegedly trying to lure children to a hotel room in Honolulu, Hawaii using “gum and money,” the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported Saturday.

“Batarti Gabbard, aka Bhakti Gabbard, allegedly approached several children, including a boy, age 9, and offered them gum and money to accompany him to his hotel room, according to police,” the outlet reported. “He also asked the children for their names and wrote them in a notebook, police said. The children refused to go with him and the suspect walked away.”

Batarti Gabbard’s wife, Kimberly Gabbard, petitioned for a protective order from her husband on Friday due to what she described as “bizarre behavior” he exhibited the day prior, which included “singing loudly” and “disrupting others” in public, the report reads.

“His family members and I have repeatedly encouraged him to seek psychiatric treatment due to his significant deterioration of his mental state and judgment,” Kimberly Gabbard wrote in her petition, according to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.

Batarti Gabbard was charged with second-degree custodial interference, a misdemeanor.

(rawstory.com)

A misdemeanor?  Are kidding me?

After filling you with the silliness and the dread of the Donny show let me leave you with some humor in a hope that it can repair some of the damage these Donny stories may have done….

https://www.buzzfeed.com/trendyghost618/walking-on-someone-stories

Well sports fans that is it for me today…..I hope you were entertained and I hope you have a wonderful Sunday and as always….Be Well and Be Safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”