I'm not gonna lie Simon....in these dark days, it gives me a little spark of joy to see you enjoying making charts and graphs 📈📊 😉
All I have to say today is that in the most ironic (and moronic) moment of the 21st century to date, yesterday, Pete Hegseth called CNN "UNSERIOUS". To say this is the pot calling the kettle black is nowhere near a strong enough analogy. Happy weekend everyone....try to find some time to smile.....love defeats hate!
Headed to a town hall with Rep. Sam Liccardo later today. When I could “pre-register “ a question, I asked that he and the congressional delegation from Silicon Valley (Ro Khanna, Zoe Loren, Kevin Mullin) tell the tech bros (greater and lesser) that they are on the wrong side of history and will pay for their support of the fascists because Trump and company will not be in power forever. A day of accountability will come! Of course, I don’t expect him to answer this one in public.
I try very hard not to make judgments on the basis of personal appearances, but I make an exception for the lack of irises. It means the same thing in real life as it does in the movies, except when it means someone is high out of their gourd, and Jared's never high, except, apparently, when he was negotiating technical issues with the Iranians
I know he's the Prince of Darkness, and his rhetoric and editorials are not always embraced but I agree with Steve Schmidt today regarding this picture of Little Marco wearing Trump's shoes.
It is fucking hilarious. And stomach-turning. Reminds me a bit of Beckett's famous quote in "Godot."
"There's man all over for you, blaming on his boots the faults of his feet."
Or stuff something into the gap, like Trump does into his nose before debates. It'd just be the equivalent of the man himself taping down his ties (too bad he can't do the same for his "hair."
Stalin humiliated people too and kept them in a state of fear. You would have to take the shit from Stalin, or else you'll be in the gulag or worse. That might happen anyhow, but I get it.
When I was younger and working for an organization, I was told I couldn't enter the office bare-legged in NYC in the summer. I had to wear pants or pantyhose.
I told them that they could wear the torturous pantyhose, and the person who invented that damnation should have been jailed.
We have a madman at the helm and the Congressional Republicans stand fear-stricken or power-hungry while our country is destroyed. We need just few that can still summon a modicum of bravery to act now. Declare your independence and just caucus with the Democrats before all is lost. The country so desperately needs to end this tragic episode. Be that leader you aspired to be when you assumed office.
"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom". Anais Nin
I put my focus on the intermediate step, encouraging potential defectors to rebrand as #ConstitutionalConservatives, citing violations of both of those principles as they declare as independent, doing their patriotic duty to caucus with Democrats. At the very least, that's just living up to their oaths of office.
If just two do that, we can yank the gavel out of Johnson's hand and start a #BlueHouseOversightRampage. They can #FlipTheHouseEarlyAndBeHeroesForever.
You'll notice in that post a reference to #ProjectCarrot, the initial part of which is for DNC Chair Ken Martin to make deals with potential defectors to not fund or back a candidate against them as long as they remain independent and caucusing with Dems into 2027.
Hey Simon! Please check into this concept through my link and if worthy pass along to your peeps. My post includes a meme set to put onto Massie's feeds to appeal to him directly to BE OUR HERO.
I'll be making more memes this week for retiring Republicans that want to flip and dramatically upgrade their legacy.
So please use the script and make some calls, folks. In that Substack I also have a script for calls to convince Martin to fulfill his role in all this.
THIS NEEDS TO HAPPEN THIS MONTH, GANG, perhaps this coming week before Trump starts a global depression. "I told you so!" will provide very little satisfaction from that point on…
this is the answer to our prayers. the easiest way to stop trumpism. just a handful in the house and maybe senate. no elections, no impeachment. just repubs standing up and doing the right thing. no campaigns, no money, no nothing but saving the country. being patriotic. putting country over party and personal enrichment. it could work. i hope the dems are pursuing this every day. this should be a national overt campaign so americans could help pressure reluctant repubs. bumper stickers, logos, social media campaign. target them. help them. guide them. coerce them. a real campaign! it could work. everyone is really sick of this shit.
I'd go with power hungry. It's very entertaining to write to Cliff Bentz to see what easily disprovable magic 8 ball lies come back. They make great fodder for letters to the editor or even posts to beltway news comment sections.
I sent off 25 postcards to Georgia, and got stamps on 75 more blank cards. I'll look at donating something. I've got a lot of recurring stuff going out every month so I don't know how much more I can do.
But I'm increasingly convinced that we are totally fucked with this Iran situation. I spent the morning listening to Malcolm Nance and then Paul Krugman with Phillips O'Brien. I worry that Trump is going to do something more desperate and dumb. I think that is a given. One thing I worry about, which hardly anyone else seems to discuss, is that he might at least make a threat to use a nuclear weapon on Iran. We aren't there yet but I worry we could get there. It is extreme and unthinkable, but Trump is totally insane.
One thing that is increasingly clear is that, when we get a Democratic president, he/she is going to have to clear out the government, including the military, of the red-hat wearing dick wavers that are currently there. I worry they've hollowed out the upper ranks of the military to a group of the dumbest loyalists, and those people are going to have to be fired.
The second is on the special election in Georgia's 14 Congressional district. I'm less interested in the state of the race than I am in the quotes from the voters who will support the Republican in the race as a kind of extension of their support for Trump. This one goes back to the "stonger" vibe Simon has been discussing for over a year:
"Luis Linares, a 24-year-old son of Salvadoran immigrants born in Dalton, also voted for Lama. He voted for Biden in 2020, but supported Trump in 2024. He saw the local GOP candidate as a continuation of Trump’s policies. 'I feel like the US is stronger under Trump,' he said. 'I feel like the war in Iran is to free their people.'"
We need to keep working to degrade Trump in the minds of voters.
BTW, as cited in Ballotpedia, Amy Walter of the Cook Political Reports says that Georgia's 14th is the most Republican-leaning district in Georgia. According to Ballotpedia, Democrats gained 39.7% of the vote in the primary. That represents a 4% improvement over the 2024 race against MTG, but Shawn Harris would have to pull off a miracle to win in the special election.
I wonder if this isn't the right time to remind the media and voters that this *isn't* the first time Trump's actions have caused a massive spike in oil prices, After all, in a world of manufactured chaos, patterns = truth, i.e. exactly what the chaos is intended to eliminate. And in the process, maybe we can help finally, finally put the blame for the "Biden inflation" squarely where it belongs.
For anyone unfamiliar with the story, in April 2020, oil prices were in a free fall because of COVID (nobody was driving), and Trump's fossil fuel allies issued him an ultimatum: broker a deal between Putin and OPEC to massively cut oil production, or we turn off the campaign money spigot you rely on and you can kiss the Great State of Texas goodbye in November. Trump dutifully did so (yes, as usual, his attacks on others for cutting production were nothing more than a confession), revealing either his complete lack of faith in the efficacy of his own COVID response or complete lack of concern for the ultimate economic fate of the average American (probably both) **when he made it a two year deal**, slated to expire in April of 2022. When the vaccines came online as quickly as they did, the economy roared back into action without enough oil available to power it. Cue inflation in the price of everything.
The GOP and its enablers in the corporate media spent most of Biden's term blaming him for inflation, citing two main causes--the American Rescue Plan (a criticism routinely backed by alleged "Democrat" Larry Summers, who seems to have been dealt with divinely since) and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which supposedly never would have happened if he were still president (senior officials in his own first administration beg to differ--they say January 6th convinced Putin we were too divided to respond, and Russia's boots on the ground back them up--the invasion force was on Ukraine's border by February 2021).
The first explanation was ripped by Moody's right from the get-go, and the Fed was ultimately forced to admit the inflation was supply, not demand-driven. The second was proven wrong by the chart linked to below, which uses government sources to show that 85% of the increase in oil prices occurred *before* the invasion began. More damningly, it shows that once Trump's deal with the devils expired in April of 2022---with the war in full swing and only becoming increasingly intense---after *just one month* of further increases, the price of oil began to *fall,* and by the end of the year it was *lower than before the war started.* It's not often you get such a clear case of cause and effect:
The Trump regime has two escalation options to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Either it can threaten to destroy Iran as a viable society with an aerospace campaign that will commit multiple war crimes or conduct a major corp-sized assault to seize the Iranian coast line of the Strait. The bombing of Kharg Island petroleum export facilities is the beginning of the first option. Even with Israeli assistance this campaign will fail and only harden the Iranian people against us for the next hundred years. The deployment
To continue my comment: The deployment of the Tripoli amphibious group is just the beginning of a buildup of US air assault aka 101st Airborne and parachute assault aka 82nd Airborne brigades in Oman and/or the UAE. Additional Marine forces will have to be deployed as well. We are talking about an assault force of approximately 50,000 troops to including rocket artillery and support troops. The assault will involve several hundred lift and attack helicopters. Naturally, a buildup of this size will take several months while the Strait remains closed. Even if the military operation is surprisingly successful, it begs the question as to how long this operation will take and the circumstance for its termination.
It appears that the US military leadership warned Trump of this military contingency and was blown off since the fool thought a military operation against Iran would be a replay of the remarkably successful Venezuelan snatch job and coercion of the surviving Bolivarian government.
Great post, Peter, and good god, to your point, even if this succeeds, what will be left of the global economy by then? And what's to stop someone this reckless and impatient from dropping a nuke over there like he's dumping s*** on protesters, damn the consequences (because as he's pointed out about every mess he's created, he'll be dead before they really hit, and "I'm nit going to heaven" anyway). To be fair to him, he has made clear again and again that he knows more than everyone in the military combined about everything military (along with more about everything than everyone on the planet), and if he says so, it must be true.
Incidentally, fwiw, Hitler believed he was a military genius as well, and constantly micromanaged and overruled his generals. Of course, he was anything but, and after his initial blitzkrieg (what might be called his Venezuela), followed by beating up a lot of weak and capitulating countries in southeastern Europe, the Middie East, and North Africa (most of whom were all too happy to hand over their Jews), things weht steadily downhill from there, until "his generals" tried repeatedly to kill him. Long live the king.
If anybody else (like I ) missed the Jo Mendoza interview earlier this week- watch it! More than any other I’ve seen, she rightfully grounds the travesty of Trump’s decision to attack Iran where it belongs- putting our troops-the men and women in our military- in harm’s way without doing the hard thinking and having the hard Congressional debate about consequences and contingencies. She doesn’t wear her military experience on her sleeve, like our pathetic excuse of a Defense Secretary does, but it clearly shines through in her perspective on and concern for the impacts of this unnecessary war. She recognizes the cost to our nation, in the loss of life, to the overall economy and to people’s wallets, and the shredding of our global standing. She’s fighting hard to give hope to the voters in AZ 6 that by voting for her, they will see change, their lives will improve. She’s terrific! Thanks for bringing us this interview, Simon.
Hi all, just back from a protest here at the Jersey Shore on a cold, blustery day. Made calls to electeds, in particular demanding help for the release from ICE detention of a young man from Plainfield NJ, who was just moved down south in preparation for possible deportation. We are gearing up for No Kings, and I'm planning on being in Springsteen's hometown of Freehold--seemed kinda appropriate for round 3.
Just finished news boosting postcards and ordered some for VA redistricting referendum. Keep going!
I'm not gonna lie Simon....in these dark days, it gives me a little spark of joy to see you enjoying making charts and graphs 📈📊 😉
All I have to say today is that in the most ironic (and moronic) moment of the 21st century to date, yesterday, Pete Hegseth called CNN "UNSERIOUS". To say this is the pot calling the kettle black is nowhere near a strong enough analogy. Happy weekend everyone....try to find some time to smile.....love defeats hate!
🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸❤️❤️❤️
Headed to a town hall with Rep. Sam Liccardo later today. When I could “pre-register “ a question, I asked that he and the congressional delegation from Silicon Valley (Ro Khanna, Zoe Loren, Kevin Mullin) tell the tech bros (greater and lesser) that they are on the wrong side of history and will pay for their support of the fascists because Trump and company will not be in power forever. A day of accountability will come! Of course, I don’t expect him to answer this one in public.
I think Jared Kushner is every bit as venal and dangerous as his father in law.
He reminds me of a mannequin. I have a sneaking suspicion that there's no human in there.
No soul. Ivanka's shrink could have a field day with the daddy issues.
Graham too.
Ivanka doesn't see a shrink Her life is great, why would she?
Everyone else around her, however....
He is totally a bot.
I try very hard not to make judgments on the basis of personal appearances, but I make an exception for the lack of irises. It means the same thing in real life as it does in the movies, except when it means someone is high out of their gourd, and Jared's never high, except, apparently, when he was negotiating technical issues with the Iranians
Father too.
and just as stupid. always falling up!
I know he's the Prince of Darkness, and his rhetoric and editorials are not always embraced but I agree with Steve Schmidt today regarding this picture of Little Marco wearing Trump's shoes.
It is fucking hilarious. And stomach-turning. Reminds me a bit of Beckett's famous quote in "Godot."
"There's man all over for you, blaming on his boots the faults of his feet."
https://steveschmidt.substack.com/p/one-shoe-at-a-time?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
Couldn't those idiots figure out they needed to just buy the same shoe in their actual size?
I guess not. The first time my boss tried to tell me what kind of shoes to wear I would be looking for another job.
Or stuff something into the gap, like Trump does into his nose before debates. It'd just be the equivalent of the man himself taping down his ties (too bad he can't do the same for his "hair."
It is just another way to humiliate the people around him. That is what Trump does like any strongman.
Yeah. But they take it.
Stalin humiliated people too and kept them in a state of fear. You would have to take the shit from Stalin, or else you'll be in the gulag or worse. That might happen anyhow, but I get it.
But why would anyone take this shit from Trump?
Mussolini did that as well--it's textbook authoritarian!
and they are hideously ugly shiny shoes! florsheim???? tasteless subhuman.
When I was younger and working for an organization, I was told I couldn't enter the office bare-legged in NYC in the summer. I had to wear pants or pantyhose.
I told them that they could wear the torturous pantyhose, and the person who invented that damnation should have been jailed.
I wasn't fired, but I did leave for a better job.
We have a madman at the helm and the Congressional Republicans stand fear-stricken or power-hungry while our country is destroyed. We need just few that can still summon a modicum of bravery to act now. Declare your independence and just caucus with the Democrats before all is lost. The country so desperately needs to end this tragic episode. Be that leader you aspired to be when you assumed office.
"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom". Anais Nin
Yes! What you describe is what I call the #ImmediateFlipMovement so please use that when you spread your sentiments.
I feel that the first domino to fall should be Rep. Massie from KY. Here's a post to elaborate on that, including a script for calls to his offices.
https://toddtelford.substack.com/p/call-rep-massies-office-today-to?r=13imj&utm_medium=ios
I put my focus on the intermediate step, encouraging potential defectors to rebrand as #ConstitutionalConservatives, citing violations of both of those principles as they declare as independent, doing their patriotic duty to caucus with Democrats. At the very least, that's just living up to their oaths of office.
If just two do that, we can yank the gavel out of Johnson's hand and start a #BlueHouseOversightRampage. They can #FlipTheHouseEarlyAndBeHeroesForever.
You'll notice in that post a reference to #ProjectCarrot, the initial part of which is for DNC Chair Ken Martin to make deals with potential defectors to not fund or back a candidate against them as long as they remain independent and caucusing with Dems into 2027.
Hey Simon! Please check into this concept through my link and if worthy pass along to your peeps. My post includes a meme set to put onto Massie's feeds to appeal to him directly to BE OUR HERO.
I'll be making more memes this week for retiring Republicans that want to flip and dramatically upgrade their legacy.
So please use the script and make some calls, folks. In that Substack I also have a script for calls to convince Martin to fulfill his role in all this.
THIS NEEDS TO HAPPEN THIS MONTH, GANG, perhaps this coming week before Trump starts a global depression. "I told you so!" will provide very little satisfaction from that point on…
I like Constitutional Conservatives.
this is the answer to our prayers. the easiest way to stop trumpism. just a handful in the house and maybe senate. no elections, no impeachment. just repubs standing up and doing the right thing. no campaigns, no money, no nothing but saving the country. being patriotic. putting country over party and personal enrichment. it could work. i hope the dems are pursuing this every day. this should be a national overt campaign so americans could help pressure reluctant repubs. bumper stickers, logos, social media campaign. target them. help them. guide them. coerce them. a real campaign! it could work. everyone is really sick of this shit.
I'd go with power hungry. It's very entertaining to write to Cliff Bentz to see what easily disprovable magic 8 ball lies come back. They make great fodder for letters to the editor or even posts to beltway news comment sections.
I sent off 25 postcards to Georgia, and got stamps on 75 more blank cards. I'll look at donating something. I've got a lot of recurring stuff going out every month so I don't know how much more I can do.
But I'm increasingly convinced that we are totally fucked with this Iran situation. I spent the morning listening to Malcolm Nance and then Paul Krugman with Phillips O'Brien. I worry that Trump is going to do something more desperate and dumb. I think that is a given. One thing I worry about, which hardly anyone else seems to discuss, is that he might at least make a threat to use a nuclear weapon on Iran. We aren't there yet but I worry we could get there. It is extreme and unthinkable, but Trump is totally insane.
One thing that is increasingly clear is that, when we get a Democratic president, he/she is going to have to clear out the government, including the military, of the red-hat wearing dick wavers that are currently there. I worry they've hollowed out the upper ranks of the military to a group of the dumbest loyalists, and those people are going to have to be fired.
Paul Krugman is affectionately known in our house as “Happy Paul.” Brilliant for sure, but a little negative.
He's a glass "half-empty" kind of guy, just like my hubby, lol.
A couple articles in the Guardian today got my attention. The first is about the dangers of going up the escalatory ladder.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/14/how-iran-war-escalate-vietnam-trump-netanyahu-us-israel
The second is on the special election in Georgia's 14 Congressional district. I'm less interested in the state of the race than I am in the quotes from the voters who will support the Republican in the race as a kind of extension of their support for Trump. This one goes back to the "stonger" vibe Simon has been discussing for over a year:
"Luis Linares, a 24-year-old son of Salvadoran immigrants born in Dalton, also voted for Lama. He voted for Biden in 2020, but supported Trump in 2024. He saw the local GOP candidate as a continuation of Trump’s policies. 'I feel like the US is stronger under Trump,' he said. 'I feel like the war in Iran is to free their people.'"
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/14/democrats-georgia-election
We need to keep working to degrade Trump in the minds of voters.
BTW, as cited in Ballotpedia, Amy Walter of the Cook Political Reports says that Georgia's 14th is the most Republican-leaning district in Georgia. According to Ballotpedia, Democrats gained 39.7% of the vote in the primary. That represents a 4% improvement over the 2024 race against MTG, but Shawn Harris would have to pull off a miracle to win in the special election.
I wonder if this isn't the right time to remind the media and voters that this *isn't* the first time Trump's actions have caused a massive spike in oil prices, After all, in a world of manufactured chaos, patterns = truth, i.e. exactly what the chaos is intended to eliminate. And in the process, maybe we can help finally, finally put the blame for the "Biden inflation" squarely where it belongs.
For anyone unfamiliar with the story, in April 2020, oil prices were in a free fall because of COVID (nobody was driving), and Trump's fossil fuel allies issued him an ultimatum: broker a deal between Putin and OPEC to massively cut oil production, or we turn off the campaign money spigot you rely on and you can kiss the Great State of Texas goodbye in November. Trump dutifully did so (yes, as usual, his attacks on others for cutting production were nothing more than a confession), revealing either his complete lack of faith in the efficacy of his own COVID response or complete lack of concern for the ultimate economic fate of the average American (probably both) **when he made it a two year deal**, slated to expire in April of 2022. When the vaccines came online as quickly as they did, the economy roared back into action without enough oil available to power it. Cue inflation in the price of everything.
The GOP and its enablers in the corporate media spent most of Biden's term blaming him for inflation, citing two main causes--the American Rescue Plan (a criticism routinely backed by alleged "Democrat" Larry Summers, who seems to have been dealt with divinely since) and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which supposedly never would have happened if he were still president (senior officials in his own first administration beg to differ--they say January 6th convinced Putin we were too divided to respond, and Russia's boots on the ground back them up--the invasion force was on Ukraine's border by February 2021).
The first explanation was ripped by Moody's right from the get-go, and the Fed was ultimately forced to admit the inflation was supply, not demand-driven. The second was proven wrong by the chart linked to below, which uses government sources to show that 85% of the increase in oil prices occurred *before* the invasion began. More damningly, it shows that once Trump's deal with the devils expired in April of 2022---with the war in full swing and only becoming increasingly intense---after *just one month* of further increases, the price of oil began to *fall,* and by the end of the year it was *lower than before the war started.* It's not often you get such a clear case of cause and effect:
https://creativepoli.net/trump_oilshock1
The Trump regime has two escalation options to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Either it can threaten to destroy Iran as a viable society with an aerospace campaign that will commit multiple war crimes or conduct a major corp-sized assault to seize the Iranian coast line of the Strait. The bombing of Kharg Island petroleum export facilities is the beginning of the first option. Even with Israeli assistance this campaign will fail and only harden the Iranian people against us for the next hundred years. The deployment
2500 Marines headed to Iran. Some days it's Just. Too. Much. God bless those innocent Marines.
To continue my comment: The deployment of the Tripoli amphibious group is just the beginning of a buildup of US air assault aka 101st Airborne and parachute assault aka 82nd Airborne brigades in Oman and/or the UAE. Additional Marine forces will have to be deployed as well. We are talking about an assault force of approximately 50,000 troops to including rocket artillery and support troops. The assault will involve several hundred lift and attack helicopters. Naturally, a buildup of this size will take several months while the Strait remains closed. Even if the military operation is surprisingly successful, it begs the question as to how long this operation will take and the circumstance for its termination.
It appears that the US military leadership warned Trump of this military contingency and was blown off since the fool thought a military operation against Iran would be a replay of the remarkably successful Venezuelan snatch job and coercion of the surviving Bolivarian government.
Great post, Peter, and good god, to your point, even if this succeeds, what will be left of the global economy by then? And what's to stop someone this reckless and impatient from dropping a nuke over there like he's dumping s*** on protesters, damn the consequences (because as he's pointed out about every mess he's created, he'll be dead before they really hit, and "I'm nit going to heaven" anyway). To be fair to him, he has made clear again and again that he knows more than everyone in the military combined about everything military (along with more about everything than everyone on the planet), and if he says so, it must be true.
Incidentally, fwiw, Hitler believed he was a military genius as well, and constantly micromanaged and overruled his generals. Of course, he was anything but, and after his initial blitzkrieg (what might be called his Venezuela), followed by beating up a lot of weak and capitulating countries in southeastern Europe, the Middie East, and North Africa (most of whom were all too happy to hand over their Jews), things weht steadily downhill from there, until "his generals" tried repeatedly to kill him. Long live the king.
If anybody else (like I ) missed the Jo Mendoza interview earlier this week- watch it! More than any other I’ve seen, she rightfully grounds the travesty of Trump’s decision to attack Iran where it belongs- putting our troops-the men and women in our military- in harm’s way without doing the hard thinking and having the hard Congressional debate about consequences and contingencies. She doesn’t wear her military experience on her sleeve, like our pathetic excuse of a Defense Secretary does, but it clearly shines through in her perspective on and concern for the impacts of this unnecessary war. She recognizes the cost to our nation, in the loss of life, to the overall economy and to people’s wallets, and the shredding of our global standing. She’s fighting hard to give hope to the voters in AZ 6 that by voting for her, they will see change, their lives will improve. She’s terrific! Thanks for bringing us this interview, Simon.
Hi all, just back from a protest here at the Jersey Shore on a cold, blustery day. Made calls to electeds, in particular demanding help for the release from ICE detention of a young man from Plainfield NJ, who was just moved down south in preparation for possible deportation. We are gearing up for No Kings, and I'm planning on being in Springsteen's hometown of Freehold--seemed kinda appropriate for round 3.
Just finished news boosting postcards and ordered some for VA redistricting referendum. Keep going!
I'm old enough to remember when we sent just a few "advisors" to Viet Nam.
Yeah. What could go wrong?
Can a Democrat win the Senate in Mississippi? Convo with Joy Reid and Stuart Stevens
https://youtu.be/AWuAbdhhhuQ?si=jW9pS-BgxVzksjVC
We don't no stinking Strait, we got beautiful clean coal.