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Gail Smith's avatar

Hi! FYI Just wanted to point out that this episode could not be saved in YouTube as it was "made for children" according to them. I don't save all the episodes, but tried to save this one and got that message. Someone needs to check their settings.....

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flo chapgier's avatar

Thank you Rick

I was listening to that awesome April 22hd podcast called Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov, and here is something that Scott said about what we should do, as Democrats needing to run now for office :

“ “You raise a few million dollars, and you get two turntables and a microphone. And I'll come back to why I said two turntables and a microphone. That's a bit of a tease.

And you create your own media, and you go on every day. And if these people did something with a reasonable amount of production value, a great producer and writer, you know, like we have here, and every day came out with three, five, 20 minutes and just hit these guys hard in the nuts every fucking day, and it would be hard. You'd have to absorb all the news, distill it.

It's a full-time job.

Yeah, it's a full-time job. And all these guys are looking for jobs. And every day came out with something.”

This is why young democrats need now to start campaigning and TALK every day on every issue and push back on what is happening and give their PROGRAM. And INSPIRE people, we, the people !

From The Prof G Pod with Scott Apr 22, 2025

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-prof-g-podcast

This IS what needs to be done

I have been commenting for a month that we ( our democrat leaders) need to be vocal

This is it

Much better said by Scott Galloway

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Tim's avatar

I wrote an essay for my high school journalism class. I was well aware of who and what Trumplethinskin was. That was in the early 80’s.

He ran for President and I did everything I could to tell them that he would get people killed (enter Covid-19).

That wasn’t enough for them so they voted for him again.

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Lynn Van Haren's avatar

These numbers are the reason I never believed he really won ALL seven swing states. Musk had something to do with changing votes. More ballots than ever in the history of our elections were turned in with only tRump’s name filled in. I’m really shocked that Biden or Harris didn’t demand a hand recount

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Lynn Helloise's avatar

Trump is rotten to the core and a divining rod for extremist, insatiably power mad freaks in need of a mascot. The amount of fog and gaslighting that blurs his evil to his base is why he gets away with so much. Sane people doubt anyone could be that vile and insane people get off on his sadism. It’s good to see some of the fog lifting revealing not just his profound derangement and criminality but to hone in on his intellectual laziness, his illiteracy,?venality and disdain for humanity. His base is groggy and filled with their own hate but eyelids are fluttering indicating there must be some independent life within, a modicum of self protection. Even his biggest crowd pleaser, abusing immigrants, is startling some out of their complacency. Oh, but that’s not a terriorist, but the owner of my favorite shop. Ditto with all the government workers being haphazardly fired, no, but that’sBob, whose kids are in school with ours, not a criminal but a doctor who works in a free clinic.Familiarity can bring contempt or it can highlight the cruel and idiotic decision to punish worthy people based entirely on the fact Jim’s of psychopaths.

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Bertila Damas's avatar

This beastly mushroom dickhead boy, doesn’t care about politics in any way, shape or form. Zip.

They’re moving on with their plans as fast as there devil hooves will go. Under or over water they don’t care.

Maybe Susie Coyote might care but no one in this administration gives a crap about politics.

Their mission is moving along and nothing has actually stopped them from the continuing destruction.

They will continue apace no matter what comes down the pike.

We have to mobilize much faster, much bigger and it must be a daily, hourly, minute by minute massive joint move with high levels of coordination between all of those in opposition. Someone has to get out in front and lead a UNITED OPPOSITION - law firms, moms, universities, businesses, dads, politicians, pundits & etc.

We need a leader or leaders to unite all factions of the the pro-democracy movement and raise the hell fires these fascists need to burn their asses to the ground and make them rue the day they thought they could take America down.

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Elaine Barr's avatar

Never mind US America. As a Canadian citizen I cannot even begin to tell you how much I despise the individual your country chose as a leader. As bad as he treats you, at least your people had the opportunity to vote. We did not, yet he belittles us, his supporters write uneducated, illiterate, and beyond disgusting things on posts Canadians write about our resistance to protect our nation, our boycotts, the lies about us and our borders, and Canada’s involvement in wars and supporting the US when after Article 5 from the US in the 2001. The fact that at least, some of you didn’t vote for this unadulterated fascist state is why I have not said f-bomb to all of you.

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Tim_TEC's avatar

Here's why the poll numbers are particularly bad for Trump. This is the honeymoon period for every new administration. The poll numbers for the first three months are some of the best for each newly elected president. Trump's disastrous low numbers were only beaten by one other administration. That is the first Trump term, and he's crashing through that bottom floor.

The worst thing for Trump is he's got no way to climb out of the hole he dug. He inherited a strong economy: unemployment at historic lows at only 4%, pretty much anyone who wanted a job could get one somewhere. The GDP was robust. The stock market was at historic highs. Inflation had gone down to almost the target level for the Fed at 2.5%. If Trump had those numbers during a campaign, they'd throw parades in his honor and just hand him the White House. The only turd in the punchbowl were egg prices, but that was improving too. So what can Trump do to get these numbers back? He's got no clue. None of the sycophantic morons who surround him have any clue either. Their only hope is for Trump to lose his cataclysmic tariff fetish and get out of the way and hope the economy rights itself. Good luck with that.

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Larry McGinnity's avatar

We the People at Work

The People, the protectors of Democracy, are out and about. What "people," out where, about what--and why? First, millions said "Hand Off"to Trump/Musk et al, then on the 19th via 50501" (50 protests, 5o states, 1 Movement) millions more protested the mess in WDC. Also on the 19th we celebrated the "the shot heard around the world at Lexington and Concord, starting the Revolution and our country. On the 22nd protectors of the environment cleaned up a different kind of mess on Earth Day.

As important as the participants in environmental mess cleanup and American history are, this post is dedicated to the named and unnamed protestors fighting the Trump/Musk Washington, DC, tyrannical mess. Or as Susan Grymes calls it: Protectors [of democracy, and so shall I in this post.

Who are the Protectors of democracy on April 5, 19th, May 1st--or all the everydays in between and into the future?? We will never know the names of each individual marcher, sign holder (or just standing together in solidarity). But we do know by name some people, advocacy groups, judges and law firms, and other entities who have not been cowed, and have fought back publicly--sometimes under threat of death.. Some, such as Sen. Cory Booker, with his 25 hour righteous speech on ethics, morality, and American democracy,have become an inspiration. Here then, in no particular order of noteworthy (except the first three), are the names of many of the army of protectors of democracy--and remember Courage is Contagious:

(Of course, the list is imperfect, Additions are welcomed. Also re-posting is permitted and encouraged.

PROTECTORS OF DEMOCRACY (By pen, voice, sign, or act)

(Updated April 25, 2025 Individuals

Heather Cox Richardson/"Letters from an American"

Jess Piper/"View from Rural Missouri"

Joyce Vance/"Civil Discourse"

Rep. AOC

AGs, 23 Blue States

Aaron Parnas

Adam Kinzinger

Sen. Adam Schiff

Adam Smith

Alex Wagner

Alexander Vindman

Ali Velshi

Alison Gill

Alvin Bragg (and the unnamed Manhattan jurors)

Amb. Susan Rice

Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales/Democracy Now

Anand Giridharadas

Anat Shenker-Osario

Andrew Weissmann

Andy Borowitz

Ann Telnaes

Anne Applebaum,

Annie Laurie Gaylor, FFRF (Freedom from Religion Foundation)

Ari Melber

August Flentje

Ben Meiselas

Beth Benike

Brett Meiselas

Brian Tyler Cohen

Cassidy Hutchinson

Charlotte Clymer

Chris Hayes

Chris Krebs

Col. Susannah Meyers

Congressman Jim Himes

D. Earl Stevens

Dan Barker, FFRF (Freedom from Religion Foundation)

Dan Pfeiffer

Dan Rather

Daniel Berulis

Daniel Morton-Bentley

David Hogg

Dean Obeidallah

Delia Ramirez

Sen. Elizabeth Warren

Sen. Elyssa Slotkin

Erez Reuveni

Rep. Eric Swalwell

Garrison Keillor

Garry Kasparov

George Conway

Glenn Kirschner

Gov. Beshear

Gov. Janet Mills

Gov. Kathy Hochul

Gov. Maura Healey (MA)

Gov. Tim Walz (MN)

Gov. Tony Evers (WI)

Greg Olear

J.B. Pritzker

Jake Auchincloss

Rep.Jamie Raskin

Rep. Jasmine Crockett

Jay Kou

Jeff Danziger

Sen. Jeff Merkley

Jeff Stein

Jeff Tiedrich

Jen Rubin And the Contrarians

Jeremy Seahill

Jessica Craven

Jessica Yellin

Jim Acosta

Jim Hightower

Jimmy Kimmel

J-L Cauvin

John Cusack

John Larson

Sen. Jon Ossoff

Jonathan Bernstein,

Jordy Meiselas

Josh Johnson (stand-up comedian)

Josh Marshall

Joy Reid

Judd Legum (popular Information)

Julie Roginsky

Katie Fang

Ken Harbaugh

Lawrence O;Donnell

Liz Cheney

Lucian Truscott IV

Marianne Williamson

Mark Fiore

Marvin Kalb

Mary L. Trump

Maxwell Frost

Mayor Michelle Wu

Mehdi Hasan

Melvin Gurai

Michael Bennett

Michel Zeitgeist

Miles Taylor

Nicolle Wallllace

Noel Casler (former and current staff of the Inter-American Foundation, a small but

mighty federal agency for Latin America)

Olga Lautman

Paul Krugman

Prof. Lawrence Tribe

Qasim Rachid

Rabbi Joshua Hammerman

Rachel Cohen

Rachel Maddow

Rebecca Solnit

Rep. Andrew Egger

Rep. Emily Randall

Rep. Jessica Denson

Rep. Jonathan V. Last

Rep. Noe Casler

Rep. Pramila Jayapal

Rep. Sarah Longwell

Rep. Al Green

Rep. Don Beyer

Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde

Rev. William J. Barber II

Rez Reuveni (acting deputy director for the Office of Immigration Litigation, and his

supervisor)

Rich Wilson

Robert B. Hubbell

Robert Reich

Roger Parloff

Ron Filipkowski

Ruth Ben-Ghait

Sarah Inama

Scott Dworkin

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (whistleblower)

Sen. Andy Kim

Sen. Chris Murphy

Sen. Chris Van Hollen

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand

Sen. Lisa Murkowski

Sen. Maria Cantwell

Sen. Patty Murray

Sen. Ron Wyden

Sharon McMahon

Sheldon Whitehouse

Simon Rosenberg

Stacey Abrams

Stephanie Miller

Stephen King

Steve Brodner

Steve Schmidt

Sue Nethercott

Sen. Tammy Duckworth

Tennessee Brandon

Thom Hartmann

Tim Snyder

Timothy Snyder

Tristan Snell

Will Bunch

Zev Shalev

ADVOCACY GROUPS, MEDIA NETWORKS

ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union)

AICN (North Carolina)

American Oversight

Bill Kristol/all NeverTrumpers (North Carolina)

Blue Future

Blue Missouri

Blue Wave

Bluesky

Bulwark Media

CODEPINK

CREW

DemCast

Democracy Forward

Democracy Index

DemocracyLabs

Every State Blue

Feathers of Hope

Field Team 6 (North Carolina)

FiftyFifty one (50501)

Fred Wellman/On Democracy

"Hands Off"

Indivisible

Jessica Valenti/Abortion Everyday

Lambda Legal

League of Women Voters

Marc Elias/Democracy Docket

MeidasTouch Network

MoveOn

MSNBC (an exception to corporate news, and their suppressing news0

No Kings

Olivia Troy

Protect Democracy

Public Citizen/Co-president Robert Weissman

Run for Something

Seneca Project

Substack

The 19th/Errin Haines

The American Manifesto

The Bulwark

The Civic Center

The Dean's List/ Dean Obeidallah

The Dr. Martin Luther King Center

The Lincoln Project

The Politics Girl

The States Project (North Carolina)

The Union (North Carolina)

Third Act

Thomas Zimmer/Democracy Americana

We the People Dissent

Working Families Party

LAW FIRMS/ORGANIZATIONS, LAWYERS, COURTS, ACADEMIA

American Bar Association

Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer

Big Ten Universities

David Pepper

Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher (representing the Amica Center for Immigrants Rights and others seeking to block funding cuts for immigrant legal services

Harvard/President Alan M. Garber

Hogan Lovells (seeking to block executive orders to end federal funding for gender-

affirming medical care Law.com)

Jenner & Block (also seeking to block the orders on cuts to medical research funding)

​Judge Hannah Dugan

Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III

(former) Judge J. Michael Luttig

Judge James Boasberg

Judge Paula Xinis

Judge Royce Lamberth

Justice Elena Kagan

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson

Justices Sonia Sotomayer

Northwestern U

Perkins Coie and Covington & Burling (have resisted Trump, fighting back with the help of other courageous firms like Williams & Connolly)

Presidents of 328 U.S. colleges and universities have signed a letter condemning

“government overreach." (including St. Louis University)

Ropes & Gray (also seeking to block cuts to medical research funding Law.com)

Susman Godfrey law firm

UC Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky

Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr (per the ABA Journal, representing fired

inspectors general Law.com)

Wilmer Hale Keker, Van Nest & Peters,

Southern Poverty Law Center

Letter signed by 500 law firms joined a court brief supporting Perkins Coie lawsuit against the Trump Administration)

To paraphrase Churchill: We shall fight them in the streets, we shall fight them on the sidewalks, we shall fight them on the internet, we shall fight them in the courts, we shall fight them in the Congress, we shall fight them in the voting booth--We shall never surrender. YOU ARE NEVER ALONE. SOLIDARITY..

E pluribus unum ( "Out of many, one")

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Jane in NC's avatar

Trump 2.0 has done more to destroy the Trump myth than any news organization, political party or ad campaign could have hoped to do. His image of being a strong man, a business genius, a master negotiator - all the things that caused people to flock to him despite the gravity of reality - are gone. Shot full of holes like a NC highway sign. By his own actions. What people are finally seeing is an old man, well off his game, past his political prime, surviving on replays of the greatest hits like a tired Vegas act - and people are over it. Hopefully, for good, she says, fingers crossed. And it's about goddamned time.

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Lynn Helloise's avatar

I had my morning fix of Rick Wilson and a dog walk on a beautiful spring day and I’m good , ready to face life in these trying times. There’s something so revealing about the fact that as Trump and his minion-agents are trying to set up a lifelong Trump autocracy, investigating ActBlue for daring to help Democrats win, his psychotic behavior and wildly unpopular policies are taking him further and further away from his preposterous goal. This time if or when he tries to pull off running for a third time, someone will

put a lampshade on his head and carry him out with his golden fixtures. Plop.

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joanne brininstool's avatar

Yes why aren’t the Democrats doing MORE advertisement of just how Trump is hurting us all and cutting services? His DOJ just downsized the civil rights division and wants them to focus on discrimination against Christian’s instead of race, creed, disability or sex. And what about weather services? And he won’t help states with disasters like Ark, a red state, as well as other states that are blue. He wants to disband FEMA.

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Constance Willard Godin's avatar

Listening now the comments are turned off on it. That's unusual isn't it? ty

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Sharon Heidē Ward's avatar

I hope you do a short with “I would like to sell you some property on an island in the pacific.” 😆🏝️🦕🦖

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OldnTired's avatar

Trump doesn't negotiate. He's a blackmailer. He's arrogant and thinks everyone will tumble to his game. He's discovering that the world is ready and willing to tell him to go eff himself. I hope tomorrow the leaders in Rome treat him as a pariah.

Can we stop acting like there is a cadre of responsible Republicans out there? They're so few and far between in Congress that they could hold a caucus in a janitor's closet. The GOP of today hasn't capitulated; they've embraced; yet will tell you in confidence that they're repulsed by what's going on. Don't believe it. They embrace so much of it you'd think you were at a polygamist wedding. They scream "Praise Jesus!" while congregating around a son of Satan and praising his name.

Do I think the Dems have the answer? No. Too many are either squeamish or so caught up in the old dynamics that they can't see the road signs. I admire AOC, but she's not the leader of the future for the party. We live in a world where sexism, let alone racism, is rampant, especially among the right. To think that a great message will get past that at this stage is naive. I don't know what will; if anything. But we have to figuratively fight.

Yes, numbers are real. But we're going to have four years of an administration that will work hard to sell people on conspiracy theories, made up and/or distorted data (let alone analyzed information) and who will eventually declare that the so-called job creators deserve to pay nothing for everything they take from us. They own the mine and we get the shaft.

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OldnTired's avatar

So it turns out that the background to the story isn't true. Bezos claims it was never even considered. But the White House sure did overreact to this rumor of a story. Shows you exactly how scared they are of people knowing how much the tariffs are costing them.

Perhaps someone needs to create a "tariff calculator". A database containing the various tariffs for the exporting nations and then a field to put in the source nation (it's listed on almost all websites, including Amazon) and the amount of the purchase. Press ENTER and see how much the tariff added in. Of course, the WH would scream about that, too.

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Robin Brenner's avatar

So why aren't Democrats doing the PR that's needed? We're still too nice. This time in our history, especially right now at the beginning of his administration, needs to make some very big noise. Gorilla PR....Electronic billboards everywhere with ordinary people's faces who've already been screwed. There are so many things that could and should be done to communicate over and over again the reality of what's happening. Not just court cases! Thank you Bernie and ACO...and now Schumer. Go where the people are and give them the facts. Let them the voice their concerns loudly. Come on! This should be easy....forcing polling to go down much further and making people SEE what's happening. We do too much talking among ourselves. AND, if the MAGAs own social media....Why don't we???????? We see how they do it. We know how to do it. Let's do it already!

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