To All My Fellow Americans Who Voted for George W. Bush:
On this, the fourth anniversary of 9/11, I’m just curious, how does it feel?
How does it feel to know that the man you elected to lead us after we were attacked went ahead and put a guy in charge of FEMA whose main qualification was that he ran horse shows?
That’s right. Horse shows…
[On] this sacred day of remembrance, do you think we honor or shame those who died on 9/11/01? If we learned nothing and find ourselves today every bit as vulnerable and unprepared as we were on that bright sunny morning, then did the 3,000 die in vain?
Our vulnerability is not just about dealing with terrorists or natural disasters. We are vulnerable and unsafe because we allow one in eight Americans to live in horrible poverty. We accept an education system where one in six children never graduate and most of those who do can’t string a coherent sentence together. The middle class can’t pay the mortgage or the hospital bills and 45 million have no health coverage whatsoever.
Are we safe? Do you really feel safe? You can only move so far out and build so many gated communities before the fruit of what you’ve sown will be crashing through your walls and demanding retribution. Do you really want to wait until that happens? Or is it your hope that if they are left alone long enough to soil themselves and shoot themselves and drown in the filth that fills the street that maybe the problem will somehow go away?
I know you know better. You gave the country and the world a man who wasn’t up for the job and all he does is hire people who aren’t up for the job. You did this to us, to the world, to the people of New Orleans. Please fix it. Bush is yours. And you know, for our peace and safety and security, this has to be fixed. What do you propose?
It’s the Pope’s funeral, so Trump’s gotta go.
It wouldn’t be like him to miss such a show.
But when he arrives he might squall,
Because of arcane Vatican protocol
Trump might find himself seated in the back row.
“Let’s be honest. This uncertainty, this chaos, is no accident. The president of the United States has chosen. Chosen to destroy the federal government’s ability to help people.”
— Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), quoted by The Hill.
“Yes, Trump and his accomplices are malicious. Yes, they’re corrupt. Yes, they’re dangerous. But they’re also profoundly stupid, and their stupidity is hurting or worrying a lot of people who voted for Trump. … So here’s my pitch: To break Trump’s coalition and reclaim our government, we need to talk not just about the administration’s corruption and its abuse of power, but about its pervasive incompetence.”
“We live in a moment when our freedoms are once again under attack from the highest office in the land. We see things that would be familiar to our revolutionary predecessors: the silencing of critics, the disappearing of people from our streets, demands for unquestioning fealty.”
— Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey (D), quoted by the Boston Globe.
“Trump intends to send those he hates to foreign prisons beyond the reach of U.S. law. He does not care — he will not even seek to discover — if those he sends into these foreign hells are guilty of what he claims. Because this is not about their guilt — it is about his power. … And if he is capable of that, if he wants that, then what else is he capable of? What else does he want? And if the people who serve him are willing to give him that, to defend his right to do that, what else will they give him? What else will they defend?”
“It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter. But in this case, it is not hard at all. The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the assemblage of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody, there is nothing that can be done. This should be shocking not only to judges but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from the courthouse still hold dear.”
— Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, a Reagan appointee and conservative icon, in an opinion about the Maryland man wrongly-deported to El Salvador.
“Buyers have poured tens of millions of dollars into President Donald Trump’s meme coin since his team advertised Wednesday that top purchasers could join Trump for an ‘intimate private dinner’ next month,” the Washington Post reports. “Nearly two dozen crypto wallets acquired more than 100,000 $TRUMP meme coins, worth roughly $100 million.”
A new Fox News poll finds President Trump’s overall approval at 44%, down 5 points from 49% approval in March. That’s lower than the approval of Joe Biden (54%), Barack Obama (62%), and George W. Bush (63%) at the 100-day mark in their presidencies. It’s also lower by 1 point compared to Trump’s 45% approval at this point eight years ago.
Wall Street Journal: “The wealthiest have gotten richer, and control a record share of America’s wealth. New data suggest $1 trillion of wealth was created for the 19 richest American households alone in 2024. … That is more than the value of Switzerland’s entire economy.”
The International Monetary Fund yesterday lowered its 2025 growth outlook for the US and the global economy, citing heightened uncertainty and economic disruption caused by President Donald Trump’s sweeping new tariffs. The IMF trimmed the 2025 US growth estimate to 1.8% from 2.7%, the largest reduction among the world’s advanced economies, and cut the global growth forecast to 2.8% from 3.3%. The fund cautioned the trade policy climate and ongoing conflicts between the US and other tariff-hit countries are discouraging investment and spending. US inflation is now predicted to reach 3% this year, one percentage point higher than the IMF’s January projection, while the risk of a US recession has increased to 40%, up from 25% in October.