On Second Thought

Musk Wants to Make Getting Social Security More Difficult

By Michael Woyton

Let’s be very clear: taking away the ability for people who qualify for Social Security — by definition “older Americans” — to speak with someone by phone will make it impossible for many to actually get benefits.

Taking away the option of phone support is exactly what a internal memo from the Social Security Administration proposes to do.

As first reported by Popular Info’s Judd Legum and then by Emily Peck of Axios, anyone seeking help with Social Security and who are unable to verify their identity via the internet would have to do so in person at local field offices.

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Oh, by the way, Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency want to make it more difficult to get to a local field office by shuttering many of them.

As of now, if you cannot verify who you are using a computer, then you can complete the process by phone, Axios reported.

The March 13 memo, which was requested by DOGE and signed by acting deputy SSA commissioner for operations Doris Diaz, said the call-in option should be ended.

DOGE’s rationale is that having people come in for verification would address “fraud risk.”

It’s safe to wonder if the rationale also includes reducing the number of people who get Social Security because they are not physically able to travel to a still-open field office.

An anonymous former SSA official told Axios that the changes would “cripple field office operations, and they’re already badly paralyzed.”

If it makes you feel any better — and it doesn’t make me feel any better — White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in an emailed statement Monday that “Any American receiving Social Security benefits will continue to receive them. The sole mission of DOGE is to identify waste, fraud and abuse only.”

Yeah right.

Josh Marshall, founder of Talking Points Memo, posted on Bluesky that SSA recipients “tend to be old and/or disabled” so the changes aren’t really going to help “if the recipient is a half blind woman in her 80s who may only have a limited education and understanding of complex financial matters.”

For what it’s worth, there are many people younger than 80 who qualify for SSA benefits and still haven’t mastered Facebook and/or a smartphone.

Marshall stressed there was no other way to describe what Musk and his ilk are doing: “DOGE is raping the SSA” and there is a real chance that an institution that works and actually helps millions of people will “simply collapse” due to being even more underfunded and understaffed.

“And all to suit Elon’s whims,” he said.

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Lead art: Screen grab from Google Maps.

Charles (Schumer) Is Not in Charge

By Michael Woyton

I’m still reeling from Friday’s disappointing passage of the continuing resolution to fund the government.

Led by Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, nine Democrats caved in to President Donald J. Felon and and the Republican Party to advance a spending bill that would keep the government open for six months.

The about face came one day after Schumer declared that the bill didn’t have enough votes for cloture, NBC News reported.

On Thursday, the senior senator from New York said he would indeed vote to advance the bill, “giving cover to other Democrats to do the same and significantly lowering the threat of a catastrophic shutdown amid broader economic uncertainty,” NBC said.

Besides Schumer, the nine non-Republicans who voted for cloture were Dick Durbin of Illinois, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Maggie Hassan of New Hamphire, Gary Peters of Michingan, Brian Schatz of Hawaii, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Angus King of Maine. All are Democrats except for King who is an independent.

Lucky me — 100 percent of my state’s senators caved.

Shaheen and King later turned around and voted with all the Republicans, except for Rand Paul) to approve the actual spending package.

Explainer: The vote on cloture, which would allow the bill to come to a vote in the Senate, required 60 votes. The actual bill only required a majority vote.

Among the Democrats who were oh so pissed at Schumer and the others was New York’s Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who had championed a 30-day funding stopgap instead of the CR to give lawmakers a little time to negotiate changes, The Hill reported.

“There are members of Congress who have won Trump-held districts in some of the most difficult territory in the United States who walked the plank and took innumerable risks in order to defend the American people, in order to defend Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare,” AOC said.

“Just to see Senate Democrats even consider acquiescing Elon Musk — I think it is a huge slap in the face,” she said.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Connecticut, said the CR would give the president and Musk too much power.

The ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee was quoted by Common Cause as saying the CR would close the book on negotiations for full-year funding bills that help the middle class and protect national security and essentially hand over Congress’s power to an unelected billionaire.

The spending plan cut $13 billion from non-defense programs that would hurt families, students and seniors; had no disaster relief for Southern California wildfires; cut funding to the National Institutes of Health by $280 million; and raised funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement by $484 million, Common Cause said, among other things.

But Schumer, who was preparing to leave the District of Columbia for a book tour as soon as the vote was taken, said it was more important to keep the government open.

His rationale, according to reporting in USA Today, was that he believed that “allowing Donald Trump to take even much more power via a government shutdown is a far worse option” than passing a bill he called “a terrible option.”

It really seems that the grifter-in-chief and his co-president were already tearing apart the fabric of this country, from taking legal residents into custody and either detaining them or shipping them around the country to thumbing their noses at judges who have the temerity to say what they are doing is illegal. The adjudicated rapist even suggested via social media that the pardons President Joe Biden preemptively gave to the Jan. 6 committee members were null and void.

The blowback has been pretty fierce against Schumer, so much so that he “postponed” his multi-city book tour because of “security concerns,” which as Amy Siskind of “The List” said is also known as “having to face his constituents.”

People who support Democrats deserve better leadership than what Schumer is scaring up right now.

Chuck Schumer should resign and let someone lead who knows how to fight.

— — — — —

Shortly after the debacle of the continuing resolution, I was scrolling through the wasteland that my Facebook news feed has become.

Boy, was I surprised to see an ad from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee with the smiling face of Sen. Kristen Gillibrand.

It, of course, was a money beg, but the timing could not have been worse.

Gillibrand said she was making “an urgent request,” and said, “I will do everything in my power to stand up to Donald Trump, but I need to know if Democrats are with me.”

Hey, Gillibrand, you had a chance to stand up to the golfer-in-chief on Friday — and you sold us out completely.

So, no, this Democrat is not with you.

FYI, since Friday, those sponsored DSCC ads have had Gillibrand saying she will stand up to Elon Musk.

I sincerely doubt that as well.

— — — — —

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Lead art: Screen grab from Google Maps

Judge Orders 1,000s of Fired Probationary Workers Reinstated

By Michael Woyton

Calling the government’s firing of thousands of probationary status workers a “gimmick” and a “sham,” a federal judge Thursday ordered six federal agencies to rehire the workers.

Judge William J. Alsup, a Clinton-era appointee in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, found “that the Trump administration’s firing of probationary workers had essentially been done unlawfully and by fiat through the Office of Personnel Management,” the New York Times reported.

The Treasury, VA, Agriculture, Defense, Energy and Interior departments were ordered to comply with the order and offer to reinstate anyone who was improperly terminated.

Alsup said what the government did was a “gimmick” contrived to quickly carry out mass firings.

The judge did clarify with lawyers who represented the unions that brought the lawsuit that reduction in force orders being issued at some agencies were “still legal and could go forward,” the Times reported.

Alsup made the ruling after taking issue with the Justice Department not making acting OPM director Charles Ezell testify Thursday, CNN reported.

Ezell was expected to face tough questions from labor union attorneys, but the Justice Department instead withdrew a declaration from Ezell which was the government’s only evidence in the case.

“You’re afraid to do so because you know cross-examination will reveal the truth,” CNN said Alsup told DOJ attorney Kelsey Helland. “I tend to doubt that you’re telling me the truth.”

Where have we heard before that attorneys representing something to do with the felon-in-chief coming into court either not prepared or unwilling to provide evidence they say they have?

It’s almost as if the current administration is trying to do as much damage as possible and hope that no one notices or doesn’t raise too much of a fuss.

Imagine that.

— — — — —

RFK Jr. is suggesting everyone should get measles. This man, who is not a doctor, will kill us.

— — — — —

How’s your retirement fund doing?

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Lead art: Screen grab from Google Maps

Kiss Today Goodbye?

By Michael Woyton

Well, it’s another day here in the United States, or not, if you believe the House of Representatives.

Included in the continuing resolution to temporarily fund the government that narrowly passed the House Tuesday was a provision that would give more power to President Donald J. Felon.

The GOPmagas in the House added wording to the CR “that could prevent Congress from using its authority to end a national emergency declared by Trump last month,” NJ.com reported.

The grifter-in-chief, in order to impose tariffs on Mexico, China and Canada, had to declare a national emergency. That sets the clock ticking for any member of the House to force a vote to repeal the tariffs.

By declaring every day as the same day, that effectively takes the power of taxation away from the Congress and gives it to the person in the White House who is tanking the economy even as we speak.

Rep. Don Beyer, D-VA, and Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-WA, said in a joint statement that the Republicans in the House voted “to give Trump expanded powers to raise taxes on American households through tariffs with full knowledge of how he is using those powers, and every Republican will own the economic consequences of that vote. It speaks volumes that Republicans are sneaking this provision into a procedural measure hidden from the American people.”

Beyer and DelBene said the Constitution gives the Congress the authority to set tariffs, which are taxes.

“Yet House Republicans are choosing to surrender the power of their own votes to a reckless president, putting politics over the country and their constituents,” the statement said.

Beyer’s deputy chief of staff, Aaron Fritschner, outlines more about how this works here.

Fritschner explained that it is a House resolution, “meaning it will take effect without further action. Republicans passed it and it’s done.”

In other words, that is the way tariffs will be dealt with whether or not the Senate approves the CR.

It was suggested on social media that if the House declares the session to be one long day, then perhaps they should only be paid for one day.

I agree.

— — — — —

Speaking of special elections, there are two coming up soon in the state of Florida that could have an effect on how things are going lately.

The adjudicated rapist in the White House plucked Rep. Michael Waltz, FL-6, to be head of the National Security Agency and Rep. Matt Gaetz, FL-1, to be attorney general out of Congress, leaving two openings.

Waltz did indeed become the 29th U.S. national security advisor, while Gaetz crashed and burned after the nomination to become a talk-show host on an obscure right-wing “news” network.

Gay Valimont, a Democrat and a gun violence prevention activist in Pensacola, Florida, is running to replace Gaetz in the FL-1 district.

Josh Weil, a Democrat, an Orlando resident and a public school educator, is seeking to replace Waltz in the FL-6 district.

These two races, along with an as-yet-unscheduled special election to replace Rep. Elise Stefanik, NY-21, could sway the balance of power in the House of Representatives, according to reporting by First Coast News. (Stefanik’s nomination to be U.N. ambassador is being held because House Speaker Mike Johnson cannot spare her vote.)

Susan Horwitz of the St. Augustine Beach Democratic Club in Florida said shifting the balance in the House could happen because of these two Florida elections.

“If the Democrats can take over and have the Speaker of the House, then we have created a new balance,” she told First Coast News. “And it would give us a little more input into what’s going on in Washington.”

So if you have a few bucks to spare, it might be worth it — and benefit America and its democracy, not to mention the economy — to contribute to Weil and/or Valimont.

I did.

— — — — —

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Lead art by Michael Woyton

Has Corruption Been Normalized?

By Michael Woyton

If there was any doubt that the current occupant of the White House was eager during his second term to line not only his pockets but the pockets of many others, that was dispelled when a senator connected the dots, and all of corruption happened in the first six freaking weeks in office!

For almost 30 minutes Thursday, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut spoke from the floor of the Senate about President Donald J. Felon’s normalization of pay-to-play politics.

“In the first six weeks of the Trump presidency, Trump and Elon Musk and their billionaire friends have engaged in a stunning rampage of open public corruption,” Murphy said.

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“It’s not fundamentally different than what happened in Russia. These are efforts to steal from the American people to enrich themselves,” he continued. “And their strategy is to do it all out in the open, to do it at such a dizzying pace that the country just gets overwhelmed or anesthetized or dulled into a sense that we just all have to accept the corruption — or, maybe more charitably, that this is just how government works, that government is just corrupt, and so the fact that it’s happening out in the open instead of happening secretly, well, it’s really nothing new.”

Watching the video (below), I was blown away by the number of easily verifiable facts presented by Murphy that all occurred within a matter of days.

To say that the more than 20 examples of corruption perpetrated by the felon-in-chief and his billionaire entourage was overwhelming is a massive understatement.

There are so many things that have happened and are continuing to happen that it is incredibly difficult to keep up with them, much less to remember when they took place.

Murphy did the public a real service by compiling the list, beginning with the launch of a meme coin on Jan. 17 and ending March 4 with Musk’s cancellation of Verizon’s contract with the FAA and substitution of his own company in its place and the gutting of IRS employees who investigate tax evasion.

In between, as outlined by Murphy, were the firing of inspectors general, who were tasked with rooting out corruption; dismantling the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has saved billions of dollars for Americans who were taken advantage of by large corporations and banks; “pausing” the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which opens the door for foreign officials to offer bribes to American officials, and the cancellation of meetings to formulate a vaccine for the next flu season, which could likely result in deaths.

There is much, much more.

Image from Sen. Chris Murphy’s Instagram account.

Murphy is not saying that there hasn’t been corruption in other administrations or even in Congress on other sides of the aisle.

“But never before has the corruption happened this openly or this frequently,” he said.

None of this is OK, Murphy said, adding that doing things by the rules still matters.

“This is how democracies die,” he said. “Democracies die when the very powerful people steal from us so regularly, so openly, so unapologetically, that we come to believe that it’s normal.

“And it’s our decision, as a body and as a country, to decide not to normalize this scale of corruption,” Murphy said.

I urge you all to take a few minutes to watch Murphy’s video or read the transcript and share this article or the links with others.

Then call or email your representatives in Congress and ask them what they are going to do about it.

To repeat: It’s not normal.

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Lead art: Screen grab from Sen. Chris Murphy’s YouTube page.

Not Shutting Up About Egg Prices

By Michael Woyton

Way to control the conversation, President Donald J. Felon.

If there’s something he doesn’t want the press or the public to talk about, he should just tell us to not talk about it. And we’ll take it from there.

Case in point: via his “Truth” Social account, the golfer-in-chief reposted something written by Charlie Kirk, who is fresh off his ego-feeding by California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Kirk wrote a piece entitled, “Shut Up About Egg Prices — Trump is Saving Consumers Millions.”

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In other words, everything’s fine. Yeah, prices are going up instead of down as promised, but America will be great again, but not for a while, and there will be some discomfort, but the billionaires in the administration won’t feel it, and we should be content with that.

As Ben Meiselas said, “Donald Trump wants you to shut up. Shut up about inflation. Shut up about egg prices. Shut up while he crashes the economy, slashes federal jobs, and golfs his days away at Mar-a-Lago, all on the taxpayer’s dime.”

Trump Tells Americans 'Shut Up About Egg Prices' as He Golfs on Saturdaywww.meidasplus.com/p/trump-tell…
— Morgan J Freeman (@mjfree.bsky.social) 2025-03-09T04:53:03.668Z

The Atlanta Fed put out a prediction that the GDP will contract around -2.8 percent in the first quarter, which is a clear sign of a recession, and as Meiselas points out, even on Wall Street execs are warning that the on-again-off-again tariffs “could trigger a Great Depression-level economic collapse.”

And what do we get from the administration? It only will be a short-term disturbance and start laying your own chicken eggs.

Over at the New York Times, opinion columnist Nicholas Kristof wonders what, if anything, will be the adjudicated felon’s undoing.

Kristof leads off by saying that, if there are aliens looking at the United States at this moment, “they might be puzzling over the great Trump paradox.

“It’s that President Trump is doing immense long-term damage to the United States by undermining democratic norms, vandalizing the federal government and siding with alleged war criminals in the Kremlin, yet if support for him falls, I doubt it will have anything to do with all this. Rather it may be … egg prices.” (NOTE: the ellipses were included by Kristof; I didn’t leave anything out.)

I guess Kristof didn’t get the “Truth” socialer’s memo.

The Times columnist, of course, would rather the public be upset about the betrayal of Ukraine or the threats to NATO or the undermining of democracy.

“But I welcome indignation of any kind,” Kristof wrote. “Maybe we can be rescued from our nation’s disastrous course by chickens.”

With that, it’s time to concentrate on making Sunday brunch, which will undoubtedly include breaking a few more expensive eggs.

— — — — —

May I suggest that the Democratic Party look to Matt Drudge for messaging advice.
— George Conway (@gtconway.bsky.social) 2025-03-09T12:37:09.146Z

— — — — —

There’s not a whole lot of “getting it done” getting done, Mr. Minority Leader, that we can see.

KATIE COURIC: Do you think the Democratic Party has become too progressive?HAKEEM JEFFRIES: I think it's important for us to be the party of common sense solutions and getting it done.
— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein.bsky.social) 2025-03-08T16:43:27.712Z

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Lead art by Michael Woyton

On-Again, Off-Again Tariffs Unsettling for Consumers, Economy

By Michael Woyton

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This post was updated at 3:32 p.m. Thursday to reflect the suspension of tariffs on Canada by the current administration.

How much is the tariff on whiplash?

As I sit here trying to write, I truly am afraid to refresh the webpage for fear that there will be another update on the state of tariffs from the administration of President Donald J. Felon.

A little more than a month ago, the grifter-in-chief imposed tariffs on imports from Canada, Mexico and China. Then the stock market didn’t react well and he said, “Nevermind” and the tariffs for Canada and Mexico were postponed until March 4.

The president put the tariffs back on as of March 4 and the stock markets plunged again.

So any guess what is happening today?

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The White House is pausing tariffs on some, but not all, Mexican imports, as well as Canadian imports, until April 2.

Why? Well, we’re guessing that the administration needed some time to come up with a good excuse.

After speaking with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, the tariffs for Mexican goods and services that are covered by the North American trade agreement — the one that the felon-in-chief signed during his first administration — will be paused until April 2, CNBC reported.

Is this going to be a monthly thing now?

The golfer-in-chief will say something, the markets will react badly, he’ll get bad TV coverage, he’ll come back and say “nevermind”? Rinse, repeat?

It’s almost as if the mayor of Mar-a-Lago 1) doesn’t know what he’s doing, 2) isn’t getting any good advice from the people around him or 3) hired really shitty people to be around him who don’t know what they are doing.

Could be combination of all three. After all, he still doesn’t realize or want to admit that tariffs on goods imported TO the United States will end up being paid by American consumers. Tariffs are not free money from other countries.

All this uncertainty is not just having an effect on only the American consumer.

“[B]usinesses have also been operating in a state of limbo, unsure of when or whether the import taxes would take hold,” NPR reported.

A business in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, that embroiders sports and work uniform emblems has halted investment in factories in Texas and Georgia because of the uncertainty.

The owner, Randy Carr, told NPR that he will try to try to pass along any import tax to customers but will likely have to bear some of the cost himself.

“We have a plan to deal with it, but honestly it’s punitive to my staff and the growth of the business, because it’s just another form of a tax,” he told the news organization.

All of this adds to the chaos that we have all been feeling since the adjudicated rapist was sent back to the White House.

— — — — —

Texas Rep. Al Green was censured Thursday by the House of Representatives for speaking out during the joint session of Congress about the plan to gut Medicaid.

Ten Democrats voted along with Republicans to censure Green.

Here are their names:

10 Dems who voted with MAGA to censure Rep Al Green for loudly rebuking Trump's fascist plan to gut Medicaid:•Ami Bera (CA)•Jim Costa (CA)•Jim Himes (CT)•Jared Moskowitz (FL)•Ed Case (HI)•Laura Gillen (NY)•Tom Suozzi (NY)•Marcy Kaptur (OH)•Chrissy Houlahan (PA)•Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (WA)
— Qasim Rashid, Esq. (@qasimrashid.com) 2025-03-06T16:53:09.096Z

The phone numbers to their offices are included in the thread.

Protest seldom starts without speaking up at inconvenient times.

— — — — —

What a front cover…
— Will Jennings 🗳️ (@drjennings.bsky.social) 2025-03-06T11:09:54.699Z

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Lead art: Screen grab from Google Maps

Americans Under Attack from Within

By Michael Woyton

Don’t like the price of eggs? Raise chickens in your own backyard. Don’t want measles? Use vitamin A supplements. Worried about Russia possibly affecting this country through cyber ops? Let’s pause all domestic planning which might prevent that.

These are “solutions” from current administration officials to problems we are facing now in the United States.

While we have real concerns, there seems to be no one in this administration who actually cares what we think.

Least of all President Donald J. Felon.

There is apparent no one in his entourage who cares enough about the American public to confront him about his boneheaded scheme to start of tariff war with Canada and Mexico. Even the Wall Street Journal editorial board calls it dumb.

The grifter-in-chief went through with his threat yesterday to slap 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico and 20 percent on China.

The president’s defense of the tariffs — which he is unwilling or too incompetent to admit will come out of the pocketbooks of Americans — is that “companies could avoid them if they set up shop in the United States,” per the New York Times.

Here’s a question: How are companies going to avoid tariffs — again, the companies DON’T PAY THE TARIFFS — by setting up shop in the U.S. without the American consumers being hit financially if and until the companies can physically build businesses here?

The golfer-in-chief ran on bringing down the prices of goods. So far that hasn’t happened and doesn’t seem likely.

How’s that working out so far?

Well, stocks took a tumble Tuesday, wiping out all gains since Election Day for the S&P 500, the Associated Press reported, following “a steep sell-off Monday.”

“Worries about tariffs raising consumer prices and reigniting inflation have been weighing on both the economy and Wall Street,” the AP said.

I’m afraid to check my 401(k)s, aren’t you?

Market in Europe also fell sharply, while there were more modest declines in Asia.

Add to all this, the former Social Security Administration commissioner Martin O’Malley said cuts by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency — or DOGE — “could result in the ‘collapse’ of the Social Security system ‘within the 30 to 90 days.’,” The Hill reported.

O’Malley, who led the SSA from December 2023 to November 2024 under the Biden administration, said the Trump/Musk administration’s attempts to cut the workforce “will lead to the departure of vital staff and threaten the agency’s fundamental operations.”

The adjudicated rapist campaigned on not touching Social Security or Medicaid, but lo and behold, he now supports the GOP budget plan which calls for deep cuts to Medicaid.

Oh, and Saturday, the mayor of Mar-a-Lago issued an executive order telling federal agencies to begin cutting down national forests for the lumber. Our national forests.

We have someone in the White House who doesn’t give a damn about anyone but himself. He certainly doesn’t care about the Americans who voted for him — reminder: it wasn’t a mandate or even a majority the total votes — and he certainly doesn’t care about the rest of us.

He doesn’t care that withholding aid and weapons from Ukraine will almost certainly kill more citizens of that country and reward a murderous Russian dictator who will likely set his sights elsewhere in Europe.

He doesn’t care that cutting off funding, then promising to restart it, but then not actually restarting the funding through the U.S. Agency for International Development will lead to preventable deaths from starvation, AIDS/HIV, polio, Ebola and more all around the globe.

But, yeah, he’s staying out of jail, and he will tell us how wonderful everything is that he’s doing during tonight’s joint session to Congress.

Americans — and others around the world — are under attack from this monster and those who blindly follow him.

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Lead art: Screen grab from Fox News

Majority of Americans Say State of Union ‘Not Strong’

By Michael Woyton

Tuesday evening the grifter-in-chief will be standing in front of a joint session of Congress and will more than likely tell the United States and the rest of the world how great he thinks his return to the Oval Office has been.

Technically, the ~~lie-fest~~ speech will not be a state of the union — that is reserved for presidents who have been in office for more than a couple of months, according to an explainer article in USA Today.

Whatever you want to call the speech it will be filled with enough boasting, accusations and goals to keep CNN’s Daniel Dale busy on the factchecking desk.

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Ahead of the so-called state of the union address, a poll conducted by the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, in partnership with NPR and PBS News, interviewed U.S. adults to find out what they thought about how the second term of President Donald J. Felon is going.

The poll found that majorities of Americans do not think the union is strong, nor do they think it’s on the right track.

“About six weeks into his second term, President Trump’s swift actions have not garnered overwhelming support from Americans,” the Marist Poll said. “In fact, majorities believe the president is moving too quickly and think the cuts made to federal agencies will do more harm than good.”

When asked, 53 percent of Americans said the country was not very strong or not strong at all. That included 74 percent of Democrats and 64 percent of independents.

The remaining 47 percent — including 77 percent of Republicans — said the nation was very strong or strong.

Fewer Americans, according to Marist, said the state of the union is not very strong or not strong at all now compared to 62 percent in 2023.

Fifty-four percent of respondents believe the country is moving in the wrong direction, as opposed to 45 percent who said it is heading in the right direction. That is an improvement from December when 64 percent said the country was off track and 35 percent said it was going in the right direction.

A clear majority of Americans said the president has been rushing to make changes without considering the impact — 56 percent to 43 percent, according to the Marist Poll.

Almost the same breakdown of Americans — 55 percent to 45 percent — believe that staff and funding cuts to agencies of the federal government will do more harm than good.

Marist also found that the president’s approval rating is under water at this time. Only 45 percent approve of the job he is going, while 49 percent disapproval.

However, the president is doing better on the approval front than his mega-donor and head or not-the-head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Elon Musk.

Only 39 percent of residents have a favorable opinion of Musk, while 50 percent have an unfavorable opinion of Musk. The remaining 11 percent, according to Marist, are either unsure or have never heard of him.

Likewise, DOGE has a 44 percent unfavorable opinion and a 39 percent favorable opinion, with 17 percent unsure of how to rate it or having never heard of it.

The Marist/NPR/PBS News poll is a survey of U.S. residents over the age of 18 and was conducted from Feb. 24 through Feb. 26. Results are statistically significant within ±2.8 percentage points. The partisan breakdown among registered voters is 34 percent Democrat, 34 percent Republican and 31 percent independent.

— — — — —

Good point.

— Liz Ahern 🌈🧜🏼‍♀️🇲🇽🐸 (@austinmermaid.bsky.social) 2025-03-03T14:21:05.821Z

— — — — —

And Conan O’Brien gets the last word for today, from the Oscars broadcast:

Conan: You know, Anora is having a good night. That's great news. Two wins already. I guess Americans are excited to see somebody finally stand up to a powerful Russian.
— Acyn (@acyn.bsky.social) 2025-03-03T03:08:54.445Z

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Lead art by Michael Woyton

Felon-in-Chief Angry Zelensky Doesn’t Kiss His Ring

By Michael Woyton

I couldn’t be more embarrassed for and ashamed of this country than I am right now.

I wasn’t planning on writing anything today, but after watching clips of President Donald J. Felon and his “right-wingman,” Shady Vance, lecturing Vladimir Zelensky during his visit to the Oval Office, I had to get this off my chest.

The president of Ukraine is a bona fide hero, having stood up to Vladimir Putin from the very beginning of Russia’s attempt to take over his country by force.

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That Zelensky is thought of as a hero and is well-respected around the world must really get under the orange-tinted thin skin of the felon-in-chief.

It’s pretty obvious that the Florida golfer knew that Zelensky wouldn’t take any bull so he had to have Vance sitting next to him.

Trump to Zelenskyy: "Don't tell us what we're gonna feel. You're in no position to dictate that. You're in no position to dictate what we're gonna feel. We're gonna feel very good and very strong. You're right now not in a very good position. You're gambling with World War 3."
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-02-28T17:47:31.112Z

Here’s hoping the outbursts and bullying that Trump and Vance displayed toward Zelensky prop him up even more around the world.

There’s no doubt that the United States does not have Ukraine’s best interests at heart.

Hell, I don’t think the U.S. has its own citizens’ best interests at heart — unless you are part of the wealthiest 1 percent.

You really couldn’t ask for a more telling explanation of what this administration is all about when one of the questions from the “news media” directed at Zelensky was about whether he owns a suit.

Watch this clip:

Actual question from reporter: "Why don't you wear a suit?"Ukrainian President Zelenskyy: "I will wear costume after this war will finish."
— Adam Parkhomenko (@adamparkhomenko.bsky.social) 2025-02-28T18:12:14.384Z

The “reporter” is Brian Glenn, who is dating Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. ‘Nuff said.

President Zelensky, apologies for having to put up with the grifter-in-chief and his buddy.

There are a lot of people in the U.S. who really do care about the people of Ukraine.

Find and follow me on BlueSky through this link.

Lead art: Screen grab from Fox News