On Second Thought

Felon Has ‘Free Ticket to Inhumanity’

By Michael Woyton

Shortly before 7:30 a.m. Monday, the current occupant of the Oval Office posted on social media that the United States had been for two days in “productive conversations” with Iran regarding the illegal, unsanctioned war, and hostilities on the part of the U.S. will cease for five days.

It really is a shame that anything coming from the administration of president donald j. felon* has to first be considered a lie.

Iranian state media reported Monday morning that officials in the regime “deny any talks” with anyone in the grifter-in-chief’s administration and claimed that any pause in attacks by the U.S. were due to Iran’s threat to target West Asia power plants.

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It really is a shame that anything coming from the Iranian government has to first be considered more credible than anything coming from our government.

What’s also a shame is that the stock market remains gullible to anything that comes out of the mouth of the convicted felon and adjudicated rapist.

According to CNBC, the Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped more than 1,000 Monday morning after the wannabe king issued his “productive talks” message.

I’m sure a lot of well-placed people made a lot of money Monday morning. I’m not one of them; are you?

Even crude oil prices dropped in the wake of the orange authoritarian’s lie.

The Dow is only around 46,500, which is no where near the 50,000 mark that Attorney General Pam Blondie citied as a reason to forget about releasing more of the Epstein files.

A comment on the internet over the weekend rang true to me: The human body was not built to know what the most despicable person in the world is doing every 15 minutes.

And President Despicable continued to prove that there is no bottom to how low he can go.

On Saturday, it was reported the former head of the FBI Robert Mueller died.

It didn’t take long for the infant-in-chief to post, “Good, I’m glad he’s dead” and that he can no longer hurt innocent people. [NARRATOR: The felon is not innocent.]

Not too long ago, Charlie Kirk was assassinated and anyone who didn’t sing Kirk’s praises enough was called deranged and sick.

Well, thank you president felon* for giving us all a template for our social media posts when a certain announcement of a certain someone’s shuffling off his mortal coil is made.

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Map showing locations of planned No Kings protests for March 28. *(screen grab from NoKings.org)*

Organizers of the upcoming No Kings protests said that their biggest turnout yet will be on March 28.

More than 3,000 rallies have been planned across the country as of this date.

Last June, there were 2,100 events scheduled that resulted in 5 million people taking to the streets, the organizers said. Then 7 million people attended more than 2,700 events in October.

“The March mobilization is the next step in this growing movement, with organizers anticipating it will be one of the largest single-day nonviolent nationwide protests in U.S. history,” officials said.

For a full list of participating cities and event details, go to www.NoKings.org.

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* I’m following what the wannabe king declared on social media that he will only refer to the Supreme Court in lowercase because he has a complete lack of respect for them after the illegal tariffs ruling.

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Lead art by Michael Woyton.

Stupidity, Cruelty, Hatred: WTF Edition

By Michael Woyton

How much stupidity, hatred and cruelty can one administration foist on this country and the world?

It seems to be limitless, coming from the ever-diminishing mind of president donald j. trump* and his clown-shoe wearing band of merry sycophants.

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Here are a few examples:

During his Watergate downfall, President Richard Nixon talked to portraits on the walls of the White House.

The current grifter-in-chief thinks he talks to former presidents.

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The convicted felon/adjudicated rapist called California Gov. Gavin Newsom “president of the United States.”

And we won’t even talk about this person calling someone else “dumb.”

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Smiley McSmilesallthetime says hurting consumers is the “last of our concerns right now.”

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This makes one wonder if the Mar-a-Lago makeup man signed an EO that cruelty is a feature not a bug in any directives.

Floating the notion of ending lifesaving drugs to blackmail a country over its minerals?

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I guess massive tariffs, insults and threats just don’t carry as much diplomatic weight as they never did.

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Lead art: Flaticon.com.

Felon Doesn’t Lie When Asked Whether He Cares

By Michael Woyton

There’s a question that president donald j. felon* probably hates getting asked.

It’s simple: “Do you take responsibility for fill-in-the-blank?”

During trump 1.0, there was this little thing called COVID going around. Remember that?

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He chose to downplay the severity of the virus, initially saying that it would disappear within a couple of weeks. He even refused to recommend the wearing of masks by saying it would be voluntary and that he would not be wearing one.

NARRATOR: Spoiler alert. He got COVID.

At one of his many press conferences while the pandemic raged on, the grifter-in-chief was asked if he was took responsibility for the all of the deaths from the disease.

His reply was, “I don’t take responsibility at all.”

Flash forward to trump 2.0 and an undeclared war in Iran that on its first day saw the deaths of at least 175 people, most of them children, when a girls’ school was struck by a couple of missiles.

Our own military has determined that the United States was responsible for the deadly strike on the school, the New York Times reported.

Preliminary findings revealed that the targeting mistake was due to the use of outdated information that was not verified. Good work, Secretary of War Crimes Pete Kegseth.

Initially, the warmonger-in-chief floated the idea that Iran was responsible for bombing its own people. But that didn’t last long because it was soon discovered that the strikes on the school used Tomahawk missiles.

The U.S. is the only country involved in the war that uses Tomahawk missiles. Oops.

After the Times report came out, the president was asked if he takes responsibility for the strike on the school.

“I don’t know about it,” he replied.

What do you know, he found a new way to not take responsibility for something.

Does he really truly not know about it, or is the orange makeup man doing what he does so easily: lie and move on.

He lies as easily as he breathes, this so-called leader of the free world.

About the only times we’re certain he’s not lying is when he’s asked about whether the war he has neither declared nor explained the reasons for will affect the American public and he says that he doesn’t care if it does.

With Iran restricting passage of oil-laden ships through the Strait of Hormuz and warning that oil prices could hit $200 a barrel, the convicted felon and adjudicated rapist is just fine with Americans paying more to gas up their cars.

He said Sunday, shortly after U.S. oil price climbed above $100 a barrel, that it was a “small price to pay” for his little war.

In a social media post, he wrote, “Short term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over, is a very small price to pay for U.S.A., and World, Safety and Peace. ONLY FOOLS WOULD THINK DIFFERENTLY!” [Punctuation and capitalization is all his.]

There you have it, fellow Americans, the billionaire felon doesn’t care how his little undeclared war is affecting you, and, oh by the way, you are fools to think he gives a damn.

Finally, the elderly Mar-a-Lago resident tells us the truth.

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Speaking of a “small price to pay,” the Pentagon told Congress that the first week of the Iran war cost American taxpayers $11.3 billion.

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Lead art: screen grab from Bloomberg via YouTube.

Editorial Cartoons: Undeclared War Edition

By Michael Woyton

Here’s a sampling of what editorial cartoonists are thinking about president donald j. felon’s* undeclared war/not-a-war.

From Dave Whamond

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From Bill Bramhall, New York Daily News

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From Nick Anderson

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From Michael de Adder

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From Clay Bennett

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From David Horsey

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Lead art: screen grab from BBC News website.

Felon Wanting ‘Unconditional Surrender’ Means Forever War

By Michael Woyton

How much clearer could it be that president donald j. felon* doesn’t give a rat’s patootie about the American public?

Time magazine published an article Thursday detailing the lead up to and execution of the president’s war in Iran.

When asked whether citizens of the United States should worried about Iran retaliating in this country, the elderly golfer’s answer was simply, “I guess.”

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The grifter-in-chief then said that that is something that is worried about all the time and planned for all the time.

However he added, “But yeah, you know, we expect some things. Like I said, some people will die. When you go to war some people will die.”

Wait, what happened to “major combat operations” that, by the way, are costing taxpayers $1 billion a day?

Just last month, in his extremely long State of the Union address, which may very well still be going on right now, the adjudicated rapist made a big deal about the drop in gas prices.

He also touted low gas prices at a rally that was held in Texas that focused on energy just hours before we started bombing Iran Saturday, Reuters reported.

Now, as gasoline prices grow every day, the climbing price of fuel is no biggie — at least to him.

“I don’t have any concern about it,” he replied when asked about the jump in prices at the pump. “They’ll drop very rapidly when this is over, and if they rise, they rise, but this is far more important than having gasoline prices go up a little bit.”

Sez the man who gets ushered around in armored vehicles wherever he goes.

According to AAA, the national average for a gallon of regular gasoline has gone up 34 cents from a week ago and 42 cents from a month ago.

And just how long are we supposed to be OK with rising gas prices and Iran retaliating on U.S. soil?

Of course, there’s no way to know in times of ~~war~~ “major combat operations.” That’s the nature of ~~war~~ “major combat operations.”

But until today the “leader of the free world” has presented us with no clear and consistent rationale for bombing Iran and no exit strategy.

On social media Friday, he posted that he will accept nothing except “unconditional surrender” from Iran, after which we and our allies — if we have any left by that time — will rebuild the country, making it bigger, better and stronger.

OMG, he even came up with a slogan for Iran’s new acceptable leader(s) to adopt: Make Iran Great Again.

Remind me how it’s going for making America great again.

I find it interesting that the orange makeup man waited until he got Congress to vote against the War Powers Act — by slim margins — before he unleashed his “unconditional surrender” blather.

For someone who ran on being the peace president and said time and time again that Kamala Harris would start World War III if she were elected president, the mayor of Mar-a-Lago continues to show that he cannot and should not be trusted with our lives.

But we knew that during COVID, didn’t we?

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Just for grins, anyone can see how much the ~~war~~ “major combat operations” are estimated to cost by looking at the Iran War Cost Tracker website.

FYI, Politico is reporting that some GOPmaga lawmakers are hearing that the Pentagon is shelling out as much as $2 billion a day on the Iran war.

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And for those on the TV machine who speak the name of her replacement as “Mark Wayne Mullin” need to be reminded to say his first name as “Markwayne” as quickly as possible, thereby making it sound as stupid as he really is.

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Lead art: screen grab from Iran War Cost Tracker website.

Felon Has No Clear War Goal, Not Focused

By Michael Woyton

One billion dollars a day.

This undeclared, unwanted, unvoted for war is costing the United States taxpayers $1 billion a day.

The Senate Wednesday voted not to invoke the War Powers Act and limit the ability of president donald j. felon* to continue bombing Iran and putting our soldiers in harm’s way.

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We’ll see how it goes in the House of Representatives, which is supposed to bring a resolution “to remove United States Armed Forces from unauthorized hostilities in the Islamic Republic of Iran” to floor for a vote Thursday.

If House Speaker Mike Johnson gets his way, it will be voted down because he said the operation — very few GOPmagas are calling it a “war” — is effective and “reversing it now would weaken America.”

A poll taken since the war began found that a majority of registered voters disapprove of the president’s handling of the operation and believe the U.S. shouldn’t have taken military action against the country, NBC News reported.

The NBC News poll surveyed 1,000 registered voters Feb. 27 to March 3.

Fifty-four percent of voters disapprove of the president’s handling of Iran, with 41 percent approving and 5 percent saying they don’t have an opinion or aren’t sure.

A majority, or 52 percent, said the U.S. should not have even started the fight.

Republican pollster Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies conducted the poll with Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates.

McInturff told NBC News that the findings indicated “a lower level of support than in most of the major military action that we’ve seen.”

He also said that attitudes shift in this country based on results.

“Things could get worse if the results are worse,” McInturff said, “and things certainly get better if there’s a stable, better outcome here.”

Well, so far, six U.S. soldiers have been killed and average gas prices nationally have jumped more than a quarter in the past week.

Keep in mind that there is no consistently stated rationale coming from administrative officials for the armed conflict.

The president, who campaigned on a promise of no new wars, has not seen fit to address the nation or Congress. Rather he has chosen to call various media outlets in an effort to “workshop” his plans for the conflict, according to New York Magazine.

After hunkering down at his seaside palace in Florida during the initial strikes, the golfer-in-chief released two prerecorded videos on social media.

Over the weekend, he called nearly a dozen reporters, many of whom work for outlets he says he despises: NBC, ABC, the New York Times and MS NOW among them.

Margaret Hartmann of New York Magazine’s Intelligencer said, “And Trump did not offer a clear or consistent justification for the war in these rapid-fire chats.”

She wrote that there was bad news and good news emerging from those calls to reporters.

The bad news is that the man who decided a war was necessary right now “doesn’t seem to have a clear, concise, consistent explanation for why he launched a new war in the Middle East, nor is he laser focused on the next steps.”

Sadly, the good news is that he’s “open to chatting with both friends and foes about what he should do.”

If this is the way the adjudicated rapist is choosing to conduct what might very well become World War III, nothing good is going to come from it.

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And the rich will get richer by profiting from this “military conflict.”

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Lead art: screen grab from CBC News: The National via YouTube.

Is Felon’s Plan for Middle East Biblical in Scope?

By Michael Woyton

Congress isn’t earning its keep. There are always complaints about “do-nothing” Congresses, but this one takes the cake.

This Congress hasn’t declared war on Iran.

You know what else this Congress hasn’t done? It hasn’t officially approved changing the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War.

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Sure, there was an executive order signed by president donald j. felon*, but you know, that doesn’t make it for real.

What really is “for real” is that we are in a state of war with a country in the Middle East because the adjudicated rapist and accused pedophile is trying to get all of us to ignore that he is not interested in being president of a democracy, has no hard and fast policies and is — checks the stock market — in the process of tanking the economy.

A week ago the national average price for a gallon of regular gasoline was $2.951, according to AAA. Yesterday, it was $2.997 and today the average price is $3.109.

In New York, today’s average price is $3.040, up 3.5 cents from yesterday.

Sure, this is the time of year that seasonal gas prices start to creep up, what with spring break around the corner.

But according to CNBC, Iran has reportedly closed the Strait of Hormuz and has said it will target vessels trying to move through the waterway.

That makes oil producers raise their prices, and there goes the jump at the pump.

All of this must be part of some grand plan on behalf of the administration, right?

How would we know?

The so-called leader of the free world still hasn’t addressed the nation or, for that matter, Congress to lay out his plan for the war in Iran.

According to talking points sent out by the White House to its GOPmaga faithful, if anyone asks if the United States is at war with Iran, the answer should be “The President announced major combat operations against Iran with clear achievable goals.”

So not “war,” but major combat operations — that’s the reason we have lost six of our soldiers — so far.

Those suggestions from the wannabe king allow shining stars of the Senate such as Oklahoma Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin, who serves on the Armed Services Committee, to get on the TV machine and say before god and everybody watching CNN, “This isn’t a war” because “we haven’t declared war.”

Are you sure you should be on a committee that oversees the armed services if you can’t tell that what is going on in the Middle East right now is a war?

Even the “Secretary of War” Pete Kegseth calls it a war, Markwayne.

Then again, maybe it’s really a Holy War.

An independent journalist named Jonathan Larsen said that more than 110 complaints were lodged over a two-day period alleging that senior officers were calling the war on Iran “‘part of ‘God’s divine plan,’ with claims that US President Donald Trump was ‘anointed by Jesus’ to spark Armadeddon,” The Cradle reported.

The soldiers making the complaints were in more than 40 units across at least 30 military sites, with soldiers telling the Military Religious Freedom Foundation “that commanders are describing the Iran campaign as divinely ordained and tied to the Book of Revelation.”

The complainants included at least 11 Christians, one Muslim and one Jew who “described the remarks as ‘so toxic and over the line’ that they shocked those present.”

More disturbing was the report that all of the complaints said there was “unrestricted euphoria of their commanders” who saw the war as “biblically-sanctioned” and a sign that the “End Times” were coming.

It all shouldn’t be surprising that this line of thought would surface during an administration with an inexperienced war-mongering former TV host defense secretary who wrote a book called “American Crusade,” that called for American Crusaders to push back against Islamists.

That same defense secretary has a tattoo on his bicep that reads “Deus Vult,” or “God Wills It.”

Combine that with presidential advisor ~~President~~ Stephen Miller whose white nationalism is driving the second term of an easily distractible authoritarian interested only in enriching himself and getting even with enemies.

That’s quite the roadmap to planetary apocalypse.

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Lead art: screen grab from LiveNOW from FOX via YouTube.

We’re Sure Felon Has Good Reasons to Bomb Iran

By Michael Woyton

Could someone out there please explain to me why we are now bombing Iran?

We had a deal with Iran that President Barack Obama negotiated, but during his first term, president donald j. felon* tore it up — likely for only one reason, that Obama signed it.

So Iran restarted its nuclear program.

And remember, in June, we bombed three of Iran’s nuclear sites, which the convicted felon described as obliterating the country’s nuclear capability.

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Now, contrary to intelligence assessments, the justification for the ongoing conflict is that Iran is back in the nuclear weapons business and “could ‘soon’ reach the U.S.”

We know now that this president doesn’t believe in intelligence.

Maybe someone out of the one in four Americans polled by Reuters who said they are in favor of the United States going to war with another Middle East country could explain the real reason we are bombing Iran. [cough Epstein cough]

That’s right, only 27 percent of those questioned by Reuters/Ipsos in a poll released Sunday said they approved of striking Iran. Forty-three percent said they disapproved of the military action and a little less than one-third, or 29 percent, were not sure.

More than half — 56 percent — said in the same poll that the golfer-in-chief is too willing to use military force.

Of Republicans, 55 percent approved of the strikes, but 42 percent of them said “they would be less likely to support the Iran campaign if it leads to U.S. troops being killed or injured.

Too late. As of this writing, four U.S. service members have died so far, according to Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, who added “we expect to take additional losses.”

Mind you, the Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted Feb. 18-23, during the time that government officials and the media were chattering about the possibility of the U.S. launching the attack.

I wonder if those 27 percent are still as enthusiastic about losing American lives in another Middle East conflict.

Maybe the next poll on the continuing conflict will better reflect how people really feel about sending Americans to die in worthless wars.

Let’s see how low his approval rating can really go.

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At least 153 deaths, many of them children are being reported, from a strike that hit a school in southern Iran, BBC said.

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No one that the wannabe king loves (if it’s possible for him to really love anyone other than himself) will ever be adversely affected by the war.

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Has the price of gasoline started going up where you live?

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Lead art: screen grab from the internet.

Long Speech About Pretty Much Nothing: Media Reports

By Michael Woyton

The best comment I saw this morning on social media was, “Is he still talking?”

Media reported that president donald j. felon* gave the longest State of the Union speech in history, even longer than his last one, for a total of 108 minutes.

Was there news in any of it?

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Only if you consider the president’s “upbeat vision of the U.S. economy” colliding “with the sentiment of Americans who remain anxious about their finances and feel they haven’t benefited from Trump’s policies,” according to the Associated Press.

The grifter-in-chief spent much of his rally-like address blaming the Democrats for what is wrong in the country — which is being run, in case you weren’t aware, by a Republican-led House, a Republican-led Senate and a Republican-led executive branch.

He blamed the left for rising health care premiums, not protecting Social Security and the affordability crisis.

The elderly golfer stuck to his long-time belief that tariffs are paid by foreign countries and that if he got his way they would replace income taxes, the AP reported.

He crowed about lifting “2.4 million Americans, a record, off of food stamps,” when the reality is the passage of his “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” that made the uber-wealthy uber-wealthier, actually made 2.4 million Americans lose access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), PBS News reported.

So “lifting” or “being kicked off.” Potato potahto, neither of which 2.4 million Americans can any longer afford.

Even the Wall Street Journal editorial page, that bastion of conservatism, didn’t find much to impress, calling it “full of patriotic spectacle” and a highlight of the GOP’s greatest hits from 2025.

However, the WSJ didn’t stop there.

“But the main political news in the speech is that there isn’t much that Mr. Trump wants Republicans in Congress to do for the rest of this year,” the editorial board said.

They called it “striking” that the president “seems to have given up on getting anything done in this Congress,” emphasizing ideas with little chance of passing, such as the SAVE America Act, which would make it harder for many people to register to vote.

There was nothing more on immigration reform other than enforcement and nothing to justify increasing defense spending.

Faced with the possibility of a Democratic takeover because the midterms, trump used his speech to try to remind voters “why they shouldn’t risk returning Democrats to power,” the WSJ said.

Now it’s up to the Democrats to remind voters what the convicted felon actually accomplished.

As former congressman and anti-trumper Joe Walsh said on social media, “He took the strongest post-Covid economy in the entire industrialized world and singlehandedly fucked it up. He put lawless, masked federal thugs on our streets to terrorize immigrants & citizens. Nothing he said last night matters.”

What he said.

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Lead art: screen grab from Al Jazeera English via YouTube.

Americans Say State of the Union ‘Not Strong’

By Michael Woyton

Full disclosure: I do not intend to watch a minute of the State of the Union speech tonight. If I still had cable, I would probably be watching TCM for their lineup of “Gaslight” at 8 p.m. and “Imitation of Life” at 10 p.m. A tip of the hat to whomever chose those two films for this evening.

Regarding the speech, I am positive that president felon (I’m following his social media post that said he will only refer to the Supreme Court in lowercase because he has a complete lack of respect for them) will say how great he has been, how great everything is and how Joe Biden is the cause of everything that’s bad.

The followup analysis, for the most part, will gloss over the slurring of his words, the lack of specificity in policy and the orange-tint of his face makeup.

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If we want a more realistic idea of how the state of the union is, we could turn to the opinion of a majority of Americans who said in response to the NPR/PBS News/Marist Poll that the “United States is not very strong or not strong at all.”

The poll, released Monday, said that six in 10 Americans believe this country is worse off than it was a year ago.

Even more said the system of checks and balances is not working.

The bottom line, according to Marist, is that “the results of these questions underscore the view of more than seven in 10 Americans that U.S. democracy is in jeopardy.”

When asked to describe the state of the union, 57 percent of respondents said it was not very strong/not strong at all — up from 53 percent in March of last year.

Of the six in 10 Americans who said the nation is worse off than it was a year ago, 90 percent were Democrats and 68 percent were independents.

The notion that the system of checks and balances in the U.S. is not working well is up by double digit percentage points, according to the Marist poll.

Sixty-eight percent of Americans disagreed or strongly disagreed that the system was working well — up from 56 percent from last year or 12 percentage points.

Interestingly, the largest change on the checks and balances system occurred among Republicans and independents, with 43 percent of GOPers, up from 26 percent, and 75 percent of independents, up from 64 percent.

The question as to whether there is a serious threat to democracy was answered in the affirmative by 78 percent of Americans, with 22 percent saying things are hunky-dory.

This NPR/PBS News/Marist Poll surveyed 1,462 adults and was conducted from Jan. 27 through Jan. 30. Results are statistically significant within ±2.9 percentage points.

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Speaking of the Epstein files:

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Still speaking of the Epstein files. Gotta get some of those signs for up here.

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Lead art: screen grab from Google Maps.