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Trump thinks the DoJ is his personal law firm. And he thinks the military is his personal militia. So like all the rest of his contractors, he's shafting them: "The 4,000 California National Guard soldiers who President Donald Trump surged into Los Angeles remain unpaid due to delays in issuing official activation orders, leaving compensation and benefits in limbo. "According to more than a dozen Guardsmen across four units who spoke to Military.com, none has received formal activation orders, the critical paperwork that not only authorizes their duty status, but also unlocks pay, Tricare health benefits and eligibility for Department of Veterans Affairs services. Without those orders, troops remain in a legal and administrative limbo." https://www.military.com/daily-news/2025/06/11/guard-soldiers-deployed-trumps-la-crackdown-arent-getting-paid-yet.html  

There was a time when Republican stood foursquare in favor of local and state government over the federal government. No more. "Noem Says National Guard Occupation Is Meant To ‘Liberate’ LA from its mayor and governor" Wonder if the citizens of LA and CA knew they were in need of "liberation" and whether they think hijacking their own state guard by the Trump Bolsheviks in Washington was an improvement over what their city and state police were providing. I doubt Noem or Trump did a poll. Look, this is about dominance, not about public safety.   https://talkingpointsmemo.com/where-things-stand/noem-says-national-guard-occupation-is-meant-to-liberate-la-from-its-mayor-and-governor

Nobody wants to get cancer. And there is no sure path to avoiding cancer. There are a number of gene alleles that predispose to cancer risk. If you inherit one of these alleles, your risk of cancer is higher than average. That doesn’t mean you can’t do anything. Knowing you’re at higher risk means you should undergo more frequent testing (breast imaging, colonoscopy, prostate exams, etc). Early detection improves survival. There are a number of other “lifestyle” risk factors for cancer: smoking, alcohol, sun exposure, obesity and aging. Of course, if your goal is a long life, you’ll have to confront an increased risk of cancer as you age. Again, surveillance is an important way to increase survival. Diet is probably the most modifiable cancer risk factor.  “ The most recent research uses different indices to assess dietary patterns without specifying the amount of animal-based foods that participants consumed. A   2023 meta-analysis   included assessment of 22 prospective...

  The stench of tear gas and hypocrisy in LA Since I don't watch TV, I might have missed it. Anybody here see Elon and the DOGE bois protesting the government inefficiency of National Guard and Marines being sent to LA as a Trump photo op? Isn’t this sort of wasteful spending what DOGE was created to eliminate? Anybody here see any anti-ICE protestors waving that "Don't Tread On Me" flag? Protestors in desert camo who are open-carrying* against governmental tyranny? Isn't the Trump Administration military occupation of LA what the NRA patriots were referring to when they talked about "2nd Amendment solutions" and "watering the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots?" Anybody here see Kristi Noem in the crowd protesting Trump’s direct attack on states’ rights? “ As South Dakota governor in February 2024,   Kristi Noem   threatened then-President   Joe Biden   when Democrats said he should federalize the National Guard in Texas to disrupt tha...

Stephen Miller has pointed ICE to Home Depots as magnets for undocumented workers (usually gathered outside, hoping to snag a day’s work). But to paraphrase Willie Sutton, why not go where the immigrants are? “Undocumented immigrants are concentrated in cities for various reasons but by no means only in cities. Cities have communal and ethnic aid networks. They have labor demand. But agro-business is also heavily dependent on undocumented labor. Agro-business is often located in red areas, even within heavily blue states. California is a key example of this. So too is Kristi Noem’s South Dakota. The state has a relatively small immigrant population, but the dairy business is heavily dependent on undocumented labor. In general, we’ve seen very little of these raids in the agricultural sector, which is mostly run by Republican business interests. This isn’t a huge surprise. But it’s worth noting explicitly. There’s been reporting that the White House has given explicit assurances to pol...

Trump claims his tariffs will bring in $3 trillion, enough to pay for the Big Beautiful Bill and also lower the national debt. This is magical thinking. Tariffs are simply a consumption tax that hits the middle class and working class hardest. It makes goods more expensive, driving inflation. It takes money out of the hands of the real job creators, the middle class and working class, increasing unemployment and slowing the US economy. Finally, Trump’s tariff goals are inherently contradictory: “. . .   there is a disconnect in Trump’s strategy: He argues that tariffs will both raise trillions of dollars and force other countries to negotiate trade deals that are more favorable for the United States. But if he succeeds at the negotiating table, tariff revenue will decline — and the “tremendous surplus” will shrink.” Call them the “tooth fairy tariffs.”   https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/06/09/business/trump-tariffs-tax-cuts-deficit/  

These days, it’s fashionable for right-wing Republicans to accuse those who disagree with their extremism as being Marxists, socialists are communists. Of course, they are using these words as epithets, not based on their actual definitions.   Also, it’s fashionable for right-wing Republicans to claim they’re not cutting the federal budget, they’re only cutting waste, fraud and abuse, the multi-purpose epithets to cover any program they hate. What’s the evidence that DOGE has been wielding its surgical chainsaw against waste, fraud and abuse? Here’s what an insider had to say: “ A former employee of the Department of Government Efficiency says that he found that the federal waste, fraud and abuse that his agency was supposed to uncover were "relatively nonexistent" during his short time embedded within the Department of Veterans Affairs.   "I personally was pretty surprised, actually, at how efficient the government was," Sahil Lavingia told NPR's Juana Summers....