MAGA crushes free speech

ABC executives took Jimmy Kimmel off the air after MAGA threatened to yank its license. Kimmel didn't say anything wrong or out of the scope of free speech. Kimmel said on air:

1. We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.

2. In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving. On Friday, the White House flew the flags at half staff, which got some criticism, but on a human level, you can see how hard the president is taking this.

3. After showing Trump discussing White House ballroom construction when asked about coping with Kirk's death: Yes, he's at the fourth stage of grief: construction. This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he called a friend. This is how a 4-year-old mourns a goldfish.

No threats, no fomenting of insurrection. Just comedy and opinions. 

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, extremist MAGA operative with lots of power, criticized Kimmel's comments and threatened that he could revoke broadcast licenses. He commented: We can do this the easy way or the hard way. 

One can easily envision Carr saying, Go ahead punk, make my day. That's how MAGA thug politics works.

This is how free speech rights die in under kleptocratic dictatorship in a corrupt capitalist economic system where money talks and democracy and freedoms walk.

MAGA bits: Hiding truth; Sequestering the liberals; Voting; The Epstein nothingburger

In the wake of Charlie Kirk's murder, MAGA elites have been blaming the left for all political violence in America. To help boost that slanderous lie to the status of MAGA truth, the DoJ quietly removed from its website a NIJ (part of the DoJ) study showing far-right extremists were responsible for most ideologically motivated deaths. See, now the liberals really are the ones who cause 100% of all politically-inspired murders!! MAGA wins again!!

The study the DoJ tried to hide from us is archived at this link. 

Part of the first page of the hidden report

that us taxpayer paid for

The NIJ is part of the DoJ

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In the wake of Charlie Kirk's murder, some MAGA elites have been saying what is on the minds of all of them. Namely, political opposition to djt and MAGA politics and policy are evil incarnate. The evil influence must be terminated one way or another. MAGA freak MTG has a fine quality MAGA solution: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) renewed her call for a “national divorce” to divide the country along partisan lines. She posits this brilliant insight in response to the Charlie Kirk murder, and federal funding disputes in Congress. “There is nothing left to talk about with the left. They hate us. To be honest, I want a peaceful national divorce. Our country is too far gone and too far divided, and it’s no longer safe for any of us. They assassinated our nice guy who actually talked to them peacefully debating ideas. Then millions on the left celebrated and made clear they want all of us dead”.

Dang, the left really wants all of the right dead? That’s awful. But at least she wants a peaceful divorce, so it's OK.

Hm, what might the MTG divorce look like in everyday reality? 

Looks good to me! 👍

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In a non-MAGA bit, USSC justice Sotomayor pointed out an unpleasant and obvious but obscure truth. Saving our democracy, rule of law and civil liberties is not longer up to our morally rotted and collapsed federal courts. The USSC has been MAGAfied and corrupted. Now, the last line of defense is the 2026 mid-term elections. 

She commented: "I don't think whether I'm concerned matters. I think what matters is whether people are concerned. I am a Supreme Court Justice. I get to decide individual cases. I get to speak my mind about them. In the end, I don't change what exists. People change what they don't like or they support what they do like. The power of change is in people."

The only way left for people to matter is to vote MAGA politicians out of power in 2026. By 2028, it will probably be too late to save our values and political system. At least that's how I read what Sotomayor is saying in the context of current political and social circumstances.

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In a final MAGA bit, we find that the Epstein thing is a total nothingburger! The valiant MAGA crackpot and extreme weirdo Kash Patel, head of the MAGAfied FBI, testified yesterday under oath to senators, e.g., the drooling MAGA thug from Louisiana, John Kennedy, that Epstein sex trafficked young women only to himself. Therefore, there will be no FBI indictments, no DoJ prosecutions, no court convictions, no pervy pedophiles going to the slammer and no revealing of names of prominent people redacted from Epstein evidence documents.

Kash Patel

Patel claims there is "no credible information" that Epstein trafficked underage girls to pedophiles. But, there is lots of solid evidence that contradicts that. It includes (1) sworn survivor testimony from trafficked women in multiple court proceedings, (2) sworn law enforcement testimony from the original investigation, (3) documented financial payments to co-conspirators, (4) the government's own charging documents referencing a trafficking network, (5) Florida Circuit Judge Luis Delgado writing that "the details in the record will be outrageous to decent people", describing "activity ranging from grossly unacceptable to rape", and (6) the 2021 conviction of Epstein's close sex associate Ghislaine Maxwell of felonies including sex trafficking of minors, conspiracy to entice minors to travel to engage in illegal sex acts, and conspiracy to transport minors with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity, all of which charges were directly linked to her coordination and facilitation of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex exploitation and trafficking network with underage girls.

Oops, bad evidence, bad, bad evidence

Thoughts about retirement & wealth distribution

CONTEXT

A potential source of wealth for all Americans is government benefits. Most Americans do not have enough accumulated wealth for what they say is a reasonably comfortable retirement. Median Retirement Savings by Age:

• Ages 55-64: $185,000
• Ages 65-74: $200,000
• Ages 75+: $130,000

That is way below the ~$1.26 million that Americans say believe they need for a comfortable retirement. Combined with other retirement accounts (401k, 403b, IRA, pensions), which represent 21% of household wealth, Social Security and retirement accounts together account for approximately 41% of total U.S. household wealth.

Medicare beneficiary financial profile:

• 25% had savings below $18,950 per person in 2024
• 50% had savings below $110,100 per person
• 25% had no home equity at all

For the 25% of Medicare beneficiaries with less than $18,950 in savings, the $230,000-$260,000 Medicare benefit value represents more than 12 times their total other assets. 

Other data: 

• 63.2% of adult Social Security recipients receive at least 50% of their total income from Social Security
• 43.6% receive 75% or more of their income from Social Security
• 27% rely on Social Security as their only source of income

To understand the magnitude, Social Security wealth totaled an estimated $73.3 trillion in 2019. That's about double all other household-sector pension and retirement account assets combined. It's ~75% the size of all conventionally measured household net worth. This makes Social Security the present value of future benefits roughly double all other household-sector pension and retirement account assets.

In other words, Social Security and medical care benefits are a major source of wealth for a lot of Americans.

Blog post

Although MAGA politicians promise to protect Social Security and Medicare, their policy proposals and legislative actions are a sustained effort to significantly reduce these programs. There is a massive disconnect between MAGA rhetoric and its governing reality. If MAGA does what is really wants to do, there would be catastrophic consequences for American households that depend on these programs as their primary source of wealth.

The Republican Study Committee (RSC), 80% of House Republicans (175 of 222 members) and 100% of House Republican leadership, repeatedly proposed dramatic cuts to Social Security. MAGA could not get that passed through congress, but it reflected their intent to gut government benefits. Their FY 2024 budget called for:

• Over $1.5 trillion in cuts to Social Security over the coming decade
• Raising the retirement age from 67 to 69
• Cutting disability benefits
• Eliminating cost-of-living adjustments (COLA) for higher-income beneficiaries
• Using a chained inflation index that would reduce benefit growth

Those changes would result in a 31% benefit reduction for median workers, i.e., those earning around $58,700 annually—and a 40% reduction for workers earning $94,000. 

In July 2025, House Republicans passed a budget bill that:

• Strips health coverage from 17 million Americans
• Cuts Medicaid, Medicare, and SNAP food assistance
• Eliminates Medicare savings programs affecting 1.4 million low-income beneficiaries
• Repeals nursing home minimum staffing rules
• Imposes Medicaid work requirements affecting 5.2 million adults

The Congressional Budget Office projects this legislation would result in over 51,000 additional preventable deaths annually.

MAGA politics is highly focused on (1) transferring both wealth and power from average citizens and the public interest, and (2) capturing and transferring as much of it as possible to political, business and religious elites.

The bottom line: For the bottom 90% of American households, these programs represent their primary source of economic security and wealth. The MAGA agenda effectively transfers this wealth and attendant power from working families to wealthy individuals via tax cuts. That fundamentally restructures American society's approach to economic security and wealth distribution.

An interesting thought --

maybe a bit oversimplified . . . .

MAGA's moral rot infects libertarian dogma

Radical right political morality

If the self-professed libertarian Rand Paul is a good example of weak libertarian moral and political principle, MAGA's moral rot has infected and rotted libertarianism. In a stunning abandonment of libertarian free speech principle, Paul now calls for a "crackdown" on bad free speech related to Charlie Kirk's murder. Until recently, Paul was a long-time free speech champion. This wacko response to Kirk's murder shows the intellectual inconsistency in modern Republican Party's relationship with civil liberties. Apparently Paul is too morally weak to stand by his principle in the face of MAGA moral rot.

In a show of infantile reasoning, Paul responded to the statement "Oh people have a right to say things" by responding "Well actually they don't necessarily have a right to say things, many people have in their contract what we call a morals clause .... or a conduct clause". What contract Paul has in mind, if any, is beside the point bullshit.

FWIW, morals clauses, while legally enforceable, have very specific applications and cannot broadly restrict political commentary. These clauses typically appear in contracts for high-profile positions - entertainment industry professionals, corporate executives, professional athletes, and public figures whose conduct directly impacts their employer's brand. They are not standard in most employment contracts.

Rand Paul is someone who needs a contract to keep him from saying stupid things. A good stupidity clause would be quite helpful.

As a long-time observer of American politics, it's amazing how much of our country was held together by a wink, a handshake, and a few norms and moral principles. Most of the norms and morals are now blown to smithereens by MAGA rot. All it took was some blowhard to say "nah, I don't think we will be doing that" and then they set the whole damned thing on fire. 

Bad libertarian, bad, bad libertarian!

Obviously, we don't have wise or 

knowledgeable leaders