Etiquette



DP Etiquette

First rule: Don't be a jackass. Most people are good.

Other rules: Do not attack or insult people you disagree with. Engage with facts, logic and beliefs. Out of respect for others, please provide some sources for the facts and truths you rely on if you are asked for that. If emotion is getting out of hand, get it back in hand. To limit dehumanizing people, don't call people or whole groups of people disrespectful names, e.g., stupid, dumb or liar. Insulting people is counterproductive to rational discussion. Insult makes people angry and defensive. All points of view are welcome, right, center, left and elsewhere. Just disagree, but don't be belligerent or reject inconvenient facts, truths or defensible reasoning.

Tuesday, June 2, 2026

Trump guts a major ocean climate science research project to hide terrifying inconvenient facts to protect polluters

The system became operational in 2016. It was designed to last for about 25 years. The cost to operate it was ~$48 million per year. Trump repeatedly tried to slash the program’s budget by about 80 percent for 2025 and 2026. OOI instruments off the coast of Newport, Ore., and Grays Harbor, Wash., collected and transmitted temperature, acidity, and oxygen level data that is needed for predicting climate-related environmental changes, and the health of the region’s commercial fishing industry. 

An OOI data transmission buoy

Long-term observing systems like OOI are critical for detecting climate change because climate changes typically emerge over a period of decades from noisy weather patterns. Once a continuous record is broken, especially in key locations like the subpolar North Atlantic or deep sea upwelling locations, scientists cannot go back and reconstruct the missing years with anything close to the accuracy of direct ocean measurements. The OOI underpins our current understanding of marine heat waves, ocean heat uptake, and biogeochemical processes that directly affect fisheries and coastal communities. From a scientific-program point of view, shutting down a system designed for 25 years after roughly a decade is another example of Trump and MAGA politics gutting the public interest to pay off special interests who profit from continuing to pollute.

The shutdown of OOI cannot be rationally understood to be a claimed neutral budget decision. The shutdown fits squarely into Trump’s and MAGA elites’ objective of (1) dismantling climate science, gutting NOAA and NSF climate research, and (2) erasing data that document fossil‑fuel damage, all while pledging to end what Trump and MAGA elites like to call the Green New Scam.

Q: Is a deceived, ignorant electorate easier to deceive, exploit and profit from than an undeceived and informed electorate?

Q: What or who is the real scam here, climate science research or Trump, MAGA elites and their way of doing business?

Info sources: Link, link, link, link, link

Sunday, May 31, 2026

Trump subverts the rule of law — federal law is now the rule of the tyrant

The first pardon on the list is Jan. 21, 2026, the day after Trump was sworn into office

Trump and MAGA elites have made clear that they use the rule of law as a special interest-serving partisan tool. To them, it’s not a neutral institution for vindicating laws or defending the public interest. AP-Frontline reporting makes the painful truth undeniable.

In this instance of Trump personally, directly subverting the rule of law, he has quietly ordered his personal DoJ to stop investigating Venezuela’s acting president and major drug dealer, Delcy Rodríguez. Rodriguez has been a target of the US Drug Enforcement Administration due to her drug kingpin activities. As can be expected from our now corrupted DoJ, they lie to us about it, a spokesperson saying “there was never an investigation into her to shut down”. This is an example of how Trump and MAGA elites have degenerated our rule of law into corrupt, cruel rule of tyrants.

AP and other sources have reported that Delcy Rodríguez was on the US Drug Enforcement Administration’s radar for years. She was designated a DEA “priority target” in 2022. That label is reserved for suspects believed to have a significant impact on the drug trade. Link

By now, Trump has a solid track record of sympathy for drug dealers, which Rodriguez seems to be. That is in addition to sympathy for rioters, tax cheats, inside stock traders, fraudsters and various other criminal miscreants and thugs who can afford to buy a pardon from Trump for their crimes. The going rate for buying a Trump pardon is estimated to be least about $1 million/pardon (and this). The DoJ still keeps track of his pardons. The DoJ makes the pardon list public at this link. At least until March of 2026, the DoJ updated the pardon list. Since then, public updates to the list have stopped. Of course, that is exactly what one would expect from Trump hiding his deep moral rot from the public.

Anyway, Trump’s protection for criminals is not new or out of character. Trump is a criminal with his own track record of criminality and contempt for the rule of law. Here are more of Trump’s pardons for criminals convicted of selling or trafficking marijuana, cocaine, or other drugs.

Trump loves pardoning criminals, assuming they can afford to pay him his pardon fee.

Q: Why do you think that the DoJ no longer publicly updates Trump’s list of pardons and commutations?

Q: Given Trump’s rock solid track record as a criminal, chronic liar and morally rotted tyrant who demands loyalty to himself over all other things, is there any solid reason to believe that (1) his loyalist DoJ is not protecting his pardons-for-profit business by no longer updating the public pardons list, or (2) Rodriguez has not engaged in any drug dealing activities?

Friday, May 29, 2026

Congress and Trump sell out the US to Israel


Fusing the US taxpayer and US military with the Israeli military
Something new has gone terribly wrong. This is just as bad as most awful things Trump and MAGA are these days. In its cowardice, corruption, staggering incompetence and seething hostility to democracy and the rule of law, our MAGA congress has quietly started a horrible, taxpayer-funded process of aggressively integrating the US and Israeli militaries.

An article by Responsible Statecraft, Congress quietly moves to integrate US and Israeli militaries, reports that buried in the House 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), there is a section entitled “United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative”. The provisions there do more to intertwine the US and Israeli militaries than anything the $200 billion+ in inflation adjusted military assistance Israel has received from the US since its founding in 1948. 

Section 224 provides for expanded bilateral research and development, co-production of weapons, joint ventures, licensing agreements, and basically all kinds of US-Israeli military-industrial complex cooperation. That greatly expands already major cooperation on missile defense. In essence, 224 greatly expands coordination to all areas of defense tech. That includes AI, quantum, and autonomous systems (drones, weaponized robots), directed energy weapons, cyberwar, and biotech (WTF, germ warfare???). Section 224 also proposes “network integration” and “data fusion”. US military data will also be Israeli military data.

Worse than all of that, the MAGA House bill strips away political and diplomatic oversight mechanisms that make the US-Israeli relationship publicly accountable. Section 224 guts the current visible annual aid vote into an opaque, basically secret machinery of taxpayer-funded defense acquisition. Section 224 limits oversight, and meaningful, honest political accountability is minimal to non-existent. The result is a defense deeper defense relationship that is basically run in secret.


Unlike other weapons agreements where the US supplies weapons and the buyers sometimes make some parts for them, Section 224 is nothing like that at all. This deal fuses US and Israeli defense sectors in multiple areas that are vital to future battlefields, e.g. autonomous systems and cyberwar. The House has also tucked provisions in 224 that would create extraordinary Israeli influence in the US, far beyond what it already has through the Israel lobby and its social media influencers. Section 224 gives the Israeli government the option to greatly expand one of the most powerful levers of influence in US politics, namely jobs. By expanding or starting new co-production facilities like it already has in Mississippi and Arkansas, the Israeli government could boast of providing jobs on US soil (at taxpayer expense), thereby corrupting members of Congress who represent the districts where those jobs are.

The US political system is already highly susceptible to the whims of the Israeli government. This proposed deal would secretly entangle the US with the Israeli war machine which has no qualms about drawing the US into military conflicts in the Middle East, whether it makes any sense or not for America and its interests. In essence, the MAGA House is proposing a full-blown secret sellout of American interests, its military independence, and the taxpayers to a brutal Israeli government. 

One has to wonder what payoff to Trump Netanyahu has promised, and how much of it has already been delivered. Also, what did MAGA House members get in return for their sellout, and how will Trump/Israel bribe the Senate? Enquiring minds want to know.

Not to worry, corporal Bone Spurs 
is on the job and in charge 
What could possibly go wrong?


Oh yeah, that could go wrong

Christianity's greatest enemy? Christian zealots

 This 1:20 video explains the threat to Christianity. I find the argument convincing.



Mindless zealots like that, along with corrupt oligarchy and corrupt autocracy, now also constitute the greatest threat to what is left of American democracy, our fading rule of law and our fading civil liberties.