Millions must constantly make choices between rent, food, and medications. America is broken.

Millions don't believe in vaccinations. America is broken.

Millions watch Fox "news" and believe the unbelievable. America is broken.

Millions don't believe in climate change, or science. America is broken.

Millions vote for a political party that is destroying them. America is broken

Millions love, back, and intend to vote for an insane presidential candidate. America is broken.

Millions don't believe in democracy (and can't even define it). America is broken.

Millions don't understand that taxes are the price of civilization. America is broken.

Millions don't understand that banning books leads to book burning. America is broken.

Millions don't understand that burning books leads to burning people. America is broken.

Millions don't understand that we are becoming the fascism we have always fought. America is broken.

Millions don't understand that our survival as a free country is on the line. America is broken.

Phony third parties being funded by Trump and his donors, are intended to take votes away from Joe Biden. Add to that the voter suppression tactics in many states, the "cleansing" of voter roles in various places, "lost votes," and who-knows-what-else the Republicans will come up with. A Trump "win" will be a stolen election. Only a fool would believe he could win the presidency fair and square.

Could he actually, once again, occupy the White House? You bet. And you don't need much imagination to understand what this country would become with this madman in power.

Is there anything we can do about it?

Well, Democrats and Independents could vote in the most massive numbers in history. Will that happen?

That aside, I have no other answer. I'm sure many would head for Canada or elsewhere. But given Trump's insanity, I'm not sure where anyone would be safe. Once he controls all the levers of American power, do you think that would be enough for him? He won't be satisfied until he owns the whole world. And if he can't own it, he'll try to destroy it.

Sorry to sound so negative, but this is one possible reality that we're facing. And if you don't agree that this could come to happen, I'd like to hear why. Better yet, I'd like to hear any ideas on how we can avoid this completely.

This post is about our lives, our country, and our freedoms. It may get me kicked off of DU and I'm willing to take that risk. But, like it or not, it's going to be a major factor in next year's election. We can't make believe it doesn't exist because the Republicans are going to mention it every hour of every day. And the time to start fighting for President Joe Biden is right now.

If Trump is their nominee, we'll be looking at a contest between an 81 year old man with most of his faculties intact, and a 78 year old man whom, it can be argued, is unfit to be president for, (perhaps), legal reasons, and definitely, because of the danger he presents to America and the world. Donald Trump is the second biggest threat to humanity, running a close second behind climate change.

MAGAs worship Trump. Sane Republicans want to see him gone and forgotten. And my guess is that these sane Republicans will vote for Joe, before, once again, giving a mentally deranged man the power to destroy us all.

To put that as plainly as possible, Donald Trump wants to be universally loved. He wants to be "Dear Leader,." He wants absolute power. And if he can't have those things, he's willing to destroy the entire world. If that isn't crazy, what is?

So here's the choice. Stand behind an aging Joe Biden. Or vote for a madman.

I really don't care what crap the Republicans throw out there, but this is the choice. And it's the job of each and every Democrat and sane human being to make the reality of the upcoming election known to all. It's about sanity vs madness. It's about our freedoms vs totalitarianism. It's about all of our lives vs a barbaric world.

He's MSNBC's greatest find since Rachel Maddow.

Most of the time, Velshi is not reading off a teleprompter. He understands the major issues of the day, his personal analyses of various topics shows he's done his homework, and he's an outstanding interviewer when he has on Congressional leaders, or lawyers such as Lawrence Tribe. And when some guest is throwing bullshit at the camera, he challenges them, and won't let them get away with it.

He's on from 10 - 12 every Saturday and Sunday morning. And he's also become the "go-to" person for any MSNBC host on vacation, or out for any other reason.

The Republican Propaganda machine has been built over decades and is tremendously effective. But we need much more of what MSNBC has to offer. Rachel Maddow is the absolute best investigative jouralist on television. And now, Ali Velshi has come up through the ranks and, I for one, find him to be a true journalist, rather than another "news reader." It's hard to name many like these two who are fighting the endless lies fed to the public by the Republican/fascist party. We need many more like them, and on many more messaging platforms other than MSNBC.

Because when Joe gets reelected next year, she will still be his Vice President. And, if for reasons of health, Joe can't complete his term, Kamala Harris will become the President of the United States.

Horror of horrors! A woman president! A liberal woman president! A BLACK, liberal woman president!

This is the Republican's worst nightmare. And they will do anything and everything to stop this from happening.

A female, liberal, BLACK president is an alien concept to the lizard-brained among us. So after next year's victory, expect the crazed to become increasingly crazed.

Hopefully, Joe will complete his second term and bring America much more of the (unrecognized and unappreciated) good he has done so far. But there's a sports saying that "We have a deep bench." And to our great good fortune, Kamala is the next in line.

I don't know how long it will take America to return to any semblance of "normalcy," which I don't foresee happening in the near future. But what is most important, is that after the 2024 elections, an unprecedented Democratic turnout will ensure that no Republican is anywhere near the levers of power. -- And if we are really fortunate, the next election will mark the end of the current version of the Republican Party.

After that, we'll have to address the healing that needs to take place.

Those words about Trump came out of the mouth a relative I haven't seen in many years.

All I could do was laugh in his face, while mentally trying to tally up the death toll. Needless to say, the conversation and the encounter with this relative ended there.

So what about Trump's death toll? Hard to calculate because he didn't kill his victims with his own hands. Rather, he let his lies, hatreds, his ingrained cruelty, and his policies, do the work for him.

Over a million Americans died from Covid. How many died as a result of his lies, his denial of reality, and his failure to mobilize all government resources? We'll never know.

How many died at the Mexican border due to his policies of cruelty and indifference. Also a number we'll never know.

How many of the weekly massacres in schools, churches, and virtually any other public place we're committed by those screwed up enough to heed his reckless, poison filled rhetoric? Here again, we'll never know.

But we do know that he is as surely a cause of death as was the European black plague of the middle ages.

He now carries Four indictments that include 91 separate felonies. And beyond that, anyone who believes he doesn't have blood on his hands is, to one degree or another, brain dead. Now, he's running for president again and could actually win/steal it? WTF is wrong with America? Whatever happened to the concept of evolving into a more intelligent species? Well, it's way too soon to write off Darwin. But we sure as hell seem to be going backwards.

And by the way, it's unlikely that Mussolini, Stalin, Hitler, or any other major tyrant of the past century or two, ever killed anyone with their own hands. They simply peddled their hatreds, their, cruelty, their poison, and then let their thugs do the actual butchering.

It's happened to most of us. We call some company with a problem and get a recorded voice. The voice gives you choices, but you're problem isn't one of them. You want to talk to a live person. After trying various tactics, you find that you're screaming at a recorded voice.

Personnel shortages in many companies due to Covid, and other reasons, have resulted in reaching more automated voices than ever before. We all know that in screaming at these automated voices, we're shoveling shit against the tide. But it doesn't stop us from being frustrated, screaming, and sometimes, just giving up and hanging up. (Which is the reason that a few companies use automated voice systems.)

If you're lucky, you eventually break through the system and get to speak to a real person who may be in Indonesia, or India. And if you're very lucky, their English is understandable.

I had a credit problem this morning and it took me almost two hours to get it resolved (I hope).

Bottom line. Automated voices have been driving us nuts for decades. Now that AI is here, try to imagine yelling at an automated voice that argues with you, tells you to calm down, and threatens to hang up on you.

Sigh. The future ain't what it used to be. Seems that AI ain't gonna' let us scream, without being punished for it.

Okay, by now, almost everyone knows that, at his Georgia arrest, he claimed to be 6' 3", and weighed 215 pounds. We all know that those are just basic, everyday Trump lies. But very few seem to realize that he also claimed his hair color to be "Strawberry Blonde."

What man would claim that?? Who would say that some incomprehensible mop?/nest?/manufactured? thing on his head was "Strawberry Blonde?"

With the exception of MAGAs, virtually everyone believes he's bug shit insane. But somehow, "Strawberry Blonde" seems somewhere outside the realm of insanity. And please don't ask me to explain that. It's impossible to know what goes on inside his "Strawberry Blonde" covered head.

Yet, here he is, once again running for president. I wonder if his fans will leave the election polls wearing "I Voted for the Strawberry Blonde Guy" buttons?

(If you don't know about his "Strawberry Blonde" claim, Google it.)

That sounds like something a desperate man might post about himself on some dating site.

I've been told that almost everyone stretches the truth on such sites. So I guess that, if I were a woman, I'd assume this guy was an inch or two shorter, uses lifts in his shoes, and is probably closer to 300 lbs, than 200 lbs.

But what I would really wonder about is that "Strawberry Blonde" thing. After all, what man has ever claimed that he was a "Strawberry Blonde?" My suspicion would be that he might be bi-curious, or a totally self-absorbed nut job.

But here's the thing. Every time that mug shot of him is shown, I see an angry, vicious, dangerous, threatening person who needs to be isolated from the rest of society. And just below that facade, I see a scared, hollow little man, trying his best to make everyone fear him and not let anyone see that he's a scared, hollow little man.

Liberal TV pundits, op-ed columnists, and every respected law professor in the country keeps telling us this.

Why are all these people still feeding us this lie? I really don't know.

On an ongoing basis, from the time Trump took office on January 20th, 2017, right up until today, the "We're all equal under the law" meme has been a lie. Yet, decent people are still trying to make us believe it's true.

Want just a bit of reality? Okay. Some of those who have been indicted as Trump co-conspirators in Georgia have been surrendering as ordered. But are they being treated the same as a black kid who has been arrested for some reason and is being processed through the system? C'mon. Use your imagination. You know the answer to that question.

We all know that Donald John Trump will not end up in an orange suit when he surrenders tomorrow. They'll get him in and out as quickly as possible. -- Seems that the largest criminal in American history is getting special treatment.

So, how can any sane human being still believe that "We're all equal under the law?"

We accuse the MAGATs of being a cult. -- A cult is made up of people who believe the lie(s) of their leader(s).

Yet we too believe the lies of our leaders. Especially the one that claims "We're all equal under the law."

It's time for us to stop believing the crap we're being fed. And it's time to ask our leaders why they're selling this crap.