Is Anyone Paying Attention?

[Sephirah]

I have to question the timing of all of this. Why now?

Millions of people are in the streets celebrating Pride peacefully around the world. And there is nothing he can do about it. So, find an excuse to insert massive numbers of federal agents to target Democratic cities. The situation changed from celebrating Pride to protesting immigration raids. Orange Man never admits to any wrongdoing and instead will double down. Weaponize the militia and counter the Pride parades with a grand military parade (that no one wanted) to stroke an ego at the cost of $45 million.

The problem is that every time he has been found in the wrong, he doubles down. That is leading us in a scary direction.

I suspect because he doesn't like being outside the news. Iran and Israel are literally destroying each other with missile barrages. There's a real possibility that Threads could happen within the next year or two. Loads of people dying. The world is quite honestly on the brink of WW3. But Trump can't stand a world where the focus isn't on him. So he has to make everything about him. Because he knows that when it comes down to it... and I kind of feel bad for saying it, US folks are insular first. What happens there matters more than what happens in the rest of the world. And this clown knows that. He plays on it. If he can make everything all about him then who cares that other parts of the world are obliterating each other? If he isn't involved in the stuff going on in the wider world, he ignores it, and gets all you folks to ignore it. By doing really stupid stuff to keep you focused on your own country and just how much he's ruining it. No publicity is bad publicity.

That's why now. Because people different to his demographic are easy targets. To keep your attention away from what actually matters. And... a lot of folks lap it up.

[Lori Dee]

I suspect because he doesn't like being outside the news.

THIS.

And yes, now we see him inserting himself into that world stage. At first, Marco Rubio clearly stated that the U.S. was not involved in any way, shape, or form. Then Trump implies that he knew about it all along. Then he states that he gave Iran 60 days to decide about the nuclear negotiations, and then it was day 61, implying that he had something to do with it. He likes to take credit for things that he had nothing to do with.

When Iran threatened to attack any country that is helping defend Israel, Trump's Administration then began a propaganda campaign informing the public that Americans live in Israel and there are American troops stationed throughout the area. He wants a war and will use any excuse to have one, in some foreign country or our own. He doesn't care.

[Sephirah]

THIS.

And yes, now we see him inserting himself into that world stage. At first, Marco Rubio clearly stated that the U.S. was not involved in any way, shape, or form. Then Trump implies that he knew about it all along. Then he states that he gave Iran 60 days to decide about the nuclear negotiations, and then it was day 61, implying that he had something to do with it. He likes to take credit for things that he had nothing to do with.

When Iran threatened to attack any country that is helping defend Israel, Trump's Administration then began a propaganda campaign informing the public that Americans live in Israel and there are American troops stationed throughout the area. He wants a war and will use any excuse to have one, in some foreign country or our own. He doesn't care.

He is all bark and no bite. He is quite happy to make himself as the king of the hill, threatening everyone but doing literally nothing. I am sorry, Lori, but it makes the US look a shadow of the powerhouse it used to be. You used to be the folks the world held in massive regard. Who would wade in and this kind of petty crap would just end. Trump just talks and everyone think's he's a joke. Because he likes to pretend that he's not a joke.

If you can... please come back to the US that had the special relationship with the UK. That everyone could count on. That you folks gave a damn about everything outside yourself without making it seem like a circus. That the folks people like Lori and Ash signed up for. And Devlyn. The world wants you to get back to that. To be the good folks again. To believe in the things your country was founded on. You can do it. You just need to cut out this orange rot.

[Lori Dee]

The world wants you to get back to that. To be the good folks again. To believe in the things your country was founded on. You can do it. You just need to cut out this orange rot.

I would venture a guess that the majority of Americans are just what you describe. Most are good people who are helpful, friendly, and courteous. Their main concern is not "men" in women's sports, but how they will make next month's mortgage payment. Many on the far right allowed their extremist views to fuel the election in the wrong direction. They used social media, chatbots, and foreign agents to spread their message of hate and make it seem like that is the majority consensus. Many are waking up and saying, "This is not what we voted for!" Many of those I have talked to said they were voting for reduced taxes and lower egg prices, not the anti-trans issues. Even politicians within the GOP are beginning to see their party platform as a bit extreme.

So, how did this happen? As I stated in an earlier post here, I have seen evidence that EVERY election is rigged. It is specifically designed so that top government positions are awarded to the highest donor. There are ways to prevent that from happening, but no one who can stop it is willing to sacrifice their golden goose.

NBC News (DEC 5, 2024) - Elon Musk spent a quarter-billion dollars electing Trump, including financing mysterious 'RBG PAC'

BBC News (Jun 6, 2025) - Musk later went on to campaign for the president there and even gave away a few $1m cheques to voters.

CalMatters (Jun 17, 2025) - Elon Musk gave $1 million to Donald Trump voters. California lawmakers want to ban that

Musk gave out $1 million checks to swing state voters in the presidential election last year and then in Wisconsin a few months later.

It will take a major revolution to make it stop, and maybe another after that to repair the damage. Sometimes I doubt I will live long enough to see it happen.

[Sephirah]

Every American person I've ever met, Lori, is not the horrible demon the world is trying to make you out to be. And that's the point. The decent people got dragged along for the ride.

In a few years, Trump will be a stain on the White House carpet. He will be a giant Athlete's Foot stain in history.

I, as most of the people in the UK, still feel that bond with our American cousins across the pond. Nothing is kind of going to remove that because of the decades, nay centuries of history we have together. No blow hard mafia boss can lose that. In the UK we feel bad just because the great orange chimpanzee is trying to control the world.

Y'all will always be our cousins across the pond <3

[Lori Dee]

Y'all will always be our cousins across the pond <3

"England and America are two countries separated by a common language." (George Bernard Shaw)

 

[Lori Dee]

Wildfires, flooding, storms, tornadoes, earthquakes, and tsunamis.

Wake up, people. Mother Nature is not happy.

[Lori Dee]

Ice given access to Medicaid data in move critics call a privacy betrayal
Officials let ICE access health data to locate migrants, alarming experts who warn of civil rights and health risks
Link to Full Article
The Guardian - Jessica Glenza
Thu 17 Jul 2025 16.36 EDT

Medicaid officials have reportedly made an agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) to allow agents to examine a database of Americans' personal information – including home addresses, social security numbers and ethnicities.

The data sharing agreement will allow Ice to find "the location of aliens", according to an agreement obtained by the Associated Press. Medicaid is the nation's single largest health insurer, providing coverage for 79 million low-income, disabled and elderly people.

"This is about the weaponization of data, full stop," said Pramila Jayapal, a Democratic US representative from Washington state, who has worked extensively on US healthcare, in a statement on social media.

"Trump said he would go after the 'worst of the worst' immigrants, yet now is giving ICE EVERYONE's Medicaid data, even as ICE targets US citizens. Oh, and undocumented immigrants can't even enroll in Medicaid."

Trump administration officials reportedly overrode the warnings of career civil servants who said such a data sharing arrangement would violate multiple statutes at the insistence of top aides to the health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr.

"Multiple federal statutory and regulatory authorities do not permit CMS to share this information with entities outside of CMS," Medicaid's deputy director, Sara Vitolo.

----------------------------------------

Ben D'Avanzo, a healthcare strategist at the National Immigration Law Center, posted on social media, "This is a privacy violation of unprecedented proportions and betrayal of trust, as the government has explicitly said, for decades, that this information will never be used for immigration enforcement."

That is because "undocumented immigrants can't even enroll in Medicaid."

And yet, here we are. The wealthy elite are breaking the law, targeting the lowest-income citizens. This is not about immigration.

Who will they target next?

[Sephirah]

"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth." - George Orwell.

That sums up Trump.

[Courtney G]

I just wanted to pop in here and agree with y'all. I loathe the guy. He's a grifting buffoon who has not been a successful businessman. The trump persona his acolytes worship is one that was created in a fake "boardroom" for a fake reality TV show.

He's a sick man, a cheat, a criminal, bigot, and on and on.

And the worst thing: people I care about think he's a good leader. There are people in my life who I've known for 40+ years but have pretty much cut ties with over this. There's a special kind of frustration that comes from knowing that your friends and family support a fascist dictator, and also support policies that are going to bring our country to its knees.

I just wish people would educate themselves. Read some Noam Chomsky, for chrissakes. Maybe some Robert Reich while you're at it.

[Lori Dee]

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been slowly creeping into our internet searches, but the pace is rapidly accelerating to even further invasions into our private lives. Web browsers are now powered by AI, which collects information about you and what your interests are. They have been doing this for years.

Companies are using AI to process data that it has collected about YOU and use that to feed customized ads. It has gone even further. Now they are using AI to not only decide what you might like, but what you can afford, and adjust prices accordingly.

Delta plans to use AI in ticket pricing draws fire from US lawmakers

We live in an online world, where all of our data and many of our social interactions exist online. We are aware of the ongoing threat of hackers who work to steal our data and even our identity. What if those hackers are not human? What if they are an army of computers?

Carnegie Mellon Researchers Demonstrate That LLMs Can Autonomously Plan and Execute Real-World Cyberattacks

Now, in Arizona, we have a charter school that will be using an AI curriculum to teach kids in fourth through eighth grades.

This School Will Have Artificial Intelligence Teach Kids (With Some Human Help)

Why is this a problem? That depends on who programmed the AI model. With Trump's intense interest in AI, he has decided that AI models that include "ideological bias", such as DEI, will not be able to do business with the federal government. We have already seen school districts, cities, counties, and states cave to Trump's agenda to ensure they receive their funding.

PREVENTING WOKE AI IN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT - Executive Orders, July 23, 2025

Trillions of dollars are now being invested in AI development for everything from scientific research to deciding what federal regulations to get rid of.

DOGE reportedly using AI tool to create 'delete list' of federal regulations

AI Datacenters use huge amounts of energy. This is why Trump is cutting environmental regulations that interfere with energy production. Those regulations have been in place for over a decade to protect our environment... because, you know, Global Warming Climate Change.

AI in Wyoming may soon use more electricity than state's human residents

And if you think that SkyNet was fiction, or that it is something far-off in the future, guess again.

China is building a constellation of AI supercomputers in space — and just launched the first pieces

[Lori Dee]

Back in February of this year, I began warning of certain things that indicated we were headed toward a dictatorship.

Today, six months later, the media is catching on. Here are a couple of interesting articles:

Trump's authoritarian streak
Link to full Article by Axios

The Trump administration takes a very Orwellian turn
Link to Full Article by CNN

  

[Sephirah]

Back in February of this year, I began warning of certain things that indicated we were headed toward a dictatorship.

Today, six months later, the media is catching on. Here are a couple of interesting articles:

Trump's authoritarian streak
Link to full Article by Axios

The Trump administration takes a very Orwellian turn
Link to Full Article by CNN

  

The sad thing about this is... literally everyone else in the world could see this before you folks even went to the polls and he got voted in. Countries were drawing up plans for how to deal with this guy before you even voted. Just because we all remember the chaos of the first time. Which... amazingly half your country forgot. I still don't understand why. And since then he's just dragged the world along in his unhinged house of horrors. Sometimes it literally is a case of not being able to see the wood for the trees.

[Pema]

The sad thing about this is... literally everyone else in the world could see this before you folks even went to the polls and he got voted in. Countries were drawing up plans for how to deal with this guy before you even voted. Just because we all remember the chaos of the first time. Which... amazingly half your country forgot. I still don't understand why. And since then he's just dragged the world along in his unhinged house of horrors. Sometimes it literally is a case of not being able to see the wood for the trees.

I just want to clarify that it wasn't half the country. Only 65% of eligible voters actually voted. Literally more people didn't vote at all than voted for him. And most of the people who did vote for him didn't forget; a large percentage of them actually want this - or thought they did. A lot of that desire is really about being so vehemently opposed to "the other side" that they'll vote for anyone but "them," even if it ends up hurting them in the end. And much of their hatred of the opposition is based on lies they've been fed.

So I think a significant majority of us knew very well what we'd be getting. Many of us did what we could to prevent it, but far too many did nothing at all and thereby allowed it.

[Lori Dee]

The people I talked to who voted for him did not vote for this. They had concerns about the egg prices and gas prices. Trump promised to end the war in Ukraine on Day One. They wanted that.

He said the way to drop gas prices was to drill, baby, drill. So he scrapped EPA and other regulations so the oil companies can drill for oil in protected wilderness areas.

He said he would secure the borders to stop the illegal immigration of violent criminals. Nobody expected that he would deport U.S. citizens and foreign students who came here legally.

We saw, even before the election, who his cabinet members would be: people whose only qualification for the job is loyalty to Trump. The rigging of the election and the dismantling of democratic protections once in office were planned during his first term. It took time to move the right people into position to make it all happen. And that takes A LOT of money. Elon Musk's $200 million donation helped make that happen.

Now that he is in power, he no longer needs Musk or his money. He is currently making billions of dollars while in office.

For Sale: Trump is leveraging power of his office to reap profits for family businesses
https://apnews.com/article/trump-businesses-trump-organization-white-house-conflicts-of-interest-b970b5681b27f86dcd461ff473be23fa

[Lori Dee]

The latest in political battles involves gerrymandering, where the controlling party in a State redraws the voting districts to favor their party. This gives them more party voters and thus more seats in Congress, the Senate, and even at the State, County, and local levels. Typically, maps are redrawn every ten years after the census. The last one was five years ago in 2020.

The GOP is beginning to realize that a majority of voters do not approve of Trump's shenanigans. Trump made a phone call to Texas Governor Abbott and told him he wanted five more Republican seats in the House of Representatives, ensuring a GOP majority would be maintained.

Gov. Abbott convened a special session of the State Assembly to redraw the voting district maps to make that happen. Democrats, knowing the GOP has the majority, fought back the only way they could, and left the state. With the Democrats absent, the State Assembly did not have a quorum to pass a vote on the new maps. The Governor ordered arrest warrants for the absent Dems. But since they are out of state, they are outside the state's jurisdiction.

Democratic California and New York Governors have decided to fight back. They say that if Texas can redraw its maps, then so can they, and they will neutralize the effect of Texas's vote. Now, the GOP Missouri Governor is considering joining the fight.

Why does this matter?

Members of many democratic minority advocacy groups are condemning Texas's move as racist. In many cities across America, people of color are represented by the Democratic Party. By gerrymandering the voting districts, the effect is that these minority groups will lose representation in Congress.

But this is not a racist act. It may have racist effects, but the motivation is strictly a power grab to keep Trump and his cronies in power. Why? Because if the Democrats take control of the House and Senate during the mid-term elections, I predict there will be numerous articles of impeachment filed. Not just upon Trump, but on his highly unqualified appointees as well. The Trump dictatorship will begin to crumble, and quickly.

How does this pertain to the LGBTQ Community?

Human rights are human rights. Women, people of color, and immigrants have fought a long, hard battle to secure these rights. These rights, in many cases, have been enshrined in amendments to our Constitution. The LGBTQ community was also making headway in the same direction, until the GOP began openly attacking us and our rights.

We represent less than 2% of the population, so even if every one of us were to become a loud activist, we could still easily be ignored by the Establishment. However, our rights are human rights too. By supporting those who have the numbers and are the loudest about civil rights, we can both win.

I don't know how this gerrymandering battle will play out. It will depend on how many states get involved. Most people agree that gerrymandering is wrong. Many democratic states have given the redistricting power to independent commissions so that fairness prevails. GOP-led states have a history of rejecting this. They want to keep the power as a tool to stay in power.

Now, we have a bill going to be proposed as federal law to ban gerrymandering in all states. While the GOP has the majority in the House and Senate, that bill will not likely pass.