clearandpresentdanger.blog

And Obama wore a tan suit!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

 

I was born and reared in rural south Mississippi.  I know white trash when I see it.  This is white trash all the way — this “mixed martial arts” is entertainment for the mentally challenged;  the Trump family may be rich (they are not really) but they are still white trash — which is why he was never accepted by the upper crust in New York.

A West Virginia trailer park has more class thaht this collection of fools.

And if you celebrate this ugliness, you need help . . . but are too goddam stupid to realize just how stupid you are.

Dr. Jie Zhang, an Associate Professor at the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics at the University of Oklahoma, and two other Mandarin speakers, who all said the word for 250, “二 百 五,” pronounced “èr bǎi wǔ,” is commonly known and used in China to call someone an idiot,

White House.  On the left, before Trump.

On the right?  July 6, 2026, ready for Trump’s bloody gladiator fight.

There are moments when the insult is so direct that politeness starts to feel like cooperation, and this is one of those moments. I am an atheist veteran, and I am watching this administration treat people like me as if our service was good enough to use but too inconvenient to recognize. I raised my right hand and swore an oath to the Constitution of the United States, not to Pete Hegseth’s personal theology, not to Donald Trump’s vanity project, and not to some Christian nationalist fantasy of what the military should look like. I gave years of my life to this country, and those years were not theoretical, symbolic, or decorative. They were real years, with real sacrifice, real loss, real stress, real consequences, and real pieces of life that never come back.

I served beside people with every kind of belief and nonbelief imaginable, because that is what the American military actually is when politicians are not trying to sand it down into propaganda. The people beside you on watch are not chosen by a church committee. They are chosen by training, duty, trust, competence, and the shared understanding that the mission matters more than personal religious branding. Nobody doing the actual work needed a theological inspection before deciding whether the person next to them counted. Now a political appointee with a culture-war résumé looks at that reality and decides that minority beliefs can be shoved out of official recognition because the spreadsheet looks cleaner that way. That is not leadership, and it sure as hell is not honor.

On March 25, 2026, Pete Hegseth announced that the Department of Defense was cutting the military’s faith and belief codes from more than 200 down to 31, and he wrapped the whole thing in the kind of bureaucratic language people use when they want an ugly decision to sound responsible. Efficiency always becomes a convenient excuse when powerful people decide certain Americans are easier to ignore. The military can track a service member’s dental readiness, training history, blood type, weapons qualifications, clearance status, dependent information, medical limitations, leave balance, and career paperwork with obsessive precision. It can track details so small they make normal civilian paperwork look relaxed by comparison. Yet somehow, acknowledging the actual beliefs of the people serving became too much to handle. That excuse deserves ridicule before it deserves analysis. A military that can coordinate submarines, aircraft, satellites, logistics, and global operations can manage a damn belief-code list when leadership believes the list matters. The problem was never complexity. The problem was whose existence became expendable once Christian nationalist politics got closer to the controls. When atheists, humanists, pagans, Wiccans, Druids, Deists, Heathens, Asatru, and other minority-belief service members get pushed out of recognition, the message is not subtle. It says the institution will still take your service, but people in power reserve the right to make your identity disappear when it offends their preferred version of America.

The timing makes the insult smell even worse. Hegseth has already drawn scrutiny for explicitly Christian activity inside the Pentagon, including a Christian worship service that turned the seat of military leadership into something far too close to a government-backed religious performance. Then, after that, we are supposed to accept that a massive reduction in recognized faith and belief codes is just neutral housekeeping. I do not have enough patience left for that level of convenient stupidity. This is the kind of thing that happens when someone mistakes religious confidence for constitutional authority. Private faith is one thing, and nobody is telling Pete Hegseth he cannot go pray, worship, quote scripture, or live according to his own beliefs as a private citizen. Public power is different, especially when that power sits over a military made up of Americans from wildly different backgrounds. The Secretary of Defense does not get to treat the force like his preferred congregation with better uniforms. The Pentagon is not a church annex, and the military is not a prop department for Christian nationalism. If he cannot separate his personal religious politics from his duty to the entire force, then he is unfit for the job. That should be obvious to anyone who understands the oath as something deeper than campaign theater.

Donald Trump owns this disgrace because this is his administration, his appointment culture, and his movement’s rotten understanding of loyalty. I already had no respect for Trump as a veteran, because the man spent his life dodging sacrifice while constantly demanding worship from people who actually made some. He avoided service, mocked military sacrifice, treated patriotism like merchandise, and turned public office into a monument to his own appetite. Now the administration carrying his name is giving us a Pentagon where minority-belief service members can be made less visible while the usual crowd pretends this is merely administrative tidying. The same people who lecture everyone else about love of country keep proving they only love the country when it flatters their preferred tribe. They praise the troops when the troops make good campaign scenery. They talk about freedom until freedom protects atheists, Muslims, pagans, immigrants, protesters, critics, or anyone else they want pushed to the edge of the frame. Their flag-waving always seems loudest when constitutional principle is weakest. Their version of patriotism has become a performance of dominance, grievance, and obedience. Veterans should be especially disgusted by that, because the oath did not ask us to defend one man’s ego. It asked us to defend a Constitution that exists specifically to restrain men like him.

The part that feels personal is not some abstract complaint about labels. It is the knowledge that this country will take almost everything from a service member and still allow politicians to treat that person’s place in the national story as conditional. It will take the missed birthdays, the broken sleep, the family strain, the deployments, the stress, the injuries, the dead friends, the damaged bodies, and the years of youth that nobody gets back. It will take the atheist on watch just as readily as the Christian beside him. It will take the humanist in uniform, the pagan in uniform, the Muslim in uniform, the Jew in uniform, the Sikh in uniform, the Hindu in uniform, and the person who does not want any belief label at all. Once the sacrifice has been made, the speeches come out, the flags appear, and everyone wants to sound solemn for thirty seconds. Meanwhile, when actual living service members need recognition, accommodation, support, and honest demographic visibility, suddenly the people in charge find a reason to narrow the record. The VA can recognize atheist and humanist emblems on government headstones, which proves the government knows damn well we exist. Apparently recognition becomes easier when the veteran is dead, silent, and no longer capable of objecting. That contradiction deserves to be dragged into the town square and made to explain itself. A country that can carve a symbol into stone after death can damn well recognize the person while they are still serving.

I want to be very clear about why this matters beyond my own anger. The Chaplain Corps is supposed to support the force, and the force is not a Christian club with a few tolerated outsiders attached for manpower. Religious preference and belief data help the military understand who is serving, what support exists, where accommodations may be needed, and whether the institution is actually seeing its people honestly. Pretending that hundreds of recognized identities can be collapsed into a tiny list without consequence is the kind of lazy arrogance that only looks harmless to people who already expect their own identity to remain protected. Majority groups rarely notice the machinery of recognition because the machinery was usually built with them in mind. Minority groups notice immediately when someone starts removing the bolts. Christian service members with actual integrity should be angry because religious liberty cannot survive as a majority-only privilege. Chaplains who take their calling seriously should be angry because their work is cheapened when the institution pretends some service members are easier to categorize out of sight. Commanders should be angry because trust erodes when troops learn that leadership sees some identities as clutter. Veterans should be angry because every attack on pluralism weakens the constitutional foundation we swore to defend. Nobody who respects the oath should shrug when government power starts playing favorites with conscience.

I earned the right to be furious about this, and I will not apologize for the temperature of my response. I earned it through years of service, through loss, through sacrifice, and through the simple fact that I actually paid a price for the country these people keep using as a backdrop for their religious politics. I buried friends who deserved better than being folded into somebody else’s cheap sermon about patriotism. I watched people give parts of themselves to a nation that too often remembers them only when applause is useful. I also know exactly how insulting it feels when a draft-dodging former president and a culture-war secretary treat real service members like supporting characters in their own ideological pageant. They can dress the policy up however they want, but the message lands clearly enough. We were good enough to serve, but our beliefs were too inconvenient to count. We were trusted with duty, but not with visibility. We were useful to the country, but apparently troublesome to the story these people want to tell about it. That is cowardly, sectarian, oath-breaking garbage, and it deserves condemnation without a single drop of sugar poured over it.

My service counted before Pete Hegseth ever touched a Pentagon policy memo. My oath counted before Donald Trump started confusing personal loyalty with national loyalty. The service of every atheist, humanist, pagan, Wiccan, Druid, Deist, Heathen, and minority-belief service member counts whether this administration recognizes it or not. Their place in the military is earned through service, not granted by the theological comfort level of a political appointee. Their dignity does not shrink because someone in power prefers a smaller, cleaner, more obedient version of America. The military belongs to the nation, and the nation includes millions of people who do not believe in God. The Constitution protects us anyway, which is precisely why Christian nationalists keep finding it so inconvenient. I did not serve a church, a preacher, a president, or a partisan movement. I served the Constitution of the United States. If Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump cannot respect that, then they are the ones dishonoring the uniform, the oath, and the country they keep pretending to defend… And they can cordially go fuck themselves!

For over 40 years I have used credit cards from two gas companies:  Exxon and Shell.

About two months ago I recevied an email from Shell telling me my current card issued by Citibank woud expire on a certain date and I would be issued a new card by a company called “Imprint.”

Nothing happened.

Then I received an email directing me to log in to Imprint and establish an account.  I did.

I checked the account 2-3 times a week.  Each time I was told my new card was “in transit.”

Eventually the new card arrived.  I went on line to activate it only to be told the number on the card was “not valid.”

Tried several times with same result.

My bank account was linked to the Shell account because I had it set up on autopay.  Sensing that this was not going to be a good experience, I unlinked my bank account so neither Imprint nor Shell could make withdrawals from my bank account.

I tried a few more times to activate the account with the same result — this is not a valid Imprint account number.

I decided to cancel my account.  Cannot do that using their online chatbot.  I tried calling their customer support number, only to be greeted by another AI chatbot.  After a few frustrating minutes talking to an AI idiot, I was told to hold for the next representative.  After 25 minutes on hold, their system hung up.

I went though this experience three times and gave up.

My bank account is unlinked so Shell, Imprint, whoever, cannot take my money.  The card they sent me will not activate.

I did an online search for “Shell, Imprint” and found that the Imprint – Shell rolllout has been a disaster with thousands upon thousands of people having the same experience I had.

I will never use Shell again for anything.  Meanwhile, the useless card now sits in the bottom of my sock drawer.

https://trumpstruth.org/statuses/39099

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump · June 4, 2026, 5:45 PM

On Wednesday, June 24th, at 7 P.M., in magnificent Washington, D.C., now totally beautified, and one of the Safest Cities anywhere in the World, and in celebration of our Country’s 250 Year History, we will be bringing you, LIVE, the Greatest Rally, EVER! It will be special at every level — A Rally to end all Rallies! We don’t want singers with no talent, but big fees to put you to sleep, we’ve told them all to stay home. All we want is you, me, a few speakers, and the Greatest Music ever played, the same Music you have listened to for years! We will have the fabulous Lee Greenwood introducing me with what has turned out to be one of the Greatest Hits of All Time, GOD BLESS THE U.S.A., and the amazing Christopher Macchio, who will sing Nessun Dorma, Hallelujah, Ave Maria, God Bless America, and others — Not since the legendary Luciano Pavarotti has there been such a voice! The Rally will also be featuring the wonderful U.S. Army Band “Pershing’s Own” and Armed Forces Choir, and “The President’s Own” Unites States Marine Band, with the Joint Armed Forces Chorus, all of your favorite Hits, PLUS a fine and highly dignified gentleman known as, President DONALD J. TRUMP!

https://www.npr.org/2026/06/04/nx-s1-5751145/save-act-senate-vote-trump

The SAVE America Act, a far-reaching Republican election overhaul that President Trump said should be his congressional allies’ top priority, has officially failed in the Senate.

The measure was voted on Thursday as an amendment as part of lengthy debate over an immigration funding package. The election bill has languished in the Senate for months, after the House passed a version in February on a near party-line vote.

The election proposal would have taken effect immediately, even as voting is underway in congressional primaries.

Notably, the legislation would have required voters to show a document proving their U.S. citizenship, like a passport or a birth certificate, when they registered to vote.

Research has shown millions of Americans don’t have easy access to those documents. And experts say such a provision is unnecessary, as noncitizens have never been shown to vote at anything but microscopic numbers in American elections.

“The alleged sin that it is trying to correct happens so infrequently that it really does seem like the solution would be much, much worse than the disease,” said Georgetown law professor Steve Vladeck, in an interview with NPR this spring.

Still, as Trump has continued his years-long campaign to sow doubt in American elections, he pitched the SAVE America Act as a panacea to the fraud he falsely claims is rampant.

“Congress should unite and enact this common-sense, country-saving legislation right now and it should be before anything else happens,” Trump said during his State of the Union address. He went on to say the only reason Democrats opposed the legislation was because they want to cheat.

Trump posted frequently online about the bill as well — including on Thursday afternoon — saying at one point that he would not sign any other legislation before the SAVE Act was passed, that it “supersedes everything else.”

Taking that cue, some Republicans talked of wanting to abolish or circumvent the legislative filibuster to make it harder for Democrats to stymie the legislation. But it was clear to Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., that there wasn’t a broad enough appetite among his Republican colleagues for that.

“It’s about the votes. It’s about the math,” Thune had told reporters. “And I’m — for better or worse — I’m the one who has to be the clear-eyed realist about what we can achieve here.”

The act would have also required all voters to show photo identification to cast a ballot. And it would have mandated that all states submit their voter lists to a Department of Homeland Security tool that has been found to erroneously flag U.S. citizens.

Traditionally, Republicans have been staunchly opposed to any legislation that would nationalize how voting is done.

But Trump has openly said he thinks the U.S. should nationalize voting, and University of Notre Dame law professor Derek Muller noted that the SAVE America Act, had it been enacted, would have been “among the most significant nationalization[s] of elections in American history.”

That could end up being the act’s legacy, Muller wrote in a blog post in March.

“It does strike me that the debate has shifted from whether to nationalize elections to how, at least for many Republicans,” Muller wrote. “And that may well–even in failure to pass the Act!–make the conversation for Democrats next time they are in power much easier to have.”

On April 14, 2025, Dan Berulis, an IT staffer at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), filed a Congressional whistleblower complaint with an extraordinary and urgent claim: The so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had seemingly compromised the agency’s data and appeared to be exfiltrating it out of the NLRB entirely. Additionally, Berulis claimed that mere minutes after DOGE members had accessed the agency’s data, there appeared to be login attempts from an IP address in Russia.

At the time, DOGE teams, orchestrated by billionaire Elon Musk, were sweeping across government, firing federal workers and accessing sensitive data and technical systems with no oversight and little transparency.

The following day, Berulis went public in an NPR article with his name and claims. In it, he claimed that in the lead-up to his Congressional disclosure, a threatening note had been taped to his door, including photos of him walking his dog that appeared to have been taken by a drone. Berulis was already scared that speaking out had made him a target.

Five days after the NPR story went live, on Easter Sunday, April 20, 2025, Berulis got in his car to drive to Maryland to make a last-minute visit to his uncle, opting to take local roads instead of the major highway nearby. Within about five minutes of leaving his house, Berulis realized something was wrong. As he approached a stop sign at an intersection, his car wouldn’t slow down. He ran off the road and into the sign. When he examined his car, he found something that terrified him: His brake lines had been cut.

https://www.wired.com/story/he-blew-the-whistle-on-doge-then-his-brakes-were-cut/

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BUT WAIT — THERE’S MORE!!

Since then, Berulis has laid low. He filed a police report, included in the suit and viewed by WIRED, and had the car seen by a mechanic who, according to the report, found “that the driver-side front impact/airbag sensor had also been removed but noted that the remaining wires had been spliced together, completing the circuit in a manner that prevented the vehicle from detecting or logging the missing component, while also preventing the vehicle from activating its safety protocols, alerting the driver, or engaging limp mode.” The police report also indicates that fingerprints had been found on Berulis’ car. According to the police report, the case is now “inactive,” “due to the lack of any specific suspect information,” though the police’s intelligence unit was notified.