Monday, October 20, 2025

The Calcium Scan Score: A Wakeup Call That Low Cholesterol Is No Indicator For Avoiding Heart Attacks

                General results - showing relative level of calcium plaque in each artery
Graph showing score between 50th and 75th percentile for men over 74.


 The sheer shock of getting the results of my recent Calcium CT scan is hard to exaggerate. Here I was cruising with just believing I had prostate cancer and bronchiectasis e.g. 

Brane Space: After CAT Scan: A Medical Reprieve - Of Sorts

to contend with and now I learn (even with total cholesterol at 144) I have to worry about a heart attack too. This revelation would never have occurred had I not gone in (with Janice to get her own) "Calcium score" last week, i.e.

Coronary calcium scan - Mayo Clinic

My primary care doctor's office on receiving the result noted:

You have a pretty significant amount of calcium in your arteries. The goal for LDL would depend on whether or not you had a heart attack in the past. If you had not been probably having an LDL below 70 is reasonable, given that you are 79 I think doing what you are doing right now makes sense, 1 could argue we use a more potent and well-tolerated statin like Crestor but frankly what you are doing right now seems to be reasonable

Results: CT Calcium Score

Impression

1. The patient's raw score correlates to between the 51st and the 75th percentile. For patients in this percentile range, this indicates a moderate atherosclerotic burden and a moderate risk of significant coronary artery disease compared to the age- and gender-matched standards. 2. Please see risk and recommendations below Total Calcium Score 0. Negative test. No specific recommendations at this time. 1-10. Minimal calcific atherosclerosis is present. No specific recommendations at this time. 11-100. Mild calcific atherosclerosis is present. Recommend discussion with the patient's physician and/or cardiology about the test results, and whether more testing or medical therapy is appropriate. 101-400. Moderate calcific atherosclerosis is present. Recommend discussion with the patient's physician and/or cardiology about the test results, and whether more testing or medical therapy is appropriate. >400. Severe calcific atherosclerosis is present. Recommend discussion with the patient's physician and/or cardiology about the test results, and whether more testing or medical therapy is appropriate. Note: Clinical discussion should also be considered based on patient age, risk percentile, and whether or not the patient has multivessel or left main disease (both considered higher risk). GENERAL INFORMATION REGARDING CORONARY ARTERY CALCIUM SCORING: 

Recent medical research has shown that the amount of calcium present in the coronary arteries correlates with the extent of atherosclerosis. The CT scanner calculates a calcium score for each of the coronary arteries based on the size and density of the calcium deposits. The total calcium score correlates with the severity of the underlying coronary atherosclerosis but does not correspond directly to the percentage of narrowing in the arteries. Calcium deposits in the coronary arteries may appear years before the development of symptomatic heart disease. 

Coronary calcium scoring is a screening test, but it may direct a patient to lifestyle modification or to further medical therapy or other diagnostic examinations. Some reports indicate it may have a role, with serial examinations, in measuring the progression of disease and the effectiveness of any treatment. A calcium score of zero means no coronary artery calcification is present. This implies a low likelihood of significant narrowing of the coronary arteries. It does not rule out the presence of noncalcified atherosclerotic (soft) plaque. Soft plaque is not detectable by the calcium-scoring test. If there is family history of coronary artery disease or other risk factors such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, sedentary lifestyle or obesity, other diagnostic modalities may be necessary to determine the risk of coronary artery disease. The raw calcium score is compared to known age-matched standards, to the scores of other people who are in the same age and gender group, to generate a percentile score. This percentile relates only to the amount of calcified plaque in the coronary arteries, and does not represent a percentage narrowing of the arteries. Significant stenosis of a coronary artery can only be evaluated with further diagnostic tests, such as cardiac stress testing or coronary arteriography.

 

My plan now is to try to avoid the cardiac 'day of reckoning' by lowering my saturated fat intake - no more Omaha Steaks 'Meat Lover's Lasagna', few giant pizzas and no more giant fatty breakfasts, e.g. 



such as took my youngest brother Mike down. One good aspect is that it justifies my refusal to take the additional ADT of abiraterone - which has multiple cardiac co-morbidities.


See Also:

The Heart Test You May Need—but Likely Haven’t Heard Of | Johns Hopkins Medicine

Excerpt:

How's your coronary artery calcium? What's that, you ask? Like the more familiar tests used to assess your risk of future heart problems—cholesterol, blood pressure and blood sugar tests, for example—coronary artery calcium (CAC) testing helps reveal your risk of heart disease, often before other warning signs appear.

And:

Mayo Clinic Minute - How a coronary calcium scan assesses heart attack risk

Record Breaking NO Kings Rallies Get Under the "King's" Skin - Showing Again Autocrats "Can't Handle Humor"

                    Protesters in Atlanta:  'Just Patriotic Americans' - Unlike Traitor Trump

                  Denver: "Jeffrey Dahmer has fewer convictions than Trump"

                Display in Denver portrays how Trump's 'Axis of evil' has taken over the nation

Over 100,000 in NYC protest the tyrant Trump

                            Protesters  in Denver: 'Release the Epstein Files'

                  Protesters in Trump's 'backyard' - West Palm Beach FL

                    Protests in Minneapolis: Message to Mike Johnson

 


 "This is what being a citizen is all about. When things are going well people take democracy for granted. And I think what we now realize is 'Oh no!'  Something must be done. Democracy is not self-executing, we have to do something. We have to vote, we have to show allegiance, we have to protest when James Comey and Letitia James are targets of vindictive investigations and prosecutions. We have to say 'No' when colleges and law firms capitulate. 

There is a thrill to being on the right side of history. These MAGA Republicans are not only evil but stupid. Because I believe their insane claims helped boost turnout yesterday"  - Jennifer Rubin, on Velshi, yesterday a.m.

"Deploying the military against our peaceful cities is part of the ruin trump is wreaking on our nation. Now he has also decided to destroy part of the White House in order to build himself some sort of a ballroom where he can show off even more than he already does. But I suppose the ruination of part of the people's historic White House is not as important as the ruination of our freedoms. Seven million people demonstrated across the whole country, and there was no violence whatsoever. Trump's totally disgusting unAmerican, subhuman response is that Ai video dumping feces upon us. He is truly public enemy numero uno." - NY Times comment

"The mood of optimism and humor that came out of Portland and was organically adopted in these protests is a spectacular way to push back against would be autocrats. It's because they cannot handle humor. These protesters did that in spades." - Miles Taylor, author of 'Blowback - A Warning To Save Democracy From The next Trump',  on Velshi, yesterday a.m.


A  beautiful  sight unfolded Saturday as more than 7 million genuine patriots in over 2.500 locations, made their feelings known on Trump's steady destruction of the government and Constitution. 

 "Hate America" fulminations as the MAGA dummies assert? Nope, roundly hating the first felon ever elected to lead this nation and everything he and his minions have done.  Such as ripping away all environmental protections in favor of fossil fuels, militarizing U.S. cities, and holding the nation to ransom in a shutdown as they use it to lay off even more federal workers.   

Meanwhile, in Colorado and other states food banks are now emptied - especially of proteins - as the Trump Mafia cut $500 million from the USDA funding that would have gone to SNAP.  Then there is the ongoing prosecution of citizens for merely criticizing the swine, and dispatching ICE masked thugs to take down innocents in Chicago, even as they blow fishermen out of the water off the coast of Venezuela.   Hate Donald Trump protests, you better believe it and you only have to see the signs and elaborate get ups - from comparing Trump to Dahmer (the Milwaukee cannibal - who killed and ate 16 victims), to bearing signs reading 'Fascist Felon".   This was the First Amendment in action. 

Of course, there will always be self-important nitwit columnists who seek to diminish or dismiss what transpired, such as Krista Kafer in an op-ed Denver Post column ('No Kings Rally Has Lost Even This Trump Critic', p. D2) yesterday.  Whining: 

"What did this No Kings protest accomplish? What was the message? Was it heard by anyone other than those making it? Did it change a single mind? Probably not."

In which case she's lost in a delusionary la-la version of Trump land, despite proclaiming she's a critic of Trumpism. Because as Miles Taylor put it on Velshi yesterday morning: 

"Look, this president does genuinely view any dissent as treason. If that is true, we saw over seven million very proud traitors in the streets yesterday. But that's not what they were. What I saw, certainly in D.C., was patriotic Americans exercising their first amendment rights peacefully without a single terrorist, rioter or paid protester in sight. And I don't think we should let those words go.  Those words that were leveled against these protesters before they even took the streets. Because it's a very alarming indication of where our country's headed which is to criminalize protests."

But it seems like Krista Kafer is quite ready to let them go. Indeed, maybe she has no clue where the country is headed as when she babbles:  

"No Kings makes no sense. Yes, Trump is mendacious, vengeful and unscrupulous.  He continuously violates constitutional boundaries by violating due process and usurping the legislature's prerogatives.  He alienated foreign allies and uses government power to punish opponents. But he isn't the first to abuse power in these ways."

Well, maybe Krista was either asleep or not paying attention when the scenes emerged out of Chicago showing Black Hawk helicopters deployed over a South Shore apartment building with ICE thugs and FBI rappelling down onto the building. Then rampaging through apartments and hauling over thirty people out - including citizens  - and putting zip ties on kids.  Terrorizing the community, e.g.

ICE raid in Chicago terrorizes community

Or maybe also she didn't see the clip showing ICE thugs firing a pepper bullet into the head of a Presbyterian priest praying in front of one ICE-controlled bldg. e.g.

ICE agents shoot pastor in head with pepper ball

Or perhaps she never saw or processed the scenes of the extra-judicial killing of Venezuelan fishermen outside the sea limits of the U.S. Ordered by Herr Trump!  (One wife of one of the victims told the NY Times he was a fisherman as were the others on his boat.)

Trump administration strikes a seventh alleged drug boat, killing 3, Hegseth says - CBS News

Venezuelan fishermen in fear after US strikes on boats in the Caribbean

And we won't even go into how Trump's repeated calls for his prosecutors to file criminal charges against adversaries have totally destroyed the DOJ's independence from the White House - making all the prosecutions a sham and undermining the rule of law.  As the Wall Street Journal's Kimberely Strassel has pointed out, Trump's 'lawfare' goes far beyond anything Dem presidents have done - and even Richard Nixon.

Maybe, just maybe, Krista Kafer is simply too ignorant of American history - or world history - to know these are the collective tactics of a wannabe dictator. And NO president of these United States has ever used them before.  As one of the No Kings organizers noted in the same Denver Post ('No Kings Rally Draws Tens of Thousands Across State, p. 1c):

"Today, millions of Americans stood together to reject authoritarianism and remind the world that our democracy belongs to the people, not to one man's ambition. This movement isn't about a single protest, it's about a growing chorus of Americans who refuse to be ruled."

Or as one protester in D.C. put it:

"We don't hate America. We hate what they - Trump and his minions - are doing to America."

Exactly!

And if poor Ms. Krista needs any more basis for these protests I suggest she read the two comments - from Jennifer Rubin and Miles Taylor - at the top of this post.

As for the proto-fascist Reeptards screaming that all those protesting on No Kings day were 'Hamas, Antifa or Marxists" maybe they need a lesson in logic.  Namely the basis for the false association fallacy e.g.

"President Trump wants to make America great again.  If protesters hate Trump then they must hate America"  

They're promoting, which is a fallacy given:


  • A person or idea is not the same as a country. A political leader, even a president, is not the physical embodiment of the nation itself. Protesters can disagree with a politician's policies, actions, or rhetoric while still being patriotic and loving their country.
  • The argument is designed to manipulate emotions. By equating criticism of the president with "hating America," the argument appeals to the emotions and loyalty people feel for their country. This emotional appeal is intended to close off legitimate discussion about specific grievances or policies.
  • It creates a false dilemma. The argument presents only two options: support the president or hate America. This ignores the wide range of positions people can hold, including disagreeing with a leader while still wanting what's best for their country.
  • It's often a form of character assassination. This type of rhetoric attacks the protesters' character and patriotism rather than engaging with their specific arguments or concerns. This distracts from the actual issues being protested, which is a tactic often used in autocracies. 

Beyond all this we now have solid proof the massive No Kings protests got under "the King's" thin skin.  As Miles Taylor noted (top quote) "autocrats can't handle humor". He was so PO'd - but feeling neutered-  he created an AI-generated video of him wearing a King's crown-  flying in an F-16 - and bombing the protesters in NYC with tons of shit. 

                                          Shit bomber King Bonespurs

  Squeaky Mikey Johnson insisted Dotard was "just using satire" but anyone with half a brain knows he could have done that without resorting to fecal matter drops. As NY Times Michelle Goldberg pointed out it merely reflected Trump's yen to "debase and cheapen" - also as one NYT commenter said "Indicative of a 3-year-old".

See e.g.

Opinion | Trump Posted a Video of Himself Dumping Excrement on Our Cities. It’s a Glimpse of His Deepest Drives. - The New York Times

Excerpt:

This weekend, I was surprised to learn that Donald Trump seems to see himself in the same way I do: as a would-be monarch spraying the citizenry with excrement.

On Saturday, perhaps stung by the enormous nationwide “No Kings” protests, Trump posted an A.I.-generated video on Truth Social that inadvertently captured his approach to governing. In it the president, wearing a crown, flies a “Top Gun”-style fighter plane labeled “King Trump” above American cities crowded with demonstrators, dumping gargantuan loads of feces on them. Amplifying it on social media, the White House communications director Steven Cheung gleefully wrote that the president was defecating “all over these No Kings losers!”

It is not at this point surprising that Trump holds half the country in contempt, or that he treats urban America as a group of restive colonies to be brutally subdued. This is a man who told the military it should use our cities as “training grounds” for foreign operations, and who has sent both troops and federal agents to terrorize Los Angeles and other cities. The president’s attempts to demote the residents of blue America from citizens to subjects have become so routine they barely make headlines anymore.

The Trump gang’s compulsion to debase and cheapen almost everything they touch is far more than a matter of style. Perhaps the most puzzling thing about the second Trump administration has been its attacks on pillars of American strength that pose no challenge to its ideology. It was predictable that the White House would gut support for the humanities, but not that it would defund pediatric cancer research. I expected it to try to eliminate the Department of Education, but not to deliberately wreck the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which helps communities in both red and blue states when they’re beset by disasters.

What’s curious, then, is not Trump’s eagerness to degrade us, but his uncontrollable urge to defile himself and his office.

See Also:

by Thom Hartmann | October 21, 2025 - 4:58am | permalink

— from The Hartmann Report

The No Kings Day protests last weekend were breathtaking. Seven million or more Americans filled streets across the country explicitly condemning the way Trump has been running our country. They carried handmade signs, sang freedom songs, and for one afternoon reminded the nation that resistance still burns hot.

But here’s the hard truth: that energy, that passion, that righteousness means very little if it doesn’t translate into structure and leadership. Movements that fail to coalesce around leaders and build institutions typically die in the glare of their own moral light or fail to produce results.

We’ve seen it before. The Women’s March drew millions. Occupy Wall Street electrified a generation. Black Lives Matter shook the conscience of the nation. But without leadership, durable organizations, funding networks, and consistent strategy, these movements faded from the political field as quickly as they filled it.

» article continues..

And:

by Jaime O’Neill | October 19, 2025 - 5:18am | permalink

Yesterday, I joined with millions of my fellow Americans from sea to shining sea and beyond to express serious antipathy for monarchy, Donald Trump, armed and masked thugs paid to terrorize the citizenry, and other discontents. For me, that was in Sacramento, California’s state capital. If seemed a rather festive gathering with people sharing smiles, reveling in one another’s company, and bearing placards, the most common of which read “No Kings,” or variations on that theme. There were kids and dogs which lightened the tone. There had been a shadow of fear about provocations from Kristi Noem’s gestapo forces or Proud Boys, et. al. The Republicans had been encouraging their fellow fascists that anyone who showed up to a No Kings march would only do that because they hate America. Imagine that.

I had pledged myself to turn out for this long-awaited protest, if for no other reason than to bring my experience with protesting full circle. I also wanted to see if I was still capable of walking from Sutter’s Fort to the grounds of the capitol building, not to trash the place as had been done by that insurrectionist crowd that had beaten cops, broken windows, searched for the then current Vice President with the intent to hang him, and expressed themselves by shitting wherever they thought that would register as the clearest signal that they were mad and hell and weren’t going to hold it anymore.

» article continues...

And:

Trump HUMILIATED After "No Kings" Meme War BACKFIRES!

And:

by Robert Freeman | October 20, 2025 - 5:12am | permalink

The rally was in Livermore, California, a burgh of about 85,000, 50 miles to the east of San Francisco. This is a small, exemplary sampling of the many hundreds of signs carried by the many thousands of protesters.

“Memo to the fascists: peaceful protest is not violent insurrection.”

“ICE is Trump’s Gestapo.”

“When cruelty becomes normal, compassion becomes radical.”

“No Dick-tators.”

“Super callous fragile racist lying nazi POTUS.”

“No faux-king way we’re gonna take this.”

» article continues...


And:

by Harvey Wasserman | October 20, 2025 - 5:05am | permalink

The massively successful NoKings2.0 has again underlined Donald Trump’s four failing MAGA fascist roots: male dominance; global white dominance; US financial dominance; and the end of fossil/nuclear fuels.

They’re all linked to the impending collapse of the petro-dollar, the century-old pillar of American prosperity, about to disappear.

Autocratic hucksters like Adolph Hitler and Donald Trump have forever feasted on the human inability to cope with a perceived loss of status.

Hitler’s Nazi putsch was rooted in Germany’s inability to accept losing World War I.

» article continues...

And:

by Phil Rockstroh | October 20, 2025 - 4:59am | permalink

— from Phil Rockstroh's Substack

Absolutely no kings, despots, tyrants, dictators, Big Brothers, Dear Leaders, Il Duces, oligarchs, plutocrat CEOs, fairytale princes and vain princesses, grandiose techbros, galactic emperors, wrathful sky gods, princes of darkness…I am all in for protest marches to oppose despotic power e.g., No Kings events. All the best to you. Yet a march as day excursion…simply marching, hoisting witty signs, and chanting slogans into indifference air will not stop the extant and fast approaching fascist juggernaut.

An individual — my wretched, narrow ass included — must commit oneself mind, body, and soul to the challenge of resisting entrenched, ruthless, and treacherous power. The revolt begins within…against despair. Create something funny, beautiful, and heartbreakingly true. Bring it to the struggle—and keep bringing it.

The largest measure of living is: to continue showing up.

On my Facebook page, a rage-gripped commenter snarled at me in pixel, insisting the above passage was love paean to The Liberal Class and the DNC.

» article continues...

Friday, October 17, 2025

Physics Today Online Announces Trio Of Physics Nobel Prize Winners

 













Physics Today online now has reported the winners of the Physics Nobel Prize for 2025.   This is for their landmark work in quantum mechanical tunneling and energy quantization in an electric circuit.

According to the report:

John Clarke of the University of California (UC), Berkeley, Michel Devoret of Yale University and UC Santa Barbara, and John Martinis of UC Santa Barbara are to be awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics “for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantization in an electric circuit,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on Tuesday. Through experiments performed at UC Berkeley in 1984 and 1985, the laureates documented the observation of two fundamental quantum mechanical behaviors in a superconducting electrical system that contained billions of Cooper pairs of electrons—extending the realm of quantum phenomena to a scale at which they can be harnessed and put to work.

“We sometimes talk about quantum 1.0 and quantum 2.0: The first quantum revolution was in the early 20th century, trying to understand what happens at the tiniest scale of individual atoms,” says Robert Schoelkopf of Yale. “Quantum 2.0 is the idea that the more explicit parts of quantum mechanics, the weird parts like superposition and entanglement, are actually a resource that you could use in information-processing tasks, in sensing, in communications.” The work of Clarke, Devoret, and Martinis, he says, “is the root of quantum 2.0.”

The experiments—conducted when Martinis was a doctoral student and Devoret was a postdoc in Clarke’s lab—were performed with a device known as a Josephson junction, in which two superconductors are separated by a thin insulating barrier. Anthony Leggett had theorized that at extremely low temperatures, macroscopically distinct states of the superconductors could exhibit the quantum mechanical behavior of tunneling: jumping from one side of an energy barrier to another, something not possible in classical physics.

Throughout the early 1980s, attempts were made to observe the effect. With careful control of their experiment and reduction of noise, the Berkeley researchers were able to observe not only quantum tunneling but also the quantization of the allowed energy levels in the system. At millikelvin temperatures, the Cooper pairs move through the barrier at a rate aligned with theoretical predictions of quantum tunneling for the quantized states.

Those observations laid the foundations for the practical use of quantized states in the form of qubits. The circuits in superconducting qubits, one of the several types of qubits in development, also use Josephson junctions. “Quantum computing is having a bit of a moment,” says MIT’s Kyle Serniak, who earned his PhD in Devoret’s group at Yale. He explains that the recent demonstration of quantum error correction by the Google Quantum AI team, for which Devoret is chief scientist of quantum hardware, is a significant step toward the realization of a useful quantum computer based on superconducting qubits.

“They were able to put more and more qubits together, run this error-correction algorithm, and see that even as the system got bigger, the logical error rates decreased,” Serniak says. Though that milestone was achieved with superconducting qubits, other qubit designs, like trapped ions and stable atoms, are also at the leading edge of quantum computing advances. Applications envisioned for quantum computing include cryptography, drug discovery, and modeling of complex physical systems.


See Also:

Brane Space: The Electric Potential - Is It Really Unphysical?

And:

Brane Space: The Realm Of "Attoseconds" And Incomprehensibly Small Times Scales - Leads To Physics Nobel Prize

And:

Brane Space: Roger Penrose Takes 1/2 Nobel Prize In Physics - For His Mathematical Proof Of Black Holes (Singularity Theorem)

And:

Brane Space: 'God Particle' Theorists Get Nobel Prize in Physics - But Pieces of Higgs Puzzle May Still Be Missing

And:

Brane Space: Kudos to Nobel Physics Prize Winners for Laying the Basis for Quantum Computing

Thursday, October 16, 2025

"I Love Hitler" Yappers Caught Out By Politico Are Merely The Latest Iteration of Nazi Lovers In Repuke Party

 

Some of the deranged 'Nazi' chat uncovered by Politico on Telegram - spouted by GOP Incels


"The United States is lurching toward neo-fascism with alarming speed, courtesy of President Donald Trump, who is using all the resources of the repressive apparatus of the U.S. state to stifle dissent and crush opposition to his extreme agenda. He is so keen on imposing his dystopian vision on the country that he has sought to criminalize anti-fascist struggle itself."-  C. J. Polychronion, on Truthout today.


It's been a shock and major revelation for many to learn - two days ago - a bunch of Reeptard Incels was having a Hitler love fest heyday on Telegram. (2,900 pages with 28,000 messages) But thanks to Politico's exposure of these losers, citizens of the country now know just how debased these miscreants have become under the Trump 2.0 reign.  A sampling of their fecal blather is shown in the top graphic - from Politico.  

According to the piece:

 "Leaders of Young Republican groups throughout the country worried what would happen if their Telegram chat ever got leaked, but they kept typing anyway.

They referred to Black people as monkeys and “the watermelon people” and mused about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies and driving them to suicide and lauded Republicans who they believed support slavery.

William Hendrix, the Kansas Young Republicans’ vice chair, used the words “n--ga” and “n--guh,” variations of a racial slur, more than a dozen times in the chat. Bobby Walker, the vice chair of the New York State Young Republicans at the time, referred to rape as “epic.” 

 Miles Taylor, former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security in the Trump administration, appearing on ALL In, referred to the wannabe Nazis and Hitler lovers as "being groomed for cruelty" by the likes of Trump and JD Vance.  In his words:

"It goes all the way to the top.  These guys like JD Vance and Trump are grooming young men in the Republican Party for cruelty.  They're raising these weak, little loser incels to go attack people who are weaker. To attack people because of their race, because of their religion.  That type of bullying displays total weakness but that's now because the core culture in the Republican Party has changed.

Those who used to be the rotting fringe are now the rotting core. And the rational people like me are now the fringe."  

To refresh memories, Taylor was most famous as the author of the 2018 anonymous op-ed "I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration". 

But one aspect Taylor overlooked is that the seeds of the "rotting fringe" were always there. No one should make the error of thinking this brand of fascism is novel.  Indeed, author Russ Bellant (Old Nazis, The New Right and The Republican PartySouth End Press, 1990), showed  that fascist ideology in the U.S. Right was cemented decades ago.

Bellant's research documented the Republican ties to Nazis via the GOP 1980s "Ethnic Division" and the then Republican Heritage Groups.   As Bellant notes (p. 4):

"In a sense...the foundation of the Republican Heritage Groups Council lay in Hitler's networks into Eastern Europe before World War II. In each of those Eastern European countries the German SS set up or funded political action organizations that helped form SS militias during the war."

He cites, for example, that in Hungary the "Arrow Cross" was the SS affiliate. In Romania it was the "Iron Guard". In Latvia, it was the "Latvian Legion". And members from ALL of these - and others - obtained passage to the U.S. and found a home in various groups after the War. Under the umbrella of the Republican Heritage Groups Council and later its "Ethnic Division". 

Their main purpose was in Republican campaign fund raising but they were also used for assorted "dirty tricks" against Democrats and may well have come up with the noisome plan to bargain with Iran to keep American hostages there, until after Reagan was elected (as opposed to Carter, in 1980).  

Bellant was also among the first to identify the toxic, fascist connections of the "America First" bunch. 

"The America First Committee was an organization founded in the early 1940s and whose charter and organization was dedicated to opposing all effort to aid Allies facing the aggression of Nazi Germany."

He also showed in detail how the propaganda and activist arm of the German Nazi party in the U.S. (the German -American Bund) was likewise active in building up sympathy  for Hitler and the Axis powers.  Indeed, prior to Pearl Harbor the zeitgeist had settled in among American Firsters that in the event of any war, the Axis  needed to prevail.  (Bellant, p. 34).    

What we behold now, for those aware of history, is Trump and his supporters, hearkening back to the days when the Nazi party and Adolf Hitler were idolized by those screeching "America First".  Maybe this is why - after the Charlottesville VA “Unite the Right” march in 2017, Trump praised the neo-Nazis as "some very fine people".  It may also be why now young Reepos feel emboldened to go on Telegram and spew their proto-Nazi, pro-Hitler garbage.  Which just proves what we knew all along: the MAGA Right are Nazi lovers and Hitler adulators.  Miles Taylor's final remark on Trump confirms all that was said earlier, noting the latest Trump immigration plan - to let neo-Nazis and racist bigots pour in:

"Look no further than the president of the United States criminalizing criticism. He says people like me are guilty of treason.  And yet his immigration policy leaked today would reward and provide safe harbor to those abroad who express racist and bigoted views in European countries - and are seeking refuge in the U.S. 

You can't make this up. They are punishing people here for their free speech but saying to violent neo-Nazis overseas, "Hey! If you need a place to stay come to America!  What does that tell all those young Republicans in America about what kind of nation he wants to build?"

Meanwhile, dumbest remark on the incident goes to  Vice President JD Vance who blabbed after the Politico revelations:

“Telling edgy, offensive and stupid jokes is what kids and young boys do.”

Except the offenders weren't 'kids' or 'young boys'.  They were grown men in their 20s, 30s.


  See Also:

by Thom Hartmann | October 17, 2025 - 5:02am | permalink

— from The Hartmann Report

Just this week, Politico exposed private Telegram chats among Young Republican leaders where they didn’t just flirt with Nazi-style extremism, they reveled in it.

In thousands of leaked messages from across the nation, rising GOP stars praised Adolf Hitler, joked about sending political rivals into gas chambers, and mocked the very idea of human dignity.

One message read, “Everyone who votes no is going to the gas chamber … Great, I love Hitler.” Another sneered, “Can we fix the showers? Gas chambers don’t fit the Hitler aesthetic.”

These weren’t anonymous trolls lurking on the margins of the internet. They included elected officers of Republican youth organizations, embedded in party structures, cultivating power now.

» article continues...

And:

Republicans Face Fallout From Racist and Homophobic Texts - The New York Times

Excerpt:

Over seven months, in 2,900 pages of messages sent over Telegram, elected Republicans and the leaders of local groups for young party activists in New York, Vermont, Arizona and Kansas routinely used racist and homophobic language and glibly invoked Hitler and the Holocaust.

The texts, reported on Tuesday by Politico, were part of a “RESTOREYR WAR ROOM” chat of about a dozen Gen Z and millennial Republicans, some of whom held jobs in elected officials’ offices or in government posts. The exchanges mixed politics with personal matters, laced throughout with offensive language that was shocking for its volume and groupthink.

William Hendrix, the vice chair of Kansas Young Republicans, used racial slurs against Black people: “Bro is at a chicken restaurant ordering his food. Would he like some watermelon and kool aid with that?”

And Samuel Douglass, a state senator in Vermont, responded to a chat about “a very obese Indian woman” with, “She just didn’t bathe often.”

The texts, which The New York Times has not seen, have created a firestorm, putting Republican leaders on the defensive. Many state officials have condemned the texts, which occurred between January and August, and some who participated in the chats have lost their jobs or have been called on to resign.

But some top Republican leaders, including President Trump, have not weighed in, and others have played down the text messages. Vice President JD Vance compared them to “anything said in a college group chat,” even though many came from local party officials and not college students.

On the far right, some suggested that any condemnation of the racist, sexist and homophobic discourse was a betrayal of the conservative cause.

And:

Brane Space: NO! Nazis Merit No First Amendment Protections

And:

Opinion | I resigned from the Marine Corps because of President Trump - The Washington Post

And:

Trump Considers Overhaul of Refugee System That Would Favor White People - The New York Times

And:

Brane Space: The Dark Underbelly Of "America First"

And:

Telegram texts reveal antisemitism, racism in YRNF ranks | Miami Herald

Excerpt:

Ten years ago, I was elected to serve as the president of the Palm Beach County Young Republicans (PBCYR). In my year in the role, I saw its platform begin to stray from the conservative principles of William Buckley and Ronald Reagan, but I thought one thing was nonnegotiable: Antisemitism and racism don’t belong in the GOP.

But that was before the bombshell Politico story this week revealing vile racist, antisemitic and homophobic comments — roughly 2,900 pages of texts shared on Telegram between Young Republican leaders in New York, Kansas, Arizona and Vermont. Included were comments such as, “Great. I love Hitler,” and “everyone that votes no is going to the gas chamber.”

Assuming the information is true, and I don’t doubt it, this is stomach-turning. I don’t know anyone involved in those chats, but they aren’t from random people. They are members of Young Republican chapters, some of whom worked in party politics or in the government. Vice President JD Vance has dismissed the remarks as “what kids do” — but that misses the point. This wasn’t a temporary lapse in judgment; the texts stretch from early January to mid-August of this year. The story revealed a culture within a portion of young Republican chapters where hate speech and cruelty have become normalized.


And:

It’s Time to Take the Nazi-Trump Comparisons Seriously
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by Adil E. Shamoo | August 24, 2017 - 7:31am

— from Foreign Policy In Focus

By Adil E. Shamoo and Bonnie Bricker

The slide towards bleak historical periods can be difficult to recognize in the moment — often it only seems obvious in retrospect. But it’s hard to miss in the U.S. in this early part of the 21st century.

Dangerous signs are everywhere. In the New YorkerRobin Wright writes of a coming Civil War. Holocaust survivors are issuing warnings about the similarities of this period to the rise of the Nazi era.

While no two events are the same, there are lessons and events in history that can be used to shine a light on the present. Those lights, if we choose to follow them, can guide us to avoid the tragic errors of the past.

The presidency of Donald J. Trump, hoisted on the shoulders of white supremacists, is a glaringly dangerous period for our country. It’s important to recognize this dangerous mix of moral turpitude, dereliction of duty, and incompetence before we fall deeper into fascism and moral tragedy.

Similarities to Hitler

There are some similarities between both Hitler’s and Trump’s rise to power.

For starters, both rose to power with minority support. The Nazi party received just 3 percent of the vote in the 1924 parliamentary election; in the 1933 election, the party won 33 percent of the votes. At his peak, Hitler managed to muster just 39 percent. (Contrary to myth, he never won a popular election outright.)

Trump took over the Republican Party with a similar style of demagoguery and dumb luck, ultimately winning the presidency with 3 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton due to the arcane Electoral College process.

Likewise, both Hitler and Trump used decrees as a tool for consolidating authoritarian powers and disorienting the opposition. Trump’s continual issuance of executive orders, starting from the first days of his presidency, has served to not only subvert the normal legislative process, but to destabilize opposition by scattering the efforts of the left. By comparison, Hitler issued more than 400 decrees against Jews over a six-year period, in a constant and brutal decimation of rights, and ultimately, lives.


And:

Europe debates free expression against hate speech and disinformation - The Washington Post

Excerpt:


President Donald Trump claimed that Europeans are losing their “wonderful right of freedom of speech.” Elon Musk told a far-right rally in London that Britons are “scared to exercise their free speech.” And Vice President JD Vance warned that U.S. troops stationed in Germany could be jailed for a “mean tweet.”

Amid such attacks by Trump and his allies, many in Europe scoffed. This is a continent where pluralistic, parliamentary democracy is the norm, rule of law is sacred, human rights are respected deeply, and cherished personal liberties are balanced against society’s broader welfare, including protection of minorities against hate.

The eye-rolling was all the more pronounced given Trump’s apparent hypocrisy — with his glee over Jimmy Kimmel’s temporary suspension, his swiftly dismissed $15 billion defamation suit against the New York Times, and the efforts by his administration to control reporters who cover the Pentagon and to prosecute political foes.

But behind Washington’s finger-pointing lies a difficult debate that is roiling many European countries: Have governments gone too far in curbing free expression when it comes to hate speech and intentional misinformation — including political propaganda and election meddling by foreign adversaries — or have they built more responsible tools to safeguard democracy?