"It was a funeral. Not a place to hold meetings. So disgusting and disrespectful. So, EXACTLY Trump! I’d expect nothing more from him."- NY Time comment
"Donald Trump got a front row seat to his own humiliation Saturday as he was verbally attacked in a homily at Pope Francis’ funeral. Trump, who traveled to Rome Friday, sat with world leaders at the service as his signature policy was rebuked to an audience of millions watching live around the world.
“Pope Francis incessantly raised his voice, imploring peace and calling for reason and honest negotiation to find possible solutions,” Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, who gave the homily, said.
“‘Build bridges, not walls,’ was an exhortation he repeated many times.”
The statement was clearly aimed at Trump’s promise to build a wall between Mexico and the USA to halt illegal immigration. It — along with many other Trump policies — was frequently criticized by the pope, who said anybody who thought of building walls rather than bridges was “not Christian.
See: Trump gets front row seat to humiliation as attacked in Pope's homily
Pope Francis' funeral in Rome tomorrow (4 a.m. EDT) has prompted speculation as to what heads of state will attend. E.g.
According to that WaPo piece from yesterday:
Trump, who had
clashed with Francis during his first and second terms in the White
House, said Monday that he and first lady Melania Trump will be in attendance.
“We look
forward to being there!” he wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social,
before the Vatican confirmed the date of the funeral.
The question is why this feral felon "looks forward to being there"? To prance around with arrogance and pride in front of other world leaders, flaunting how he's turned full on Dictator and is on the verge of converting the U.S. into a Fourth Reich? This after his felon-traitor administration has begun snatching innocent people off the streets and hauling them to a Gulag called CECOT in El Salvador.
Think I'm being histrionic or exaggerating? Okay, then note the words of one of the Wall Street Journal's columnist's - Gerard Baker - from yesterday (p. A14):
"In its 100 -day multifront war the Trump team has taken on the courts, leading universities, most of the media, much of the legal profession, the bond markets, the currency markets, the equity markets as well as the global system of alliances and the global economic system."
This, for sure, lays out the scale of destruction and demolition but doesn't specifiy it, as I did in a recent post, e.g.:
- Trump falsely accused Ukraine of being the aggressor in Russia's war this after he PARDONS all the January 6th traitors.
- Trump then destroyed relations with every single one of our allies, starting with Canada - asserting he wanted it annexed as the "51st state."
- Trump then began to dismantle the entire US government using a mock Musk "agency" called DOGE.
- Trump then proceeded to nominate fools and butt-kissers to run all our Intel Agencies and Health and Human Services. Oh, and an incompetent drunk ignoramus to run the Pentagon.
- Trump then set out to destroy our economy using the monumental unforced error of $6 trillion in tariffs setting off a global trade war.
- Trump upended the rule of law, attacking judges, the courts and lawyers, trying to hold him accountable for his lawless overreach.
- Trump fired the head of cyber intelligence leaving us open to attacks
- Trump upbraided and humiliated Ukraine President Volydymor Zelenskyy, showing all sentient citizens how tight a leash Putin has on him.
Putin couldn't have been happier if Trump himself were a Russian agent, a "Manchurian candidate" if you will.
See Also:
Magazine Cover Puts A World Of Hurt On Trump's First 100 Days
In my Loyola Theology notes 'Demoniacs in the Gospels' (from 1964-65):
"Demoniacs" were a synonym for "persons possessed by the devil or several devils." Many such cases, as pointed out in the notes (which I still have) were mentioned in the Synoptic Gospels but these often were extreme in revealing aspects of insanity, psychosis, or seizures. However, a more subtle form was also noted in which "excessive energy" - usually described as "feral" - could be present in a person otherwise too old or mentally compromised to manifest it. One got a glimpse of such energy in Trump when he upended Joe Biden in their first and only debate last year by "flooding the zone" with attack accusations:
As I noted:
Trump, by contrast to Biden's feeble voice and reactions, barked voraciously in blustering responses, ninety five percent of which contained zero accurate content and were tangential to the moderators' questions. The lies themselves flew out of his mouth like a firehose. I told Janice I estimated two hundred in two minutes but it may have only seemed that way since so many were put together in single word salads. The result? Trump created the illusion of having more energy, more youth and more mental acuity.
Later, in Trump's only debate with Kamala, I directly called out a "feral" energy. According to my Oxford Dictionary: Feral is a term used to describe a domestic animal turned wild, But in the context of my Loyola Theology notes it would almost certainly peg the "wild" human actor as a "demoniac". Can one be sure Trump is a demoniac? My Theology prof would have answered: "Only through an attempted exorcism. Then the demon or demons would reveal themselves".
Certainly, that Jesuit scholar would wonder what demon or demons had taken possession of Trump. Merely examining his on-off feral facial expressions, i,e,
as well as his first 100 days of feral actions (noted above) he'd likely speculate the alien intruders could be Baphomet, Belial or Pazuzu. Of course, as a materialist I disavow any and all supernatural entities. However, my Barbadian friend and biochemist John Phillips (who co-founded the Barbados Philosophical Society with me in 1974) is not so quick to be dismissive:
He is adamant that such entities do exist, though he grants they are nameless. When I asked him what exactly he believes they are, he replied:
"We (metaphysicians) assign the term 'elementals'. They are basically souls - or if you prefer individuated consciousness - trapped on the earth plane and prevented from reincarnating. Trapped in fleshless form, unable to appease their sadistic, lustful or monetary appetites, they are left only with attempted possession of another consciousness to fulfill their desires vicariously."
Though I still suspect John's take is loaded with dollops of codswallop, at one level it makes a kind of nutso sense. Imagine, if you will, a greed- infested, rapacious tyrant who could have lived at any time in the past. But he (or she) is now trapped on this earthly plane as John puts it, unable to fulfill its carnal or other desires. By his logic it would search out a similar degraded (but fleshly) conscious being to try to possess its sentience. It's easy to conceive Trump would be a perfect host for a multitude of these forlorn castoffs, given his own degraded nature. Which degradation, indeed, may have been accelerated via multiple serial or lengthy one-off possessions.
When I pressed John to give me one example of such a possessed flesh human, current or past, he didn't hesitate.
"Jeffrey Dahmer!"
The saga of Jeffrey Dahmer is one of the most appalling in the history of Milwaukee (writing as a former resident, also born there). Dahmer redefines what a human beast is, as he not only drugged his hapless victims, but butchered them after sexual congress, then cannibalized selected body parts and often stored the heads in his fridge.
Killed in a prison some years ago, John argues his consciousness - left unfulfilled and detached- became trapped on this plane searching for similar leaning personalities to possess. He also maintains the lure and fascination for such elementals can itself trap other living humans into being susceptible. He even argued that a Dahmer Museum of Horrors opened in Milwaukee over a decade ago was doing no one any good, e.g.
If we grant even a scintilla of credibility to John Phillips' take, then Donald J. Trump - by the totality of his actions - may also be possessed by an elemental and hence qualify as a "demoniac". At least according to Fr. Tonnar, my Theology prof- as well as John.
For my part, though the demoniac theory is fascinating I will stick with the more prosaic theory of psychologist Bandy X. Lee - that Trump is an extreme version of a predatory, narcissistic psychopath. And as I noted back in 2017, this likely had its origins in abandonment by his parents as a teen - after they learned he had been making jack knives to cut up feral cats in Queens' alleys. They sent him off to aa military school and it fucked him up from then on - sending him on the path to egomaniacal redemption and retribution.
In any case, it makes him as unfit to attend Francis' funeral as he is to occupy the highest office in the country, He is a menace, irrespective of whether regarded as a psychopath or demoniac-elemental. And has no business at a beloved pope's funeral.
Presidents Obama and Biden were active during the reign of Pope Francis, and accorded him respect. It would therefore be fitting if both of them could attend - to convey a higher level of respect and to ensure classier conduct. One thing we know is that Dotard Demoniac Trump will not deliver anything but chaos, contempt and self-indulgence.
Update: 4/25: The first words out of Trump's feral mouth to reporters before leaving for Rome were:
"It's going to be very interesting, we're going to meet with a lot of the foreign leaders that want to meet."
In other words, this despotic Turd sees the funeral as a meeting opportunity to browbeat world leaders about his insane tariffs and who knows what else.
See Also:
by Thom Hartmann | April 26, 2025 - 5:03am | permalink
The Trump administration just gutted Meals on Wheels. Seriously. Meals on Wheels!
Donald Trump didn’t just “disrupt” America; he detonated it. Like a political Chernobyl, he poisoned the very soil of our democratic republic, leaving behind a toxic cloud of cruelty, corruption, and chaos that will radiate through generations if we don’t contain it now.
He didn’t merely bring darkness; he cultivated it. He made it fashionable. He turned cruelty into currency and made ignorance a political virtue.
This man, a grotesque cocktail of malignant narcissism and petty vengeance, ripped the mask off American decency and showed the world our ugliest face. He caged children. Caged. Children. He laughed off their cries while his ghoulish acolytes used “Where are the children?” as a punchline for their next QAnon rally.
And:
jeffrey_r._wilson_22trump_is_satan_-_paradise_lost_in_washington_dc22_2019.pdf
And:
And:
‘Demonic activity was palpable’ at Trump’s rally, pastor says - The Washington Post
And:
Vatican Demands "Thousands of Trained Exorcists" For Demonic Possession Crisis
And:
by John Feffer | April 24, 2025 - 4:21am | permalink
— from Foreign Policy In Focus
The best way of preventing authoritarian leaders from overthrowing democracies is to make sure that they never get into power in the first place. That’s what the French did last year when parties on the left united and then made a second-round pact with the centrists to prevent Marine Le Pen and her far-right National Rally from winning a parliamentary majority. And now the courts have convicted Le Pen of corruption and barred her from running for office.
Americans have obviously screwed the pooch on that particular method of preventing autocracy. Voted out of office, slapped with multiple suits, convicted of a felony, denounced by dozens of his former appointees, Donald Trump nevertheless managed to use these setbacks as evidence that even a billionaire ex-president can be an “outsider” who’s taking on the “establishment” and sticking up for the “little guy.”
On the eve of the first 100 days of Trump’s second term, the challenge has now become infinitely more difficult. America is now living through that horror movie cliché where the call is coming from inside the house. The seemingly indestructible culprit has returned for a more horrifying sequel to destroy U.S. democracy from within. Worse, all the failures of his first term are now helping him craft more successful disruptions in his second.
And:
by Madhoosier | April 20, 2025 - 7:28am | permalink
Hatred.
Trump hates America with with the kind of hatred that takes decades to fester, hatred only possible in somebody with an overwhelming sense of having been grievously wronged.
What was that wrong?
Success.
Donald Trump was born to success, and success with the wealth and trappings that surround it became Donald Trump's holy grail.
1) To show a subgroup is a proper subset, we prepare the table for the operation, thus:
Two years ago the northern hemisphere had just experienced the hottest summer in recorded history, including month by month the warmest June, July, August, and (by a country mile) September ever. Staggering heat records were set in place after place globally. Fires from Canada to Hawaii to Europe broke all records. The southern hemisphere had a “winter” from — yes! — hell. Europe was burning up, Greece experienced unprecedented fires and floods as well. Libya had a significant part of a major city washed away. China, too, experienced unprecedented flooding around its capital, where 1.2 million people had to be evacuated, and in Hong Kong, too.
Meanwhile the sea ice in the Antarctic fell to the lowest levels (yes again!) in recorded history, as did sea ice in the Arctic, helping to ensure a future in which rising sea levels could flood coastal cities. And Greenland has been lending a hand to that same future, starting 2023 with temperatures unmatched in at least 1,000 years and still setting new temperature records in July. Worse yet, that’s just to begin down a list that increasingly seems unending.
In certain parts of the United States, the summer of 2023 was literally a hell on Earth and, as a New York Times piece headlined it recently, also “A Summer Preview of the Future; Floods, Fires, and Stifling Heat. It felt like the opening minutes of a disaster movie.”.
A stunning heat wave, for instance, stretched across a drought-stricken Southwest all the way to California, while Phoenix, Arizona, hit an almost unbelievable temperature record of 54 days of 110-degree heat or higher! (Oh, wait, make that 55!)
And that, of course, was just to begin down a seemingly endless list. I haven’t even mentioned disappearing mountain glaciers or the soaring temperatures of South Asia or the Middle East. (Iran hit a record heat index temperature of 158 degrees in August.) But let me stop there. It isn’t hard to see that, if we humans continue to use staggering amounts of fossil fuels and so pour ever more greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere — and the latest study indicates that they are heading in that direction at record levels — the Earth, or at least life as we humans have known it on this planet, will, in the long run, almost literally go down in… what else?… flames.
That was two years ago. Now, thanks to the short sighted voting choices of millions (including Gen Z whose futures will be cratered), the orange felon has returned to power and vowed to burn the rest of the planet to a crisp. In barely two months, Dotard Trump has severely damaged the world’s
ability to fight climate change, and likely set us back twenty ‘Earth days’.
This ignorant tyrant has upended U.S. environmental policy with cynical, short-sighted moves that will have lasting implications for this country, and the planet. With a flurry of bogus executive orders- that have exceeded the limits of presidential power- Trump has gutted federal climate efforts, rolled back regulations aimed at limiting pollution and given a major boost to the fossil fuel industry.
He's also abandoned efforts to reduce global warming, even as the world has reached record levels of heat that scientists say is driven largely by the burning of fossil fuels. After all, on Inauguration Day, Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris climate agreement, making it the only nation to walk away.
Process that! The only nation to walk away.
Every corner of the world is now experiencing the effects of these rising temperatures in the form of deadlier hurricanes, floods, wildfires and droughts, as well as species extinction. Much worse, for many of his MAGA base, he has gutted NOAA - especially the section responsible for deploying weather balloons to detect violent super cells, tornadoes. That means millions will now be in the path of these storms and not know until it's too late, costing untold losses in lives, property.
In addition to achieve such a wholesale overhaul of the country’s climate policies in such a short time, the Trump administration has reneged on federal grants, fired workers en masse (E.g. at NOAA) and attacked longstanding environmental regulations. Relatively unpolluted air and water from now on? Forget about it! So expect lung diseases, respiration disabilities and cancers to multiply.
Trump has also frozen funds appropriated by Congress for clean
energy projects, taking particular aim at wind energy, the country’s largest
source of renewable power. He has
stopped approvals for wind farms on public land and in federal waters
and has threatened to block projects on private land.
The bottom line is that given the climate havoc he's wrought, the world and particularly the younger generations inhabiting it, will be left to live fraught and destitute lives as the worst of climate change transpires between now and 2100. Much of this will be because Trump's actions will have accelerated Earth's crossing of severe climate tipping points, e.g.
As noted in the above graphic, a tipping point arises when a previous stable equilibrium is suddenly upended for a more violent, hostile one. Say, for example, we are now at Equilibrium 1 where we expect (in the U.S., Canada) heat waves that can last 1 -2 weeks on average. By all accounts and measures (e.g. rate of increase in CO2 concentration), Trump's insane actions could have us at Equilibrium 2 by 2035. In this new scenario we could be looking at heat waves (110F- 120F /day) lasting up to 2 months. In an SSP5 -8.5 scenario (issued by the IPCC) we would see an increase of 5.7 C by 2100, which the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists noted.
It seems likely that by the time Trump leaves office (hopefully) in 2028 the Earth will be on that SSP-8.5 extreme trajectory.
See Also:
by Robert C. Koehler | April 26, 2025 - 4:39am | permalink
Let Earth Day be every day! Let it transcend the present state of politics and our economic hierarchy. Let it open us to the future we long for but do not yet envision.
We live on one vulnerable, extraordinary planet. We are not its overlords; we are part of an evolving circle of life, which we are still trying to understand. And we can only understand it if we also value it, ever so deeply. Earth Day is also Love Day.
Oh God, let it flow beyond the invisible borders we have created. To that end, I call forth the late Pope Francis, who died two days ago as I write—a day before Earth Day 2025. He was 88. Unlike most world leaders, he saw the need to transcend the present worldview—including religion—that currently holds the planet hostage.
And:
by Tom Engelhardt | September 12, 2023 - 5:09am | permalink
And:
by Basav Sen | April 25, 2025 - 4:51am | permalink
On April 22, Earth Day, the White House issued a press release that reads like parody. It would be comical if the consequences weren’t so dire.
The release proclaims that President Trump “follows science.” This is a laughable lie.
In a few short months, this administration has censored scientific information on government websites, tried to eviscerate funding for scientific research, turned its back on global scientific cooperation, and fired government scientists.
Leading administration officials have publicly repeated fossil fuel industry-backed disinformation. And in a very disturbing recent move, a federal prosecutor has sent threatening letters to medical journals, revealing the administration’s authoritarian impulse to censor scientific findings that challenge their agenda.
And:
The Intelligent Irrationalists: Why So Many High IQ Folks Deny Sound Science
And:
Five Major Climate Tipping Point Manifestations & What They Mean
