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Mary Margaret Clark (Schultheis)

Mike I am posting these two links to provide more context and understanding of DOGE and also the wasteful $$$$$ issued through USAID over many years. Perhaps a discussion needs to be had about government's irresponsible use of its citizens' hard-earned money.

https://x.com/renztom/status/1887038847629877714?s=46&t=6ZEf-6spHk0AlDclOXEIJg

https://x.com/tpv_john/status/1887292202541588738?s=46&t=6ZEf-6spHk0AlDclOXEIJg

Michael McLeod

Thanks mm. I'm all for a discussion,sure, and I've seen that list of complaints and if true it certainly merits a housecleaning. Just concerned and confused about the abrupt destruction of what looks like a merciful and life-saving global program that brings mercy to the world and good will to our country - and the possibility that we've just doomed thousands of iimpoverished souls around the world, most importanly children,  in the meantime.

Republicans have targeted aid-related programs before. Just shutting them down abruptly - that is a whole new thing and possibly illegal.

Sure If it's just shock treatment and showmanship, that's trump's style. But if it's dooming innocents and violating the rule of law in the process.....

Go ahead and call me a bleeding heart. There are worse things to be called And I may be missing something because,as I said, I'm an arts critic and feature writer, or was, and the international scene isn't up my alley. Plus I never watch tv of any sort.

So thanks again for the clips. In all honesty even after doing quite a bit of reading news clips from various sources I am still confused about the details and goals and motivations and above all morality -or lack of it - on this one.

John Jackson

MM, regarding Politico, here’s a CNN link that, unlike the one you referenced, comes closer to the truth:

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/05/media/politico-usaid-subscription-government/index.html

Apparently various agencies/individuals in the U.S Government, had subscriptions to Politico because it is a responsible new organization, and well, you know, it’s good for government officials to be informed.

The sum total of these subscriptions amounted to $8.2 million last year across the entire federal government (which has a budget of $7 trillion).  To put this in perspective, the Politico subscriptions amounted to slightly more than one millionth of the federal budget.

USAID’s share of the $8.2 million in subscriptions was $44,000 (1/200 of the total), hardly proof that Politico was “massively funded by USAID”.  This tiny fraction is not surprising because USAID is a tiny part of the federal government, accounting for about 0.5% of total federal spending, pretty much a rounding error.

Of course, this is taken straight from the authoritarian playbook – to harass and intimidate responsible news organizations so the lies of the right can go unchallenged.

Mary Margaret Clark (Schultheis)

Why is our federal bureucracy placed in charge of sending American taxpayer $$ to corrupt foreign governments around the world? We have been doing this for decades and exactly where is the proof that USAID followed the $$ to insure it improved the lives of persons living there? Isn't that what people around the world should be demanding of their own governemnts? Has anyone complaining about the abolishment of USAID even read the insane ways our tax dollars are being used? I believe that disaster relief is a worthy cause, but even that has been abused by those charged with administering it.....just look at Haiti after the earthquake 13 years ago when billions were pouring in to rebuild! It is still a poverty stricken and child-trafficked country. Should we be earmarking the USAID money to promote birth control, abortions, transgender surgeries, LGBTQ ......that is doing more to damage the physical and emotional health of those uneducated and impoverished persons than

Has anyone taken note of the tens of thousands of single young men who entered this country illegally from over 175 countries.....why aren't they remaining in their own countries and finding solutions to their country's problems? America is an example of citizens rising up to establish a more free and prosperous nation. It can be done. We should not be the financier and protector of the entire world. 

Democrats and RINO's may hate Trump, but he was elected by 77 million voters to root out those who are part of the globalist's 2030 agenda of bringing about a one world government, placing all the people of the world under the umbrella of the chosen elites. Their motto...."You will own nothing and be happy".

I pray every night for the return of "One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all".

John Jackson

All Republican and Democratic presidents since WWII have recognized that the humanitarian work of USAID more than pays for itself in the value of the good will it fosters around the world toward the U.S.  And now we’re going to just chuck this out on Musk's say-so without any serious thought or analysis.

As I pointed out before, USAID accounts for 0.5% of our national budget and the U. S. spends considerably less as a percentage of GDP than other advanced nations do on economic and humanitarian aid to poor countries.

And the Chinese can’t believe their good fortune as they have a huge program providing aid to poorer countries in Asia, Africa and South America, many of which have deposits of strategic rare minerals that are in increasingly short supply around the world. The end of USAID will make these Chinese programs much more effective in promoting their interests around the world.

Mary Margaret Clark (Schultheis)

John...can't believe you still regard the NYT and CNN as credible news sources as they are losing readers and listeners every day. I remember when they both pushed  Russiagate, Laptopgate, Covid 19 mitigations, Jan.6th as an "insurrection" and yet tried to tell us the BLM riots were "peaceful" while businesses in cities all across the U.S. burned to the ground. 

Here is an excerpt from an article NOT from NYT or CNN that shines a light on the fact that all demographics of the U.S. have become enlightened by alternative news, freed from the legacy media corporatism that used to dominate. 

It seems that at this age Trump is no longer going to change or perhaps no one thinks it is convenient to do so. Voters have learned to distinguish between his jokes, his offensive hyperbole, his jabs and his serious comments, between what Trump says without a filter and what Trump might actually do. People distinguish the myth from the man far better than the progressive intelligentsia.

The old Republican vote has evolved into a coalition of middle and lower class, without too many identity distinctions, oblivious to the racialized and delusional caricatures fabricated by a crazed left that did nothing but divide and confront society. Trumpism today has a large base.

Finally, the man with the worst press in the history of mankind, who has been insulted in every possible way, demonized to the point of exhaustion and tried in every court of law for the most improbable causes has managed to survive the wrath of the elites. Without knowing it, world progressivism transformed him into a contemporary hero. Attempts to crush him by any means have aggrandized his insurgent status.

In pursuing the fallen Trump in 2020, Democrats became cartoonishly vindictive. Their ongoing comparisons to dictators, the Russiagate and Laptopgate revelations, his permanent cancellation, the criminal charges against him, exposed Trump's resilience. Claims that Trump will become a vindictive dictator who will use the judicial system as a weapon against his opponents seem ludicrous because it was the Democrats who spent the last few years using the judicial system as a weapon against him.

The Democrats who were coming in 2020 to be temperate, rational and normal were the most inept, delusional, vindictive, irrational and illiberal collective in the world. Curiously, a senile Biden, a meritless inconsequential Kamala and a Democratic Party rotten to the bone succeeded in making Trump the sane, sensible and normal choice; the most palatable to voters fed up with a disturbed, authoritarian, reality-divorced and brutally anti-freedom establishment.

John Jackson

MM, as long as "your" media promote obvious and demonstrable lies like the "stealing" of the 2020 election, that the rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, causing the death of one police officer and the injury of scores of others, were patriots,  and that climate change is a hoax, I'll stick with the mainstream media.

Michael McLeod

omg. i had a feeling we were due for a let's-go-after-the-mainstream-media skirmish.

by the way, for starters: nytimes PRINT subscriptions are yes, omg! dropping! plummeting! It must be because they don't print stuff that trump and company agree with! it's also because the journalists at those crappy illiterate godless institutions are all liberals and they are going to hell!

But guess what? Tthe truth is that newspapers in general - the PRINT aspect of newspapers -- is going the way of the horse and buggy -- not because god hates them and they don't cater to some people's dogmatic and gullible way of looking at things but because of, duh, the Internet! News Paper subscriptions are down. Maybe on the way to extinction for all we know. I will miss the tactile pleasure of snappin a sunday morning paper open and enjoying every words while being careful not to spill a drop of morning coffee on myself. But Fact is, according to a recent ruetter's story, while paper sales are down the ONLINE distribution is growing, particularly for the New York Times, poor new york times, whose grave you are happily dancing on, Mary Magaret meanie head,  has only 11 million subscribers. And it's doing just fine thank you very much. CNN's numbers are up too, by the way. Somebody's bs-ing you.

To continue my diatribe: As far as my trade in general is concerned, he fact is that more people than ever read the new york times and other publications of all sort and from all points of view than ever. News papers are horse-and-buggy by todays communication standards.

There are dips, of course. From Reuter's in a recent story:  "the New York Times added fewer digital subscribers than expected in the third quarter"  as readers cut back on spending in an uncertain economy, but overall "Digital advertising sales at NYT  jumped 8.8%, its strongest growth in more than two years."

So in fairness your buddy -- who uses name calling and half-truths rather than logic, you'll notice, to keep his followers in line -- may have seen that third quarter dip and jumped for joy. Embrace your beliefs. I respect your right to them them whether or not I share them or see through the childlike name-calling that seems to work with certain crowds. But facts are facts.

The NY Times overall is doing great. It aims to reach 15 million digital subscribers by 2027. It crossed 11 million in the recent third quarter.. It's growing like crazy and it's a hell of a lot better source of the truth for my money than your boy trump -- and I'd say overall "world progressivism"  is on the rise and its sensible and informed perspective sees Mr. Trump for the quite successful panderer of bs that he is - as history will also perceive him, I'm quite sure..

Facts are facts and my sense is that Trump has no interest in letting them - meaning facts - get in his way. Easier to rely on fakeries and slurs such as whole-cloth dismissal of hard working professionals as phony "intelligencia."  

Name calling.

I'm tempted to indulge in it myself.

Probably have already in private.

But I will say that a part of me likes seeing this generational shake-up.

I think the true foundations of the country (and journalism) will stand up to it in the end, as they have in the past. Hoping I live to see it but I wouldn't bet on it. But history will expose trump for what he was. And I don't have to write that in bold. It'll be clear to all long after we're gone.

PS: The reason I will never be a crack addict is because these peanut-butter-filled pretzel-drop thingies I am eating right now as I finish up this defensive and defiant little scree of mine are one hell of a lot more addictive. 

Michael McLeod

My lord. How low can this piece of poo go?

John Jackson

MM, regarding your two DOGE links - are you serious?  Just one example - the claim that “the Clinton Foundation... is a child trafficking enterprise”.  This kind of outrageous lie speaks volumes about the credibility of the sources you cite.

DOGE will be responsible for an unprecedented brain drain from the federal government which will only  make the government less efficient.  Under the guise of "efficiency", experienced civil servants, who have served both Republican and Democratic administrations and who know their jobs well, will be fired and replaced by people who have no experience on the job and whose only qualification is unwavering loyalty to Trump.

The government we have is hardly perfect, but if you think it's inefficient now, just wait...

Michael McLeod

John:He's also dismissing climate change as an issue. Don't want to be an alarmist but if I did I'd have plenty to go on. There is evidence of a pronounced recklessness to him this time around.

Joseph Gentilini

Michael McL and John Jackson ----  AMEN!

John Jackson

This is a belated response to MM’s post 14971 about Trump’s Canadian tariff threat.  Full disclosure - I have a soft spot in my heart for Canada.  My father grew up in a small town just north of Albany (NY), that was mostly French Canadian.  The town was poor – the street my grandparents lived on was a block and a half long and it had three bars, including one directly next door to their house.  Two of my father’s three sisters married men of French Canadian heritage and five of my nine cousins have French Canadian last names.

My grandmother who was second generation Irish, like many of her French Canadian neighbors, had a devotion to St. Anne (Mother of Mary) and to the Lourdes-like basilica of St Anne de Beaupre, a pilgrimage destination  just east of Quebec City. Perhaps my earliest clear memory was a trip our family took with my grandparents, all of us in our '53 Oldsmobile (my grandparents didn’t own a car) to Beaupre and participating in a nighttime candlelight procession around the outside of what seemed to be an impossibly grand cathedral.  I also remember seeing the interior with crutches lining the walls.  Many years later I visited Beaupre to find the “cathedral” was a mid-sized church, but still with crutches hanging on the walls (and  Wikipedia says it still draws half a million pilgrims each year).

Since that initial visit, I’ve been to Canada at least 30 times, mostly for work (Canadian companies and universities have bought many of the instruments my company makes), but also 7-8 times on vacation and every time I’ve been blown away by the country (especially its cities, which put most American cities to shame) and its people.

Regarding MM’s post by Elizabeth Nickson, the kindest thing I can say about this rambling out-of-control diatribe is that the author appears to be consumed with self-loathing about being born Canadian and utter contempt for her countrymen.  Examples:

“I only grew when I left the country after graduate school.”

“With any luck the inevitable success of the Trump economy and the ferocity of his team will force Canadians to grow the fuck up... He should do the kind thing and put us out of our misery.”

Nickson seems to be an outlier among her fellow Canadians who, from the reports I’ve read, are livid about the threats and are ready to fight back, canceling travel plans to the U.S. and boycotting American brands: https://www.ipsos.com/en-ca/canadians-turn-away-us-amid-tariff-concerns  

It’s hard/impossible to find a serious economist who supports Trump’s tariff threats (the stock market tanked the first day after the tariffs were announced but then recovered when they were rescinded).  The last time we had a trade war like the one Trump is envisioning was in 1930 and the tariffs enacted then are credited with deepening and prolonging  the Great Depression.  The Wall Street Journal called Trump’s tariffs “the dumbest trade war in history”:  https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/02/trump-tariffs-wall-street-journal-editorial

When we already have enough enemies around the world, isn't it beyond stupid to bully and pick a fight with your oldest and best friend?

Michael McLeod

I had overlooked the obvious until I read your post, John.

Then it struck me.

Like all cowards, Trump picks on the most vulnerable and conjurs up lies to keep his followers in line. He's really, really good at it. And he plays on their preconceptions and pride and prejudices like a virtuouso violinist. I'll give him that. 

Well - I gotta be fair - he lies about bigshots, too. He tells his base that one of his most accurate and persistence critics, the New York Times, is in trouble financially, which it's not. (print subscriptions are down but online subscriptions are up, as with many if not most pubs these days and, let's face it, henceforwards).

Now he's picking on the likes of those sainted and painfully pleasant folks in that sprawling non-threatening country hovering benignly over our heads on all the maps. (Seems to me canada is always colored a soft, cozy shade of pink in those maps.)

And why would a guy like the trumpster give a crap about the starving children globally that are saved via usaid?

I swear to God this is no longer politics. It's more like a silent move tear-jerker featuring an evil villian stroking his icky moustache. 

Yet it plays to a particular crowd.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-aid-freeze-could-hit-sudan-starving-children/

John Jackson

And how can you not love a country that produces music like this?  The first minute is slow but then it really breaks loose.  A hallmark of French Canadian music is the syncopated background percussion produced by one of the musicians sitting on a chair and tapping/stomping both feet on the floor.

Michael McLeod

WOW, JOHN! FEEL LIKE I JUST GOT BACK FROM THE GYM AFTER LISTENING TO THAT!

Ok

Let's calm down.

BUT SOMEHOW I KEEP TEARING MY HAIR OUT ABOUT PRESIDENT TRUMP BECAUSE I CAN'T TELL THE DIFFERENT BETWEEN THE MYTH AND THE MAN!! HE'S THE MYTHING MAN! AND IT'S HARD TO SAY THAT WITHOUT FEELING LIKE I AM TALKING WITH A LISP!!

Having said that, I'm going to do my best to take a self-imposed break from politics to write my memoir on behalf of my two children, Taylor and Michelle.

I think it may be memoire with an "e," that looks better.

My girlfriend, Denise, a marvelous and quite a bit more intelligent and clearly better looking than I am grade school teacher, has instructed me to do so.

I dare not say no -- Nor will I act up in class. 

I always loved stories and words, as all children do, and my mother obligingly trucked me and my three sisters around to those charming, quiet, book-scented libraries in Clintonville and elsewhere in Columbus and fostered a love of story and storytelling in me. Her father, Ernest Victor Reutinger, was a doctor, with a little outcrop of an office in front of his home on east main street next to a catholic school whose name escapes me, and she brought me a stack of his old prescription pads to write on - thus the beginning of my career at a quite tender age.

After Watterson I got a degree in english from Ohio Dominican College, was drafted after that, came back, got an MA in Journalism from OSU on the GI bill, and got my first job as city beat and police reporter at the Middletown Journal, then moved to the Cincinnati Enquirer as a film reviewer and feature writer, then moved to Orlando to write features, freelanced for the LA Times, then got into long form journalism writing profiles and features for magazines.

FIFTY YEARS WORTH OF THAT!!! I can't remember all of it partly because of age and alzheimer's and partly because there is just so much of it to go back over.

But now I'm doing it.

So wish me luck.

I'll post here if I run across anything that might be of general interest as I go back through my memories and clips. Self imposed muzzle from here on out, which I think will be of benefit to all, when it comes to politics. Gonna be tough to rein myself in on that front but something tells me its for the greater good, as well as to the benefit of my children, and - I saved the real reason for last - it will keep me in the good graces of Denise, who knows how to handle a child-man man-child such as myself given that she teaches hard core first and second graders, most of whom probably have more sense in their heads than I do.

And just now I smacked my forehead with an obvious realization:

This is the first time in 70 years, going back to Immaculate Conception grade school on East North Broadway, that a second grade teacher gave me a writing assignment!

Now I know what people mean when they say life is a circle.

One big difference: this teacher isn't wearing a habit. 

She's become one, though.

God bless all the ladies, in and out of habits, who've kept me in line over the years.

Michael McLeod

This is a bad time for me to wax nostalgic.

Seriously. I should be addressing something far more important.

This is an extremely dangerous moment -- not just for police officers who are dying in the midst of our recent political turmoil but for the press. No, I don't know of any colleagues who have died. But it's bad out there and I do know colleagues who I thought of as hard core who are frightened.

It's a good time for me to say this:

Disagree with what you read as much as you like. Just be sure to guard your right to read it.

All of it.

There are a lot of great quotes along these lines.This is one of my faves. It may sound old fashioned to you. It's not. It's applicable. Today. And tomorrow. And the next day. I wouldn't get up on my soap box about this if I didn't think the situation we're in at the moment calls for it. In all my life as a journalist I've never seen manipulation - successful manipulation,at least to a degree - as I see it right now. I'm confident that truth will out, but I fear the damage that may happen in the meantime.

Here's the quote. It might strike you as being a bit over the top. It's not.

To the press alone, checkered as it is with abuses, the world is indebted for all the triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.”

James Madison.

Timothy Lavelle

Mike, I am encouraged by you and John enough to recount an old old story. But first, John, I was caught by the boldened print of a comment in your post that lead me to read it quickly...and in one small instance, possibly disagree. It was your "travel after college" quote from the Canadian. At first glance, reading just the bold print,  I thought "Damn, John, you agree with my feeling that travel is one of the best things to teach us our own biases and help us grow"...but I got it wrong, you were using that to show she was less than loving toward her home country. I am hoping she meant "Travel is good for th soul"  but maybe you understand her btter. She likely hates NPR that airs Canadian viewpoints almost nightly.

Old, old memory/story. We lived on the Hilltop and there was a small public library somewhere on West Broad around Warren/Hague Ave. I was somewhere from 6-8 years old when my Mom (Big Sally) dropped me off there. By my lonesome. I wandered around through stacks and read titles on the books. One smaller book, red cover, had a weird funny name. I pulled it down and looked through it at the pictues. To this day the memory of those black and white pics are lodged way down deep. I couldn't read the book, I believe, but I memorized the title cause it was so vividly weird. "Auschwitz" was that title.

That book, that experience, lead me to wonder, (maybe while Coach Dick was teaching us history) why Germans were obviously savage people that really deserved to be wiped off the face of the earth. How did Europe not know for hundreds of years beforehand that these German bastards would try to rule the earth and kill people wantonly. Why not just eradicate those pre-sig heilers before they got so much power?  

It took years of travel amongst all sorts of peoples to challenge childhood beliefs and allow me a widened view. I was never brilliant...My parents, god love 'em, taught me that black people were just crap. It took Viet Nam and the men I met there to straighten that stupidity out. It took living in some pretty repressive areas (Saudi for one) to understand that all people need good, big hearted leadership to give them a more giving view and that it took surprisingly little bad leadership to play to their basest instincts and bring about horrors. The Germans of the day were not inherently bad, they were lead to be heartless for awhile by people who had no heart.  We need to keep fighting for heart in our country.  Enough from me. 

Michael McLeod

You said it well Tim.

The heart is most definitely at stake. More so now than at any other time in our lifespan.

That sounds dramatic as hell I know. And fact is I'm more optimistic than pessimistic. I think we'll see our way through this thing and emerge stronger. Or maybe emerge wounded. I'm hoping for the former.

Now that I am more or less fully retired I can follow this stormy sea change we're in and try to get a sense of where it's headed.

These next four years are gonna be messy though. And dangerous. Yet a crisis can bring out the best in us. That is, at least, what I'm hoping for.

David Mitchell

Tim,

I second that "well said" from Mike.

But I am still frightened by this ego-driven grifter. I may be the last person on earth to agree with much of the "left" idealism, and I acknowledge there is a degree of corruption and waste in many government aid projects.

But this guy is heartless, wreckless, and dangerous. And what seems even more frightening to me is the number of people who have fallen under his spell. 

One small issue that has grabbed my attention;

It is my understanding we have now stranded hundeds of AID workers in foreign countries who now have no way to get back home. (and "co-president" Musk is too poor to offer any free tickets). And among them are a several dozen pregnant women who were expecring to get back home to have their babies delivered in the U.S. 

Of course this barely scratches the surface of the number of children whose diseases we could have prevented. Those poor suckers thought American would make good on their "commitments" - like Afghanistan (yes, Joe's blunder), or like Vietnam (Nixon's betrayal).

HA !    Suckers.

* But by all means, I bet we can count on an extension of tax breaks for those in the upper income bracket. 

David Mitchell

One thing more.

Having appointed myself "Chief Proofreader and Fact Verifyer" on this Forum, I am able to assure all of our readers that those Jacksons of East Schereyer Place, did in fact have a '53 Oldsmobile - and another oldsmobile after that one.

I seem to recall that John's dad drove my dad, John and I, and another young friend to old Municipal Cleveland Stadium to watch my first major league baseball game - a double header between the Indians and the Yankees (Herb Score vs. Whitey Ford in the first game) - in that newer "Rocket 88".

Just didn't want to allow any notion that John plays loose with his facts. 

John Jackson

Dave, my memory is not as sharp as yours, but I do remember our trip to see the Indians in Cleveland.  I remember especially our fathers' talk on the late night drive back to Columbus about the Russian menace (which scared the living daylights out of me at the time).   

Needless to say, I'm so relieved we don't have to worry about this any more since Trump and Putin see pretty much eye-to-eye on everything. 

Michael McLeod

An Illustrated Love Letter to Words and the Meaning Between Them

Michael McLeod

I just had to share that book review below. Apart from alerting you to a book you might like, the review itself is so beautifully crafted. It's not my own review, though I always loved the deal we had going at one of the newspapers where I worked: If you wrote a book review you got to keep the book. You should see my book case. Make that book cases.

I love that word the reviewer uses - "chimera." Without looking it up I think it means a fuzzy, dreamlike image. The  reviewer is Maria Popova and she has a website called the marginalia.

And hell yes I've bought that book.

On another note: I just walked out back. Skies are blue in Orlando right now and as I walked towards the pool in the backyard a shadow passed over me and I saw it was from a circling hawk, a big one, white from the neck up and brown otherwise, and then I saw its mate circling in the other direction in a wide arc and landing in my neighbor's huge oak tree and I looked up and said, out loud: "thank you" for the beauty of the day and the presence of both of them in it.

There was a part of me that wished the hawks in unison or perhaps the disembodied voice of God had said, quietly, so as not to make me pee my pants on the spot, "you're welcome."

But apparently that's asking too much.

Again, the book review just below this message is not mine; it's one I just posted because the book itself is so cool.

Michael Boulware

Mike McLeod,, Just getting caught up with our website and read the awful news about your sister. I deeply regret that news. I sure hate to see people I like and admire to go through the pain of losing people we love.We sure have lost some great ones lately.