The Blue Country Gazette is the successor to the Rim Country Gazette, reflecting our evolution to a nationwide political blog for readers who identify as "blue," liberals, progressives, and/or Democrats. Our mission is to provide distinctive coverage of issues during a time of extreme polarization in the U.S. We strive to provide side-stories and back-stories that provide additional insights and perspectives conventional coverage often doesn't include.
A woman holds an upside down American flag. (photo: Allison Robbert/Getty) (Today, most protestors associate the upside down flag with the nation
heading in the wrong direction, or being under the control of the wrong
political party. The upside down version of the flag is becoming more pronounced among both conservatives and liberals.)
(Editor's note: Satirist Andy Borowitz turns serious on this 4th of July weekend.)
"...to build a future grounded in compassion, courage, and shared humanity."
Andy Borowitz/The Borowitz Report
04 July 25
When in the course of human events it
becomes necessary for a people to break from a leader who governs with
cruelty, contempt, and corruption, a decent respect to the opinions of
humankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them
to the separation.
We hold these truths to be
self-evident: that all people are created equal, endowed with inherent
dignity and unalienable rights—among these are life, liberty, equality,
and the pursuit of justice.
That to secure these rights,
governments derive their power from the consent of the governed. When a
leader becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right and duty of
the people to refuse allegiance and to stand united in the defense of
their freedoms.
The current holder of high office has shown himself to be unfit to lead a free and just society.
* He disrespects women, mocking survivors of violence and stripping away their rights.
* He fuels racism and white supremacy, scapegoating communities of color and denying their equality.
* He assaults free speech, attacking the press, punishing dissent, and spreading disinformation.
*
He exploits public office for private gain, enriching himself and the
billionaire class while abandoning the poor and working people.
* He undermines justice, ignores the rule of law, and places himself above accountability.
* He disregards science, endangering lives in times of crisis and sacrificing the planet for profit.
* He fans division and incites violence to maintain power, wielding fear as a weapon against the people.
Time
and again, we have protested peacefully, spoken truthfully, and
appealed to our shared humanity. We have been met with indifference,
hostility, and violence. A leader who governs through hatred and greed
is unfit to govern at all.
Therefore, we, the people of
conscience and conviction, do solemnly declare our independence from this tyrant and all he represents.
We withdraw our consent.
We refuse to be complicit in cruelty.
We reject the abuse of power for personal gain.
We stand for dignity, truth, equality, and justice for all people.
With firm reliance on each other and unwavering hope in our collective strength,
We pledge to resist oppression in all its forms,
To uphold the rights of the vulnerable,
And to build a future grounded in compassion, courage, and shared humanity.
Let this declaration be both a breaking and a beginning.
President
Donald Trump is simply not going to stand for the media reporting
anything he doesn’t like, and he’s going to use every tool in his
toolbox to make that happen. If that means prosecuting media outlets,
he’s down. If it means suing them, he’s all in. And if it means gutting
nonpartisan government media, he’ll do it.
On Tuesday, Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem threw a little temper tantrum about CNN’s coverage of the ICEBlock app.
Yes, Noem threatened to get the Department of Justice to
prosecute CNN for running a segment about an iPhone app. You’d think
that CNN had presented a detailed tutorial on how to use ICEBlock to
ambush Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, but the coverage is nothing more than an explainer on the app’s inventor and what the app does.
Homeland Security Secretary and dog murderer Kristi Noem, another Trump bimbo who is in way over her mental capacity.
According to Joshua Aaron, the app’s creator, ICEBlock is an
“early warning system” to track ICE agents nearby. Users can report the
location of agents with notes on how to identify them, and any user
within a 5-mile radius will get notified—not unlike the Google Maps
feature where you can report that there are police ahead.
It should go without saying, but it is not illegal to determine
where ICE agents are and to tell other people. And it certainly isn’t
illegal to use an app that does that. Noem’s confusion may be
understandable, though, since she thinks of them as her ownpersonal masked secret police.
Ever eager to help Trump weaponize the DOJ, Attorney General Pam Bondi alreadydid a media hit
against CNN on Fox News Monday. The app, she claimed, is “giving a
message to criminals where our federal officers are, and he cannot do
that, and we are looking at it, we are looking into him, and he better
watch out.”
Always a legal genius, Bondi went on to say that ICEBlock is “not protected speech.”
That is absolutely not the case. It’s legal to publicize the whereabouts and actions of law enforcement and even torecord police. Well, at least until the Supreme Court carves out a special exception for Trump, as it’s wont to do.
Trump lackey and Attorney General Pam Bondi is about as illegal as they come. She makes a mockery of the title.
After Noem’s threats, Trump had to get in on the action, but he’s actually mad about somethingentirely different.
“And they may very well be prosecuted also for having given
false reports on the attack in Iran. They were given totally false
reports. It was totally obliterated,” he said. “So they may very well be
prosecuted for that. What they did there, we think, is totally
illegal.”
This is the same thing that Trump was mad about a few days ago.
But back then, he was threatening the media in his personal
capacity—because we now live in a world where the president is allowed
to routinely sue media outlets he doesn’t like.
Despite being president, Trump has still made time to pursue his personal grievances against the media. CBS is close topaying him off
over his nonsense lawsuit in which he claims that the network
deceptively edited a segment featuring Vice President Kamala Harris.
In other words, CBS is going to pay Trump—the person—millions
and millions of dollars so that Trump—the president—will tell the
Federal Communications Commission to approve a merger between CBS’
parent company, Paramount, and Skydance Media. It’s the same thing thatABC News did before Trump even took office.
Last week, Trump had his personal attorney, Alejandro Brito—who also handled the ABC suit—send letters
to CNN and The New York Times threatening to sue over reporting on a
preliminary intelligence report that said that Trump’s drone strikes had
only knocked Iran’s nuclear program back a few months.
In hisletter to the Times,
Brito said that the reporting “undermined the credibility and integrity
of President Trump in the eyes of the public and the professional
community.”
Apparently, reporting anything at odds with Trump’s assertions
is now considered defamation of Trump, allowing him to sue. But it’s
also now considered a crime, so Trump, as president, can get the DOJ to
prosecute. And just to round things out, Trump’s already had his
administrationdestroy the nonpartisan Voice of America for being “radical.”
The DOJ is supposed to be independent of the president, not a
vehicle for Trump to use for retaliatory prosecution. The president
shouldn’t be able to pursue his personal civil grievances against the
same media outlets that he threatens with prosecution. But it’s
happening because norms have not held, and checks and balances fell
apart.
Trump’s attacks on the media are an assault on the First
Amendment and other core democratic principles. In other words, it’s
business as usual for Trump.
Vice President JD Vance doesn't care about 17 million Americans losing their health insurance."Republicans are about to force the largest loss of
health care in American history — and they clearly couldn’t care less...."By Emily Singer Daily Kos StaffJuly 2, 2025 REPUBLISHED BY:Blue Country Gazette BlogRim Country Gazette Blog
Vice President JD Vance sought to get GOPers on board by saying
that all of those negative things are just "immaterial" "minutiae"
compared to the money the bill provides to help Republicans deport
immigrants.
"The thing that will bankrupt this country more than any other
policy is flooding the country with illegal immigration and then giving
those migrants generous benefits. The OBBB fixes this problem. And
therefore it must pass," Vance wrote
in a post on X. "Everything else—the [Congressional Budget Office]
score, the proper baseline, the minutiae of the Medicaid policy—is
immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement
provisions."
Not only is Vance's statement absurd as he claims that actively
harming the poorest among us is not important, but his statement is
also false.
The nonpartisan CBO has said immigrants actually help lower budget deficits.
"People are rightly noting that kicking millions off of
Medicaid is not 'minutiae,' but the premise is wrong here too. Of the
reasons to deport undocumented immigrants, federal fiscal health is one
of the worst ones. CBO found they *lower* deficits by ~$1T over the next
10 years," Ernie Tedeschi, director of the Budget Lab at Yale, wrote
in a post on X. "That’s because undocumented immigrants tend to pay
taxes funding programs like Medicare & Social Security (despite the
stereotype, most undocumented immigrants who work are above the table)
but are often ineligible to receive benefits."
Democrats immediately pointed out the cruelty of Vance's tweet
"The 17 MILLION Americans you’re kicking off their health
insurance aren’t 'minutiae,'" Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Brendan
Boyle, ranking member of the House Budget Committee, wrote
in a post on X. "Republicans are about to force the largest loss of
health care in American history — and they clearly couldn’t care less
about working families."
"Ben, a disabled 14-year-old from Chesterfield, VA, isn’t 'minutiae,'" Warner wrote. "His health insurance isn’t minutiae. His future isn’t minutiae. Medicaid matters and I am fighting to protect it."
Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins have “serious reservations” about the bill.
Vance was needed to help Republicans pass the travesty of a
bill with a 51-50 vote—which hurts the poor and working class in order
to give tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the richest few.
Republican Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina,
Rand Paul of Kentucky, Susan Collins of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski of
Alaska, all either said they were voting no or had “serious
reservations” about the bill.
“As I've said from the beginning, I have a lot of serious reservations about the bill,” Collins told
reporters Tuesday morning. “I'm going to wait ‘til we're done, know
what direction we're going in, before announcing my position.”
Republicans tried to get Murkowski on board by making a specific carveout for Alaska that would keep the state from losing its Medicaid and food stamp benefits—while screwing everyone else.
There was also talk about trying to flip Paul to a yes by lowering the debt ceiling increase from $5 trillion to $500 billion.
However, Erik Wasson of Bloomberg News reported
that Senate Majority Leader John Thune was confident he had a deal to
get the bill to pass, though it’s unclear what that deal entails.
As we’ve said repeatedly, never bet against Republicans caving to Dear Leader’s will.
Editor’s note: This story was updated after the Senate passed the bill on Tuesday.
Will Trump's BBB spell the end of America as we knew it? Have we become the land of the fearful and the home of the billionaires?
National security depends on citizens’
trust in our armed forces. We lose that if we turn soldiers into
law-enforcement officers.
Leon E. Panetta/The Atlantic28 June 25
Our security is dependent on those who are willing
to fight our foreign enemies and die for their country. We honor them
and their families because their bravery and courage protect our
democracy. We respect our military precisely because its role in
defending the nation means that the military does not get involved in
politics.
If we allow the president to politicize the military, that
will undermine the trust of the American people in our national
security. The mobilization of the National Guard in California has
raised concerns about whether the reason for its deployment was based on
real threats to law and order, or on political differences between the
governor of California and the president of the United States.
To protect the role of the military, the U.S. has historically made
clear in its laws that federal troops should not be used for civilian
law enforcement. In 1878, President Rutherford Hayes signed the Posse
Comitatus Act, which bars the military from doing the work of
law-enforcement officers. Even the statutes that authorize the president
to activate the National Guard make clear that troops are to be limited
to responding to “invasions” or “rebellions.” The U.S. is not facing
either an invasion or a rebellion.
Respect for the military’s role is crucial for our democracy. That is
why the law is designed to ensure that our armed forces are not
politicized or misused. This rule-of-law tenet is the fundamental
difference between a free society and an autocracy. Tyrants use the
military as a pawn to solidify power, put down protests, and arrest
opponents.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has incurred as many as a million casualties
among the soldiers he sent into Ukraine for his dictatorial goal of
restoring the supposed greatness of the Soviet Union. Putin has found an
ally in another ruthless autocrat, North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un,
who has sent forces to help Russia’s fight in Ukraine. In China, the
primary purpose of the military is to protect those in power. In each
case, the tyrant demands—for his own survival—that the loyalty of the
military is solely to him, not to the nation, let alone the people.
Doing a dictator’s bidding is not how the military works in America.
Our service members swear an oath of loyalty to the Constitution, not to
the president. They follow the orders of the president as their
commander in chief, but may do so only if those orders are legal and
pursuant to the Constitution. Their job demands training, skill, and
courage, certainly. The job also requires the capacity to make decisions
based solely on the goal of accomplishing a national-security mission,
not appeasing political leaders. As secretary of defense, I was a party
to the kinds of tough decisions our military has to make. That judgment
must not be damaged by those who seek to use it for political purposes.
At the Pentagon, I bore the vital responsibility of deciding on the
deployment of our men and women in uniform, and whether to put them in
harm’s way. The concern that some of those deployed would not return
from a mission was always uppermost in my mind. Whenever we lost a
serving soldier, I would receive a report and see their name. On those
occasions, I personally wrote a condolence note to their family. The
list of fallen warriors was also sent to the White House so that the
president could do the same and convey the nation’s gratitude to the
family for the sacrifice that their loved one had made.
Admiral Bill McRaven, the head of Special Operations Command at the
time, made clear to me that every military judgment must be based on
doing what’s right to accomplish the mission. As the director of the
CIA, I was in charge of the covert operation to hunt down the al-Qaeda
leader Osama bin Laden at his secret compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
McRaven was the Afghanistan-based operational commander of the raid, in
which two teams of Navy SEALs flew 150 miles at night.
As they were
about to land, residual heat from the day caused one of their
helicopters to stall out and make a hard landing that left its tail
stuck on one of the compound’s walls. I called McRaven to ask what was
going on. He was decisive in his response. “I have called in a backup
helicopter, and we will proceed with the mission breaching through the
walls,” he said. “The mission will go on.” I gave my approval. The
mission was successful: The man who had masterminded the 9/11 attacks
was finally eliminated. The kind of split-second judgment that McRaven
showed is what our military is trained to do.
In the recent success of the U.S. forces that were deployed to attack
Iran’s nuclear facilities, the military did a great job of planning and
execution. America has the strongest military force on Earth, but all
of the technologically advanced weapons, planes, ships, and equipment
would not be worth much without the skill and training of our service
men and women. At outposts throughout the world, they are our front line
of defense. They are our national security.
To maintain that security demands that we protect and respect the
constitutional purpose they serve. If a president deliberately misuses
the military for partisan reasons, he is weakening America’s safety.
Leadership of a military devoted to defending our nation is an honored
role that goes back to George Washington and the creation of the
Continental Army 250 years ago. During that long history, Americans have
learned that presidential parades do not define their military; what
does is their respect for the military’s mission of protecting national
security. Trust in the military is indivisible from trust in the
Constitution. Both must remain inviolable.
Donnie Bone Spurs reporting for duty: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses" and I'll send their sorry asses to El Salvador. Except Melania, of course. On second thought...
An initial classified US assessment of Donald Trump’s
strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities over the weekend says they did not
destroy two of the sites and likely only set back the nuclear program
by a few months, according to two people familiar with the report.
The report produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency – the
intelligence arm of the Pentagon – concluded key components of the
nuclear program, including centrifuges, were capable of being restarted
within months.
The report also found that much of Iran’s stockpile of highly
enriched uranium that could be put to use for a possible nuclear weapon
was moved before the strikes and may have been moved to other secret
nuclear sites maintained by Iran.
The findings by the DIA, which were based on a preliminary battle
damage assessment conducted by US Central Command, which oversees US
military operations in the Middle East, suggests Trump’s declaration
about the sites being “obliterated” may have been overstated.
Trump said in his televised address on Saturday night
immediately after the operation that the US had completely destroyed
Iran’s enrichment sites at Natanz and Fordow, the facility buried deep
underground, and at Isfahan, where enrichment was being stored.
“The strikes were a spectacular military success. Iran’s key nuclear
enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.
Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace,” Trump said in
his address from the White House.
While the DIA report was only an initial assessment, one of the
people said if the intelligence on the ground was already finding within
days that Fordow in particular was not destroyed, later assessments
could suggest even less damage might have been inflicted.
Long regarded as the most well-protected of Iran’s nuclear sites, the
uranium-enrichment facilities at Fordow are buried beneath the Zagros
mountains. Reports have suggested that the site was constructed beneath
45-90 metres (145-300ft) of bedrock, largely limestone and dolomite.
Media coverage of the DIA assessment appeared to anger Trump, who on
Tuesday evening accused news outlets of demeaning the military strike by
saying it only set back Iran’s nuclear program by a few months.
“THE NUCLEAR SITES IN IRAN ARE COMPLETELY DESTROYED!” Trump posted in all caps on his Truth Social platform.
The White House also disputed the intelligence assessment, which was
first reported by CNN. “The leaking of this alleged assessment is a
clear attempt to demean President Trump, and discredit the brave fighter
pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran’s
nuclear program,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a
statement.
The US vice-president, JD Vance, admitted on Sunday that Washington
did not know where Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranian was,
saying: “we are going to work in the coming weeks to ensure that we do
something with that fuel”.
The Guardian revealed last Wednesday
that top political appointees at the Pentagon had been briefed at the
start of Trump’s second term that the 30,000lb “bunker buster” GBU-57
bombs meant to be used on Fordow would not completely destroy the
facility.
In that briefing, in January, officials were told by the Defense
Threat Reduction Agency at the Pentagon that developed the GBU-57 that
the bombs would not penetrate deep enough underground and only a
tactical nuclear weapon would wipe out Fordow.
The US strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities involved B2 bombers
dropping 12 GBU-57s on Fordow and two GBU-57s on Natanz. A US navy
submarine then launched roughly 30 Tomahawk missiles on Isfahan, US
defense officials said at a news conference Sunday.
Defense secretary Pete Hegseth repeated Trump’s claim
at the news conference that the sites had been “obliterated”, but the
chair of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Dan Caine, who helped oversee
the operation, was more measured in his remarks.
Caine said that all three of the nuclear sites had “sustained severe
damage and destruction” but cautioned that the final battle-damage
assessment for the military operation was still to come.
TOUGH GUY PINOCCHIO: “The strikes were a spectacular military success. Iran’s key nuclear
enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated."
Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) took a swipe at Donald Trump and Republicans during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday by throwing some pointed shade at first lady Melania Trump and her immigration path to the U.S.
Crockett,
during a hearing titled “Restoring Integrity and Security to the Visa
Process,” argued that “the idea that Trump and my Republican colleagues
want to restore integrity and security in the visa process is absurd."
The lawmaker first slammed Trump-era immigration tactics, saying:
“Integrity
is not snatching lawful visa holders off the streets and throwing them
into unmarked vans. Integrity is not revoking visas based on social
media posts that hurt somebody’s little feelings, because kids decided
they want to go after Trump or this administration. We have a thing
called free speech in this country.”
Then she got personal about the president:
“And
since we’re talking about integrity, I’m confused as to why my
Republican colleagues aren’t talking about the lack of integrity when it
comes to the president’s family’s visas. Let me remind you all that
Melania, the first lady — a model, and when I say model, I’m not talking
about Tyra Banks, Cindy Crawford or Naomi Campbell-level — applied for
and was given an EB-1 visa.”
To
gain an “Einstein visa,” as the EB-1 is also called, noted Crockett,
“you’re supposed to have some sort of significant achievement, like
being awarded a Nobel Peace Prize or a Pulitzer, being an Olympic
medalist, or having other sustained extraordinary abilities and success
in sciences, arts, education, business or athletics.”
“Last time I
checked, the first lady had none of those accolades under her belt,”
she said. “It doesn’t take an Einstein to see that the math ain’t
mathin’ here."
Libertarian Cato Institute analyst Alex Nowrasteh attempted a lighthearted defense of the first lady.
“Not
everybody could marry Donald Trump and I think that’s quite an
achievement, so I think she deserves credit for that,” he quipped,
adding: “Nobody up here could have done it.”
Crockett laughed. “You sure are right,” she replied. “I couldn’t do it.”
"The first lady — a model, and when I say model, I’m not talking
about Tyra Banks, Cindy Crawford or Naomi Campbell-level — applied for
and was given an EB-1 visa.”
President
Donald Trump bemoaned the Juneteenth holiday on Thursday, saying
Americans get too many days off and that it is hurting businesses.
"Too many non-working holidays in America,” Trump wrote
in a Truth Social post Thursday night. “It is costing our Country
$BILLIONS OF DOLLARS to keep all of these businesses closed.
The workers
don’t want it either! Soon we’ll end up having a holiday for every once
[sic] working day of the year. It must change if we are going to, MAKE
AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!"
There’s so much to break down from this ridiculous social media post it’s hard to know where to start.
First, it’s incredibly rich for Trump—who has spent many of the 151 days he’s been in office on the golf course rather than working—to say that American workers are given too much time off.
Trump is also notorious for not working hard himself, beginning his days late with scheduled "executive time"—where he sits like a vegetable in front of cable news raging about how it's not covering him favorably enough.
What's more, companies aren't forced to close on federal
holidays, as there is no law requiring that workers be given days off.
That’s in stark contrast to other countries, where the government
mandates that workers get vacation days. For example, in the United
Kingdom workers must be given 28 days of paid vacation annually. And in France and Spain, workers receive five weeks of mandated paid leave.
We’re sure that plenty of workers were
toiling away on Thursday—I’m sure some readers here will let us know in
the comments that their offices and workplaces were up and running.
Also, find us a worker who thinks, as Trump asserted, that they get too much vacation. We'll wait.
What’s even more hypocritical is that Trump honored Juneteenth
every year during his first term as president, even before it was a
federal holiday. According to the Associated Press, he claimed once to
have made the holiday “very famous.”
Ultimately, Trump was likely mad about Thursday’s federal holiday not because workers got the day off, but because of what the holiday represents—the
day commemorating the emancipation of enslaved Black Americans.
Juneteenth was, for many years, mostly celebrated by the Black community
before former President Joe Biden signed a bill into law that made the day an official federal holiday.
For Trump and his administration, they’d rather celebrate the traitorous Confederates, whose names they are now putting back on military bases across the country, than give workers the day off to celebrate the end of slavery. Gross.
You could call him a pig, but that would be insulting to all of pigdom.
