The Books of Bokonon

I'll offer a few videos that go into a few facets of the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 document. I will keep the focus on city planning as well as women's rights, but let's be aware that this is an expansive document that would fundamentally alter American life in a way that would harm the average citizen.  Let's start with CityNerd. His focus in the video below is primarily on urban transportation, which is crucial. He also does take a moment to get into some of the bigger picture stuff about how federal agencies would be run by partisan hacks rather than staffed by professionals who actually understand their jobs. He also reminds us that Trump implemented the Heritage Foundation's agenda for him quite faithfully: 64% of its proposals ended up becoming policy. He also takes some time rebutting critics of his Project 2025 videos: Here's another video done in the style of Schoolhouse Rock (for any of us who remember growing up on that): And here is anoth...

There's a YouTube host I periodically watch whose beat is urban areas, CityNerd. If you're cool with someone who is as fluent in sarcasm as he is in English, you've come to the right place. It's impossible to discuss cities and transportation without involving politics, and Project 2025 certainly would do some considerable damage if implemented. This particular video is useful for understanding just how Trump's less sophisticated and even more unhinged Agenda 47 is related to specific sections of Project 2025. Bottom line: it's bad for Americans. See for yourself. Trump is very fixated on coal, a mid-20th century view of suburban living, and an even more primitive approach to handling the problem of the unhoused (Tent cities and asylums? Are you kidding?). Trump is also fixated on the usual divide-and-conquer tactic of blaming immigrants on homelessness. It's his standard playbook, and of course those who've drunk the kool-aid will never acknowledge how ...

  Maybe. Leeja Miller certainly makes her case.

Trump may only cop to having a "concept of a plan" for healthcare law in the US, but JD Vance spills the tea: Democrats are always hoping for a break that’ll thrust kitchen-table issues like health care into the headlines. Suddenly they have two to work with. Donald Trump provided them the first one at last week’s presidential debate, when he admitted, nine years after he began trying to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, that he only has “concepts of a plan” to replace a law that tens of millions of Americans depend upon for their health insurance. Now comes another. Asked Sunday on Meet the Press to elaborate on Trump’s health care “concepts,” his running mate JD Vance explained that the Trump health-care agenda is to wreck protections for pre-existing conditions (while lying about it). That comes from Brian Beutler's substack (paywalled, except for the teaser paragraphs). I think The New Yorker has an extensive article as well, but it is so paywalled that we don...

I barely am scratching the surface here, but this is what you can expect from the GOP if Trump were to be reinstalled into the White House: say goodbye to your Social Security benefits and say goodbye to freedom of movement . It is not hyperbole to say we will end up with a dictatorship that will impoverish us and restrict our ability to travel even between state lines. That's not the America I wanted to leave for my children and their children. We all deserve so much better. Harris/Walz is our ticket for a better future. Those are the stakes.

 

It's another day that ends in y. So, today, I am giving you a mix of humor (Seth Meyers), news (Ari Melber) and will chase it with some dry sarcastic humor (CityNerd).  Seth Meyers, with an assist from Amber Ruffin, covers more of the craziness in the news. The first minutes are spent on Trump's disastrous interview by Elon Musk, which went about as bad as one would expect:   Ari Melber on the Trump campaign's continuing meltdown, including the campaign's attempt to run away from an issue the GOP pushed for decades: banning abortion. Turns out that bans and threats of jail time for the women seeking to terminate pregnancies are very unpopular across much of the political spectrum. Hmm. Who knew. Here's the segment: CityNerd eviscerates Project 2025 apologists for sport: It does appear that I have some visitors who return, so for all two of you, I will keep on posting as time permits. Cheers! Update: One for the road on Trump's disastrous Twitter/X interview:

This is my friendly reminder that rumors of Project 2025's demise are exaggerated. Project 2025 is alive and well, as a recently exposed cache of training videos makes perfectly clear. If you want to watch them, the link is here . As usual, ProPublica provides a helpful public service with its investigative journalism. As noted elsewhere, Project 2025 may not explicitly name Donald Trump as the beneficiary of Project 2025's proposals, it's very clear that this is a plan for the next GOP president, who would be Trump if he manages to win enough of the electoral vote count in November. It also is worth mentioning that the co-authors of the various chapters of that document are former and future Trump Cabinet members and potential leaders of various agencies in the eventuality of a Trump victory. This very partial list I found in Axios gives a bit of a teaser of what to expect if Project 2025 were implemented. Like your accurate weather forecasts? Too bad. NOAA is on the cho...