FirstCircle

Though we might find it hard to imagine, we cannot now rule it out: the possibility of systemic collapse in the United States. The degradation of federal government by Donald Trump and Elon Musk could trigger a series of converging and compounding crises, leading to social, financial and industrial failure.

From Bernie Sanders (video).

The President of the United States is aligning himself with the dictator of Russia, Vladimir Putin, to undermine the independence of Ukraine and its democracy.

The law criminalizes being outside with “camping paraphernalia,” like sleeping bags or cookware, without written permission from property owners or the city. It includes a provision that anyone “causing, permitting, aiding, abetting or concealing” violations is subject to up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

“[The mayor] claims no service providers will get arrested, but ultimately, the law prevails,” said Vivian Han, CEO of the nonprofit Abode Services. “This is for all time, not just while he’s mayor.”

Greg Ward, a minister at Mission Peak Unitarian Universalist Congregation, said his church hands out “blessing bags” of food and clothing.

“Putting [them] in the hands of the unhoused could be aiding and abetting,” said Ward. “That could make us criminals.”

The previous Sunday, the workers spoke with a supervisor at Lamell, Jimenez said, telling him that they wanted a meeting with the company’s president, Ronald Lamell, Jr., to speak about the raise issue. The workers also wanted to discuss what they said were times company superiors entered employer-provided housing without permission. The group asked to have this meeting before they returned to work on Monday, Jimenez said.

The company did not agree to the meeting, and the supervisor indicated there would be “punishment” if the workers did not show up the following morning, Jimenez said.

The workers then commenced a work-stoppage on Monday morning. A manager entered the employer-provided home where Jimenez lives, he said, banging on doors and telling the workers they were fired if they did not show up for work.

The company then offered individual workers their jobs back at a lower wage, $14.50, according to Jimenez — a move he described as “humiliating.” The company also told the workers to vacate their employer-provided homes adjacent to the company’s sawmill, Jimenez said.

At the protest on Friday, the group marched to Lamell’s office with banners and drums, hoping to ask the company’s leadership for their jobs back — with a raise. Though employees could be seen inside through the office’s windows, none came to the door.

Instead, a fleet of Essex police vehicles pulled down the snowy road to the office.

Handing the organ to nurse Tammy Nelson, Shaknovsky told her to mark it “spleen,” even though it weighed at least 10 times as much as the average spleen and was clearly a liver, according to Bryan’s lawsuit. Nelson allegedly did as she was told.

Within minutes, other doctors and hospital higher-ups swarmed the operating room, the suit states. All of them allegedly recognized the organ that had been removed was a liver but nevertheless covered up Shaknovsky’s mistake by documenting on official records that he had cut out Bryan’s spleen.

Shaknovsky allegedly tried to persuade hospital staff members that it was the spleen. He repeatedly left and returned to the operating room to tell people that Bryan had died of a “splenic aneurysm,” the suit states. In informing Bryan of her husband’s death, he allegedly told her the cause was a spleen so diseased that it had swelled to four times the normal size and shifted to the other side of his body.

Ascension nurse Kathleen Montag chased Bryan into the parking lot and lied about how her husband had died to get her signature agreeing to forgo an autopsy, the suit states.

The cover-up fell apart when the district’s medical examiner performed an autopsy and determined that the organ that had been removed was Bryan’s liver while his spleen was untouched and in the normal position, state disciplinary records show. The medical examiner ruled Bryan’s death a homicide caused by bleeding to death and having his liver removed.

According to testimony at his trial, Nelson ignored his training and moved to arrest Sarey by himself, resulting in a scuffle that ended when Nelson shot Sarey in the belly at point-blank range. Testimony and video showed that as Sarey slumped to the ground, Nelson cleared a malfunction in his handgun, looked around and then shot Sarey a second time in the head.

“Using unnecessary violence was nothing new for Nelson,” Eakes wrote, noting Phelps had already concluded during an earlier ruling that Nelson had a pattern of using violence “during routine and nonthreatening situations when someone showed him disrespect or failed to acknowledge his authority.”

Sarey was Nelson’s third fatal shooting as an Auburn officer. The city has paid about $6 million to settle claims against Nelson, including $4 million to Sarey’s family.

The leaders of the Greater Idaho movement have asked President-elect Donald Trump to support their efforts to have counties in eastern Oregon join Idaho – a state they say is more in tune with them politically, economically and culturally.

“Unlike typical politicians, you have a unique ability as a practical problem-solver to get things done, and your support can bring a peaceful resolution to Oregon’s long-standing east-west divide,” the three leaders said in a Dec. 4 letter to Trump.

Matt McCaw, the executive director of Citizens for Greater Idaho, said Thursday morning that the group has not yet received a response from Trump.

“It takes time for these things to filter through, but we are hopeful that somebody from the administration will reach out to us and pick this up,” McCaw said. “This is an idea whose time has come.”

The letter added that “eastern Oregon residents recognize that representative government will never come from Oregon because we are outvoted on every issue the progressives put forth, leaving us completely disenfranchised

On a recent snowy morning in Derby, Letourneau accompanied a reporter up to the hill near his home, pointing out along the way a large “Trump 2024” flag he had strung up nearby. Along the road at the foot of the hill, he has a large white and red sign telling state and federal law enforcement to “beware” and stay off of his land.

But he does allow the government to lease a slice of that land to operate a surveillance tower, a deal Letourneau said he signed off on because he thinks the tower is an important tool for local U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents. He said he’s heard for years about those same agents arresting people who attempt to enter the U.S. on the road that runs along the hill and, at points, parallels the Canadian border.

“We need something they can work with to catch those aliens,” he said, referring to people who cross the border without authorization. “They’re coming right and left.”

We were losing slowly. Now we are losing quickly. Democracy, accountability, human rights, social justice – all were rolling backwards as money swarmed our politics. Above all, our life-support systems – the Earth’s atmosphere, oceans, ecosystems, ice and snow – have been hammered and hammered, regardless of who is in power. Donald Trump might strike the killer blows, but he is not the cause of an ecocidal economic system. He is the embodiment of it.

Trump has pledged to wage war on planet Earth, ripping up US climate commitments and reverting to unrestrained fossil fuel extraction and burning. If he follows the Project 2025 agenda, he will leave the UN climate framework altogether, making his assault on Earth systems much harder to reverse.

His evangelical base, eager to advance the biblical apocalypse, will love him for it. Most simply deny climate breakdown. Others perceive events such as floods and fires not as warnings, but as joyous portents of the end of times: a great cleansing, in which the righteous will be uplifted to sit at the right hand of God, while their enemies will be cast into the fiery pit. What we will see under a new Trump presidency is a neat alignment of the interests of fossil fuel companies and a constituency gunning for Armageddon (and hoping that Benjamin Netanyahu will assist its delivery).

Nazism has nothing to do with race and nationality. It appeals to a certain type of mind.

Lt. John Rodgers, a 20-year sheriff’s veteran in Clark County, where Springfield is the county seat, made the statements in several posts on Facebook, WHIO-TV reported. In one post, he reportedly wrote: “I am sorry. If you support the Democrat Party I will not help you.” Another said: “The problem is that I know which of you supports the Democratic Party and I will not help you survive the end of days.”

The sheriff’s office said Rodgers, who has commanded the department’s road patrol, would remain on duty, with a written reprimand for violating the department’s social media policy.

Humor. Harper's Magazine, August 1992.