Democrat News

This post was originally published on this site

It would seem that Orlova’s comments have since landed her in hot water with the authorities. She claimed it was just her attempt at “black humor” and should not have been published. And it does sound rather simple: Find a husband off to join Putin’s “Special Military Operation” in Ukraine, wait for him to die, and then collect the 8 million ruble death benefit. (8 million rubles is about $95,000.) Easy peasy. “This is a business plan,” she says, matter-of-factly.

Source: Radio Liberty

Tomsk realtor Marina Orlova apologized to Russian military personnel after a video went viral online in which she called the purchase of real estate using compensation for the death of a participant in the invasion of Ukraine a “business plan,” according to Kholod, citing Orlova’s comment to the Pod’em publication.

During a podcast she “recorded with a friend,” Orlova answered a question about what a woman over 30 should do if she wants to buy real estate. “It’s all easy and simple. You find a man who serves in the SVO, he dies, and you get eight million,” Orlova said.

Orlova claimed in the video that “many people do this”: “A lot of women come to us with these eight million, buy some cheap apartment.”

Orlova called her statement “black humor” that should not have been published. The realtor added that after the video was published, she received threats, so she decided to close her social networks.

Nevertheless, State Duma deputy Vitaly Milonov, in a conversation with Russia Today, called on the security forces to check Orlova. The Z-activist movement “Call of the People” also demanded that the head of the Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin conduct an investigation into Orlova’s statements.

She has since been forced to apologize for her comments, comments which don’t sound like she was kidding at all to my ears.

“I apologize for myself personally and I apologize even for Daria. First of all, to our SVO participants, to the wives whose men went to SVO, to the widows and mothers. I am very sincerely ashamed,” Orlova said.

Where do you find money to buy an apartment if you are a Russian woman?

According to Marina Orlova, a realtor from Tomsk: “Everything is easy and simple now. You find a man who serves in the SMO. He dies and you get 8,000,000. This is a business plan.” pic.twitter.com/RtlxLtXl6V

— Natalka (@NatalkaKyiv) April 1, 2025

UPDATE: The realtor has now been sentenced to 80 hours of community service. The podcast was taken down by the Russian regime after her abject apology.

The Oktyabrsky District Court of Tomsk sentenced realtor Marina Orlova to 80 hours of community service for an interview in which she called marrying a participant in the war against Ukraine a “business plan” in the hopes of his death and receiving monetary compensation that could be used to buy her own home. Blogger Daria Cherdantseva, who recorded and published an interview with Orlova, was sentenced to 85 hours of community service. Both were found guilty in an administrative case of inciting hatred or enmity.

Nonetheless, the problem which Russian officials say does not exist is real, and these so-called ‘Black Widows’ or ‘Grave Diggers’ are a problem, especially in the Donetsk and Luhansk ‘People’s Republics’ (phony Russian occupied areas of Ukraine).

This post was originally published on this site

Seniors are not only stressed out by Trump’s economically destroying tariffs that have decimated their portfolios; they are horrified at where their 401ks are.

Here comes Fox News to put lipstick on pig Trump.

Kaleigh McEnany pretended Trump is looking to help future generations. Harris Faulkner was up next and said she’s hopefull everythigj is gonna work out.

For who? The millionaire class is certainly happy.

Suddenly, high prices and crashing markets are but a snapshot for Harris. Wow, how times have changed. If Joe Biden’s stock markets were reacting this way, Faulkner would have lead an attack on the White House with torches in hand,.

FAULKNER: The markets are a snapshot, as you said, Kayleigh, you know, today compared to yesterday, compared to tomorrow. The issue is going to be, which generations of today are you choosing, because those are the ones that just voted you in, in November.

So being transparent about what that bumpy road is going to be like, and making an educated guess — look, we have a president now that isn’t whiffing anything and he’s certainly not taking unmitigated risks.

Say, what? Trump is taking unmitigated risks. His fucking tariffs are causing their pain.

FAULKNER: He can read the road ahead and make a deal, Art of the Deal. So part of that deal is to making sure your shareholders, the actual people, not by money, but by vote understand what’s coming. And those 401(k) people who are depending, those retirees, all of that. Just talking plain speak with them.

Look, when this nation used to go to war, people in this country would support the war effort with their materials at home and making things for weaponry and all of that. We gotta do 100% buy-in over this bumpy period just communicate.

What fucking war? This beyond wag the dog theatrics.

The only war Trump is waging is on the American public. Trump is only thinking about himself. He isn’t putting moronic tariffs on out trade partners and allies for the good of future generations. He’s doing it because he has a fixation on them.

Harris Faulkner was the worst MAGA scream queen when Biden was in office. Now she’s supporting an enemy to the people.

This post was originally published on this site

Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) didn’t take kindly to Senator Ted Cruz’s MAGA-approved talking points ranting about the Democratic Party or federal judges.

She hammered him so bad he left.

Cruz attacked the judges, cried about protests targeted at the Kangaroo Supreme Court and claimed Democrats loved helping murderers and rapists. ( I included his rant in the video)

KLOBUCHAR: Okay, that was a lot.

Let me start with a few things. Number one, we love democracy, and I believe what we should be having is a civil debate about how we can best, if Donald Trump wants to make changes to the government, we should be doing it in a legal way, not how he’s doing it, and the only reason there’s all these injunctions, Senator Cruz, is because he’s violating the Constitution.

Why would Trump-appointed judges—

Cruz, whose time was up continued acting the the fool by attacking Klobuchar’s initial response to his antics.

CRUZ: Why don’t you file them in red districts?

KLOBUCHAR: What did you just say?

CRUZ: Why don’t you file them in red districts? Why are the Democrat Attorney General seeking out left-wing blue—

Sen. Ashley Moody (R-FL) had to step in and shut him up.

Cancun Cruz didn’t like that and he complained to his Republican colleague.

CRUZ: Senator Moody, we have debates on this committee. They occur regularly.

MOODY: Let’s let her have her time, and then we’ll get back to that if you want to wait, we’ll get back to Senator Cruz.

Cruz couldn’t stop talking and he cried, I’m not yelling. Finally Klobuchar was able to respond.

KLOBUCHAR: I am making the strong case that the reason all these cases have been filed and the reason that these judges who have been appointed by Ronald Reagan—yes, they still exist—and the Bushes and Donald Trump, judges appointed by Donald Trump, have been making these decisions is because this is not legal.

Donald Trump himself has used his social media account, the White House account, to post an image of himself wearing a crown saying, Long live the king. The issue is that we do not live in a kingdom, and Elon Musk is not his court jester.

Ours is a nation of laws in which no one is above the law. That is why 39 different judges from vastly different backgrounds appointed by five different presidents have made clear that these are illegal actions.

And these judges have rightly blocked these actions. And it is important that we not lose sight of the underlying cause of these injunctions. It is not that these judges are crooked or lunatics or evil. Those are words used by the president and his allies.

It is because the administration is violating the Constitution.

She finished off cowardly Cruz with this, who apparently left the chamber rather than own his idiocy.

KLOBUCHAR We didn’t just decry the violence.

We actually did something about it in response to a court that is run by Justice Roberts, who is a Republican appointee.

So I think that kind of language actually makes a situation worse when it’s not even true.

But unfortunately, Senator Cruz left, so he did not hear my response to what was a lie.

Poor Ted can’t handle the truth.

This post was originally published on this site

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is facing global blowback after announcing a dramatic series of tariffs on countries around the world, with U.S. adversaries and allies alike promising crushing responses that could devastate the American economy.

Stock markets in the United States, Europe and Asia plunged in the aftermath of President Trump’s announcement, which included a 10% base rate hike on nearly all foreign imports. Still other countries and trading blocs, including China, the European Union, South Korea and Japan, were hit with higher rates.

“We’re now preparing for further countermeasures to protect our interests and our businesses if negotiations fail,” Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said in remarks late Wednesday evening from Uzbekistan, calling Trump’s announcement “a major blow to the world economy.”

The British trade secretary said that the United Kingdom, one of America’s closest allies with strong ties to the Trump administration, would work over the next month to see whether it could negotiate an exemption from U.S. tariffs, or otherwise deliver retaliatory taxes. The government published a webpage asking businesses for input on identifying which American products the U.K. should implement tariffs on, with the most minimal impact on the British economy.

And in Paris, French officials said they were also pushing the rest of the European Union to agree on a response that would target U.S. digital businesses, particularly Big Tech firms, core to the U.S. and Californian economies.

“A two-phase European response is now underway,” a French official told The Times. By mid-April, the official said the European Union would unveil its initial response on U.S. steel and aluminum exports, followed by a more comprehensive, “sector-by-sector” response rolled out by the end of the month.

“Nothing should be off the table,” the official said, including “responses in the digital services sector.”

“That is what I see, that Donald Trump will buckle under pressure, that he will correct his announcements under pressure,” Robert Habeck, Germany’s economy minister, told reporters Thursday, “but the logical consequence is that he then also needs to feel the pressure.”

White House officials have acknowledged they expect initial turbulence from the tariffs announcements, but Trump has said the disruptions will be worth it when “jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country.”

The Trump administration initially said it was imposing “reciprocal” tariffs in direct response to each country’s taxes on imported U.S. goods: “They do it to us, and we do it to them,” Trump said. “Very simple.”

But the rates put forward by the White House show the administration actually used a calculation that has nothing to do with foreign tariffs at all. Instead, the administration took the U.S. trade deficit with individual trading partners, divided it by U.S. imports from that partner, and then divided the total in half.

Trump’s Agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins, acknowledged that pain was coming to U.S. farmers and agricultural businesses, already strapped before the tariff announcement and now facing lower prices for their goods and higher prices for their equipment and raw materials.

“There will be a short time of uncertainty, and then we’ll move back to the prosperity that this president has envisioned,” Rollins said to reporters at the White House on Thursday.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a CNN interview Wednesday evening that other countries should “sit back, take a deep breath, don’t immediately retaliate.”

Democrats in the U.S. have balked at the extent of the tariffs. Late Wednesday, the Senate delivered a rare rebuke to Trump’s tariffs agenda when the body passed a resolution that would end the national emergency on the fentanyl crisis, which Trump declared to substantiate his tariffs against Canada.

Four Republicans — Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Rand Paul of Kentucky — joined with all Democrats to pass the resolution, which next goes to the House, where it has little chance of passing the Republican-led chamber.

“The stock market is down since the beginning of the year, the cost of everything from groceries to housing continues to rise. Americans’ retirement funds have shrunk, and the chances of a recession is up,” said Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) from the Senate floor Wednesday. “That sure doesn’t feel like a liberation to me.”

This post was originally published on this site

Yes, Trump’s tariffs are a huge tax hike on Americans already struggling with the cost of living and they are tanking the stock market (the Dow is down nearly 1,300 points as I write this). But there’s a method behind the apparent madness and it’s not the “good for the economy” justification Trump and his cronies pretend.

Although the move seems like another deranged idea from the most ignorant and incompetent person ever likely to inhabit the White House, there’s a far more frightening method to the seeming madness.

Sen. Chris Murphy laid it out in a Blue Sky thread. “Those trying to understand the tariffs as economic policy are dangerously naïve,” he wrote. “They aren’t designed as economic policy” but a “new, super dangerous political tool.”

Murphy went on to note that kings and despots used taxes, which is what tariffs are, to control populations. “Our own revolution was spurred by the King’s use of heavy taxation of the colonies to punish our push for self governance,” he noted. “The King’s message was simple: stop protesting and I’ll stop taxing.” That is why our founding fathers gave Congress, not the president, the power of the purse.

Trump is already using government funds to bully universities, law firms and state and local governments, Murphy added. The tariffs are the next step in the fascist bullying.

Trump has deliberately created economic suffering in order to force every business to pledge loyalty to him in exchange for sanctions relief.

“The tariffs are DESIGNED to create economic hardship. Why? So that Trump has a straight face rationale for releasing them, business by business or industry by industry. As he adjusts or grants relief, it’s a win-win: the economy improves and dissent disappears,” Murphy continued. “It’s the playbook for democratically elected leaders who want to stay in power forever,” Murphy said.

Fortunately, not all is lost… yet. “But as long as we see this clearly, we can stop him. Public mobilization is working. Today, a few Republicans joined Democrats to vote against one set of tariffs. The people still have the power,” Murphy wrote Wednesday night, at the end of his thread.

So, if you haven’t made plans yet to take part in the Hands Off! national protest on Saturday, there couldn’t be a better time to do so than now.

This post was originally published on this site

Senator Chris Coons destroyed Fox News host Martha McCallum for defending the outrageous Elon Musk-led DOGE attacks on the federal government very easily.

One point in particular was telling when Coons explained that there were names on the roles for 150 years, which is longer than the system was born, but they’re not receiving payments, and the Fox News host didn’t believe that was the case. It has already been proven what Musk stated about 150 year-olds receiving benfits was a lie. But lies never die on Fox News.

COONS: There are people whose names are on the rolls as having been born 150 or 200 years ago. They’re not receiving Social Security payments.

MACCALLUM I don’t think that’s true.

COONS: So the statement that there’s all these people, Martha, I’m just repeating back to you what the Trump administration, acting Social Security administrator, has said about the percentage of fraud in Social Security.

Part of why I’m alarmed about Elon Musk and DOGE, and they’re getting into the systems, and they’re getting the access to the individual information of millions of Americans, is that Elon Musk has made it clear he thinks Social Security is a Ponzi scheme.

A Ponzi scheme is itself fraudulent, fake, criminal, or illegal. I don’t think Social Security is a Ponzi scheme.

I think 70 million Americans depend on it for their principal source of income.

So letting DOGE into Social Security to tear it up like they’ve destroyed other agencies, I think is immoral.

Sen. Coons did a good job of frustrating MacCallum, who had her MAGA Musk talking points at the ready. Musk should be nowhere near private data of millions of Americans, including trying to destroy what he considers a Ponzi scheme. which is a cornerstone of security for seniors.

This post was originally published on this site

Trump’s clown of a Commerce Secretary, billionaire Howard Lutnick, told CBS Morning News he never said what he did say when he called people complaining about not getting their Social Security checks, “fraudsters.“

Lutnick definitively said this: “A fraudster always makes the loudest noise, screaming, yelling and complaining,” he sneered. “All the guys who did PayPal, like Elon, know this by heart, right? Anybody who’s been in the payment system and the process system knows the easiest way to find the fraudster is to stop payments and listen. ‘Cause whoever screams is the one stealing.”

That means not sending payments to Social Security recipients.

Watch him lie to CBS News.

HOST: You made a comment a couple of weeks ago that if seniors missed a Social Security check, they wouldn’t notice.

They think there’s just a little minor problem and that the people who complain are the fraudsters.

What did you mean by that?

LUTNICK: That’s not what I said.

Look, that’s that’s not what I said.

Please don’t take my Social Security comments out of context.

Lutnick then swore that the Trump administration would not touch anyone’s payments and then he lied about being taken out of context..

LUTNICK: And that’s just taking my statements out of context.

HOST: No one’s taking them out of context, Secretary Lutnick..

So you’re saying what I’m hearing is that any senior who was worried or complained, you’re not saying they’re fraudsters.

They have a right to worry.

But you’re saying, actually, don’t worry.

Here is Lutnick’s full statement. .

Let’s say Social Security didn’t send out their checks this month. My mother-in-law, who’s 94, she wouldn’t call and complain. She just wouldn’t! She’d think something got messed up and she’ll get it next month.” A fraudster always makes the loudest noise, screaming, yelling and complaining,” he sneered. “All the guys who did PayPal, like Elon, know this by heart, right? Anybody who’s been in the payment system and the process system knows the easiest way to find the fraudster is to stop payments and listen. ‘Cause whoever screams is the one stealing.”

Lutnick is a lying clown.
He did the morning round-up of shows and was just as ridiculous on CNN.

This post was originally published on this site

Fox Business Network host Stuart Varney, a rabid Trump supporter, opened his program by saying Wall Street and stock markets hate Trump tariffs

We are seeing a decline of thousands of points because of Trump’s moronic tariffs, and Varney did not try to put lipstick on the pig when he opened his program.

VARNEY: Here’s the response from Wall Street.

Hate it.

Dow Industrial is likely to be down 1,200 points at the opening bell.

That would be 3%.

The S&P 3.7% down.

The Nasdaq up maybe 900 points.

That is 4.5%.

Spectacular declines across the board.

Varney’s producers were so flummoxed they put up the wrong graphic on-air when discussing retailers.

Was this a way to put some green on the board?

Then Varney did his best to soften this blow.

Economists? They’re largely skeptical that the tariffs will produce a new golden age of prosperity.

Ya, think?

Holy hellfire stock market crash, Batman.

This post was originally published on this site

The painfully stupid self-described Stable Genius® imposed “reciprocal” tariffs on Wednesday, which he deemed Liberation Day, and the stock market plummeted soon after his announcement. Before his speech, Donald wrote on Truth Social, “IT’S LIBERATION DAY IN AMERICA!” Don’t you feel liberated?

These weren’t actually “reciprocal” tariffs, though, and after tariffing almost every damn place on Earth, the mad King unsurprisingly didn’t include Russia. But he did slap tariffs on uninhabited islands with zero population- the Heard and McDonald Islands, which are an Australian territory and one of the most remote places on Earth. The seals, penguins, and other birds that inhabit the island were hit with a 10 percent “reciprocal tariff.”

But that’s not all. AFP reports:

Strings of ocean specks around the globe, including Australia’s Cocos (Keeling) Islands and the Comoros off the coast of Africa, were likewise subjected to 10 percent new tariffs.

Another eye-catching inclusion in the tariffs list was Myanmar, which is digging out from an earthquake that left nearly 3,000 people dead, and whose exports to the United States will now face 44 percent in new levies.

Britain’s Falkland Islands — population 3,200 people and around one million penguins — got particular punishment.

The South Atlantic territory — mostly famous for a 1982 war fought by Britain to expel an Argentinian invasion — was walloped with tariffs of 41 percent on exports to the United States.

The Trump Tariff Tax is the largest peacetime tax hike in U.S. history. These Tariffs are nearly 10x the size of those imposed during the Trump-Pence Administration and will cost American families over $3,500 per year. Check Out“Spoiling America’s Golden Age”@AmericanFreedom 👇 pic.twitter.com/2NghyDc8c1

— Mike Pence (@Mike_Pence) April 2, 2025

The Heard and McDonald Islands are completely uninhabited. Population zero. I guess we’re going to tariff the seagulls?

It kind of feels like a White House intern went through Wikipedia’s list of countries and just generated this list off of that with no further research. https://t.co/UpTgcICbg1

— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@ReichlinMelnick) April 2, 2025

Trump administration has put a 10 percent tariff on the Heard and McDonald Islands….

which has a population of 0 people and is inhabited only by penguins. pic.twitter.com/oSx7LyU0b3

— MaineWonk (@TheMaineWonk) April 2, 2025

As The Washington Post noted, “The nation could see average import taxes reach 1930s levels.” What a fun ‘liberating’ time it was in the 1930s.

BREAKING: Citizens of Heard and McDonald islands have issued a statement after trump’s 10% tariff. pic.twitter.com/C7nYpAGRRb

— Covie (@covie_93) April 2, 2025

Markets are tanking, my 401k is dropping like a rock, groceries are more expensive and he’s trying to get rid of Social Security and Medicare.
Thanks Trump, you just ruined every American’s future.
Take cover now, the next Great Depression is here. https://t.co/bJNhXkoqiQ

— Helis Bor (@helisbor) April 2, 2025

That’ll show those penguins a thing or two! He is the biggest dummy that ever dummied.

This post was originally published on this site

It’s bad enough that Attorney General Pam Bondi is labeling Tesla vandals as “terrorists,” especially after Donald Trump pardoned the violent Jan. 6 insurrectionists, but it’s even worse that she threatened U.S. Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, on Fox News, for supporting peaceful Tesla Takedown protests.

Had Bondi actually watched Crockett’s comments in support of a Tesla Takedown protest on her birthday, Bondi would have seen how obvious it was that Crockett was not at all suggesting any kind of violence toward Tesla or CEO Elon Musk.

This is what Crockett actually said:

CROCKETT: All I want to see happen on my birthday is for Elon to be taken down. Yes, listen, I have learned, as I serve on the DOGE oversight committee, that there is only one language that the people that are in charge understand right now, and that language is money.

And so, I’ve been so proud to see us organized behind a cause, because here’s the deal: The things that we’re fighting for, we are fighting for our country. We’re fighting for democracy, we’re fighting for our freedoms. And when I say fighting, I’m saying that figuratively, obviously. Everything that I am promoting is nonviolent, and so definitely don’t want anyone to take that word literal in any way, but I think that it is important that we say that we stand for freedom in this country. We stand for our constitution in this country. And the best way to show that we are American, is by using our constitutional rights.

The top law enforcer in the U.S. either never bothered to watch the comments she suggested were criminal or else Bondi was lying when she mischaracterized Crockett’s words in order to demonize her on the air. “You have this congresswoman, Crockett, who is calling for attacks on Elon Musk on her birthday,” Bondi told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo. “Let’s take him out on my birthday, she says. And yet she turns and says, oh, I’m not calling for violence.”

Surely Bondi knows that demonizing a Democrat on Fox News triggers death threats.

Fortunately, Crockett does not seem likely to crumple like billionaires have. First, she called out Bondi for threatening her for exercising “my right to free speech,” and to politicize it. Then Crockett doubled down on why she thinks Musk should be taken down. Not taken out, taken down, like the protests. Get it, Pam?

CROCKETT: I don’t like Elon Musk. I’m gonna say it 50,000 times. I don’t like him. I don’t like that he going out there and he firing people. I think that he’s a crook. Because somehow the rest of us can’t sit around and get whatever federal contracts we want. The rest of us can’t sit around and get law enforcement and get them somehow ordained as federal law enforcement to protect him. The rest of us can’t get our dealerships protected by the federal government. That is somebody that is operating above the law for whatever reason, just because he has a lot of money, more money than everybody else.

And yes, I am happy to see that on my birthday, which is what I said, there were peaceful protests around this world against him, because he is a problem. And so you never should have somebody that is sitting that high and is going to sit up here and threaten a sitting member of Congress when she knew good and well if she watched the entire thing that I specifically told protesters to make sure you consult with lawyers, just like I’ve told protesters over and over and over in the history of me advising people to go out and exercise their Constitutional right. The fact that there are other sitting members that have received letters of threat from this new DOJ tells me that they are about retribution, and they are not about following the law.

As awful as Trump and his enablers are, I feel better knowing that Jasmine Crockett is in Congress.