The shadow presidency question by Kingsley Cobb

Washington thrives on rumors, but the most persistent rumors are often the ones that reveal deeper anxieties about power. Lately, a growing number of observers have begun asking a question that would have sounded absurd not long ago: Is Vice President JD Vance quietly emerging as the administration’s dominant political force?

The speculation is fueled by perception rather than proof. Critics of President Donald Trump point to what they view as a less energetic public presence and a greater reliance on surrogates to carry political battles. Supporters dismiss such claims as partisan wishful thinking. Yet politics is often shaped as much by appearances as realities, and appearances matter.

That is why Vance’s increasingly visible role has attracted attention. When a vice president becomes one of the administration’s most aggressive public defenders and policy advocates, people naturally begin wondering where influence truly resides. Whether those suspicions are fair is almost beside the point. In Washington, perception frequently becomes its own political reality.

The recent push for federal scrutiny of Minnesota officials, including Governor Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison, illustrates the dynamic. To supporters, such moves represent a necessary effort to hold public officials accountable and confront alleged failures in oversight. To critics, they look like part of a broader strategy to nationalize political conflicts and expand executive influence. Either way, the episode reinforced the image of an administration increasingly defined by its next generation of political leadership.

Vance occupies a unique position in that story. Unlike many vice presidents who spend years carefully avoiding the spotlight, he often appears comfortable stepping directly into controversy. He communicates with the confidence of someone thinking beyond the immediate news cycle. His speeches, interviews, and public interventions frequently sound less like those of a supporting actor and more like those of a politician preparing for a larger role.

That does not mean he is secretly running the government. Washington has a long history of mistaking visibility for authority. Powerful vice presidents have existed before, and ambitious vice presidents are hardly a new phenomenon. But the questions persist because Vance increasingly projects the image of a leader whose influence extends beyond the traditional boundaries of his office.

The broader issue is not whether a handoff of power is occurring behind closed doors. There is no public evidence of that. The real issue is that many Americans appear willing to believe it could be happening. That reflects a deeper uncertainty about leadership, succession, and transparency in modern politics.

Every administration eventually faces a moment when attention shifts toward the future. Sometimes that transition happens gradually, almost invisibly, before anyone officially acknowledges it. The public begins watching the second-in-command more closely. Reporters start reading significance into every appearance. Political allies quietly adjust their calculations.

Whether that moment has truly arrived remains open to debate. But JD Vance’s growing prominence has ensured that the debate itself is no longer confined to political insiders. In a city built on influence, the perception of power can be nearly as important as power itself. And right now, that perception is becoming impossible to ignore.

 

The election that never ends by Markus Gibbons

One of the defining features of a healthy democracy is not victor, it is defeat. Winning elections is easy to celebrate; losing them is the real test of democratic character. The ability to accept the judgment of voters, absorb disappointment, regroup and compete again is what separates democratic politics from a permanent struggle for power. Increasingly, however, the Republican Party under Donald Trump appears unwilling to accept that basic principle.

A striking transformation has occurred over the past decade. Election outcomes that favor Republicans are presented as legitimate expressions of the popular will. Election outcomes that favor Democrats are routinely treated with suspicion, hostility, or outright rejection. The pattern has become so familiar that it barely surprises anyone anymore. If Republicans win, democracy has spoken. If Republicans lose, something must have gone wrong.

The danger lies not merely in claims of fraud. Every democracy experiences disputes, recounts, and allegations of irregularities. The deeper problem is the normalization of a political culture in which defeat itself becomes illegitimate. Losing is no longer viewed as evidence that voters preferred another candidate. Instead, it is portrayed as proof of conspiracy, corruption, manipulation or theft.

Trump did not invent political grievance, but he elevated it into a governing philosophy. Within that framework, responsibility rarely exists. Electoral setbacks are never the result of unpopular policies, strategic mistakes, weak candidates, demographic changes, or shifting public opinion. The explanation always comes from somewhere else. Courts are biased. Election officials are corrupt. The media is plotting. Bureaucrats are sabotaging. Democrats are cheating. The possibility that voters simply chose differently is treated as almost unthinkable.

This mindset has consequences far beyond campaign rhetoric. Democratic systems depend on shared rules and shared realities. Citizens do not have to agree on policy, ideology, or leadership. They do, however, need to agree on how power changes hands. Once a major political movement ceases to recognize electoral defeat as legitimate, every election becomes a potential constitutional crisis.

What makes the situation especially troubling is how deeply this attitude has spread throughout the Republican Party. What once might have been considered an extraordinary claim has become a routine expectation. Candidates now often prepare supporters for allegations of fraud before votes are even counted. Suspicion comes first; evidence arrives later, if at all.

The result is a politics trapped in perpetual resentment. Elections no longer settle disputes. They merely launch the next round of accusations. Trust erodes. Institutions weaken. Citizens become convinced that only victories count and that defeats are inherently suspect.

Democracy dies not only when votes are prevented from being cast. It also weakens when political leaders teach millions of people that unfavorable outcomes are impossible to accept. A republic cannot function indefinitely if one side views every loss as theft and every winner as illegitimate.

The greatest threat is not a single disputed election. It is the gradual disappearance of democratic acceptance itself. When losing becomes unthinkable, democracy becomes impossible. And when a major party can no longer distinguish between defeat and conspiracy, the election never truly ends.

The rate of desperation by Mary Long

There are stories so horrifying that they force us to confront uncomfortable truths about the modern world. The reported kidnapping of hundreds of Iraqi Kurds by traffickers in Libya and allegations that some may have had their kidneys forcibly removed when they could not pay ransom demands, belongs firmly in that category.

If the claims are true, this is not merely a migration story. It is a story about the collapse of human dignity in the shadows of a global system that has become disturbingly accustomed to suffering.

The details are almost unbearable. Men and women fleeing hardship, instability, and uncertainty embarked on a dangerous journey toward what they hoped would be safety and opportunity in Britain. Instead, many allegedly found themselves trapped in a nightmare where human beings became commodities. The reported ransom demand was chillingly straightforward: pay $5,000 or lose a kidney.

The language of organized crime has always been ruthless, but this represents something even darker. It reflects a marketplace in which every part of a desperate person has value. If migrants cannot provide cash, their bodies become collateral.

What makes this story particularly disturbing is how plausible it sounds in today's migration landscape. Human trafficking networks have flourished across routes stretching from the Middle East and Africa to Europe. Smugglers advertise journeys with the polished confidence of travel agents. Social media platforms are filled with promises of safe passage and prosperous futures. Yet behind the marketing lies an industry built on exploitation, coercion, violence and death.

The victims in this case were not reckless adventurers. They were people driven by hope and necessity. Many migrants understand the dangers they face. They hear stories of shipwrecks, detention centers, and abuse. Yet they continue because remaining where they are feels even less tolerable. That reality should concern policymakers everywhere.

The temptation in political debates is to reduce migration to numbers. Governments count arrivals, calculate costs, and argue over quotas. But statistics can obscure the human beings at the center of the discussion. Every migrant is a person making a decision under pressure, often after exhausting every other option. When legal pathways are limited and opportunities scarce, criminal networks eagerly fill the vacuum.

This is why stories like this should alarm people regardless of their position on immigration policy. One can support stricter border controls and still be horrified by trafficking. One can favor more open migration policies and still acknowledge the dangers of uncontrolled smuggling routes. The common ground should be simple: no human being should become prey for criminal enterprises.

The alleged kidney removals also expose a broader moral failure. Organ trafficking has long existed on the fringes of the global economy, sustained by desperation on both sides of the transaction. But reports suggesting migrants may have been mutilated as punishment for poverty reveal a level of cruelty that should shock the conscience of the international community.

The tragedy of these Iraqi Kurds is not only what may have happened to them in Libya. It is that their suffering was predictable. Whenever vulnerable people are forced into the hands of criminals, exploitation follows. The details may vary. The outcome rarely does.

Their scars, if the reports are accurate, tell a story far larger than any single journey. They are reminders that when hope is forced underground, humanity often follows it there.

Screws & Chips #127 #Cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

In a galaxy far, far away, intelligence demonstrated by screws and chips,
boldly gone where no robot has gone before!

For more Screws & Chips, HERE!
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The gift of empty space by Jemma Norman

There are only two possibilities when a political leader steadily surrenders ground to a rival. Either it is part of a grand strategy or it is happening despite their intentions. Looking at the trajectory of Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch and the rise of Nigel Farage, the first explanation requires a degree of political sophistication that has yet to reveal itself. The second requires only observation.

For months, Badenoch has faced a dilemma that has haunted Conservative leaders ever since the Brexit referendum transformed British politics. How do you hold together a coalition that stretches from moderate conservatives in southern England to voters increasingly attracted to populist nationalism? The traditional answer was broad church politics. The modern answer increasingly has been, panic.

Farage understood something long before much of Westminster did. Political vacuums do not remain empty. If one party refuses to articulate the frustrations, fears, and cultural grievances of a segment of the electorate, another party will. Reform UK has thrived not merely because Farage is a gifted communicator but because he has been handed opportunities by opponents unable to define themselves.

Badenoch entered the leadership promising clarity and conviction. Her supporters argued that she possessed intellectual confidence and ideological coherence. Yet leadership is not measured by speeches, interviews or social media clips. It is measured by the ability to dominate political territory. On that test, the evidence is uncomfortable.

The Conservatives increasingly find themselves trapped between competing instincts. They want to sound tougher than Labour while appearing more responsible than Reform. They want to acknowledge public anger without embracing the rhetoric that fuels it. The result is often a message that satisfies nobody. Voters seeking stability look elsewhere. Voters seeking disruption look to Farage.

This does not mean Badenoch secretly wants Farage to become the dominant figure on the British right. Political leaders rarely spend years climbing mountains merely to hand the summit to someone else. The more plausible interpretation is that she underestimated how quickly political relevance can evaporate. Modern politics is brutal toward hesitation. Every uncertain message becomes a gift to a rival who appears more certain.

Farage's greatest advantage has never been policy detail. It has been simplicity. He offers a clear story about Britain, its problems, and its future. One may disagree with that story but it is unmistakably his. Badenoch, by contrast, often appears caught between defending a Conservative record many voters rejected and constructing a new identity that remains unfinished.

The irony is that Farage's rise says as much about Conservative weakness as it does about Reform's strength. Political movements rarely conquer territory that is being actively defended. They succeed when the gatekeepers stop convincing people why the territory matters.

History may ultimately judge Badenoch less harshly than current headlines do. She inherited a party exhausted by internal warfare, electoral defeat, and years of declining public trust. Those are not conditions from which quick recoveries emerge. Yet politics offers little sympathy for difficult inheritances.

Whether through miscalculation, hesitation, or simple inability to adapt, Badenoch has so far created the impression of a leader reacting to Farage rather than defining him. In politics, that distinction is everything. The politician setting the agenda owns the future. The politician responding to it usually ends up explaining the past.

The Price of Growing Old by Dai Eun Greer

Every year, World Elder Abuse Awareness Day arrives with solemn statements yet the most uncomfortable conversation is often left untouched. Elder abuse is not only a matter of individual cruelty. It can also emerge from systems designed to place financial efficiency ahead of human care.

The modern privatization of elder care has transformed one of society’s most profound responsibilities into a marketplace. In theory, competition should improve quality. In practice, the results are far less reassuring. Across many countries, aging parents and grandparents increasingly find themselves living within institutions managed according to business models that reward cost-cutting, expansion, and profitability. Care becomes a service line. Residents become occupancy rates. Human vulnerability becomes an operating expense.

This is not an indictment of every private provider. Many caregivers working in privately run facilities perform extraordinary work under difficult conditions. They deserve admiration. The problem lies elsewhere. It lies in a system that too often measures success by financial outcomes rather than human ones.

The arithmetic is brutally simple. Staffing is expensive. Time is expensive. Attention is expensive. Compassion, while impossible to quantify, often requires all three. When organizations face pressure to increase margins, reduce costs or satisfy investors, the temptation to trim staffing levels becomes nearly irresistible. The consequences are rarely dramatic enough to make headlines. They arrive quietly.

An unanswered call button.
A rushed meal.
A skipped conversation.
A resident left sitting alone for hours.

Neglect rarely announces itself with the spectacle that accompanies physical abuse. It accumulates gradually, hidden behind schedules, spreadsheets, and management reports. Its victims often lack the strength, confidence, or opportunity to speak about it. By the time families notice, the damage may already be done.

There is a particular irony in the language surrounding elder care today. Facilities advertise lifestyle experiences, wellness environments, and personalized living. The vocabulary sounds suspiciously similar to that of luxury hotels and technology companies. Aging, however, is not a consumer experience. It is a human condition. People in their eighties and nineties do not primarily need branding strategies. They need patience, safety, companionship and consistent care.

The deeper issue concerns what privatization reveals about our cultural priorities. Modern societies celebrate productivity, innovation, and economic growth. Old age represents something different. It reminds us of dependence, fragility, and mortality. These are realities many cultures would prefer not to confront. Outsourcing care to increasingly corporate systems can become a convenient way of distancing ourselves from those reminders.

World Elder Abuse Awareness Day should therefore challenge more than individual misconduct. It should challenge collective complacency. The question is not merely whether elders are being harmed. The question is whether our institutions are structured in ways that make harm easier to ignore.

A society ultimately reveals its character through the treatment of those who possess the least power. Elderly people, particularly those requiring extensive care, belong to that category. They cannot lobby effectively. They cannot dominate public debate. They depend on others to defend their interests.

That dependency places a moral burden on the rest of us. Caring for older generations should never be reduced to a balance-sheet calculation. The true measure of elder care is not profitability, occupancy, or efficiency. It is whether the final years of a human life are lived with dignity. Everything else is accounting.

Puppi & Caesar #46 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

Another cartoon with a mean and know-all of a bully cat, Puppi and her intellectual, pompous companion categorically-I-know-all, Caesar the squirrel!  

For more Puppi & Caesar, HERE!
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Sacco and Vanzetti: That Agony is Our Triumph by Rene Wadlow

"If it had not been for these things, I might have live out my life talking at street corners to scorning men.  I might have die, unmarked, unknown, a failure.  Now we are not a failure.  This our career and our triumph. Never in our full life could we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man's understanding of man as now we do by accident.  Our words - our lives - our pain - nothing! The taking of our lives  -  lives of a good shoemaker and a poor fish peddler - all! That last moment belongs to us - that agony is our triumph" - Letter of Bartolome Vanzetti (1888-1927) to Judge Webster Thayer who had condemned Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco (1891-1927) to death for the murder of a guard and the paymaster of the Slater and Morill Shoe Company in Braintree, Massachusetts on 15 April 1920.

Sacco and Vanzetti, along with a third member of the Italian anarchist group involved in the robbery were electricuted at midnight on 23 August 1927, after seven years of legal procedings and an organized social campaign to prevent the execution led by some of the leading intellectuals of the time, especially the novelist John Dos Passos.  Some 200,000 persons attended the funeral, and there were demonstration in front of U.S. embacies in many parts of Europe.  Since then, Sacco and Vanzetti have been symbolic figures in efforts to abolish the death penalty.

Two aspects of the trials and legal procedures have stood out in the anti-death penalty debates.  The first is that it is often difficult to have a trial that is not influenced by emotions and the political currents of the times.

Both Sacco and Vanzetti had been members of an anarchist network led by the Italian anarchist writer Luigi Galleani who was living for some years in the New York area.  He edited a journal calling for violent revolution.  He was deported to Italy in June 1919, but his journal continued for several years after that.  In the minds of many in the U.S.A. there was a link between anarchy and Bolshevism which had just come to power in Russia in 1917.  There were fears that Bolshevism would spread.  Moreover, both Sacco and Vanzetti had left for Mexico in 1917 and changed their names to evade draft registration which had been introduced in 1917 when the U.S. jointed the First World War.  The prosecutor in the murder trial used the Mexico flight to demonstrate their lack of patriotism. In Massachusetts, there was a general anti-Italian feeling, even if individuals were not anarchist but family-loving Roman Catholics.

The second element of the case used in anti-death penalty efforts is that people are executed who are later found to be not guilty of the crimes for which they were executed.  Research on the case continued long after the executions.  It is highly possible that Sacco was in fact involved in the robbery and may have used the weapon he had with him.  Vanzetti was not involved but rounded up as a member of the same Italian anarchist group which had robbed the pay of other shoe companies as well.

Thus the possibility of a person from a minority group, of the lower class, at a time of fear and international violence being convicted and executed is higher than if a person is part of the majority, has money to get a good lawyer, and the world situation is calm.

Studies in a good number of countries indicate that the death penalty has little impact on the rate of violent crimes.  Thus, the Association of World Citizens has worked with others, especially in the United Nations bodies for the abolition of the death penalty.

Since the end of World War II, there has been a gradual abolition of the death penalty.  In some countries, executions have been suspended in practice but laws allowing executions remain.  In other countries, there has been a legal abolition.The abolition of executions and the corresponding valuation of human life are necessary steps in the development of a just world society.

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Rene Wadlow, President, Association of World Citizens

The trillion-dollar mortification by Jennifer Stephenson

The emergence of the world's first trillionaire is not merely a business story. It is not a tale of innovation, entrepreneurial genius or the rewards of risk-taking. It is above all a mirror. And what that mirror reflects is not flattering.

Humanity has somehow arrived at a point where one individual can accumulate wealth on a scale that previous generations would have associated with kingdoms, empires, or mythology, while millions of people struggle to secure enough food, housing and medical care to survive. The contrast is so extreme that it almost escapes comprehension. A trillion dollars is no longer wealth in the ordinary sense. It is power, influence, and ownership concentrated beyond any rational social purpose.

The defenders of extreme wealth tend to retreat into familiar arguments. The billionaire created jobs. The billionaire built companies. The billionaire earned it. Yet these arguments avoid the central question. How much wealth can any one person reasonably possess before the accumulation itself becomes evidence of a system malfunctioning?

No one works a million times harder than a teacher. No one contributes a million times more value than a nurse. No one is a million times more essential than the sanitation worker who keeps a city functioning. The notion that a single individual can legitimately command resources greater than the economies of entire nations is not proof of meritocracy. It is proof of imbalance.

What makes the situation particularly disturbing is that it unfolds against a backdrop of visible hardship. Even in the United States, the richest nation in history, people sleep in cars, skip meals, ration medication, and work multiple jobs while remaining one emergency away from financial disaster. Food banks continue to serve growing numbers of families. Homeless encampments stand within sight of luxury developments. The same society that can generate trillionaires somehow struggles to guarantee basic dignity.

This is not an argument against success. It is an argument against excess.

A healthy economy should reward innovation, ambition, and entrepreneurship. It should encourage people to build companies and solve problems. But there is a profound difference between rewarding success and permitting the creation of fortunes so vast that they distort politics, public discourse, labour markets, and even democratic institutions themselves.

Taxation was never intended to be punishment. At its best, it is a recognition that extraordinary prosperity depends upon public infrastructure, legal protections, educated workers, and social stability. Those who benefit the most from that system should contribute proportionately to sustaining it.

The question is not whether billionaires deserve to pay more. The question is why societies have become so comfortable allowing wealth to pile upward without limit while basic human needs remain unmet below.

A trillionaire is not simply a wealthy person. A trillionaire is a warning light on the dashboard of civilization. The achievement may be celebrated in financial circles, but for everyone else it should prompt a far less comfortable conversation.

If one person can possess a trillion dollars while millions struggle to survive, the embarrassment does not belong to that individual alone. It belongs to all of us.

 

The day the cockroaches answered back by Avani Devi

Politicians often discover that insults are the most expensive words they ever utter. A dismissive remark, intended to belittle opponents, can sometimes become the spark that lights a movement. If recent events in India are any indication, Narendra Modi’s government may have stumbled into precisely that trap. The story begins with a word, “cockroaches.”

When India’s chief justice reportedly described young unemployed critics of the government in those terms, the comment was likely meant to convey irrelevance, nuisance, perhaps even contempt. Instead, it appears to have achieved the opposite. Within weeks, a generation that already felt ignored found a symbol around which to rally. What began as an online joke transformed into the Cockroach Janta Party, a movement that now attracts crowds large enough to make even seasoned politicians take notice.

The name itself is politically brilliant. For decades, opposition parties across the world have tried to construct identities around lofty ideals, historical grievances or elaborate policy agendas. The Cockroach Janta Party did something simpler. It took an insult and wore it proudly. The message is obvious: if the establishment sees us as pests, then perhaps there are more of us than it cares to admit.

History is full of examples of groups reclaiming labels intended to diminish them. The remarkable speed of this movement suggests that millions of young Indians were waiting for an outlet to express frustrations that have been building for years. Youth unemployment remains a stubborn challenge. Economic growth figures may impress investors and government spokespersons, but they do not automatically translate into meaningful opportunities for every graduate searching for work.

That frustration has often lacked a political home. Traditional opposition parties have struggled to present themselves as credible alternatives to Modi’s highly disciplined political machine. The prime minister remains one of the most dominant political figures of his generation. His supporters point to infrastructure projects, welfare programs and India’s rising global influence. Yet dominance can produce a dangerous illusion: the belief that criticism comes only from enemies rather than citizens with legitimate concerns.

This is where the cockroach metaphor becomes unexpectedly powerful. Cockroaches are famous for surviving. They adapt. They multiply. They persist despite every attempt to eliminate them. As political branding goes, it may be accidental genius. Every criticism strengthens the narrative. Every attempt to mock the movement risks validating its central claim that young people are being dismissed rather than heard.

Of course, parody movements often burn brightly and disappear just as quickly. Social media excels at creating spectacles but is less successful at sustaining organizations. Gathering a crowd is one thing. Building policy platforms, leadership structures and electoral strategies is something else entirely. The Cockroach Janta Party may ultimately prove to be a temporary protest rather than a lasting political force.

But that possibility misses the larger point. The significance of the movement is not whether it wins elections. Its significance lies in what it reveals. Millions of young Indians appear eager to challenge a political culture that they believe no longer listens to them. They are using humour as a weapon because conventional avenues of influence seem ineffective.

The real danger for any government is not opposition. Democracies are supposed to have opposition. The real danger is dismissing opposition as something less than human.

When people are called cockroaches, they sometimes answer back. And when enough of them answer together, the joke stops being funny and starts becoming politics.

 

Twilight #Poem #Painting by Nikos Laios

 

In the twilight
The Earth is still,
The colours are soft,
And the night begins.

A new act,
A new play,
Full of drama,
Beautyand life.

Then the night
Comes and under
A canopy of stars
We live our brief
Shining moments
And the twilight dawns
And the earth is still
And the colours are soft
In the morning light
As another day begins,
Another day of life,
Another blessed day.

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With a digital painting from Nikos Laios

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