Progressive Thinking

Progressive Laura Kiefert comments on the latest Trump garbage dragging Barack Obama into his deranged circus with talk of treason and prison? Hell no. That’s not politics — that’s delusion with a bullhorn.

LAKE GENEVA, WI - I’ve sat through a lot of crap over the years. I’ve watched Donald Trump lie, rant, threaten, and throw around schoolyard nicknames like a drunk uncle on Facebook. I didn’t like it — but I stomached it. I rolled my eyes through “Sleepy Joe,” grit my teeth through “rigged election,” and let the “Hunter’s laptop” noise roll off my back like static.

But now Trump wants to haul Barack freaking Obama in front of a court and slap him with treason charges?

Get real. Get a grip. Get a clue.

You want to talk about delusional? This isn’t just political theater — this is a full-blown cult meltdown. Obama didn’t commit treason. He committed the unforgivable sin of being a brilliant, calm, compassionate, Black man who ran the country with grace — and made it look easy. And Trump has never gotten over it.

Let’s call this what it is: a pathetic attempt to rewrite history and distract from Trump’s own avalanche of crimes, lawsuits, and disgrace. The man’s got more indictments than most people have pairs of socks. He’s a convicted felon, a pathological liar, and a walking violation of decency. But sure, let’s toss Obama in prison for… what exactly? Hurting Trump’s feelings?

This isn’t about justice. It’s about vengeance. It’s about weaponizing the legal system to punish anyone who dared outshine the orange messiah. First Hillary. Then Biden. Now Obama. Next — what? Rachel Maddow? Mr. Rogers?

And let’s not forget, this all comes from the same lunatic who pushed birther conspiracies for years because Obama had the audacity to be born with a name like Barack Hussein Obama. Trump built his entire political identity on undermining Obama’s legitimacy — and now he wants to seal that hatred with a prison sentence?

Give me a break. Hell, give me a damn whiskey.

Obama led with class. He didn’t whine, he didn’t grift, and he didn’t throw tantrums on Twitter. He passed the ACA. He killed bin Laden. He never once called for his political enemies to be locked up. And now we’re supposed to believe he is the traitor?

No. Just no.

I’ve got plenty of bones to pick with politicians, left and right. I can argue policy all day long. But if you think it’s okay to send a former president — especially one as admired and scandal-free as Obama — to prison over paranoid fiction, you’re not just wrong. You’re part of the problem. You’re lighting matches under the very foundation of democracy.

So go ahead and chant “lock him up” if it makes you feel powerful. But know this: when you start throwing treason charges at Obama, you’re not draining the swamp. You’re drowning in it.

Government is about moving the money around and right depends on whose side you're on.

LAKE GENEVA, WI - I used to be politically indifferent. My political resume was limited to high school Student Council and what I absorbed from Schoolhouse Rock. I figured politics was just for loud guys in ties arguing on TV. That changed the day I married a man who devoted his life to public service—and showed me what government is actually supposed to do.

He explained something I’d never really thought about: the government doesn’t make money. It takes in taxes—and then decides how to spend them. That’s it. That’s the whole game. And those choices reveal everything. Who do we tax? Who do we help? Who gets a lifeline and who gets left to drown?

Well, here we are, under Trump’s second term, and the answers couldn’t be clearer. Republicans are choosing billionaires over veterans. Wall Street over working families. Private jets over school lunches. And they’re calling it patriotism.

Today, they’re voting on Trump’s latest monstrosity—the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill.” It’s a $3.3 trillion wrecking ball dressed up like a gift. A grenade lobbed directly at the people struggling the most. And somehow, they’re cheering.

I wasn’t always this political. But watching what’s being done to everyday Americans—what’s being justified in the name of “freedom”—woke me up. And if it hasn’t done the same to you, I hate to say it, but you might be asleep at the wheel.

My husband once told me that government’s real job is reallocating resources. Taxes don’t shift all that much overall—but who’s in charge determines who benefits. Under compassionate leadership, those dollars go toward helping people: healthcare, education, food, housing. You know, the basics for a decent life.

But under Trump and the GOP? It’s a firehose aimed straight at the top. Billionaires are cashing in while safety nets are being set on fire. Medicaid? Slashed. SNAP? Gutted. Housing aid, energy assistance, preventative healthcare? Axed. This bill doesn’t just chip away at the social contract—it feeds it into a woodchipper.

And what do we get instead? Billions more for border militarization, detention centers, and mass deportation quotas. Cuts to green energy, handouts to oil companies, and yet another round of corporate tax loopholes big enough to steer a yacht through—assuming you can afford one. It even risks speeding up the insolvency of Medicare and Social Security—because, apparently, fiscal responsibility only applies when someone’s poor.

Let’s stop pretending this is about conservative principles. It’s not. Republicans aren’t conserving anything—they’re dismantling. They don’t want smaller government. They want a brutal one. One that punishes the vulnerable and rewards the wealthy. This isn’t reform. It’s a hostile takeover by people who believe suffering is a moral failure—unless you’re rich, in which case it’s a tax deduction.

Look at the difference when Democrats are in charge. People get help. Children eat. Students get relief. Families catch a break. But when Republicans take the wheel? It’s slash-and-burn time. They strip healthcare, cut school meals, and then smile while forgiving millions in PPP loans for their country club buddies. With this bill, they’ve made their priorities crystal clear: feed the rich, starve the rest.

I watched my husband dedicate his life to service. Real service—not stock photos and flag pins. He believed government should work for everyone—not just CEOs, lobbyists, and the donor class. But everything he stood for is being bulldozed. They say we can’t afford insulin or affordable housing, but we’ve got billions for oil subsidies and border walls. If that’s not a collapse of values, I don’t know what is.

And here’s the really ugly truth: This isn’t a policy disagreement. It’s class warfare. We’ve normalized cruelty. Kids go hungry and we blame their parents. Veterans sleep in the cold and we call them lazy. Immigrants beg for safety and we scream “invasion.” Meanwhile, billionaires build rocket ships and buy football teams. And Republicans? They grin, they vote yes, and they pop champagne.

We don’t have a budget crisis in America—we have a moral one. Republicans are fighting tooth and nail for billionaires, corporations, oil tycoons, ICE, private prisons, and defense contractors. And they’re more than willing to throw the rest of us—seniors, students, the sick, the poor, immigrants, teachers, working families—under the damn bus.

And the worst part? They’re not even ashamed. They’re proud. They call it “beautiful.” But it’s not.

It’s brutal. It’s deliberate. And it’s damn well time we stop sugarcoating it.

“Freedom” in America has become little more than a slogan. Other countries provide healthcare, education, and dignity without bragging about it. Meanwhile, the U.S. drowns in debt and calls it patriotism. We’re not the freest. We’re just the loudest.

LAKE GENEVA, WI - I want to be a proud American. I want to feel good about this country. But that gets harder every day—not because I’ve stopped loving what this place could be, but because the people running it, especially under Trump and the current GOP machine, have poisoned the well. They’ve turned the word “freedom” into a marketing gimmick—a smokescreen to distract from greed, cruelty, and decay.

We say we’re the “freest country in the world,” but what does that even mean anymore? We love to chant it, print it on shirts, and use it to justify every disaster we let unfold. But it sure doesn’t feel like freedom when your medical bill is larger than your mortgage. It doesn’t feel like freedom when your job offers no sick leave, your rent eats your paycheck, and your retirement plan is “don’t get old.”

Here’s the part that really burns: while we scream about how free we are, people in other countries are just… living. They’re not waving flags every five minutes. They don’t need to. Their governments treat them like citizens, not burdens. They don’t have to earn basic rights through bootstraps and bankruptcy courts.

Take Finland: their education system is ranked among the best in the world. No tuition. No standardized test mania. Teachers are respected, paid well, and given autonomy. Meanwhile, we’re giving teachers “DonorsChoose” accounts and asking them to crowdfund pencils.

In Germany, college is free even for foreigners. In America, you can graduate with $120,000 in student debt and a degree that gets you a job asking, “Do you want fries with that?”

In Australia, you can call an ambulance without panicking. You won’t get a $4,000 bill just for being unconscious. In the UK, you don’t pay a dime at the ER. Here? You get a financial death sentence for a broken leg or a trip to the ICU.

Norway guarantees parental leave—paid parental leave—for both parents. In America? You’re lucky if your employer lets you use two weeks of vacation, unpaid, while you try to survive on microwave dinners and three hours of sleep.

France gives you a month of vacation by law, and workers will literally shut the country down if their rights are threatened. Here, we clap for people working 70-hour weeks with no healthcare like they’re heroes—not victims.

And yet we still act like we're the best. We still equate "America" with "freedom," like the rest of the world is just waiting for us to rescue them from their scary socialist nightmare. Meanwhile, they’re sipping wine on paid leave, seeing doctors without bills, and not worrying that a random Tuesday at school might be their last.

And then there's Trump—because how could we forget? Under his reign, "freedom" became the right to be selfish. The right to ignore public health. The right to call immigrants animals. The right to keep a boot on the neck of anyone who's not white, straight, rich, and born within our borders.

It wasn’t about expanding freedom—it was about weaponizing it. Under Trump, freedom meant cruelty for everyone else and total impunity for the powerful. If you're rich, you were free to loot the system. If you're poor? You were free to suffer quietly—or get arrested trying to survive.

So yeah, I want to be a proud American. But it's hard when you live in a country that refuses to take care of its own, that mocks compassion as weakness, and that clings to this absurd myth that we’re number one just because we say so. We’re not. And unless we stop lying to ourselves, we never will be.

I don’t want a country that tells me I’m lucky to be here. I want a country that proves it. Because if this is what freedom looks like—crippling debt, mass shootings, poverty wages, zero safety nets—then what exactly are we so proud of?

Trump’s “big beautiful bill” isn’t policy—it’s punishment. With $3.3 trillion in giveaways to the rich and a scorched-earth campaign against the poor, sick, and working class, this is America 2025: where billionaires get tax breaks and hungry families get cut off.

LAKE GENEVA, WI - So here we are again—Donald Trump is back in the White House, and predictably, he’s wasting no time turning cruelty into policy. His latest monstrosity, the so-called “big beautiful bill,” is a $3.3 trillion Trojan horse: sold as a cure for the nation’s budget woes, but in reality, it’s just another grotesque cash grab for the ultra-wealthy. This isn’t policy—it’s class warfare, and Trump is leading the charge with a golden sledgehammer aimed squarely at the necks of the poor, sick, and working-class Americans.

Let’s cut through the bullshit. The bill enacts brutal cuts to Medicaid and SNAP—two lifelines for millions of Americans—all while showering the rich with permanent tax cuts and flashy new loopholes. Since Trump took office again in 2025, at least 10.6 million people are at risk of losing Medicaid coverage, not because they got richer, but because Republicans decided healthcare for the poor is just too damn expensive. Even worse, many are being purged due to paperwork technicalities. If you missed a deadline or couldn’t print your 12th form in time, too bad—you’re out. No insulin, no cancer treatment, no care for your disabled kid. Meanwhile, the only thing expanding is the IRS backlog of audits targeting working families for minor errors on child tax credits.

And if that weren’t vile enough, Trump’s bill also slashes SNAP—cutting off about 8 million people from food assistance. That’s nearly one in five current recipients. They want you to believe it's about “personal responsibility,” but the data is clear: most adults on SNAP already work—just not at jobs that provide basic security. Nearly 70% of SNAP households have children. But in Trump’s America, if you’re not clocking 40 hours at a dead-end job that still doesn’t pay rent, you can starve. Maybe your billionaire landlord will toss you some caviar from his yacht in the Maldives.

This is all part of a much bigger scam. While the poor get choked by red tape, the rich are handed golden parachutes. The bill makes Trump’s 2017 tax cuts permanent, with even more goodies for the upper crust. That includes tax write-offs on tips and overtime (nice headline, but temporary), and juiced-up deductions for older taxpayers with six-figure incomes. There's even a temporary raise in the State and Local Tax (SALT) cap—from $10,000 to $40,000—so millionaires in blue states can keep more of their loot. These aren’t crumbs. They’re cakes for the rich. Yale’s Budget Lab confirms it: the poorest Americans see their incomes shrink by 2.5%, while the top earners get richer by 2.4%. Trump’s America is Robin Hood in reverse.

And let’s not forget the hypocrisy of “fiscal responsibility.” Trump’s gang loves to scream about the deficit, but this bill explodes it—adding $3.3 trillion in red ink by 2034, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Why? Because slashing benefits isn’t enough—they need to bankroll tax cuts for the already rich. It’s smoke, mirrors, and moral rot. Meanwhile, $45 billion goes to ICE for deportation crackdowns, and $50 billion is set aside for more walls and militarized border zones. They won’t pay to keep your grandma alive, but they’ll bankroll a wall no one asked for and no one needs.

Tax evasion? Still thriving. The top 1% dodge around $163 billion every single year, nearly double what the entire SNAP program costs. And let’s not even get started on the $200 billion in COVID relief fraud—much of it taken by corporations that didn’t need a dime. These scams are forgiven like a priest at confession, while poor people face jail time for misreporting a few hundred bucks in emergency relief.

So yes—entitlement has become a dirty word in Trump’s America. And that’s the damn disgrace.

Because here’s the truth: people are entitled to certain things. Healthcare when they’re sick. Food when they’re hungry. Safety when they’re old or disabled. These aren’t luxuries—they’re the bare minimum of a decent society. But we live in a country where the loudest voices scream “No fair!” if someone else gets help. As if we all start from the same line. As if empathy is some kind of weakness.

This isn’t just economic policy—it’s a reflection of who we are. Or maybe more accurately, who we’ve become. Trump struts onstage, bragging about how he’s “saving” America by gutting its most humane programs, all while Fox News calls it a victory for “working Americans.” Working Americans? They’re the ones being sacrificed.

And let’s settle something once and for all: these programs are called entitlements because people earned them. They exist because we, as a nation, supposedly believe in human dignity. But if we can’t afford to keep people fed and alive, then what the hell are we funding? This isn’t a civilized nation—it’s a banana republic with gold trim, where the king hoards while the peasants beg. Trump’s bill is a branding iron—searing his name onto every cut, every cancellation letter, every ER visit that ends in bankruptcy. It’s not just cruel. It’s criminal.

So let’s call this bill what it really is: a blood-soaked budget for billionaires, a death sentence for the vulnerable, and a celebration of systemic greed.

Welcome to America, where facts are optional, fear is currency, and everyone’s one meme away from a meltdown. I wrote this blog to drag the manipulation machine into the spotlight—where it belongs. If you’ve ever asked, how the hell did we get here?... pull up a chair. You’re not alone.

LAKE GENEVA, WI - I used to think I was pretty sharp. A thinker. A question-asker. A woman who couldn’t be duped by shiny objects or political tap dancing. And yet here I am, watching half the country fall face-first into the same manipulation trap over and over again like it’s a damn carnival game—except nobody’s winning a goldfish, just a warped sense of reality and maybe a tin foil hat.

Welcome to America, where the lies are slick, the truth is boring, and people treat Facebook memes like sacred scripture.

It starts with the news. Not the news as in “factual information,” but the multi-million-dollar circus of opinion, drama, and commercial breaks. Everyone’s got a narrative to sell. One channel tells you immigrants are crawling through your windows and stealing your lawn chairs, and the other acts like everything is fine except for the occasional democracy fire. You’re not being informed. You’re being marketed to. They’re not here to tell you what’s true—they’re here to sell you a story you’ll watch with your mouth open and remote in hand like it’s the last season of Succession.

Then comes repetition. Repeat a lie enough times and it gets shiny. Familiar. Comforting, even. Like that old pair of sweatpants you know you shouldn’t wear in public but somehow still do. Say something like “The election was stolen” or “Climate change is a hoax” enough times, and folks start defending it like it’s their firstborn. Doesn’t matter if it makes no sense. If it feels true, that’s close enough, right?

We’re also soaking in fear like it’s a bubble bath. And let me tell you, fear sells. It sells ads. It sells guns. It sells entire political careers. The more terrified you are, the easier you are to herd. And while we’re busy panicking about imaginary threats (like being forced to eat vegan meatloaf or share a bathroom with someone who doesn’t match our bathroom expectations), the real problems—corporate greed, dying ecosystems, a healthcare system held together with scotch tape and ductwork—go completely ignored.

Meanwhile, the social media overlords are sitting back with their feet up, watching us implode one “BREAKING NEWS” post at a time. Those algorithms know us better than we know ourselves. They feed us exactly what will keep us scrolling, arguing, and foaming at the mouth like caffeinated raccoons. If you believe Bigfoot is your spirit guide, congratulations—by dinner, your feed will be a conspiracy buffet with a side of QAnon fries.

And the tribalism? Oh boy. We’ve traded conversation for teams. Pick a side and stay loyal, no matter how dumb it gets. Your team can literally light their pants on fire, and you'll still find a way to blame the other guys for handing them the match.

Now let’s talk about the American obsession with “all opinions matter.” Look—I’m all for free speech, but just because you can say something doesn’t mean it deserves airtime. We’ve reached the point where “Well, that’s just my opinion” is used as a get-out-of-facts-free card. That guy on YouTube with the crazy eyes and unverified credentials? His “truth” apparently carries just as much weight as someone with three degrees and a lab coat. Brilliant.

And while we’re all screaming at each other over who can say what where and whether books should include gay penguins, guess who’s quietly robbing us blind? The rich. The powerful. The corporations with more tax breaks than employees. But sure, let’s blame the cashier at Walgreens or the guy who cleans hotel toilets for ruining America. Makes total sense.

Don’t overlook the rise of the Influencer Industrial Complex. Apparently, if you have a ring light, a half-smile, and a decent squat routine, people will trust you with everything from financial advice to holistic remedies made of fermented goat spit. Science? Who needs it? Credentials? So overrated. That girl with 200K followers who sells waist trainers and essential oils now has thoughts on international diplomacy and vaccines. And guess what? People are listening.

Then we’ve got the conspiracy crowd, where logic goes to die. These folks believe they’ve cracked the code while the rest of us are sleepwalking through life. They’ve connected the dots—from Hillary’s emails to lizard people running Target—and you can’t convince them otherwise. It’s like once you’ve bought the ticket to Crazytown, there are no refunds. Only more dots.

But the root of it all? We’ve never been taught to think. Really think. Question sources. Challenge assumptions. Ask, “Wait a minute, where the hell did that come from?” Instead, we were handed standardized tests and told to memorize stuff we forgot before the ink dried on our Scantron sheets. And so here we are. A nation with supercomputers in our pockets and brains full of bumper stickers.

So yeah—we’re being manipulated. Intentionally. Repeatedly. Expertly. But here’s the kicker: we’re active participants in our own bamboozling. We like being right more than we like being informed. We’d rather be outraged than curious. And as long as we keep taking the bait, the people reeling us in will never run out of line.