Wednesday, May 20, 2026

Time and time again

 May 20 (Reuters) - The Trump administration was expected to announce criminal charges against former Cuban president Raul Castro as the United States steps up its pressure campaign against the Caribbean island's communist government.


The Raúl Castro Indictment

  • The Charges: The Trump administration indicted former Cuban President Raúl Castro (age 94) on charges of conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals, murder, and destroying an aircraft.
  • The Incident: The indictment stems from Castro's alleged role in the 1996 shootdown of two civilian planes operated by the group Brothers to the Rescue, which killed four people, including three Americans.
















Donald Trump has been fulminating and fuming lately, as he often does, about "rigged elections" in California, where he has apparently never won a majority of votes, attributing that outcome to blatant "rigging." That seems pretty obvious to him, because everyone knows that Californians, like all Americans, really love The Donald. (He did win election fair and square nationally last time by a small margin, but didn't carry California.) 


May 2026 "Sleazebag" Rant: Trump went on Truth Social to blast Fox for interviewing progressive Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), He considers Fox his own personal network, loyal only to him. It shouldn't be giving air time to Democrats. 

President Trump also demanded that Senate Republicans fire the nonpartisan Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, after she ruled that Republicans could not include funding for his White House ballroom in an immigration enforcement bill.

I already uploaded a recent blog draft and now I'm going to take a break, so may as well post this one as well.  

Vanishing act


Well, my entire blog post just disappeared once again this morning--something happening all too often lately, very frustrating and just so completely aggravating. And the post just prior to this one took 3 separate tries before it actually stayed posted. Why is this happening now? The blog deities never try to explain. 

 And yet, 10 years of posts from the previous blog address https://honduraspeacecorps.blogspot.com are still up today. I do like to go back to review my own history when memory fails. I've had a rather unusual life of both tragedies and adventures, nothing very predictable or ordinary,  And I am also bilingual and, you might say, multicultural after sojourns and missions in some 40 countries.

When that first blog address ran into problems, I launched this version honduraspeacecorps2.blogspot.com

Cave writings and even ancient manuscripts survive millenia, but on-line writing may be ephermeral, as I am finding out, having lost a couple of entire posts in just the last 2 days. I've written 2 books that capture just fragments of my life, but am not sure about writing another one. Maybe I'll just stick with the blog. 

I may need to consult a blog doctor to advise me now.

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 Here's a summary from Yahoo News about an item discussed in the just-vanished post: 

The biggest and most exciting win for the White House came on Tuesday: defeating Rep. Thomas Massie, the Kentucky Republican who opposed Trump on key issues, including on the “big, beautiful bill” tax and spending plan and on pushing for the release of files related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Massie lost to Trump-backed Ed Gallrein, who got 54% of the GOP primary vote. For months, Trump and his allies have attacked Massie, and they got their win Tuesday in the most expensive House primary in history. 

Primary winner Gallrein is a Kentucky farmer and military veteran with no prior political experience, someone specifically recruited by Trump to defeat Massie. He had apparently never considered a political career before. Defeated incumbent Massie has been in Congress for 14 years, but Trump spared no effort to punish him and to issue a warning to other Republicans who might be tempted to fail to follow his dictates. Trump may snooze a lot during the day, but he always wakes up in time to inflict vengeance. He is showing that he is top dog in the Republican Party now and that no party member should ever dare to try opposing him. 

Trump warns, "It doesn't work out well’ when GOP members vote against him,


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Here's a fundraising appeal posted today from demoralized Democrats. (And how can the rest of us get out of a tax audit? )

The story that broke today honestly feels like something you’d expect to read about in another country.

According to reports, Donald Trump and his family are now being granted immunity from pending tax audits while Trump sits in office.

 

Think about that for a second. Ordinary Americans get audited. Working families get crushed over paperwork mistakes.People stress over taxes every single year because they know the IRS can come after them if they screw something up.

 

But apparently if you become President of the United States and surround yourself with enough loyalists, the rules suddenly stop applying to you.

 

That’s the part that keeps eating at us. Not just the corruption itself. Not just the hypocrisy.

Trump and his allies keep consolidating power while Republicans stack courts, redraw maps, flood elections with billionaire money, and attack the very institutions that are supposed to provide

 accountability in the first place.


NY Times, I.R.S. to Drop Audits of Trumbp and Family

As part of the Justice Department’s deal, officials vowed not to pursue any matters, including those involving President Trump’s tax returns, that are pending.

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Yes, How can the rest of us get out of tax audits? Democrats seem to be targeted.

Is it all just hopeless now or can we Democrats do something about it? 

Voters may soon tire of Donald Trump and his sneaky machinations, so we certainly need to try to speed up that process. 

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Wash. Post, Global Security

Trump’s $1.45 trillion defense budget is the largest — and most contested — in American history


Trump may be cutting funds from most government agencies and services. but he is adding them to the defense budget. War Secretary Pete Hegseth is eagerly helping him do that.  




CBS News

Trump says Netanyahu will do "whatever I want him to do" on Iran

That is probably a true statement, since Trump saved Bibi from facing an immediate criminal indictment, allowing him to remain in office as Israel's prime minister. Trump also carried out Netanyahu's suggestion to attack Iran for no reason, which killed the Ayatollah, and has proved to be a further reason for delaying his trial. 

OK folks, let's stop right now as it's getting dark and that means computer trouble around here.