Pam Spaulding
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pamspaulding.bsky.social
Pam Spaulding
@pamspaulding.bsky.social
23K followers 9.9K following 13K posts
Former natl political blogger, Pam's House Blend (2004-2013) during OG citizen journo era. Dipping back into pol discourse here. Spinal fusion vet (3x). DM only if I know IRL. Durham, NC native, now in Central Valley CA.

PHB history: https://is.gd/7GbAv2
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pamspaulding.bsky.social
2/2
Their solution? 😆

"If Vance/Rubio want to run for the job, they need to work on invoking 25thA now. It is clear Trump's mental capacity has diminished...Having said that, given how lap-doggy both Vance/Rubio have been I doubt non-MAGA among us will likely want such folks."
🌐 is.gd/kkmMpE
HAPPY HOLL Shadowblade83 4h <<ThatcherConservative>> Many allies had soldiers die from the war in Afghanistan. Relative to their population, some countries lost more of their young and best then the US. Denmark for instance among them... and many more wounded. All to honor article 5 in NATO. Invoked by the US after 9/11. Honored by other members, paid in blood. If Trump wanted to alienate allies further, taking a shot at soldiers of allied nations sacrificing everything would do it. In hope he rolls those comments back. ← Reply ↑ Vote ↓ niresangwa 9h British Conservative Infuriating man. Starmer should be demanding an apology. ← Reply 5 ↑ Vote ↓ Sad-Indication-9112 5h Laissez-Fair Yeah I think he's lost the plot. Trump needs to only have Vance or Rubio talk in public from now on. ← Reply ₩2 ↑ Vote noSoRandom Guy 7h⚫ Edited Conservative If Vance/Rubio want to run for the job, they need to work on invoking 25th amendment now. It is clear Trump's mental capacity has diminished, if they do not act, they will be weighed down by the same thing Harris was. Having said that given how lap-doggy both Vance/Rubio have been I doubt non-MAGA among us will likely want such folks, and without coronation from Trump, MAGA block will not back them. *Edit: Looked through some details on the web not a lawyer or a constitutional expert -- If Vance is trying to be strategic he may wait another year as that potentially gets him 10 years of Presidency. He does now, he only gets less than 7 years. On the flip side, he gets 3 years to prove others he can take the good parts of Trump policy and shun the crazy bits. Key-Monk6159.2h Conservative Top 1% Commenter No two ways about this, it was VERY wrong. There is a valid point to be made that Europe needs to step up and carry more weight but this wasn't the way. talksindemos 1h Conservative ← Reply ↑ Vote ↓ Coming from a long time Trump defender on lots of topics (see my post history) if the guy could just learn how to shut the fuck up sometimes in person and on Truth social/ twitter, he would have never lost to Biden in 2020 and also would have swept the midterms. I've said this since day one, some great policies (outside of dumb shit like Greenland) but he is his own worst enemy and is now actively hurting the conservative movement when this was the time we should have capitalized, considering how weak and divided the dems are.
January 24, 2026 at 2:31 AM
pamspaulding.bsky.social
...Lawrence then "explains how Trump provided “flagrant screamingly obvious proof of a president personally ordering prosecutions” when he called for his DOJ to prosecute Jack Smith during his testimony while Republican questions to Jack Smith “ranged from the ignorant to the idiotic.”
January 23, 2026 at 9:35 PM
pamspaulding.bsky.social
Thanks! I put your points into a JPG that can be shared...
10 Points on the politics of ICE funding 1/23/2026 (@ezralevin.bsky.social) 1) Trump/Miller/GOP want more ICE funding 2) Dem leadership doesn't want it but also doesn't see a way to stop it without focusing attention on it. 3) Dem consultants say focus on ICE is a political loser. [❌ They are wrong — it's a winner] 4) Dem voters want to see elected Dems fight ICE. 5) Dem leadership wants to limit blowback from Dem voters. 6) Elected Dems issue statements against ICE to reassure Dem voters that we're all aligned. 7) Dem leadership quietly cuts deal with GOP on funding bills, including ICE. 8) Elected Dems (mostly) vote against the ICE funding, knowing it will pass. 9) Elected Dems get to claim they opposed, while paving the way for passage. 10) This theater allows Dems to fundraise off of ICE opposition, while shifting back to an affordability-centric campaign message. Via Ezra Levin: https://bsky.app/profile/ezralevin.bsky.social/post/3md3zbquglc2m
January 23, 2026 at 8:05 PM
pamspaulding.bsky.social
👀 Trump's foolishness — pursuing legal action against Dimon/Chase over his frivolous shiz — affects markets.

Grandpa Chaos only considers retribution — it's his lizard brain primary motivation for anything. He TACOs only if someone of influence 💰 dials him up.
🧾 english.elpais.com/economy-and-...
‘Sell America’, the two words that sum up the markets’ break with an out-of-control Trump
Investors welcomed the Greenland agreement with relief, but the attack on JP Morgan raises new concerns. The Trump era is pushing investors to reduce their exposure to the US, a trend expected to cont...
english.elpais.com
January 23, 2026 at 6:36 PM
pamspaulding.bsky.social
🚨 Telling fact: >20% of the FBI workforce has been taken off core duties & reassigned to immigration enforcement.

Based on Trump's pardons & budget for ICE, the regime shows little interest in investigating corruption, cybercrime, white-collar crime, drug trafficking & terrorism.

Ka$h has to go.
Philip Fields, former counterterrorism analyst: The first thing they did was they disbanded our Foreign Influence Task Force. They said that we had to pull back on investigations under the Foreign Agent Registration Act, which applies to people who might be working at the direction of a foreign government without disclosing it. People that I worked with in the counterintelligence program were very upset about a lot of the investigative tools being taken away. Kayla Staph, former cyber special agent: Shifting priorities away from cyber means less time tracing illicit cryptocurrency transactions, unmasking the identities of cybercriminals and determining their locations around the world, and disrupting nation-state adversaries who target critical infrastructure. When former F.B.I. Director Christopher Wray went before Congress in January 2024, he said that even if we shifted every single F.B.I. agent and analyst to working China cyber, we would be working with one person to 50 Chinese hackers or cyberthreat actors. That’s an insane statistic — and that’s just China. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/01/22/magazine/trump-kash-patel-fbi-agents.html?unlocked_article_code=1.GVA.BJ_n.j_I2vhCUAHPu&smid=url-share Kayla Staph, former cyber special agent: The immigration push grew immensely, and it grew fast. Leadership was like, This isn’t going away, and all of you will now participate. HQ informed our field offices that the agents out with ICE needed to be taking pictures so they could post them to social media. I had never been asked to do that during an arrest operation before. It’s inappropriate and tactically unsound. Field-office leader 2: I am a conservative. I believe in tightening our borders. I just had an issue with the execution of it. My counterparts at D.H.S. were constantly getting yelled at, being threatened and fearing for their jobs. That’s not the way to work. They literally had quotas. Each region had to have a certain amount of arrests every single day. It was completely asinine. This is how things go sideways. For me, the No. 1 priority was agent safety. I don’t want my agent to be killed or to be responsible for somebody else getting killed. I did everything I could to make sure that headquarters is happy, but at the same time, I’m not jeopardizing my agents or my morals or the Constitution either. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/01/22/magazine/trump-kash-patel-fbi-agents.html?unlocked_article_code=1.GVA.BJ_n.j_I2vhCUAHPu&smid=url-share Senior executive 2: Every May, there’s a Five Eyes conference with the head of every intelligence agency. This year it was in the U.K. Kash Patel is going. In the lead-up to that, his detail starts making crazy requests. He’s got special requirements on everything. And the Brits are getting pissed. Before the conference, his staff says he’s unhappy because he doesn’t like meetings in office settings. What he wants is social events. He wants Premier soccer games. He wants to go jet skiing. He’d like a helicopter tour. Everyone who heard about this was like: Hold on. Is he really going to ask the MI5 director to go jet skiing instead of meeting? The schedule is set, and every Five Eyes partner is doing this. They can’t just say that he’s not participating and instead he wants to go to a Premier soccer game. This is a job, guys. His staff only cared about three things: what his meals were, when his workouts would be and what his entertainment would be. The biggest plan is how he’s going to get his girlfriend in there so she can go to Windsor Castle. He’s got Nicole Rucker as his assistant, like a true executive concierge. And when she’s not getting the food or the workout she wants, she’ll just start screaming at people, Make it happen! https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/01/22/magazine/trump-kash-patel-fbi-agents.html?unlocked_article_code=1.GVA.BJ_n.j_I2vhCUAHPu&smid=url-share Senior executive 3: Patel stopped having his weekly meetings with the leaders of the field offices on Wednesdays. There were phone calls from one individual to another, and things were getting missed, things were getting dropped, because they didn’t want to have an email chain. Tonya Ugoretz, former assistant director of the directorate of intelligence: Routine internal communications stopped. The director and the deputy got frustrated with media leaks, and they wouldn’t send anything out about people retiring and new people filling their roles or reorganization of the work force. People had to go to social media to see what was going on and who might be next on the chopping block. (In response to questions about this article, Bongino wrote in an email: “A ‘media’ enterprise that viciously propagated the most destructive political hoax in American history? You guys are jokers, relying on people we likely removed for misfeasance or malfeasance, to feed your ignorant audience the nonsense gruel they crave.”) https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/01/22/magazine/trump-kash-patel-fbi-agents.html?unlocked_article_code=1.GVA.BJ_n.j_I2vhCUAHPu&smid=url-share
January 23, 2026 at 5:14 PM