Monday, February 10, 2025

Making The Culture Safe For Straight White Men

Treating non-white non-males and non-cis gendered people like human beings is the worst thing that ever happened to this country.

“Fuck The Constitution”

And when the chief executive tries to usurp the authority of Congress? What, just let him because his name is “Trump”? They aren’t compelled to do it. They are required to; by law. Remember the old adage, dipshit: “Ignorance of the law is no excuse.” Yes. The federal isn’t a business, the POTUS is not a CFO. Article I: the Congress levies taxes and spends money. The POTUS doesn’t decide whether or not the Congress got it right. There is no line-item veto: of laws or of government spending. I really want that clause in Art. II pointed out to me; the one Sununu insists is in there. When the POTUS acts as if he’s above the law, the judges have a say in what the law is he took an oath to preserve, protect and defend. "Suckers!" "You’ll thank me later for inflation now. And prices won’t go down, ‘cause that would be deflation.  So: suckers! And tariffs will just make things worse; they always do. Worse for you, not for white guys like me! Suckers!” "Live free or die," right? Besides, we don’ need no steenkin’ healthcare! That’s just elites who tell us we do! Fuck ‘em and their ee-leetist med-ee-sin! We’ll see what happens when the shit hits the fan. Should be interesting.

Because really, these clowns eating Trump’s πŸ’© and saying it has raisins, are just pathetic.

L’etat, C’est Moi

I don’t really think this is all just because Trump is obsessed with Gaza. And a slight detour to remind everyone Trump terrified Hamas into the hostage releases (not months of delicate negotiations between Biden, Israel, and Hamas): Hamas doesn’t appear to be worried.
Back to Gaza proper: Trump seems to think being POTUS makes him Real Estate Developer-in-Chief. He told Baier:
"We'll build beautiful communities for the 1.9 million people," Trump said. "We'll build beautiful communities, safe communities. Could be five, six, could be two, but we'll build safe communities a little bit away from where they are, where all of this danger is. In the meantime, I would own this. Think of it as a real estate development for the future. It would be a beautiful piece of land, no big money spent."
Communities for 1.9 million people? Sure, how hard can it be, how long can it take? Those 2 million will just get out of the way, right? Or Jordan or Egypt have a guest room, right? Because the Palestinians are not going back to Gaza, are they?
"No, they wouldn’t," Trump said. "Because they’re going to have much better housing, much better – in other words, I’m talking about building a permanent place for them because if they have to return now it would be years before you could ever – it's not habitable. It'll be years before it can happen. I'm talking about starting to build, and I think I could make a deal with Jordan. I think I could make a deal with Egypt. We give them billions and billions of dollars a year."
Yup, they ain’t comin’ back, in Trump’s version. But please don’t call it “ethnic cleansing.” It’s just forcibly removing them to another place which will be better for them…someday. Probably. Definitely not something that’s ever happened in the history of America. Definitely not. Don’t say it is. 

And Trump is going to do this himself, and Egypt and Jordan will agree to take refugees (“Don’t use that word!”), because “we” “give them billions and billions of dollars a year.” “We” did that, so they owe Trump.

In other words the United States and Egypt and Jordan will do this for Trump because….

I’m also sure this is all entirely independent of Netanyahu. Because I’m as stupid as an American journalist. πŸ€ͺ

Just A Reminder

 Elmo bought Twitter because a court told him to. He spent a lot of money NOT to put his money where his mouth is. And a court told him he had to, anyway.

"The point being, a strategy by Musk of just ignoring the law and ignoring the courts would engender MASSIVE pushback from the federal courts. They don't have to worry about standing for any elections, and don't have to lie to the rubes in the base. They have life tenure," said Esper. 
He also pointed out that Republicans don't have the power or influence to impeach a judge. 
"We have a weird dynamic where many people have convinced themselves that a stupid belief (that it is possible for Musk to exercise dictatorial power on behalf of Trump with no possible accountability) is actually the Smart Take that the Experts Don't Know." 
"What do you think happens to Tesla or Twitter or SpaceX in all their civil cases in federal courts if Musk becomes The Guy Who Disobeys Federal Court Orders? This guy has massive business interests he wants to protect as well," the litigator continued.
Time is a flat circle, especially for frequent litigants. People are already refusing to buy Teslas because they don’t want to be associated with a a Nazi. Judges are people, too; and you ignore one judge, heaven help you in the courts of the rest.

What goes around comes around. Hard, and upside your head. Musk lost in federal court once. He doesn’t want that to happen again and again and again….

The Guy Who Thinks He’s Knows More About Government Than Anyone

Payments for immigrants is not “waste and fraud.” And even if it was, the recourse is a civil suit, not fire all the inspectors general and freeze funding without authority. Congress actually does have the power to authorize payments like that. You don’t have the authority to stop them. No one does except Congress, or a court of competent jurisdiction after proper findings. Elmo is neither.

“Appears to be” is not a legal standard except in cases of conflicts of interest, of which yours are legion. Rooting around in databases you don’t understand does not make you knowledgeable anymore than declaring 120 hour work weeks makes your cars reliably self-driving.  And people with “foreign names” on the SS rolls (careful, “Elon”) doesn’t even begin to indicate fraud.

Get back to me when water doesn’t set your cars on fire (inextinguishably) and your rockets don’t explode and you once financially sound social media platform isn’t losing money like a Trump casino. Because based on your track record alone you shouldn’t be allowed near anyone else’s computer, or be in possession of anything sharper than a rubber ball.

Thoughts And Prayers

Vice President of government relations at the National Association of Evangelicals, Galen Carey, warned the president’s “indiscriminate stop-work orders issued with little or no advanced notice have created chaos and confusion on the ground.” 
“This is damaging and wasteful," Carey said. "Some of our members and partners are experiencing crippling cashflow crises, necessitating mass layoffs and abrupt termination of services with no time for responsible transitions." 
The faith leader noted while “there are aspects of our foreign aid programs that should be ended and others that could be reformed for greater effectiveness ... this review and reform can be achieved without the wholesale disruption of the many programs that are working well and saving lives." 
"We affirm the goal of eliminating wasteful spending throughout government but caution against hastily pursued measures that will prove costly,” Carey said, as Business Insider reports. “The abrupt closure of many effective aid programs will mean that some of the money already spent will have been wasted. Commodities will be lost and food will rot, medicines expire. Other supplies may be stolen or misappropriated because the staff and the partners are not allowed to receive them.” 
Carey, urged Trump “to rethink the assumption that effective international assistance does not benefit our national security, peace and prosperity.”
It’s all fun and games until somebody gets punched in the mouth.
Well, what's interesting is it's almost nonexistent," said Rausenbush. "I mean, there have been Christians in federal government, there have been great programs that have been run with Christian assistance in USAID. This is not a problem, but the president is actually — what he's trying to do is create a problem, which is part of a play for power. And so this is, what we've actually seen is an anti-Christian bias coming out of the White House. So we actually need protection from the White House at this point." 
"No one knows that better than people like [Bishop] Mariann Budde, who have been attacked, bullied by the president, receiving death threats, just for preaching from her pulpit that he might give mercy," he added. "We've seen the Catholic bishops being attacked by J.D. Vance for doing their work, being accused of going for the bottom line. This is gross, grotesque."   
One of the biggest attacks, he continued, is tech billionaire Elon Musk's attacks on Lutheran organizations that work on refugee resettlement. 
"They help the elderly, they help people across this country, doing great work. And Elon Musk comes out and says, oh, these people are money laundering," said Rausenbush. "These are all attacks directly on Christian communities. The Quakers have experienced it, with ICE being now allowed to invade congregations one after another. Christian communities under attack from this Trump-Vance-Musk administration. And it's very ironic that they're worried about anti-Christian bias, given that we need to be protected from this White House."
Tbf, being anti-Quaker is an American tradition, from hanging us in Boston Common to Feds infiltrating our peace and justice orgs. ;-p
Yeah, it is. “Weird” practices are inherently suspect and non-Xian. Which is why all right-thinking Protestants don’t trust Catholics. 😈

Sunday, February 09, 2025

Replies Only (Worth 1000 Words)

Penny For Your Thoughts


31 USC 5112:
(a) The Secretary of the Treasury may mint and issue only the following coins: 
(1) a dollar coin that is 1.043 inches in diameter. 
(2) a half dollar coin that is 1.205 inches in diameter and weighs 11.34 grams. 
(3) a quarter dollar coin that is 0.955 inch in diameter and weighs 5.67 grams. 
(4) a dime coin that is 0.705 inch in diameter and weighs 2.268 grams. 
(5) a 5-cent coin that is 0.835 inch in diameter and weighs 5 grams. 
(6) except as provided under subsection (c) of this section, a one-cent coin that is 0.75 inch in diameter and weighs 3.11 grams. 
... 
(c) The Secretary may prescribe the weight and the composition of copper and zinc in the alloy of the one-cent coin that the Secretary decides are appropriate when the Secretary decides that a different weight and alloy of copper and zinc are necessary to ensure an adequate supply of one-cent coins to meet the needs of the United States.
31 USC 5112 directs the Secretary of the Treasury to coin denominations set out in the statute (i.e., at the direction of Congress). The only determination the Secretary can make is the zinc/copper composition of the penny to “ensure an adequate supply” to meet the country’s needs. 

Which doesn’t authorize him to de-authorize the penny. That authority remains with Congress.
The Congress shall have Power . . . ] To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures; . . .
Article I, Section 8, Clause 5By the way:
Because Article I, Section 10, Clause 1 of the Constitution prohibits the states from coining money, the Supreme Court has recognized Congress’s coinage power to be exclusive.
I don’t see where Congress has delegated that exclusive power to the Secretary of the Treasury. Not in this statute, anyway.

Gonna be interesting to see what Congress does about this. 🧐
Yeah, I'd also gone to the statute when I saw his latest. My thought is that there are a bunch of "shall issue" clauses in the language, so does that suggest "may issue" means Congress delegated and TreasSec has discretion to issue (so long as the coinage conforms to specified composition, weight, etc) or not?
The bulk of the statute concerns specific coinage, like the state quarters I collected a few years back. But section a) directs treasury to mint certain denominations, and only (in section c) gives discretion on the metals composition of the penny. But the Treasurer has no discretion in whether or not to issue any of the specified coins in section a. Arguably he can slow or increase production; but there’s no authority granted to cease production altogether.

That’s up to Congress.

The Color Of The Sky On His Planet

"For duty and humanity!” (VERY early Three Stooges short. Don’t know what made me think of that.) Yeah, but you blinked. Never heard of it. I have heard of the Super Bowl, though. Haven’t been glued to the set, but I saw Taylor Swift in the stadium. Haven’t seen Trump. Not that I missed that. I am sorry I missed that. Especially since Elmo was supposed to have bought all the Super Bowl ad time to promote DOGE. Or fire everybody in government. Or something. The Presidential curse continues… Still hungry for that attention.

Sunday Evening Meditation

 


I always thought so.

“Don’t Tax You, Don’t Tax Me, Tax That Feller Behind The Tree”

Katie Britt is too young to know how familiar this is:
“While the administration works to achieve this goal at NIH, a smart, targeted approach is needed in order to not hinder life-saving, groundbreaking research at high-achieving institutions like those in Alabama,” she told AL.com 
A few facts. The University of Alabama at Birmingham is the largest employer in the state. It gets more than a billion dollars a year from NIH funding. The head of the Birmingham Business Alliance is quoted saying the whole thing is super bad. Birmingham’s Mayor Randall Woodfin (D) also seems to be freaking out. Britt wouldn’t stop talking: “We can eliminate administrative bloat and waste while not losing our competitive edge to adversaries like Communist China. I look forward to working with incoming HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to accomplish this vital mission and ensure our nation remains at the forefront of medical innovation, research, and patient care.” 
The University of Alabama at Huntsville is comparably reliant on NIH funding grants. And we’re certain to see similar outcries from Republican representatives in other states as they find out often from Republican stakeholders in their states about what the NIH cuts mean for them. Then the question is likely to move on to whether Trump can shift the question from one of across-the-board cuts to cuts that only target institutions in blue states or simply any institutions that don’t support Donald Trump.
Given Trump’s track record of the last few weeks, he’ll fold for every one of them. Besides, the more he targets blue states, the more Democrats are likely to retaliate.

But I’ve seen this movie before, and it always ends the same way: Republicans declare spending anywhere but in their state/district to be rife with fraud and abuse (it’s never “or” abuse, always “and.”). So cut “their “ funding, but keep mine.

The title is a quote from Huey Long. This has been going on at least since we were a Republic. The flip side of taxes is always spending: the former unpopular, the latter very popular. And one man’s “waste and abuse” is always another person’s valuable investment.

There’s A Reason No POTUS Has Ever Attended The Super Bowl

It’s the same reason Trump is going: it costs the taxpayers a lot of money. 

Trump just knows he’s getting in for free, including travel costs to and from.

Yeah, About That…

(And Trump isn’t saying anything he didn’t say about any of his civil suits ir criminal cases in the past four years. Calm down.)

πŸ’Ό πŸ”¨πŸ”¨πŸ”¨

When John Tyler was president, he worked hard to get Congress to admit Texas to the Union: as another slavery state. Trump has no idea how to admit Canada to the Union, and furthermore has no idea what it would mean:
Velshi went on to explain that Canada has 41 million people, "so if Canada were to become America, some changes would be in order. First of all, Congress would have to grow." 
"But here's problem," He continued. "Number one, this little thing called the Reapportionment Act of 1929 mandates that the U.S. House is no bigger than 435 members. So, if you did the math combining Canada's population with America's and dividing it by 435, Canada would net 47 seats, and those seats would be taken away from states all over the country. Who's going to tell all of those voters that Trump gave their congressional representation to a guy in Saskatchewan?" 
Regarding the Senate, "Trump is only offering that Canada become one state with two senators," but since each Canadian province would insist on being its own state, Canada wouldn't be the 51st state. it would be states 51 through 60 at the very least" meaning a possible 20 new members of the Senate. And that, said Velshi, would make for "the largest reorientation of political power in America since women were given the right to vote in 1920." 
Velshi concluded, "Expansion from Canada to the 'Gulf of America' might be a fun idea for Trump, until our nice neighbors up north kick his party out of office and install a liberal supermajority. We haven't even talked about what that's going to do to the supreme court. Now, of course, in typical Canadian politeness, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said there's, quote, 'Not a snowball's chance in hell that Canada joins America,' but Canada, if I were you, maybe the chance to take over your noisy neighbor from inside isn't the worst idea in the world."
I know this is supposed to be another “brilliant” Trumpian distraction from things like this: But he has absolutely no idea what he’s doing, or what he’s talking about. That wasn’t a bill, it was an EO. He has no clue what a “trade deficit” is.
The most obvious benefit of a trade deficit is that it allows a country to consume more than it produces. In the short run, trade deficits can help nations to avoid shortages of goods and other economic problems. 
In some countries, trade deficits correct themselves over time. A trade deficit creates downward pressure on a country's currency under a floating exchange rate regime. With a cheaper domestic currency, imports become more expensive in the country with the trade deficit. Consumers react by reducing their consumption of imports and shifting toward domestically produced alternatives. Domestic currency depreciation also makes the country's exports less expensive and more competitive in foreign markets. 
Trade deficits can also occur because a country is a highly desirable destination for foreign investment. For example, the U.S. dollar's status as the world's reserve currency creates a strong demand for U.S. dollars. Foreigners must sell goods to Americans to obtain dollars. The stability of developed countries generally attracts capital, while less developed countries must worry about capital flight. 
Disadvantages of Trade Deficits 
Trade deficits can create substantial problems in the long run. The worst and most obvious problem is that trade deficits can facilitate a sort of economic colonization. If a country continually runs trade deficits, citizens of other countries acquire funds to buy up capital in that nation. . 
... 
While trade deficits are often viewed negatively, they can also have potential benefits for an economy. For example, a trade deficit may reflect strong domestic demand and economic growth, as well as access to a wider range of goods and services for consumers. Additionally, a trade deficit can be financed by foreign investment inflows, which can stimulate domestic investment and economic activity.
Trying to explain that to Trump would be like trying to pour a gallon of water into a thimble.

The man is dumber than a bag of hammers.

In A Former Life, Kristi Noem Was A Beauty Pageant Winner

If only she didn’t fit that stereotype so well. Her dead dog trusted her, too. (Also, what does a bunch of non-government employees with access to private information have to do with people not trusting government? Except to affirm we shouldn’t trust the people allowing that to happen?)

Things That Didn’t Happen For $1000

Mike Waltz, National Security Advisor:
I have a lot of experience about it on the ground, but in these first two weeks, we've had major foreign leaders. We have the Mexicans putting thousands of their troops on the border. The Canadians putting their assets on the border. Panama moving away from Belt and Road. Colombia first refusing to take deportation and then now taking it — and we can go on and on, with the successes of the hostages that the previous administration couldn't get out. President Trump says, 'There's all hell to pay,' and now we have, not only hostages from Hamas reuniting from their family, from Venezuela and from the Taliban, too. So, we've had an amazing two weeks. We can get into the details of foreign assistance, but it badly needs reformed."
Mexico and Canada agreed to do what they were already doing. 

Colombia objected to military aircraft flying to Colombia. No word on what Trump gave up to get their agreement in relocation of immigrants, but Trump is angry with Homan because he’s not moving more immigrants out than Biden did.

The Hamas hostage releases were negotiated by Biden over months. Trump had nothing to do with it, and is giving Hamas a gift by saying he’ll move the Palestinians out of Gaza. (Trump had probably been informed of the hostage release in November or December, and bellowed to make himself look big).

And yes, American foreign policy does badly need to be reformed. We’ll have to reform it in four years.

“Are There No Workhouses?”

"Let them eat cake.” πŸŽ‚ 

(Except Marie Antoinette didn’t say that. She wasn’t that cruel. Or stupid.)

Mere Anarchy Is Not Quite Loosed Upon The World

Trump is not the government. Elmo is not even a government employee. What Trump orders is carried out by government employees. Who can refuse to defy a court order. Trump may try to fire them, but that’s not an authority they have to recognize.

Which will set off a mess that won’t let Trump do what he wants to do. 

I’m not saying it’s the safeguard, the firewall, the check on Trump’s power grab; but it’s not as simple as Trump saying: “How many divisions does the court have?”

It won’t be less chaos, but it will be a purging of the chaos. At some point even Republicans realize government has to function. Government employees refusing to endanger personal information or SS checks or Medicare payments or any other benefit of government will be public heroes. 

The public already doesn’t like Elmo being government adjacent. And Trump likes Elmo in that position, taking the heat for him. Heat is something Trump definitely doesn’t like to take.

There’s a point where this goes too far, and that point will be ignoring court orders. Even Gov. Kefauver didn’t win national support for that. When Trump declares that he is the law, and he’s above the courts, that’s when he falls.

Did he withdraw the threats of tariffs he never imposed because he was too stupid to know Mexico and Canada were already doing what they agreed to do (or did they each tell him that, and he left that part out?), or did he fold like an empty suit because Big Business/Finance told him to cool it? 

Yes.

Just like he withdrew the China tariff on packages (🀷🏻‍♂️) because nobody wanted to pay the extra postage?

Trump said there would be pain. And there was, and he cut and ran. He’s a bully, which means he’s a coward. He can’t even rehire Marlo Elez (because Elez was never a government employee, and Trump doesn’t want him to be). He just says he wants it done. He doesn’t want to be responsible, doesn’t even want to defy the courts. (He hasn’t told Elmo to do so yet.) And he can’t make the rest of government do it for him. It would be the Saturday Night Massacre on a government-wide scale. Except with civil servants, who can’t be fired for refusing to do an unlawful act.

And even Trump knows that.

Not Good At Their Jobs

Thank you, Marco Rubio, for doing what was going to be done until Elmo and Trump stopped it? And started it again for the same reason Trump stopped all the tariffs he didn’t impose (and the one he apparently did)?

Dude, that’s pathetic. Almost as pathetic as this.
And the government has our tax returns; the information for our passports; our DL numbers; our bank account numbers. And they don’t abuse it. But PayPal fired Elmo, and he’s not a government employee. Actually a judge can tell a prosecutor how to use their discretion, by dismissing a case the judge decides should not have been prosecuted (i .e., “abuse of discretion”). And a military court can tell a general how to prosecute a war, by finding them in violation of the UCMJ.

Vance really isn’t very good at this.

Saturday, February 08, 2025

No Wonder Elmo Wants To Be In Government



His "trucks" burn, and can’t pass government crash tests:
A new analysis by independent automotive blog FuelArc suggests that fire fatalities are 17 times more likely in a Cybertruck than in the infamous Ford Pinto — the posterchild of deadly cars if ever there was one. 
The site arrives at that conclusion by comparing the total units sold so far — 34,438 for the Cybertruck, compared to 3,173,491 for the ill-fated Pinto, discontinued in 1980 — and comparing reported fire fatalities for both. 
At the current rate of horrible fiery deaths, FuelArc projects the Cybertruck will have 14.52 fatalities per 100,000 units — far eclipsing the Pinto's 0.85. (In absolute terms, FuelArc found, 27 Pinto drivers died in fires, while five Cybertruck drivers have suffered the same fate, at least so far.)  
Asked for comment, a FuelArc analyst had some advice for Cybertruck owners: "you should know where your emergency door releases are and how to operate them, and instruct your backseat passengers on the same." 
FuelArc caveats that the numbers are an estimate at best, because Tesla doesn't release its Cybertruck sales data to the public, lest it hurt its stock price. But that's not the only thing that hasn't been released.  
The Cybertruck — an almost 3 ton vehicle which is apparently allowed to drive itself — has never passed independent crash testing by the National Highway Traffic Safety Authority, and has refused to release its in-house safety testing data, which means other drivers and pedestrians are in the dark as to its safety.
The UK won’t let the things in, and the EU wants to ban them.

Meanwhile, in America, where “regulation” is a four-letter word…

(The car in the picture, by the way, caught fire because it ran over a fire hydrant and the water flooded the battery compartment, starting a fire that took 90 minutes to extinguish. Even Pintos never burned because water got in the engine compartment.))

The Dog That Didn’t Bark

He wasn’t fired. He quit. It gives the Administration a pass to keep repeating the false story. Elmo didn’t fire Elez. Elez’s racism didn’t bother Musk. Or Trump. Or Vance.

Elez quit. Which showed more character than Musk, or Trump, or Vance. Really damning with faint praise, isn’t it?

George Wallace Was More Subtle

I’m sure he’s happy “they” count 100% for apportionment.

He Will Do Nothing, And Declare Victory

While falsely crediting DOGE.

Like A Cineplex πŸ“½️

The single person on the planet with full access to that information doesn’t even have an informed opinion, and that’s all he wants. Nothing he does is criminal, but anything anyone does, or he thinks they do, is criminal.

There’s going to be some pain. Listening to that will certainly make your head hurt. Energy did it. And actually gas was $2.14 in 2016, and rose to $2.72 in 2018. It dropped to $2.17 during Covid. The last time gas was close to $1.84 was 2004.

“Groceries” is an “old-fashioned word” because he eats in his restaurants every night. Man o’ the people!

Friday, February 07, 2025

Jokers To The Right

 So Trump called a handful of GOP Representatives and the Speaker of the House to the White House, put them in a room, said "Work it out," and locked the door.  For five hours.

Forget what they talked about:  think about the guest list.  The Speaker of the House, one of four Constitutional offices in the federal government, third in line to the presidency, came at the beckoning of the POTUS.  Not to meet with the POTUS, but to be locked in a room like a rowdy child needing discipline.

The Speaker should have told the President, "Unlock this door, and let me out.  Or you'll never get any bill you want anywhere near the floor of the House.  I have work to do.  If you want to talk to me, you have my number.  In the meantime, I am the person in charge of one half of the legislative body down the street,  now open the door or suffer the consequences."

That, of course, didn't happen, because Mike Johnson is more spineless and worthless than Kevin McCarthy.

Reports are there was a lot of yelling and tension in the room.  Chip Roy says he was there, and everything was just fine.  Which only means everyone finally agreed (with their fingers crossed) to whatever Roy wanted, just so the doors would open and they could go to the bathroom.

What a fucking disgrace.  And they still have no idea how to avoid a government shutdown if they can't keep Roy and the Freedom Caucus on side.  Because the Democrats aren't going to help them anymore.  Which is wise counsel, indeed.

TIME Magazine Should Be Fired Immediately!

(Oldest playground taunt of all time. Trump is a superannuated adolescent.) The guy who wrecked Twitter? Whose rockets πŸš€ keep blowing up? (NASA solved that problem over 60 years ago). Whose cars explode into inextinguishable flame on impact? Whose self-driving mechanisms drive cars into objects? Who sat down with a Twitter engineer and nodded and said “I see” as the engineer showed Elmo code and fed him bullshit about it? Because he knew Elmo didn’t know a damned thing about coding? The guy who’s in this position because the only other prominent person on the planet who is stupider and more narcissistic is Trump?

BTW, there was a train fire yesterday and a plane crash in Alaska today. What the fuck are you doing on Hannity, Duffy?

Idiot.

My cellphone is smarter than Elon Musk.
😈
Tariffs were supposed to lower our taxes. We were also told “there would be pain,” but we’d be alright with that.

“Marshmallows are for team players.”*

*Yup . “Severance,” again.

πŸš‚

 As I’ve said before:

According to a report from Reese Gorman of NOTUS, members of the GOP caucus are being forced to deal with an onslaught of complaints from constituents about the president's moves or, as one congressional aide colorfully put it, hometown voters are "s------- Twinkies." 
As the report notes, Trump's "chaotic governing style" is causing members of his own party no small amount of grief, because they are not being provided with talking points or detailed explanations to quell constituent fears and complaints. 
"More than half a dozen GOP members and staffers told NOTUS that Trump’s sudden moves have yielded thousands of questions from distressed constituents, with congressional offices receiving an unusual influx of calls and emails in response to the president’s executive orders," Gorman reported before adding one GOP aide said of the Trump White House, "They need to get their s--- together.” 
The report notes that the president has shown little concern or compassion for his caucus when making controversial decisions such as setting even the most violent of the Jan. 6 free from jail to shuttering government departments with no notice. 
"A number of Republicans have expressed concern to the White House about the lack of communication, two sources told NOTUS," Gorman explained. 
According to one Republican who didn't want to identified in the piece, the Trump White House seems incapable of understanding “the breadth of what they are trying to do," before warning they are, "Burning up political goodwill at an alarming rate."
Trump’s never had a Board of Directors. The only oversight he’s ever had was his father trying to bailout his Atlantic City casino.

I’m not saying Congress is going to 25th amendment him, or even impeach him. But he’s hurtling toward a Democratic Congress in 2026, like a runaway freight train.

The More Pertinent Issue

Why is a “kid” rifling through government computers and reportedly rewriting the code he finds there?

As well as halting government actions, with no authority to do so?

“Release The Glasgow Block Now!”*

Write another EO! "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...."

The issue here is: what does Trump think “Christianity” is?  Other than people who support him?
And who does he think God is?  Him? Does he think he released the water in Northern California and it came down as rain over L.A.? I mean, of all the things that never happened, this never happened the most.

But who will say that?
"Christianity” is saying “Merry Christmas” and denying equality to non-white men.—The Trump Dictionary 

“May Kier’s mercy follow you into the eternal dark.”*


*Yeah, it’s a “Severance” reference. I’m trying to be on the cutting edge.

Sweeping The Nation

 By feeding Google lies:

As reports of arrests poured in last month, the immigration lawyer watched in shock. Social media and listservs filled with rumors of raids and local news programs showed Ice apprehensions in towns as small as Cartersville, Georgia, population 25,000. “There was a lot of noise online,” she said. “And it was creating terror in the community.” She said it was hard to separate fact from fiction, so she decided to create a nationwide map that aggregated all actual Ice arrests. 
At the end of her workdays, she would sit down and start Googling – typing in searches like “ice arrests Nebraska” and “recent ice arrests Arizona”. Then she would plug in other states. 
The lawyer noticed a strange pattern. In almost every state, at least one press release from Ice’s website appeared in Google’s top results. Nebraska, for example, surfaced links for two press releases. One said “ICE executes federal search warrants in Nebraska”, the other said “ICE fugitive operations team arrests 44 absconders”. Both displayed their dates of publication as 24 January 2025 on Google search. But when the lawyer clicked through to the report, the actual dates of publication were August 2018 and June 2008, respectively. 
“I’ve now done it in all 50 states … and I’ve done it in multiple cities. And it’s the same thing,” the lawyer said. “They all had the last update of 1/24/2025 and they were all popping up at the front of the algorithm.” 
 Maria Andrade, a longtime immigration lawyer in Idaho, says Ice arrests have been scant in the state so far. “We had one that didn’t result in detention,” she said. “I haven’t heard of mass arrests in any area at all.” 
Yet the first result for a Google search of “ice arrests Idaho” is a press release from Ice saying 22 people were arrested in an “enforcement surge”. The date of publication displayed in the search results is 24 January 2025, but the operation actually happened in July 2010. Andrade said that arresting 22 people would have been a large number for Idaho and that such incidents are extremely rare, given the minimal number of Ice agents, rural terrain and extreme weather. If so many people were arrested in one sweep in Idaho last month, she said, she would know about it. 
“If the objective is to scare people who look up raids in Idaho, that would be a good way to accomplish it,” Andrade said. “That would be a good way to mislead people.”
So, about those "dirt bags" Noem “rounded up.” Or school busses being boarded in Texas. Or detainees being sent to Gitmo. Any reason to believe any of that happened? We saw Noem in costume; we didn’t see any arrests. A school district sent out a letter saying it could happen, no doubt because ICE had contacted them. Trump’s lying press secretary said flights had started to Gitmo. Any reason to believe any of that happened? The lies aren’t just to scare people, after all.

Yes, the misleading information is coming from the government.
What was interesting, she said, was that Ice had marked all of these press releases as old. The agency displayed a message at the top of every page the Guardian reviewed noting it contained “archived content” that was “from a previous administration or is otherwise outdated”. 
But when the tech expert looked at the code of these online press releases, she saw a new element had been added – a time stamp. “Every article was updated on the 24th, which was causing the Google SEO to interpret that as a recently updated article, and therefore rank it higher,” she said. 
To exhaust all possibilities, the tech expert did the same test with several other government agencies. She crosschecked with the websites of the Department of Labor, Department of Defense, Department of the Interior and Department of Veterans Affairs and found no evidence of new time stamps. 
“[With Ice,] these are old articles that are now appearing at the top of the Google and Bing search results as recent headlines, where no other government agency is doing this,” she said. “As someone in tech, I would interpret that as an intentional play to get more clicks, essentially on these misleading headlines.”
Adding, for no real reason at all:
Wait. Have @doge and Elon just been pulling numbers from https://usaspending.gov ? 
Then releasing it as if they discovered it ? 
Brilliant if true. 
Absolutely brilliant. Fooled me. 
Very Trump like too. 
Any https://usaspending.gov experts out there that can tell us ?

Thursday, February 06, 2025

πŸ™‹πŸ»‍♂️

Why does anybody even listen to Trump? If he’d said his plane runs on a special fuel that comes from a foreign country that you can’t get here but it makes his plane more powerful than a locomotive and faster than a speeding bullet, it would be as nonsensical.

And you can’t hook satellites to land? So Starlink doesn’t work? Nor do the communication systems with the ISS and all American spacecraft since Mercury? Nor all the (now obsolete but once fully functional) satellite TV receivers? The satellites that provide telecommunications and GPS and weather data and surveillance information? 

Somebody give Grandpa a cup of cocoa and put him to bed.
But when you have 39 different companies working on hooking up different cities at different people. You need one company. With one set of equipment.
Which company does he want to give that contract to? And what kickback is he expecting?
And there are some countries that have unbelievable air controller systems. And they would've, bells would've gone off when that helicopter literally even hit the same height. Because it traveled a long distance before it hit. It was just like, just wouldn't stop. Follow the line. But bells and whistles would ve gone off. They have 'em where it actually could virtually turn the thing around. It would've just never happened if we had the right equipment.
Or maybe enough controllers in the tower to properly monitor all the equipment. Because Elmo can’t even design a self-parking car. He sure as shit ain’t coming up with an AI to replace air traffic controllers.
And one of things that's gonna be, l'm gonna speaking to John and to Mike and to Chuck and everybody, we have to get together and just as a single bill just pass where we get the best control system. When I land in my plane, privately, l use a system from another country because my captain tells me, I'm landing in New York and I'm using a sys— I won't tell you what country, but l use a system from another country because the captain says 'This thing is so bad, it's so obsolete! And we can't have that.

What’s obsolete is the capacity of the system, thanks to Reagan and the massive increase in air travel since he fired all the controllers. Or maybe it’s the fact that we went 16 years without an airplane crash, and within days after you fire head people and tell everybody “DEI” means “your job is gonna DIE!”, we have a major collision and a jet falls out of the sky?

At the very least, the buck stops on your desk, buddy. But you senselessly blame “DEI” and say the solution is “Infrastructure Week.” Which is something you talked about for 48 months last time, and never delivered. So excuse me if I don’t hold my breath waiting for “Infrastructure Week II: Electric Boogaloo.”

I mean, when you can’t tell the difference between The Onion and the news, you know times is bad.

It’s The Corps of Engineers

It’s what they do. C’mere, lemme tell you a story. 

In the 1930’s, the Corps of Engineers built a reservoir far to the west of Houston, for flood control. When full, it was designed to drain overland to Buffalo Bayou and from there to the Gulf.

After Harvey dumped acre-feet of water on Houston, the reservoir was full. But the area around the reservoir was no longer prairie, it was Houston. The reservoir was no longer west of town, it was in town. And the watercourse from the reservoir to the bayou ran through neighborhoods, as well as neighborhoods all along the bayou down to the Gulf.  Neighborhoods undreamt of in the ‘30’, but certainly known to all and sundry 80 years later.  But the Corps was monitoring the reservoir, had responsibility for the reservoir, cared only about the condition and capacity of the reservoir, and at 11 pm decided they had to open the gates of the reservoir. Without so much as a warning that floodwaters would be coming soon to a neighborhood known to you. 

Houses and neighborhoods untouched by the inundation of Harvey were drowned by the Corps. People who survived Harvey died in the flood caused by the Corps. And nobody higher up had to tell them to do that. They did it in their own.

So believe me when I tell you: it’s what the Corps does. They follow orders (or the plan), no matter what.

πŸ•³️ In The Ground

 I once had the displeasure of listening to a displaced Bostonian (a “Hah-vahd” man) on the radio talking to 2 similarly situated friends he’d invited on his local show, spending an hour disdaining Texas and the South, over the paucity of “true” culture and intellectual rigor (actually, of any intellect at all). They so perfectly fit the stereotype of Americans aping English class snobbery I’d have sworn it was a Beyond The Fringe sketch. Especially as I knew real Texans (i.e., not our politicians) are incredibly hospitable people, it burned to listen to these snobs mocking their hosts in Texas (not the transplant on the show, who clearly longed to return to “civilization) and presuming they were superior. 

I think I quit listening to Pacifica Radio after that.

There are two points in Randy Newman’s song “Rednecks.” And the second is that rednecks, the ignorant, clannish, inbred bigot, show up in all cultures and attitudes. Like snobs from Harvard, for example.

BTW, one of the nicest people I ever met was a Brooklyn Jew from Harvard Law. I sat with him as an usher at the Catholic wedding of a mutual friend, and did my Protestant best to explain to him, sotto voce, what was going on. The groom, also a Harvard Law graduate, was the mutual friend. Those three voices on the radio were the closest I’ve ever come to actual Harvard snobs. (I met a few intellectual snobs on the faculty at UT in grad school. It’s why I took my Master’s and left.)

In the South we “know” people “up North” look down on us as inbred peckerwoods with no culture and less couth, who don’t even know a dinner table can have more than one fork at the plate. But I’ve honestly never met such people. I spent two weeks in NYC, in two trips, and had a lovely time each trip. I even drove into and out of Brooklyn the second trip, in the days before GPS. (Yes, I consider that an accomplishment.) I don’t look it (well, maybe the cowboy boots), but I can certainly sound Texan. Or certainly not from north of the Mason-Dixon. Yet I’ve never personally been faced with regional snobbery.

And yes, in general, the nicest people I’ve met have been the poorest. Or at least in the working class. I met a lot of well-off people when my daughter was in private school (long story). When they found out I wasn’t in oil or a big law firm, they pretty much had no use for me. Not all of them, but many. (They also freaked because I was a pastor. I still had hopes of securing another church at the time. Something about clerics really freaks people out.) Of course, that may have been because we had little in common. Except I was the only college degreed worker on a construction site the summer I graduated, and I got along well with everybody there. Go figure.

So when Newman sings about “some smart-ass New York Jew,” it’s the persona of the narrator presuming (i.e., bigotry) that all New Yorkers on TV are…Jews. I grew up in a small East Texas town with a synagogue (and a Catholic Church, now a cathedral. These are still as rare as hen’s teeth in East Texas), even went to school with two Jewish girls. Their father was a prominent businessman whom my father knew; and their Judaism meant nothing to us. But still, when we thought of NYC, we thought of Jews. Stereotypes. Everybody’s got ‘em. When I was young and met people who found out I was a Texan, they inevitably thought I: a) rode a horse (I did, but not in town) and, b) probably lived near an oil derrick, if it wasn’t in my backyard (only they didn’t know what to call it).  Oh, and c), I wore a cowboy hat. 🀠 

Ironically, the kids in high school who wore boots and cowboy hats we called “rednecks.” They didn’t ride horses to school, either. They drove pickup trucks; with gun racks. Anyway…

When I got to seminary, a friend asked me if we had humidity in Texas, as St Louis (where we were) did. I only realized later he thought the “Texas” he’d seen in westerns was the real thing. Mostly that was the deserts of California. Again, anyway…

What makes me think of all this, and Randy Newman?

We got no-necked oilmen from Texas 
 Good ol' boys from Tennessee 
 College men from LSU 
 Went in dumb, come out dumb too 
 Hustlin' 'round Atlanta in their alligator shoes 
Gettin' drunk every weekend at the barbecues

For the life of me I can’t slip a piece of paper between the “college men from LSU” and those three examples from Hah-vahd. Not examples of the actual school, mind you. Examples of the stereotype; same thing Newman is using the song’s persona to talk about there. We do love stereotypes, after all. We all do.

MAGA is the particular target of the song, in contemporary application. Which just means the more things change, the more they don’t change. Besides, I’m old enough to remember when the “Best and the Brightest” got us neck deep in the Big Muddy, and the big fool said: “Move on.” The B&B, if you didn’t know, were from the Ivy League.

“We don’t know our ass from a hole in the ground.” Sometimes it seems like none of us do. 

Wednesday, February 05, 2025

Trump Isn’t Playing

David Remnick thinks Trump reads Machiavelli; or at least knows something about history:
More than five hundred years ago, Machiavelli, the philosopher of political practice and modern republicanism, suggested, in “Discourses on Livy,” that “at times it is a very wise thing to simulate madness.” Richard Nixon, according to his chief of staff H. R. Haldeman, apparently arrived at a similar conclusion, saying, “I call it the Madman Theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese to believe I’ve reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war. We’ll just slip the word to them that, ‘for God’s sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about communism. We can’t restrain him when he’s angry—and he has his hand on the nuclear button’—and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace.”
Just an aside: I’m too lazy to check the date on that quote, but it hardly matters. Haldeman was out by April, 1973. The Vietnam War (I’m still inclined to call it “the war”) ended in April, 1975. Kissinger was right: Nixon had a “meatball mind.”

Trump's intention is not strategic in any sense of the word. He craves attention, and thinks he’s most successful when he’s making a real estate deal (despite reality). That’s all. Otherwise, he makes Nixon look like Thomas Jefferson. Trump is not a student of history, or anything else. Trump is only a student of Trump.
Miller, of course, is aware that Trump’s intention, always, is to shock, to play the madman, and thus frighten his rivals and alter the terms of the debate. Maybe, just maybe, it will all dissipate, Miller suggested. Trump habitually says outrageous things, watches how they land, and, often enough, distances himself from his own provocations. (Will he seize Greenland? The Panama Canal? Make Canada the fifty-first state?) Perhaps Trump thinks he’ll be able to prop up Netanyahu at home and so deeply alarm other Middle Eastern leaders that he will be able to both muscle Iran into a deal that ends its nuclear ambitions and complete a broader regional settlement with Saudi coΓΆperation. Or perhaps Trump’s latest performance is of a piece with the strategy of “flooding the zone” with so much chaos and deceptive rhetoric, and with so many mind-altering proposals and appointments, that, while the establishment’s collective head explodes on an hourly basis, he achieves at least some of his fondest ambitions.
Trump is not playing. He is a madman, just not in the entertainment sense by which we judge such things, where by behavior and appearance and actions the character telegraphs a mental state we understand as “mad.” It’s a stereotype. In this, Trump is not a stereotype. But he is truly deranged.

He’s deeply delusional. Being a one man organization all his life, never answering to a board or partners, he lives in perpetual adolescence, seeing what he wants, grabbing it, breaking it, tossing it aside, and grabbing something else. He will “take “ Gaza. How? With what army? More to the point, with what authority? I still shudder at ads for charities for veterans which remind me they fought for our freedom.  In ‘Nam? In Iraq? Afghanistan? Grenada? Yeah, not since WWII, really. But Gaza? Why are we going to use our military to clean out Gaza? (Trump’s press flack says he didn’t say, that other countries will relocate Palestinians and do the work. 

That is just one question at least half of the Congress will ask. I’m pretty sure more than half of the country will, too.

I get that it’s comforting to think there must be a method in the madness; that Trump has some kind of strategy, however chaotic and unruly he may be. He is not, however, unpredictable. As Remnick notes, Jared Kushner has been pushing this idea for a year. But Remnick is loathe to connect the dots. As Orwell said, sometimes the hardest thing to do is to see what’s in front of your nose.
"Donald Trump just openly committed American arms, honor, and credibility to forcibly expel Gaza’s Palestinian population and redevelop the territory into a glittering tourist hub," wrote Wilson. "Yes, it sounds entirely unhinged, and it may torpedo any remaining hope of an enduring Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. It also hands every Islamist militant group an airtight propaganda victory: proof, in their eyes, that the United States is indeed the 'Great Satan.' It’s sounds insane because it is. It sounds manic because it is. It sounds deranged because it is." 
Yet the press is approaching this idea the wrong way, Wilson continued — their reaction "stems from the persistent, and persistently wrong, assumption that Trump acts with coherent intent, good counsel, sound judgment, and the nation’s interests at heart. In reality, he is a figure of chaos, a 'last-person-heard' president who leaps from one manic idea to the next." After all, he ran for office on the premise of non-intervention and resolving global military conflicts peacefully, not more American adventurism.
Do tell.
One of the most telling reactions to Trump's Gaza proposal, said Wilson, came from his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, a longtime GOP strategist with a reputation for whipping those around her into ruthless discipline; she looked on at Trump, her eyes bulging and her expression astonished. 
"The widely photographed look on Susie Wiles’s face spoke volumes: even insiders realize nothing and no one controls Trump. He is a man who is, by all appearances, is both mentally unstable and cognitively unable to process reality beyond his own mental architecture," wrote Wilson. "The damage is mounting, and even red-state leaders are slowly waking up to the danger of entrusting government after government function to the most extreme and least capable loyalists."
She speaks for all sentient beings there.