Friday, May 23, 2025

Leopards Eating Cellphones Party

"The leopards weren’t supposed to eat my face!,” cries the faceless guy who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party candidate.
“All the dairy farmers who voted for Trump were under the impression they weren’t going to come on farms and take our guys,” one farmer said. “It’s happening more than we’d like. It’s scaring the farming community and we’re like, ‘This wasn’t supposed to happen.’”
And nobody could have foreseen:
Federal immigration authorities say they are not targeting Vermont’s $3.6 billion dairy industry, which is responsible for 63 percent of the milk produced in New England," the report said. "But the recent arrests are prompting some in the sector to wonder how it would survive without its undocumented labor force."

The report quoted Vermont's Secretary of Agriculture as saying, "I think our farmers are concerned about the well-being of their workers. That’s foremost. They’re also concerned if (the workforce) was to go away, who’s going to do the work? Who’s going to milk the cows?”
Besides, the price of “groceries” is going down, isn’t it? Well, until it goes up again.

And since I can’t let it go:
And no market for those cellphones, because the price will be so high no one will buy them.

I really expect Apple will sue over this “tariff.” Even at 25%, it’s cheaper than setting up a plant in America (years; damned things aren’t built by “automation”). By that time, Trump is gone (if Congress doesn’t rain on his tariff parade starting in ‘27). Apple can easily outlast him.  And eat some of the 25%, if they have to.

But there’s a very real question whether Trump has this authority; and whether Congress can even give it to him. It that theory cracks the door open (at least 3 lawsuits are trying to), expect Apple, and many others, to consider putting their shoulders to it.
Grok: "It is not feasible for U.S. Steel to add 70,000 jobs in 2025. A more realistic scenario, if the Nippon deal proceeds or tariffs boost demand, might see a few thousand direct jobs created over several years, supplemented by indirect jobs in related sectors. The steel industry’s structural shift toward automation, combined with labor shortages and modest demand growth, makes a workforce expansion of this magnitude implausible in the near term."
It’s not that AI is per se right, but that Trump is just such a fucking idiot. And so fucking delusional. Two conditions that often appear alike.
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Send Her To China

"…then they came for the white people…”
Belgium’s Royal Palace said Friday that Princess Elisabeth, who is first in line to the throne, is waiting to find out whether she can return to Harvard for her second year after U.S. President Donald Trump announced a ban on foreign students at the university.

The Trump administration on Thursday revoked Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students in its escalating battle with the Ivy League school, saying thousands of students must transfer to other schools or leave the country.

“We are looking into the situation, to see what kind of impact this decision might have on the princess, or not. It’s too early to say right now,” said the palace’s communications head, Xavier Baert.

Baert said that Princess Elisabeth, aged 23, has completed her first year of a graduate school program at Harvard and would spend the summer back in Belgium. “And we’ll have to see what happens next year,” he said.

The princess is the first of four children born to King Philippe and Queen Mathilde, and has been studying for a Master in Public Policy. Last year, she obtained a degree in history and politics at Lincoln College at Oxford in the U.K.
It’s not like we need good relations with the future queen of Belgium, after all. Even if she is white. She ain’t American.
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Who Will Rid Us Of This Meddlesome Toddler?*

*In accordance with the law and Constitution, of course. It all depends on how Trump feels that day. Moment. (And there’s nothing he can do to make “the country “ eat it. But that’s not dementia or sheer idiocy because…Joe Biden didn’t tell us he had cancer. Until he did. Oh, and a bad debate performance. It only takes one. Although Trump has had several…)

But Biden used an autopen. At some point in 4 years. Jake Tapper will not consider that dementia until at least 2029. It’s important we time these things carefully.

In the meantime, let us ask where the fuck Congress is.
Or that. It’s a string of sentences; but taken together, or each separately, it’s complete gibberish. If my father had ever talked this way, I’d have sought (and gotten) a conservatorship in a very short order.

Where the fuck is Congress?
Except there is no spoon deal. And now my head hurts. Knows not, and knows not that he knows not. In perpetuity. Congress knows better than this. Or they have staff who can explain it to them. Committees which can hold hearings and get information about this. As paranoid as Pete Hegseth, and just as dumb.

Where the fuck is Congress?
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I’ma Take These Three Comments…

...from here:
The irony is rich that part of DHS' demands includes ensuring "viewpoint diversity"...
--NTodd
The xenophobia of this administration is already starting to harm colleges. Yesterday I saw an article how Union College, a small liberal arts college in upstate NY failed to meet its goal for students attending next autumn. The shortfall was mostly foreign students scared off by Trump. The college is going to have to dip into its endowment to cover the costs that previously would have been bourn by foreign students paying full tuition. Next year for most colleges will be worse, the number of graduating seniors will be substantially less than this year, it will be 18 years from the 2008 recession, a consequence of the downturn being a drop in the birthrate. Unlike previous recessions, the birthrate never recovered when the economy improved. The drop is students is particularly difficult, because the families that stopped having children where most often those in the middle class that send their kids to school. The double whammy of less foreign and less US students will likely drive a number of smaller, regional, liberal arts colleges under. Harvard and Yale have massive endowments and sufficient prestige that they won't lack for students and money, but outside of that thin layer of wealthy and competitive schools, the loss of students is going to very difficult in the long term (and surprisingly short term too.)
--rustypickup 
It is no end of wild to realize these people, offered the choice of sharing a comfortable couch, would take the dunghill so long as they had it to themselves. Human nature can be a really twisted thing.
--jim, some guy in Iowa 

And let this be the extended context:
Somebody’s feeling their oats, who really shouldn’t be. I won’t say it’s a price we pay. The same idiots and sentiments were loudly expressed during the Vietnam War. They had to be reminded what a touchstone the 1st Amendment is for this country. It was not a fun time.

I really thought we’d left “America, Love It Or Leave It,” in the’70’s.

I should have known better.
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Non-Americans Go Home!

American education for Americans, taught the American Way!
Noem is the numbskull who thinks habeas corpus is a legal principle that permits Trump to deport foreigners. The order was predicated on the pre-textual claim that Harvard is fostering antisemitism, when in fact the antisemite in chief, Donald Trump, invited the two leading antisemites in the U.S., Nick Fuentes and Kayne West, to have dinner with him last year at Mar-a-Lago.

As evidenced by all the surrounding circumstances, including most notably the Trump administration’s letter to Harvard on April 11, 2025, Noem’s order is a blatant authoritarian effort to take control of Harvard. The April 11th letter demonstrates the Trump administration’s goal to dictate who can be admitted, what courses can be taught, what professors they can hire and who should be disciplined for exercising their First Amendment right to free speech under the Constitution.

Today, Harvard sued Trump to nullify Noem’s order. The lawsuit correctly alleges that Noem’s order is “clear retaliation for Harvard exercising its First Amendment rights to control Harvard’s governance, curriculum and the ‘ideology’ of its faculty and students.” Harvard will likely move for a temporary restraining order (TRO) to stop the enforcement of Noem’s illegal order. 

This motion will start the process to remove Noem’s order permanently. After the TRO, Harvard will ultimately move for a permanent injunction. The process will be similar to the one the law firm Perkins Coie pursued in permanently reversing Trump’s unconstitutional executive order against the law firm.

But for the Supreme Court’s opinion last year granting Trump presidential immunity for “official acts,” Trump’s and Noem’s actions would violate federal criminal law for defrauding the government. By basing their order on an official order from Homeland Security, their actions constitute immunized “official acts.” Since the Supreme Court ruled that a prosector cannot get behind the true motive and intent of the “official act,” even if it evinces a criminal purpose, there is no way the criminal law can hold accountable Trump and Noem.

Regardless of court intervention, the damage created by Trump’s actions will have a negative impact on the ability of Harvard and other American universities to attract the best and brightest. This move, along with the Trump administration’s massive cuts on research, will create a significant brain drain that will only benefit our foreign adversaries. Already, a major Chinese University, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, is offering to enroll the international students who cannot stay at Harvard. Bottom line, this will only serve to make China great again. MCGA.

Educating international students is critical for developing U.S. soft power that educates the best and the brightest from overseas, many of whom return to their counties and assume leadership positions. Rather than being exposed to American democracy, they will instead be indoctrinated with Chinese authoritarianism.
American authoritarianism for American students!

"Revoking Harvard’s certification is unlawful many times over," the judge wrote in her order. "It is a pillar of our constitutional system that the government cannot 'invok[e] legal sanctions and other means of coercion' to police private speech, especially when the government’s treatment is animated by viewpoint discrimination. The government’s effort to punish the University for its refusal to surrender its academic independence and for its perceived viewpoint is a patent violation of the First Amendment."
The Administration still thinks this is their winning propaganda point:
"If only Harvard cared this much about ending the scourge of anti-American, anti-Semitic, pro-terrorist agitators on their campus they wouldn't be in this situation to begin with," Jackson said. "Harvard should spend their time and resources on creating a safe campus environment instead of filing frivolous lawsuits."
I suspect most Americans are still worried about the price of eggs; and gas; and rising costs at Walmart.
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First World Problems

 The New Yorker has just published a long article on the Israeli embassy staff members senselessly murdered on the streets of D.C. The subheading to the article is:

Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky were killed without regard for who they were, or what they believed.


The same can be said of the anonymous 10 year old boy who went out to get bread for his family in Gaza, and died because of an Israeli bomb. Except we don’t know his name, or what he believed. And we probably never will.

War is hell. Collateral damage. So many died. Murder is different.

Round up the usual excuses.
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“Who Is My Neighbor?”

 


Luke tells us the man who asked that question was “seeking to justify himself.”
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Thursday, May 22, 2025

“Don’t Trust Anyone Over 30!”

 MAGA logic:

Young House Democrats demanded what Axios called an "age reckoning" on Thursday after a third Democrat died while in office, with some remarking that President Donald Trump's "Big, Beautiful Bill" passed through the chamber this week, and the "difference is the number of members who passed away."

Rep. Sylvester Turner (D-TX), 70, Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ), 77, and Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA), 75, all died since March, the latest being Connolly, who died Wednesday and was the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee. Eight Democrats have died since November 2022, according to Axios.
Grijalva and Connolly both died of cancer within a year after starting treatment. Turner was treated for cancer in 2022, but was working until the day before he died.

So, by the logic of the “young House Democrats,” we should bar all former cancer patients from running for Congress. We can’t do that by law, so let’s do it by party pressure! State by state, district by district! It’s genius! What could go wrong? Candidates have to submit an extensive medical history before they can be placed on the primary ballot. Win-win!

We can’t do it by age because old people die anyway! We have to be reasonable, and do it by medical history! And then by age! People with “bad” medical histories can be allowed to be on the Democratic ballot until they are 70, and then they are banned because they’ve already lived too long! We could move on to ban people on prescription drugs for chronic conditions (they might die!) and people who wear glasses (weakness!). We can’t just project strength, we have to prove strength! It’s the only way to avoid electoral inconvenience and the anxiety of losing a close vote!

We gotta make democracy safe for the world and more comfortable for young people! Never trust anyone over 30!
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“This is the start and not the beginning.”

That’ll last about as long as it takes Harvard to request a TRO. And that’s another reason why Harvard will likely win a TRO. Too bad, then, that questions of law are not settled by plebiscite.

Meanwhile, the fish continues to rot from the head:
We should all eat more Big Macs? Says the guy who thinks information on the internet is more reliable than actual intelligence data. I’ve been on prescription drugs for nearly 50 years. Without them I’d probably have died years ago. I know many people on prescription drugs for chronic conditions, not all of them “old people,” either. We’re all doing better because of those drugs. What is this idiot on about? Before these drugs people died you, 65 was “old” and few people lived that long. Quality of life was measurably worse. What’s next? Too many people wear glasses?

The heart of this is just fucking eugenics. “Healthy” people deserve life, “unhealthy” people who need “prescription drugs” need to die and decrease the surplus population.
Trump: "The drug companies are very worried that they're gonna fight. And that's ok. If they fight, we'll just say, 'That's ok, we're just not gonna let you sell any more cars into the US or we're not gonna let you sell any more wine or liquor or alcohol or something that's actually way more important to them than the drugs."
What the honest fuck is he talking about? Explains so much. 

And now: closing thoughts.

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With All Due Respect: Don’t Fuck With Old People

What I was talking about earlier, but this time with a large dose of “Fuck you very much.”

This passed 215-214. We're going to lose our healthcare because 3 senior Dems have died this year. We lost Roe because Ginsburg didn't retire. We lost the election because Joe ran for reelection.

Our country is being destroyed because geriatric Dems can't retire and let go of power.
Sheila Jackson Lee died in July, 2024. Arguably she shouldn’t have run again because of her health. But she was 74 when she died.  And it didn’t impinge on the current situation.

No special election was called (blame Abbott) , and Sylvester Turner won her seat in November, and was sworn into office in January, 2025.

Turner had announced a bone cancer diagnosis in 2022. He was treated then. On March 4, 2025, he fell ill, and died the next day. He was 70.

Not young, I will grant you. But hardly with one wheelchair wheel in the grave. He hasn’t been replaced because Greg Abbott again refused to call a special election for the very reason we are now (well, some of us) whinging about (that a Democrat would win the seat is a certainty).

The funny thing is the ignorance professed here, based on the laughable idea the vote yesterday means it’s all over but the crying. First, remember all those government shutdowns, and risks of government shutdowns? Going back years? Decades, even? That’s because the federal government has been running on continuing resolutions, rather than a fully authorized budget, for that long. Occasionally a budget is actually authorized; more often it’s just CR’s to keep everything open. And that’s because Congress hasn’t been able to agree on a budget for those years. CR’s, sometimes good for a year, sometimes for only a few months, keep kicking the can down the road. That’s why the debt ceiling has to be periodically raised. No damn budget authorizing expenditures. Just CR’s that expire, or provide funding insufficient to need. So the idea the budget has now “passed” because of a single House vote is ignorant, indeed. The Senate has to weigh in, and they aren’t as enthusiastic about this bill as the MAGA House is.

Rinse. Repeat. Shit, we’ve been doing it this way for so long we all think it’s normal!

As for illness: news flash! People get sick! And die! Some before they are “geriatrics”! Some after! Trump is 79, but he’s not dead yet!  SO GET THE FUCK OVER IT!

Or at least know what the hell you’re talking about.
I don't care if this is ageist. 70+ year old should not be running congress or the presidency. There should be a mandatory retirement age because older generations should not be allowed to have a death grip on power like this.
It is ageist. And remarkably stupid. As a nearly septuagenarian myself, I say again: “Fuck you very much.” And don’t fuck with old people. We didn’t get this far by being stupid.

And shit, the incumbent or his stand-in was gonna lose that election anyway. That Trump (!) won is proof of that.
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In Trump’s America 🇺🇸

 When did Peter Baker become woke?

The Oval Office dressing down of South Africa's president became a stark demonstration of Trump’s belief that the world has aligned against white people, and that Black people and minorities have received preferential treatment.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/21/us/politics/trump-ramaphosa-south-africa-visit.html
David Frum bemoans due process:
The original sin was failing to send Donald Trump to prison for the rest of his life for mounting a violent coup to overthrow the election of 2020.
Aside from the fact he still could have won the election, and then? Probably released from prison for four years, free to wander the world and do what he’s doing right now. As we know, there’s nothing to keep a convicted felon from being President.
So what does it mean that Elmo was in the Oval Office with the President of South Africa? And Trump made it clear his concerns about Afrikaaners are Elmo’s concerns? And government agencies are still pressuring nations (like South Africa) to contract with Starlink?

Watch the donut, not the hole.
My daughter had pink hair (briefly) in college (art school. I think it was a requirement.). Would that be enough to make her suspicious? And when did we start going after white people? Does this mean Niemoller was right? Yamiche Alcindor is going to lose her access to the White House.
The president showed a video that he said showed more than a thousand burial sites of white South Africans, and he said they were murdered," Alcindor told Leavitt at Thursday's press briefing. "We know that that was not true and that the video wasn't doing that."

"So I wonder, why did the president choose to show that? It's not true the video was showing a burial site," the correspondent continued. "It is unsubstantiated that that's the case."

"No, it's true that that video showed the crosses that represent what the president claimed!" Leavitt exclaimed. "The video showed images of crosses in South Africa about white farmers who have been killed and politically persecuted because of the color of their skin."

"What protocols are in place when there's unsubstantiated information being put out for the world and world leaders to show?" Alcindor pressed.

"What's unsubstantiated about the video?" Leavitt griped. "And that's a ridiculous line of questioning."
You can almost see the smoke coming out of the Leavitt bot.🤖  Oddly, Trump didn’t know. Pretty sure that’s what Yamiche Alcindor was referring to. The violence in Trump’s imagination? Also, pretty clear this is not going entirely Trump’s way. I know I feel better.
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Circumstances Are All

Of course, Johnson claims he actually had two more votes, because one GOP representative was just too late, and a second fell asleep and missed it, too.

At least Jeffries isn’t claiming he had the majority but for two dead people.

Although you can legitimately blame Greg Abbott for refusing to set a special election to replace Sylvester Turner until Nov. 4.

I wonder what a tie would have done under House rules…?
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The More They Remain The Same

When I was a kid (this was probably 60 years ago), my family was with my mother’s sister’s family at a pizza place, if I recall. Out of town, on vacation, some place none of us had ever been. And like a kid proud of my independence, I left the table in search of a restroom.

I knew how to read the signs (obviously), but this one confused me. Still, it was unoccupied, which is what mattered, so I used the facilities and returned to the table. Where I asked my father what it meant, and upon my recital he burst into laughter, and then explained the terms I had not, at that ripe and tender age, yet learned.

It was, as I say, a mom ‘n’ pop place, and the sign on the door of the single restroom in the building was handwritten. It read:

Co-ed head
Enter At Your Own Risk 

I would guess this was before Nancy Mace’s parents had even met. How we got this far without her guidance is truly a mystery.
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“I and the school children know…”

"...what everyone must learn..."
WRC TV - Two Israeli Embassy staff shot and killed in front of the Capital Jewish Museum in DC. The suspect shouted 'Free Palestine' while being arrested, according to law enforcement sources.

https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/police-investigate-shooting-in-downtown-dc/3919196/
"…those to whom violence is done/do violence in return.”
A 10-year-old was hoping to fetch bread from his aunt in Gaza when an Israeli bomb killed him, his family said.

Just a few hours earlier, Israel had announced it would begin letting some aid into Gaza after a blockade of nearly three months.
Rinse, repeat.
I read recently that most historians believe that the Reichstag fire — long used as the ur-example of a false flag justifying Nazi totalitarianism — was probably just set by a dude acting alone and not at the behest of Nazis. That it was a violent act that served as useful idiocy.
But never think it’s a closed system.
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“I Am Sorry I Don’t Have A Plane To Give You”

Donald Trump has access to the best intelligence information in the world. You’d never know it.

US President Donald Trump brandished a stack of printed articles at the White House Wednesday that he claimed documented a genocide taking place against white people in South Africa.

Mixed into the deck of papers he unveiled before South African leader Cyril Ramaphosa, however, was a months-old blog post featuring a photo from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
What’s better there? The fact no one in the Administration vetted that picture to determine its provenance? Or the fact that picture is from a blog post?

Well researched information, eh?
"Death of people, death, death, death, horrible death, death," Trump said as he flipped through the headlines, which he said were published in "the last few days."

"These are all people that recently got killed."
Yeah, the date of that photograph (at least a month old), matters as much as the fact it isn’t even an event in the right country.
At the bilateral meeting in the Oval Office on Wednesday, the US president held up a February article about tribalism in Africa from a little-known website called "American Thinker."
Another stellar source.
It featured a blown-up image showing Red Cross workers in protective gear handling body bags.

"Look, here's burial sites all over the place," said Trump. "These are all white farmers that are being buried."

But the image is a screengrab from a February YouTube video of Red Cross workers responding after women were raped and burned alive during a mass jailbreak in the Congolese city of Goma, according to its caption.
Reading comprehension is not his strong suit. Good to know, eh? (But not really a surprise, either.)
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Wednesday, May 21, 2025

Castles In The Air

DOD has accepted the Qatari jet, but there’s nothing in that which contradicts anything I’ve read about it:

“The secretary of defense has accepted a Boeing 747 from Qatar in accordance with all federal rules and regulations,” the chief Pentagon spokesman, Sean Parnell, said in a statement. “The Department of Defense will work to ensure proper security measures and functional-mission requirements are considered for an aircraft used to transport the president of the United States.”

The plane, which industry executives estimated is worth about $200 million, will require extensive work before it can be considered secure enough to carry Mr. Trump, Pentagon officials have acknowledged in recent days.

“Any civilian aircraft will take significant modifications to do so,” Troy Meink, the Air Force secretary, said on Tuesday during Senate testimony. “Based on the secretary’s direction, we are postured and we’re off looking at that right now, what it’s going to take for that particular aircraft.”
Interestingly, it’s been in San Antonio (several bases there) undergoing maintenance. Which would conform with reports it needs heavy maintenance before it’s airworthy. And there’s the fact no one wants 747’s anymore, because, as we knew, they’re gas guzzlers (4 engines bad, 2 engines better).
The plan has drawn concern from members of Congress, who worry that Mr. Trump will pressure the Air Force to do the work so fast that sufficient security measures are not built into the plane, such as missile defense systems or even systems to protect the plane from the electromagnetic effects of a nuclear blast.

“If President Trump insists on converting this plane to a hardened Air Force One before 2029, I worry about the pressures you may be under to cut corners on operational security,” Senator Tammy Duckworth, Democrat of Illinois, said as Mr. Meink was testifying.

The Pentagon has not given an estimate of when the work on the Qatari plane might be done, even though Mr. Trump and the White House have made clear the president wants it soon, perhaps even by the end of the year.

“We will make sure that we do what’s necessary to ensure security of the aircraft,” Mr. Meink said at the Senate hearing. “I will be quite clear and discuss that with the secretary up to the president if necessary if we feel there’s any threats that we are unable to address.”
Trump wants his big, fancy plane now. He probably imagines it will still be a “flying palace,” too.  This matter is going to require Congressional oversight.
The new plane will be the third being retrofitted for use as Air Force One, replacing two planes that have been in use for 35 years and have had maintenance problems.

But maintaining the staff and equipment for three planes is extraordinarily expensive, an estimated $135 million a year for each plane, according to the Pentagon. And it could cost $1 billion or more to retrofit the Qatari plane to get it ready for use as Air Force One, a process that former Air Force officials said could take longer than finishing the job Boeing is already doing to deliver the replacements for the current two planes.

The first of the Boeing planes is scheduled to be delivered in 2027, Air Force officials recently said.

It remains unclear where the money will come from to retrofit the Qatari plane or to maintain and operate it, once it is completed. Congress typically reviews and approves spending on any new major Pentagon programs. But Mr. Trump has already shown a willingness to spend federal dollars as his administration wants, often without consulting Congress.
I suspect the bureaucracy in the Pentagon knows how NOT to lose money from their programs by, say, communicating with Congress.  $1 billion is lot to reallocate. There’s gonna be pushback, like: “Sorry. Tell the POTUS we can’t get enough qualified people to work on 3 planes at once. We could end up not getting any of the three ready. So we have Boeing concentrating on their contract. There aren’t enough people in the world to work on a third.”

And there’s still Congressional oversight:
The Senate majority leader, John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, said this month that Congress would be asking questions about any possible use of the Qatari plane as Air Force One.
After Trump’s big, beautiful bill, Yeah, that one, the walking horror currently stalking the halls of Congress; after that thing fails (they don’t call Medicare and Social Security the “third rail” for nothing), there won’t be much stomach for all the expenses of a third AF1.
Marc J. Foulkrod, the chief executive officer of Avjet Global Sales, which tried to help Qatar sell the plane, said the United States would be better off working with Boeing to accelerate its work on the $3.9 billion contract to deliver the two 747 jets it has already been working on for five years.

“I’ve done completions on big airplanes, and there’s always ways to accelerate the program,” Mr. Foulkrod said in an interview. “That’s a better dollar value than trying to take an airplane from somebody else.”
On at least one level, the Qatari royal family just wanted to get this albatross off their necks. And there’s a certain pleasure in thinking Trump will never get any use of it, whether Congress funds its renovation or not. We really can’t allow the POTUS to fly in just any plane. ✈️ 

Trump may stomp his feet; but the midterms could change everything, and ground his dreams of riding in, or keeping, a flying palace.
I mean, really.
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All News Is Gossip

QED.

I know that should be the conclusion to a line of reasoning; but I have my reasons. 

When Clooney noted that Biden is old (Biden is. No shame or blame in it. I’m not as old as Biden and I know I’ve lost a step. Some of that comes from being retired (you’ll see), and it’s not a bad thing, because Lorry Nose I was tired of doing the jobs I was doing.), it was news because…no one "sympathetic" to Biden had actually said so. And to be fair, now, I don’t think what Clooney said made a real difference. It became part of the conversation after Biden’s debate performance. But I really don’t think even the debate cost Biden the election. ("Do I contradict myself?/Very well, then, I contradict myself./I am vast, I contain multitudes.")  Debates never do, I’m convinced, especially after the lame ass campaign Trump ran (playing music at a rally for an hour? Rambling nonsensically and proving he didn't understand the first thing about the problems facing the country?) and his fraud and criminal convictions meant nothing to anybody (remember when that was going to stop him?), people just pretty much voted on “What the hell? Can’t be any worse…” And turned out the incumbent.

But the Clooney remark let the gossip flow. After all, criticism of Trump U.S. old news. It’s TDS, it’s baked into the pie, it honestly has no effect anymore. Jake Tapper isn’t readying his book on Trump’s “hidden” dementia. There’s no there, there. Old news. Dog bites man. Gossip needs something new to chew on. Somebody actually saying: “You know, Joe Biden’s not as young as he used to be,” is something new to chew on.

Part of the problem here is age. It’s a problem I saw with the churches, and now the churches are dying because the old people wouldn’t let the young people in. The two churches I pastored wouldn’t let me in. Most of the members were old enough to be my parents, and I was in my 40’s. My father was the same age when I was a child, and so were most of the people in our church, including the pastors. Even then the younger ones didn’t fare as well as the older ones did. When I returned, this time as a pastor offering to help them adapt and change, they didn’t want to much more than they did in my childhood. They wanted things to be like they were 40 years ago.

Not unlike, I have to say, Trump does today. 

And so their churches died, because the old people refused to let go or get out of the way. And, of course, they were that old and “in the way” simply because they were living longer. 

My parents left the town they grew up in and moved to a different one. The church they went to was mostly people their age. The few elderly were happy to let those young people do things “their way.” But they were a distinct minority. Most people didn’t make it to 70. My grandfathers were “old.” I am not perceived, by society or myself, as being nearly as old as they were then. By the time they were my age now, they were dead. My father outlived his parents and siblings by decades. He died shortly after his 90th birthday. He died of brain cancer, which was only diagnosed shortly before he died, though in retrospect it was clear the tumor had been there for years. Funny how often that happens.

But we dare not insult Trump by questioning his age or attributing any infirmity to it.  Or we just all know Trump is demented and delusional suffering serious physical and mental decline, and that's not "news" because the voters elected him anyway.  The same way they elected a convicted rapist and felon and fraud and the guy who bragged about grabbing women "by the pussy!".  You know, after all that, what difference does it make?

And then it's just a matter who who's winning the latest media-proclaimed horse race.  Well, that, and Jake Tapper's new book.

We need to have a conversation about the elderly.  Not so we can put them on ice floes (I think that's an urban legend, anyway), but so we can deal with the fact we have an aging population who needs to be cared for, but who also doesn't need to be in charge when there are clear signs of insufficiency.  Of course, that assumes we agree on what those "clear signs" are, but we have to start talking about it.  We are already dividing on political/regional lines (I really think that's just the consensus forged by Pearl Harbor and full mobilization for a war in two theaters is over and we're settling back to status quo ante), but we are also dividing along age lines.  Old people, who used to be a numerical minority anyway, were seldom as vital as they are now.  The change is good, but we aren't facing it squarely and deciding how to manage it.  I don't want to be shunted aside or mothballed because I'm entering my seventh decade; but neither do I think a "cognitive test" which only shows you can remember a few words is a satisfactory test of leadership.  Age does bring infirmities that can't be overcome with exercise and diet and regular checkups.

But neither is age alone (as once it was) grounds for dismissal.  We just need to learn how, as a society, as a country who elects its government officials, we are going to make better decisions and better assessments about the effects of age.

Because this is not a problem that's going away.
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I Was Joking...

 ...about Musk and Trump ganging up on the President of South Africa.  But the motherfucker did it:

The Art of the Diplomacy Deal Is there a video Trump could watch? Idiot-In-Chief. Get him to explain what "apartheid" was, and who whatever he's talking about is the opposite of that.  

In the meantimre, I'll take "Things That Haven't Happened" for $1000, Alex. Trump believes in videos, not government reports. And, of course, in "white genocide." Also, too, as well:

[Daniel] Dale [on CNN*] jumped in, explaining, "The last nine months of 2024 in South Africa: 19,696 murders. How many of them occurred on farms? 36."

"36 about 0.2 percent," he re-emphasized. "That includes employees like security staff, farm workers. How many of them were actual farmers? Seven out of more than 19,000 and it's not even clear that those are all white farmers. Contrary to what the president said, many farmers in South Africa are Black."

"Even the white ones who have been victims of crime, it's not clear, have been targeted for racial reasons," he elaborated. "Experts and white farmers themselves in South Africa have repeatedly told media outlets and think tanks that they feel they are often targeted for robbery and even attacks because they are geographically isolated and therefore vulnerable."
Rather ordinary rural crime, IOW. Too stupid to realize Ramaphosa just pantsed him on the world stage.


A picture is worth 1000 more words.  First, the Oval Office now looks like a movie set for a New Orleans whorehouse.  Second, what the hell is that model of a plane doing there?  It's gonna take more than the waters of two rivers to clean this pile of shit out.

*No word on whether Dale also worked in a reference to Jake Tapper's new book.  I think management is requiring everyone on air on CNN to do so at least every 10 minutes.
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Why The Courts Matter

Because this guy has no fucking clue what he's talking about: 

Kiley: Do you believe that someone who has entered the US illegally— that the due process requirements for that individual are the same as for a US citizen?

Crockett: Per the constitution, if you are on our soil, you are guaranteed due process. The fact that there is even a question is why we are struggling right now…

Kiley: That is simply untrue. The Supreme Court has made it very clear that due process is a context dependent inquiry 

Crockett: There was never a distinction that said somehow dependent on your status you somehow lose your access to due process. That is the only thing the Supreme Court has been consistent on..

Kiley: Due process is not just something that is the same in every context

Jayapal: I would like to submit for the record the constitution of the US…
But Stephen Miller thinks the Supreme Court ruled the exact opposite way that they did, so...you lose.  Kiley's run rings around you logically!
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Who You Gonna Believe?

And Elon Musk will be there. Maybe playing the role of JD Vance as Ramaphosa is treated like Zelensky?

Nah, probably not. South Africa wants to make a Starlink deal. I’m guessing as a way to grease the skids with the U.S. *


Or, you know: not.
You'll notice that each of the major dailies has now run a "Musk is pulling back" ... "Musk won't be spending more on campaigns" article in just the last few days. But look closer and US diplos keep working to rack up Starlink contracts for him overseas and more USG contracts keep piling up.

2/ Meanwhile Musk remains the enforcer behind DOGE. This is a good example of a crisis comms team at work.



*Yeah, seriously:
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“Old Times There Are Not Forgotten”

JD Vance goes back to his roots:
The Vice President later added, “I saw an interview with Chief Justice Roberts recently where he said the role of the court is to check the excesses of the executive. I thought that was a profoundly wrong sentiment.”

Vance added, “That’s one-half of his job. The other half of his job is to check the excesses of his own branch. You cannot have a country where the American people keep on electing immigration enforcement and the courts tell the American people they’re not allowed to have what they voted for. That’s where we are right now.”
How about if the people voted for racism and a return to the pre-Civil Rights Act, pre-Fair Housing Act, pre-Brown v Board and desegregated military days, the days of racial covenants in deeds and “whites only” diners and water fountains and bathrooms?

The courts have declared racial discrimination a “pernicious category,” despite some of the actions of the Roberts Court. I’m pretty sure they taught that at Yale.  Would you expect the courts to slavishly follow the election results then? 

Because the xenophobia of this Administration is just another form of racism. It’s pretty clear your Administration doesn’t think it can send the black people “back home.” But they still have hope they can drive out all the brown people.

You really aren’t fit to be among civilized people, are you?
In the full podcast, the pair spoke on a wide range of topics including how his faith shapes his politics.
I don’t like to comment on another person’s faith, but you are really pushing me.
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Tuesday, May 20, 2025

Every Time You Think It Can’t Get Worse

🤬
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A Copy Of A Parody

He wants to take it to Florida with him. (He also doesn’t have the first clue what it says.) "What? Me worry?” Prosecutor, judge and jury all in one. So much simpler that way. Oh, you’re no fun anymore! Trump’s autopen.
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The Borowitz Report

Still trying to figure out what Biden’s cancer diagnosis has to do with anything.
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In a bombshell report that stirred controversy on Tuesday, a prominent conspiracy theorist claimed that Joe Biden concealed his health problems by making the American economy boom for four straight years.

“Biden thought he could hide his health issues by making the U.S. economy the envy of the world,” the conspiracist, Harland Dorrinson, said. “Low unemployment, a surging stock market, and a stable dollar all played their parts in the cover-up.”

Strengthening NATO and bolstering relationships with allies were also key components of Biden’s elaborate scheme to hide his health woes, Dorrinson said.

“Biden kept the media distracted by making the US trusted and respected around the world,” he said. “Trump would never do that.”
Who is he going to chastise for pointing out the Emperor has no clothes?

Now…
"No, and I understand your point there for certain," said Brown. "But now this information is coming out and there's a big question of when this started, right? We know it's an aggressive form that it spread to his bone. And so you just wait until someone who's like the president of the United States shows symptoms until you test them in a situation like this?"

"In older men, yeah ... this is the specific recommendation for this particular disease," said Reiner. "But one other point I do want to make ... I think this is really illustrative of what can happen when we elect very old people to office. When you're 80 years old, stuff happens. And it doesn't matter how you look one day, but 80-year-olds get heart attacks, and they get strokes, and they get prostate cancer. And it happens more frequently the older we get."

This, he added, is the reason "I've always felt super strongly about, when we're vetting candidates running for office, we should expect, as the voting public, the people who are putting these people in office, we should expect complete transparency. We should expect that the medications listed on these disclosures are the complete list, right? Not the partial list."
...do Trump. While it matters.*


*Although I think the election if Trump, again, proves nobody really cares. Campaigns don’t really matter. Most voters don’t pay attention, and vote for who they think they’re voting for. Medical reports won’t really change minds, unless the press decides there’s a book promotion in it. Otherwise it’s soon gone; and who’s going to release a book on the scandal in the middle of the scandal? What Tapper is doing now is creating that scandal in order to sell his book. He can control the narrative now, because he has an excuse to: he’s not making news, he’s peddling product.

See how easy it is? The market makes it alright. Even as it undoes our electoral process. The only time to talk about a President’s condition is when he’s safely out of office; and there’s a book in it. A “free press” doesn’t pay, after all. Writing a book is a meal ticket; and the only way to ride herd on the narrative.
I mean, honestly, who are these people talking to? Each other? At best it demands we recognize that old people are subject to rapid decline; and we need to recognize that Trump is old

If that’s what you call “soul-searching,” then we are speaking different languages.
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ICE Barbie Doesn’t Know What She’s Talking About

🎶Fun, fun, fun ‘til her Daddy takes the T-bird away!🎶
G: Would you consistently be using it for travel?

NOEM: I have no idea

G: We've seen the Instagram photos. Some really bad weapons handling.
Fuck people! ICE Barbie needs a new jet! Well, at least she’s completely ignorant. And the check is in the mail. And China will pay for the tariffs. Like when we stopped testing for Covid, the number of cases went down. Or when you lower taxes, tax revenues skyrocket. Or something.
RUBIO: Your regret for voting for me confirms I'm doing a good job
Little Marco thinks he has hair on his balls. He doesn’t. He’s just the same sad little man he’s always been.

And we close with Sen. Professor Warren doing her job:
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How To (NOT) Win Friends And Influence People

TRUMP: I don't think Thomas Massie understands government ... I think he should be voted out of office
"Let’s just assume that Trump is already completely mentally incapacitated.” Because that’s the discussion they’re trying desperately to avoid.
Trump "weaponization czar" Ed Martin: "Many many people in this country are victims of what I call hoaxes that capture our imagination. The unselect committee of Liz Cheney -- they spent hundreds of millions of dollars with earned media to condition people to think something about J6 that we know was not true. So we have to unpack that, unravel it ... we have to go faster ... and then still have the trials and prosecutions."
I really want to know what his legal theories are, because the man doesn’t talk like a lawyer. He talks like a gibbering loon. (The congressional members of that committee all enjoy constitutional immunity from precisely the kind of prosecution Martin is talking about.)
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But Joe Biden Is Old! 🤮

And lied about his cancer:
We're going to have a bill. The one big, beautiful bill. I think it's going to be, it's the biggest bill ever passed and we got to get it done. Tremendous tax cuts for people, tremendous incentives, tremendous regulation cuts, all these regulations that are so horrible," Trump said.

He then devolved into spewing theories about former President Biden and promising to investigate who signed legislation with the "autopen."

"And now you find out what happened. Because Biden — look, it's a very sad thing what happened," Trump said, presumably about Biden's recent stage-4 cancer revelation.

"But I really — we're going to start looking into this whole thing with who signed this legislation, who signed legislation opening our border. I don't think he knew! I said, there's nobody that could want an open border. Nobody. And now I find out that it wasn't him. He opened it. Who was operating the auto pen? This is a very serious thing. We had a president that didn't sign anything. He had almost everything. He opened the borders of the United States of America, and I kept saying, who would do such a thing? Allowing criminals to pour in from all over the world, not just South America — all over the world.

"They came in from Africa, they came in from Asia, they came from the Congo, the prisons in the Congo, in Africa. These are rough, rough people. The prisons from the Congo are empty. You know where they are? They're in this country. Who would sign this? Nobody would sign it. No sane person would sign it. You know who signed it? Radical left lunatics that were running our country and the autopen signed it.

"And they didn't want him," Trump said of Biden. "And they were disappointed in getting him because they wanted Bernie Sanders. And then after about two weeks, they said, 'Wait a minute, this is a gift. He'll do anything. We're going to use the autopen.' And they use the autopen and everything. He didn't approve this stuff because when Joe Biden was with it, he would never have approved that. You take a look. he would have never approved open borders."
And did Jake Tapper mention he has a book to sell?

I’m sure that’s all more important than reporting on this word vomit.🤮 

ADDING: Nope, no exaggeration. This is how CNN covered Trump’s spew:
"Remember, we had a majority of one for six months,” Trump said, “and that was a very frightening thing because the Democrats have really hurt our country, and we are going to go into this very much unified. Remember what I said, the auto pen, this government was illegally run for four years.”

Anchor Kate Bolduan summed up the almost 10-minute remarks by saying, “All right. So we've been listening to the president, his position, his messaging, going in. Kind of an exercise in manifestation, trying to say that the party is very unified.”

“Manu, you heard you were listening in. You heard the president as he's walking in. What is he heading into? He says the party's very unified," Bolduan said to correspondent Manu Raju, who was in Congress.

“Yeah. It's actually not very unified,” Raju said. “There's actually significant division, particularly between the more moderate members and the more conservative members, over some of the issues that Donald Trump just laid out there. One of which is the issue of Medicaid.”
Dare not tread on Tapper’s toes, eh? Or dare not mention the Emperor is a naked raving lunatic. Far safer to handicap the voting in a bill.

I’ll retire to Bedlam….
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