Tuesday, January 28, 2025

No Notes (As The Kids Say)

 


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“I Declare Bankruptcy!”

We’ll start here:
The Supreme Court told Trump nothing he does is illegal and he has concluded that means taking away all power from Congress too.
And then:
Dear Internet: 
#SCOTUS holding that the President can't be prosecuted for official acts does *not* mean, under *any* non-frivolous reading, that the *federal government,* including all of its officers, is immune from civil suits for *its* official acts. 
There's just no equivalency between the two. 
(This is for everyone who keeps responding to posts about how crazy stuff that the Trump administration is going to get blocked in court by waving their hands and shouting "immunity." That's not how any of this works.)
The irony here is that the Trump administration is waving their hands and shouting “immunity!” Sort of. 

Thanks to the wholly unexpected invention of “presidential immunity,” Trump & Co. think they can get the Supremes to invent other favorable constitutional arguments, like erasing birthright citizenship from the 14th amendment, or ignoring Article. I, sec. 9, cl, 7 ("No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law ..."). The challenge intended with the freezing of all grants is to the Impoundment Control Act if 1974, a statute even Thomas enforced in a recent decision.  Trump figures they already won the lottery, why not just shoot the moon?🌒 

Not that we’re dealing with the brightest here:
Lawyers don’t disagree on this. Congressional appropriations are public law, just like the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 is law. The Constitution even says so.

And Trump’s act was presumptively illegal. That’s how some of this works.
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Putting My Radical Bona Fides Out There

Thought Criminal:
Reality is what's real, it's what's important. The Trump crash is happening a bit faster than I anticipated and the most mentally deficient president in our history isn't going to learn what tariffs are and who pays them. He'll NEVER, EVER admit that he didn't know what he was talking about, like any spoiled rich asshole baby man like himself, he'll insist that he was right and everyone else is wrong. You know, like Bruno Ganz acted out when he was told Steiner's attack wasn't going to happen. Republicans and the 30 or so percent of Americans who voted for Trump have put the big, fat, stupid despot into power for the next four years and they are going to crash everything like when they put Coolidge and Hover in office. I hope and pray there is real and deep Constitutional change this time when the country turns to democrats, perhaps Democrats to save them, yet again. Only hopes and prayers aren't enough. We tried to save democracy with keeping the Constitution after the Civil War and slavery was abolished in its de jure form, after the Great Depression, after Jim Crow was temporarily overturned and it has never worked. We need to dump the presidential system with fixed terms and we need, more than anything to level billionaires out of existence. We need a whole new thing and this time it has to be based on equality, not libertarian notions of liberty. "Nature an nature's god" doesn't automatically right things if you just let them sort themselves out. You need rational judgement to carry out moral imperatives and equality is one of those, do to others what you would have them do to you needs to be the basis of the law, the economy and society.
I don’t disagree with the conclusion; I would just carry it a step further. Rational judgment is not enough (for one thing, it’s never well enough defined). What I would propose is, IMHO, “rational judgment;” but few would agree with me.

Do unto others is a good plan, but it comes after you restructure society (culture, expectations, what really is “right and wrong”), with this truly radical idea: the first shall be last, and the last first. The first of all should be last and servant of all.

Imagine the competition to achieve that goal. 🥅 

And you could call it the basileia tou theou. Or, as some have called it: heaven on earth.
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Actions And Words

 I’m neither for or against Mormonism. I do know some of its critics deny it has any connection to Christianity. But this sounds more Christian than any Christian pastor who gets in front of a camera to profess allegiance to Trump:

"While deportation is a vital tool in upholding the rule of law, it must be wielded with a proper proportion of compassion. Mass deportation may not uphold either, in the end,” he wrote in a Jan. 21 op-ed. 
He described a moment where he met the eyes of a man being apprehended by border patrol agents.
“I saw in his eyes both his plight and my role in trying to fix this human crisis,” he wrote. “No words were spoken, yet the look in his eyes seemed to be asking me the question, ‘How can you be letting this go on?’ He was the one in handcuffs, yet I felt as though I was the one who had failed.” 
Like a plurality of Utahans, Mr. Curtis [the new Senator from Utah] is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – a church long rooted in international missionary work, whose members are often more welcoming of immigrant communities than other conservatives. Some Mormon Republicans, including Mr. Romney and former Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, formed a pocket of conservative resistance against Mr. Trump, though that’s lessened in recent years. 
Mr. Curtis says his faith shapes his approach to everything, including politics: “It would be impossible to separate my faith from my actions.” But he also resists comparisons to his predecessor.
I’m not advocating for his idea of “faith” (I don’t know what it is), nor do I know what he means by “compassion.” I’ll just point out that, albeit in a more public setting, these sentiments aren’t too different from those expressed by Bishop Budde. To Trump’s face.

I could wish for more publicity Christian Christians to at least follow these examples. Although actions still speak much louder than words.
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He Made The Tides Come Back In

And he made the rains fall. He has also ended our long Marxist nightmare:
NEW — OMB temporarily pauses all agency grants and loans programs. 
Per copy of memo: "The use of Federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve."
"Equity” is SO unAmerican!
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Monday, January 27, 2025

Get The Ruler Out

To play this out, there will be literally dozens of lawsuits challenging what OMB is doing on the ground that it violates the Impoundment Control Act of 1974. Trump’s DOJ will argue that the Act is unconstitutional. And this will quickly get to #SCOTUS, where it will be the biggest case of the term.
We need to measure the rule of law.
And for as cynical as many have become about #SCOTUS, if *I* were trying to get the constitutionality of the Impoundment Control Act before this Supreme Court, the absolute *last* way I would do it is through an across-the-board, wholesale freeze accomplished via a thinly reasoned 2-page memorandum.
Trump has frozen all government grants.
Congress approved these investments and they are not optional, they are the law. These grants help communities in red states and blue states and support families, help parents raise kids, and lead to stronger communities. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/01/27/white-house-pauses-federal-grants/
I’m familiar with them from the education grants awarded to schools. This action is like shutting down the government.
Normally when you have a government shutdown it's because there's a funding lapse. Tonight we have a government shutting down lots of itself by fiat. This is something new.
It's now like a full government shutdown because this will be felt immediately. Schools across the country are going to have to suspend programs, perhaps suspend teachers and personnel, even cancel classes.* This will have a major impact, probably more immediate than closing government offices or national parks. Because more people are affected by the local schools than probably any other branch of government, and in their daily lives. 

Trump wanted attention. He may regret getting it.


*Texas state government has justified reducing spending for local schools on the grounds (among others) that federal funds will make up some of the shortfall.  Not anymore.
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They got surfin’, too! 🏄‍♂️

It would seem everything in government must be cut or halted to save money except defense spending. Which must be wasted profligately. But that’s okay, because we’ll get the world to pay for it. We should tax other nations for being on the same planet with us. It’s a privilege they should pay for.

We’ll save Australia 
Wouldn’t want to hurt no kangaroo.🦘 
We’ll build an all-American amusement park there,
They got surfin’, too! 🏄‍♂️ 

—Randy Newman
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You Mean Like “DEI”…

Even though people defended Musk's "My heart goes out to you" as an alibi against his salute being a Sieg Heil, it's quickly becoming a catchphrase amongst the online far-right to indicate the exact opposite. NEW from Louis Keene and me (join Bluesky, Louis lol):

 …means “white racism is normative”? (Spoiler: that’s always what it meant.)

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Ummm…

Or being born on third base with a silver spoon in your mouth. Or does he mean we get what we deserve? Well, some of us do. And follow the law, if we have to. As a last resort, anyway. Maybe. We’ll see. Depends entirely on what we can get away with. Funny thing, so was Hannibal Lecter. BREAKING NEWS:  NASDAQ jumps off a cliff. Film at 11. I feel like we covered this already. 🤨
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So, That Happened

 The MAGA posture on what happened yesterday is that Trump “won.”

Well, Trump shot his mouth off on social media, which caused Colombia to respond in kind, which sent tout La intertoobs into a tizzy about the morning beverage and flowers for Algernon , er, VD, and then…

…it was over?

What’s going to be ignored is that this never should have happened. Colombia apparently never objected to the repatriation of its citizens. That would be why the President of Colombia sent his jet to bring them home. But Trump had to play Macho Man and send them back via military transport, which no country south of the Rio Grande cared for (Mexico refused to let military planes land, but Trump didn’t threaten them with immediate tariffs. 🤨 ). In fact, this whole thing played out on social media, where the wholly ignorant (I’m looking at me) go to pontificate.

What do you know about Colombian politics? I know nothing at all about. Odds are Trump doesn’t, either; nor does he have any advisors who do. Hell, Trump just congratulated himself because the Chiefs beat the Bills in a playoff game. He’s a certified narcissist moron who really does think he knows all he needs to know. And there’s evidence he doesn’t know anything about China’s efforts to influence the world that isn’t Europe or Russia or North America.

A look the world, IOW. [Looking back, I have no idea what I was trying to say. I have decided autocorrect has a sense of humor. A very strange sense of humor.]

Now China didn’t suddenly win all of Colombia’s coffee contracts, or its rose market, or even its oil contracts (Colombia is the fourth largest supplier of oil to the United States). But maybe China, looks more appealing this morning. Maybe Colombian politics stayed their president’s hand. Maybe he got what he wanted, and is playing this as putting the U.S. in its place. Maybe they now want better relations with China.

Who on social media really knows?

You can be like Trump, and thump your virtual chest. Or you can be like Trump and think your side (not his) lost the Image war. 

Or you can be rational, and decide none of this should have happened this way. And stop jumping every time Trump tweets. Especially to conclusions.

I’m talking to myself now.

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Sunday, January 26, 2025

Stupidity Is Not Diplomacy

Reports are the Administration was “surprised” Colombia wouldn’t let military planes land. Did anybody check? Think to make a phone call. Or was it all just “AMERICA!! FUCK YEAH!!! LET’S DO THIS THING!!!!”

I think I know the answer.
The US cannot treat Colombian migrants as criminals. 
I deny the entry of American planes carrying Colombian migrants into our territory. 
The United States must establish a protocol for the dignified treatment of migrants before we receive them.
Yeah, I’m right. Happy VD! All this because Trump can’t do basic diplomacy and had to “look tough” by using military planes (because he can’t use them for anything else on the border), which has pissed off several countries below the Rio Grande.
Yeah , it’s worth it. 🙄

Trump thinks Colombia will pay their tariffs, too. 

It will be interesting watching the dynamics w/ Colombia after today’s back & forth. 
They have become a solid military ally with the US & they are the biggest exporters of several key products demanded in the US. 
Plus, huge Colombian diaspora in the US. 
“Shock & awe” running into some issues?
We don’t need anybody, right, Trump? We don’t need allies. We don’t need trade partners. 

“AMERICA!! FUCK YEAH!!! LET’S DO THIS THING!!!!”

And why haven’t the Democrats capitalized on this yet? 
Two-thirds of Americans drink coffee every day. If Democrats can't make political hay out of TRUMP JUST PUT A 25% TAX ON YOUR COFFEE then I don't know what we're doing here. Figure comes from the coffee people: 
https://www.ncausa.org/Newsroom/Daily-coffee-consumption-at-20-year-high-up-nearly-40
And yes, this happened:
Colombia will send its presidential plane to Honduras to pick up Colombians after the country refused to accept migrant deportation flights from the United States, causing President Trump to enact tariffs and other retaliatory measures on Sunday. 
Colombian President Gustavo Petro has arranged for the presidential plane to facilitate the “dignified return of Colombian nationals who were to arrive in the country today in the morning hours, coming in from deportation flights,” read a statement released on Sunday. 
“This measure is in response to the government’s commitment to guarantee dignified conditions. In no way have Colombians, as patriots and subjects of rights, been or will be banished from Colombian territory,” the statement continued.
Colombia's problem is the military (v. civilian, used by Biden) planes. Nothing to indicate tariffs are not being imposed on both sides. 

This is all because Trump is an idiot.
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The “Prophetic Tradition” Means Just Telling The Truth

 Bishop Budde:

I think you could argue it a couple of ways. I would like to say I was being pretty normal. I don’t think I was saying anything that was all that radical, to be honest. I feel like it was pretty basic. Treat people with dignity, be honest, be humble. Care for your neighbors—not only care for your neighbors but care for the stranger. I mean, this is pretty basic spiritual practice. 
Now, is it easy? No, it’s not easy. But you wouldn’t have to be a Christian or a person of faith to espouse those pretty universal values. But we live in a time and we are now led by a President who is, by his own definition, a disrupter. He’s really determined to disrupt the way our society functions. He feels a tremendous mandate to do that. He has a lot of influence. And, at least in his opening few days as President, he is leading the country in the way he promised in the campaign, which is harsh and inflammatory in its assumptions about whole swaths of human beings, and also what it means to be this country. So I would say, both as an American and as a Christian, I’m pretty much right in the center. If it comes across as radical, that just says something about the times we are in.
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The Wish To Be Cared For


 

Machiavelli during his lifetime was personally acquainted with the cursed Strife inflicted on Florence by gift-guzzling Medici princes, also with the bonfiring of the city’s beloved vanities at the behest of Friar Girolamo Savonarola, a vengeful Dominican monk preaching the word of God as a howl of rage against the world, the flesh, and the devil. The history books tend to portray Machiavelli as a cynical Italian courtier supplying despots with murderous raisons d’état. The spin is travesty. Machiavelli was an idealistic civil servant who was also a poet and playwright seeking to provide early sixteenth-century Florence with a republican form of government. He rated the task as the most worthy of human endeavors when supported by a citizenry animated with the will to act instead of the wish to be cared for. 
… 
Winning is such a great feeling. Isn’t it a great feeling? Winning! A great feeling. Nothing like winning! Gotta win…There is no other alternative. Victory, winning, beautiful words, but that is what it is all about. [Donald Trump at the midshipman graduation, May 2018]
It’s not what it’s all about. W.H. Auden’s poem “September 1, 1939,” the date of the Nazi invasion of Poland, is what it is all about:
The windiest militant trash 
Important Persons shout 
Is not so crude as our wish: 
What mad Nijinsky wrote 
About Diaghilev 
Is true of the normal heart; 
For the error bred in the bone 
Of each woman and each man Craves what it cannot have, 
Not universal love 
But to be loved alone. 
Human beings consumed with the single-minded staring into mirrors lose the capacity to think. An exceptionally virulent strain of intellectual leprosy tends to show up in rich people who imagine that because they are rich, they step into the golf shoes of Andrew Carnegie’s “highest type of man, the best and most valuable of all that humanity has yet accomplished.” In the world according to Trump, money is the true, the good, and the beautiful, the hero with a thousand faces, all of them the face of Trump—gloating or seething, saying and doing whatever it takes to make the American democracy smaller than himself, to nullify it in theory, dispose of it in practice. What Edith Wharton said of America’s late nineteenth-century Gilded Age is true of the early twenty-first-century rerun: “A frivolous society can acquire dramatic significance only through what its frivolity destroys.”
--Lewis Lapham 
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The Hate That Dare Not Speak Its Name

"We aren’t white racist anarchists, they are!”

And what’s Mike Lee’s response when Patel takes over and Proud Boys keep marching? Memory hole? 🕳️ 

Why does Mike Lee hate the Proud Boys? Is he MAGA un-mutual?
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Saturday, January 25, 2025

He Really Does Just Talk To Hear His Head Rattle

Trump cannot coerce Canada into becoming part of the U.S., not because he has no such leverage (he doesn’t), but because that’s not the Constitutional process (and please don’t threaten me with the Roberts Court, they have nothing to do with this. This is a constitutional process, not a legal one.).

Until Canada petitions to join the union, it’s a non-starter. And seeing as Canada is 10 provinces (if Quebec consents. Yeah, that’ll happen!), that means 10 (9?) new states. All Democratic, since Canadian conservatives are somewhere to the left of AOC (for starters, they hardly consider national healthcare to be “socialism”). Congress has to accept their petition (again, POTUS has no vote). Do you see them doing that? Adding 20 Democratic senators, to start with? 20 Senators who probably think AOC is a moderate?

Yeah, sure.

Aside from the fact Canada will never petition to join the U.S. 

Trump just likes the sound of his own voice.
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In Case You Weren’t Sure What Elmo’s Salute Meant

The people who like Elon:
Musk today at an AfD rally: “The German people are really an ancient nation which goes back thousand of years… It's good to be proud of German culture, German values, and not to lose that in some sort of multiculturalism that dilutes everything” 
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/elon-musk-appears-video-german-far-right-campaign-event-2025-01-25/
Also, too, as well:
Musk spoke in favour of voting for the far right party, saying: "I'm very excited for the AfD, I think you're really the best hope for Germany ... fight for a great future for Germany," he told onlookers.

Ein volk, ein reich, ein Elmo. 

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Lordelpus

All that’s left is to pray for justice? He means like this:
In order to combat the scourge of “DEI,” the DOJ yesterday indefinitely suspended observance of events like Black History Month, Women’s History Month and other long observed (and one would imagine fairly innocuous) commemorations. 
The details are as follows. 
Yesterday as part of the implementation of Trump’s anti-DEI executive order and the related anti-DEI guidance memorandum from the Office of Personal Management, the Executive Office of United States Attorneys immediately “suspend[ed] observance programs until further notice” and advised regional U.S. Attorneys Offices that “we believe it would also be prudent for the USAOs to suspend all observance events at this time.”
In case you weren’t sure what Trump meant.

Mitch McConnell voted against Hegseth; largely because Mitch McConnell is serving his last term. Perhaps the last decent public thing he’ll do. Had he supported the second impeachment, Trump could have been barred from office. Not that the unrepentant racist cares about civil rights. But I have to ask, in the words of e.e. cumming:

“how do you like your blue-eyed boy
Mister Death”
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👍 💩

 Mark Cuban:

The thing to understand about Trump is like in his first term, he doesn’t want to govern. He doesn’t want to learn. He wants to campaign and look good. 
Republicans know this. So there are battles going on right now to take control of the actual process of governing. 
It’s easy for Trump to respond to talking heads and proclamations. He just talks to media and posts on socials. 
It’s hard for him to have control of the details of legislation beyond Exec Orders, because they take time, legal understanding and nuance. Which he has zero interest in. 
He doesn’t care about FEMA, NIH etc. He cares about talking about them. Which is why it’s important for those entities to be proactive behind the scenes and realize that all they have to do is Smile and give him credit for shit that isn’t really happening. Newsome understood this yesterday.
Trump is in Las Vegas today, at a rally: Irony is not his strong suit. A bottomless need for adulation, is.  (And I disagree with Cuban on one point: Trump doesn’t even care what the EO’s say. He just likes signing them. I do agree that the real question for the next four years is: who is really in charge?)

(And no, Trump is not going to change FEMA.  He just talks to hear his head rattle. Newsom did it right: just nod and move on. After all:
I’m not saying she shouldn’t have challenged him. But that gets “thumbs up” on social media, and not much else. Newsom doesn’t win the social media fight, but it’s a good lesson in giving Trump his due. And getting back to work, because ultimately what Trump says doesn’t matter as much as getting on with the work of governance.)
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So King Canute Can’t Stop The Tides?

President Trump fired 17 inspectors general, the internal watchdogs who monitor federal agencies, on Friday night, capping a week of dramatic shake-ups of the federal bureaucracy with a focus on loyalty to the president. (NYT confirming WashPost) https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/24/us/politics/trump-fires-inspectors-general.html?smid=nytcore-android-share
Well, he thinks he did:
"At this point, we do not believe the actions taken are legally sufficient to dismiss Presidentially Appointed, Senate Confirmed Inspectors General" writes Hannibal “Mike” Ware, Council of Inspectors on Integrity and Efficiency
Pretty sure that email wasn’t legally sufficient. Maybe he should have posted a “truth”. Interesting Times ahead. Cause it ain’t over, ‘til it’s over. In related news:
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Ain’t That America? 🇺🇸

It's the racism, stupid.
(San Antonio Express-News) — President Donald Trump’s assault on federal diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives has claimed a new victim – the Tuskegee Airmen https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/trump-dei-tuskegee-airmen-banned-air-force-20054637.php
I heard about the Tuskegee Airmen in my adulthood. So three decades or so was long enough.

I guess that made white pilots feel bad.😞 

“DEI” now means “racism for white guys, the way God intended it!”
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