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Finally Friday Reads: The Turn of the Screw
“Meanwhile, at Mars-a-Lago… Donold’s training pays off..” John Buss, @repeat1968,@johnbuss.bsky.social
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
With its tumultuous and ineffective leadership, the aptly named chaos caucus again plays a game of brinkmanship that risks American lives and the economy. I’m getting way too old for this kind of torment. The Republican-led Congress has completely forgotten its role in governance and its duties, ensuring the stability required for all the entities that rely on that and the rule of law to function. They only seem to air grievances and feed their raging ids. This year’s version comes with a dangerous twist. The prime chaos factor is the richest man on earth who was not elected or officially appointed to anything. His claim to fame is funding the Trump campaign and those of other Republican elected officials, and he has no clue about our system of government, our institutions, our Constitution, or, for that matter, anything. He’s also bugfuck crazy.
President Eject Incontinentia Buttocks is huddled down in Florida doing God knows what, and J Dank has gone missing. Milk cartons will soon have to show his picture and ask, “Have you seen this president?” Bayou Moses looks to be the next biggest loser of the House Speaker’s Gavel. The country looks like some twisted version of The Mouse That Roared. How are we to deal with a Cabal of Billionaires empowered by an angry crew of religious nuts, bigots, and know-nothings? They appear to own the house and the Supreme Court at the moment.
Meanwhile, back in the world of the same old shit, we get Mitch McConnell suddenly lecturing everyone and seemingly trying to protect the old magic ways of the US Senate and the Democratic Party appointing the same old group that hasn’t been able to do anything to stop this to a leadership position. I cannot be the only one who doesn’t see any of this ending well. He thinks he can swiftly change roles from Macbeth to King Lear.
So, how on earth did Elon Musk blow up a bipartisan deal on the budget? This is from Sam Stein writing at The Bulwark. “Elon Killed the Budget Deal. Cancer Research for Kids Was Collateral Damage. “Advocates were celebrating the inclusion of money and provisions to help fund pediatric research. And then the tweets started.”
THE DECISION BY REPUBLICAN LEADERSHIP to scuttle a bipartisan funding deal on Thursday night has left lawmakers scrambling and others anxiously bracing for a government shutdown.
For a host of issue advocates, however, the prevailing mood in Washington, D.C. was one not of chaos but utter devastation.
The initial deal that congressional leaders had agreed to included a number of key priorities that, in the course of hours, were jettisoned by GOP leaders looking to calm Elon Musk’s pique and satisfy Donald Trump’s demands. And though the slimmed-down bill that Trump endorsed in its place failed to pass the House, few people expected that the initial deal would make a comeback—meaning that many of its components were likely gone for good.
The list of provisions left in the dust heap was lengthy. The initial compromise bill included language to ensure that providers of internet service to rural areas weren’t ripping off customers, to protect consumers from hidden hotel fees, to secure semiconductor supply chains, to restrict U.S. outbound investment in China, even to prohibit deepfake pornography. All those were all gone in the successor bill.
But some of the hardest cuts to swallow involved medical research. In particular, advocates say, the revised funding bill delivered a devastating blow to the fight against pediatric cancer.
The slimmed-down version was stripped of language that would have allowed children with relapsed cancer to undergo treatments with a combination of cancer drugs and therapies. (Currently the Food and Drug Administration is only authorized to direct pediatric cancer trials of single drugs.) The bill also didn’t include an extension of a program that gave financial lifelines, in the form of vouchers, to small pharmaceutical companies working on rare pediatric diseases. It was also missing earlier provisions that would have allowed for kids on Medicaid or CHIP—that is, poor children—to access medically complex care across state lines.
And, of course, Trump wants to ensure that there’s a two-year extension of the Debt Ceiling so that he can give away the Treasury to his Cabal and grift off the nation without having to take on the burden of once again landing the Federal Budget into record-setting red zones. He seriously believes that the voters will blame all these shenanigans on Biden who evidently trying to Trump-proof things and get Federal judges appointed to the bench. Musk is on a rampage to replace the governments that once fought NAZIs with NAZis all over the world and evidently has the money to attempt it. This is from New York Magazine. “Musk Pauses Torment of GOP to Praise German Extremists.” Nia Prater has the analysis.
Elon Musk has spent the better part of this week working to derail Congress’s attempt to fund the government, but he found time early Friday morning to express support for the politics of Alternative für Deutschland or Alternative for Germany, the country’s most prominent far-right political party.
“Only the AfD can save Germany,” Musk wrote on X early Friday morning.
The comment was in response to a video posted by Naomi Seibt, a German far-right activist, that criticized Friedrich Merz, the leader of the conservative party Christian Democratic Union of Germany. Recently, Merz has been leading in the polls to become the nation’s next chancellor next year. The caption for Seibt’s video read, “The presumptive next chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) is horrified by the idea that Germany should follow Elon Musk’s and Javier Milei’s example. He staunchly rejects a pro-freedom approach and refuses any discussion with the AfD.”
The AfD is a nationalist and anti-immigration party that has seen its popularity steadily grow over the last several years. In September, the party won its first state election, becoming the first far-right party to win an election in Germany since the Nazis, per CNN. AfD’s candidate in that race, Björn Höcke, is a controversial figure who has been fined for using a Nazi slogan and criticized for a speech many denounced as antisemitic.
Olaf Scholz, the current chancellor of Germany, was dismissive of Musk’s words when asked about them during an unrelated press conference with Estonian prime minister Kristen Michal on Friday. “We have freedom of speech, and that also applies to multibillionaires,” Scholz said, per Bloomberg. “But freedom of speech also means that you can say things that are not right and do not contain good political advice.”
This is not the first time that Musk has indicated support for AfD. Last year, The Guardian reported that Musk shared a pro-AfD post that criticized Germany funding charity groups that operate ships that rescued migrants, referring to the migrants as “illegal immigrants.”
“Let’s hope AfD wins the elections to stop this European suicide,” the post read.
Musk, who intends to play an starring role in Donald Trump’s second term, has similarly shown an affinity for other conservative leaders in Europe. He’s been pictured with Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni and Nigel Farage, a British politician who leads the right-wing populist party Reform UK. In recent days, there’s been speculation that Musk might be considering a massive multimillion-dollar donation to Farage’s party, prompting worries among watchdog groups.
Musk has such a manic schedule, given he’s also trying to give parts of Ukraine to Putin, threatening to oust the Canadian and blow up the US economy today. Candian TV had this headline last week. “Elon Musk calls Justin Trudeau ‘insufferable tool’ in new social media post.” Musk is channeling his inner Lex Luther!
Billionaire Elon Musk is calling Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “an insufferable tool” in a new social media post on Wednesday.
“Won’t be in power for much longer,” Musk also wrote about the prime minister on “X.”
Musk was responding to a video posted of Trudeau, in which the prime minister described Kamala Harris’ U.S. presidential loss as a setback for women’s progress.
“We were supposed to be on a steady, if difficult sometimes, march towards progress. And yet, just a few weeks ago, the United States voted for a second time to not elect its first woman president,” Trudeau said during a speech at the Equal Voice Foundation Gala in Ottawa on Tuesday night.
Trudeau also said women’s rights and women’s progress are “under attack overtly and subtly,” and that he “always will be a proud feminist.”
Musk, who is the CEO of Tesla and founder of space company SpaceX, has been tasked to co-chair U.S. president-elect Donald Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency. He was also a prominent figure in Trump’s election campaign.
Wednesday’s post is Musk’s latest swipe at the prime minister since Trump was re-elected in November. Responding to a user on “X” on Nov. 7 asking for Musk’s help to get rid of Trudeau, Musk wrote “He will be gone in the upcoming election.”
Ontario Premier Doug Ford says he let Trudeau know his comments were “not helpful.”
Ford, who with the rest of Canada’s premiers, met with the prime minister and several of his cabinet ministers on Wednesday to discuss how Canada would respond to Trump’s tariff threats.
“Donald Trump was elected democratically,” Ford said, adding that the premiers made sure Trudeau “got the message loud and clear.”
Musk’s post also comes during a tense time in Canada-U.S. relations.
Trudeau has been facing social media jabs from Trump following the prime minister’s visit to Mar-a-Lago nearly two weeks ago to discuss Trump’s tariff threat. Last month, Trump threatened to impose a 25 per cent tariff on all Canadian imports on his first day in office unless Canada addresses his border security concerns.
Following that meeting, U.S. network Fox News reported Trump joked during the dinner in Florida that if the potential tariffs would harm the Canadian economy — as the prime minister conveyed to him — perhaps Canada should become America’s 51st state(opens in a new tab).
Days later, Trump posted an A.I.-generated image to social media that depicted him standing next to a Canadian flag(opens in a new tab) and overlooking a mountain range with the caption “Oh Canada!”
Evidently, since he managed to buy the US Presidency and dupe enough dolts into voting for the Dotard, he thinks he can do it with Canada and a good portion of Europe. He’s being all kissy-face the days with the UK’s Nigel Farage also. The AP characterizes all these shenanigans thusly. “Musk ascends as a political force beyond his wealth by tanking budget deal.” Is the legacy media going to sleep through all of this and cover it like mundane news? Thomas Beaumont has the analysis.
In the first major flex of his influence since Donald Trump was elected, Elon Musk brought to a sudden halt a bipartisan budget proposal by posting constantly on his X megaphone and threatening Republicans with primary challenges.
The social media warnings from the world’s wealthiest man preceded Trump’s condemnation of a measure negotiated by GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson, which effectively killed the stopgap measure that was designed to prevent a partial shutdown of the federal government.
Washington was scrambled a day after Musk’s public pressure campaign. Trump on Thursday first declined to say whether he had confidence in Johnson. But later in the day, Trump praised him and House leaders for producing “a very good Deal,” after they announced a new plan to fund the government and lift the debt ceiling.
Before the new deal was reached, Congressional Democrats mocked their GOP counterparts, with several suggesting Trump had been relegated to vice president.
“Welcome to the Elon Musk presidency,” Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia of California wrote on X.
What was clear, though, is Musk’s ascendance as a political force, a level of influence enabled by his great wealth. In addition to owning X, Musk is the CEO of Tesla and Space X.
Since the Supreme Court decided Citizens United, unelected billionaires have been buying Supreme Court Decisions and Justices. That’s taken a while to ferret out because the crooked Supreme Court Justices haven’t reported their spoils and they have no ethics standards. We know they’ve got lobbyists that hand out checks, but most of them do not want to be caught in the act of kleptocracy. Musk has the audacity of a Bond villain. It’s just out there for all to see and for the press to cover.
House Speaker Bayou Moses has yet another agreement to put forward as the clock ticks to midnight EST. This is from The Hill. “Johnson says he has plan C to avert shutdown, vote expected.” I’ll believe it when I see it frankly.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said he has a plan C to avert a shutdown and the House will vote Friday morning on the legislation — but Republicans indicated there is not yet widespread agreement.
“Yeah, yeah, we have a plan,” Johnson said Friday morning as he entered the Capitol. “We’re expecting votes this morning, so you all stay tuned. We’ve got a plan.”
He did not say what it entails. And lawmakers leaving meetings in Johnson’s office Friday morning indicated that there was not yet an agreement on a path forward.
“Anybody who’s telling you there’s an agreement is just a little bit ahead of themselves,” Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), chair of the Republican Main Street Caucus, said as he left the Speaker’s office later Friday morning.
Lawmakers have little time to avoid a shutdown: Government funding runs out when the clock strikes midnight late Friday.
Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) said on CNBC on shortly after Johnson’s comments Friday morning that he thinks Washington will probably avoid a shutdown since “we’re pushed up against Christmas here,” saying a “clean” funding extension is likely.
“There’s a chance today a clean CR [continuing resolution], short-term clean CR — it may be for two, three weeks,” Mullin said. “That was something that was discussed, you know, late last night, you know, even some discussions this morning. I’m not going to say that’s going to happen, but you know, that’s really the option that’s on the table.”
This is the usual way for them to avoid the problems. Just keep kicking that can. This just prolongs things. This process has historically been messy and difficult. We may see a technical shutdown tonight, and that does not bode well, given the current antics and players. This is from The Hill. “NY Democrat: ‘Elon Musk has Donald Trump in a vise.” Joanne Haner has the lede.
Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) on Thursday suggested Elon Musk is the one directing the Trump administration, not President-elect Trump, pointing to the tech entrepreneur’s leading position in opposing the government funding stopgap measure.
“Elon Musk has Donald Trump in a vise,” Goldman said on MSNBC on Thursday. “And it is very clear that Elon Musk is now calling the shots.”
Musk made several social media posts Wednesday criticizing the spending measure deal unveiled by House Republicans this week. He called the more than 1,500-page measure a big “piece of pork” while calling on GOP lawmakers to oppose it.
Trump later in the day also called for the bill to be dismissed, suggesting instead that Congress pass a clean continuing resolution with a debt hike increase. That proposal was rejected Thursday night, and Congress is now working on a plan C with less than 24 hours to go before the deadline.
“We need to face the reality: Right now, we have President Elon Musk. And Trump? Maybe he’s vice president, I guess,” Goldman said. “Vice presidents don’t do much, so that makes sense. He might be the chief of staff. I don’t know what you call him, but he is not calling the shots.”
Goldman is not the only Democrat saying Musk is the one calling the shots in the administration; a number of Democrats have made similar arguments, while the White House has said Trump and the GOP are doing the bidding of billionaires.
Meanwhile, the government is making plans for a shutdown. This is from the Washington Post.
House Republicans are discussing the latest plan from leadership to fund the government and avoid a shutdown before a midnight deadline. Several Republicans said the Rules Committee will meet to send two separate bills to the floor, which would need a simple majority to pass. They are: A clean extension of current fiscal levels until mid-March that includes an extension of a farm bill that requires reauthorization, and a $110 billion relief bill to help natural disaster survivors and aid farmers. Republicans had no plans for an immediate vote on suspending the debt limit, despite President-elect Donald Trump’s repeated demands. At the White House, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre lashed out at Republicans who had agreed to a bipartisan deal and then abandoned it. “This is a mess that Speaker [Mike] Johnson created, that is his mess to fix,” she told reporters at the daily briefing, adding that there was “still time” for Republicans to “do the right thing.” The Office of Management and Budget alerted federal agencies Friday morning to prepare for an imminent government shutdown.
The budget fiasco isn’t the only thing threatening the US and the Global Economies. Trump is just not giving up on his ignorant view of tariffs. This is from CNBC. Trade negotiations are not subject to the art of the Deal. They are gamesmanship on an entirely different level. “‘Tariffs all the way’: Trump says European Union must buy U.S. oil and gas in trade ultimatum.” He thinks he looks like a tough guy, but anyone who knows about economic policy knows he just looks like an idiot.
Trump has made threats of sweeping tariffs on U.S. trading partners including China, Mexico and Canada a signature part of his presidential campaign — and he’s continued the narrative as he prepares to enter office, despite economists warning of risks to domestic inflation.
Analysts say there is high uncertainty over the extent of the tariffs Trump will be willing — or able — to follow through with, and how much of his rhetoric is a starting point for striking deals.
His latest comment comes after EU heads of state held their final meeting of the year on Thursday, during which the topic of Europe-U.S. relations was discussed.
“The message is clear: the European Union is committed to continue working with the United States, pragmatically, to strengthen transatlantic ties,” European Council President António Costa said following the meeting.
Enrico Letta, former prime minister of Italy and dean of the IE School of Politics, Economics and Global Affairs, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Friday that the EU needed to be prepared to retaliate to Trump’s threat.
“I think it is a transactional approach, we have to respond to this transactional approach. [Trump] mixes together energy and tariffs on goods, manufacturing and so on. I think it’s incorrect because the two topics are completely different,” Letta said.
“If the deal is proposed by Trump — such an asymmetric deal on topics that are not linked one to the other — I think we have to do the same.”
“Considering that the most asymmetric part is the relationship on the financial side, we have to start considering that maybe replying on the financial side could be a solution,” he said.
Ahead of the U.S. election in November, EU officials spent months preparing for a lurch toward U.S. protectionism and for a more confrontational relationship with the White House, in the event of a Trump victory. The EU has also made moves toward strengthening its relationship with the U.K., which left the bloc in 2020, as a guard against potential clashes over trade and defense.
It’s disturbing that many folks and the media are acting like Joe Biden is already out of the picture. However, Republican dysfunction could also deal the final blow to the Republican Party. Jeffries has control over his congress critters. It’s obvious Johnson doesn’t. You may remember that John Boehner threw up his arms and retired over the many chaotic factions. It hasn’t improved since then. Digby has an interesting view in her Salon column. “Elon Musk just killed Donald Trump’s honeymoon. We are seeing is an emerging crack in the GOP coalition.”
The activist base that had recently fashioned itself as the Tea Party after Obama’s election in 2008, quietly reinvented itself as the MAGA movement and lost all interest in fiscal austerity the minute Trump came on the scene. But there has always been some restiveness among the right-wing ideologues in the House and Senate who really want to massively cut discretionary spending and the so-called entitlements to the bone. They’re true believers in the idea that government should not help people, period. They were relegated to the back bench during Trump’s first term and spent most of their time tilting at windmills because Trump was happily spending like the treasury was his own credit line at Deutsche Bank.
He had no appetite for big spending cuts that might hurt his chances for re-election. After all, he didn’t run as a budget-cutting deficit hawk. He always claimed that he didn’t need to drastically cut spending because the debt would disappear with tariffs and unprecedented growth. He said the same thing during the 2024 campaign, insisting that it would even pay for government-funded child care, the worst of all possible worlds.
He pays lip service to cutting spending but he doesn’t really care about it. He’s told people he’s not worried about a U.S. debt crisis as he’ll be out of office by then. And he’s got stuff he wants to spend a lot of money on, like deporting millions of immigrants!
That’s never been clearer than this week when Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., presented the bipartisan continuing resolution to fund the government until March and all hell broke loose in the House. Those rascally, backbench Tea Party/Freedom Caucus ideologues finally got the leader they’ve been waiting for and his name is Elon Musk, the richest man in the world.
It was a given that the Freedom Caucus gang would not vote for the bill. They vote no on everything. It had been negotiated by the bipartisan negotiators in both chambers with the knowledge that the Senate was still in Democratic hands and the tiny GOP majority in the House required a bipartisan compromise. Everyone knew that the screamers in the House would have a fit and call for Mike Johnson’s head (which is why they changed the rule raising the threshold from one member to nine.) And since the speaker knows better than to go to the john without getting Trump’s permission, you can be sure that Trump was kept informed of all of this. They all agreed that they would get rid of this hot potato, adjourn quickly and go home for the holidays.
That didn’t work out the way they planned it. Trump thought he had cleverly boxed Musk out of real power by creating a powerless “commission” for him and his sidekick Vivek Ramaswamy to come up with enormous spending cuts to reduce the federal government by as much as a third, which he knows won’t happen. However, Trump has essentially empowered Musk to speak for him by having him by his side every minute for the last three months. And seeing as he’s the richest man in the world who owns a major social media platform, he has plenty of power all on his own.
I have actually heard several talking heads think that Trump’s disinterest in the actual work for the job is worse this time around. The suggestions that he just ran for office to stay out of jail and that he would just be a figurehead may come to fruition. His dementia has worsened. He disappears from the public a lot. He doesn’t appear to have a craving for attention or energy. It may be that Doddering Don will be happy for everyone else to do his work as long as he can cuddle up to foreign dictators. I’m actually surprised Musk has gotten this much press coverage and went rogue on the budget negotiations. The Donald that stalked Hillary wouldn’t have liked that.
But, who am I but a mostly retired economics professor who sometimes would just rather play the piano or guitar all day than think about this and have to unravel it for students.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
#JohnbussBskySocial #Repeat1968JohnBuss #BayouMoses #ElonMuskIsANAZI #FederalBudgetAndDeficit #HouseSpeakerMikeJohnson #PresidentEjectIncontinentiaButtocks
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Mostly Monday Reads: The Press Bends the Knee
“So I’m guessing reducing everyone’s electric bill by half isn’t gonna happen either..” John Buss, @johnbuss.bsky.social
Good Day, Sky Dancing!
I wanted to start this morning with something very normal, American, and positive. Today, President Biden will designate a National Monument in Maine for the late great Secretary of Labor under FDR Francis Perkins. She was the first woman to serve as a Secretary in a President’s Cabinet. She inspired me since she played a major role in economic and labor policy during the Great Depression. She was appointed in 1933 and served 12 years. She should be known as the Mother of Social Security. Her role in implementing and determining policy during the New Deal programs cannot be underestimated. She has touched the lives of all of us even though she left office in 1945.
The Hill has an article up today about her tenure and the memorial today.
During Perkins’s tenure, the Labor Department oversaw Immigration and Naturalization Services, a role she used to aggressively lobby to admit larger numbers of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi-occupied Europe.
Perkins was considered a stalwart ally of labor unions during her tenure, which included her counseling Roosevelt against breaking a 1934 waterfront strike that shut down much of the West Coast. She also refused to deport Australian-born longshoremen’s union head Harry Bridges for his membership in the Communist Party, which led the House Un-American Activities Committee to introduce an unsuccessful impeachment resolution against her.
Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, arrives for a special meeting, September 16, 1938 Image: Library of Congress ID hec.25045
She claimed to have been radicalized after she witnessed the notorious Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York in 1911, in which 146 garment workers were burned or leaped to their deaths after they were locked inside for the workday.
The national monument will comprise the nearly 60 acres that were once Perkins’s family’s homestead in Newcastle, which her family has owned for nearly three centuries.
The designation comes after Biden earlier in March signed an executive order calling on the Interior Department to identify sites with significance in women’s history in America.
You may read the Biden announcement at this link to the White House. I found this journal article written about her by Harris Chaiklin, Ph.D. at VCU Libraries Social Welfare History Project. “Perkins, Frances, Change Agent in: Eras in Social Welfare History, Great Depression, People, Recollections. Frances Perkins: She Boldly Went Where No Woman Had Gone Before.” A wealthy daughter of a wealthy Boston family, she had the type of education that generally sent a woman to ‘spinsterhood.’ Her upbringing prepared her for her role, shaping some of the most strategic and important policies of the time. Fannie Perkins persisted. She eventually landed in Greenwich Village, where she became a mediator. Her friends included Sinclair Lewis and Robert Moses.
A transforming event occurred while she was having tea with a wealthy friend who lived in Washington Square. Word came that the Triangle Shirtwaist factory was on fire. They rushed to it. The horror they saw there helped forge in Frances a lifelong commitment to worker’s safety and rights. That she was with a wealthy friend is significant. Though not wealthy she knew this life style and associated with wealthy people. Good friends from this group provided a place for her to live at key points in her career when her earnings were not enough to meet her needs.
After the fire there was increasing activity in campaigning for worker’s rights and safety while the social work job continued. Once a social worker who lived in the settlement house with Frances asked for help in getting a teenage boy out of jail because he was supporting his family. Frances went to the Charity Organization Society which after a long investigation deemed him “unworthy.” A friend suggested she try the Tammany Hall in the client’s district. The problem was helped within 24 hours. Her lobbying activities also put her in contact with other machine politicians. She met and struck up a close relationship with Al Smith. Working together they succeeded in getting a bill passed that limited women to a 54 hour work week. It was a compromise and liberals attacked her for giving up too much to get it passed. She knew that without the compromise there would have been no bill and not even the limited protection this bill offered. The lessons in becoming a skilled politician were piling up. In the past she had looked down on politicians but now concluded, “…that venal politicians can sometimes be more useful than upstanding reformers (Downey, 2009,p. 39).” Understanding and accepting the value of working within the political order was one of the secrets of her success.
Her experiences in these activities taught her another valuable lesson. A politician told her that men trusted women who were motherly and not seductive sirens. Downey says, “She began to see her gender, a liability in many ways, could actually be an asset. To accentuate this opportunity to gain influence she began to dress and comport herself in a way that reminded men of their mothers, rather than doing what women usually like to do which is making themselves more physically attractive to men (Downey, 2009, p. 45). At this time she was 33 years old. Up to then the papers had characterized her as “perky” “pretty” “dimpled.” They now began to label her as “Mother Perkins” a name she disliked only a little less than being called “Ma Perkins.” Such was the price for shaping herself into a highly effective politician. In these activities Frances was aware of her limitations as a woman and avoided places where women did not usually go. She did her lobbying in hallways and not bars. This too became a lifelong skill. When people were brought together to work out differences she stayed in the background. Others often got credit for her greatest accomplishments. Who today identifies her as the moving force behind achieving Social Security?
Well, me. I know what it took to get that kind of great change written into law and policy. You may read more at the link.
And, unfortunately, we have the antithesis to her and the people she worked with and for today. This is from Mark Jacob’s writing on his blog Stop the Presses. “Here’s what we WON’T do when Trump takes over. We won’t shut up and give up – we’ll stand up and power up.” This is necessary since we have learned yet another big Media outlet has caved to President-Eject Incontinentia Buttocks. The brilliant suggestions continue past this bit.
As democracy defenders, we’re facing hard times when authoritarian Donald Trump takes office Jan. 20. But what will we do about it? For now, I’m focusing on what we won’t do:
We won’t shut up.
We won’t retreat from the news.
We won’t lose our ability to be outraged.
We won’t be duped by a fake “crisis” that serves as a pretext to send the military against American citizens and turn our country into a police state.
We won’t sit on our couch and watch protests on TV when we should be out protesting in front of the TV cameras.
We won’t tolerate abuse of women simply because the person who won the last presidential election is a sexual predator.
We won’t get exhausted. Instead, we’ll pace ourselves, find ways to relax and enjoy life, and be ready to go at the crucial moments.
We won’t accept the notion that “all politicians lie.” More politicians lie when the news media and public accept lying and thus make it advantageous to lie.
We won’t forget to be kind.
We won’t expect the New York Times, the Washington Post and the TV networks to wake up and seriously confront the threat of fascism when they didn’t do it before the election.
We won’t forget that Trump won by just 1.5 percentage points — not a mandate, and certainly not a statement that most Americans want to surrender their rights to him.
The little tomboy girl I was who wanted to do everything boys do and do it better is still in me. Not backing down. Nope. Not gonna do it. Wouldn’t be prudent at this juncture. This is from Lisa Needham at Public Notice. ABC was never a station we watched much as my Dad was a big fan of Huntley-Brinkley. Also, George Stephanopoulos has never been on my list to receive any news or advice. This disappoints me but doesn’t surprise me at all. “ABC bends the knee. Corporate media is surrendering already.” That’s exactly what a stumbling despot wants on his way to power. He wants control of the media. Wouldn’t want the truth sneaking out while you’ve got that propaganda thing going.
Since the election, plenty of the richest among us have rushed to curry favor with Donald Trump by showering him with cash.
Meta’s Mark Zuckerburg is giving Trump $1 million for his inauguration, as is OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Amazon, which will also stream the ceremony on Prime. But perhaps even more galling is ABC’s move to settle an absurd defamation lawsuit brought by Trump over George Stephanopoulos’s completely defensible on-air statement that Trump had been found liable for rape.
ABC will donate $15 million to Trump’s presidential library — a thing that has not yet been built and currently exists only as a website maintained by the National Archives. The network also agreed to pay $1 million toward Trump’s lawyer fees, continuing Trump’s streak of never paying for his own legal bills. And ABC and Stephanopoulos pledged to make a statement saying they “regret” the remarks.
It’s a bad omen for mainstream media coverage of Trump 2.0 and speaks to the importance of independent outlets that won’t be so easily intimidated.
Trump’s lawsuit rested on the incredibly flimsy argument that it defamed him to say he was found liable for the rape of E. Jean Carroll when he was actually found liable for forced digital penetration. But Stephanopoulos’s comments were consistent with how the presiding judge described the case.
So, since I seem to be going all economist on you these days, let me just say that I love Paul Krugman’s substack. I’m glad he left the New York Times, even though he really didn’t state a reason other than it was time. Here’s today’s offering at Krugman Wonks Out. “Crypto is for Criming. It’s not digital gold — it’s digital Benjamins.” You can write me down as a crypto hater. I will never know how this Ponzi scheme took root, but then I can’t explain the appeal of President-Eject Incontinentia Buttocks to me either. I have decided that some folks just want to be lied to if it feeds their raging ID and be told lies and sold a bill of goods just to think they may have something going for themselves and take a breather from their anger and resentment.
‘The tech bros who helped put Trump back in power expect many favors in return; one of the more interesting is their demand that the government intervene to guarantee crypto players the right to a checking account, stopping the “debanking” they claim has hit many of their friends.
The hypocrisy here is thick enough to cut with a knife. If you go back to the 2008 white paper by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto that gave rise to Bitcoin, its main argument was that we needed to replace checking accounts with blockchain-based payments because you can’t trust banks; crypto promoters also tend to preach libertarianism, touting crypto as a way to escape government tyranny. Now we have crypto boosters demanding that the evil government force the evil banks to let them have conventional checking accounts.
What’s going on here? Elon Musk, Marc Andreesen and others claim that there’s a deep state conspiracy to undermine crypto, because of course they do. But the real reason banks don’t want to be financially connected to crypto is that they believe, with good reason, that to the extent that cryptocurrencies are used for anything besides speculation, much of that activity is criminal — and they don’t want to be accused of acting as accessories.
You may take the Good Doctor’s Monetary Theory lecture at the link. I can’t believe Milton Friedman would have anything positive to say about this development at all. He wrote the book on money and was awarded a Nobel Prize in Economics. And I also am having a huge hissy over the potential targeting of the FDIC. I worked in banking. I’ve worked for the Fed. This is my bailiwick. My daughter, the finance guru, didn’t fall for crypto, so I must have done something right. Don’t fall for this, either! This is from Reuters. “Trump’s floated idea to shutter FDIC would be political heavy lift, say analysts.” Fannie Perkins would really be in the fray on this one. How could they forget the Great Recession? It started with financial overreach in the banking industry too. CEOs and their marketing execs are more interested in becoming bigger than running an effective business.
U.S. bank stocks were unfazed on Friday after a report that President-elect Donald Trump’s team had floated the idea of shrinking or eliminating a top banking regulator, with analysts saying such a plan would not win the necessary political backing.
In recent interviews with bank regulator candidates, Trump advisers have asked whether the incoming president could abolish the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC) and move its deposit insurance function into the Treasury Department, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.
Officials from the newly founded Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has been tasked with finding major government savings, participated in the interviews, the WSJ said.
However, while the current system comprising three federal and multiple state bank regulators is complex, a major restructure would struggle to garner the political support needed to get through Congress, which is also expected to be tied up on tax reform and crypto legislation next year, analysts and academics said.“It would require congressional action and despite the Republican party majority in both the Senate and the House, it would require support from the Democrats which remains very unlikely,” ING sector strategist Marine Leleux wrote in a note.
Bank stocks were little changed on Friday.
The Trump transition team has been interviewing candidates for financial agency roles, including the bank regulators, in recent days, said two people with direct knowledge of the matter. DOGE officials have been involved in some of those interviews, one said
I cannot see Senator Elizabeth Warren being quiet about any of this. However, the ink of the press is focused on the man with the most responsibility for this mess. Senator Mitch McConnell is objecting a lot now that he’s an ineffective backbencher. Look, he doesn’t like Polio! He wants the vaccine still! Look, he’s got something to say about how wonderful the Bush years were because we tried and failed to bomb “American Exceptionalism” into the Middle East, but it’s good policy!. But just because we know better doesn’t mean Legacy Media does. This is from MSNBC and Steve Benen, which means I assume Rachel saw this, too. “Why Mitch McConnell’s latest clashes with Trump matter. Despite his recent partisan history, Mitch McConnell has thrown a lot of brushback pitches in Donald Trump’s direction lately.” WTAF?
It was hard not to wonder how Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a polio survivor, would respond to the news. As it turned out, we didn’t have to wait too long to find out.
In a statement to NBC News, the Kentucky Republican — who’ll soon step down from his GOP leadership post — didn’t mention Kennedy by name, but the longtime senator said anyone seeking a confirmation vote must be specific about their intentions related to the polio vaccine.
“Anyone seeking the Senate’s consent to serve in the incoming Administration would do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts,” McConnell wrote. He added that “efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed — they’re dangerous.”
It was a notable brushback pitch from a key GOP official, but it was also part of a recent pattern: McConnell has thrown a lot of these pitches at Trump and his team lately.
- In an interview with the Financial Times, published last week, McConnell warned about the dangers of isolationism, which he seemed to tie directly to his party’s incoming president. “We’re in a very, very dangerous world right now, reminiscent of before World War II,” the senator said, adding, “Even the slogan is the same. ‘America First’ — that was what they said in the ’30s.”
- McConnell has a newly published essay in Foreign Affairs magazine, warning against the “right-wing flirtation with isolation and decline.” Referencing a signature phrase from Trump, the Kentucky Republican added, “America will not be made great again by those who simply want to manage its decline.”
- The senator’s written piece echoed a speech he delivered earlier this month, rejecting his party’s isolationist wing.
- In Congress last month, Matt Gaetz’s bid to become the next attorney general collapsed in the face of opposition from GOP senators. While there was no official tally on the scope of the Republican opposition to the former Florida congressman, The New York Times reported that McConnell was among those staunchly opposed to his prospective nomination.
When political observers take stock on Capitol Hill, looking for Republicans who might be a thorn in the president-elect’s side, they tend to focus on members such as Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski and Maine’s Susan Collins. But what if McConnell — who’s expected to retire at the end of his term, and who doesn’t appear to have anything to lose by standing up to Trump — unexpectedly joins the faction of Trump skeptics?
To be sure, it’d be a mistake to get one’s hopes up.
These folks are the heirs of Edward R. Murrow? Seriously? Let me just leave you with a quote from the guy that covered the NAZIs running rampant over Europe and didn’t mince words. Extra points if you know this was his sign-off!
Good Night and Good Luck!
“Surely we shall pay for using this most powerful instrument of communications to insulate the citizenry from the hard and demanding realities that must be faced if we are to survive”
Edward R. Murrow
So here I am at the keyboard, your nerdy friend. We don’t have the same number of folks reading us that we used to back in the day when we were one of the top 25 Political Blogs. But we’re here, and we’re still fearless. It is actually nice to see the country’s public intellectuals doing the Old School Blog thing these days on Substack. Throw them some bling if you can! I started out on Fire Dog Lake way back in the day. I know BB was at The Daily Kos until the anti-Hillary stuff flared. We’re here because we don’t like one-sided stories. We like to find the facts.
We’ve had terrible technical trouble with WordPress since they seem to have turned something that can’t figure out how to let people comment. Half the time, I can’t even comment on my posts here. I have to dive behind the front page to the dashboard. But, you know what … there’s a lot of stuff here from many people, and it’s still in the files. It’s been very close to 20 years now, too. I’m unsure how to get it to any place safer now. So, we’re here. We won’t shut up. We’re a Refuge.
I have one more thing to share with you. It’s important. Please read it. This is the Methodist church I want to remember. It’s also a story I’m familiar with. Our neighbors from south of our border were here helping us clean up after Katrina when everyone else wasn’t. I still want a taco truck on every corner, and we’re a lot closer to that down here in New Orleans than we used to be. It just occurred to me that I likely wrote a lesson plan for my high school students when I was in my 20s, and my heart was an open book. I actually taught civics then. Can you believe it? This story is important.
In a world full of Kari Lakes, be a Francis Perkins. In a world full of George Stephanopoulos, be an Edward Murrow.
My church kept ICE from deporting our neighbor Jose. The Bible told us so.President-elect Donald Trump has plans to end a policy that generally restricts ICE from arresting undocumented people at or near so-called sensitive locations. http://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnb…
— Democracy Skies in Blueness – Resist (@democracyblue.bsky.social) 2024-12-15T14:10:26.674Z
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
And if your comment goes to pending, know that our three editors here will pull it out.
Do NOT SURRENDER in advance!
Vive la résistance!
#JohnbussBskySocial #Repeat1968JohnBuss #DoNotSurrenderInAdvance #EdwardRMurrow #FrancisPerkins #GraceUnitedMethodistChurchNewOrleans #idiocracy #kakistocracy #kleptocracy #Polycrisis #PresidentEjectIncontinentiaButtocks #TheLegacyMediaSucks
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Finally Friday Reads: Let’s talk Kleptocracy!!
“Felon of the Year!” John Buss, @johnbuss.bsky.social
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
The Golden Age of Self-Dealing is about upon us! This year, we’ve had all kinds of new descriptions to assign the type of government the dumbest among us will usher in on Jan 20th. We’re in a polycrisis that will be managed by the least qualified and skilled among us; a kakistocracy. We will be governed by the least fit, the most incompetent, and the proven corrupt. I spent a lot of time in my doctoral program studying Corporate Governance. However, we, the People, are much more than mere stockholders in our government. The powers invested in our Federal Government could lead to more serious crimes than even the worst things committed by companies like Enron. Corporations can not print that universally accepted thing called government-backed currency. They cannot declare war and make and break treaties and alliances. That’s probably the biggest responsibility. But our health, happiness, justice, and liberty are at stake. Are we really that expendable to them?
Much of what’s being discussed right now is dismantling agencies that have been vested with the responsibility to ensure many things businesses do won’t kill us or bilk us. So, what will likely happen if we are left to the wolves of Wall Street with no oversight? What about putting the conspiracy crowd in charge of guarding our public health or our safety when we fly, drive, or use any form of transportation? What about letting anyone with the financial ability to set up shop call themselves a university, a daycare, or any other form of school? Should we leave children to the likes of the folks who tell pollsters they don’t think Arabic numbers should be taught in school? The overlords will ship off their kids to the top boarding schools in the country while everyone else gets stuck with whatever the undereducated in their community will scream about. It’s a pretty depressing future.
So, I’m not even sure where to start, but how about with RFK Jr, the one with the worm that ate his brain, and the television and web-based Snake Oil Salesman, Mehmet Oz. A USA Today headline blares this bit of happy news. “Dr. Mehmet Oz had up to $33 million in companies doing business with agency he’d run.” I don’t care if it’s in a blind trust; he knows if he owns it. Erin Mansfield has the analysis.
President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to be the top health insurance regulator in the country, Dr. Mehmet Oz, has invested in companies that do business with the agency he would run.
Oz, Trump’s choice to run Medicare, Medicaid and the insurance marketplace under the Affordable Care Act, owned up to $33.7 million stock in these companies when he filed a financial disclosure during his unsuccessful 2022 campaign for Senate in Pennsylvania.
The TV talk show host owned between $280,000 and $600,000 in UnitedHealth Group and between $50,000 and $100,000 in CVS Health, which both provide health insurance plans under Medicare Advantage.
He also owned between $5.8 million and $26.7 million in Amazon and between $1.6 million and $6.3 million in Microsoft, two major technology providers for the Centers for Medicare and Medicare Services, the agency he would run.
Accountable.US, a left-leaning group that compiled some of the research, said it reviewed filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and was unable to find evidence that Oz sold stocks in Amazon or Microsoft since the 2022 filing.
“All nominees and appointees will comply with the ethical obligations of their respective agencies,” Brian Hughes, a spokesperson for the Trump-Vance transition, said in a statement to USA TODAY when asked if Oz still owns these stocks.
Oz will be required to fill out the same form after his official nomination as administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Oz in 2020 said the federal government should allow all Americans to purchase coverage through Medicare Advantage, a program in which private insurance sell Medicare-regulated plans to seniors and people with disabilities.
In 2022, Oz owned stock in the parent company of UnitedHealthcare, which covered 29% of Medicare Advantage patients in 2024, according to the health care organization KFF, formerly known as the Kaiser Family Foundation. CVS Health covers another 12%.
I won’t give you my usual microeconomics lectures on monopoly, but for all that shouting about free markets these billionaires do, they sure love themselves markets that are so concentrated that you can count the number of providers with one hand. This year’s study from this 2024 report by the US Government Accountability Office will give you the willies. Oh, and DOGE is after that Federal Agency, along with others. Just to make it short, these markets are dysfunctional. The producer side of the equation has too much power in the market. In this case, it’s literally the power of life and death. And, it’s made based on whether they hit their profit goals for their stockholders. Businesses only make money by cutting costs because doing anything inventive is hard. You know what that leads to. “Private Health Insurance: Market Concentration Generally Increased from 2011 through 2022.GAO-25-107194.”
Several companies may be selling health insurance in a given market, but, as we previously reported, most people usually enroll with one of a small number of insurers. Known as market concentration, this can result in fewer choices of insurers and higher premiums due to less competition in the market.
Market concentration generally increased from 2011 through 2022, with three or fewer insurers holding at least 80% of the market share for the individual and employer group markets in at least 35 states. However, the markets for individuals became slightly less concentrated from 2020 to 2022.
In November 2022, GAO reported that, from 2011 through 2020, enrollment in private health insurance plans was concentrated, meaning a small number of issuers of those plans enrolled most of the people in a given market (GAO-23-105672). Specifically, GAO considered a market concentrated in a state if three or fewer issuers held at least 80 percent of the market share of enrollment. For this report, GAO examined the individual (coverage primarily sold to individuals who lack access to group coverage), small-group (coverage offered by small employers), and large-group (coverage offered by large employers) health insurance markets from 2011 through 2022 and found that concentration generally increased. Specifically:
The overall individual market became more concentrated from 2011 through 2022. Concentration in this market peaked in 2019 and became slightly less concentrated through 2022.
The small-group market became more concentrated from 2011 through 2022, but the rate of increase slowed more recently.
The large-group market remained concentrated with only slight increases from 2011 through 2022 (see figure).
Companies do not merge for the purpose of cost efficiencies. They merge because they think they will own more of the market and have more market power. This concentration will lead to much higher profits and less for everyone else. I can spend an entire semester showing how broken concentrated markets are and that they desperately need supervision. But that serves everyone but the guys at the top, so these studies are written, empirical evidence is provided by nerds like me and think tanks, and nothing gets done policy-wise.
In the case of this market, people die for the illusion that all markets set free of oversight magically function on their own. That’s a philosophical hypothesis that tests wrong over and over. Few markets meet the critical structure that makes them efficient by leaving them alone. Most of those are wholesale commodities markets and not complex markets like those that try to find a price for financial contracts that tend to be very specific and unique, involve middlemen and market confusion, and can’t find a price with just interaction between buyer and seller.
I ran across this Blue Sky thread by billionaire Mark Cuban. He gets it. There’s more of this thread here. I can tell you anecdotally what it took me to get out of the Mutual of Omaha provide providers, which was basically Catholic Management sending patients to Catholic hospitals when I had my high-risk pregnancy. I basically told my ex, who was one of these ghoulish cost cutters for that company, that he better get them to pay for me delivering at Methodist or that I would go there to deliver, and he could fricking pay for it for the rest of his natural born days.
He got the person in charge to send me to Methodist since it was the only hospital with a neonatologist at the time. He was a nice Jewish OB/GYN who later was in charge of Doctor Daughter’s residency. Methodist Hospital obviously cared if their patients lived while having a complicated pregnancy. You might notice that the way I got this treatment was to send an AVP of the company to twist their arm. I remember that one of my friends doing his rotation in OB/GYN watched a patient at Creighton Medical Center get a lecture from a Priest brought in by her doctor on why she should carry her pregnancy to term despite the condition the baby had was a brain undeveloped so badly that it was spilling out from a lack of skull. There was no chance of survival, but there was a lot of risk to the mother. I was not about to go through that. I was a happy little Methodist then, and that’s where I wanted to deliver my youngest. The C-section went fine, and we both went home, although I did drive myself to the emergency room 10 weeks before she was due to hemorrhaging.
All this leads to Mark Cuban. Leave these decisions to Doctors. not cost-cutting paper pushers like my MBA ex-husband.
If you want to understand why healthcare pricing is horrific, the first thing to know is that our system puts 100% of the credit risk for deductibles, copays and co-insurance on hospitals and doctors. That's insane. We have turned them into Sub Prime Lenders 🧵
When they can't collect payment, they raise prices to make up that loss. Plus they need to have all the administration of a mortgage loan servicer to try to collect those amounts. Which of course also puts people who can't afford the cost, in medical debt, which often leads to bankruptcy
Then there are insurance companies. The crazy thing is that for more than 50m people,those covered by self insured entities,ins comps don't actually provide insurance. They act as Care Authorizers and payment processors. Can the care occur and how much will be paid.
Their primary role is to make sure that there is not fraud by providers (think overuse of operations to inflate revenue , or services not covered by the plan the user is covered by and/or determine if care is "medically necessary "
That authorization process is one we should not be asking ins comps to do. That role should be performed by INDEPENDENT TPAs. With zero economic incentive to approve or deny. The first step is for self insured entities to use 3rd party TPAs and move away from insurance companies for this service
If they do this, they can use the insurance companies for their networks and software. But better yet, I think direct contracting is the future. For my employees, we are direct contracting with providers. We are stipulating that there will be no pre authorizations. We will trust the provider
Imagine that! He says to trust the Doctors, not the guys making money off the ill.
So, I am staying with the theme of Health Care because BB alerted me to this while preparing to write this post. JJ couldn’t believe they would actually do this to us. This headline is horrifying! It’s from Reuters. “Trump to discuss ending childhood vaccination programs with RFK Jr.” This is what happens when idiots vote for supposed “businessmen.” WTF do either of these men know about vaccines?
Trump says could get rid of some vaccinations “if I think it’s dangerous”
Kennedy is known for anti-vaccine stance, linked to debunked autism claims
Experts warn ending vaccine programs could lead to disease outbreaks, deaths
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump in an interview published on Thursday said he will be talking to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his nominee to run the Department of Health and Human Services, about ending childhood vaccination programs.
When asked if he would sign off if Kennedy decided to end childhood vaccinations programs, Trump told Time magazine, “we’re going to have a big discussion. The autism rate is at a level that nobody ever believed possible. If you look at things that are happening, there’s something causing it.”
When asked if the discussion could result in his administration getting rid of some vaccinations, Trump said: “It could if I think it’s dangerous, if I think they are not beneficial, but I don’t think it’s going to be very controversial in the end.
Asked in the Nov. 25 interview if he thinks childhood autism is linked to vaccines, Trump said: “No, I’m going to be listening to Bobby,” referring to Kennedy. Trump said he had a lot of respect for Kennedy and his views on vaccinations.
Can you hear me screaming all the way from the Mississippi River way down yonder in New Orleans? And this is the headline that did it to me from The Guardian. “RFK Jr key adviser petitioned regulators to revoke approval of polio vaccine. Aaron Siri is helping Trump’s health secretary pick to select top jobs despite long history of attacking vaccines.” I wonder what Mitch McConnell might say if he could.
A key legal adviser to Robert Kennedy Jr, Donald Trump’s pick for health secretary, is at the center of efforts to push federal drug regulators to revoke approval for the polio and hepatitis B vaccines and block distribution of 13 other critical vaccines.
Aaron Siri, a lawyer who has been helping Kennedy select top health administrators as part of the Trump transition process, is deeply embedded in longstanding efforts to force the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to withdraw a raft of vaccines that have saved the lives and health of millions of Americans.
Siri has been sitting alongside Kennedy in interviews in which they have asked candidates for top health jobs where they stand on vaccines, the New York Times reported on Friday.
Kennedy, a leading vaccine sceptic, has insisted he has no plans to revoke vaccines should he be confirmed by the US Senate for the health secretary position. But his close ties with Siri are raising concerns about the incoming Trump administration’s intentions, given the lawyer’s intimate involvement in the anti-vaccine movement.
Siri works closely with the Informed Consent Action Network (Ican), a “medical freedom” non-profit founded by Del Bigtree, whose has long waged war on vaccines including as producer of the anti-vaccination documentary, Vaxxed. The New York Times report noted that Siri filed the 2022 petition calling for the FDA to revoke approval for the polio vaccine on behalf of ICAN.
Poliovirus, the cause of a disease that used to be one of the most feared by Americans, has been eliminated from the country by the US through polio vaccines. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that the best way to avoid its return and keep people safe is through vaccination.
Siri has not only been involved in lawsuits calling for the withdrawal or suspension of the polio and hepatitis B vaccines, but he has also petitioned the FDA to “pause distribution” of 13 other vaccines, according to the Times.
Trump said this week that Kennedy may investigate vaccines for a supposed link with autism. The remark to NBC suggests that his pick for health secretary may run with the conspiracy theory that there is a connection between childhood vaccinations and autism that has been thoroughly debunked yet is repeatedly peddled by Kennedy.
Kennedy’s spokesperson, Katie Miller, confirmed to the Times that Siri has been advising Kennedy but said his vaccine petitions had not been discussed.
“Mr Kennedy has long said that he wants transparency in vaccines and to give people choice,” she said.
When you have a savior complex, you think nothing will get you. There are a lot of those types up for Cabinet jobs. Kari Lake is about to become the Voice of America. I’ve already dubbed her Lady Haw-Haw after an American NAZI sympathizer who was a propagandist on the radio during World War 2. NPR has a lot to say about that. “Trump says Kari Lake will lead Voice of America. He attacked it during his first term.” Our taxes are funding MAGA propaganda here.
President-elect Donald Trump says Kari Lake, a local television news anchor-turned-MAGA politician, will lead the federally funded broadcaster Voice of America.
If successful, the move would put a loyalist at the helm of a news outlet that Trump sought to bring to heel under his appointee during the final year of his first term. Trump officials sought to strip the network and its parent agency of their independence during his first term, including actions later found to be illegal and in one case, unconstitutional.
But Trump doesn’t have the authority to unilaterally install Lake; the hire is dependent on a bipartisan board beneath the chief executive of its parent agency.
Voice of America (VOA), which is funded by Congress, operates in nearly 50 languages and reaches an estimated 354 million people weekly across the globe. It is part of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, the government agency that oversees all non-military, U.S. international broadcasting.
Trump said Wednesday on Truth Social that Lake will be appointed by and work closely with the incoming head of that agency, “who I will announce soon.”
A free press is central to VOA’s mission: It aims to bring unfettered reporting to places that do not have it, and show political debate and dissent in the U.S. even when that reflects critically on the administration in power.
Trump’s White House took the unprecedented step in spring 2020 of openly attacking VOA in public statements over its perceived failures to explicitly blame the Chinese government for the pandemic.
On Wednesday, Trump wrote that Lake and his as-yet-unnamed agency leader will “ensure that the American values of Freedom and Liberty are broadcast around the World FAIRLY and ACCURATELY, unlike the lies spread by the Fake News Media.”
I’d say it’s highly likely that Tulsi Gabbard will be more than willing to provide material for those broadcasts. I’m sure Putin will oblige. The latest outrage, for me, anyway, is that all the Trump TechBros are funding his inauguration with millions of dollars, and Presidential Reject Incontinentia Buttocks is inviting all the favorite despots from the world over. This is from CNN. “Xi’s RSVP is a snub to Trump, but the inauguration invite is still a big deal.”
Getting Xi to fly across the world would be an enormous coup for the president-elect — a fact that would make it politically unfeasible for the Chinese leader. Such a visit would put the Chinese president in the position of paying homage to Trump and American might — which would conflict with his vision for China’s assumption of a rightful role as a preeminent global power. At the inaugural ceremony, Xi would be forced to sit and listen to Trump without having any control over what the new president might say while lacking a right of reply. Xi’s presence would also be seen as endorsing a democratic transfer of power — anathema for an autocrat in a one-party state obsessed with crushing individual expression.
Still, even without a favorable response, Trump’s invitation to Xi marks a significant development that sheds light on the president-elect’s confidence and ambition as he wields power ahead of his second term. CNN’s team covering Trump reported that he’s also been asking other world leaders if they want to come to the inauguration — in a break with convention.
This is a reminder of Trump’s fondness for foreign policy by grand gesture and his willingness to trample diplomatic codes with his unpredictable approach. The Xi invitation also shows that Trump believes that the force of his personality alone can be a decisive factor in forging diplomatic breakthroughs. He’s far from the only president to pursue this approach — which rarely works since hostile US adversaries make hardnosed choices on national interest rather than vibes.
Then, when will his cult figure this one out about his lie about being able to bring prices down, which he just admitted he can’t do?
Wake me up when this is all over.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
#JohnbussBskySocial #Repeat1968JohnBuss #antiVaccinationTwits #DrMehmetOzWeirdo #KarLakeWeirdo #RFKJrWeirdo #SelfDealingTrumpCabinet #Self_ #TrumpCabinetRapeGang #TrumpCabinetWeirdos #VoiceOfTrump
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Finally Friday Reads: Another Fine Mess by the Butt-Wipers of Incontinentia Buttocks
“Updated version of an oldie. Probably will be doing a lot of that since it’s like deja vu all over again.” John Buss
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I still have this dreadful sinus infection. Last night, the temperature dropped to what usually doesn’t appear until the end of January here. The last two years have been insane, climate-wise. We’ve got many active candidates for the next probable pandemic. We’ve got an economy that’s currently the envy of the world. The number of ongoing hot wars is frightening, with one being labeled a genocide by the well-respected Amnesty International. “Polycrisis” is the term now used by folks who form the intellectual community of Strategic Advisors. That would imply “military, geopolitical, economic, political, climate, and other crises.”
The convergence of all these crises creates a situation where we need to work globally more than ever. So, the country, usually seen as the leader on the global stage, has a voting populace that just sent a clown car. Tom Nichols has this analysis written in The Atlantic. “Trump Voters Got What They Wanted. Those who expect Donald Trump will hurt others, and not them, are likely to be unpleasantly surprised.” The pathology of Trump voters is clearly stated in the clip below from The Bulwark Podcast. “The American people made their choice, and the fight to preserve the global democratic coalition against the global authoritarian movement continues. But maybe letting those voters see unadulterated Trumpism in the White House, without the baby bumpers—at least for a little while—is how we save America. Plus, the price of eggs v fascism, and Trump is going to inherit a great economy and claim responsibility for it.”
What do we do now that the lemmings are plunging over the cliff while chanting, “We really owned the libs”?
I think we can sum it up with a simple quote by George Carlin. “Think of how stupid the average person is and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
So, given that we’re firmly in a state of Polycrisis, what can be made of Trump’s ill-suited cabinet choices? For one, we know they’re there to throw out every specialist in each Federal Department to cripple that department and to lessen the number of folks that carry out the mandates (i.e., laws) established by Congress over the years over a few centuries. Are we really going to be stuck with Patel of the Crazy Eyes and crazier thoughts? RFK jr, who is responsible for killing children in Samoa with his bizarre, unschooled thoughts on vaccines? Will he really yank all the passports of his so-called enemies, and how long will that list eventually be? The entire west wing will be filled with sociopaths, narcissists, and conspiracy nuts at this rate.
So here’s Pete again. Is Trump still trying to inflict him on our military? You know, the ones that President-Reject Incontinentia Buttocks called ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’? Here are some thoughts by writer Cathy Young. “In Pete Hegseth’s Totalitarian Vision, Opponents of Christian Nationalism Are Commies and Political Enemies. Trump’s defense pick will help him pave the way to an authoritarian America.”
President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, is in trouble. While initial reactions to his nomination focused on the absurdity of this former Fox News anchor being elevated to second in command of the military, the main obstacles to Hegseth’s confirmation remain his various problems with women: a sexual assault allegation from 2017, disparaging comments about women in the military, and a newly surfaced 2018 email from his mother berating him for habitual mistreatment of the opposite sex.
But even more alarmingly: Hegseth is an ideological extremist who views political opponents as “the enemy” and political differences as war by another name. Worse, he’s a Christian nationalist of the stridently militaristic kind, which raises disturbing questions about his potential willingness to misuse the U.S. military for political purposes. This is not a characterization pieced together from the odd soundbite or two—Hegseth himself tells us who he is in his books. The image of Hegseth that emerges from The War on Warriors (2024), Battle for the American Mind (2022), and American Crusade (2020), is of a militant Christian extremist who is obsessed with the Crusades and whose highest aspiration is redesigning the U.S. military into his ideological mold.
The central idea of American Crusade is that the survival of the United States as a free country requires a “holy war” to achieve “a single paramount objective: the categorical defeat of the Left.” Hegseth accuses the left—by which he doesn’t just mean an extremist fringe but the Democratic Party and its supporters in general—of seeking the “utter annihilation” of true patriots. “We are two Americas; a house divided,” he declares, and the other half is full of people whose “ignorance and ideologies threaten America’s very survival.” Hegseth writes: “Only the categorical defeat of the Left will secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. We must reelect Donald Trump in 2020 and continue the cultural counterattack until Leftists are no longer electorally viable.” The implication is clear: liberty requires one-party rule. This is far from an unrepresentative line. In The War on Warriors, complaining that “the Left has never fought fair,” Hegseth lists “electing Obama” among its dirty tricks, despite the fact that Obama won a greater share of both the popular and the electoral vote in 2008 and 2012 than Trump did in 2016 and 2024.
Amanda Marcotte also writes about his love affair with White Christian Nationalism, a truly perverse twist on the New Testament, at Salon.
The central idea of American Crusade is that the survival of the United States as a free country requires a “holy war” to achieve “a single paramount objective: the categorical defeat of the Left.” Hegseth accuses the left—by which he doesn’t just mean an extremist fringe but the Democratic Party and its supporters in general—of seeking the “utter annihilation” of true patriots. “We are two Americas; a house divided,” he declares, and the other half is full of people whose “ignorance and ideologies threaten America’s very survival.” Hegseth writes: “Only the categorical defeat of the Left will secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. We must reelect Donald Trump in 2020 and continue the cultural counterattack until Leftists are no longer electorally viable.” The implication is clear: liberty requires one-party rule. This is far from an unrepresentative line. In The War on Warriors, complaining that “the Left has never fought fair,” Hegseth lists “electing Obama” among its dirty tricks, despite the fact that Obama won a greater share of both the popular and the electoral vote in 2008 and 2012 than Trump did in 2016 and 2024.
In addition to treating a broadly defined “Left” as the enemy, American Crusade also heaps scorn on ostensibly patriotic but overly complacent “fifty-fifty Americans.” The term comes from Theodore Roosevelt, who is quoted in the epigraph to the first part of the book: “There is not room in the country for any fifty-fifty American, nor can there be but one loyalty—to the Stars and Stripes.” The quote appears to be a garbled amalgam of several passages in Roosevelt’s speeches and writings, all of them from a very specific context: divided loyalties among some German-Americans during World War I. Hegseth’s “fifty-fifty American,” by contrast, refers to a well-meaning non-combatant in the culture war: a “squish” who disapproves of the perceived excesses of the progressive left but shrugs them off in the hope that “common sense will prevail,” or who doesn’t want to be “overly political,” or who thinks his or her local public school is great. For all his talk of reverence for America’s founding ideals, Hegseth’s version of Americanism sounds at times more like proto-totalitarian French Jacobinism, whose ideologues asserted that not only “traitors” but the “indifferent” and the “passive” must be punished.
After reading these analyses and their supporting citations, you can only be left with the idea that this man will have no problem turning the military on Americans out of step with his bizarre beliefs. I focus on this because Incontinentia Buttocks’ most recent picks have to do with ICE and his planned massive deportations and establishment of Concentration Camps. This is from Politico‘s Myah Ward. “Trump names ICE chief and makes another round of immigration announcements. The president-elect is planning an ambitious immigration agenda during his first 100 days.”
Trump said he was nominating Rodney Scott as commissioner of Customs and Border Protection. Scott served for almost three decades in the Border Patrol, and as the chief of the agency during the last year of the Trump administration and beginning of the Biden administration. He helped implement Trump’s Remain in Mexico Policy, Title 42 and Safe Third Country agreements.
Trump also announced he was tapping Caleb Vitello, who’s currently the assistant director of the Office of Firearms and Tactical Programs in Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to serve as acting director of ICE.
And the president-elect picked Tony Salisbury, who serves as the special agent in charge for ICE Homeland Security Investigations in Miami, to serve as the deputy homeland security adviser on the White House Homeland Security Council. Brandon Judd, the president of the National Border Patrol Council, which represents more than 17,000 Border Patrol Agents and support staff, was also announced as Trump’s nominee to be ambassador to Chile.
Immigration was Trump’s top priority on the campaign trail, and in his first 100 days he plans to begin the process of deporting hundreds of thousands of people and to roll back President Joe Biden’s immigration policies. Outside allies expect the administration’s immigration policy, similar to Trump’s first term, to be run out of the White House by incoming Border Czar Tom Homan and Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser.
So, what happens with those Concentration Camps once he starts outloading Hispanic Americans? Also, will we ever rid ourselves of Biggest Dickus? More about his funding of the Trump campaign is coming out, and it’s horrifying! This is from NBC. “Elon Musk spent a quarter-billion dollars electing Trump, including financing mysterious ‘RBG PAC’. The super PAC, which defended Trump on abortion, got its more than $20 million from the “Elon Musk Revocable Trust.” This guy’s the Make American Apartheid South Africa freak!
Billionaire Elon Musk poured more than $20 million into a mysterious super PAC at the end of the 2024 campaign, part of more than $250 million he spent overall to boost President-elect Donald Trump, new campaign finance reports show.
Musk financed RBG PAC, according to the report the group filed Thursday night with the Federal Election Commission. The super PAC, which did not disclose its donors before the election, launched ads contending that Trump did not support a federal abortion ban.
All of the money the group pulled in — $20.5 million — came from a single donation from the Elon Musk Revocable Trust in Austin, Texas. RBG PAC spent almost all of its money on digital ads, mailers and text messages, according to the campaign finance report, which covered Oct. 17 through Nov. 25.
Robert Reich believes that Trump might just bring on a Civil War. That’s a frightening thought that was discussed during his first term. But that was before he figured out how to blow things up. “How Trump could bring on a second civil war. “With his plans to use the military to root out undocumented immigrants and to use the Justice Department and FBI to punish his political enemies.”
Trump may force a second civil war on America with his plan to use the military to round up at least 11 million undocumented people inside the United States — even if it means breaking up families — send them to detention camps, and then deport them.
As well as his plan to target his political enemies for prosecution — including Democrats, journalists, and other critics.
What happens when we, especially those of us in blue states and cities, resist these authoritarian moves — as we must, as we have a moral duty to?
What happens when we try to protect hardworking members of our communities who have been our neighbors and friends for years, from Trump’s federal troops?
What happens when we refuse to allow Trump’s lackeys to wreak revenge on his political enemies who live within our states and communities?
Will our resistance give Trump an excuse to use force against us?
This is not far-fetched. We need to answer these questions for ourselves. We should prepare.
Trump has said he’ll use the Insurrection Act — which grants a president the power to “take such measures as he considers necessary” to suppress “any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy.”
He’s also said he’ll use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to end sanctuary cities. Such cities now limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Trump told Fox News’s Harris Faulkner that “we can do things in terms of moving people out.”
Those are all very good questions. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal are trying to get some changes made to the Insurrection Act right now. The Brennan Center has this analysis. “The Insurrection Act: A Presidential Power That Threatens Democracy. Congress must reform the outdated law, which is ripe for abuse.”
When former President Trump says he would conduct mass deportations of millions of people if elected again, some of his advisers talk about deploying the states’ National Guard to help carry out the task, even in states that oppose this extreme immigration policy.
But would he have the legal authority to do that? The answer is yes, it is legally possible under the Insurrection Act, an outdated law that is in urgent need of reform to prevent abuses of power and adapt to modern times.
The Insurrection Act is among the most powerful emergency powers at the disposal of a president, who can use it to deploy the U.S. armed forces and the militia to suppress insurrections, quell civil unrest or domestic violence, and enforce the law when it is being obstructed.
There are few constraints to this presidential power — neither Congress nor the courts play a role in deciding what constitutes an obstruction or rebellion — and the law does not limit what actions military forces may take once deployed.
The law, which was last amended in the 1870s, has been rarely invoked. But it has been both used and misused in the past. Past uses include enforcing civil rights laws, helping companies break strikes, and suppressing so-called “race riots.”
Currently, there are calls for President Biden to invoke it to gain control of the Texas National Guard and order it to stand down in the city of Eagle Pass, where National Guard soldiers have occupied a park along the southern border to militarize the border and deny federal border protection agents access.
And let’s not forget Trump’s supporters urged him to use it to impede the transition of power after the 2020 presidential election.
Although there is no question that Biden could turn to the Insurrection Act to respond to a deliberate obstruction that prevents the federal government from performing immigration duties, he should refrain from doing so and instead seek to assert federal authority through the courts. The act should be a tool of last resort, and any power of this magnitude requires robust checks and balances that it currently lacks.
That’s why the Brennan Center has proposed comprehensive reforms that would narrow the criteria for deployment, specify what actions are and are not authorized when the act is invoked, and give Congress and the courts approval and review authority to serve as checks against abuse or overreach.
The current changes asked for by Warren and Blumenthal are outlined here by the Washington Insider. “Democratic Senators Urge Biden to Restrict Military Deployment, Citing Concerns Over Trump’s Plans.” Stacy M. Brown reports the details.
Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) have called on President Joe Biden and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to issue a directive limiting the use of military personnel for domestic purposes, warning against potential misuse by President-elect Donald Trump after he takes office on Jan. 20.
The senators stressed the importance of clear guidelines to prevent the military from being deployed against American citizens without explicit constitutional or congressional authorization.
The request is rooted in the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits using federal troops in domestic law enforcement unless authorized by the Constitution or Congress.
While the Insurrection Act provides a narrow exception in cases of insurrection, rebellion, or extreme unrest, Warren and Blumenthal called for further restrictions to prevent abuse.
“Any deployment of federal forces must occur only when state or local authorities are overwhelmed and unable to ensure public safety,” the senators wrote.
They also emphasized the importance of consulting Congress before deploying troops and ensuring service members understand their obligations to reject unlawful orders.
The senators’ letter notes growing concerns over Trump’s rhetoric and past actions.
During his first term, Trump considered invoking the Insurrection Act to respond to Black Lives Matter protests, and some allies urged him to declare martial law after his 2020 election defeat. More recently, Trump has suggested using the military to deport immigrants without permanent legal status and relocating troops from overseas to the southern border.
Trump has picked a deputy for Kristy Noem at Homeland Security. This is reported by South Florida’s Channel 6 News. “Trump picks Miami HSI special agent in charge for deputy homeland security advisor. Anthony Salisbury is currently a Miami Homeland Security Investigations special agent in charge.”
In his current role, Anthony W. Salisbury “manages all of HSI’s complex Federal Law Enforcement investigative programs related to National Security and smuggling violations, including counter-proliferation, financial crimes, commercial fraud, human trafficking, human smuggling, narcotics smuggling, transnational,” the former president shared in a post on Truth Social.
He has previously served as the acting deputy executive associate director of HSI in Miami, and supervised the activities of HSI offices throughout the Republic of Mexico as the deputy attaché.
In his post, Trump wrote: “Tony will bring his vast Law Enforcement, counter-narcotics, and counter-cartel experience to the White House where he will serve under Stephen Miller, Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security Advisor.”
Miller is Trump’s pick for deputy chief of policy, longtime adviser and an immigration hard-liner, AP News reports.
The more deeply these picks get embedded and embed The True Believers, the more difficult it will be to find and remove them as needed. Again, I see most of the action needed to stop this lies within the courts and Congress. Fortunately and unfortunately, the House and Senate are quite close even though they will be controlled by Republicans. Are there enough sane people to stand up to these MAGA terrorists? The courts will likely follow the law until we hit SCOTUS. There are obviously embedded MAGA nuts there who continue to rewrite the Constitution and precedent.
We’ve got less than a month to develop a strategy that lets them know that We, the People, are not interested in becoming MAGA-compliant serfs. This won’t be pretty, but I’m not gonna quietly take it.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
S0, this is for all of you butt-wipers for Incontinentia Buttocks …
#JohnbussBskySocial #Repeat1968 #andOtherCrises #AssWipersForIncontinentiaButtocks #CabinetOfIncompetentImbeciles #climate #economic #geopolitical #IncontinentiaButtocks #JohnBuss #military #political #Polycrisis #PosseComitatusAct #TheInsurrectionAct #TrumpCabinetRapeGang #TrumpCabinetWeirdos
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Mostly Monday Reads: A little too much Biggus Dickus Energy
“American Oligarchs parade to MAGAville to grovel before the newborn king.” John Buss, @johnbuss.bsky.social
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I feel like I’m spending far too much time in Spamalot and Life of Brian, where the President-Elect, Incontinia Buttocks, makes pronouncements with his First Lady, Biggus Dickus, watching over his shoulder. It’s been weird watching all the Tech Bros and Nepo Babies running to Mara Lardo to bend the knee. They are undoubtedly trying to encourage tariffs to take out other American Businesses, not theirs. The next act of resistance will be flying my flag at half-mast on January 20th. I have also heard a few folks are flying Pirate Flags, too. I’m already trying to envision a massive blizzard in the District. Maybe I can get the local VooDoo Priestess to join in. Naughtiest Maximus (pictured up top)has already shown up to kiss Incontina Buttocks. Melania even showed up for a visit by Justin Trudeau, who was closely watched by his wife. I imagine there’s never been this much ass licked before ascension.
So, I agree with this headline from Public Notice. Noah Berlesky speaks for us all. “Kash Patel’s nomination signals how bad things can get. The worst timeline comes into view.” I hope the Republican Senators find their balls before this one comes up for review. That is if he or any of them come up for Senate review, which would be close to following the Rule of Law for President-Elect Incontinia Buttocks.
Patel is considered unqualified for the post even by staunch Trump-supporting conservatives. He’s made it clear he intends to use his power to attack the “deep state,” which he frames as a needed populist purge of a corrupt establishment. But in reality, Patel is poised to use the resources of the FBI to target Trump’s political opponents and criminalize resistance.
Rather than reforming the FBI, Patel and Trump are promising to embrace the worst of the bureau’s legacy, extending its use as an authoritarian cudgel to pursue grudges and crush dissent. The FBI, with its often ugly history, is a blunt instrument that Trump is intent on weaponizing — a goal that mostly eluded him during his first term when he failed to completely bend the bureau to his will.
Patel’s primary qualification for running the FBI is a spotless record of doing whatever Trump wants him to do. He was an undistinguished Florida defense attorney and DOJ staffer until 2017, when he was hired to work for the House Permanent Select Committee, which at the time was led by MAGA flunky Devin Nunes.
Patel headed the committee’s investigation of Russian interference on behalf of Trump in the 2016 campaign. He was the main author of the “Nunes memo,” a partisan attack on the Justice Department intended to obscure links between Trump’s campaign and Russia. Trump was delighted by Patel’s open hackery and declassified the document despite Justice Department objections.
…
Following Trump’s reluctant departure from office, Patel continued to serve as a willing and eager jack-of-all-lies.
Patel failed to show up for at least one deposition before the January 6 Committee, which wanted to talk to him about his role in Trump’s coup plotting. Trump gave Patel access to his presidential records, supposedly to write an account of his term that denied Russian collusion in the 2016 election. When it became clear that Trump had improperly removed some classified presidential records, Patel rushed to his defense, claiming in an interview with Breitbart that Trump had magically declassified everything. But other Trump administration officials disputed that, and Patel ended up testifying before a grand jury in return for immunity.
So, we will see more of Lickus Bottomus, Bottom for short.
Fortunately, the actual President still has power. He gave his son, Hunter, a blanket pardon, so Trump has one less person to torment. Let’s hope First Dog Commander can get one, too.
He’s also giving ambassador positions to cronies, criminals, and children’s inlaws. This is from the BBC. “Trump chooses Jared Kushner’s father for ambassador to France.” I guess he’ll be out there searching for the next Trump properties.
President-elect Donald Trump announced Saturday that he has selected Charles Kushner as his pick for ambassador to France.
Mr Kushner is a real-estate developer and the father of Jared Kushner, husband of his daughter Ivanka Trump. Trump pardoned Mr Kushner during his first term, waving away a federal conviction in 2020.
In a post to his social media site Truth Social, Trump said Mr Kushner is “a tremendous business leader, philanthropist, & dealmaker, who will be a strong advocate representing our Country & its interests”.
The nomination appears to be the first administration position that Trump has formally offered to a relative since his re-election.
Trump’s first real pardons will likely be all the felons and traitors on January 6. They’ll be joining whatever form of the SS gets dreamed up by Tulsi Gabard and Pam Bondi. These are the two Vestal Virgins that worship Incontina Buttocks. It’s said the VVs are always chosen before puberty and guard the sacred hearth where all the evidence is burned. Matt Gaetz will likely be installed as a White House Satyr in charge of recruiting initiates.
Of course, we’re discovering much more about the other Satyr still on the Cabinet list, Pete Hegseth. This is from The New Yorker, as reported by Jane Mayer. “Pete Hegseth’s Secret History. A whistle-blower report and other documents suggest that Trump’s nominee to run the Pentagon was forced out of previous leadership positions for financial mismanagement, sexist behavior, and being repeatedly intoxicated on the job.” Thanks to BB for following his Bacchanalian romps.
After the recent revelation that Pete Hegseth had secretly paid a financial settlement to a woman who had accused him of raping her in 2017, President-elect Donald Trump stood by his choice of Hegseth to become the next Secretary of Defense. Trump’s communications director, Steven Cheung, issued a statement noting that Hegseth, who has denied wrongdoing, has not been charged with any crime. “President Trump is nominating high-caliber and extremely qualified candidates to serve in his administration,” Cheung maintained.
But Hegseth’s record before becoming a full-time Fox News TV host, in 2017, raises additional questions about his suitability to run the world’s largest and most lethal military force. A trail of documents, corroborated by the accounts of former colleagues, indicates that Hegseth was forced to step down by both of the two nonprofit advocacy groups that he ran—Veterans for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America—in the face of serious allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety, and personal misconduct. Remember, Satyrs often attempted to seduce or rape nymphs and mortal women alike, usually with little success. That’s why most of them rely on money to get the deeds done.
A previously undisclosed whistle-blower report on Hegseth’s tenure as the president of Concerned Veterans for America, from 2013 until 2016, describes him as being repeatedly intoxicated while acting in his official capacity—to the point of needing to be carried out of the organization’s events. The detailed seven-page report—which was compiled by multiple former C.V.A. employees and sent to the organization’s senior management in February 2015—states that, at one point, Hegseth had to be restrained while drunk from joining the dancers on the stage of a Louisiana strip club, where he had brought his team. The report also says that Hegseth, who was married at the time, and other members of his management team sexually pursued the organization’s female staffers, whom they divided into two groups—the “party girls” and the “not party girls.” In addition, the report asserts that, under Hegseth’s leadership, the organization became a hostile workplace that ignored serious accusations of impropriety, including an allegation made by a female employee that another employee on Hegseth’s staff had attempted to sexually assault her at the Louisiana strip club. In a separate letter of complaint, which was sent to the organization in late 2015, a different former employee described Hegseth being at a bar in the early-morning hours of May 29, 2015, while on an official tour through Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, drunkenly chanting “Kill All Muslims! Kill All Muslims!”
In response to questions from this magazine, Tim Parlatore, a lawyer for Hegseth, replied with the following statement, which he said came from “an advisor” to Hegseth: “We’re not going to comment on outlandish claims laundered through The New Yorker by a petty and jealous disgruntled former associate of Mr. Hegseth’s. Get back to us when you try your first attempt at actual journalism.”
Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, described the report of Hegseth’s drinking as alarming and disqualifying. In a phone interview, Blumenthal, who currently leads the Senate committee that will review Hegseth’s nomination, told me, “Much as we might be sympathetic to people with continuing alcohol problems, they shouldn’t be at the top of our national-security structure.” Blumenthal went on, “It’s dangerous. The Secretary of Defense is involved in every issue of national security. He’s involved in the use of nuclear weapons. He’s the one who approves sending troops into combat. He approves drone strikes that may involve civilian casualties. Literally life-and-death issues are in the hands of the Secretary of Defense, and entrusting these kinds of issues to someone who might be incapacitated for any reason is a risk we cannot take.”
Let’s go back to Pam Bondage for this analysis by Marci of Empty Wheel. “America Just Failed the Test of Responding to Trump’s Politicized Prosecutions.” This really puts Biden’s Pardon of his son in place. We know what’s coming next, and Well, it ain’t that pretty at all.
Let’s imagine that, two years from now, Pam Bondi rolls out charges against some onetime adversary of Donald Trump. To the extent that journalists will still be employed and reading court filings, to the extent that prosecutors under Emil Bove (who at SDNY oversaw a team sanctioned for discovery violations) comply with discovery requirements, the adversary in question learns the following about his prosecution:
- The case started when an investigator started looking into a transnational trafficking network
- The investigator discovered that the prominent adversary had paid one of the sex workers trafficked in the network
- Rather than pursuing the traffickers, the investigator used the payment for sex as cause to open an investigation
- Of course, no one is going to charge a John … so the investigator starts pulling divorce records and four year old tax returns to try to move from that payment for sex work to something that can be charged
- Then the investigator started incorporating oppo research from Peter Schweizer into his investigation
- Kash Patel’s FBI set up protected ways to accept tips from Trump supporters who’ve doctored documents to create a crime
- Trump called up Bondi and told her to take more aggressive steps
- Trump called up foreign leaders asking for help on this prosecution
- Bondi then set up a way to launder that information from foreign sources, including known spies, into the investigation of the adversary
- Patel’s FBI asked a partisan informant to fabricate claims against the adversary
- Trump publicly called out prosecutors — resulting in them and their children being followed — because they had not yet charged his adversary
- Ultimately, the adversary got charged on 5-year old dirt, and only then, after charging, did prosecutors quickly do the investigative work to win the case at trial
Now, as I’ve described it, you surely imagine you’d say, wow, that looks like a thoroughly corrupt prosecution, a clear case of Trump using DOJ to punish his adversaries.
Right?
It’s not so much that investigators didn’t, after the fact, find a crime to charge. They did. If you investigate most high profile people long enough, you’ll find something to charge, particularly if multiple people come to DOJ with doctored evidence to help create that crime.
It’s that someone found the name of an adversary in the digital records of crimes that were more important to investigate, and instead of pursuing that crime, used the electronic record as an excuse to keep looking until they found some evidence of a crime against Trump’s adversary.
Everyone would recognize that’s what happened, right?
Of course not. Of course no one would recognize that that was a political prosecution.
We need no further proof than the fact that none of those very same details showed up in any of the coverage of the Hunter Biden investigation. Not now that he has been pardoned. Not when all these details came out last year. Not in any of the retrospectives of the times Trump demanded investigations on his adversaries.
What will happen instead is that a bunch of self-important DC scribes will chase the most salacious allegations, provide endless headlines about sex workers and wild parties. The DC scribes will ignore every detail about the legal investigation — every one!! — and instead use the prosecution as an opportunity to sell political scandal. And also, they will point to their Tiger Beat coverage as proof, they say, they are not politically biased.
Rather than diligently rooting out the obviously politicized prosecution, the press will be complicit in it.
And rather than deciding that the adversary was the target of an obviously politicized prosecution, American public opinion would instead decide that the adversary was icky, and because he is icky, his statements about Trump cannot be credited.
That is what political prosecutions look like. That is, of course, precisely what the Hunter Biden prosecution was (ignoring the assurances from prosecutors who say no one with the fact set Hunter faced would be charged). Every single bullet has an analogue in the Hunter Biden case. That obviously political prosecution is what happened.
Once the GOP got the House majority, they did nothing else but platform these claims, which a different set of self-important scribes treated as an interesting process story, not an obvious case of a great abuse of government power.
And now that Biden has pardoned his son, the very same self important scribes who ignored all the signs this was a political prosecution, are giving non-stop coverage to a pardon that — unlike those of Trump’s Coffee Boy, National Security Adviser, campaign manager, personal lawyer, and rat-fucker — are not about self-protection, most with no mention of all the evidence Trump ordered up this prosecution to target Joe Biden.
The question is, what are we going to do about this, now that we have rock solid proof the press establishment is not only incapable, but wildly uninterested, in rooting out this kind of politicized prosecution — at least not when they can instead sell scandal?
In the face of seeing Pam Bondi and Kash Patel preparing to redouble efforts to find politicized prosecutions against Donald Trump’s adversaries, Joe Biden chose to end the process, with his son, at least.
I’m actually on the record opposing the pardon — but not for the reasons everyone else is. I don’t think pardoning Hunter in this circumstance is corrupt. I take Biden at his word that he changed his mind about pardoning Hunter. I’m far more interested in Trump admitting he was lying about his plans to implement Project 2025 than that Biden reneged on assurances no one much believed anyway.
I oppose the pardon because it eliminates Hunter’s standing to appeal and with those appeals to begin telling the story that the media chose to ignore. I oppose the pardon because if we don’t start laying out how Trump already politicized DOJ while there’s a good base of legitimate judges in place, it’ll be far too late.
I frankly will give Biden a pass on this, knowing that he’d never do it if Harris was on her way to inauguration. I know the Rule of Law is important. But how do we know what will be left of that once Trump takes office? Frankly, I hope he’s staying up nights Trump-proofing things. All you have to do is go to the Memeorandum page to see how obsessed the legacy media is with this action.
- Betsy Woodruff Swan / Politico: We haven’t seen a pardon as sweeping as Hunter Biden’s in generations
- Ivana Saric / Axios: What to know about presidents pardoning family members and allies …
- Rebecca Shabad / NBC News: White House press secretary defends Hunter Biden pardon: ‘Enough is enough’
- Alexander Burns / Politico: Joe Biden’s Parting Insult
- Alexander B. Howard / CIVIC TEXTS: On pardons, smartglasses, an authoritarian administration, and a case of the Cyber Mondays
Okay, let me address that last one. Here are Alexander’s thoughts.
I understand why President Biden pardoned his son, even if I believe doing so set a terrible precedent at the exact wrong time in our history, along with breaking a promise he had repeatedly made for years.
It’s the icing on a rotten cake, in terms of allowing the appearance of corruption to fester and then issuing a sweeping pardon to encompass all acts for a decade, presumably to head off Trump persecuting Hunter Biden further.
I do not, however, buy arguments that Biden’s pardon someone now gives permission to Trump to abuse the pardon power or accelerates the shredding of constitutional and legal norms that the Trump administration began 8 years ago. Trump.
On his way out the door, Trump pardoned dozens of his supporters, including those convicted of far worse crimes that lying about substance abuse when buying a gun or tax offense. He’s been dangling pardons to people convicted of assaulting federal police or engaging in seditious conspiracy. There is no good faith from that quarter, so do not treat his claims about the abuse of the pardon power with any seriousness.
Yeah, what he said. And also what he said on this.
As Tom Nichols observed in the Atlantic, commenting on Trump’s nomination of a conspiracy theorist who has promised to weaponize federal law enforcement against his political enemies and the press to lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI, “If you want to assemble the infrastructure of an authoritarian government, this is how you do it.”
Republican Senators are now a final bulwark against tyranny, after failing to uphold their oath by removing a corrupt demagogue from power & banning Trump from office in his second impeachment trial. The initial signs are not promising, but enough lawmakers are expressing doubt about appointing a
Every institution has now failed to check and balance Trump’s corruption and criminal conspiracies, from the Justice Department to Congress.
Worse lies ahead, if Trump is successful in installing loyalists across the defense, law enforcement, and intelligence agencies.
A transition insider told Axios that Trump “no longer listens to people, usually Senators, who tell him ‘that’s not how it’s done’ or ‘it doesn’t work that way.’ He no longer accepts that rationale.”
Senators must choose between their oaths to our Constitution, or Trump.
Yes, don’t forget the Senate.
The Romans used the name senatus for their most important seat of government, which derives from senexmeaning ‘old’ and meant ‘assembly of old men’ with a connotation of wisdom and experience. Members were sometimes referred to as ‘fathers’ orpatres, and so this combination of ideas illustrates that the Senate was a body designed to provide reasoned and balanced guidance to the Roman state and its people.
And, originally, our Senate was designed to “protect the rights of individual states and safeguard minority opinion in a system of government designed to give greater power to the national government.”
The Senate has two important and specific duties. Senators are empowered to conduct impeachment proceedings of high federal officials, are tasked with exercising the power of advice and consent on treaties, and play an important role in the confirmation (or denial) of certain appointments including ambassadors and judicial court justices.
You can’t look at those two things; one from an explanation of historical Rome, and the bottom one is Senate.gov describing itself to realize the institution has morphed. But then we still have to look at the voters to determine how someone as nauseating as Ted Cruz continues to weasel his way back into office. Those two important and specific duties of Senators have not been carried out very well in the times of Incontinia Buttocks. What happens in the Senate and what doesn’t happen in the Senate will materially impact our lives. I’m not certain that my two Senators are reachable, although Cassidy has done the right thing several times, much to my surprise. I’m not sure it will help, but all I can think of right now is that we all need to hold their feet to the fire or be consumed by it.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
#JohnbussBskySocial #Repeat1968JohnBuss #BidenPardonsHunter #BiggusDickus #IncontiniaButtocks #MattGaetzWeirdo #montyPython #Nepobabies #Nepotism #PamBondiWeirdo #PeteHegsethWeirdoSexualAssaulter #Satyrs
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Finally Friday Reads: Your Cassandra Daily
Nothing says Thanksgiving to me more than the WKRP Turkey Drop! Thank you, John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
My first short story remains in my scrapbook in its purply blue mimeograph ink. It has my drawing of Cassandra and my interpretation of my favorite Greek Character, who was dedicated to the Greek God Apollo but was fated to make true prophecies no one ever believed. I was drawn to her in my 5th-grade mythology class. I remember my mother listening to me once and starting to question me before she interrupted herself by telling me this. “I don’t know why I question you; you’re almost always right.” I usually don’t believe everything I read, but I remember it. Prognostication is less godly and more mathematical these days, but when you know what’s likely to happen when you do that S-VAR model based on solid theory and a new hypothesis, you don’t always want to welcome the results.
I’ve been running around with my hair on fire since the Orange Demon started obsessing about tariffs again. He tried them during his last Reign of Terror and nearly drove our farmers out of business. Congress had to rescue them with huge subsidies that paid them for not selling their crops or livestock. Trump started a Trade War with China. He needed a visit from Herbert Hoover’s Ghost and to listen to the huge chorus of economists who warned him, but he persisted. Luckily, it didn’t take out the U.S. economy, but it ran up the deficit and jeopardized the Agriculture sector.
This warning is from the AP. “Trump’s tariffs in his first term did little to alter the economy, but this time could be different.” Trump’s misunderstanding of tariffs could wreck the economies of North America. This analsyis comes from Josh Boak.
Donald Trump loved to use tariffs on foreign goods during his first presidency. But their impact was barely noticeable in the overall economy, even if their aftershocks were clear in specific industries.
The data show they never fully delivered on his promised factory jobs. Nor did they provoke the avalanche of inflation that critics feared.
This time, though, his tariff threats might be different.
The president-elect is talking about going much bigger — on a potential scale that creates more uncertainty about whether he’ll do what he says and what the consequences could be.
“There’s going to be a lot more tariffs, I mean, he’s pretty clear,” said Michael Stumo, the CEO of Coalition for a Prosperous America, a group that has supported import taxes to help domestic manufacturing.
The president-elect posted on social media Monday that on his first day in office he would impose 25% tariffs on all goods imported from Mexico and Canada until those countries satisfactorily stop illegal immigration and the flow of illegal drugs such as fentanyl into the United States.
Those tariffs could essentially blow up the North American trade pact that Trump’s team negotiated during his initial term. But on Wednesday, Trump posted on social media that he had spoken with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and she had agreed to stop unauthorized migration across the border into the United States.
Trump also posted on Monday that Chinese imports would face additional tariffs of 10% until Beijing cracks down on the production of materials used in making fentanyl.
President Sheinbaum immediately denied Trump’s characterization of their conversation. This headline from HuffPo says it all. “Trump Mocked After Mexico’s President Blows Up His Brag About Their Call.” Josephine Harvey reports on the response.
Donald Trump seemed to offer alternative facts on Wednesday about his recent call with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and was swiftly rebutted by the leader herself, prompting mockery on social media.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, the U.S. president-elect declared that Sheinbaum had “agreed to stop Migration through Mexico, and into the United States, effectively closing our Southern Border.”
Shortly afterward, Sheinbaum shared a Spanish-language message about the conversation, writing, “We reiterate that Mexico’s position is not to close borders, but to build bridges between governments and communities.”
Both leaders characterized the call as positive. The two spoke after Trump on Monday threatened to impose a 25% tax on all products entering the country from Canada and Mexico as soon as he takes office. Trump said, “This Tariff will remain in effect until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!” He also threatened to put an “additional 10%” tariff on goods from China.
This week’s news was somewhat reminiscent of Trump’s claim ahead of the 2016 election that he would make Mexico pay for “100%” of a proposed wall at the U.S. border. Enrique Peña Nieto, Mexico’s president at the time, disagreed. Mexico did not pay.
Social media users sarcastically celebrated Trump’s fictional victory this week.
“All it took was one call. Donny deals,” journalist Sam Stein posted online.
Mike Nellis, a former aide to Vice President Kamala Harris, said, “Trump thinks he convinced the President of Mexico to stop all migration across the border LOL.”
Olivia Troye, who was a White House official in Trump’s first term, offered a “Translation” of the president-elect’s comments about Mexico.
Just had a conversation with the President of Mexico who didn’t allow me to bully her, which left me confused about my charm…she pointed out that this is very bad…very bad for me if I do these tariffs…” Troye wrote.
China and Canada were also blunt about DonOld’s mischaracterizations of his conversations with their leaders. USA Today‘s Kim Hjelmgaard reported it this way. “‘Counter to facts and reality’: China, Mexico, Canada respond to Trump tariff threats.”
Officials in China, Mexico and Canada criticized Tuesday a pledge made by President-elect Donald Trump on social media to impose new tariffs on all three of the United States’ largest trading partners on the first day of his presidency.
Trump said the move, which appears to violate the terms of a free-trade deal Trump signed into law in 2020, is aimed at clamping down on drugs − fentanyl especially − and migrants crossing into the U.S. illegally.
The president-elect said he would sign an executive order immediately after his inauguration introducing a 25% tariff on all goods coming from Mexico and Canada and a 10% tariff on goods from China.
Trump takes office on Jan. 20.
“Both Mexico and Canada have the absolute right and power to easily solve this long simmering problem,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social, a platform he owns. “It is time for them to pay a very big price!” He accused China in a separate post of failing to block smuggling of U.S.-bound fentanyl, a synthetic opioid.
There was quick pushback to Trump’s comments from all three countries.
Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said: “No one will win a trade war or a tariff war” and “the idea of China knowingly allowing fentanyl precursors to flow into the United States runs completely counter to facts and reality.”
Mexico’s finance ministry said in a statement the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, a trade pact Trump sponsored during his first term, provided “certainty” for investors. “The response to one tariff will be another, until we put at risk companies that we share,” Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum said, naming General Motors and Ford, among others. Sheinbaum said her comments, read aloud in a press conference, were sent in a letter to Trump.
Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, said the tariffs would be “devastating to workers and jobs” in both the U.S. and Canada.
A tariff is effectively a tax imposed by one country on the goods and services imported from another country. Oil is the top U.S. import from Canada, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The largest category of goods imported to the U.S. from Mexico is cars and components for cars. The U.S. imports a significant amount of electronics from China. Some goods are exempt from tariffs because of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
Businesses are already responding to the tariff threats. This will not be good for American Consumers. NBC News reports: “Here’s where consumers could feel the price pain if Trump’s tariffs go into effect. Trump has made threats about tariffs in the past. Businesses are nevertheless taking the latest threats seriously.” This guy hasn’t even taken the oath of office, and he’s already acting like he’s sitting in the Oval Office.
An estimate from The Budget Lab at Yale shared Wednesdaywith NBC News found that the cost to consumers from Trump’s proposed tariffs could reach as much as $1,200 in lost purchasing power on average based on 2023 incomes, assuming retaliatory duties on U.S. exports are put into place.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has already warned that any new tariffs imposed by the U.S. would be met with retaliatory ones by her country. Canada is similarly considering its own options, including possible tariffs on U.S. goods, according to The Associated Press.
America’s biggest import from Canada is oil — and any increase in energy prices would likely be felt throughout the economy.
“Another way to think about this is it’s 4 to 5 months of a normal year’s inflation in one fell swoop,” Ernie Tedeschi, The Budget Lab’s director and the former chief economist under the Biden administration, said in an email.
The three countries Trump has selected for a new round of targeted tariff proposals — China, Mexico and Canada — represent nearly half of all U.S. import volumes.
While Trump has insisted other countries end up paying the cost of tariffs, most economists agree those costs wind up getting passed on to shoppers. And at a time when rising prices remain a top concern, the types of goods that could see higher costs are the ones consumers interact with every day.
Some companies are warning that particularly import-heavy parts of the economy could be hit hard. Best Buy CEO Corie Barry warned Tuesday that any added costs on U.S. imports “will be shared by our customers.” Electronic goods account for the largest share of U.S. imports from China as of 2023.
“There’s very little in [the] consumer electronics space that is not imported. … These are goods that people need, and higher prices are not helpful,” Barry said.
This is what happens when morons vote for a moron. David R. Lurie of Public Notice has this analysis on other Trump plans. These endanger our National Security. “Tulsi Gabbard and Trump’s scheme to gut the intel agencies. It’s hard to envision a less suited intelligence chief. That’s a feature, not a bug.”
Donald Trump has selected Tulsi Gabbard, former congresswoman and notorious Putin stooge, as his nominee for director of the office of national intelligence.
It’s difficult to imagine a candidate less suited to carry out the DNI’s mission, and that’s very likely just the reason that Trump chose her. Gabbard has virtually none of the experience or expertise required to competently assume DNI’s weighty responsibility of marshaling the information and analyses gathered by the nation’s intelligence agencies and coordinating their work.
Gabbard’s longstanding association with a shadowy rightwing cult, her history of suspicious uses of campaign funds, her habitual conspiracism and advocacy for the interests of bloodthirsty dictators (including Syria’s Bashar al-Assad as well as Putin) all raise a multiplicity of red flags.
But, as Donald Trump made clear during his first term in office, national security is hardly at the top of his list of priorities. In fact, hobbling the nation’s intelligence agencies is one of his principal goals.
Donald Trump has selected Tulsi Gabbard, former congresswoman and notorious Putin stooge, as his nominee for director of the office of national intelligence.
It’s difficult to imagine a candidate less suited to carry out the DNI’s mission, and that’s very likely just the reason that Trump chose her. Gabbard has virtually none of the experience or expertise required to competently assume DNI’s weighty responsibility of marshaling the information and analyses gathered by the nation’s intelligence agencies and coordinating their work.
Gabbard’s longstanding association with a shadowy rightwing cult, her history of suspicious uses of campaign funds, her habitual conspiracism and advocacy for the interests of bloodthirsty dictators (including Syria’s Bashar al-Assad as well as Putin) all raise a multiplicity of red flags.
But, as Donald Trump made clear during his first term in office, national security is hardly at the top of his list of priorities. In fact, hobbling the nation’s intelligence agencies is one of his principal goals.
Marc Zuckerberg perfects his role as Surrender Monkey by dining with the Dotard at Mara Lardo. This is from the BBC. “Mark Zuckerberg dines with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago.” It was definitely a Baboon butt moment.
Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg has visited Donald Trump at his resort in Mar-a-Lago, further evidence of the apparent thawing in their once frosty relations.
The president-elect already has a close, high-profile relationship with another of the leading figures in tech, X owner Elon Musk.
Historically, though, there has been no such closeness between Trump and Mr Zuckerberg – with Trump barred from Facebook and Instagram after the Capitol riots, and Trump threatening the Meta boss with jail if he interfered in the 2024 presidential election.
However, there has recently been evidence those strained relations are improving, culminating in Mr Zuckerberg dining with the president-elect at his Florida mansion.
“Mark was grateful for the invitation to join President Trump for dinner and the opportunity to meet with members of his team about the incoming administration,” a Meta spokesperson told the BBC.
“It’s an important time for the future of American Innovation,” the statement added.
The Detroit Free Press featured an Op-Ed by the AG of Michigan, Dana Nessel. It is difficult not to notice the incredibly large number of Sexual Predators Trump has been appointing to his Cabinet and other leadership positions. It seems like a feature and not a bug, “Michigan AG Nessel: Trump cabinet picks show disdain for victims of sex assault.” We continue to see a parade of the stupid and the lawless.
Every 68 seconds, an American is sexually assaulted.
Only a third of the estimated 440,000 victims over the age of 12 each year will ever report, often due to negative emotions such as guilt, shame, and self-blame.
Survivors feel they won’t be believed, so why bother reporting, opening themselves up to ridicule, judgment and shame?
So what is it we are telling victims of these brutal, life-altering crimes, when our President-elect seeks to elevate alleged fellow perpetrators to cabinet positions and other high levels of power in our government?
To lead the Department of Defense, Trump has nominated Fox News personality Pete Hegseth, who settled an accusation that he raped a woman and entered into a non-disclosure agreement with the victim. To lead the Department of Health and Human Services, he nominated Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who has been accused of groping a young woman who worked for him as a babysitter on several occasions. For Secretary of Education – responsible for ensuring the schooling of our nation’s children – he nominated Linda McMahon, who has been sued for criminal negligence for enabling the grooming and sexual abuse of children by employees of her organization. And as the nation’s top law enforcement officer, he nominated former Representative Matt Gaetz — who withdrew from consideration last week — the subject of a House Ethics Committee investigation, following accusations he paid minors for sex. And Trump still has more nominations to make.
With these nominations, we are telling survivors of sexual assault that they don’t matter, that their trauma is meaningless and that they should stay silent.
And they will.
The American Prospect calls them “The Rape Gang.”
The presumptive Secretary of Education is married to a man whose former employee alleges he forced her to perform sex acts with his friend for an hour and a half after he defecated on her head. The presumptive Commerce Secretary preemptively sued his former assistant in 2018, after her lawyer threatened to publicize “not pretty” 2 a.m. text messages she’d received from him and his wife. The presumptive Health and Human Services director’s explanation for forcibly groping a former nanny’s breasts while holding her hostage in a kitchen pantry was that he “had a very, very rambunctious youth”; he was 46 at the time. The White House efficiency czar, currently a defendant in a putative class-action lawsuit filed by eight former employees who accuse him of perpetrating an “Animal House” work environment of “rampant sexual harassment,” and paid a quarter of a million dollars to a flight attendant who says he got naked and asked her to touch his erect penis in exchange for the gift of a horse.
And of course the presumptive Defense Secretary was accused of raping a woman who was tasked with monitoring what she described to police as his “creeper vibes” after a Republican women’s conference at which he was a keynote speaker, just a month and change after the birth of his fourth child with a woman who was not his wife at the time. (Reader, she married him.)
The aggressive rapeyness of the second Donald Trump administration is so tyrannical it’s almost enough to make a girl wistful for Matt Gaetz, the Florida congressman who withdrew his name from attorney general contention yesterday (to make way for the despicable Pam Bondi) amid an orgy of leaks from two investigations into his sexploits with a 17-year-old procured by a convicted sex trafficker friend. Multiple witnesses testified that Gaetz did not actually know the 17-year-old was underage, you see, and that he ceased having sex with her when he found out.
We definitely have a kakistocracy coming our way. We can see the incompetence, the total lack of knowledge of policy, and the complete inappropriateness of every candidate for Cabinet. It comes from the ultimate dotard. The only thing we have going for us now is our resolve and the fact that the Republican Majority in both Houses is narrow. Both houses have also had lots of experience in gumming up the works for Trump. Trump’s so-called mandate is a bald-faced lie. The LA Times asks, “As Trump’s lead in popular vote shrinks, does he really have a ‘mandate’?” Of course, Trump will be oblivious to all that, so he’s relying heavily on executive mandates that may or may not be legal.” Jenny Jarvis has the details.
Though Trump overwhelmingly won the electoral college vote, his tally in the popular vote is hardly a landslide.
In the last 75 years, only three other presidents had popular-vote margins that were smaller than Trump’s.
When Trump exaggerates his presidential mandate, he is not an outlier but drawing from bipartisan history.
In his victory speech on Nov. 6, President-elect Donald Trump claimed Americans had given him an “unprecedented and powerful mandate.”
It’s a message his transition team has echoed in the last three weeks, referring to his “MAGA Mandate” and a “historic mandate for his agenda.”
But given that Trump’s lead in the popular vote has dwindled as more votes have been counted in California and other states that lean blue, there is fierce disagreement over whether most Americans really endorse his plans to overhaul government and implement sweeping change.
The latest tally from the Cook Political Report shows Trump winning 49.83% of the popular vote, with a margin of 1.55% over Vice President Kamala Harris.
The president-elect’s share of the popular vote now falls in the bottom half for American presidents — far below that of Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson, who won 61.1% of the popular vote in 1964, defeating Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater by nearly 23 percentage points.
In the last 75 years, only three presidents — John F. Kennedy in 1960, Richard Nixon in 1968 and George W. Bush in 2000 — had popular-vote margins smaller than Trump’s current lead.
“If there ever was a mandate, this isn’t it,” said Hans Noel, associate professor of government at Georgetown University.
There is a slim majority margin in the US House of Representatives. There is no mandate radical change there. This is from Politico, “Where the slim House margin might matter most.” The analysis is by Anthony Adragna.
Republicans are vowing an all-out war in the opening days of the next Congress against Biden administration regulations in areas as varied as energy, financial, housing and education policy.
They’re hoping for a redux of 2017 and 2018, when Republicans used their unified control of government and the powers of the Congressional Review Act to ax 16 regulations. With a coming 53-47 majority, GOP senators say they’re again primed to use the CRA, one of their most potent tools to undo Democratic policies — and one that tends to unite the often fractious Republican conference.
But — and it’s a major but — an extremely narrow House margin could make things hard to pull off, at least for the first couple of months of the Trump administration. While the GOP could lose as many as three votes in the Senate with Vice President-elect JD Vance (R-Ohio) casting tie-breakers, the House very well be at a one-vote margin until early April (more on that math below).
Still, that hasn’t dampened Republicans’ enthusiasm around the CRA.
“We’re going to want to go and evaluate everything that fits into the jurisdiction” of the 1996 review law, incoming Senate Whip John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) told Inside Congress. Invoking it involves passing simple-majority votes in both chambers plus a presidential signature, no filibusters allowed.
President Joe Biden’s administration recognized this looming threat and prioritized early completion of rulemakings to shield them from congressional challenge. Still, dozens of regulations were finalized after Aug. 1, 2024, leaving them vulnerable to the CRA, according to Public Citizen, which closely tracks the potential use of the law. (That corresponds to the date identified by the Congressional Research Service after which rules might be vulnerable to revocation.)
Barrasso’s hardly alone with vows of aggressive use of the tool, which had only been successfully used once before Trump’s first term.
“We’ll do every possible regulation we can get to,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said. “It’s a wonderful tool for undoing the bureaucratic excess of the Biden administration.”
“On some of these crazy policies we ought to just get rid of them as fast as we can,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), who said he’d instructed his staff to find regulations that may be good targets for challenges.
“This is the only time the Congressional Review Act actually has teeth, otherwise it’s a messaging vehicle,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said, referring to the first months of a new trifecta, since using the CRA effectively requires one party to control the presidency and both chambers of Congress, a relatively infrequent occurrence in modern politics.
Hopefully, this turns into a Can’t Do Anything Congress.
Have a good weekend! Hope you had a great day for feasting! I’m off to eat a turkey sandwich!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
#JohnbussBskySocial #Repeat1968JohnBuss #DonnyDotardAndTheChaosCult #TrumpCabinetRapeGang
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Finally Friday Reads: Your Cassandra Daily
Nothing says Thanksgiving to me more than the WKRP Turkey Drop! Thank you, John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
My first short story remains in my scrapbook in its purply blue mimeograph ink. It has my drawing of Cassandra and my interpretation of my favorite Greek Character, who was dedicated to the Greek God Apollo but was fated to make true prophecies no one ever believed. I was drawn to her in my 5th-grade mythology class. I remember my mother listening to me once and starting to question me before she interrupted herself by telling me this. “I don’t know why I question you; you’re almost always right.” I usually don’t believe everything I read, but I remember it. Prognostication is less godly and more mathematical these days, but when you know what’s likely to happen when you do that S-VAR model based on solid theory and a new hypothesis, you don’t always want to welcome the results.
I’ve been running around with my hair on fire since the Orange Demon started obsessing about tariffs again. He tried them during his last Reign of Terror and nearly drove our farmers out of business. Congress had to rescue them with huge subsidies that paid them for not selling their crops or livestock. Trump started a Trade War with China. He needed a visit from Herbert Hoover’s Ghost and to listen to the huge chorus of economists who warned him, but he persisted. Luckily, it didn’t take out the U.S. economy, but it ran up the deficit and jeopardized the Agriculture sector.
This warning is from the AP. “Trump’s tariffs in his first term did little to alter the economy, but this time could be different.” Trump’s misunderstanding of tariffs could wreck the economies of North America. This analsyis comes from Josh Boak.
Donald Trump loved to use tariffs on foreign goods during his first presidency. But their impact was barely noticeable in the overall economy, even if their aftershocks were clear in specific industries.
The data show they never fully delivered on his promised factory jobs. Nor did they provoke the avalanche of inflation that critics feared.
This time, though, his tariff threats might be different.
The president-elect is talking about going much bigger — on a potential scale that creates more uncertainty about whether he’ll do what he says and what the consequences could be.
“There’s going to be a lot more tariffs, I mean, he’s pretty clear,” said Michael Stumo, the CEO of Coalition for a Prosperous America, a group that has supported import taxes to help domestic manufacturing.
The president-elect posted on social media Monday that on his first day in office he would impose 25% tariffs on all goods imported from Mexico and Canada until those countries satisfactorily stop illegal immigration and the flow of illegal drugs such as fentanyl into the United States.
Those tariffs could essentially blow up the North American trade pact that Trump’s team negotiated during his initial term. But on Wednesday, Trump posted on social media that he had spoken with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and she had agreed to stop unauthorized migration across the border into the United States.
Trump also posted on Monday that Chinese imports would face additional tariffs of 10% until Beijing cracks down on the production of materials used in making fentanyl.
President Sheinbaum immediately denied Trump’s characterization of their conversation. This headline from HuffPo says it all. “Trump Mocked After Mexico’s President Blows Up His Brag About Their Call.” Josephine Harvey reports on the response.
Donald Trump seemed to offer alternative facts on Wednesday about his recent call with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and was swiftly rebutted by the leader herself, prompting mockery on social media.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, the U.S. president-elect declared that Sheinbaum had “agreed to stop Migration through Mexico, and into the United States, effectively closing our Southern Border.”
Shortly afterward, Sheinbaum shared a Spanish-language message about the conversation, writing, “We reiterate that Mexico’s position is not to close borders, but to build bridges between governments and communities.”
Both leaders characterized the call as positive. The two spoke after Trump on Monday threatened to impose a 25% tax on all products entering the country from Canada and Mexico as soon as he takes office. Trump said, “This Tariff will remain in effect until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!” He also threatened to put an “additional 10%” tariff on goods from China.
This week’s news was somewhat reminiscent of Trump’s claim ahead of the 2016 election that he would make Mexico pay for “100%” of a proposed wall at the U.S. border. Enrique Peña Nieto, Mexico’s president at the time, disagreed. Mexico did not pay.
Social media users sarcastically celebrated Trump’s fictional victory this week.
“All it took was one call. Donny deals,” journalist Sam Stein posted online.
Mike Nellis, a former aide to Vice President Kamala Harris, said, “Trump thinks he convinced the President of Mexico to stop all migration across the border LOL.”
Olivia Troye, who was a White House official in Trump’s first term, offered a “Translation” of the president-elect’s comments about Mexico.
Just had a conversation with the President of Mexico who didn’t allow me to bully her, which left me confused about my charm…she pointed out that this is very bad…very bad for me if I do these tariffs…” Troye wrote.
China and Canada were also blunt about DonOld’s mischaracterizations of his conversations with their leaders. USA Today‘s Kim Hjelmgaard reported it this way. “‘Counter to facts and reality’: China, Mexico, Canada respond to Trump tariff threats.”
Officials in China, Mexico and Canada criticized Tuesday a pledge made by President-elect Donald Trump on social media to impose new tariffs on all three of the United States’ largest trading partners on the first day of his presidency.
Trump said the move, which appears to violate the terms of a free-trade deal Trump signed into law in 2020, is aimed at clamping down on drugs − fentanyl especially − and migrants crossing into the U.S. illegally.
The president-elect said he would sign an executive order immediately after his inauguration introducing a 25% tariff on all goods coming from Mexico and Canada and a 10% tariff on goods from China.
Trump takes office on Jan. 20.
“Both Mexico and Canada have the absolute right and power to easily solve this long simmering problem,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social, a platform he owns. “It is time for them to pay a very big price!” He accused China in a separate post of failing to block smuggling of U.S.-bound fentanyl, a synthetic opioid.
There was quick pushback to Trump’s comments from all three countries.
Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said: “No one will win a trade war or a tariff war” and “the idea of China knowingly allowing fentanyl precursors to flow into the United States runs completely counter to facts and reality.”
Mexico’s finance ministry said in a statement the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, a trade pact Trump sponsored during his first term, provided “certainty” for investors. “The response to one tariff will be another, until we put at risk companies that we share,” Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum said, naming General Motors and Ford, among others. Sheinbaum said her comments, read aloud in a press conference, were sent in a letter to Trump.
Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, said the tariffs would be “devastating to workers and jobs” in both the U.S. and Canada.
A tariff is effectively a tax imposed by one country on the goods and services imported from another country. Oil is the top U.S. import from Canada, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The largest category of goods imported to the U.S. from Mexico is cars and components for cars. The U.S. imports a significant amount of electronics from China. Some goods are exempt from tariffs because of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
Businesses are already responding to the tariff threats. This will not be good for American Consumers. NBC News reports: “Here’s where consumers could feel the price pain if Trump’s tariffs go into effect. Trump has made threats about tariffs in the past. Businesses are nevertheless taking the latest threats seriously.” This guy hasn’t even taken the oath of office, and he’s already acting like he’s sitting in the Oval Office.
An estimate from The Budget Lab at Yale shared Wednesdaywith NBC News found that the cost to consumers from Trump’s proposed tariffs could reach as much as $1,200 in lost purchasing power on average based on 2023 incomes, assuming retaliatory duties on U.S. exports are put into place.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has already warned that any new tariffs imposed by the U.S. would be met with retaliatory ones by her country. Canada is similarly considering its own options, including possible tariffs on U.S. goods, according to The Associated Press.
America’s biggest import from Canada is oil — and any increase in energy prices would likely be felt throughout the economy.
“Another way to think about this is it’s 4 to 5 months of a normal year’s inflation in one fell swoop,” Ernie Tedeschi, The Budget Lab’s director and the former chief economist under the Biden administration, said in an email.
The three countries Trump has selected for a new round of targeted tariff proposals — China, Mexico and Canada — represent nearly half of all U.S. import volumes.
While Trump has insisted other countries end up paying the cost of tariffs, most economists agree those costs wind up getting passed on to shoppers. And at a time when rising prices remain a top concern, the types of goods that could see higher costs are the ones consumers interact with every day.
Some companies are warning that particularly import-heavy parts of the economy could be hit hard. Best Buy CEO Corie Barry warned Tuesday that any added costs on U.S. imports “will be shared by our customers.” Electronic goods account for the largest share of U.S. imports from China as of 2023.
“There’s very little in [the] consumer electronics space that is not imported. … These are goods that people need, and higher prices are not helpful,” Barry said.
This is what happens when morons vote for a moron. David R. Lurie of Public Notice has this analysis on other Trump plans. These endanger our National Security. “Tulsi Gabbard and Trump’s scheme to gut the intel agencies. It’s hard to envision a less suited intelligence chief. That’s a feature, not a bug.”
Donald Trump has selected Tulsi Gabbard, former congresswoman and notorious Putin stooge, as his nominee for director of the office of national intelligence.
It’s difficult to imagine a candidate less suited to carry out the DNI’s mission, and that’s very likely just the reason that Trump chose her. Gabbard has virtually none of the experience or expertise required to competently assume DNI’s weighty responsibility of marshaling the information and analyses gathered by the nation’s intelligence agencies and coordinating their work.
Gabbard’s longstanding association with a shadowy rightwing cult, her history of suspicious uses of campaign funds, her habitual conspiracism and advocacy for the interests of bloodthirsty dictators (including Syria’s Bashar al-Assad as well as Putin) all raise a multiplicity of red flags.
But, as Donald Trump made clear during his first term in office, national security is hardly at the top of his list of priorities. In fact, hobbling the nation’s intelligence agencies is one of his principal goals.
Donald Trump has selected Tulsi Gabbard, former congresswoman and notorious Putin stooge, as his nominee for director of the office of national intelligence.
It’s difficult to imagine a candidate less suited to carry out the DNI’s mission, and that’s very likely just the reason that Trump chose her. Gabbard has virtually none of the experience or expertise required to competently assume DNI’s weighty responsibility of marshaling the information and analyses gathered by the nation’s intelligence agencies and coordinating their work.
Gabbard’s longstanding association with a shadowy rightwing cult, her history of suspicious uses of campaign funds, her habitual conspiracism and advocacy for the interests of bloodthirsty dictators (including Syria’s Bashar al-Assad as well as Putin) all raise a multiplicity of red flags.
But, as Donald Trump made clear during his first term in office, national security is hardly at the top of his list of priorities. In fact, hobbling the nation’s intelligence agencies is one of his principal goals.
Marc Zuckerberg perfects his role as Surrender Monkey by dining with the Dotard at Mara Lardo. This is from the BBC. “Mark Zuckerberg dines with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago.” It was definitely a Baboon butt moment.
Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg has visited Donald Trump at his resort in Mar-a-Lago, further evidence of the apparent thawing in their once frosty relations.
The president-elect already has a close, high-profile relationship with another of the leading figures in tech, X owner Elon Musk.
Historically, though, there has been no such closeness between Trump and Mr Zuckerberg – with Trump barred from Facebook and Instagram after the Capitol riots, and Trump threatening the Meta boss with jail if he interfered in the 2024 presidential election.
However, there has recently been evidence those strained relations are improving, culminating in Mr Zuckerberg dining with the president-elect at his Florida mansion.
“Mark was grateful for the invitation to join President Trump for dinner and the opportunity to meet with members of his team about the incoming administration,” a Meta spokesperson told the BBC.
“It’s an important time for the future of American Innovation,” the statement added.
The Detroit Free Press featured an Op-Ed by the AG of Michigan, Dana Nessel. It is difficult not to notice the incredibly large number of Sexual Predators Trump has been appointing to his Cabinet and other leadership positions. It seems like a feature and not a bug, “Michigan AG Nessel: Trump cabinet picks show disdain for victims of sex assault.” We continue to see a parade of the stupid and the lawless.
Every 68 seconds, an American is sexually assaulted.
Only a third of the estimated 440,000 victims over the age of 12 each year will ever report, often due to negative emotions such as guilt, shame, and self-blame.
Survivors feel they won’t be believed, so why bother reporting, opening themselves up to ridicule, judgment and shame?
So what is it we are telling victims of these brutal, life-altering crimes, when our President-elect seeks to elevate alleged fellow perpetrators to cabinet positions and other high levels of power in our government?
To lead the Department of Defense, Trump has nominated Fox News personality Pete Hegseth, who settled an accusation that he raped a woman and entered into a non-disclosure agreement with the victim. To lead the Department of Health and Human Services, he nominated Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who has been accused of groping a young woman who worked for him as a babysitter on several occasions. For Secretary of Education – responsible for ensuring the schooling of our nation’s children – he nominated Linda McMahon, who has been sued for criminal negligence for enabling the grooming and sexual abuse of children by employees of her organization. And as the nation’s top law enforcement officer, he nominated former Representative Matt Gaetz — who withdrew from consideration last week — the subject of a House Ethics Committee investigation, following accusations he paid minors for sex. And Trump still has more nominations to make.
With these nominations, we are telling survivors of sexual assault that they don’t matter, that their trauma is meaningless and that they should stay silent.
And they will.
The American Prospect calls them “The Rape Gang.”
The presumptive Secretary of Education is married to a man whose former employee alleges he forced her to perform sex acts with his friend for an hour and a half after he defecated on her head. The presumptive Commerce Secretary preemptively sued his former assistant in 2018, after her lawyer threatened to publicize “not pretty” 2 a.m. text messages she’d received from him and his wife. The presumptive Health and Human Services director’s explanation for forcibly groping a former nanny’s breasts while holding her hostage in a kitchen pantry was that he “had a very, very rambunctious youth”; he was 46 at the time. The White House efficiency czar, currently a defendant in a putative class-action lawsuit filed by eight former employees who accuse him of perpetrating an “Animal House” work environment of “rampant sexual harassment,” and paid a quarter of a million dollars to a flight attendant who says he got naked and asked her to touch his erect penis in exchange for the gift of a horse.
And of course the presumptive Defense Secretary was accused of raping a woman who was tasked with monitoring what she described to police as his “creeper vibes” after a Republican women’s conference at which he was a keynote speaker, just a month and change after the birth of his fourth child with a woman who was not his wife at the time. (Reader, she married him.)
The aggressive rapeyness of the second Donald Trump administration is so tyrannical it’s almost enough to make a girl wistful for Matt Gaetz, the Florida congressman who withdrew his name from attorney general contention yesterday (to make way for the despicable Pam Bondi) amid an orgy of leaks from two investigations into his sexploits with a 17-year-old procured by a convicted sex trafficker friend. Multiple witnesses testified that Gaetz did not actually know the 17-year-old was underage, you see, and that he ceased having sex with her when he found out.
We definitely have a kakistocracy coming our way. We can see the incompetence, the total lack of knowledge of policy, and the complete inappropriateness of every candidate for Cabinet. It comes from the ultimate dotard. The only thing we have going for us now is our resolve and the fact that the Republican Majority in both Houses is narrow. Both houses have also had lots of experience in gumming up the works for Trump. Trump’s so-called mandate is a bald-faced lie. The LA Times asks, “As Trump’s lead in popular vote shrinks, does he really have a ‘mandate’?” Of course, Trump will be oblivious to all that, so he’s relying heavily on executive mandates that may or may not be legal.” Jenny Jarvis has the details.
Though Trump overwhelmingly won the electoral college vote, his tally in the popular vote is hardly a landslide.
In the last 75 years, only three other presidents had popular-vote margins that were smaller than Trump’s.
When Trump exaggerates his presidential mandate, he is not an outlier but drawing from bipartisan history.
In his victory speech on Nov. 6, President-elect Donald Trump claimed Americans had given him an “unprecedented and powerful mandate.”
It’s a message his transition team has echoed in the last three weeks, referring to his “MAGA Mandate” and a “historic mandate for his agenda.”
But given that Trump’s lead in the popular vote has dwindled as more votes have been counted in California and other states that lean blue, there is fierce disagreement over whether most Americans really endorse his plans to overhaul government and implement sweeping change.
The latest tally from the Cook Political Report shows Trump winning 49.83% of the popular vote, with a margin of 1.55% over Vice President Kamala Harris.
The president-elect’s share of the popular vote now falls in the bottom half for American presidents — far below that of Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson, who won 61.1% of the popular vote in 1964, defeating Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater by nearly 23 percentage points.
In the last 75 years, only three presidents — John F. Kennedy in 1960, Richard Nixon in 1968 and George W. Bush in 2000 — had popular-vote margins smaller than Trump’s current lead.
“If there ever was a mandate, this isn’t it,” said Hans Noel, associate professor of government at Georgetown University.
There is a slim majority margin in the US House of Representatives. There is no mandate radical change there. This is from Politico, “Where the slim House margin might matter most.” The analysis is by Anthony Adragna.
Republicans are vowing an all-out war in the opening days of the next Congress against Biden administration regulations in areas as varied as energy, financial, housing and education policy.
They’re hoping for a redux of 2017 and 2018, when Republicans used their unified control of government and the powers of the Congressional Review Act to ax 16 regulations. With a coming 53-47 majority, GOP senators say they’re again primed to use the CRA, one of their most potent tools to undo Democratic policies — and one that tends to unite the often fractious Republican conference.
But — and it’s a major but — an extremely narrow House margin could make things hard to pull off, at least for the first couple of months of the Trump administration. While the GOP could lose as many as three votes in the Senate with Vice President-elect JD Vance (R-Ohio) casting tie-breakers, the House very well be at a one-vote margin until early April (more on that math below).
Still, that hasn’t dampened Republicans’ enthusiasm around the CRA.
“We’re going to want to go and evaluate everything that fits into the jurisdiction” of the 1996 review law, incoming Senate Whip John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) told Inside Congress. Invoking it involves passing simple-majority votes in both chambers plus a presidential signature, no filibusters allowed.
President Joe Biden’s administration recognized this looming threat and prioritized early completion of rulemakings to shield them from congressional challenge. Still, dozens of regulations were finalized after Aug. 1, 2024, leaving them vulnerable to the CRA, according to Public Citizen, which closely tracks the potential use of the law. (That corresponds to the date identified by the Congressional Research Service after which rules might be vulnerable to revocation.)
Barrasso’s hardly alone with vows of aggressive use of the tool, which had only been successfully used once before Trump’s first term.
“We’ll do every possible regulation we can get to,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said. “It’s a wonderful tool for undoing the bureaucratic excess of the Biden administration.”
“On some of these crazy policies we ought to just get rid of them as fast as we can,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), who said he’d instructed his staff to find regulations that may be good targets for challenges.
“This is the only time the Congressional Review Act actually has teeth, otherwise it’s a messaging vehicle,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said, referring to the first months of a new trifecta, since using the CRA effectively requires one party to control the presidency and both chambers of Congress, a relatively infrequent occurrence in modern politics.
Hopefully, this turns into a Can’t Do Anything Congress.
Have a good weekend! Hope you had a great day for feasting! I’m off to eat a turkey sandwich!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
#JohnbussBskySocial #Repeat1968JohnBuss #DonnyDotardAndTheChaosCult #TrumpCabinetRapeGang
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𝗩𝗼𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗴 𝘁𝘃-𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗻 𝗝𝗼𝗵𝗻 𝗕𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗮𝗿𝗱 (87) 𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗹𝗲𝗱𝗲𝗻
Voormalig tv-weerman John Bernard is op 87-jarige leeftijd overleden. Dat hebben zijn familie en oud-werkgever RTL laten weten. Bernard overleed vorige week in het bijzijn van zijn familie.
https://www.rtl.nl/boulevard/artikel/5481866/voormalig-tv-weerman-john-bernard-87-overleden
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Finally Friday Reads: The Chaos Kakistocracy
“Jobs, jobs, Jobs!” John Buss, @johnbuss.bsky.social
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Regime changes haven’t happened yet, but businesses are already planning major layoffs, freezes, and price increases. That signals a type of economy we haven’t seen for a while. It’s called stagflation. For those of us who lived through that, you’ll remember the pain that went from the Nixon years to the Reagan years. It includes painful unemployment and rabid inflation. We just have to hope that the plans to take political control of the Fed don’t come to fruition. The current Fed Chair says he will not resign. That doesn’t even include the conversation about the massive removal of Federal workers and the deportation of the migrants that would have a devastating impact on the farm and most service industries.
Did I use enough citations for you? Let’s look at a few of them but I’ll get to the bottom line. Pay off all your debt as much as possible. Don’t take on anything that requires financing. Interest rates will go up as inflation returns. The entire thing is a vicious circle we learned much about in the 1970s. The 1980s taught us that tax cuts for the rich only drive up the deficit. Get ready for a repeat of that on steroids.
Traditional Republicans have always been migrant-friendly. However, that’s back when they were more focused on getting the business donors enriched and less worried about things like “poisoning the blood” and blaming them for statistically nonexistent problems, like crime and eating pets. However, that was before the rise of the Christofascists and the NAZIs ushered in MAGA.
The Brookings Institute reviewed recent peer-reviewed research in economics in September that shows exactly how devastating the cost of these deportations will be. That does not even cover the psychological and emotional trauma to communities forced to witness the round-up of their neighbors to massive concentration camps. This is a must-read. Chloe East is the researcher.
Increased deportation is associated with poorer economic outcomes for US-born workers
Across multiple studies, economists have found that once SC is implemented, the number of foreign-born workers in that county declines and the employment rate among U.S.-born workers also declines. My research with Annie Hines, Philip Luck, Hani Mansour, and Andrea Velásquez finds that when half a million immigrants are removed from the labor market because of enforcement (due to deportations and indirectly due to chilling effects), this reduces the number of U.S.-born people working by 44,000.
Why do deportations hurt the economic outcomes of U.S.-born workers? The prevailing view used to be that foreign-born and U.S.-born workers are substitutes, meaning that when one foreign-born worker takes a job, there is one less job for a U.S.-born worker. But economists have now shown several reasons why the economy is not a zero-sum game: because unauthorized immigrants work in different occupations from the U.S.-born, because they create demand for goods and services, and because they contribute to the long-run fiscal health of the country.
First, unauthorized immigrant workers and U.S.-born workers work in different types of jobs. Figure 1 shows the percentage of unauthorized immigrant workers, authorized immigrant workers, and U.S.-born workers that are in each of the 15 most common occupations among unauthorized immigrants.
It is clear that unauthorized immigrants take low-paying, dangerous and otherwise less attractive jobs more frequently than both U.S.-born workers and authorized immigrant workers. For example, almost 6% of unauthorized immigrants work as housekeepers, construction laborers, or cooks, compared to about 2% of authorized immigrant workers and 1% of U.S.-born workers (See Figure 1).
Occupations common among unauthorized workers, such as construction laborers and cooks, are essential to keep businesses operating. Deporting workers in these jobs affects U.S.-born workers too. For example, when construction companies have a sudden reduction in available laborers, they must reduce the number of construction site managers they hire. Similarly, local restaurants need cooks to stay open and hire for other positions like waiters, which are more likely to be filled by U.S.-born workers.
Caregiving and household service jobs are also common among unauthorized immigrants. The availability and cost of these services in the private market greatly impacts whether people can work outside the home. My research with Andrea Velásquez and new research by Umair Ali, Jessica Brown and Chris Herbst find that Secure Communities impacted the childcare market—the supply of childcare workers fell. This led to a reduction in the number of college-educated mothers with young children working in the formal labor market.
You’ll notice women bear the brunt of this policy, but it goes nicely into the plan to get women back into the kitchen. Please read about the impact of the deportation in 2008 that happened in South Carolina, called the SC Act or Secure Communities Act. The details are gruesome but here’s the bottom line in a move to deport 400,000 people in a limited area.
While only people who were arrested had their immigration status checked under SC, the policy nonetheless impacted a large portion of immigrants. There were broad “chilling effects” of the policy that meant even people not targeted for deportation became fearful of leaving their house to do routine things like go to work. This is partly because the program did not only target serious criminals—the most serious criminal conviction for 79% of those deported was non-violent, including traffic violations and immigration offenses, and another 17% were not convicted of any crime.
An article that appeared in Mother Jones, also last September, details the devastation that will come if mass deportation happens. Isabela Diaz provides the analysis. “How Trump’s “Mass Deportation” Plan Would Ruin America. It would be brutal, costly, and likely illegal.”
This time around, they plan to invoke an infamous 18th-century wartime law, deploy the National Guard, and build massive detention camps—and intend on reshaping the federal bureaucracy to ensure it happens, drafting executive orders and filling the administration with loyalists who will quickly implement the policies. “No one’s off the table,” said Tom Homan, the former acting director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under Trump. “If you’re in the country illegally, you are a target.”
If Trump and his allies have it their way, armed troops and out-of-state law enforcement would likely blitz into communities—knocking on doors, searching workplaces and homes, and arbitrarily interrogating and arresting suspected undocumented immigrants. The dragnet would almost certainly ensnare US citizens, too.
The nation’s undocumented immigrants grow and harvest the food we eat, construct our homes, and care for our young and elderly. They pay billions in taxes, start businesses that employ Americans, and help rebuild in the wake of climate disasters.
Not only would Trump’s plan rip families and communities apart, but it also would have devastating effects for years to come, including on US citizens who perhaps have overlooked how integral undocumented immigrants are to their everyday life. Trump frames immigration as an existential threat to the United States. He has said immigrants are “taking our jobs,” are “not people,” and are “poisoning the blood of our country.” The reality is that if his plan were implemented, American life as we know it would be ruined—even for those cheering for mass deportation.
This will be in the hands of many of the folks who say they’re Christians but miss a major cultural value in both the Old and New Testaments. I was raised Presbyterian, attended my best friend’s Lutheran Church, baptized my girls in the Methodist church, and taught a large number of Sunday School classes. I’m not unfamiliar with the Bible. Matthew was my favorite of all. Whenever you ask me about my favorite verses, I’ll quote the Beatitudes and anything from Matthew or James. Trump is an actor, and his piety display is just an act.
Matthew 25:31-40 Jesus says, “I was a stranger, and you welcomed me,” and “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.”
Numbers 15:16 The Bible says, “I am the Lord, and I consider all people the same, whether they are Israelites or foreigners living among you”.
Here’s a study cited in the Mother Jones article.
According to a 2016 report by the Center for American Progress, deporting 7 million workers would “reduce national employment by an amount similar to that experienced during the Great Recession.” GDP would immediately contract by 1.4 percent, and, eventually, by 2.6 percent. In 20 years, the US economy would shrink nearly 6 percent—or $1.6 trillion. Trump’s plan would lead to a dire shortage of low-wage workers, which would “bring on a recession while reigniting inflation,” predicts Robert J. Shapiro, a former undersecretary of commerce in the Clinton administration.
The costs of mass deportation will be devastating. Here is another study on the costs from The American Immigration Council.
“Using data from the American Community Survey (ACS) along with publicly-available data about the current costs of immigration enforcement, this report aims to provide an estimation of what the fiscal and economic cost to the United States would be should the government deport a population of roughly 11 million people who as of 2022 lacked permanent legal status and faced the possibility of removal. We consider this both in terms of the direct budgetary costs—the expenses associated with arrest, detention, legal processing, and removal—that the federal government would have to pay, and in terms of the impact on the United States economy and tax base should these people be removed from the labor force and consumer market.
In terms of fiscal costs, we also include an estimate of the impact of deporting an additional 2.3 million people who have crossed the U.S. southern border without legal immigration status and were released by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from January 2023 through April 2024. We consider these fiscal costs separately because we don’t have more recent ACS data necessary to estimate the total net changes in the undocumented population past 2022, or the larger impact on the economy and tax base of removing those people, an impact that is therefore not reflected in this report.
In total, we find that the cost of a one-time mass deportation operation aimed at both those populations—an estimated total of is at least $315 billion. We wish to emphasize that this figure is a highly conservative estimate. It does not take into account the long-term costs of a sustained mass deportation operation or the incalculable additional costs necessary to acquire the institutional capacity to remove over 13 million people in a short period of time—incalculable because there is simply no reality in which such a singular operation is possible. For one thing, there would be no way to accomplish this mission without mass detention as an interim step. To put the scale of detaining over 13 million undocumented immigrants into context, the entire U.S. prison and jail population in 2022, comprising every person held in local, county, state, and federal prisons and jails, was 1.9 million people.
In order to estimate the costs of a longer-term mass deportation operation, we calculated the cost of a program aiming to arrest, detain, process, and deport one million people per year—paralleling the more conservative proposals made by mass-deportation proponents. Even assuming that 20 percent of the undocumented population would “self-deport” under a yearslong mass-deportation regime, we estimate the ultimate cost of such a longer operation would average out to $88 billion annually, for a total cost of $967.9 billion over the course of more than a decade. This is a much higher sum than the one-time estimate, given the long-term costs of establishing and maintaining detention facilities and temporary camps to eventually be able to detain one million people at a time—costs that could not be modeled in a short-term analysis. This would require the United States to build and maintain 24 times more ICE detention capacity than currently exists. The government would also be required to establish and maintain over 1,000 new immigration courtrooms to process people at such a rate.”
How’s that for dismantling the state and getting rid of Federal Workers? It sounds like a bit of hypocrisy to me.
There’s that stagflation prognosis again. That was the time of the economy in 1980 when I got my first house fixed rate loan at 16.7%, which was only one of three mortgage loans made that month at the largest Savings Loan in the heartland. I worked there so they gave me a discount down to 12%. Let’s see all those young people trying to buy their houses in that environment. My loan now is fixed at 3%. Thank you, Obama!
One of the worst possible things that could happen is allowing politics back into Fed Policy. This was a problem that was fixed by law because obvious presidential interference generally led to low interest rates that brought more inflation. I have purposefully used a conservative-bent economist for this analysis. “The Economic Consequences of Political Pressure on the Federal Reserve.” Elonia is hot for this pogrom. Tell me again, who thinks that Nepobaby is brainy? Again, if you lived through the dread of Nixon’s years, you’ll remember the inflation he brought trying to get the Fed to loosen interest rates during a period of inflation. It wasn’t pretty.
The data on personal interactions by themselves are at best a noisy measure of political interference with the Fed. For example, in a recession the president might be more likely to contact the Fed chair and ask them about their view on the economy. In this instance, personal interactions would increase, but not because they reflect political pressure.
To overcome this identification challenge, I exploit an increase in president–Fed interactions that plausibly took place purely for the purpose of influencing Fed policy and arguably had an impact on the stance of monetary policy. In his desire to be re-elected in 1972, Richard Nixon pressured Arthur Burns to ease monetary policy in 1971. Burns, a Republican and friend to Nixon, reportedly gave in to Nixon’s pressure.
A variety of external evidence corroborates this interpretation of the Nixon–Burns clash, including recordings from the “Nixon tapes” and entries in Arthur Burns’ personal diary. For example, Burns writes in his diary that Nixon urged him “start expanding the money supply and predicting disaster if this didn’t happen.” To support the interpretation that Burns eased policy in response to Nixon’s pressure, I show that Romer and Romer (2004) uncover easing shocks to monetary policy prior to Nixon’s re-election. I also present supporting evidence from the voting behavior of the FOMC.
I exploit the narrative around Nixon’s pressure in a structural vector autoregression (SVAR) that contains the president–Fed interactions as well as standard macro data. I identify a shock to political pressure on the Fed based on narrative sign restrictions. Specifically, I define a political pressure shock as an increase in president-Fed interactions that eases policy in an inflationary way and constitutes the main contributor to the spike in president–Fed interactions in late 1971.
Yes. This is the kind of thing I do for my research. Just go look at the graphs. They speak volumes.
The number of president–Fed interactions displays persistence after the political pressure shock hits, with the IRF reversing to closes 0 after around two years. The shock induces a monetary easing, with a roughly 100 basis points lower interest rate after a few quarters. The price level response to the shock builds up gradually and persistently and reaches a 5% higher price level after four years. These estimates imply that exerting political pressure 50% as much as Nixon did, over a period of six months, permanently increases the US price level by more than 8%.
The responses of real GDP and fiscal variables are not distinguishable from zero. This finding indicates that political pressure primarily induces a price level effect. It turns out that in some subsamples (not shown here), it is possible to detect a significant response of real GDP, but this response is actually negative.
This cartoon is actually from the American Enterprise Institute. This shows you have far Republican Politicians have actually gotten from actual Economics.
That’s a dismal scientist telling you that all hell breaks loose whenever an American President tries to influence the Fed. Nixon wanted to win the reelection and pressured the Fed to drop interest rates, which caused massive inflation. eventually, we got unemployment, and that’s stagflation. That’s what poor Jimmy Carter inherited. The Tax Cuts for the Rich narrative through the Reagan years was even worse. I was studying economics at the time and became an economic analyst for that Savings and Loan that went bankrupt because of that policy. (I surprised them with that data, the first of many times I was the brains of a clueless CEO.) When the Reagan administration pulled off the usury laws, we got a financial crisis in 1984, which later looked mild compared to the one Dubya brought on in 2008, also known as the SubPrime Crisis.
NPR unravels the plan that Trump has to control the Fed. “How Trump’s wish for more Federal Reserve control could impact economy if he’s reelected.”
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Geoff Bennett:
So, first, let’s start with a bit of a reality check. How feasible is it for Donald Trump to fundamentally change the autonomy of the Fed and change the relationship between the Federal Reserve and the president if he is reelected?
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Krishna Guha:
Well, it’s complicated.
So, first off, for President Trump, if reelected, could certainly let his views on monetary policy be known loudly and including through social media and other nonconventional channels. He could try to do what’s called jawboning, leaning on the Fed in public to take certain actions on interest rates.
Actually changing the institutional independence of the Fed, that’s more challenging. The Fed’s independence is enshrined in the act of Congress the Federal Reserve Act, and that makes the chairman, for instance, removable as generally understood, only for a cause, which would mean something pretty extreme to make him unfit for office.
The president can’t simply appoint additional members to the Federal Reserve Board. He’d have to wait until vacancies became available and those only become available very slowly. So it would be tough. Now, there is one complication, and that is that it is somewhat unsettled as to what the exact legal status of the Fed chair is and whether the president might have some legal grounds for being able to dismiss a Fed chair.
That’s not something that I think any mainstream lawyer or central banker believes is right, but it hasn’t been fully tested in the courts. And so there’s some outside possibility that the president could attempt to assert an authority over the Fed chair that has not been understood to be there.
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Geoff Bennett:
If we look to other countries or look back in this country’s own history, what does it tell us? Does a Central Bank that remains independent from political influence, does that yield better monetary policy and better macroeconomic decision-making?
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Krishna Guha:
There’s just very, very strong evidence from the U.S. itself and from countries around the world that independent central banks tend to achieve better economic outcomes.
And that ultimately doesn’t just benefit society, doesn’t just benefit the economy. It, in the end, tends to benefit the president as well. And so I think there’s actually a lot of good reason why it would be not to try to assault the independence of the Central Bank.
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Geoff Bennett:
Critics have blasted the Fed for being too slow to respond to inflation. And there will certainly be folks who say, why is it such a bad thing to have the Fed accountable to someone, accountable to the executive branch?
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Krishna Guha:
So, you raise a really important issue there, Fed accountability.
Now, Fed officials past and present will say, absolutely, the Fed must be accountable. But under our system of government, the Fed is accountable to Congress, not the executive branch. The Fed is a creature of Congress. The Fed chair goes to Congress to testify. He’s grilled by members of the Senate. He’s grilled by members of the House.
That is the way that our system of accountability is set up. And it’s the way that it’s worked very well in recent decades. That doesn’t mean that the Fed is always going to get everything right. Of course not. The issue is simply, would you have more confidence that the Fed would get things about right most of the time if it was more insulated from short-term political pressures, or do you think that political pressures are going to make them do a better job?
I think most people have a pretty intuitive grasp of what the answer to that question would be.
Again, Powell says he will not resign. That gives us about another year where monetary policy can offset this craziness. This is from CBS. “Fed Chair Jerome Powell says he won’t resign if Donald Trump asks him to step down.”
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said he won’t step down if President-elect Donald Trump, who has previously criticized Powell’s performance, asks him to resign.
Speaking at a press conference Thursday to discuss the Fed’s move today to cut its benchmark interest rate by 0.25 percentage points, Powell added that it is not permitted under the law for presidents to fire or demote the Fed chair.
When asked if he’d step down if Trump requested it, Powell responded with a one-word answer: “No.”
Powell’s insistence that he’ll remain in his role comes after Trump aired grievances about the Fed’s decision-making during his first presidency and, more recently, on the campaign trial. Trump, who has accused Powell of being “political,” also told Bloomberg Businessweek this summer he would let the economist serve out his term, “especially if I thought he was doing the right thing.”
Yet Trump has also said he thinks the U.S. president should have more influence on Fed decisions.
Are you asleep yet or is your hair on fire like mine? And again, here are the massive layoffs and hiring freezes now planned for 2025. “A running list of companies preparing to raise prices if Trump’s trade plan is enacted.” This is from Business Insider. The analysis is provided by Ayelet Sheffey. It’s from a few days ago.
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President-elect Donald Trump proposed broad tariffs on imports, including up to 60% on goods from China.
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Economists say his proposals could spike inflation as companies tend to pass costs on to shoppers.
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Some companies have already said increased tariffs would lead them to raise prices.
Some executives have warned that price hikes are on the way if President-elect Donald Trump’s trade plans go into effect.
On the campaign trail, Trump proposed a 60% tariff on goods imported from China coupled with a 10% to 20% tariff on goods imported from other countries. While the president-elect could choose not to enact tariffs at that scale once he assumes office, economists and the market have predicted that his proposals would spike inflation and cause the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates.
Several companies have already begun responding to Trump’s election victory and the implications his tariff proposals would have on the costs of their goods. Executives have told analysts on earnings calls that it would be difficult to maintain current prices under Trump’s broad tariffs.
Other companies are still waiting for more information from the president-elect. Tarang Amin, the CEO of ELF Beauty, told Business Insider that the company must first see the policy Trump enacts before making any changes to its pricing and that a new policy wouldn’t affect the business until after its 2025 fiscal year.
“We don’t like tariffs because they are a tax on the American people,” Amin said, adding that the company had been subject to a 25% tariff since 2019 because of policies from Trump’s first term. “And at that time,” he said, “we pulled all the levers available to us to minimize the effects to our company and our community.”
Karoline Leavitt, a Trump-Vance transition spokeswoman, told BI: “In his first term, President Trump instituted tariffs against China that created jobs, spurred investment, and resulted in no inflation.” She added that Trump will “work quickly” to lower taxes and create more American jobs.
Below are the companies that are warning of price increases if Trump’s tariff proposals are implemented.
Before I went completely into economics, I was a history major. We’ve done this before. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 raised import duties on more than 20,000 goods and agricultural imports to protect U.S. businesses and farmers. Hoover signed it into law. It made the Great Depression worse. Don’t these whackadoodle schools teach History and Civics anymore?
Before every major recession we’ve had since 1984, I’ve always found myself running around going what are these idiots smoking? I’ve fled to safety and minimized my losses. Ronald Reagan’s folly basically wiped out my first IRA and my Dad’s retirement portfolio. But, I always did better than everyone else because if you’re just an economics teacher living a normal life and not privy to all the insider muckety muck, you do that. I remember the manager for my Louisiana 403B was amazed I held my losses to a lower percentage than anyone else at the USL. I was not amused. A loss is a loss, and I’m definitely paying for those years now as I was then.
Just buckle up. This is going to be a very chaotic ride. Prepare for the worst. Again, the best thing you can do is pay the debt off and not add any more, if possible. I am also expanding my small food garden and orchard. I’m not sure if Congress is up to the test of its checks and balances, so this is not looking good. Also, remember how long it took to get out of Nixon’s mess. We really didn’t recover completely until the Clinton years.
The two pieces of news we also have today is that Matt Gaetz quit the AG cabinet appointment. He says he’s not going back to Congress. Speculation is that he will still have a political appointment in the administration, just one that doesn’t take Senate approval. Pam Bondi, who he once bribed to stop her from filing a suit against his phony university and who is basically one of his personal attorneys is now the nominee.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
#JohnbussBskySocial #chaos #ConvictedFelon #DonnyDotardAndTheChaosCult #TheEconomicImpactsOfDeportationAndTariffs #Trump #TrumpEconomyWrecker #TrumpStagflation
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Star Wars Comics Artist John Cassaday Has Died Aged 52
#JohnCassaday
John Cassaday who drew Star Wars for Jason Aaron's Marvel comics run has tragically died at the age of 52.
https://www.fanthatracks.com/news/literature-art/star-wars-comics-artist-john-cassaday-has-died-aged-52/?feed_id=31443 -
Que la tierra te sea leve, #JohnCassaday
#Comics
#RIP -
#JohnCassaday, one of the most acclaimed and successful #comicbook #artists of his generation, #artist on #AstonishingXMen and co-creator (and artist) of #Planetary, has passed away at age 52.
Cassaday was a self-taught artist who attended film school, and worked in television #news for a while.
https://www.cbr.com/john-cassaday-planetary-astonishing-xmen-obituary/
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It's really sad hearing about the passing of John Cassaday. 52 is way, way too young. Such a talented artist, his distinct, cinematic-like style that put focus on conveying the characters' emotions through expression and body language played no small part in elevating the stories that he had worked on. 'Astonishing X-Men' and so many other books would not have been the same without him.
🔗 https://bleedingcool.com/comics/comics-artist-john-cassaday-planetary-co-creator-has-died-aged-52/
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What a loss...
Comics Artist John Cassaday, Planetary Co-Creator, Has Died Aged 52
https://bleedingcool.com/comics/comics-artist-john-cassaday-planetary-co-creator-has-died-aged-52/
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Good Day,
Sky Dancers!
I wish I could say that this is the usual Labor Day Weekend start of the Silly Season heading toward the election, but I can’t. The first establishment media interview with Vice President Harris and Governor Walz went to Dana Bash, who is not exactly in the bag for MAGA but just a poor interviewer. CNN used to be the place to go for news. Now it’s the place to go for yawns and gotcha questions. I didn’t see the interview, but their follow-up panel was sleep-inducing. I did see bits and pieces last night. I waited for the Transcript and the video this morning to take in more than just the CNN-chosen ‘highlights.’ There were only two questions and comments that grabbed my attention.
BASH: On that note, you had a lot of Republican speakers at the convention. Will you appoint a Republican to your Cabinet?
HARRIS: Yes, I would.
BASH: Any one in mind—
HARRIS: Yes, I would. No, no one in particular in mind. I got — we got 68 days to go with this election, so I’m not puttin’ the cart before the horse. But I would. I think — I think it’s really important. I — I have spent my career inviting diversity of opinion. I think it’s important to have people at the table when some of the most important decisions are being made that have different views, different experiences. And I think it would be to the benefit of the American public to have a member of my Cabinet who is a Republican.
BASH: Speaking of Republicans, I want to ask you about your opponent, Donald Trump. I was a little bit surprised, people might be surprised to hear that you have never interacted with him, met him face to face. That’s gonna change soon, but what I want to ask you about is what he said last month. He suggested that you happened to turn Black recently for political purposes, questioning a core part of your identity.
HARRIS: Yeah.
BASH: Any—
HARRIS: Same old, tired playbook. Next question, please. (LAUGH)
BASH: That’s it?
HARRIS: That’s it.
It allowed Harris to share her priorities and discuss Biden/Harris’s achievements. The gotcha moments came over the misunderstanding of her role in border negotiations in North Central America, fracking, and the ‘affordability crisis.’ She answered these questions directly and succinctly. That’s not stopping the Trumplican Media from saying the interview was a Dumpsterfire. But then, it’s doubtful any of the MAGA faithful actually watch CNN. I didn’t think any of the gotcha questions landed, but then I operate in a world where I don’t want White Male Christian Dominance with a token Tulsi Gabbard and Vivek Ramaswamy added as props.
BASH: You talk about — you call it the opportunity economy. You are well aware that right now many Americans are struggling. There’s a crisis of affordability. One of your campaign themes is, “We’re not going back.” But I wonder what you say to voters who do want to go back when it comes to the economy specifically because their groceries were less expensive, housing was more affordable when Donald Trump was president.
HARRIS: Well, let’s start with the fact that when Joe Biden and I came in office during the height of a pandemic, we saw over 10 million jobs were lost. People — I mean, literally we are all tracking the numbers. Hundreds of people a day were dying because of COVID. The economy had crashed.
In large part, all of that because of mismanagement by Donald Trump of that crisis. When we came in, our highest priority was to do what we could to rescue America. And today, we know that we have inflation at under 3%. A lot of our policies have led to the reality that America recovered faster than any wealthy nation around the world.
But you are right. Prices in particular for groceries are still too high. The American people know it. I know it. Which is why my agenda includes what we need to do to bring down the price of groceries. For example, dealing with an issue like price gouging.
What we need to do to extend the child tax credit to help young families be able to take care of their children in their most formative years. What we need to do to bring down the cost of housing. My proposal includes what would be a tax credit of $25,000 for first-time home buyers so they can just have enough to put a down payment on a home, which is
part of the American dream and their aspiration, but do it in a way that allows them to actually get on the path to achieving that goal and that dream.
BASH: So you have been vice president for three and a half years. The steps that you’re talking about now, why haven’t you done them already?
So, my answer would be, “D’oh, I’m Vice President, and my job is to implement President Biden’s policy, you know.” But she’s classier than me and answered this way.
HARRIS: Well, first of all, we had to recover as an economy, and we have done that. I’m very proud of the work that we have done that has brought inflation down to less than 3%, the work that we have done to cap the cost of insulin at $35 a month for seniors. Donald Trump said he was gonna do a number of things, including allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices. Never happened. We did it.
So now, and I — as I travel in the state of Georgia and around our country, the number of seniors that have benefited, I’ve met — I was in Nevada recently. A grandmother who showed me her receipts. And before we capped the cost of insulin for seniors at $35 a month she was paying hundreds of dollars, up to thousands of dollars a month for her insulin. She’s not doing that any longer.
BASH: So you maintain Bidenomics is a success.
So, my answer would be: “Look at the damned economic, inflation, and job numbers, you stupid bitch!” But, again, she’s classier than me, and I guess I would have to maintain a modicum of dignity, being an economics professor and all. I would not say that to my class, but they are students, and she’s an overpaid talking head with a penchant for too much one hand then the other hand journalism even when the other hand is stealing us blind and wants to be a dictator.
HARRIS: I maintain that when we do the work of bringing down prescription medication for the American people, including capping the cost — of the annual cost of prescription medication for seniors at $2,000; when we do what we did in the first year of being in office to extend the child tax credit so that we cut child poverty in America by over 50%; when we do what we have done to invest in the American people and bringing manufacturing back to the United States so that we created over 800,000 new manufacturing jobs, bringing business back to America; what we have done to improve the supply chain so we’re not relying on foreign governments to supply American families with their basic needs, I’ll say that that’s good work. There’s more to do, but that’s good work.
But hey, what about? That came next. Read more at the link or watch the video.
Today, I was delighted by a Washington Post Op-Ed by Dana Milbank, which was witty and true. It was a definite dig at that horrid thing at the New York Times earlier in the week. In a test of character, Trump shows his true grift. In his disorientation, the GOP nominee and former president retreats to his instincts.”
The New York Times ran a fine specimen of unintentional comedy this week: an essay by conservative writer Rich Lowry titled “Trump Can Win on Character.”
The only thing that could have made it better was if it had been under the byline of Stormy Daniels.
Lowry’s argument itself wasn’t quite as absurd as the headline. He was only suggesting that Trump repeatedly call Vice President Kamala Harris “weak,” which Trump probably won’t do, because he’s too busy calling her a communist, a copycat, stupid, a recent conversion to being Black or someone with a crazy laugh who is not as good looking as he is.
Trump could win on various things: inflation, immigration, isolationism. But the notion that a felon and adjudicated sexual abuser who shouts barnyard obscenities and vulgar epithets at his rallies would return to the White House on the strength of his upstanding character? Well, let’s just say there are very fine people on both sides who would have trouble making that argument.
As though in answer to the suggestion that he can “win on character,” Trump responded over the next couple of days by:
- Holding a campaign event in front of graves at Arlington National Cemetery, where his staff reportedly pushed aside a cemetery official trying to enforce rules against politicizing the sacred ground. Trump posed graveside with a big grin and a thumbs-up, and his campaign set the Republican nominee’s cemetery visit to music and posted it as a TikTok video. When a Harris spokesman commented on the “sad” event, Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, declared that Harris herself “can go to hell.” (Vance, after a cool reception last week at a doughnut shop in Georgia, got booed by firefighters this week in Boston.)
- Announcing that two of the nation’s most prominent conspiracy theorists — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard — would be co-chairs of his presidential transition if he wins the election, with influence over key appointments and policies. Gabbard’s trumpeting of Russian propaganda has been labeled “treasonous” by Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), and Kennedy’s long-shot presidential campaign somehow fizzled after he acknowledged, among other things, having a brain worm and leaving a dead bear cub in New York’s Central Park.
- Rolling out his latest attempt to cajole his supporters to line his own pockets. This time, he offered another round of “digital trading cards” featuring a Trump superhero. Supporters who parted with $1,485 or more in this Trump-enrichment scam would be sent a piece of the fabric cut from the “knockout suit” he wore during his June debate with President Joe Biden.
- Proclaiming that it was “Biden’s fault and Harris’s fault” that he was the victim of a failed assassination attempt, asserting without evidence that they prevented the Secret Service from protecting him and that he might have been shot “because of their rhetoric.” The FBI reported that the shooter, a Republican, had searched online for both Biden and Trump events and settled on the Trump rally as a “target of opportunity.”
- Sharing another fusillade of posts on social media that cited QAnon slogans, called for the imprisonment of his opponents, and suggested that Harris used sex to advance her career.
On Thursday, Trump was in Michigan and as coarse as ever — referring twice to Harris’s running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, as “Tampon Tim”; preposterously claiming that in Democratic states “you’re allowed to kill the baby after the baby is born”; and saying of Harris: “Nobody knows who the hell she is. She does not give a damn about you.” While complaining that the Army had said he used the Arlington National Cemetery visit “to politic,” he went right on “politicking” about it. Referring to the families of the fallen he met with, Trump said Biden and Harris “killed their children as though they had a gun in their hand.”
That last bit still has me peeved. I have relatives buried in Arlington National Cemetary, and my Dad chose to be buried in a Washington State Veteran’s Cemetery, where the Pilot and Navigator of his World War II B-25 bombing crew is also buried. I am incensed about this for my family, who served in the Military from the Revolutionary War forward, including the winning side of the Civil War. Historian Heather Cox Richardson puts this into perspective in her Substack, Letters from an American.
And now the U.S. Army has weighed in on the scandal surrounding Trump’s visit to Arlington National Cemetery for a campaign photo op, after which his team shared a campaign video it had filmed. The Army said that the cemetery hosts almost 3,000 public wreath-laying ceremonies a year without incident and that Trump and his staff “were made aware of federal laws, Army regulations and [Department of Defense] policies, which clearly prohibit political activities on cemetery grounds.”
It went on to say that a cemetery employee “who attempted to ensure adherence to these rules was abruptly pushed aside…. This incident was unfortunate, and it is also unfortunate that the… employee and her professionalism has been unfairly attacked. [Arlington National Cemetery] is a national shrine to the honored dead of the Armed Forces, and its dedicated staff will continue to ensure public ceremonies are conducted with the dignity and respect the nation’s fallen deserve.”
“I don’t think I can adequately explain what a massive deal it is for the Army to make a statement like this,” political writer and veteran Allison Gill of Mueller, She Wrote, noted. “The Pentagon avoids statements like this at all costs. But a draft dodging traitor decided to lie about our armed forces staff, so they went to paper.”
The deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh said the Department of Defense is “aware of the statement that the Army issued, and we support what the Army said.” Hours later, Trump campaign manager Chris LaCivita reposted the offending video on X and, tagging the official account for Army Secretary Christine Wormuth, said he was “hoping to trigger the hacks” in her office.
In Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall reported that the Trump campaign’s plan was to lay a wreath at Arlington National Cemetery to honor the 13 members of the U.S. military killed in the suicide bombing during the evacuation of Kabul, Afghanistan, in August 2021. They intended to film the event and then attack Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden for not “showing up” for the event, which they intended to portray as an “established memorial.”
She has also some good news to share from the Financial World. I can only say that Janet Rivlin’s hands are all over this. Good for her!
Another major story from yesterday is that the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has finalized two rules that will work to stop corruption and money laundering in U.S. residential real estate and in private investment.
This is a big deal. As scholar of kleptocracies Casey Michel put it: “This is a massive, massive deal in the world of counter-kleptocracy—the U.S. is finally ending the gargantuan anti–money laundering loopholes for real estate, private equity, hedge funds, and more. Can’t overstate how important this is. What a feat.”
The White Stripes are the latest band telling the DonOld Campaign to cease and desist! “‘Fascists’: Jack White threatens to sue Trump campaign over use of music. White Stripes singer angered after Trump aide shares social media post using clip of band’s hit Seven Nation Army.” I wonder if it’s too late for Chachi to record something dismal? The display of privilege in all these acts of theft of dignity and expression is just the latest in the NepoBaby news.
Another bit of Trumplican Justice and Karma from The Hill. “Georgia election workers seek control of Giuliani’s assets to collect on $146M defamation judgment. Two Georgia election workers have asked a federal judge for control over Rudy Giuliani’s assets to collect on the $146 million defamation judgment against him for baselessly claiming they engaged in election fraud in 2020.”
The request from Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss comes just short of a month after the ex-New York City mayor’s defunct bankruptcy, filed in the aftermath of the staggering judgment, was formally closed.
“Mr. Giuliani has spent years evading accountability for his actions — first in litigation in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and then in chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings that Mr. Giuliani commenced in this District,” Aaron Nathan, an attorney for the mother-daughter duo, wrote in a Friday court filing. “Now that Mr. Giuliani’s bankruptcy case has been dismissed, Plaintiffs are finally in a position to receive a measure of compensation by enforcing their judgment.”
Freeman and Moss asked the judge to order Giuliani to turn over personal property in his possession and to give the women the power to take possession of and sell any property he does not turn over.
“Those remedies are overwhelmingly justified under New York law,” Nathan wrote. “And they are all the more appropriate in the context of this case, where Mr. Giuliani has proven time and again that he will never voluntarily comply with court orders, much less voluntarily satisfy Plaintiffs’ judgment.”
After a trial in December, a jury ordered Giuliani to pay Freeman and Moss more than $148 million, though after attorneys fees and other adjustments, the judgment was formally entered just under $146 million.
The election workers testified to their lives being turned upside down by a torrent of racist and violent threats after Giuliani, the ex-personal lawyer of former President Trump, baselessly claimed they committed widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
Giuliani froze the judgment, and other pending lawsuits against him, by filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. But the judge’s dismissal of that case enabled the two election workers to collect on the judgment — even though they are likely to recover far less than $146 million, given Giuliani disclosed only $10.6 million in assets to the bankruptcy court.
Well, y’all have a great long weekend and remember how many lives it has cost to make this country what it is and can be. We can’t afford to let them all down now.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
https://skydancingblog.com/2024/08/30/finally-friday-reads-10/
#Repeat1968 #ArlingtonNationalCemetery #DanaBashisms #GratuitousRudyGiulianiBashingForFun #HarrisWalzCNNInterview2024 #HarrisWalzPolicyPriorities2024 #JohnBuss
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Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I never wanted a week to end so much in my life as this one. I’m not one for TV viewing because reality shows are not my thing. There are very few movies and series that grab my attention, too. This time of year, it’s good to have the weather channel. You already know I’m a news junkie, but the news is more like a staged reality show than about actual events that matter. It also is getting too far into the Beltway gossip zone to be of any real use. The media is on a few stories like flies on rice. I searched for something beyond the Beltway jive talk today.
Today, Majority Leader Hakeem Jeffries put to rest a story at the Washington Post yesterday. I would like to think this will stop all the headlines out there speculating when and if President Biden will give up his bid for his second term.
The other big story was the Republican National Convention, which looked more like a North Shore Klan rally than a convention. The self-proclaimed ‘David Duke without the Baggage,’ Congressman Steven Scalise, even got a speaking spot. I questioned my affiliation with the Republican Party after the 1992 speech by Pat Buchannan. After that, I registered as an Independent for quite a while.
[17] Mr. Clinton, however, has a different agenda.
[18] At its top is unrestricted abortion on demand. When the Irish-Catholic governor of Pennsylvania, Robert Casey, asked to say a few words on behalf of the 25 million unborn children destroyed since Roe v. Wade, Bob Casey was told there was no place for him at the podium at Bill Clinton’s convention, no room at the inn.
[19] Yet a militant leader of the homosexual rights movement could rise at that same convention and say: “Bill Clinton and Al Gore represent the most pro-lesbian and pro-gay ticket in history.” And so they do.
[20] Bill Clinton says he supports school choice – but only for state-run schools. Parents who send their children to Christian schools, or private schools, or Jewish schools, or Catholic schools need not apply.
[21] Elect me, and you get two for the price of one, Mr. Clinton says of his lawyer-spouse. And what does Hillary believe? Well, Hillary believes that 12-year-olds should have the right to sue their parents, and Hillary has compared marriage and the family as institutions to slavery and life on an Indian reservation.
[22] Well, speak for yourself, Hillary.
[23] This, my friends, is radical feminism. The agenda that Clinton & Clinton would impose on America – abortion on demand, a litmus test for the Supreme Court, homosexual rights, discrimination against religious schools, women in combat units – that’s change, all right. But it is not the kind of change America needs. It is not the kind of change America wants. And it is not the kind of change we can abide in a nation that we still call God’s country.
[24] The President of the United States is also America’s commander-in-chief. He’s the man we authorize to send fathers and sons and brothers and friends into battle.
[25] George Bush was 17-years-old when they bombed Pearl Harbor. He left his high school graduation, he walked down to the recruiting office, and he signed up to become the youngest fighter pilot in the Pacific war. And Mr. Clinton? And Bill Clinton? When Bill Clinton’s time came in Vietnam, he sat up in a dormitory room in Oxford, England, and figured out how to dodge the draft.
That time I got to see both President HW Bush and President Bill Clinton together presenting aid to the city’s Universities on the Campus at UNO. I was sitting nearly up front and even had a nice chat with a secret service woman. Where did those days go? (December 7,2005)
Needless to say, I voted for Bill Clinton even though I had previously supported Bush against Reagan when he pulled that stunt about Welfare Queens. If you haven’t read Josh Levin’s book ‘The Queen’, you should. Here’s an interview with him from PBS by Hari Sreenivasan from June 2019. Reagan used a criminal who was an outlier to slur an entire group of women, as detailed in “The True Story Behind the ‘Welfare Queen’ Stereotype.”
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Hari Sreenivasan:
Josh there’s this “welfare queen” moniker that’s been used really to demonize entire groups of people. You go through this entire book and take a dive not just into that phrase but really that it’s based on a real person. She was an outlier while at the same time becoming an icon for a whole category.
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Josh Levin:
Yeah that’s exactly right. Her name was Linda Taylor and she was identified by the Chicago Tribune in 1974 as a person who had committed welfare fraud while driving fancy cars, including a Cadillac. And very quickly after that she was given the nickname the welfare queen. And it was a nickname and a stereotype that really very quickly blew up.
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Hari Sreenivasan:
You know it was a Chicago paper that gave her that nickname but it’s really Ronald Reagan on the campaign trail that makes that phrase such a household idea. How did it get from the Chicago paper into his speeches?
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Josh Levin:
One of his advisers had found a wire story about it and Reagan was looking for kind of outrageous stories about welfare because welfare reform had been one of his big accomplishments as governor of California. And it was also something that voters were outraged about in the mid 1970s increased welfare spending at a time when the economy was really poor. And this idea that there were welfare cheats out there was something that created outrage.
Ronald Reagan Campaign Speech, 1976: In Chicago, they found a woman who holds the record. She used 80 names, 30 addresses, 15 telephone numbers to collect food stamps, Social Security, veterans’ benefits for four nonexistent deceased veterans husbands. Her tax-free cash income, alone, has been running $150,000 a year.
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Josh Levin:
He didn’t say the phrase “welfare queen” in his speeches he would talk about how there was this woman in Chicago who’d stolen as much as one hundred fifty thousand dollars in welfare money in a single year, which was an exaggerated sum. But there was such baggage attached to welfare at that point that I think the electorate really understood what he was saying and really knew what he was talking about. Welfare has been an effective talking point for a whole generation of politicians.
Me and the nuns at Congo Square protesting the caging of children and Donald’s family separation policy. (July 2,2017)
Now we have promises to deport and look up and one that is painted with the brush of ‘illegal immigrant with brown skin.’ They’re also developing a scheme of citizenship that would deprive citizenship for all kinds of folks that would actually include Melania if the law passed. This is from the page of America’s Voice.
Selected immigration components of Project 2025 are below:
Mass Detention and Family Separation: Project 2025 paves the way for mass family separation by eliminating important benefits for unaccompanied children and transfers the care of unaccompanied minors from Health and Human Services to DHS to allow for large scale detention of young children. The proposal recommends weakening standards for migrant detention, calling for mass detention in temporary structures such as tents.
Attacks on Dreamers and Parents of US Citizens: Project 2025 calls for the elimination of family-based immigration and DACA.
Raid Schools Hospitals and Religious Zones: Project 2025 removes prohibitions on ICE acting in ‘sensitive zones’ thus allowing raids on schools, hospitals, and religious institutions.
Suspending Due Process: Project 2025 removes legal processes allowing immigrants a day in court by expanding the use of expedited deportations to the ‘fullest extent’ throughout the country. It also gives DHS the authority to declare a ‘mass migration event’ and enact anything to avert it (e.g. scrapping all Title 8 requirements and automatically expelling migrants). The proposal further undermines due legal processes by allowing immediate expulsion of migrants in the case of ‘loss of operational control’ or USCIS backlogs which is caused by consistent underfunding from Republican officials. Project 2025 would create a show-me-your-papers style mandate and require ICE to remove, arrest, and detain immigration violators anywhere in the country and without warrant, if possible. The plan authorizes local law enforcement to participate in border security actions and penalizes jurisdictions that do not comply. The project also plans to remove oversight authorities from ICE and classify all USCIS operations.
Use of the Military: Project 2025 encourages the use of the US military to crack down on peaceful migrants arriving at the border. The proposal also considers engaging in war with drug cartels in Mexico.
Attacks Legal Immigration: Project 2025 seeks to restrict legal immigration by barring certain groups or nationalities from accessing work and student visas, eliminates DACA, family-based immigration, TPS, and visas for victims of crime, reduces asylum and discounts gang and domestic violence as grounds.
Yup, I am photobombing my friends at the Women’s March (Jan.23, 2013). All the Donald Cult probably thinks I doth protest too much.
These kinds of things happen when White Christian Nationalists take over a party and embrace a criminal, narcissistic, lying, and authoritarian leader. We’ve gone from a B-movie Actor to a Reality Show Actor who sure does a good job at Crisis Acting, too. I’ll rely on JJ to outline the absolute misogyny demanded by Project 2025. My point is that the RNC this year was basically the showboat for Project 2025. It was a festival of the Donald Cult wreaking racism, misogyny, and white Christian nationalism. Plus, the Vice Presidential nominee is a self-loathing hillbilly. His book is all about blaming poor people in Appalachia for the systemic problems they face. This is from Aja Romano, who is writing for VOX. “Revisiting Hillbilly Elegy, the book that made J.D. Vance. The bestseller proves Trump’s VP pick has abiding disdain for absolutely everyone.”
At one time, liberal and conservative centrists alike hailed Vance’s bestselling 2016 memoir of making it out of rural, poverty-stricken Appalachia, transforming himself from a tempestuous teen into a successful Yale law school grad.
Yet years on, Vance has undergone a transformation of a different sort, remolding himself from a fairly moderate professed conservative who once compared Trump to Hitler and wrote with disdain about the outer edges of the party into a would-be authoritarian.
That’s not to say Vance doesn’t have some nuanced and even appealing positions. His populist economic instincts are a running theme of Elegy, and today he makes deals across the aisle with Democrats like Sen. Elizabeth Warren. But to understand his larger worldview, you have to look past his economic ideas to his social ideas — and to what Vance actually displays about himself throughout the book.
Perhaps readers in 2016 were eager to look past the book’s highly loaded subtext and overt classism, as the promise of a sympathetic conservative who could unlock Trumplandia for liberals was just too appealing. It also seems likely that readers loved the book because it confirmed all of the negative stereotypes they already held about country hicks. As a read on Vance himself, though, in the context of his subsequent embrace of Trump and far-right ideology, Hillbilly Elegy paints a portrait of a man obsessed with status — and brimming with contempt for just about everyone he meets.
Another one about J.D. This is from the Independent. “I’m from the same place as JD Vance, and there’s nothing to celebrate now that he’s Trump’s VP. We are both Appalachians, with eerily similar working-class backgrounds which JD Vance wrote about in his bestselling book Hillbilly Elegy. Yet, says Skylar Baker-Jordan, our views — and our reactions to this attempted assassination — couldn’t be more different.”
Like so many millions of my fellow citizens, I watched in horror on Saturday as a would-be assassin came perilously close to murdering former president Donald Trump. This was not just an attack on him and those innocent people simply exercising their First Amendment right to attend a political rally. It was not just an attack on the Republican Party.
It was an attack on the very fabric of American democracy.
Political violence has become a norm in our divided and beleaguered nation. From the 2011 attack on Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords to the 2017 shooting of Republican Steve Scalise to the attack last year on Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, to this weekend’s horrific attack which left one of our fellow citizens dead, we are increasingly solving our differences not with ballots and votes, but bullets and violence.
Neither side in this cold civil war, now cataclysmically close to boiling point, can claim the moral high ground. Would that someone told my fellow Appalachian, JD Vance.
“The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” the junior senator from Ohio tweeted last night following the shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania. “That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.
So the man they’re hailing as being just a good old boy is really just another elite enthralled by bigger elites. That’s what reality television has done with political reality. It’s made an entire group of people believe that a staged, scripted, false narrative wrapped up in a box with reality printed on it must be true. Let me show you some data rather than speculation. This is from Newsweek. This was published two days ago. The data comes before that awful RNC ho-down. “Donald Trump’s Chances of Winning Election Are Declining.” This comes from who once was a candidate and has worked campaign since High School. Don’t trust polls too far away from Election Day!
According to the tracker, Biden is favored to win in 534 out of 1,000 of FiveThirtyEight’s simulations of how the election could go, while Trump wins in 462. The poll also shows that the simulations indicate that Biden is on track for a three-point win.
The polling website said its forecast is based on a combination of polls and campaign “fundamentals,” such as economic conditions, state partisanship and incumbency.
It comes after a Presidential Voting Intention poll of 3,601 swing state voters by Redfield & Wilton Strategies, found that Trump’s margins over President Joe Biden have narrowed since June in two key states: Florida and North Carolina.
Trump previously defeated Biden in both states in 2020, while he held a six-point lead over Biden in Florida in a Redfield & Wilton Strategies poll from that June.
This craziness at The Daily Beast has me seething. It’s written by Jake Lahut. “Trump’s Plan to Slam Dems for Their ‘Coup’ Against Biden: Campaign. No matter who may replace Biden, the Trump camp plans to attack Democrats for an unruly ouster of their nominee.”
However, he now only leads the current president by four points in Florida. The poll shows that 45 percent of participants plan to vote for Trump, compared to Biden’s 41 percent.
It is not the only recent poll to give Trump only a four-point lead in Florida. A June Fox News survey gave Trump 50 percent of the vote, compared to 46 percent for Biden.
You would think a few folks would be reading them just to notice the trend. But, nope. Not with a big dose of Potomac Fever going on. So this one from The Daily Beast has me seething. It’s written by Jake Lahut. “Trump’s Plan to Slam Dems for Their ‘Coup’ Against Biden: Campaign, No matter who may replace Biden, the Trump camp plans to attack Democrats for an unruly ouster of their nominee.” Notice how we get two for one here.
Donald Trump‘s campaign will attack the Democrats for conducting a “coup” if Joe Biden quits the presidential race, the GOP campaign co-chair told The Daily Beast on Thursday.
The former president’s campaign for president will try to throw the charge leveled at him over the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection back in Democrats’ faces, Chris LaCivita told The Daily Beast in an exclusive interview at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
“Here’s what’s fascinating about it,” LaCivita said as he mingled on the convention floor in Milwaukee. “You are watching a coup. Literally. In front of your eyes.”
LaCivita, the architect with Susie Wiles of Trump’s 2024 campaign, offered the first insight into how Republicans will deal with a new Democratic candidate as Biden appeared increasingly likely to accede to calls to step aside.
The attack as a “coup plotter” will be matched with a playbook that continues to attack Biden’s record especially if Biden is succeeded by his vice president, Kamala Harris.
The campaign will run the same strategy if Harris takes over, he said. Biden has already given Republicans too much fodder, he acknowledged. They will also demand that Biden step down as president if he won’t run. That would give them extra ammunition to attack Harris as a sitting president who benefited from a “coup.”
“It’s Joe Biden,” he added, even if the nominee will not, in fact, be Joe Biden, should he step aside.
And AOC says the quiet part out loud. We knew this. “AOC goes live on Instagram saying many who want Joe Biden to drop out of race also want to remove Kamala. ‘A lot of them are not just interested in removing the president. They are interested in removing the whole ticket,’ congresswoman says.” This is from the Independent.
New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went on Instagram Live early on Friday morning to share her thoughts on Joe Biden’s floundering re-election campaign – and warning that many of those who want the President to drop out of the race, also want Vice President Kamala Harris off the ticket too.
“If you think that there is consensus among the people who want Joe Biden to leave … that they will support, Vice President Harris, you would be mistaken,” she told viewers.
She slammed her colleagues for giving anonymous quotes to the press, calling it “bull****” and urged those resigned to a loss to Donald Trump to give up their seats.
“My community does not have the option to lose,” she said.
“If they’re going to come out and say all their little things on background, off the record, but they’re not going to be fully honest, I’m going to be honest for them. I’m in these rooms. I see what they say in conversations,” the congresswoman said.
One last story that really shows what the ramping up of Wipipo privilege has done to our society. This is from CNN. “‘Treated like a convict’: NFL legend Terrell Davis describes getting handcuffed on a plane near his kids after asking for ice.” This story is reported by Holly Yan.
Terrell Davis and his family were looking forward to vacationing in California when pro football Hall of Famer was handcuffed and removed from a United Airlines plane – for no apparent reason.
“I was stripped of my dignity. I was powerless. I couldn’t do anything,” the two-time Super Bowl champion told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Wednesday.
The incident happened Saturday at the end of a flight from Denver to Orange County, California. Davis, 51, was flying with his wife, two sons and daughter when one of the sons asked for a cup of ice during beverage service, Davis wrote on Instagram. A flight attendant “either didn’t hear or ignored his request and continued past our row,” the post read.
Terrell Davis and his family were looking forward to vacationing in California when pro football Hall of Famer was handcuffed and removed from a United Airlines plane – for no apparent reason.
“I was stripped of my dignity. I was powerless. I couldn’t do anything,” the two-time Super Bowl champion told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Wednesday.
The incident happened Saturday at the end of a flight from Denver to Orange County, California. Davis, 51, was flying with his wife, two sons and daughter when one of the sons asked for a cup of ice during beverage service, Davis wrote on Instagram. A flight attendant “either didn’t hear or ignored his request and continued past our row,” the post read.
We should really be careful. It is getting ugly out there. But, if there is a protest of anything here in Orleans Parish, I will be there. I will also vote. I will also drag my neighbors to the voting booth if I have to.
We shall overcome.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Nothing reminds me of the worst stuff to come out of the 80s than Disco. Nothing says cultural appropriation like three white guys from the Isle of Man morphing funk and black slang into a song that’s all about themselves!!!!!! But it’s a good message to the pols and media that won’t settle down and do their damned jobs!
https://skydancingblog.com/2024/07/19/finally-friday-reads-we-shall-overcome/
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