#repeat1968-john-buss — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #repeat1968-john-buss, aggregated by home.social.
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Finally Friday Reads: State of Exhaustion
“You know Hegseth is chomping at the bit to annihilate something for the Dear Leader.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I’m sorry I am so late, but I had to do some errands, including getting a new passport, which was way more complicated than the last time I did it. I wanted to get it done for several reasons, but top of the list was avoiding getting a passport with Orange Caligula’s nasty picture on its cover. I also do not want to be used as a tool of that ish that is Freedom 250.
The weird thing was that while I was cheerfully smiling in my last passport, they told me I could no longer smile. I have to look neutral, which comes off as grim. The Postal worker actually said they want it to look like a mug shot now. I hope that doesn’t portend anything for the future. But, frankly, the look on my face basically says I’m a very unhappy American.
I thought I had given my PDF copy of my application a look through last night, but it was nothing compared to what they expect to see now. I had to do a handwritten version after the consensus was that my middle name was no longer needed. They also took my last passport. My first passport was part of a family passport. They no longer have those, I guess. I brought the one prior to that, when I was married, but much like my interest in all that, they weren’t the least bit interested. The Postal workers were sighing about the entire mess as much as I was. I have no idea what started all this, but I have DOGE and AI in mind as the primary hypothesis.
The majority of us are pretty broke right now. So, I’m not planning on a vacation at the Riviera. Part of me really wants the passport again in case things get any worse around here. Day after day, our democracy seems to be backsliding more quickly than ever. Trump, however, has a bigger grift going than ever. This New York Times story is worth checking out. It’s reported by Jason Horowitz. “Trump’s Huge Windfall Has Few Known Global Precedents. President Trump’s earnings in office are at a level once unimaginable for any leader of a liberal democracy, particularly a sitting American president.”
Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister and billionaire mogul who died in 2023, is often considered to have set the mold for President Trump with his mastery of the news media, gilded taste and, above all, legislative maneuvers that drew accusations of conflicts of interest.
Mr. Berlusconi passed laws that appeared tailor-made to protect and benefit his family’s vast business empire. And his annual earning disclosures showed he had been paid tens of millions of dollars while serving as prime minister.
This week, new financial disclosures suggested that Mr. Trump has broken that mold by making at least $2.2 billion in his first year back in the White House, including about $1.4 billion from his family’s cryptocurrency businesses.
Mr. Trump’s profits are a haul once unimaginable for any leader of a liberal democracy, particularly a sitting American president. No modern Western leader has ever publicly disclosed such big windfalls while in office.
The Trump family’s earnings, experts said, have moved him into an echelon of enrichment more associated with strongmen in Russia and Turkey.
His gains were all the more striking because the United States has long positioned itself as a standard-bearer for financial regulation, anti-graft measures and the rule of law. Yet his cryptocurrency earnings highlight an unusually glaring conflict: As president, Mr. Trump oversees the regulation of an industry that, as a businessman, he also greatly profits from.
The White House has denied that Mr. Trump or his family had engaged in conflicts of interest and he has personally brushed aside such concerns, saying this week: “I never speak to any of the people that run the money.”
That reluctance to acknowledge any conflict now makes it harder, experts said, for anti-corruption investigators in countries big and small to combat behavior that the United States, until Mr. Trump’s presidency, once condemned.
“How the U.S. behaved was quite influential in shaping international norms,” said Professor Liz David-Barrett, director of the Center for the Study of Corruption at the University of Sussex.
Now, Mr. Trump’s windfall has undermined the idea “that there is a standard to which we should all be aspiring,” she said. It was now easier for other global leaders to ask “‘why should I regulate my behavior?’ when the greatest power in the world” is not regulating its president, she added.
Newsweek has more numbers and analysis under this headline. “Trump Says Family Faces Constant ‘Conflict’ Under White House Spotlight.” The Trump Family Crime Syndicate knows no boundaries.
Questions surrounding the Trump family’s business interests have followed the president throughout both of his administrations, but critics say those concerns have intensified during his second term as the family’s portfolio expands into areas including cryptocurrency, international real estate and private investments.
Trump’s latest financial disclosure report drew particular attention because it showed substantial income tied to crypto ventures associated with the family. The filing included hundreds of millions of dollars connected to World Liberty Financial and related businesses.
Supporters of the president say that Trump has complied with applicable ethics requirements and note that federal conflict-of-interest laws do not require presidents to divest personal assets. Trump underscored that point in the CNBC interview, saying there was “nothing illegal” or improper about the family’s business activities.
Ethics watchdogs, including Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), along with Democratic lawmakers and former government ethics officials, have argued that the Trump family’s expanding business ventures create actual or perceived conflicts of interest.
Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate banking committee, accused Trump of “brazen crypto corruption” this week after the financial disclosures revealed his family’s cryptocurrency ventures made more than $1 billion since his return to office.
“The crypto legislation heading to the Senate floor must prevent the president, vice-president, senior administration officials, members of Congress, and their families from profiting off the crypto industry,” said Warren in a statement. “If it does not, it will only turbocharge Donald Trump’s brazen crypto corruption.”
It’s not the first time Warren has issued a warning over Trump’s financial dealings with his family. In May 2025, Warren and Sen. Chris Van Hollen sent a letter to President Trump urging him and his family to divest from World Liberty Financial. They wrote that: “Your personal financial entanglements with foreign governments threaten to undermine U.S. national security.”
There’s a lot of information in it about Trump’s sperm discharges.
The brothers have significantly expanded their business portfolio in recent years. Their highest-profile ventures include co-founding World Liberty Financial, a decentralized finance platform that has generated hundreds of millions of dollars for the Trump family through token sales and a stablecoin business. They also launched American Bitcoin in March 2025, a cryptocurrency mining company, and have backed ventures through 1789 Capital, where Donald Jr. is a partner investing in defense, AI and technology companies.
They have pursued international Trump-branded licensing agreements in countries including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, India and Romania, while expanding into firearms retail, drone technology and politically aligned consumer brands.
According to Forbes, Donald Jr.’s net worth increased six fold since between the presidential election in November 2024 and the end of Donald Trump’s first year back in office, in December 2025, jumping from $50 million to $300 million.
Something sure smells rotten. This is from The New Republic. “Kleptocracy Is Trump’s Most Lucrative Business Venture. His investments make money even when his ventures fail! ” Timothy Noah has the story.
Being president of the United States is by far the most lucrative business venture of Donald Trump’s checkered business career. The June 30 release of his financial disclosure report makes this official. Trump has turned the American presidency into an extractive industry. In 2025, Trump mined more than $2.2 billion in income from being president, most of it from crypto, from which he extracted $1.4 billion. That’s all the more remarkable when you remember that crypto entered a slump last year and that investors in Trump’s crypto ventures who were not members of the Trump family lost $2.3 billion, according to a June 9 investigation by Tom Bergin of Reuters. It’s almost as if Trump’s ability to draw income from business ventures did not depend on those ventures being successful!
A cynic might observe that Trump’s special treatment is no different from that of American chief executives in the private sector who are similarly insulated from failure. But Trump’s payday puts theirs in the shade. The only CEO whose compensation exceeded Trump’s last year was Elon Musk, who (for now) is a category of one. Musk’s $158 billion pay package from Tesla last year was more than 15 times larger than the combined pay packages of the other 391 chief executives surveyed in late June by The Wall Street Journal.
If we set Musk aside, the highest-paid chief executive in the Journal’s ranking was Shankh Mitra, chief executive of Welltower, “a real estate investment trust focused on senior housing and healthcare.” Let’s leave for another day the ethics of harvesting a vast personal fortune from the physical and mental decline of one’s fellow human beings. My point here is that Mitra’s obscene pay package last year of $821 million was less than half of Trump’s $2.2 billion. Plus, I bet Mitra had to put in at least some actual work.
I observed a year ago that Trump is America’s first rentier president. A rentier is someone who makes his money through the possession of assets rather than the exertion of labor. Rentiers are capitalism’s nepo babies. Prior to Trump, the main rentier occupations were real estate and finance. Trump himself was a classic rentier capitalist, a rich kid who joined the family real estate business, exaggerated his success to a credulous tabloid press, and inherited $413 million from his more successful father. Trump moved the family business from dowdy apartment buildings in Brooklyn and Queens to luxury apartments and hotels in Manhattan and beyond, but many of these went bankrupt. In 2018, The Economist concluded Trump would have made more money had he been a more conventional rentier and invested daddy’s money in index funds.
The rentier presidency is a much more lucrative proposition than rentier capitalism, and one with which index funds can’t possibly compete. Crucially, there is no index fund that lets you acquire a stake without investing money or labor. During the 2024 presidential campaign the Trump family acquired a 60 percent stake in World Liberty Financial and was granted 75 percent on net revenues from token sales. (The Trump family stake in the company, the less valuable part of this deal, has since fallen to 38 percent.) Trump did not pay for these privileges, yet last year he earned more than $594 million from them. Neither is there any evidence, according to Reuters’ Bergin, that Trump ever paid for his stakes in the crypto firms ALT5 Sigma, American Bitcoin, or Celebration Coins. This last alone netted Trump more than $636 million last year.
One more short article before I ruin your Independence Day weekend. This is from Democracy Defenders Action.
Following is a statement by Amb. Norm Eisen (ret.), co-founder and board member of Democracy Defenders Action and Richard W. Painter, former associate counsel to President George W. Bush, regarding President Trump’s newly released financial disclosures. Amb. Eisen was the White House ethics czar for President Obama.
“President Trump’s financial disclosure reveals he is capitalizing on the presidency for personal gain on a staggering scale never seen in American history.
“Worse, he’s doing this while his administration refuses to regulate the very industry making him a billionaire several times over, leaving Americans exposed while his own meme coin soars. His cronies and family are up to their eyeballs in the grift.
“Make no mistake. His billions in personal profit don’t come out of thin air. Every dollar extracted from these schemes comes at a cost imposed directly on the American people—whether through weaker consumer protections, trust sold to the highest bidder or otherwise.
“Congress has the power to enact legislation now to prevent these types of conflicts of interest for the president, vice president and members of Congress themselves. They should also investigate and hold him accountable. By refusing to act, they are complicit.
“The American people will not tolerate this shocking greed. And they will hold accountable those who enabled it.”
I’m not sure about the American people’s inability to tolerate his shocking greed. I’m more worried they won’t pay attention to all the warnings and will not vote.
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?
#Repeat1968JohnBuss #DemocracyBacksliding #PassportApplicationProcess #TheTrumpFamilyCrimeSyndicate #TrumpFamilyGriftRodeo #TrumpGrifting -
Finally Friday Reads: State of Exhaustion
“You know Hegseth is chomping at the bit to annihilate something for the Dear Leader.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I’m sorry I am so late, but I had to do some errands, including getting a new passport, which was way more complicated than the last time I did it. I wanted to get it done for several reasons, but top of the list was avoiding getting a passport with Orange Caligula’s nasty picture on its cover. I also do not want to be used as a tool of that ish that is Freedom 250.
The weird thing was that while I was cheerfully smiling in my last passport, they told me I could no longer smile. I have to look neutral, which comes off as grim. The Postal worker actually said they want it to look like a mug shot now. I hope that doesn’t portend anything for the future. But, frankly, the look on my face basically says I’m a very unhappy American.
I thought I had given my PDF copy of my application a look through last night, but it was nothing compared to what they expect to see now. I had to do a handwritten version after the consensus was that my middle name was no longer needed. They also took my last passport. My first passport was part of a family passport. They no longer have those, I guess. I brought the one prior to that, when I was married, but much like my interest in all that, they weren’t the least bit interested. The Postal workers were sighing about the entire mess as much as I was. I have no idea what started all this, but I have DOGE and AI in mind as the primary hypothesis.
The majority of us are pretty broke right now. So, I’m not planning on a vacation at the Riviera. Part of me really wants the passport again in case things get any worse around here. Day after day, our democracy seems to be backsliding more quickly than ever. Trump, however, has a bigger grift going than ever. This New York Times story is worth checking out. It’s reported by Jason Horowitz. “Trump’s Huge Windfall Has Few Known Global Precedents. President Trump’s earnings in office are at a level once unimaginable for any leader of a liberal democracy, particularly a sitting American president.”
Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister and billionaire mogul who died in 2023, is often considered to have set the mold for President Trump with his mastery of the news media, gilded taste and, above all, legislative maneuvers that drew accusations of conflicts of interest.
Mr. Berlusconi passed laws that appeared tailor-made to protect and benefit his family’s vast business empire. And his annual earning disclosures showed he had been paid tens of millions of dollars while serving as prime minister.
This week, new financial disclosures suggested that Mr. Trump has broken that mold by making at least $2.2 billion in his first year back in the White House, including about $1.4 billion from his family’s cryptocurrency businesses.
Mr. Trump’s profits are a haul once unimaginable for any leader of a liberal democracy, particularly a sitting American president. No modern Western leader has ever publicly disclosed such big windfalls while in office.
The Trump family’s earnings, experts said, have moved him into an echelon of enrichment more associated with strongmen in Russia and Turkey.
His gains were all the more striking because the United States has long positioned itself as a standard-bearer for financial regulation, anti-graft measures and the rule of law. Yet his cryptocurrency earnings highlight an unusually glaring conflict: As president, Mr. Trump oversees the regulation of an industry that, as a businessman, he also greatly profits from.
The White House has denied that Mr. Trump or his family had engaged in conflicts of interest and he has personally brushed aside such concerns, saying this week: “I never speak to any of the people that run the money.”
That reluctance to acknowledge any conflict now makes it harder, experts said, for anti-corruption investigators in countries big and small to combat behavior that the United States, until Mr. Trump’s presidency, once condemned.
“How the U.S. behaved was quite influential in shaping international norms,” said Professor Liz David-Barrett, director of the Center for the Study of Corruption at the University of Sussex.
Now, Mr. Trump’s windfall has undermined the idea “that there is a standard to which we should all be aspiring,” she said. It was now easier for other global leaders to ask “‘why should I regulate my behavior?’ when the greatest power in the world” is not regulating its president, she added.
Newsweek has more numbers and analysis under this headline. “Trump Says Family Faces Constant ‘Conflict’ Under White House Spotlight.” The Trump Family Crime Syndicate knows no boundaries.
Questions surrounding the Trump family’s business interests have followed the president throughout both of his administrations, but critics say those concerns have intensified during his second term as the family’s portfolio expands into areas including cryptocurrency, international real estate and private investments.
Trump’s latest financial disclosure report drew particular attention because it showed substantial income tied to crypto ventures associated with the family. The filing included hundreds of millions of dollars connected to World Liberty Financial and related businesses.
Supporters of the president say that Trump has complied with applicable ethics requirements and note that federal conflict-of-interest laws do not require presidents to divest personal assets. Trump underscored that point in the CNBC interview, saying there was “nothing illegal” or improper about the family’s business activities.
Ethics watchdogs, including Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), along with Democratic lawmakers and former government ethics officials, have argued that the Trump family’s expanding business ventures create actual or perceived conflicts of interest.
Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate banking committee, accused Trump of “brazen crypto corruption” this week after the financial disclosures revealed his family’s cryptocurrency ventures made more than $1 billion since his return to office.
“The crypto legislation heading to the Senate floor must prevent the president, vice-president, senior administration officials, members of Congress, and their families from profiting off the crypto industry,” said Warren in a statement. “If it does not, it will only turbocharge Donald Trump’s brazen crypto corruption.”
It’s not the first time Warren has issued a warning over Trump’s financial dealings with his family. In May 2025, Warren and Sen. Chris Van Hollen sent a letter to President Trump urging him and his family to divest from World Liberty Financial. They wrote that: “Your personal financial entanglements with foreign governments threaten to undermine U.S. national security.”
There’s a lot of information in it about Trump’s sperm discharges.
The brothers have significantly expanded their business portfolio in recent years. Their highest-profile ventures include co-founding World Liberty Financial, a decentralized finance platform that has generated hundreds of millions of dollars for the Trump family through token sales and a stablecoin business. They also launched American Bitcoin in March 2025, a cryptocurrency mining company, and have backed ventures through 1789 Capital, where Donald Jr. is a partner investing in defense, AI and technology companies.
They have pursued international Trump-branded licensing agreements in countries including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, India and Romania, while expanding into firearms retail, drone technology and politically aligned consumer brands.
According to Forbes, Donald Jr.’s net worth increased six fold since between the presidential election in November 2024 and the end of Donald Trump’s first year back in office, in December 2025, jumping from $50 million to $300 million.
Something sure smells rotten. This is from The New Republic. “Kleptocracy Is Trump’s Most Lucrative Business Venture. His investments make money even when his ventures fail! ” Timothy Noah has the story.
Being president of the United States is by far the most lucrative business venture of Donald Trump’s checkered business career. The June 30 release of his financial disclosure report makes this official. Trump has turned the American presidency into an extractive industry. In 2025, Trump mined more than $2.2 billion in income from being president, most of it from crypto, from which he extracted $1.4 billion. That’s all the more remarkable when you remember that crypto entered a slump last year and that investors in Trump’s crypto ventures who were not members of the Trump family lost $2.3 billion, according to a June 9 investigation by Tom Bergin of Reuters. It’s almost as if Trump’s ability to draw income from business ventures did not depend on those ventures being successful!
A cynic might observe that Trump’s special treatment is no different from that of American chief executives in the private sector who are similarly insulated from failure. But Trump’s payday puts theirs in the shade. The only CEO whose compensation exceeded Trump’s last year was Elon Musk, who (for now) is a category of one. Musk’s $158 billion pay package from Tesla last year was more than 15 times larger than the combined pay packages of the other 391 chief executives surveyed in late June by The Wall Street Journal.
If we set Musk aside, the highest-paid chief executive in the Journal’s ranking was Shankh Mitra, chief executive of Welltower, “a real estate investment trust focused on senior housing and healthcare.” Let’s leave for another day the ethics of harvesting a vast personal fortune from the physical and mental decline of one’s fellow human beings. My point here is that Mitra’s obscene pay package last year of $821 million was less than half of Trump’s $2.2 billion. Plus, I bet Mitra had to put in at least some actual work.
I observed a year ago that Trump is America’s first rentier president. A rentier is someone who makes his money through the possession of assets rather than the exertion of labor. Rentiers are capitalism’s nepo babies. Prior to Trump, the main rentier occupations were real estate and finance. Trump himself was a classic rentier capitalist, a rich kid who joined the family real estate business, exaggerated his success to a credulous tabloid press, and inherited $413 million from his more successful father. Trump moved the family business from dowdy apartment buildings in Brooklyn and Queens to luxury apartments and hotels in Manhattan and beyond, but many of these went bankrupt. In 2018, The Economist concluded Trump would have made more money had he been a more conventional rentier and invested daddy’s money in index funds.
The rentier presidency is a much more lucrative proposition than rentier capitalism, and one with which index funds can’t possibly compete. Crucially, there is no index fund that lets you acquire a stake without investing money or labor. During the 2024 presidential campaign the Trump family acquired a 60 percent stake in World Liberty Financial and was granted 75 percent on net revenues from token sales. (The Trump family stake in the company, the less valuable part of this deal, has since fallen to 38 percent.) Trump did not pay for these privileges, yet last year he earned more than $594 million from them. Neither is there any evidence, according to Reuters’ Bergin, that Trump ever paid for his stakes in the crypto firms ALT5 Sigma, American Bitcoin, or Celebration Coins. This last alone netted Trump more than $636 million last year.
One more short article before I ruin your Independence Day weekend. This is from Democracy Defenders Action.
Following is a statement by Amb. Norm Eisen (ret.), co-founder and board member of Democracy Defenders Action and Richard W. Painter, former associate counsel to President George W. Bush, regarding President Trump’s newly released financial disclosures. Amb. Eisen was the White House ethics czar for President Obama.
“President Trump’s financial disclosure reveals he is capitalizing on the presidency for personal gain on a staggering scale never seen in American history.
“Worse, he’s doing this while his administration refuses to regulate the very industry making him a billionaire several times over, leaving Americans exposed while his own meme coin soars. His cronies and family are up to their eyeballs in the grift.
“Make no mistake. His billions in personal profit don’t come out of thin air. Every dollar extracted from these schemes comes at a cost imposed directly on the American people—whether through weaker consumer protections, trust sold to the highest bidder or otherwise.
“Congress has the power to enact legislation now to prevent these types of conflicts of interest for the president, vice president and members of Congress themselves. They should also investigate and hold him accountable. By refusing to act, they are complicit.
“The American people will not tolerate this shocking greed. And they will hold accountable those who enabled it.”
I’m not sure about the American people’s inability to tolerate his shocking greed. I’m more worried they won’t pay attention to all the warnings and will not vote.
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?
#Repeat1968JohnBuss #DemocracyBacksliding #PassportApplicationProcess #TheTrumpFamilyCrimeSyndicate #TrumpFamilyGriftRodeo #TrumpGrifting -
Mostly Monday Reads: Gobblefunk
“Meanwhile… at the Reflecting Pool in Washington, DC. Not everyone in Trumpland is impressed with the latest distraction. MAHA!”John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
There actually is some good news from the Supreme Court Today. I’m not holding my breath that it will stand, however. It’s hard to hold your breath on anything. The Straight of Hormuz is still an active battlefield, no matter what Orange Caligula tells the press. People are dying in ICE custody as ICE has not been paying for medical care for 7 months. All of our allies are moving closer to Europe and farther from us, no matter where they are in the world. We’re a shithole country. We might as well face up to it.
Just breaking: news from the Supreme Court. NBC News reports that “Supreme Court temporarily restores full access to abortion pill. “The decision means mifepristone remains available nationwide without an in-person meeting required while litigation continues.” I read this headline after taking Temple for a walk and found a bunch of stickers on the neutral ground. Of course, I picked them up, and Temple and I will be plastering them at all the local bars later today.
This seems a little karmic, doesn’t it? Lawrence Hurley and Aria Bendix have the lede.
The Supreme Court on Monday provisionally blocked a lower court decision that would have limited availability nationwide of the abortion pill mifepristone.
In two brief orders, Justice Samuel Alito, one of the court’s conservatives, said the decision by the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals would remain on hold until at least May 11. Alito issued the order because he is the justice who handles emergency issues arising from that appeals court, which covers Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi.
The temporary pause gives the high court time to consider next steps in the case as it weighs separate emergency requests filed by drug makers Danco and GenBioPro.
The nationwide availability of mifepristone was cast into jeopardy on Friday when the appeals court granted Louisiana’s request to void Biden administration rules that allowed the drug to be administered without an in-person meeting, meaning it can in theory be mailed anywhere in the country, even in states with strict abortion bans.
Alexis McGill Johnson, president of abortion rights group Planned Parenthood Action Fund, welcomed the decision.
“While mifepristone access returns to where it was on Friday morning, the whiplash and chaos that patients and providers are navigating have already had real consequences for real peoples’ lives and futures,” she said in a statement.
Anti-abortion groups have been pushing for years to reinstate the in-person dispensing requirement, alleging that taking mifepristone at home can be dangerous — despite studies that have found it to be safe and effective.
Danco makes Mifeprex, the brand name version of mifepristone, while GenBioPro makes a generic version.
Alito ordered Louisiana to file its response to the company’s request by the end of the day on Thursday.
This is the latest deadly weirdness from NBC News. Once again, we see Trump cannot be trusted, and that Hegseth is probably drunk bombing. “U.S. denies Iranian claim that it hit American warship as Trump launches mission to reopen Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. said two American-flagged commercial vessels transited the critical waterway Monday as part of the new “Project Freedom.” This story is reported by Yuliya Talmazan and Courtney Kube.
The U.S. military on Monday rejected Iranian claims to have struck an American warship trying to enter the Strait of Hormuz and said the first commercial ships had transited the critical waterway as part of President Donald Trump’s new mission to guide stranded vessels.
Meanwhile, the South Korean government confirmed earlier reports that explosion and fire had occurred on a South Korean-operated cargo ship on Monday.
Trump announced that starting Monday the U.S. military would help free ships that have been “locked up” and unable to transit the key trade route amid the maritime standoff between Tehran and Washington.
Iran signaled an aggressive response to this latest bid to break its stranglehold over the strait, which has left global shipping at an effective standstill and sent energy prices spiraling.
Tehran issued a new map and a flurry of statements that sought to reassert its control. Early Monday, it claimed to have stopped U.S. destroyers from entering the strait.
After the U.S. warships ignored several radio warnings, cruise missiles, rockets and combat drones were fired near them, army public relations said in a statement carried by the semi-official Tasnim news agency.
Iranian state media had earlier claimed that two missiles had hit a U.S. ship near the entrance to the strait, but the U.S. military denied this.
“No U.S. Navy ships have been struck. U.S. forces are supporting Project Freedom and enforcing the naval blockade on Iranian ports,” Central Command said in a post on X.
A U.S. official also denied to NBC News that any U.S. Navy ships were prevented from accessing the strait on Monday by Iran.
It really does sound like we’re the bad guys now, doesn’t it? Washington Monthly‘s Paul Glastic has this interesting bit of analysis today. “Why the U.S.-led Liberal World Order is Only Mostly Dead.”
Even before Donald Trump launched his ill-advised war on Iran, America’s allies were already pronouncing the end of the era of U.S. leadership of the free world. “The West as we knew it no longer exists,” European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said in April of 2025 as she tried to rally governments in Asia, the Middle East, and Europe to counter massive tariffs that Trump had recently imposed. “The old order is not coming back,” declared Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney this past January in a widely reported speech at Davos after fresh attempts by Trump to seize Greenland.
But in the wake of Trump’s cavalier attack on Iran and the global economic pain that has resulted, even some of America’s most vocal and influential champions of U.S. supremacy seem ready to throw in the towel. The neoconservative national security scholar Robert Kagan of the Brookings Institution recently penned a requiem in The Atlantic for eight decades of Pax Americana:
Those days are now over and will not soon return. Nations that once bandwagoned with the United States will now remain aloof or align against it—not because they want to, but because the United States leaves them no choice, because it will neither protect them nor refrain from exploiting them. Welcome to the era of the rogue American superpower. It will be lonely and dangerous.
Such declarations of the end of the U.S.-led international order are understandable. In a sense, they are a simple recognition of what Trump writes every day in ALL CAPS in his Truth Social posts, and of what his second-term government has been doing for 16 months. Just as Trump burned through his inherited wealth in a series of failed real estate ventures in his younger years, so is he now squandering decades of accumulated U.S. power in a mad attempt to overthrow the post-war system of alliances and institutions that was the means of acquiring that power. And he still has more than two-and-a-half years left in his presidency. Who knows how much more damage he will do? There is no reason to think he will abandon his beliefs that our allies are parasites, that international institutions are for losers, and that strongmen like him and Vladimir Putin should rule their spheres without constraint.
Countries across the globe are now recognizing that their past reliance on Washington for everything from advanced weaponry to sea lane protection has made them vulnerable to a leader like Trump. Consequently, they are looking for ways to give themselves some “strategic autonomy” from the United States—by, for instance, tilting towards China, or crafting a new coalition of “middle powers,” as Carney suggested in Davos, or creating a “European NATO” in which the U.S. no longer plays a leading, or perhaps any, role.
Given the circumstances, countries are wise to pursue these new arrangements. But they are poor substitutes for the U.S.-led liberal international order that Trump is dismantling. A better strategy is to rebuild that order in some form as soon as Trump leaves office. That might seem like wishful thinking, but it is not. Rather, it is the probable course of events if (as also seems likely) a Democrat wins the White House in 2028.
According to numerous polls, Democratic voters remain staunch supporters of Ukraine, NATO, and international institutions generally. They profoundly oppose Trump’s gunboat diplomacy in Venezuela and Iran. To win the presidential primary, any Democratic candidate must adhere to these views and, if successful in the general election, follow through in office to remain popular with the base. That shouldn’t be a problem if Democrats also control both houses and support a more internationalist foreign policy. Agencies gutted by Trump, such as USAID and the State Department, could be refunded and even expanded via reconciliation, thus requiring no GOP votes.
Some Republican lawmakers, free of Trump, might also be willing to support a more traditional foreign policy approach. In April, when Trump threatened to pull out of NATO if the allies didn’t help open the Strait of Hormuz, GOP Senate Majority Leader John Thune said there was little appetite in his caucus to support Trump in that effort. “We got an awful lot of people who think that NATO is a very critical, incredibly successful post-World War II alliance. And I think in the world today, you need allies,” Thune told reporters. Additionally, a NATO in which member states have raised their defense spending and taken increased responsibility for aiding Ukraine is an alliance that more conservative Americans can get behind without feeling like suckers.
Many supporters of traditional U.S. multilateralism fear that, because of Trump’s nationalist and extortionist policies, other countries can no longer trust us. After all, American voters elected Trump not once, but twice. That’s a fair point. But it’s also true that American voters threw Trump out of office once and, in virtually every election over the past year-plus, have signaled their unhappiness with the state of the country under his leadership. Moreover, all advanced democracies have far-right authoritarian political movements that could take over their governments. We can’t trust their voters any more than they can trust ours. We may all be fated to oscillate between liberal and illiberal governments, as Hungary has, until we address the working-class economic distress that is the root cause of the problem. As I have argued, it’s easier to do that multilaterally than separately.
These days, it’s easy to see why all of these countries have given up on us. Many of us here in the country feel that way, too. It’s so important to make sure the midterms flip the House and the Senate. If not, I may be writing future blog posts from Lima, Peru. Alison Quinn, writing for The Daily Beast, has the perfect observation. ” We’ll have to ask Dr. BB for confirmation, but I believe lack of sleep can increase the level of madness in a mentally ill person. “Truth of Trump’s Wild Sleepless Nights Exposed. LOSING HIS MIND. Joanna Coles and Daily Beast executive editor Hugh Dougherty dive into a jaw-dropping investigation revealing the president’s relentless late-night posting habits.”
A third of Donald Trump’s social media posts now come in the middle of the night when the soon-to-be 80-year-old president should be sleeping, raising urgent new concerns about his mental health as he navigates war.
Joanna Coles and Daily Beast executive editor Hugh Dougherty break down a shocking investigation that puts Trump’s late-night posting habits on stark display, revealing a disturbing pattern between those baffling posts fired off in the dead of night and the awkward moments in the Oval Office when the president has been caught appearing to doze off.
“It is an extraordinary, extraordinary piece of work. Josh Fiallo, our brilliant reporter, counted up all the times that Donald Trump posted on Truth Social in April and then he looked at when he was posting and he looked between the hours of 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. and we discovered that there were only five days in April when the president did not post on Truth Social between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m.,” Dougherty said on The Daily Beast Podcast.
“Eighty percent of nights when he could be sleeping, he’s posting,” he said.
While Trump’s often bizarre Truth Social posts have in many ways become a hallmark of his time in office, there was something quite different about them in the month of April: They appeared to become more frantic, disjointed, and more incendiary, as Trump’s political troubles multiplied, leading to foul-mouthed tirades and threats of war crimes that shocked even his own MAGA base and prompted some of his own allies to sound the alarm. It was no longer just Democrats questioning his fitness for office, but former advisers and much of the American public.
A Fox News poll conducted April 17-20 found that 55 percent of respondents felt Trump did not have the “mental soundness” to be an effective leader.
Well, at least the majority of us can see clearly. So that’s it for me. I got a smoker grill and intend to sit in what will become the new backyard of the kathouse and eat some very delicious food this summer. That’s mostly because I’m having the kitchen completely redone soon, so I have to cook somewhere else. It will be like a Girl Scout camp trip soon!
Please take care of yourselves, be kind to yourselves, and remember we’re always here for each other!
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?
“Don’t gobblefunk around with words.” ― Roald Dahl, The BFG.
#Repeat1968JohnBuss #DonTGobblefunkAroundWithWordsRoaldDahl #ICE #mifepristone #SCOTUS #StraightOfHormuz #TheBFG #TrumpSGoingSlightlyMad #USVsTheLiberalWorldOrder -
Mostly Monday Reads: Gobblefunk
“Meanwhile… at the Reflecting Pool in Washington, DC. Not everyone in Trumpland is impressed with the latest distraction. MAHA!”John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
There actually is some good news from the Supreme Court Today. I’m not holding my breath that it will stand, however. It’s hard to hold your breath on anything. The Straight of Hormuz is still an active battlefield, no matter what Orange Caligula tells the press. People are dying in ICE custody as ICE has not been paying for medical care for 7 months. All of our allies are moving closer to Europe and farther from us, no matter where they are in the world. We’re a shithole country. We might as well face up to it.
Just breaking: news from the Supreme Court. NBC News reports that “Supreme Court temporarily restores full access to abortion pill. “The decision means mifepristone remains available nationwide without an in-person meeting required while litigation continues.” I read this headline after taking Temple for a walk and found a bunch of stickers on the neutral ground. Of course, I picked them up, and Temple and I will be plastering them at all the local bars later today.
This seems a little karmic, doesn’t it? Lawrence Hurley and Aria Bendix have the lede.
The Supreme Court on Monday provisionally blocked a lower court decision that would have limited availability nationwide of the abortion pill mifepristone.
In two brief orders, Justice Samuel Alito, one of the court’s conservatives, said the decision by the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals would remain on hold until at least May 11. Alito issued the order because he is the justice who handles emergency issues arising from that appeals court, which covers Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi.
The temporary pause gives the high court time to consider next steps in the case as it weighs separate emergency requests filed by drug makers Danco and GenBioPro.
The nationwide availability of mifepristone was cast into jeopardy on Friday when the appeals court granted Louisiana’s request to void Biden administration rules that allowed the drug to be administered without an in-person meeting, meaning it can in theory be mailed anywhere in the country, even in states with strict abortion bans.
Alexis McGill Johnson, president of abortion rights group Planned Parenthood Action Fund, welcomed the decision.
“While mifepristone access returns to where it was on Friday morning, the whiplash and chaos that patients and providers are navigating have already had real consequences for real peoples’ lives and futures,” she said in a statement.
Anti-abortion groups have been pushing for years to reinstate the in-person dispensing requirement, alleging that taking mifepristone at home can be dangerous — despite studies that have found it to be safe and effective.
Danco makes Mifeprex, the brand name version of mifepristone, while GenBioPro makes a generic version.
Alito ordered Louisiana to file its response to the company’s request by the end of the day on Thursday.
This is the latest deadly weirdness from NBC News. Once again, we see Trump cannot be trusted, and that Hegseth is probably drunk bombing. “U.S. denies Iranian claim that it hit American warship as Trump launches mission to reopen Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. said two American-flagged commercial vessels transited the critical waterway Monday as part of the new “Project Freedom.” This story is reported by Yuliya Talmazan and Courtney Kube.
The U.S. military on Monday rejected Iranian claims to have struck an American warship trying to enter the Strait of Hormuz and said the first commercial ships had transited the critical waterway as part of President Donald Trump’s new mission to guide stranded vessels.
Meanwhile, the South Korean government confirmed earlier reports that explosion and fire had occurred on a South Korean-operated cargo ship on Monday.
Trump announced that starting Monday the U.S. military would help free ships that have been “locked up” and unable to transit the key trade route amid the maritime standoff between Tehran and Washington.
Iran signaled an aggressive response to this latest bid to break its stranglehold over the strait, which has left global shipping at an effective standstill and sent energy prices spiraling.
Tehran issued a new map and a flurry of statements that sought to reassert its control. Early Monday, it claimed to have stopped U.S. destroyers from entering the strait.
After the U.S. warships ignored several radio warnings, cruise missiles, rockets and combat drones were fired near them, army public relations said in a statement carried by the semi-official Tasnim news agency.
Iranian state media had earlier claimed that two missiles had hit a U.S. ship near the entrance to the strait, but the U.S. military denied this.
“No U.S. Navy ships have been struck. U.S. forces are supporting Project Freedom and enforcing the naval blockade on Iranian ports,” Central Command said in a post on X.
A U.S. official also denied to NBC News that any U.S. Navy ships were prevented from accessing the strait on Monday by Iran.
It really does sound like we’re the bad guys now, doesn’t it? Washington Monthly‘s Paul Glastic has this interesting bit of analysis today. “Why the U.S.-led Liberal World Order is Only Mostly Dead.”
Even before Donald Trump launched his ill-advised war on Iran, America’s allies were already pronouncing the end of the era of U.S. leadership of the free world. “The West as we knew it no longer exists,” European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said in April of 2025 as she tried to rally governments in Asia, the Middle East, and Europe to counter massive tariffs that Trump had recently imposed. “The old order is not coming back,” declared Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney this past January in a widely reported speech at Davos after fresh attempts by Trump to seize Greenland.
But in the wake of Trump’s cavalier attack on Iran and the global economic pain that has resulted, even some of America’s most vocal and influential champions of U.S. supremacy seem ready to throw in the towel. The neoconservative national security scholar Robert Kagan of the Brookings Institution recently penned a requiem in The Atlantic for eight decades of Pax Americana:
Those days are now over and will not soon return. Nations that once bandwagoned with the United States will now remain aloof or align against it—not because they want to, but because the United States leaves them no choice, because it will neither protect them nor refrain from exploiting them. Welcome to the era of the rogue American superpower. It will be lonely and dangerous.
Such declarations of the end of the U.S.-led international order are understandable. In a sense, they are a simple recognition of what Trump writes every day in ALL CAPS in his Truth Social posts, and of what his second-term government has been doing for 16 months. Just as Trump burned through his inherited wealth in a series of failed real estate ventures in his younger years, so is he now squandering decades of accumulated U.S. power in a mad attempt to overthrow the post-war system of alliances and institutions that was the means of acquiring that power. And he still has more than two-and-a-half years left in his presidency. Who knows how much more damage he will do? There is no reason to think he will abandon his beliefs that our allies are parasites, that international institutions are for losers, and that strongmen like him and Vladimir Putin should rule their spheres without constraint.
Countries across the globe are now recognizing that their past reliance on Washington for everything from advanced weaponry to sea lane protection has made them vulnerable to a leader like Trump. Consequently, they are looking for ways to give themselves some “strategic autonomy” from the United States—by, for instance, tilting towards China, or crafting a new coalition of “middle powers,” as Carney suggested in Davos, or creating a “European NATO” in which the U.S. no longer plays a leading, or perhaps any, role.
Given the circumstances, countries are wise to pursue these new arrangements. But they are poor substitutes for the U.S.-led liberal international order that Trump is dismantling. A better strategy is to rebuild that order in some form as soon as Trump leaves office. That might seem like wishful thinking, but it is not. Rather, it is the probable course of events if (as also seems likely) a Democrat wins the White House in 2028.
According to numerous polls, Democratic voters remain staunch supporters of Ukraine, NATO, and international institutions generally. They profoundly oppose Trump’s gunboat diplomacy in Venezuela and Iran. To win the presidential primary, any Democratic candidate must adhere to these views and, if successful in the general election, follow through in office to remain popular with the base. That shouldn’t be a problem if Democrats also control both houses and support a more internationalist foreign policy. Agencies gutted by Trump, such as USAID and the State Department, could be refunded and even expanded via reconciliation, thus requiring no GOP votes.
Some Republican lawmakers, free of Trump, might also be willing to support a more traditional foreign policy approach. In April, when Trump threatened to pull out of NATO if the allies didn’t help open the Strait of Hormuz, GOP Senate Majority Leader John Thune said there was little appetite in his caucus to support Trump in that effort. “We got an awful lot of people who think that NATO is a very critical, incredibly successful post-World War II alliance. And I think in the world today, you need allies,” Thune told reporters. Additionally, a NATO in which member states have raised their defense spending and taken increased responsibility for aiding Ukraine is an alliance that more conservative Americans can get behind without feeling like suckers.
Many supporters of traditional U.S. multilateralism fear that, because of Trump’s nationalist and extortionist policies, other countries can no longer trust us. After all, American voters elected Trump not once, but twice. That’s a fair point. But it’s also true that American voters threw Trump out of office once and, in virtually every election over the past year-plus, have signaled their unhappiness with the state of the country under his leadership. Moreover, all advanced democracies have far-right authoritarian political movements that could take over their governments. We can’t trust their voters any more than they can trust ours. We may all be fated to oscillate between liberal and illiberal governments, as Hungary has, until we address the working-class economic distress that is the root cause of the problem. As I have argued, it’s easier to do that multilaterally than separately.
These days, it’s easy to see why all of these countries have given up on us. Many of us here in the country feel that way, too. It’s so important to make sure the midterms flip the House and the Senate. If not, I may be writing future blog posts from Lima, Peru. Alison Quinn, writing for The Daily Beast, has the perfect observation. ” We’ll have to ask Dr. BB for confirmation, but I believe lack of sleep can increase the level of madness in a mentally ill person. “Truth of Trump’s Wild Sleepless Nights Exposed. LOSING HIS MIND. Joanna Coles and Daily Beast executive editor Hugh Dougherty dive into a jaw-dropping investigation revealing the president’s relentless late-night posting habits.”
A third of Donald Trump’s social media posts now come in the middle of the night when the soon-to-be 80-year-old president should be sleeping, raising urgent new concerns about his mental health as he navigates war.
Joanna Coles and Daily Beast executive editor Hugh Dougherty break down a shocking investigation that puts Trump’s late-night posting habits on stark display, revealing a disturbing pattern between those baffling posts fired off in the dead of night and the awkward moments in the Oval Office when the president has been caught appearing to doze off.
“It is an extraordinary, extraordinary piece of work. Josh Fiallo, our brilliant reporter, counted up all the times that Donald Trump posted on Truth Social in April and then he looked at when he was posting and he looked between the hours of 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. and we discovered that there were only five days in April when the president did not post on Truth Social between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m.,” Dougherty said on The Daily Beast Podcast.
“Eighty percent of nights when he could be sleeping, he’s posting,” he said.
While Trump’s often bizarre Truth Social posts have in many ways become a hallmark of his time in office, there was something quite different about them in the month of April: They appeared to become more frantic, disjointed, and more incendiary, as Trump’s political troubles multiplied, leading to foul-mouthed tirades and threats of war crimes that shocked even his own MAGA base and prompted some of his own allies to sound the alarm. It was no longer just Democrats questioning his fitness for office, but former advisers and much of the American public.
A Fox News poll conducted April 17-20 found that 55 percent of respondents felt Trump did not have the “mental soundness” to be an effective leader.
Well, at least the majority of us can see clearly. So that’s it for me. I got a smoker grill and intend to sit in what will become the new backyard of the kathouse and eat some very delicious food this summer. That’s mostly because I’m having the kitchen completely redone soon, so I have to cook somewhere else. It will be like a Girl Scout camp trip soon!
Please take care of yourselves, be kind to yourselves, and remember we’re always here for each other!
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?
“Don’t gobblefunk around with words.” ― Roald Dahl, The BFG.
#Repeat1968JohnBuss #DonTGobblefunkAroundWithWordsRoaldDahl #ICE #mifepristone #SCOTUS #StraightOfHormuz #TheBFG #TrumpSGoingSlightlyMad #USVsTheLiberalWorldOrder -
Mostly Monday Reads: Mercy Me!
“This was the plan all along. Authoritarianism has arrived and is on full display. Can’t wait to hear the “this is what I voted for” crowd crying when they are executed on the streets protesting the confiscation of their guns. But hey, there are no men in women’s sports!” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Yet another start to a week in the cruel and vulture-ridden world of Donny J. His obsession with his own self-interest continues to plague the country with problems we don’t need, didn’t ask for, and most of us know they ruin our way of life. The most ridiculous aspect is that all these grudges have evolved into bizarre legal actions, which have been disrupting nearly every process and institution that we rely on. Today, stocks are falling because Trump just has to have someone to blame for his rotten economy.
Richard Nixon FAFO’d with the Fed back in the 1970s and learned exactly how international financial and monetary markets are massively disrupted by politicians meddling with these markets. This is a journal article that you can read if you’d like. (How Richard Nixon Pressured Arthur Burns: Evidence from the Nixon Tapes, Burton A. Abrams, Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 20, no. 4, Fall 2006.)
A more updated analysis can be found at NPR. This is from February 2025. “What happened when Richard Nixon wanted more control over interest rates? This is a tale of a president pressuring the head of the central bank for political reasons. Burns fights it, then capitulates, and it lays the foundation for later inflation.” I lived through this as I was actually studying to be an economist. It has significantly shaped many of my perspectives on why politicians should refrain from certain functions. I can also offer testimony that everyone — including me at one time — who has worked for the Fed holds Fed independence as a sacred trust to the American People.
Whether the Federal Reserve raises, lowers or maintains baseline interest rates is one of the most important economic decisions it makes. And that decision is made outside of presidential control, at least theoretically. Kenny Malone and Mary Childs from our Planet Money podcast had the story of what happened when one president wanted more control over interest rates.
MARY CHILDS, BYLINE: In 1971, President Richard Nixon began secretly recording basically everything.
KENNY MALONE, BYLINE: Thirty-three years later, virtually all of those tapes were publicly available.
BURTON ABRAMS: Well, everyone else was interested in Watergate. I was interested in monetary policy.
CHILDS: Economist Burton Abrams drove down to the National Archives.
ABRAMS: They were available on reels, and then you had to put on earphones and try to make out the garbled conversations that existed.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
RICHARD NIXON: Arthur, how are you? (Inaudible).
CHILDS: Arthur, how are you? Nixon says to Arthur Burns, chairman of the Federal Reserve.
MALONE: Nixon was one year away from reelection, and unemployment had been rising.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
NIXON: So this will be the last conservative administration in Washington.
MALONE: This will be the last conservative administration in Washington.
CHILDS: Nixon seems to tell his Fed chair to let more money flow through the economy, which generally helps unemployment but risks inflation.
MALONE: Arthur Burns seems to push back and also seems to tap on the table to make this point.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ARTHUR BURNS: I don’t want to see interest rates exploding (inaudible).
ABRAMS: Burns is making an appeal to Nixon that he doesn’t want to stimulate anymore. He’s still holding out. Yep.
MALONE: So I assume Nixon is not super jazzed about that meeting.
ABRAMS: No, so I suspect that behind the scenes, pressure is still to give Nixon the monetary policy he wants.
MALONE: According to Arthur Burns’ personal diary, he was warned that White House operatives had their bayonets out for him and that Nixon was threatening to pack the Fed board and completely take control.
Economist Mark Zahn explains it all. This is from ABC. “Stocks fall after Trump’s DOJ opens criminal probe into Fed Chair Powell. Powell rebuked the probe as an effort to undermine the Fed’s independence.” It’s not nice to fool your major donors. We continue the Magical Misery tower with whatever this brand of “conservatism” claims to be. Republicans only want the government out of business when it suits them.
Stocks slid in early trading on Monday hours after reports that the Department of Justice had opened a criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell centered on the central bank leader’s remarks to Congress about an office renovation project.
Powell, who was appointed by Trump in 2017, issued a rare video message rebuking the investigation as a politically motivated effort to influence the Fed’s interest rate policy.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 290 points, or 0.6%, while the S&P 500 fell 0.4%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq declined 0.3%.
Gold and silver — safe-haven assets often seen as a hedge against the stock market — moved higher on Monday.
The selloff on Monday also appeared to include reaction to a social media post from President Donald Trump advocating for a 10% cap on credit card interest rates for one year. Shares of several major banks fell in early trading.
The DOJ’s criminal probe follows a monthslong influence campaign undertaken by Trump as he has frequently slammed the Fed for what he considers a reluctance to significantly reduce interest rates.
The criminal probe appears to center on allegations of false remarks made by Powell about a renovation of the Fed’s headquarters during a congressional hearing in June.
Trump has repeatedly denounced Powell for alleged overspending tied to the central bank’s $2.5 billion renovation project. The Fed attributes spending overruns to unforeseen cost increases, saying that its building renovation will ultimately “reduce costs over time by allowing the Board to consolidate most of its operations,” according to the central bank’s website.
Federal law allows the president to remove the Fed chair for “cause” — though no president has ever done so. Powell’s term as chair is set to expire in May, but he can remain on the Fed’s policymaking board until 2028. Powell has not indicated whether he intends to remain on the board.
It’s sincerely hypocritical to me to watch a convicted and well-known lifetime felon try to trump up charges on some of the most ethical government servants we’ve ever had. Powell has released a statement through the usual Fed channels.
I have deep respect for the rule of law and for accountability in our democracy. No one—certainly not the chair of the Federal Reserve—is above the law. But this unprecedented action should be seen in the broader context of the administration’s threats and ongoing pressure.
This new threat is not about my testimony last June or about the renovation of the Federal Reserve buildings. It is not about Congress’s oversight role; the Fed through testimony and other public disclosures made every effort to keep Congress informed about the renovation project. Those are pretexts. The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the President.
This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions—or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation.
No rational, studied, normal economist would disagree with his statements. However, sell-outs for money, power, and greed will always pop up to empower evil intent.
ICE is now using AI to make human hunting easier for them thanks to Palantir.#FuckICE #ICE #Palantir #Pinks #ProudBlue #Resist
— SaltyBitchables (@saltybitchables.bsky.social) 2026-01-12T16:19:11.238Z
ICE continues to be a rogue organization with no respect for the law or for human life. Judd LeGume’s blog’s Popular Information has some great perspectives on the ICE Raids today. The inhumanity of their actions shows intent, organization, and planning. “Kill, smear, cover-up.”
“The known facts do not support the official federal government narrative of Renee Good’s killing. Now, in an unusual move, the federal government is excluding state law enforcement from the investigation.
Initially, the FBI and Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) agreed to conduct a joint investigation of Good’s death. This is standard procedure. But this agreement was quickly rescinded. The BCA says it has lost “access to the case materials, scene evidence [and] investigative interviews necessary to complete a thorough and independent investigation.” As a result, the BCA believes it will not be able to conduct a thorough investigation that will ensure “accountability and public confidence.”
Instead, the investigation will be led exclusively by the FBI, which is run by Kash Patel, one of Trump’s most partisan supporters. Patel wrote a series of children’s books that referred to Trump as a “king.”
“What are you hiding?” Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison asked. “I mean, if you feel that you’re — that the ICE agent operated within the law, then let there be an investigation so that that can be revealed.” Ellison said that the federal government was undermining “a fair, transparent investigation” by excluding state investigators. According to Ellison, the FBI investigation “will look simply like a whitewash… covering up… what could well be nefarious, bad activity.”
“Let’s call a spade a spade,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said. “Kristi Noem watched the videos and doesn’t want an impartial investigation because she knows her narrative about domestic terrorism is bullshit.”
After an officer-involved shooting, it is standard protocol for the officer and witnesses to remain on the scene to be interviewed. Further, nothing should be removed from the scene. But in this case a video shows “several agents, including the agent who opened fire, get in their vehicles and drive off, apparently altering the active crime scene.”
ICE policy requires “officers and agents… to activate body-worn cameras at the start of enforcement activities and to record throughout interactions.” But no body cam videos have been released.
Since the federal government has asserted control over the investigation, it has selectively leaked evidence to ideologically friendly publications. A 47-second video of the incident, for example, was shared with Alpha News, a right-wing outlet in Minnesota. It was then amplified by Vance. It was released by the DHS the next day.
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty announced she was conducting her own investigation and urged the public to submit evidence directly to her office. Vance told reporters on January 8 that Ross has “absolute immunity” for Good’s killing. Moriarty said that is not true.
Moriarty revealed that federal law enforcement removed Good’s vehicle from the scene before state investigators could examine it. Good’s car is a key piece of evidence because it could help definitively establish if Ross was struck in any way.”
Joyce Vance warns us in her SubStack that “Tonight’s column is far longer than I like to run, perhaps the longest one ever. But please don’t give up on it. Although I’d planned to write about developments we expect this week in various lawsuits, these are the times we live in. The situation with ICE is critical right now. I’ve packed a lot of information you’ll need this week as the situation in Minneapolis develops into this post, but don’t feel like you have to read it all at once.”
We head into the coming week in an unsettled moment where the administration has blood on its hands. It would have been fair for the administration to call for time to investigate what happened in Minneapolis the morning Renee Good was shot and killed by an ICE agent. But that’s not what ICE’s leadership, the DHS Secretary, or the White House has done. They blamed the victim. They criticized her for exercising her rights as an American citizen. They called her a terrorist. None of this suggests the administration has good intentions. Vice President Harris told us this would happen and now it has.
Sunday morning, CNN’s Jake Tapper showed DHS Secretary Kristi Noem video of the mob attacking the Capitol on January 6.
Tapper: “I just showed you video of people attacking law enforcement officers on January 6. Undisputed evidence, and I just said, President Trump pardoned all of them. You said that President Trump is enforcing all the laws equally. That’s just not true. There’s a different standard for law enforcement officers being attacked if they’re being attacked by Trump supporters. We just saw that.”
Trump’s September 2025 Presidential Memo titled “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” (NSPM-7) spelled this all out. It divides the country into good guys and bad guys. If you’re for Trump, you’re a good guy. If you’re against Trump, you’re a domestic terrorist. The rules that apply to the two groups are different. Attack the police in support of Donald Trump (January 6), and you get a pardon; stop to watch what an ICE agent is doing, and it’s a death sentence.
Trump attributed the need for NSPM-7 to dramatic increases in “Heinous assassinations and other acts of political violence.” He cited “the horrifying assassination of Charlie Kirk” and called out people who “adhered to the alleged shooter’s ideology, embraced and cheered this evil murder while actively encouraging more political violence,” as the justification for the memo. He also cited the 2024 murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson and “the 2022 assassination attempt against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh” as further justification, along with the two assassination attempts on his own life and what he calls “riots” in Los Angeles and Portland that were a “1,000 percent increase in attacks on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers since January 21, 2025, compared to the same period last year.” He also wrote that “Separate anti-police and ‘criminal justice’ riots have left many people dead and injured and inflicted over $2 billion in property damage nationwide.”
Trump claims the recent “political violence is not a series of isolated incidents and does not emerge organically.” He says it’s the “culmination of sophisticated, organized campaigns of targeted intimidation, radicalization, threats, and violence designed to silence opposing speech, limit political activity, change or direct policy outcomes, and prevent the functioning of a democratic society.” No evidence is offered to support this. But that doesn’t seem to matter in the rush to a conclusion: “A new law enforcement strategy that investigates all participants in these criminal and terroristic conspiracies — including the organized structures, networks, entities, organizations, funding sources, and predicate actions behind them — is required.” Although at first this seemed targeted toward civil society and civil rights groups that advocated and litigated on behalf of Americans and their rights, now, it seems to be turned against anti-ICE protestors who are doing nothing more than exercising their First Amendment rights.
This list is horrifying.
NSPM-7 identifies “common threads animating this violent conduct” as:
- anti-Americanism;
- anti-capitalism;
- anti-Christianity;
- support for the overthrow of the United States Government;
- extremism on migration, race, and gender; and
- hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.
If you have any of these tendencies, or if the administration believes you do, one of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF) is directed to investigate you.
There are about 200 JTTFs across the country. They are the nerve center of the federal government’s efforts to ensure potential acts of terrorism are detected before they can be committed. Agents and prosecutors from federal and state agencies meet to review cases and ensure nothing important is swept aside. The work can be intense and urgent. Now, Trump has ordered that the JTTFs “shall investigate” an exhausting laundry list of potential infractions committed by people who oppose his views. In Trump’s view, Americans exercising their First Amendment and other rights are violent domestic terrorists.
But it’s all one-sided. Just like Noem’s failure to recognize the crimes committed by January 6 defendants in the question from Tapper that we started out with tonight. It’s all a thinly veiled mechanism for criminalizing innocent behavior by anyone who opposes this administration. Hence the characterization of Good, who was unarmed when she was shot and killed by a law enforcement officer, as the “terrorist.”
I have one more topic today that I find horrifyingly short-sided and cruel. This is all in the name of keeping women out of the workforce. This is from AXIOS. It’s reported by Emily Peck. “Trump funding freeze could stretch child care to a breaking point.”
Child care providers, already under financial strain, face their greatest test yet as the Trump administration imposes new rules and restrictions on funding.
Why it matters: Federal money underpins the entire industry — vital to millions of parents trying to manage work and family, across all income levels.
Driving the news: A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked the administration from freezing more than $10 billion for five blue states, claiming widespread fraud.- The administration, meanwhile, is also asking all states to provide more information to justify and support spending on care, a requirement that some state officials and advocates say is onerous and could delay funding.
The big picture: Even before the freeze, states were scrambling to make up for the loss of pandemic-era child care funding.
- “There hasn’t been a full-on collapse, but it’s just been a kind of slow-moving deterioration,” says Matthew Nestler, an economist at KPMG who tracks the sector.
Zoom out: Child care providers, mainly small businesses on tight margins, are struggling to stay afloat.
- Wait lists for child care are growing in some states, and prices are rising — that often means a parent needs to make a tough choice, and could leave the labor market entirely. Typically, that’s mothers.
- So many workers depend on child care that any policies that reduce investment in the sector have big knock-on effects for the entire economy, Nestler says.
Zoom in: Colorado froze new child care enrollments in some counties last year because of state budget constraints, coming on top of the pandemic pullback.
That’s been devastating for Westwood Academy, a preschool and child care center in Denver, where two-thirds of kids, about 20, were on federally subsidized tuition at the start of 2025.
Now, the program is down to just four of these kids, says RB Fast, who started the center in 2022 when pandemic funds were flowing. Last year, the center lost about $70,000. (Typically, she turns some profit.)
She’s planning to open a second center in a wealthier suburb, where she’ll charge $2,200 a month for a full-day toddler care. In her current center in Denver, she charges $1,747.
The upshot: “High quality child care is increasingly becoming a luxury good,” she says.
In Indiana is facing similar struggles.
It’s hard to look daily at all the things this regime is doing to make our lives worse-off. Many are focused on harming the least and most vulnerable among us. I know all these grudges Trump holds impact his actions as does his level of greed, need for attention, and seemingly needless compulstion to be cruel.His brain is fed by the likes of Stephen Miller and some backward notion that life was better in previous centuries. But, the man has serious mental issues and personality disorders. Why don’t so many of his followers see that? Why doesn’t the Republican Party do something? They’re empowering the worst in humanity to destroy everything this country has every stood for.
The struggle continues.
What’s on your Reading, Action and Blogging list today?
#FartusDeportUs #Repeat1968JohnBuss #AmericanRoulette #EnemyListsAmericanStyle #FederalReserveIndependence #ICE #JeromePowell #RichardNixon #StockMarketsPlunge #TrumpCutsChildcareSupport
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Mostly Monday Reads: Mercy Me!
“This was the plan all along. Authoritarianism has arrived and is on full display. Can’t wait to hear the “this is what I voted for” crowd crying when they are executed on the streets protesting the confiscation of their guns. But hey, there are no men in women’s sports!” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Yet another start to a week in the cruel and vulture-ridden world of Donny J. His obsession with his own self-interest continues to plague the country with problems we don’t need, didn’t ask for, and most of us know they ruin our way of life. The most ridiculous aspect is that all these grudges have evolved into bizarre legal actions, which have been disrupting nearly every process and institution that we rely on. Today, stocks are falling because Trump just has to have someone to blame for his rotten economy.
Richard Nixon FAFO’d with the Fed back in the 1970s and learned exactly how international financial and monetary markets are massively disrupted by politicians meddling with these markets. This is a journal article that you can read if you’d like. (How Richard Nixon Pressured Arthur Burns: Evidence from the Nixon Tapes, Burton A. Abrams, Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 20, no. 4, Fall 2006.)
A more updated analysis can be found at NPR. This is from February 2025. “What happened when Richard Nixon wanted more control over interest rates? This is a tale of a president pressuring the head of the central bank for political reasons. Burns fights it, then capitulates, and it lays the foundation for later inflation.” I lived through this as I was actually studying to be an economist. It has significantly shaped many of my perspectives on why politicians should refrain from certain functions. I can also offer testimony that everyone — including me at one time — who has worked for the Fed holds Fed independence as a sacred trust to the American People.
Whether the Federal Reserve raises, lowers or maintains baseline interest rates is one of the most important economic decisions it makes. And that decision is made outside of presidential control, at least theoretically. Kenny Malone and Mary Childs from our Planet Money podcast had the story of what happened when one president wanted more control over interest rates.
MARY CHILDS, BYLINE: In 1971, President Richard Nixon began secretly recording basically everything.
KENNY MALONE, BYLINE: Thirty-three years later, virtually all of those tapes were publicly available.
BURTON ABRAMS: Well, everyone else was interested in Watergate. I was interested in monetary policy.
CHILDS: Economist Burton Abrams drove down to the National Archives.
ABRAMS: They were available on reels, and then you had to put on earphones and try to make out the garbled conversations that existed.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
RICHARD NIXON: Arthur, how are you? (Inaudible).
CHILDS: Arthur, how are you? Nixon says to Arthur Burns, chairman of the Federal Reserve.
MALONE: Nixon was one year away from reelection, and unemployment had been rising.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
NIXON: So this will be the last conservative administration in Washington.
MALONE: This will be the last conservative administration in Washington.
CHILDS: Nixon seems to tell his Fed chair to let more money flow through the economy, which generally helps unemployment but risks inflation.
MALONE: Arthur Burns seems to push back and also seems to tap on the table to make this point.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ARTHUR BURNS: I don’t want to see interest rates exploding (inaudible).
ABRAMS: Burns is making an appeal to Nixon that he doesn’t want to stimulate anymore. He’s still holding out. Yep.
MALONE: So I assume Nixon is not super jazzed about that meeting.
ABRAMS: No, so I suspect that behind the scenes, pressure is still to give Nixon the monetary policy he wants.
MALONE: According to Arthur Burns’ personal diary, he was warned that White House operatives had their bayonets out for him and that Nixon was threatening to pack the Fed board and completely take control.
Economist Mark Zahn explains it all. This is from ABC. “Stocks fall after Trump’s DOJ opens criminal probe into Fed Chair Powell. Powell rebuked the probe as an effort to undermine the Fed’s independence.” It’s not nice to fool your major donors. We continue the Magical Misery tower with whatever this brand of “conservatism” claims to be. Republicans only want the government out of business when it suits them.
Stocks slid in early trading on Monday hours after reports that the Department of Justice had opened a criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell centered on the central bank leader’s remarks to Congress about an office renovation project.
Powell, who was appointed by Trump in 2017, issued a rare video message rebuking the investigation as a politically motivated effort to influence the Fed’s interest rate policy.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 290 points, or 0.6%, while the S&P 500 fell 0.4%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq declined 0.3%.
Gold and silver — safe-haven assets often seen as a hedge against the stock market — moved higher on Monday.
The selloff on Monday also appeared to include reaction to a social media post from President Donald Trump advocating for a 10% cap on credit card interest rates for one year. Shares of several major banks fell in early trading.
The DOJ’s criminal probe follows a monthslong influence campaign undertaken by Trump as he has frequently slammed the Fed for what he considers a reluctance to significantly reduce interest rates.
The criminal probe appears to center on allegations of false remarks made by Powell about a renovation of the Fed’s headquarters during a congressional hearing in June.
Trump has repeatedly denounced Powell for alleged overspending tied to the central bank’s $2.5 billion renovation project. The Fed attributes spending overruns to unforeseen cost increases, saying that its building renovation will ultimately “reduce costs over time by allowing the Board to consolidate most of its operations,” according to the central bank’s website.
Federal law allows the president to remove the Fed chair for “cause” — though no president has ever done so. Powell’s term as chair is set to expire in May, but he can remain on the Fed’s policymaking board until 2028. Powell has not indicated whether he intends to remain on the board.
It’s sincerely hypocritical to me to watch a convicted and well-known lifetime felon try to trump up charges on some of the most ethical government servants we’ve ever had. Powell has released a statement through the usual Fed channels.
I have deep respect for the rule of law and for accountability in our democracy. No one—certainly not the chair of the Federal Reserve—is above the law. But this unprecedented action should be seen in the broader context of the administration’s threats and ongoing pressure.
This new threat is not about my testimony last June or about the renovation of the Federal Reserve buildings. It is not about Congress’s oversight role; the Fed through testimony and other public disclosures made every effort to keep Congress informed about the renovation project. Those are pretexts. The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the President.
This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions—or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation.
No rational, studied, normal economist would disagree with his statements. However, sell-outs for money, power, and greed will always pop up to empower evil intent.
ICE is now using AI to make human hunting easier for them thanks to Palantir.#FuckICE #ICE #Palantir #Pinks #ProudBlue #Resist
— SaltyBitchables (@saltybitchables.bsky.social) 2026-01-12T16:19:11.238Z
ICE continues to be a rogue organization with no respect for the law or for human life. Judd LeGume’s blog’s Popular Information has some great perspectives on the ICE Raids today. The inhumanity of their actions shows intent, organization, and planning. “Kill, smear, cover-up.”
“The known facts do not support the official federal government narrative of Renee Good’s killing. Now, in an unusual move, the federal government is excluding state law enforcement from the investigation.
Initially, the FBI and Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) agreed to conduct a joint investigation of Good’s death. This is standard procedure. But this agreement was quickly rescinded. The BCA says it has lost “access to the case materials, scene evidence [and] investigative interviews necessary to complete a thorough and independent investigation.” As a result, the BCA believes it will not be able to conduct a thorough investigation that will ensure “accountability and public confidence.”
Instead, the investigation will be led exclusively by the FBI, which is run by Kash Patel, one of Trump’s most partisan supporters. Patel wrote a series of children’s books that referred to Trump as a “king.”
“What are you hiding?” Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison asked. “I mean, if you feel that you’re — that the ICE agent operated within the law, then let there be an investigation so that that can be revealed.” Ellison said that the federal government was undermining “a fair, transparent investigation” by excluding state investigators. According to Ellison, the FBI investigation “will look simply like a whitewash… covering up… what could well be nefarious, bad activity.”
“Let’s call a spade a spade,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said. “Kristi Noem watched the videos and doesn’t want an impartial investigation because she knows her narrative about domestic terrorism is bullshit.”
After an officer-involved shooting, it is standard protocol for the officer and witnesses to remain on the scene to be interviewed. Further, nothing should be removed from the scene. But in this case a video shows “several agents, including the agent who opened fire, get in their vehicles and drive off, apparently altering the active crime scene.”
ICE policy requires “officers and agents… to activate body-worn cameras at the start of enforcement activities and to record throughout interactions.” But no body cam videos have been released.
Since the federal government has asserted control over the investigation, it has selectively leaked evidence to ideologically friendly publications. A 47-second video of the incident, for example, was shared with Alpha News, a right-wing outlet in Minnesota. It was then amplified by Vance. It was released by the DHS the next day.
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty announced she was conducting her own investigation and urged the public to submit evidence directly to her office. Vance told reporters on January 8 that Ross has “absolute immunity” for Good’s killing. Moriarty said that is not true.
Moriarty revealed that federal law enforcement removed Good’s vehicle from the scene before state investigators could examine it. Good’s car is a key piece of evidence because it could help definitively establish if Ross was struck in any way.”
Joyce Vance warns us in her SubStack that “Tonight’s column is far longer than I like to run, perhaps the longest one ever. But please don’t give up on it. Although I’d planned to write about developments we expect this week in various lawsuits, these are the times we live in. The situation with ICE is critical right now. I’ve packed a lot of information you’ll need this week as the situation in Minneapolis develops into this post, but don’t feel like you have to read it all at once.”
We head into the coming week in an unsettled moment where the administration has blood on its hands. It would have been fair for the administration to call for time to investigate what happened in Minneapolis the morning Renee Good was shot and killed by an ICE agent. But that’s not what ICE’s leadership, the DHS Secretary, or the White House has done. They blamed the victim. They criticized her for exercising her rights as an American citizen. They called her a terrorist. None of this suggests the administration has good intentions. Vice President Harris told us this would happen and now it has.
Sunday morning, CNN’s Jake Tapper showed DHS Secretary Kristi Noem video of the mob attacking the Capitol on January 6.
Tapper: “I just showed you video of people attacking law enforcement officers on January 6. Undisputed evidence, and I just said, President Trump pardoned all of them. You said that President Trump is enforcing all the laws equally. That’s just not true. There’s a different standard for law enforcement officers being attacked if they’re being attacked by Trump supporters. We just saw that.”
Trump’s September 2025 Presidential Memo titled “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” (NSPM-7) spelled this all out. It divides the country into good guys and bad guys. If you’re for Trump, you’re a good guy. If you’re against Trump, you’re a domestic terrorist. The rules that apply to the two groups are different. Attack the police in support of Donald Trump (January 6), and you get a pardon; stop to watch what an ICE agent is doing, and it’s a death sentence.
Trump attributed the need for NSPM-7 to dramatic increases in “Heinous assassinations and other acts of political violence.” He cited “the horrifying assassination of Charlie Kirk” and called out people who “adhered to the alleged shooter’s ideology, embraced and cheered this evil murder while actively encouraging more political violence,” as the justification for the memo. He also cited the 2024 murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson and “the 2022 assassination attempt against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh” as further justification, along with the two assassination attempts on his own life and what he calls “riots” in Los Angeles and Portland that were a “1,000 percent increase in attacks on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers since January 21, 2025, compared to the same period last year.” He also wrote that “Separate anti-police and ‘criminal justice’ riots have left many people dead and injured and inflicted over $2 billion in property damage nationwide.”
Trump claims the recent “political violence is not a series of isolated incidents and does not emerge organically.” He says it’s the “culmination of sophisticated, organized campaigns of targeted intimidation, radicalization, threats, and violence designed to silence opposing speech, limit political activity, change or direct policy outcomes, and prevent the functioning of a democratic society.” No evidence is offered to support this. But that doesn’t seem to matter in the rush to a conclusion: “A new law enforcement strategy that investigates all participants in these criminal and terroristic conspiracies — including the organized structures, networks, entities, organizations, funding sources, and predicate actions behind them — is required.” Although at first this seemed targeted toward civil society and civil rights groups that advocated and litigated on behalf of Americans and their rights, now, it seems to be turned against anti-ICE protestors who are doing nothing more than exercising their First Amendment rights.
This list is horrifying.
NSPM-7 identifies “common threads animating this violent conduct” as:
- anti-Americanism;
- anti-capitalism;
- anti-Christianity;
- support for the overthrow of the United States Government;
- extremism on migration, race, and gender; and
- hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.
If you have any of these tendencies, or if the administration believes you do, one of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF) is directed to investigate you.
There are about 200 JTTFs across the country. They are the nerve center of the federal government’s efforts to ensure potential acts of terrorism are detected before they can be committed. Agents and prosecutors from federal and state agencies meet to review cases and ensure nothing important is swept aside. The work can be intense and urgent. Now, Trump has ordered that the JTTFs “shall investigate” an exhausting laundry list of potential infractions committed by people who oppose his views. In Trump’s view, Americans exercising their First Amendment and other rights are violent domestic terrorists.
But it’s all one-sided. Just like Noem’s failure to recognize the crimes committed by January 6 defendants in the question from Tapper that we started out with tonight. It’s all a thinly veiled mechanism for criminalizing innocent behavior by anyone who opposes this administration. Hence the characterization of Good, who was unarmed when she was shot and killed by a law enforcement officer, as the “terrorist.”
I have one more topic today that I find horrifyingly short-sided and cruel. This is all in the name of keeping women out of the workforce. This is from AXIOS. It’s reported by Emily Peck. “Trump funding freeze could stretch child care to a breaking point.”
Child care providers, already under financial strain, face their greatest test yet as the Trump administration imposes new rules and restrictions on funding.
Why it matters: Federal money underpins the entire industry — vital to millions of parents trying to manage work and family, across all income levels.
Driving the news: A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked the administration from freezing more than $10 billion for five blue states, claiming widespread fraud.- The administration, meanwhile, is also asking all states to provide more information to justify and support spending on care, a requirement that some state officials and advocates say is onerous and could delay funding.
The big picture: Even before the freeze, states were scrambling to make up for the loss of pandemic-era child care funding.
- “There hasn’t been a full-on collapse, but it’s just been a kind of slow-moving deterioration,” says Matthew Nestler, an economist at KPMG who tracks the sector.
Zoom out: Child care providers, mainly small businesses on tight margins, are struggling to stay afloat.
- Wait lists for child care are growing in some states, and prices are rising — that often means a parent needs to make a tough choice, and could leave the labor market entirely. Typically, that’s mothers.
- So many workers depend on child care that any policies that reduce investment in the sector have big knock-on effects for the entire economy, Nestler says.
Zoom in: Colorado froze new child care enrollments in some counties last year because of state budget constraints, coming on top of the pandemic pullback.
That’s been devastating for Westwood Academy, a preschool and child care center in Denver, where two-thirds of kids, about 20, were on federally subsidized tuition at the start of 2025.
Now, the program is down to just four of these kids, says RB Fast, who started the center in 2022 when pandemic funds were flowing. Last year, the center lost about $70,000. (Typically, she turns some profit.)
She’s planning to open a second center in a wealthier suburb, where she’ll charge $2,200 a month for a full-day toddler care. In her current center in Denver, she charges $1,747.
The upshot: “High quality child care is increasingly becoming a luxury good,” she says.
In Indiana is facing similar struggles.
It’s hard to look daily at all the things this regime is doing to make our lives worse-off. Many are focused on harming the least and most vulnerable among us. I know all these grudges Trump holds impact his actions as does his level of greed, need for attention, and seemingly needless compulstion to be cruel.His brain is fed by the likes of Stephen Miller and some backward notion that life was better in previous centuries. But, the man has serious mental issues and personality disorders. Why don’t so many of his followers see that? Why doesn’t the Republican Party do something? They’re empowering the worst in humanity to destroy everything this country has every stood for.
The struggle continues.
What’s on your Reading, Action and Blogging list today?
#FartusDeportUs #Repeat1968JohnBuss #AmericanRoulette #EnemyListsAmericanStyle #FederalReserveIndependence #ICE #JeromePowell #RichardNixon #StockMarketsPlunge #TrumpCutsChildcareSupport
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Mostly Monday Reads: It can get Worse
“The man is a machine, he never stops working to make America greater, again.” John Buss.
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Numerous rallies and organizing efforts have taken place here in New Orleans. We’re seeing ICE and Border Patrol officers from all over invade the city. No massive action yet, but some people are being arrested and kidnapped. Here’s the kind’ve information I’m seeing reported by Unión Migrante. This is today.
Monday, November 24 at 8:45am there was a checkpoint coming down the English Turn Bridge towards Plaquemines Parish towards Belle Chasse. They were eating 6 police officers in marked cars ros and 4 officers in private clothes with vests and private cars marc️ Est Est
We’ve seen detainees here earlier with ICE and these police officers coordinating together as asking about brake stickers and then asking people where they were born.
The invaders are staying at a military base in Belle Chasse, which is south and east of us in Plaquemines Parish. Meanwhile, it’s happening everywhere. It’s cruel. It’s ugly. It’s not the way to run a democracy or a government. It is also happening elsewhere. This is from The Barbed Wire, as reported by Leslie Rangel. “A Disabled Child’s Mom Reported Him Missing. He Was Locked Away by Federal Immigration Authorities for 48 Days. Emmanuel Gonzalez, a 15-year-old who has an intellectual disability, walked away from his mom’s fruit stand in October. Houston Police called ICE instead of reuniting them.”
In early October, Emmanuel walked away from his mom’s fruit stand to find a bathroom. Garcia looked for him all over the city, and after several hours of coming up empty handed, she filed a missing person’s report with the Houston Police Department.
The boy was found by Houston firefighters nearly 24 hours later. But instead of reuniting him with his mom, the police department turned him over to immigration authorities, and Emmanuel ended up in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), where he remained for 48 days, despite his mother’s pleas for him to be released into her care.
Immigration-related arrests and detentions have surged under the Trump administration, particularly in Texas. According to analysis by the Texas Tribune, daily arrests have risen roughly 30 percentage points in ICE regions including Houston, and the Harris County Jail leads the country in ICE detainers — requests from immigration agents to hold a person for deportation. The Houston Chronicle found police calls to ICE have surged 1,000%.
The vast majority — more than 70% — of those arrested haven’t committed any crime. And, in an increasing number of cases, calls for help to the Houston Police Department have resulted in the caller or a family member winding up in federal detention. In one case, a woman from El Salvador called Houston police to report an abusive ex-husband — instead officers called ICE on her.
Emmanuel’s story enraged many Houston residents as community members grappled with the cruelty of keeping a disabled child locked away from his mother.
In the 48 days since he left her side, Garcia was only allowed to see Emmanuel three times. Once when he needed emergency surgery. The second time was during a scheduled visit facilitated by her legal team and U.S. Rep. Al Green. In that case, Garcia and her son got to hug each other and share a meal.
The stress, fear, and anxiety of this is not existential for me. One of my closest friends is in hiding. The worry is hard to control. I can’t even imagine what kind of hell a mother whose child has been kidnapped feels for 48 straight days. We’re gathering up food and resources for our neighbors living in this reality. This is the reality I am in, as reported by CNN. “In New Orleans, immigrants are staying home and hiding out as city braces for Border Patrol operation.” The story is reported by Zoe Sottile.
In New Orleans, people are used to having their resilience tested.
There was Hurricane Katrina, the BP oil spill, a major hotel collapse, a vicious early pandemic surge and a terror attack during the 2025 New Year’s celebrations.
Now immigrants and organizers say they’re preparing for what feels like may be another disaster heading for their community: Top Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino and roughly 250 federal agents are expected to launch an immigration enforcement operation in the city starting the first week of December, according to two sources familiar with the planning. Advocates and residents told CNN they’re preparing a bit like they would for one of the hurricanes that have ravaged the sinking city.
“The immigrant community is feeling absolute panic and terrified,” Rachel Taber, a volunteer with Unión Migrante, an immigrant-led advocacy group, said. “People are treating it like a hurricane as much as they can, buying groceries, staying in the house, planning not to be able to go to work.”
The 307-year-old city, a blue enclave in a Republican-led state, will be the latest target of the Department of Homeland Security’s operations, according to those two sources, part of the president’s pledge to enact mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.
In response to questions from CNN about the operation, DHS sent a statement from Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin: “For the safety and security of law enforcement, we’re not going to telegraph potential operations.”
Operations in other cities have featured the armed, masked federal agents and unmarked vehicles that have become a hallmark of immigration enforcement under the second Trump administration. The agents have also been criticized over their use of force against both US citizens and non-citizens, including shootings, tear gas and flash bangs.
About 23,400 immigrants make the Cresent City their home — roughly 6.5% of the total population, according to data from the US Census. Over half of those are non-citizens.
Around half of New Orleans’ immigrant population is from Latin America, according to Census data. And immigrants’ share of the population is smaller than in other cities where Bovino has led arrests.
This just appeared in my feed from our local online news source, Nola.com. “Letters: Witnessing immigration raid firsthand raises tremendous concern.” It’s written by Anna Herman.
My family immigrated to this country from Eastern Europe to escape persecution and enjoy a better life in a land they had never seen. Their journey was not easy, but they worked incredibly hard peddling goods until they could own their own stores. It’s unbelievable to think of what my great-grandparents went through so my family could have a future in this country.
Many are still dreaming of coming to America to work hard and create a better life for their families. Meanwhile, the news around immigration enforcement in this country is sad, overwhelming and easy to tune out. I admit that some days I shut out the news, stay in my bubble and focus on my life. However, that bubble burst after I witnessed people being kidnapped in broad daylight.
While I was in the parking lot at Lowe’s in Metairie, my friend and I saw men aggressively shoving people to the ground, and we realized we were witnessing an ICE raid. These supposed government officials wore masks and shoved their victims into unmarked cars with Mississippi plates. I repeatedly asked the masked men what agency they were with. They responded that they did not have to tell me, while pulling their masks up higher.
The New Orleans community cannot be OK with this. We must demand due process. Regardless of political leanings, we share an obligation to stop people from being snatched off the street.
History tells us that without resistance, this doesn’t end here. If we say nothing and do nothing, this could soon very well happen to you or me. Now is the time to ask yourself what you can do to make sure your actions match your values.
My city has survived a lot. But the basic idea of living in an American city and being invaded by American forces is a terrible sin against the U.S. Constitution and us. It must end. The AP reports on another invasion in Memphis, which also leaves me feeling sick this morning. We don’t have a Department of Justice; we have a Department of Domestic Terror. “Thousands of arrests by Trump’s crime-fighting task force in Memphis strain crowded jail and courts.”
A task force ordered by President Donald Trump to combat crime in Memphis, Tennessee, has made thousands of arrests, compounding strains on the busy local court system and an already overcrowded jail in ways that concerned officials say will last months or even years as cases play out.
Since late September, hundreds of federal, state and local law enforcement personnel tied to the Memphis Safe Task Force have made traffic stops, served warrants and searched for fugitives in the city of about 610,000 people. More than 2,800 people have been arrested and more than 28,000 traffic citations have been issued, data provided by the task force and Memphis police shows.
The task force, which includes National Guard troops, is supported by Republican Gov. Bill Lee and others who hope the surge reduces crime in a city that has grappled with violent crime, including nearly 300 homicides last year and nearly 400 in 2023.
From 2018 to 2024, homicides in Memphis increased 33% and aggravated assaults rose 41%, according to AH Datalytics, which tracks crimes across the country using local law enforcement data for its Real-Time Crime Index. But AH Datalytics reported those numbers were down 20% during the first nine months of this year, even before the task force got to work.
Opponents of the task force in majority-Black Memphis say it targets minorities and intimidates law-abiding Latinos, some of whom have skipped work and changed social habits, such as avoiding going to church or restaurants, fearing they will be harassed and unfairly detained. Statistics released at the end of October showed 319 arrests so far on administrative warrants, which deal with immigration-related issues.
This seriously feels like we’ve got a NAZI problem here. This reeks of Himmler’s Schutzstaffel, also known as the SS, printed with its stylized runes. ( ᛋᛋ ) The name literally means “Protection Squadron”. So, this is what our National Security looks like now. This is like a bad movie or a bad dream. This is from Steve Vladek writing at One First. ” Another Bad Week for the Presumption of Regularity. Three different flashpoints highlight how much the Trump administration has done, in such short order, to undermine its own litigation efforts and to damage—perhaps irreparably—DOJ’s credibility.”
Back in January, just three days into the second Trump administration, I wrote a post titled “On the Credibility of the Department of Justice.” The post identified a couple of (very early) signs that the administration was already engaging in behavior that gave reason to worry about whether the federal government would adhere to its long history of turning square corners in the federal courts—and hypothesized some of the ways in which a Department of Justice that lost credibility would not only struggle with relatively straightforward litigation tasks, but would make it far harder, going forward, for courts to defer to government officials even in circumstances in which they should, all at the expense of what’s long been known as the “presumption of regularity.”
Ten months later, that post reads as impressively naive about the depths to which the administration would sink; the outright defiance of at least some lower court orders in which it would engage; and the deep, perhaps irreparable damage its behavior would do to public faith in the integrity (or even the minimal competence) of the Department of Justice. Last week alone, developments in three different cases—the criminal prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey; the ongoing efforts to remove Kilmar Abrego Garcia from the United States; and the civil suit challenging the behavior of federal law enforcement officers in Chicago during Operation Midway Blitz—all provided dramatic, independent evidence of the same broader theme: Whereas the first Trump administration was often characterized as “malevolence tempered by incompetence,” this is worse: it’s malevolence exacerbated by incompetence. That’s problematic enough for the government’s credibility before federal district judges. But at some point soon, one suspects that the Supreme Court itself may well have to grapple with its consequences—or risk being duped.
Saturday neighborhood pop up at the corner of Magazine & Napoleon in New Orleans. We're all bracing for the regime's assault as though we're preparing for a hurricane. We've got this.
— Buddy Spell (@buddyspell.bsky.social) 2025-11-23T19:06:27.583Z
This protest includes my friend, who is a music professor at Loyola. She’s the one in the costume holding the “DUE PROCESS” sign. You may read more about pending courses at the link. There are numerous court cases pending to clarify some of the Trump administration’s actions. The bigger question is, will they continue to ignore rulings while waiting for the Supreme Court to intervene on their behalf? This one just popped up on my feed from CNN.”Federal judge dismisses indictments against Letitia James and James Comey, saying Lindsey Halligan appointment was unlawful.”
A federal judge dismissed the indictments against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James on Monday.
The judge found that the appointment of interim US Attorney Lindsey Halligan in Alexandria, Virginia, was invalid.
Trump handpicked Halligan for the role amid increasing pressure to bring criminal cases against his political enemies, including Comey and James.
“The Attorney General’s attempt to install Ms. Halligan as Interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia was invalid,” Judge Cameron McGowan Currie wrote in her Monday order.
According to Currie, “all actions flowing from Ms. Halligan’s defective appointment” including the indictments against Comey and James “were unlawful exercises of executive power and are hereby set aside.”
The judge tossed out the cases “without prejudice,” leaving open the possibility that the cases against Comey and James can be brought again alleging the same conduct.
CNN has reached out to the Justice Department for comment.
James issued a statement after the charges against her were dropped.
I must admit that the stress of all this is wearing on me. I got a phone call from my friend. That lowers my blood pressure a little. I don’t know how much longer we can continue like this. I’ve always stocked my house with canned goods and such during a hurricane. Doing it for a friend who is in danger if they go outside their house is an entirely different emotion and level of stress, as well as that feeling of helplessness. So be strong, do whatever you can to save our country from that horrible monster and his cabinet of goons. Protect who you can. We can’t let our country go down like this.
What’s on your reading, action, and blogging list today?
We have come too far to turn around
We are here to bear witness
To this monstrous sickness
But we have come too far to turn around
We have stared into the eyes of evil
We have slow danced with the devil
We have sat down at his table
And shared with him in the feast
We have swallowed the liquid of his lies
Tolerated the one we despise#repeat1968JohnBuss #crimeTaskForce #iceRaids #iceRaidsAndChildren #lawsuitsAgainstTrumpism #memphis #newOrleans
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Mostly Monday Reads: It can get Worse
“The man is a machine, he never stops working to make America greater, again.” John Buss.
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Numerous rallies and organizing efforts have taken place here in New Orleans. We’re seeing ICE and Border Patrol officers from all over invade the city. No massive action yet, but some people are being arrested and kidnapped. Here’s the kind’ve information I’m seeing reported by Unión Migrante. This is today.
Monday, November 24 at 8:45am there was a checkpoint coming down the English Turn Bridge towards Plaquemines Parish towards Belle Chasse. They were eating 6 police officers in marked cars ros and 4 officers in private clothes with vests and private cars marc️ Est Est
We’ve seen detainees here earlier with ICE and these police officers coordinating together as asking about brake stickers and then asking people where they were born.
The invaders are staying at a military base in Belle Chasse, which is south and east of us in Plaquemines Parish. Meanwhile, it’s happening everywhere. It’s cruel. It’s ugly. It’s not the way to run a democracy or a government. It is also happening elsewhere. This is from The Barbed Wire, as reported by Leslie Rangel. “A Disabled Child’s Mom Reported Him Missing. He Was Locked Away by Federal Immigration Authorities for 48 Days. Emmanuel Gonzalez, a 15-year-old who has an intellectual disability, walked away from his mom’s fruit stand in October. Houston Police called ICE instead of reuniting them.”
In early October, Emmanuel walked away from his mom’s fruit stand to find a bathroom. Garcia looked for him all over the city, and after several hours of coming up empty handed, she filed a missing person’s report with the Houston Police Department.
The boy was found by Houston firefighters nearly 24 hours later. But instead of reuniting him with his mom, the police department turned him over to immigration authorities, and Emmanuel ended up in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), where he remained for 48 days, despite his mother’s pleas for him to be released into her care.
Immigration-related arrests and detentions have surged under the Trump administration, particularly in Texas. According to analysis by the Texas Tribune, daily arrests have risen roughly 30 percentage points in ICE regions including Houston, and the Harris County Jail leads the country in ICE detainers — requests from immigration agents to hold a person for deportation. The Houston Chronicle found police calls to ICE have surged 1,000%.
The vast majority — more than 70% — of those arrested haven’t committed any crime. And, in an increasing number of cases, calls for help to the Houston Police Department have resulted in the caller or a family member winding up in federal detention. In one case, a woman from El Salvador called Houston police to report an abusive ex-husband — instead officers called ICE on her.
Emmanuel’s story enraged many Houston residents as community members grappled with the cruelty of keeping a disabled child locked away from his mother.
In the 48 days since he left her side, Garcia was only allowed to see Emmanuel three times. Once when he needed emergency surgery. The second time was during a scheduled visit facilitated by her legal team and U.S. Rep. Al Green. In that case, Garcia and her son got to hug each other and share a meal.
The stress, fear, and anxiety of this is not existential for me. One of my closest friends is in hiding. The worry is hard to control. I can’t even imagine what kind of hell a mother whose child has been kidnapped feels for 48 straight days. We’re gathering up food and resources for our neighbors living in this reality. This is the reality I am in, as reported by CNN. “In New Orleans, immigrants are staying home and hiding out as city braces for Border Patrol operation.” The story is reported by Zoe Sottile.
In New Orleans, people are used to having their resilience tested.
There was Hurricane Katrina, the BP oil spill, a major hotel collapse, a vicious early pandemic surge and a terror attack during the 2025 New Year’s celebrations.
Now immigrants and organizers say they’re preparing for what feels like may be another disaster heading for their community: Top Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino and roughly 250 federal agents are expected to launch an immigration enforcement operation in the city starting the first week of December, according to two sources familiar with the planning. Advocates and residents told CNN they’re preparing a bit like they would for one of the hurricanes that have ravaged the sinking city.
“The immigrant community is feeling absolute panic and terrified,” Rachel Taber, a volunteer with Unión Migrante, an immigrant-led advocacy group, said. “People are treating it like a hurricane as much as they can, buying groceries, staying in the house, planning not to be able to go to work.”
The 307-year-old city, a blue enclave in a Republican-led state, will be the latest target of the Department of Homeland Security’s operations, according to those two sources, part of the president’s pledge to enact mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.
In response to questions from CNN about the operation, DHS sent a statement from Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin: “For the safety and security of law enforcement, we’re not going to telegraph potential operations.”
Operations in other cities have featured the armed, masked federal agents and unmarked vehicles that have become a hallmark of immigration enforcement under the second Trump administration. The agents have also been criticized over their use of force against both US citizens and non-citizens, including shootings, tear gas and flash bangs.
About 23,400 immigrants make the Cresent City their home — roughly 6.5% of the total population, according to data from the US Census. Over half of those are non-citizens.
Around half of New Orleans’ immigrant population is from Latin America, according to Census data. And immigrants’ share of the population is smaller than in other cities where Bovino has led arrests.
This just appeared in my feed from our local online news source, Nola.com. “Letters: Witnessing immigration raid firsthand raises tremendous concern.” It’s written by Anna Herman.
My family immigrated to this country from Eastern Europe to escape persecution and enjoy a better life in a land they had never seen. Their journey was not easy, but they worked incredibly hard peddling goods until they could own their own stores. It’s unbelievable to think of what my great-grandparents went through so my family could have a future in this country.
Many are still dreaming of coming to America to work hard and create a better life for their families. Meanwhile, the news around immigration enforcement in this country is sad, overwhelming and easy to tune out. I admit that some days I shut out the news, stay in my bubble and focus on my life. However, that bubble burst after I witnessed people being kidnapped in broad daylight.
While I was in the parking lot at Lowe’s in Metairie, my friend and I saw men aggressively shoving people to the ground, and we realized we were witnessing an ICE raid. These supposed government officials wore masks and shoved their victims into unmarked cars with Mississippi plates. I repeatedly asked the masked men what agency they were with. They responded that they did not have to tell me, while pulling their masks up higher.
The New Orleans community cannot be OK with this. We must demand due process. Regardless of political leanings, we share an obligation to stop people from being snatched off the street.
History tells us that without resistance, this doesn’t end here. If we say nothing and do nothing, this could soon very well happen to you or me. Now is the time to ask yourself what you can do to make sure your actions match your values.
My city has survived a lot. But the basic idea of living in an American city and being invaded by American forces is a terrible sin against the U.S. Constitution and us. It must end. The AP reports on another invasion in Memphis, which also leaves me feeling sick this morning. We don’t have a Department of Justice; we have a Department of Domestic Terror. “Thousands of arrests by Trump’s crime-fighting task force in Memphis strain crowded jail and courts.”
A task force ordered by President Donald Trump to combat crime in Memphis, Tennessee, has made thousands of arrests, compounding strains on the busy local court system and an already overcrowded jail in ways that concerned officials say will last months or even years as cases play out.
Since late September, hundreds of federal, state and local law enforcement personnel tied to the Memphis Safe Task Force have made traffic stops, served warrants and searched for fugitives in the city of about 610,000 people. More than 2,800 people have been arrested and more than 28,000 traffic citations have been issued, data provided by the task force and Memphis police shows.
The task force, which includes National Guard troops, is supported by Republican Gov. Bill Lee and others who hope the surge reduces crime in a city that has grappled with violent crime, including nearly 300 homicides last year and nearly 400 in 2023.
From 2018 to 2024, homicides in Memphis increased 33% and aggravated assaults rose 41%, according to AH Datalytics, which tracks crimes across the country using local law enforcement data for its Real-Time Crime Index. But AH Datalytics reported those numbers were down 20% during the first nine months of this year, even before the task force got to work.
Opponents of the task force in majority-Black Memphis say it targets minorities and intimidates law-abiding Latinos, some of whom have skipped work and changed social habits, such as avoiding going to church or restaurants, fearing they will be harassed and unfairly detained. Statistics released at the end of October showed 319 arrests so far on administrative warrants, which deal with immigration-related issues.
This seriously feels like we’ve got a NAZI problem here. This reeks of Himmler’s Schutzstaffel, also known as the SS, printed with its stylized runes. ( ᛋᛋ ) The name literally means “Protection Squadron”. So, this is what our National Security looks like now. This is like a bad movie or a bad dream. This is from Steve Vladek writing at One First. ” Another Bad Week for the Presumption of Regularity. Three different flashpoints highlight how much the Trump administration has done, in such short order, to undermine its own litigation efforts and to damage—perhaps irreparably—DOJ’s credibility.”
Back in January, just three days into the second Trump administration, I wrote a post titled “On the Credibility of the Department of Justice.” The post identified a couple of (very early) signs that the administration was already engaging in behavior that gave reason to worry about whether the federal government would adhere to its long history of turning square corners in the federal courts—and hypothesized some of the ways in which a Department of Justice that lost credibility would not only struggle with relatively straightforward litigation tasks, but would make it far harder, going forward, for courts to defer to government officials even in circumstances in which they should, all at the expense of what’s long been known as the “presumption of regularity.”
Ten months later, that post reads as impressively naive about the depths to which the administration would sink; the outright defiance of at least some lower court orders in which it would engage; and the deep, perhaps irreparable damage its behavior would do to public faith in the integrity (or even the minimal competence) of the Department of Justice. Last week alone, developments in three different cases—the criminal prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey; the ongoing efforts to remove Kilmar Abrego Garcia from the United States; and the civil suit challenging the behavior of federal law enforcement officers in Chicago during Operation Midway Blitz—all provided dramatic, independent evidence of the same broader theme: Whereas the first Trump administration was often characterized as “malevolence tempered by incompetence,” this is worse: it’s malevolence exacerbated by incompetence. That’s problematic enough for the government’s credibility before federal district judges. But at some point soon, one suspects that the Supreme Court itself may well have to grapple with its consequences—or risk being duped.
Saturday neighborhood pop up at the corner of Magazine & Napoleon in New Orleans. We're all bracing for the regime's assault as though we're preparing for a hurricane. We've got this.
— Buddy Spell (@buddyspell.bsky.social) 2025-11-23T19:06:27.583Z
This protest includes my friend, who is a music professor at Loyola. She’s the one in the costume holding the “DUE PROCESS” sign. You may read more about pending courses at the link. There are numerous court cases pending to clarify some of the Trump administration’s actions. The bigger question is, will they continue to ignore rulings while waiting for the Supreme Court to intervene on their behalf? This one just popped up on my feed from CNN.”Federal judge dismisses indictments against Letitia James and James Comey, saying Lindsey Halligan appointment was unlawful.”
A federal judge dismissed the indictments against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James on Monday.
The judge found that the appointment of interim US Attorney Lindsey Halligan in Alexandria, Virginia, was invalid.
Trump handpicked Halligan for the role amid increasing pressure to bring criminal cases against his political enemies, including Comey and James.
“The Attorney General’s attempt to install Ms. Halligan as Interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia was invalid,” Judge Cameron McGowan Currie wrote in her Monday order.
According to Currie, “all actions flowing from Ms. Halligan’s defective appointment” including the indictments against Comey and James “were unlawful exercises of executive power and are hereby set aside.”
The judge tossed out the cases “without prejudice,” leaving open the possibility that the cases against Comey and James can be brought again alleging the same conduct.
CNN has reached out to the Justice Department for comment.
James issued a statement after the charges against her were dropped.
I must admit that the stress of all this is wearing on me. I got a phone call from my friend. That lowers my blood pressure a little. I don’t know how much longer we can continue like this. I’ve always stocked my house with canned goods and such during a hurricane. Doing it for a friend who is in danger if they go outside their house is an entirely different emotion and level of stress, as well as that feeling of helplessness. So be strong, do whatever you can to save our country from that horrible monster and his cabinet of goons. Protect who you can. We can’t let our country go down like this.
What’s on your reading, action, and blogging list today?
We have come too far to turn around
We are here to bear witness
To this monstrous sickness
But we have come too far to turn around
We have stared into the eyes of evil
We have slow danced with the devil
We have sat down at his table
And shared with him in the feast
We have swallowed the liquid of his lies
Tolerated the one we despise#repeat1968JohnBuss #crimeTaskForce #iceRaids #iceRaidsAndChildren #lawsuitsAgainstTrumpism #memphis #newOrleans
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Mostly Monday Reads: Mass Shooting Mania
“Eagle eye Kash solves another one!” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
My kids were Quarter Rats. We lived in the lower quarter for five years before settling about a mile downriver in a small, single, pre-Civil War house near the Mississippi. Prior to COVID-19, I still gigged there consistently. My last gig was on Bourbon Street, accompanying and DJing for two talented Drag Queens doing Drag Queen Cabaret. It ended in a very Bourbon Street way.
The club finally got to return to its strip club days when its permit got approved, and like me, all good things move downriver where the local talent can shine, and up until Airbnb forced tourists on us, we could just be New Orleans. I keep meaning to go back to the one activity that truly relaxes me, but like most of my neighbors, I fear the people who come from other cities that scream and yell biblical obscenities at my GLBTQ friends whenever they dare to have a public celebration. We’ve had all the local versions of piety performing bible bangers and right-wing white boy droogies. We’ve been safe from them to date, but we know it’s just a matter of time before they show up anywhere they’re not wanted.
Since then, I admit, I rarely head to the Quarter, let alone Bourbon Street. I’m generally only in the vicinity when the small, early Holiday parades fire up. This year, there have been two violent events on Bourbon Street, which were–as usual–a combination of plenty of alcohol and rage. Our law enforcement officials have begged the state, to no end, to set up a gun-free zone there. The Louisiana outback, with its constant gun violence, never puts the state on the map quite like an attack on Bourbon Street. The state determined the best defense was just a bunch of ugly,out-of-place barricades that did no good at all on Saturday night. No city has a fighting chance unless their states have sensible gun laws.
Over the weekend, Bourbon Street was one of three American locations that suffered a mass shooting. The first to hit the headlines created a war zone at a Latter-day Saints Church. I grew up with a Latter-day Saints Temple–the winter stakes one–on the same block as my home. My mother was over there doing so much work on the family genealogy that they even called her Sister Whittaker. I’m quite familiar with the religion and people. I could hardly stop my imagination from jumping from the Temple that is now burnt to the ground in Michigan, to the one sitting next to my cul-de-sac in Omaha.
For some reason, attacking a religious building appears to get more media hand-wringing than attacking a school of children or a mall full of tourists and service workers. This attack was huge, but had all the footprints of the uniquely American tragedy of a white guy, mad at the world, finding a way to commit suicide while bringing a lot of innocents with him. I’m waiting for the lies about this guy to start like a volcanic eruption from President Evil and his incompetent loyalists. You really have to be dumb to try to see this for what it was and what it was not.
This first read is from The New Republic. “Mormon Church Gunman Had Trump Sign Outside His Home. Thomas Jacob Sanford drove his car into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc, Michigan, and opened fire.” Again, let’s see them spin this one.
Thomas Jacob Sanford, the 40-year-old Iraq War veteran identified as the suspect in a fatal Sunday attack on a Mormon church in Grand Blanc, Michigan, seemed to own Donald Trump memorabilia, with a campaign sign on display outside his house.
His reported home on East Atherton Road in Burton, Michigan, according to public records, is located less than 20 minutes by car from the church into which he ran his truck, before opening fire—killing at least four people—and setting the building ablaze.
As of June 2025, the house had a Trump campaign sign posted on its fence, per a Google Maps image. A picture posted to Facebook in September 2019, of Sanford with his wife and son, shows him wearing a camo shirt that reads “Re-elect Trump 2020,” and “Make liberals cry again.”
Mark Grebner, a Michigan Democratic consultant and data expert, told local outlet Bridge Michigan that Sanford signed two petitions a few years ago, both of which seemingly aligned with right-wing causes: one for Unlock Michigan, against Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s pandemic restrictions, and an anti-abortion petition by Right to Life Michigan.
Local authorities and the FBI have not yet identified a motive for the attack.
Undoubtedly, everyone is waiting for the Director to pull something stupid out of his ass that will please Yam Tits and no one else.
Oh, right, I’m not being politically correct here. Now’s the time for useless thoughts and prayers, and not looking to solve this uniquely American and preventable tragedy. Sensible Gun Laws are cancel culture. Sending Troops to terrorize immigrants and protestors exercising their First Amendment rights is some kind of take back of America. I’ve purposefully kept the TV news off because frankly, I’m tired of the ritual dance they perform that includes the ‘Both Sides Do it’ Shuffle’ and the ‘What can be done about this?’ Mambo. Definitely don’t mention that the Secretary of War and FARTUS want cities to look like war zones. It’s part of the Macho, Macho, Man disco punch shuffle we get to view daily when FARTUS is trying to look all Village People.
This is from the Chicago Sun-Times. “Feds march into downtown Chicago; top border agent says people are arrested based on ‘how they look’. U.S. Border Patrol agents wearing tactical gear and carrying long guns made arrests in downtown Chicago and the River North neighborhood Sunday. “This is not making anybody safer — it’s a show of intimidation,” Gov. JB Pritzker said.”
Dozens of federal agents took individuals into custody during a winding patrol Sunday through downtown Chicago, and a top U.S. Border Patrol official told WBEZ the agents were arresting people based on “how they look.”
The agents, clad in military-style fatigues, roamed past some of Chicago’s most well-known landmarks on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. The highly visible show of force came just three days after Border Patrol boats carrying armed officers appeared on the Chicago River.
Gregory Bovino, commander at large of the border force, contrasted the people being arrested with a white WBEZ reporter, saying agents consider a person’s appearance before taking them into custody.
“You know, there’s many different factors that go into something like that,” Bovino said. “It would be agent experience, intelligence that indicates there’s illegal aliens in a particular place or location.
“Then, obviously, the particular characteristics of an individual, how they look. How do they look compared to, say, you?” he said to the reporter, a tall, middle-aged man of Anglo descent.
Bovino, who brought his “Operation At Large” deportation campaign from California to Illinois this month, made the comments about three weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court said federal agents could continue stopping people based on factors including race and language during the campaign in California. The court’s majority did not explain itself.
Chicago has been on edge ever since President Donald Trump floated the idea of sending National Guard troops into the city in August. Though he never followed through, Sunday’s immigration patrols may have given him the photo opportunity he’s been looking for.
Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker responded on social media by noting the officers appeared “to be carrying large weapons around downtown Chicago in camouflage and masks.
“This is not making anybody safer — it’s a show of intimidation, instilling fear in our communities and hurting our businesses,” Pritzker said.
Immigration agents were patrolling several other neighborhoods, Bovino added.
“Chicago’s got a lot of murders,” Bovino said. “We’re going to make the city a safer place.”
The city’s murder numbers have been falling fast in recent years, and studies show the vast majority are committed by U.S. citizens. Violent crime overall is down too.
Bovino said the deportation blitz also extends beyond Chicago’s borders: “It could be Cicero. It could be South Chicago. It could be anywhere in Illinois.”
As the immigration patrol continued through River North, people on a double-decker tour bus craned their necks to get a look at the commotion.
At one point, agents ran after a bicyclist who’d yelled at them. He got away.
I can tell you that it is the most intimidating, awful experience from all my friends in the service industry who had to deal with that situation in the French Quarter during the Super Bowl. It is fucking scary and intimidating. That was only a week or so compared to what L.A. went through.
I heard this directly from my grocery shopper this week. He’s a young black man with this for a side gig. He told me the same thing I would’ve told him as I left him with the old TV, saying, “Be Safe Out there.” He told me his idea of fun these days is staying at home.
Other than trips to the doctor, I pretty much stay within the confines of a few blocks in my neighborhood. I’m lucky I have all the friends and music venues, and a library within those confines. I’m just peachy. Meanwhile, I’m exercising like a marine. The saying on the avenue is that they will be coming for us. As a professor, that’s what I hear from colleagues, too. It’s also why I’ve been happily teaching online and off-campus for two years. We had a shooter at the Lake Front campus in the Library not that long ago, and I’m glad to share office space with two cats and a dog.
I will be testing the waters on October 18th, but luckily, the 9th ward is hosting the second “No Presidents’ protest and I’ll be blocks from home.
So, with cash incentives and the ‘do whatever’ set of orders, this headline from the New York Times is not surprising. (Shared link.) “‘I’m From Here!’: U.S. Citizens Are Ending Up in Trump’s Dragnet. As immigration agents take a more aggressive approach, they have stopped and in some cases detained American citizens.” How long before the arrest orders include other identifiers, like looking too much like a professor, a potential protester, or someone who is part of or supports the GLBTQ community?
U.S. citizens, many of them Latino men, have been stopped and in some cases taken into custody by law enforcement officers who are carrying out President Trump’s immigration crackdown and who suspect the men are living in the country illegally.
While many of those detained have immediately declared their U.S. citizenship to officers, they have routinely been ignored, according to interviews with the men, their lawyers and court documents. In some cases they have been handcuffed, kept in holding cells and immigration facilities overnight, and in at least two cases held without access to a lawyer or even a phone call.
How many U.S. citizens have been swept up in the Trump administration’s immigration sweeps is difficult to say. No comprehensive log of such encounters is available from the federal government, and immigration agents are not required to document stops of citizens.
A review by The New York Times of publicly reported cases and court records found that since January, at least 15 U.S. citizens have been arrested or detained and questioned about their citizenship by immigration agents or local law enforcement officers enlisted to work with the federal authorities.
In late January, Julio Noriega, 54, of Chicago, had been handing out copies of his résumé to local businesses in Berwyn, Ill., when ICE officers approached him as he walked out of a Jiffy Lube auto service shop.
They handcuffed him and loaded him into a van, without allowing him to explain he was a citizen, according to a motion filed in the Federal District Court for Northern Illinois. He was released about 10 hours later, the court filing states.
School budgets and government programs are already being targeted by right-wing machinations in Yam Tit’s administration. We may have a government shutdown just because a few specific religious folks can’t take anyone not being exactly like them
Trump threatens to shut down US government unless Democrats agree to ban all trans health carehttps://www.thepinknews.com/2025/09/29/trans-care-ban-government-shutdown/?utm_content=1759153201&utm_medium=social&utm_source=bluesky
— PinkNews (@pinknews.bsky.social) 2025-09-29T13:40:02.77694129Z
From the link embedded above from Pink News. “Trump threatens to shut down US government unless Democrats agree to ban all trans health care. Proposed legislation behind the impending US government shutdown contains provisions that would ban federal funding for transgender adults, as well as youngsters.” This is reported by Amelian Hansford.
The bill has kept congress at a stand-still over the past few days after Democrats refused to provide the necessary votes for it to go through. Unless agreement is reached by 12.01am (Eastern) on Wednesday (1 October), sections of the government will be unable to function.
Donald Trump initially refused to meet with Democrats to avoid the shutdown, accusing minority leaders Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer of making “unserious and ridiculous demands”. The Republicans control both the senate and house of representatives.
If passed, the law would prohibit trans surgeries, strip [health insurance] Medicaid coverage from transgender people and ban Pride flags from public buildings, such as schools and universities.
While Trump has since agreed to meet with Democrats, trans men and women have urged them not to bow to any pressure from the president.
One person on Reddit, whose post has gone viral, called on members of the public to “contact your senators and house reps asap”, urging them to protect “the rights and dignity of LGBTQ+ Americans”.
They went on to say: “These are not budgetary measures, they are ideological attacks [that] would erase protections, endanger lives and weaponise federal funding to coerce institutions into abandoning care. For many, access to HRT and affirming care is not optional, it’s life-saving.
“Democrats have the power to stop all this happening if they hold the line in the senate.”
This news via The Guardian is probably the most prescient window into the dark hearts of the Republicans sitting on the SCOTUS bench. Read it and weep. “Clarence Thomas says precedent might not determine cases on upcoming supreme court docket. The court is expected to weigh in next session on same-sex marriage, which it legalized in 2015.” Women’s rights were the first to be destroyed. Now, we’re moving on to the Old Testament version of GLBTQ rights.
Settled legal precedent in the US is not “gospel” and in some instances may have been “something somebody dreamt up and others went along with”, the US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has said.
Thomas – part of the conservative supermajority that has taken hold of the Supreme Court over Donald Trump’s two presidencies – delivered those comments Thursday at the Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law in Washington, DC, ABC News and other outlets reported. His remarks preceded the nine-month term that the Supreme Court is scheduled to begin on 6 October.
“I don’t think that … any of these cases that have been decided are the gospel,” Thomas said during the rare public appearance, invoking a term which in a religious context is often used to refer to the word of God. “And I do give perspective to the precedent. But … the precedent should be respectful of our legal tradition, and our country and our laws, and be based on something – not just something somebody dreamt up and others went along with.”
Among the various cases Thomas and his colleagues are expected to weigh in on is a request to overturn the 2015 Obergefell supreme court decision that legalized marriage for same-sex couples nationwide. Other cases being mulled by the Supreme Court for its 2025-2026 term involve tariffs, trans rights, campaign finance law, religious rights, and capital punishment.
Thomas was in the 5-4 minority that voted against the Obergefell decision.
Trump’s first presidency yielded him three supreme court picks that gave the panel a conservative supermajority which has frequently ruled in his favor after he returned to the White House in January.
In June 2022, as Joe Biden’s presidency interrupted Trump’s terms, that conservative supermajority also struck down the federal abortion rights which had been established decades earlier by the Roe v Wade supreme court precedent. Thomas wrote a concurring opinion in which he urged the court to “reconsider all … substantive due process precedents”, including in Obergefell as well as cases involving rights to contraception and same-sex intimacy.
Thomas reportedly told those listening to him at the Catholic University that he feels no obligation to hew to precedent “if I find it doesn’t make any sense”.
“I think we should demand that, no matter what the case is, that it has more than just a simple theoretical basis,” Thomas said. If it’s “totally stupid, and that’s what they’ve decided, you don’t go along with it just because it’s decided”.
Down here, we have Social Aid and Pleasure clubs, which originally sprang up to ensure folks could get a good send-off with a second line when they exited the earthly door. It’s morphed into a lot more than that now. It’s basically a tribe of neighbors looking out for each other. You may want to consider setting up some networks like this, as food and services for the elderly and children disappear. You may need it for more than that later.
I don’t think I need to remind you of German history and what happened when NAZIs went door to door. Oregon is now suing the Trump administration to keep troops out of Portland. This is from Politico. “Oregon sues to block Trump from deploying state’s National Guard in Portland. ”Local law enforcement has this under control,” the governor said.” Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney share the headline.
Oregon and its largest city, Portland, are suing to block President Donald Trump from deploying the state’s National Guard, calling it an unconstitutional abuse of power.
“Far from promoting public safety, Defendants’ provocative and arbitrary actions threaten to undermine public safety by inciting a public outcry,” the state and city contend in the lawsuit filed Sunday in federal court in Portland.
“I think this is a sad day for our country, a sad day for Oregon that the president of the United States does not listen to local leaders about what they need,” Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek, a Democrat, told reporters during a videoconference shortly after the suit was filed.
“When the president and I spoke yesterday, I told him in very plain language there is no insurrection or threat to public safety that necessitates military intervention in Portland or any other city in our state,” Kotek said. “Putting our own military on our streets is an abuse of power … Local law enforcement has this under control.”
“It’s actually un-American, if you think about it, to use the military against our own citizens but that’s exactly what’s happening right now, across our country,” Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield, a Democrat, told the press conference. He said his office plans to file within the next day for a temporary restraining order against the deployment.
The lawsuit follows Trump’s announcement on social media Saturday that he was ordering the Defense Department to send troops to Portland to use “full force, if necessary,” to combat protests that he said were interfering with immigration enforcement. Trump described the decision as the result of a request from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
Oregon officials say the Pentagon followed through on Trump’s order on Sunday morning, calling up 200 members of the state’s 6,500-member National Guard contingent. State officials say even the relatively small call-up could damage the state’s ability to respond to emergencies.
Lawyers for the state say protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement have been small and relatively subdued, routinely featuring fewer than 30 people, and that there have been no arrests related to those protests from June until earlier this week.
One last read via PBUMP.Net. “How Trumpworld inflates the perceived danger of the left.”
It is stipulated at the outset that there have been gruesome acts of political violence in recent months that appear to have been motivated by hostility to right-wing politics or the administration. This is not really contestable and rarely seriously contested. There is, in fact, violence on the political left.
It is also the case, though, that right-wing political violence has been much more common in recent years. This is not a useful bit of information to the Trump administration, which actively seeks to ignore or bury it. It, like Trump himself, is committed to presenting political violence as centrally if not entirely a function of the left — obviously in part because doing so provides a rationalization for the administration to crack down on the president’s political opponents. Trump’s been champing at the bit to deploy the military against protesters, a desire so obvious that questions about his doing so were part of Pete Hegseth’s confirmation hearings to serve as Defense Secretary.
Over the weekend, Trump announced on social media that he would be directing the (since-confirmed) Hegseth to “provide all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland, and any of our ICE Facilities under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists.” He further “authoriz[ed] Full Force, if necessary” — apparently giving the military a green light to shoot at the purported “terrorists”.
Why Portland? Well, that’s an interesting story that reflects one of the central ways that Trump and his allies convince the right that there’s an imminent threat — a tactic so convincing that it apparently convinced Trump, too.
The next section is my favorite.
In mid-June 2020, I noticed something weird about Fox News’s coverage of the racial-justice protests that had emerged in response to the killing of George Floyd: they were often accompanied by footage of violence or vandalism that had actually occurred more than a week prior. Tucker Carlson (then still a Fox host), Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham were incorporating footage into their shows that had been recorded in late May. The reason for doing so wasn’t subtle; they (and Trump, who was president) hoped to suggest that a firm hand was needed to keep the lunatic left under control.
It didn’t work. But what I couldn’t have anticipated then was that Fox would still be using that footage five years later.
Trump eventually backtracked on his threat to send troops to Portland. In an interview with NBC’s Yamiche Alcindor, he described a conversation he’d had with Oregon’s governor.
“I said, ‘Well wait a minute, am I watching things on television that are different from what’s happening? My people tell me different,’ ” Trump said of the conversation. “They are literally attacking and there are fires all over the place…it looks like terrible.”
Well, yes, Man Who Has Access to the Breadth of Federal Intelligence Gathering. What you saw on TV was in fact not what was happening at the moment in Portland.
So what had Trump seen? Given his tendency to stay tuned to Fox News we can make some educated guesses.
Trump made his pledge to send troops to Portland on Saturday morning. On Friday, Fox News had several segments in which purported violence in the city was shown.
One featured Tricia McLaughlin, a Homeland Security official who often appears on cable shows. As she was discussing an executive order Trump signed, the channel showed b-roll of events in Portland.
You will notice, though, that the footage was not timestamped for any date in September. Instead, they showed an encounter apparently involving tear gas that occurred back in June … and footage from protests in July 2020.
In the next hour, they ran the same playbook. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was on, talking about how dangerous the left was next to footage of Portland violence from July 2020.
You’re POTUS, you have thousands of intelligence reports and agencies at your beck and call, so who are you gonna call? Forget calling, just watch whatever crap Fox News or some other right-wing propaganda channel, and there you go! So this is obviously Philip Bump’s personal site, and it’s also quite the long-form read. Take some time and read the rest. Buckle up! Find your safe word! Collaborate with like-minded neighbors! You may need each other soon! More specifically, be safe out there!
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?
#JohnbussBskySocial #Repeat1968JohnBuss #GLBTNews #immigrationHorrorStories #massShootings #TrumpSTroopsInUSCities
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Mostly Monday Reads: Mass Shooting Mania
“Eagle eye Kash solves another one!” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
My kids were Quarter Rats. We lived in the lower quarter for five years before settling about a mile downriver in a small, single, pre-Civil War house near the Mississippi. Prior to COVID-19, I still gigged there consistently. My last gig was on Bourbon Street, accompanying and DJing for two talented Drag Queens doing Drag Queen Cabaret. It ended in a very Bourbon Street way.
The club finally got to return to its strip club days when its permit got approved, and like me, all good things move downriver where the local talent can shine, and up until Airbnb forced tourists on us, we could just be New Orleans. I keep meaning to go back to the one activity that truly relaxes me, but like most of my neighbors, I fear the people who come from other cities that scream and yell biblical obscenities at my GLBTQ friends whenever they dare to have a public celebration. We’ve had all the local versions of piety performing bible bangers and right-wing white boy droogies. We’ve been safe from them to date, but we know it’s just a matter of time before they show up anywhere they’re not wanted.
Since then, I admit, I rarely head to the Quarter, let alone Bourbon Street. I’m generally only in the vicinity when the small, early Holiday parades fire up. This year, there have been two violent events on Bourbon Street, which were–as usual–a combination of plenty of alcohol and rage. Our law enforcement officials have begged the state, to no end, to set up a gun-free zone there. The Louisiana outback, with its constant gun violence, never puts the state on the map quite like an attack on Bourbon Street. The state determined the best defense was just a bunch of ugly,out-of-place barricades that did no good at all on Saturday night. No city has a fighting chance unless their states have sensible gun laws.
Over the weekend, Bourbon Street was one of three American locations that suffered a mass shooting. The first to hit the headlines created a war zone at a Latter-day Saints Church. I grew up with a Latter-day Saints Temple–the winter stakes one–on the same block as my home. My mother was over there doing so much work on the family genealogy that they even called her Sister Whittaker. I’m quite familiar with the religion and people. I could hardly stop my imagination from jumping from the Temple that is now burnt to the ground in Michigan, to the one sitting next to my cul-de-sac in Omaha.
For some reason, attacking a religious building appears to get more media hand-wringing than attacking a school of children or a mall full of tourists and service workers. This attack was huge, but had all the footprints of the uniquely American tragedy of a white guy, mad at the world, finding a way to commit suicide while bringing a lot of innocents with him. I’m waiting for the lies about this guy to start like a volcanic eruption from President Evil and his incompetent loyalists. You really have to be dumb to try to see this for what it was and what it was not.
This first read is from The New Republic. “Mormon Church Gunman Had Trump Sign Outside His Home. Thomas Jacob Sanford drove his car into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc, Michigan, and opened fire.” Again, let’s see them spin this one.
Thomas Jacob Sanford, the 40-year-old Iraq War veteran identified as the suspect in a fatal Sunday attack on a Mormon church in Grand Blanc, Michigan, seemed to own Donald Trump memorabilia, with a campaign sign on display outside his house.
His reported home on East Atherton Road in Burton, Michigan, according to public records, is located less than 20 minutes by car from the church into which he ran his truck, before opening fire—killing at least four people—and setting the building ablaze.
As of June 2025, the house had a Trump campaign sign posted on its fence, per a Google Maps image. A picture posted to Facebook in September 2019, of Sanford with his wife and son, shows him wearing a camo shirt that reads “Re-elect Trump 2020,” and “Make liberals cry again.”
Mark Grebner, a Michigan Democratic consultant and data expert, told local outlet Bridge Michigan that Sanford signed two petitions a few years ago, both of which seemingly aligned with right-wing causes: one for Unlock Michigan, against Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s pandemic restrictions, and an anti-abortion petition by Right to Life Michigan.
Local authorities and the FBI have not yet identified a motive for the attack.
Undoubtedly, everyone is waiting for the Director to pull something stupid out of his ass that will please Yam Tits and no one else.
Oh, right, I’m not being politically correct here. Now’s the time for useless thoughts and prayers, and not looking to solve this uniquely American and preventable tragedy. Sensible Gun Laws are cancel culture. Sending Troops to terrorize immigrants and protestors exercising their First Amendment rights is some kind of take back of America. I’ve purposefully kept the TV news off because frankly, I’m tired of the ritual dance they perform that includes the ‘Both Sides Do it’ Shuffle’ and the ‘What can be done about this?’ Mambo. Definitely don’t mention that the Secretary of War and FARTUS want cities to look like war zones. It’s part of the Macho, Macho, Man disco punch shuffle we get to view daily when FARTUS is trying to look all Village People.
This is from the Chicago Sun-Times. “Feds march into downtown Chicago; top border agent says people are arrested based on ‘how they look’. U.S. Border Patrol agents wearing tactical gear and carrying long guns made arrests in downtown Chicago and the River North neighborhood Sunday. “This is not making anybody safer — it’s a show of intimidation,” Gov. JB Pritzker said.”
Dozens of federal agents took individuals into custody during a winding patrol Sunday through downtown Chicago, and a top U.S. Border Patrol official told WBEZ the agents were arresting people based on “how they look.”
The agents, clad in military-style fatigues, roamed past some of Chicago’s most well-known landmarks on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. The highly visible show of force came just three days after Border Patrol boats carrying armed officers appeared on the Chicago River.
Gregory Bovino, commander at large of the border force, contrasted the people being arrested with a white WBEZ reporter, saying agents consider a person’s appearance before taking them into custody.
“You know, there’s many different factors that go into something like that,” Bovino said. “It would be agent experience, intelligence that indicates there’s illegal aliens in a particular place or location.
“Then, obviously, the particular characteristics of an individual, how they look. How do they look compared to, say, you?” he said to the reporter, a tall, middle-aged man of Anglo descent.
Bovino, who brought his “Operation At Large” deportation campaign from California to Illinois this month, made the comments about three weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court said federal agents could continue stopping people based on factors including race and language during the campaign in California. The court’s majority did not explain itself.
Chicago has been on edge ever since President Donald Trump floated the idea of sending National Guard troops into the city in August. Though he never followed through, Sunday’s immigration patrols may have given him the photo opportunity he’s been looking for.
Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker responded on social media by noting the officers appeared “to be carrying large weapons around downtown Chicago in camouflage and masks.
“This is not making anybody safer — it’s a show of intimidation, instilling fear in our communities and hurting our businesses,” Pritzker said.
Immigration agents were patrolling several other neighborhoods, Bovino added.
“Chicago’s got a lot of murders,” Bovino said. “We’re going to make the city a safer place.”
The city’s murder numbers have been falling fast in recent years, and studies show the vast majority are committed by U.S. citizens. Violent crime overall is down too.
Bovino said the deportation blitz also extends beyond Chicago’s borders: “It could be Cicero. It could be South Chicago. It could be anywhere in Illinois.”
As the immigration patrol continued through River North, people on a double-decker tour bus craned their necks to get a look at the commotion.
At one point, agents ran after a bicyclist who’d yelled at them. He got away.
I can tell you that it is the most intimidating, awful experience from all my friends in the service industry who had to deal with that situation in the French Quarter during the Super Bowl. It is fucking scary and intimidating. That was only a week or so compared to what L.A. went through.
I heard this directly from my grocery shopper this week. He’s a young black man with this for a side gig. He told me the same thing I would’ve told him as I left him with the old TV, saying, “Be Safe Out there.” He told me his idea of fun these days is staying at home.
Other than trips to the doctor, I pretty much stay within the confines of a few blocks in my neighborhood. I’m lucky I have all the friends and music venues, and a library within those confines. I’m just peachy. Meanwhile, I’m exercising like a marine. The saying on the avenue is that they will be coming for us. As a professor, that’s what I hear from colleagues, too. It’s also why I’ve been happily teaching online and off-campus for two years. We had a shooter at the Lake Front campus in the Library not that long ago, and I’m glad to share office space with two cats and a dog.
I will be testing the waters on October 18th, but luckily, the 9th ward is hosting the second “No Presidents’ protest and I’ll be blocks from home.
So, with cash incentives and the ‘do whatever’ set of orders, this headline from the New York Times is not surprising. (Shared link.) “‘I’m From Here!’: U.S. Citizens Are Ending Up in Trump’s Dragnet. As immigration agents take a more aggressive approach, they have stopped and in some cases detained American citizens.” How long before the arrest orders include other identifiers, like looking too much like a professor, a potential protester, or someone who is part of or supports the GLBTQ community?
U.S. citizens, many of them Latino men, have been stopped and in some cases taken into custody by law enforcement officers who are carrying out President Trump’s immigration crackdown and who suspect the men are living in the country illegally.
While many of those detained have immediately declared their U.S. citizenship to officers, they have routinely been ignored, according to interviews with the men, their lawyers and court documents. In some cases they have been handcuffed, kept in holding cells and immigration facilities overnight, and in at least two cases held without access to a lawyer or even a phone call.
How many U.S. citizens have been swept up in the Trump administration’s immigration sweeps is difficult to say. No comprehensive log of such encounters is available from the federal government, and immigration agents are not required to document stops of citizens.
A review by The New York Times of publicly reported cases and court records found that since January, at least 15 U.S. citizens have been arrested or detained and questioned about their citizenship by immigration agents or local law enforcement officers enlisted to work with the federal authorities.
In late January, Julio Noriega, 54, of Chicago, had been handing out copies of his résumé to local businesses in Berwyn, Ill., when ICE officers approached him as he walked out of a Jiffy Lube auto service shop.
They handcuffed him and loaded him into a van, without allowing him to explain he was a citizen, according to a motion filed in the Federal District Court for Northern Illinois. He was released about 10 hours later, the court filing states.
School budgets and government programs are already being targeted by right-wing machinations in Yam Tit’s administration. We may have a government shutdown just because a few specific religious folks can’t take anyone not being exactly like them
Trump threatens to shut down US government unless Democrats agree to ban all trans health carehttps://www.thepinknews.com/2025/09/29/trans-care-ban-government-shutdown/?utm_content=1759153201&utm_medium=social&utm_source=bluesky
— PinkNews (@pinknews.bsky.social) 2025-09-29T13:40:02.77694129Z
From the link embedded above from Pink News. “Trump threatens to shut down US government unless Democrats agree to ban all trans health care. Proposed legislation behind the impending US government shutdown contains provisions that would ban federal funding for transgender adults, as well as youngsters.” This is reported by Amelian Hansford.
The bill has kept congress at a stand-still over the past few days after Democrats refused to provide the necessary votes for it to go through. Unless agreement is reached by 12.01am (Eastern) on Wednesday (1 October), sections of the government will be unable to function.
Donald Trump initially refused to meet with Democrats to avoid the shutdown, accusing minority leaders Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer of making “unserious and ridiculous demands”. The Republicans control both the senate and house of representatives.
If passed, the law would prohibit trans surgeries, strip [health insurance] Medicaid coverage from transgender people and ban Pride flags from public buildings, such as schools and universities.
While Trump has since agreed to meet with Democrats, trans men and women have urged them not to bow to any pressure from the president.
One person on Reddit, whose post has gone viral, called on members of the public to “contact your senators and house reps asap”, urging them to protect “the rights and dignity of LGBTQ+ Americans”.
They went on to say: “These are not budgetary measures, they are ideological attacks [that] would erase protections, endanger lives and weaponise federal funding to coerce institutions into abandoning care. For many, access to HRT and affirming care is not optional, it’s life-saving.
“Democrats have the power to stop all this happening if they hold the line in the senate.”
This news via The Guardian is probably the most prescient window into the dark hearts of the Republicans sitting on the SCOTUS bench. Read it and weep. “Clarence Thomas says precedent might not determine cases on upcoming supreme court docket. The court is expected to weigh in next session on same-sex marriage, which it legalized in 2015.” Women’s rights were the first to be destroyed. Now, we’re moving on to the Old Testament version of GLBTQ rights.
Settled legal precedent in the US is not “gospel” and in some instances may have been “something somebody dreamt up and others went along with”, the US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has said.
Thomas – part of the conservative supermajority that has taken hold of the Supreme Court over Donald Trump’s two presidencies – delivered those comments Thursday at the Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law in Washington, DC, ABC News and other outlets reported. His remarks preceded the nine-month term that the Supreme Court is scheduled to begin on 6 October.
“I don’t think that … any of these cases that have been decided are the gospel,” Thomas said during the rare public appearance, invoking a term which in a religious context is often used to refer to the word of God. “And I do give perspective to the precedent. But … the precedent should be respectful of our legal tradition, and our country and our laws, and be based on something – not just something somebody dreamt up and others went along with.”
Among the various cases Thomas and his colleagues are expected to weigh in on is a request to overturn the 2015 Obergefell supreme court decision that legalized marriage for same-sex couples nationwide. Other cases being mulled by the Supreme Court for its 2025-2026 term involve tariffs, trans rights, campaign finance law, religious rights, and capital punishment.
Thomas was in the 5-4 minority that voted against the Obergefell decision.
Trump’s first presidency yielded him three supreme court picks that gave the panel a conservative supermajority which has frequently ruled in his favor after he returned to the White House in January.
In June 2022, as Joe Biden’s presidency interrupted Trump’s terms, that conservative supermajority also struck down the federal abortion rights which had been established decades earlier by the Roe v Wade supreme court precedent. Thomas wrote a concurring opinion in which he urged the court to “reconsider all … substantive due process precedents”, including in Obergefell as well as cases involving rights to contraception and same-sex intimacy.
Thomas reportedly told those listening to him at the Catholic University that he feels no obligation to hew to precedent “if I find it doesn’t make any sense”.
“I think we should demand that, no matter what the case is, that it has more than just a simple theoretical basis,” Thomas said. If it’s “totally stupid, and that’s what they’ve decided, you don’t go along with it just because it’s decided”.
Down here, we have Social Aid and Pleasure clubs, which originally sprang up to ensure folks could get a good send-off with a second line when they exited the earthly door. It’s morphed into a lot more than that now. It’s basically a tribe of neighbors looking out for each other. You may want to consider setting up some networks like this, as food and services for the elderly and children disappear. You may need it for more than that later.
I don’t think I need to remind you of German history and what happened when NAZIs went door to door. Oregon is now suing the Trump administration to keep troops out of Portland. This is from Politico. “Oregon sues to block Trump from deploying state’s National Guard in Portland. ”Local law enforcement has this under control,” the governor said.” Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney share the headline.
Oregon and its largest city, Portland, are suing to block President Donald Trump from deploying the state’s National Guard, calling it an unconstitutional abuse of power.
“Far from promoting public safety, Defendants’ provocative and arbitrary actions threaten to undermine public safety by inciting a public outcry,” the state and city contend in the lawsuit filed Sunday in federal court in Portland.
“I think this is a sad day for our country, a sad day for Oregon that the president of the United States does not listen to local leaders about what they need,” Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek, a Democrat, told reporters during a videoconference shortly after the suit was filed.
“When the president and I spoke yesterday, I told him in very plain language there is no insurrection or threat to public safety that necessitates military intervention in Portland or any other city in our state,” Kotek said. “Putting our own military on our streets is an abuse of power … Local law enforcement has this under control.”
“It’s actually un-American, if you think about it, to use the military against our own citizens but that’s exactly what’s happening right now, across our country,” Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield, a Democrat, told the press conference. He said his office plans to file within the next day for a temporary restraining order against the deployment.
The lawsuit follows Trump’s announcement on social media Saturday that he was ordering the Defense Department to send troops to Portland to use “full force, if necessary,” to combat protests that he said were interfering with immigration enforcement. Trump described the decision as the result of a request from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
Oregon officials say the Pentagon followed through on Trump’s order on Sunday morning, calling up 200 members of the state’s 6,500-member National Guard contingent. State officials say even the relatively small call-up could damage the state’s ability to respond to emergencies.
Lawyers for the state say protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement have been small and relatively subdued, routinely featuring fewer than 30 people, and that there have been no arrests related to those protests from June until earlier this week.
One last read via PBUMP.Net. “How Trumpworld inflates the perceived danger of the left.”
It is stipulated at the outset that there have been gruesome acts of political violence in recent months that appear to have been motivated by hostility to right-wing politics or the administration. This is not really contestable and rarely seriously contested. There is, in fact, violence on the political left.
It is also the case, though, that right-wing political violence has been much more common in recent years. This is not a useful bit of information to the Trump administration, which actively seeks to ignore or bury it. It, like Trump himself, is committed to presenting political violence as centrally if not entirely a function of the left — obviously in part because doing so provides a rationalization for the administration to crack down on the president’s political opponents. Trump’s been champing at the bit to deploy the military against protesters, a desire so obvious that questions about his doing so were part of Pete Hegseth’s confirmation hearings to serve as Defense Secretary.
Over the weekend, Trump announced on social media that he would be directing the (since-confirmed) Hegseth to “provide all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland, and any of our ICE Facilities under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists.” He further “authoriz[ed] Full Force, if necessary” — apparently giving the military a green light to shoot at the purported “terrorists”.
Why Portland? Well, that’s an interesting story that reflects one of the central ways that Trump and his allies convince the right that there’s an imminent threat — a tactic so convincing that it apparently convinced Trump, too.
The next section is my favorite.
In mid-June 2020, I noticed something weird about Fox News’s coverage of the racial-justice protests that had emerged in response to the killing of George Floyd: they were often accompanied by footage of violence or vandalism that had actually occurred more than a week prior. Tucker Carlson (then still a Fox host), Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham were incorporating footage into their shows that had been recorded in late May. The reason for doing so wasn’t subtle; they (and Trump, who was president) hoped to suggest that a firm hand was needed to keep the lunatic left under control.
It didn’t work. But what I couldn’t have anticipated then was that Fox would still be using that footage five years later.
Trump eventually backtracked on his threat to send troops to Portland. In an interview with NBC’s Yamiche Alcindor, he described a conversation he’d had with Oregon’s governor.
“I said, ‘Well wait a minute, am I watching things on television that are different from what’s happening? My people tell me different,’ ” Trump said of the conversation. “They are literally attacking and there are fires all over the place…it looks like terrible.”
Well, yes, Man Who Has Access to the Breadth of Federal Intelligence Gathering. What you saw on TV was in fact not what was happening at the moment in Portland.
So what had Trump seen? Given his tendency to stay tuned to Fox News we can make some educated guesses.
Trump made his pledge to send troops to Portland on Saturday morning. On Friday, Fox News had several segments in which purported violence in the city was shown.
One featured Tricia McLaughlin, a Homeland Security official who often appears on cable shows. As she was discussing an executive order Trump signed, the channel showed b-roll of events in Portland.
You will notice, though, that the footage was not timestamped for any date in September. Instead, they showed an encounter apparently involving tear gas that occurred back in June … and footage from protests in July 2020.
In the next hour, they ran the same playbook. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was on, talking about how dangerous the left was next to footage of Portland violence from July 2020.
You’re POTUS, you have thousands of intelligence reports and agencies at your beck and call, so who are you gonna call? Forget calling, just watch whatever crap Fox News or some other right-wing propaganda channel, and there you go! So this is obviously Philip Bump’s personal site, and it’s also quite the long-form read. Take some time and read the rest. Buckle up! Find your safe word! Collaborate with like-minded neighbors! You may need each other soon! More specifically, be safe out there!
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?
#JohnbussBskySocial #Repeat1968JohnBuss #GLBTNews #immigrationHorrorStories #massShootings #TrumpSTroopsInUSCities
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Finally Friday Reads: “The thing that’s extra damaging now is the craziness.”
Drew this last Sunday, envisioning a trump renovation of the Lincoln Memorial as he “cleans up” DC. Wake up to find South Park had the same idea. Should have posted it sooner. John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I have to admit that my heroes have always been Nobel Prize Winners in Economics. Between hearing family stories about living through the Great Depression and my own experience of inflation and stagflation, I just totally fell into my economics major. It was practical, scientific, and consensus-seeking. I have an early copy of Keynes’ The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money that was my father’s economic textbook after the War. I also have my own copy of Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz’s A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960. As a Financial Economist, I have strong roots as a monetarist.
As I reached out to study Trade Theory in search of what all countries needed in place to have a stable, growing economy and financial system, I became drawn to Paul Krugman. The headline up top is straight from him. This year, I’ve watched just about everything we’ve learned since the Great Depression on how to stabilize and grow an economy, from all these wise people, being thrown to the wind. I’m opening with the current Krugman critique of the “craziness.” It will be followed by some excellent analysis of what’s passing as policy these days, which is anything but a market economy. You can make a good case that we are moving in the direction of a Soviet-style command and Control system and heading straight into a Maoist one. This is how our regime rolls these days, and as Krugman says, it’s crazy.
I start with Thor Benson’s interview with Dr. Krugman at the Substack Public Notice.
Paul Krugman’s publication here on Substack has quickly become a vital resource for explanatory (and entertaining) coverage of Trump’s self-destructive economic policies. In fact, the Nobel Prize winner recently triggered Trump himself, with the president howling that Krugman is a “Trump Deranged BUM” in an unhinged Truth Social screed.
So with economic indicators weakening and talk of stagflation in the air, we connected with Krugman for a wide-ranging conversation about tariffs, inflation, why the AI bubble is reminiscent of the late 1990s, Trump’s teetering economy, and more.
“I think there’s a high likelihood of what we used to call a ‘growth recession’ or a jobless recovery — a situation where the economy isn’t plunging, but in fact unemployment is going up,” Krugman told us. “The economy is growing too slowly right now to generate enough jobs and there’s real weakness, which we’ve already seen in the data.”
“The thing that’s extra damaging now is the craziness. Nobody knows what the tariff rates will be in six months. Businesses making investment decisions want to know what things are going to be like over the next five years, but nobody has the faintest idea.”
The key to the crazy car is indeed tariffs. The damage, like the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act Congress imposed in 1929, made the Great Depression what it turned out to be. The media has pushed the idea that the current tariff regime has been limited because of the TACO craziness. Read Krugman’s thoughts on that.
Thor Benson
Why haven’t tariffs inflicted more damage on the economy already? There were a lot of dire warnings in the lead-up to Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement nearly five months ago.
Paul Krugman
The scale of Trump’s tariffs is beyond the highest expectations people had. When he was talking about 10 percent tariffs globally, people thought, “Well, he won’t really do that.” In fact, it looks like we’re going to end up with an average tariff rate of around 18 percent, which is huge. We knew the reaction would be delayed, and it’s been even more delayed than expected, but it’s starting to show now.
The first thing to say is that, in general, protectionism is bad, but people tend to overstate the case. I’ve written about that a few times. It sounds important, because it has global effects, but it gets overhyped. Our screwed-up healthcare system does way more damage to the economy than Trump’s tariffs. Reasonable estimates of the long-run impact of these tariffs is a 0.4 or 0.5 percent cut to GDP — not trivial, but not apocalyptic.
In terms of the inflationary impacts of tariffs, there was a lot of front-running. Companies that import stuff rushed to do so earlier this year before the tariffs kicked in. To some extent, we’re still living off inventory that was built up in that period, and you can see it in the data. There was a huge surge in imports early in the year and then a huge drop after the tariffs finally kicked in. We’re still living off inventory that was brought in at much lower tariff rates.
It’s also important to note that the TACO thing is wrong. Trump did not chicken out. We’ve got 15 percent tariffs on the EU and Japan and iron tariffs on a number of countries.
The fact that people kept thinking we were gonna have trade deals and the tariffs were going to come back down meant that companies were reluctant to pass price hikes into stores, because they didn’t want to make customers mad and lose market share. It’s only now really sinking in that this is for real, and so the “let’s eat the tariffs for a while” thing is fading out.
It’s happening a little slower than expected, but for the most part we’re pretty much right in line with what economists were saying earlier this year.
Professionals are fleeing the U.S. Treasury. “Treasury Department’s No. 2 official is leaving. Michael Faulkender oversees the department’s operations and has a broad policy portfolio that spans tax, international finance, sanctions, and financial regulation.” The adults are leaving the room.
The rest is under a paywall, but you get the general gist of it. So, all of this tariff shit is not coming out of Congress, as it should. That is what led to this very important article in Fortune. You may read all of it. The first author, Jeffrey Sonnenfield, is a Yale University Business Professor. The rest of the authors are equally impressive. There are CEOs of Top Companies as well as other academics, including Distinguished Professor Laura Tyson, a former chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisors, back when we really were doing economic policy. Here’s the headline, folks! “Is MAGA going Marxist and Maoist? Trump’s assault on free-market capitalism.”
As many CEOs understandably grew horrified last month at the prospect that New York City, the capital of capitalism, is on the brink of going socialist with the mayoral momentum of the inexperienced candidate Zohran Mamdani, they were ignoring the greater assault on free market capitalism that has already overtaken the nation in the Republican Party. While we agree that Mamdani’s solutions to affordable housing and grocery prices threaten to undermine free markets by bowing to the appeal of populist anger, President Donald Trump has already begun doing so, but to suit his own grandiose political agenda instead.
Unlike any leader of any free-market economy around the world, President Trump has seized control of private enterprise’s strategic decision-making and investment policies while invading corporate board rooms so that he may dictate leadership staffing, punish corporate critics, and demand public compliance with his political agenda. This is far more dangerous to capitalism than a city-run grocery store.
Many free-market economists and business leaders who have long worshipped the free-market ideals of Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek, Ayn Rand, and Milton Friedman should be aware that their idols would be rolling in their graves right now, as rather than pursue standard laissez-faire conservative economic policies, MAGA has gone Marxist and even, increasingly, Maoist
That sounds dour, doesn’t it?
As Greg Ip warned this week in The Wall Street Journal, “The US marches toward state capitalism with American characteristics … President Trump is imitating [the] Chinese Communist Party by extending political control ever deeper into the economy.” Ip pointed out that in the past, crisis-driven government bailouts of the banking and automotive sectors, such as TARP, were acute, targeted assistance, with brief and bipartisan rescue aims. Similarly, government incentives to drive investments in chips manufacturing, oil exploration, space exploration, internet development, agricultural vitality, cancer detection, disease treatment, and clean energy were not ownership deals with preferred companies or corporate cronies.
Indeed, Ip’s warnings mirror our own, as we were the first to accurately, presciently warn—over a year ago—that many of Trump’s economic positions more closely resemble communism than capitalism, as part of what we called “the coming MAGA assault on capitalism.” It certainly looks like MAGA is going Marxist if not even Maoist, especially across Trump’s vicious personal targeting of individual business leaders; government crackdown on business freedom of expression; weaponization of government powers; apparent extortion of businesses; and insertion of government into an unprecedented, outsized role in private sector strategic investment, capital flows and business decision-making.
Marxism and Maoism were both, of course, expressions of the communist theory that spilled forth from Karl Marx’s pen in the 19th century, brought to life in the brutal one-party states of the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China under its leader Mao Zedong, before it evolved into “capitalism with Chinese characteristics” starting in the 1970s, around the time of President Richard Nixon’s fateful visit to Beijing.
Both Marxism and Maoism claimed to champion “ordinary people” against corrupt or exploitative elites, while both targeted intellectuals, bureaucrats, and traditionalists, and purged institutions to enforce ideological purity, especially during Stalin’s “Great Terror” and Mao’s “Cultural Revolution.” Both centralized leadership to the point of creating a cult of personality, demanding intense loyalty and the glorification of the sole figure who could fix the country’s problems. Both prized loyalty over expertise, sidelining critics and dissenters in favor of a tightly controlled political narrative. Sound familiar?
The essence of market capitalism is that owners—shareholders and the management they appoint share in the profits. These deals give share of profits to government in return for favors. Friedman said that federal government should never own anything—that it should not run a surplus because it would have funds to invest in the private sector. What strategic decision-making rights would the government have in such deals, then?
So, I have studied all of these things in both comparative economic systems and comparative political systems, as well as Russian and Chinese history courses. If you ever did any of this, you would be as scared as I am. You may also watch the latest South Park episode, where all these institutional leaders line up and gift solid gold and silver gee-gaws to Yam Tits. Once again, dark humor mimics a dark regime.
You may read all the listed evidence at the link. This is not normal. This is heavy-handed interference in all our markets. Evidently, regulation is good if it’s the #FARTUS openly demanding he be cut in on all deals. There are so many things going on that are not normal; all alarms should be blaring loudly by now. “Trump’s FBI Raid of John Bolton’s Home Looks Like a ‘Five-Alarm Fire. Thus far, little is known about Friday’s law enforcement action against a top Trump critic. But we’re seeing an escalation of authoritarian power on many fronts that has grown unmistakable.” This is from the New Republic. It’s written by Greg Sargent.
Whatever we end up learning about the rationale for the FBI’s early-morning raid on former national security adviser John Bolton’s Bethesda, Maryland, home on Friday, there’s plainly a major escalation underway in President Donald Trump’s use of law enforcement to persecute his perceived enemies and entrench his authoritarian power. Consider the pattern:
Assaults targeting individual business leaders
Trump has a long history of targeting individual CEOs in highly vicious, personal terms for perceived offenses. This week, Trump called for the firing of Goldman Sachs’ renowned economist Jan Hatzius who accurately called the 2008 financial crisis over the economist’s concern regarding the tariff overhand on the US economy. He also attacked a top-performing financier, David Solomon, the non-partisan CEO of Goldman Sachs, telling him to quit and just be a disc jockey. (Solomon has a famous side hustle as an electronic dance music DJ, known as DJ D-Sol.)
- The targeting of Bolton, a major critic of Trump, appears to have been personally authorized by Kash Patel. An apparently official leak to the New York Post deliberately underscored Patel’s involvement, probably to make sure it’s understood by Trump’s other enemies. Remember: Trump installed Patel as FBI director for this very purpose. Patel had openly declared in 2023 that “the conspirators,” that is enemies of Trump and MAGA, must be prosecuted, and also that more loyalists with the resolve to see this through would be recruited to carry this out. Bolton was on Patel’s enemies list.
- Trump is now targeting Fed governor Lisa Cook, another proclaimed enemy, and he’s escalating the use of law enforcement and the manipulation of the bureaucracy to do so. Trump loyalist William Pulte, head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, is alleging that Cook committed mortgage fraud, and this has been referred to the Justice Department. Whether or not there’s anything to the fraud claims, they’re minor at best, and it’s already highly suspect that Pulte, an agency head, has taken such an active interest in investigations into individual mortgages that happen to belong to Trump’s highest-profile enemies. Given that Trump personally promoted an article about the referral of the Cook matter to DOJ, Pulte’s move looks even more suspect.
- Tellingly, Trump also heavily promoted the news of another supposedly fraudulent mortgage held by an enemy, Senator Adam Schiff. Schiff flatly denies the charges, yet DOJ is now criminally investigating them. Here again, Trump loyalist Pulte was directly involved in the manufacturing of the pretext for this, and experts say the process employed was dubiously manipulated. The same tactic has been used against New York Attorney General Letitia James, another major Trump foe. The question now is whether the White House is directing Pulte to rummage through the mortgages of Trump enemies for material that can serve as a pretext for potential DOJ prosecutions. It’s hard to imagine something of this magnitude proceeding without the White House’s blessing.
- After protests broke out over Trump’s attempted takeover of the Washington, D.C. police force and his deployment of the National Guard there—which is itself a major escalation—White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller expressly declared that protests would be met with a surge of additional law enforcement and/or military resources. Notably, there’s been no serious effort to reassure Americans that Trump’s militarization of the city, or of Los Angeles, is rooted in benign intentions. In fact, this week Trump suggested he would personally ride through the city with the National Guard. Though he scrapped the plan, that was probably for logistical reasons, and he plainly wants all this military activity in urban centers to be seen as affirmative confirmation of his ongoing consolidation of power.
- Longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon explicitly declared the other day that ICE officers will indeed be employed during the 2026 midterm elections in large numbers to monitor voting booths, again floating undocumented voters as the bullshit pretext to justify it. Bannon is not in a position to compel this, of course, but it’s clear the MAGA movement now sees Trump’s militarization of cities as a precursor to the use of law enforcement and/or the military to intimidate voters in large numbers, or foment a crisis atmosphere designed to help the GOP, or both.
- Last but not least, as we reported, a recent internal Department of Homeland Security memo outlines the hopes of senior DHS officials for substantially escalated military involvement in domestic law enforcement going forward. It even declares that military operations like the one in L.A. may be needed “for years to come.”
The raid of Bolton’s home was authorized by a court, and it is seeking to “determine whether he illegally shared or possessed classified information,” according to The New York Times. Trump told reporters Friday that he’d been unaware of the raid, but responded to it ominously.
WTF is going on? This is not normal. This is not democratic. This is not how our republic is supposed to work. Meanwhile, Donald’s dash for the Nobel Peace Prize is dashed again. Put so played him. This is from Politico. “Trump’s peace bid flops as Kremlin says no plans for Putin-Zelenskyy summit. Moscow obfuscates again in new remarks by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.” Well, inadequate Yam Tits strike again and cost the country more of our hard-earned dollars.
Russia’s top diplomat said Friday the Kremlin is “not ready at all” for a meeting between President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, pouring cold water on U.S. President Donald Trump’s efforts to set up a summit.
Trump announced Monday on social media that he was arranging a bilateral meeting between Zelenskyy and Putin, following crunch talks with European leaders at the White House — but gave scant details.
But Moscow has since been reluctant to commit to a confab between the two leaders, with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov saying Tuesday such a meeting would need to be prepared “step by step, gradually, starting from the expert level and then going through all the necessary stages.”
He sowed further doubt Friday, claiming that Zelenskyy was the one not willing to negotiate by refusing to rule out joining NATO or concede to the Kremlin’s maximalist territorial demands.
“Putin is ready to meet with Zelenskyy when the agenda is ready for a summit, and this agenda is not ready at all,” Lavrov told U.S. channel NBC.
“Zelenskyy said no to everything. … How can we meet with a person who is pretending to be a leader?” he added.
While U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said earlier this week the Russian ruler had agreed to a face-to-face meeting, touting his supposed openness to talks as a breakthrough, European diplomats and leaders have voiced skepticism that Moscow is really interested in ending the war and willing to negotiate in good faith.
“We are forgetting that Russia has not made one single concession, and they are the ones who are the aggressor here,” the EU’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said Friday.
Zelenskyy accused Moscow on Friday of dragging out peace talks in a bid to hold off punishing American sanctions, which Trump has threatened to impose on Russia and its trading partners if the Kremlin does not participate.
#FARTUS is the most corrupt and inept president we’ve ever had. I have no idea how we’re going to survive much more of this. More things from Memeorandum to check out:
- Ian Millhiser / Vox: The Supreme Court hands down some incomprehensible gobbledygook about canceled federal grants — Late Thursday afternoon, the Supreme Court handed down an incomprehensible order concerning the Trump administration’s decision to cancel numerous public health grants.
- Daniel Dale / CNN: Fact check: Trump and the case of the nonexistent $600 billion EU ‘gift’ — Seventeen days ago, President Donald Trump made a dramatic claim in an interview on the business news channel CNBC. As part of his July trade agreement with the European Union, he said, the EU gave the United States …
- New York Times: Noem’s Spending Rule Causes Delays at Homeland Security Dept.
- New York Times: Trump’s Attacks on Institutions Threaten a Bulwark of Economic Strength
Don’t forget, Trump is destroying the Smithsonian, the entire White House, and just about every check and balance enumerated by the U.S. Constitution. You may gag over the Oval Office Changes at Business Insider. His future architectural destruction is outlined in USA Today. It includes the Lincoln Bedroom, and he’s specifically interested in its bathroom. That’s a lot of gag for your buck.
We’re certainly going to get more proof that everything Trump touches dies.
I can’t watch the news much anymore. I think I’ll go watch the Disney Channel now.
What’s on your Reading, Blogging, and Action list today?
#Repeat1968JohnBuss #economics #FARTUS #NobelPrizeEconomics #NobelPrizeForPeace #tariffs #TrumpIsAMarxistMaoist
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Finally Friday Reads: “The thing that’s extra damaging now is the craziness.”
Drew this last Sunday, envisioning a trump renovation of the Lincoln Memorial as he “cleans up” DC. Wake up to find South Park had the same idea. Should have posted it sooner. John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I have to admit that my heroes have always been Nobel Prize Winners in Economics. Between hearing family stories about living through the Great Depression and my own experience of inflation and stagflation, I just totally fell into my economics major. It was practical, scientific, and consensus-seeking. I have an early copy of Keynes’ The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money that was my father’s economic textbook after the War. I also have my own copy of Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz’s A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960. As a Financial Economist, I have strong roots as a monetarist.
As I reached out to study Trade Theory in search of what all countries needed in place to have a stable, growing economy and financial system, I became drawn to Paul Krugman. The headline up top is straight from him. This year, I’ve watched just about everything we’ve learned since the Great Depression on how to stabilize and grow an economy, from all these wise people, being thrown to the wind. I’m opening with the current Krugman critique of the “craziness.” It will be followed by some excellent analysis of what’s passing as policy these days, which is anything but a market economy. You can make a good case that we are moving in the direction of a Soviet-style command and Control system and heading straight into a Maoist one. This is how our regime rolls these days, and as Krugman says, it’s crazy.
I start with Thor Benson’s interview with Dr. Krugman at the Substack Public Notice.
Paul Krugman’s publication here on Substack has quickly become a vital resource for explanatory (and entertaining) coverage of Trump’s self-destructive economic policies. In fact, the Nobel Prize winner recently triggered Trump himself, with the president howling that Krugman is a “Trump Deranged BUM” in an unhinged Truth Social screed.
So with economic indicators weakening and talk of stagflation in the air, we connected with Krugman for a wide-ranging conversation about tariffs, inflation, why the AI bubble is reminiscent of the late 1990s, Trump’s teetering economy, and more.
“I think there’s a high likelihood of what we used to call a ‘growth recession’ or a jobless recovery — a situation where the economy isn’t plunging, but in fact unemployment is going up,” Krugman told us. “The economy is growing too slowly right now to generate enough jobs and there’s real weakness, which we’ve already seen in the data.”
“The thing that’s extra damaging now is the craziness. Nobody knows what the tariff rates will be in six months. Businesses making investment decisions want to know what things are going to be like over the next five years, but nobody has the faintest idea.”
The key to the crazy car is indeed tariffs. The damage, like the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act Congress imposed in 1929, made the Great Depression what it turned out to be. The media has pushed the idea that the current tariff regime has been limited because of the TACO craziness. Read Krugman’s thoughts on that.
Thor Benson
Why haven’t tariffs inflicted more damage on the economy already? There were a lot of dire warnings in the lead-up to Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement nearly five months ago.
Paul Krugman
The scale of Trump’s tariffs is beyond the highest expectations people had. When he was talking about 10 percent tariffs globally, people thought, “Well, he won’t really do that.” In fact, it looks like we’re going to end up with an average tariff rate of around 18 percent, which is huge. We knew the reaction would be delayed, and it’s been even more delayed than expected, but it’s starting to show now.
The first thing to say is that, in general, protectionism is bad, but people tend to overstate the case. I’ve written about that a few times. It sounds important, because it has global effects, but it gets overhyped. Our screwed-up healthcare system does way more damage to the economy than Trump’s tariffs. Reasonable estimates of the long-run impact of these tariffs is a 0.4 or 0.5 percent cut to GDP — not trivial, but not apocalyptic.
In terms of the inflationary impacts of tariffs, there was a lot of front-running. Companies that import stuff rushed to do so earlier this year before the tariffs kicked in. To some extent, we’re still living off inventory that was built up in that period, and you can see it in the data. There was a huge surge in imports early in the year and then a huge drop after the tariffs finally kicked in. We’re still living off inventory that was brought in at much lower tariff rates.
It’s also important to note that the TACO thing is wrong. Trump did not chicken out. We’ve got 15 percent tariffs on the EU and Japan and iron tariffs on a number of countries.
The fact that people kept thinking we were gonna have trade deals and the tariffs were going to come back down meant that companies were reluctant to pass price hikes into stores, because they didn’t want to make customers mad and lose market share. It’s only now really sinking in that this is for real, and so the “let’s eat the tariffs for a while” thing is fading out.
It’s happening a little slower than expected, but for the most part we’re pretty much right in line with what economists were saying earlier this year.
Professionals are fleeing the U.S. Treasury. “Treasury Department’s No. 2 official is leaving. Michael Faulkender oversees the department’s operations and has a broad policy portfolio that spans tax, international finance, sanctions, and financial regulation.” The adults are leaving the room.
The rest is under a paywall, but you get the general gist of it. So, all of this tariff shit is not coming out of Congress, as it should. That is what led to this very important article in Fortune. You may read all of it. The first author, Jeffrey Sonnenfield, is a Yale University Business Professor. The rest of the authors are equally impressive. There are CEOs of Top Companies as well as other academics, including Distinguished Professor Laura Tyson, a former chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisors, back when we really were doing economic policy. Here’s the headline, folks! “Is MAGA going Marxist and Maoist? Trump’s assault on free-market capitalism.”
As many CEOs understandably grew horrified last month at the prospect that New York City, the capital of capitalism, is on the brink of going socialist with the mayoral momentum of the inexperienced candidate Zohran Mamdani, they were ignoring the greater assault on free market capitalism that has already overtaken the nation in the Republican Party. While we agree that Mamdani’s solutions to affordable housing and grocery prices threaten to undermine free markets by bowing to the appeal of populist anger, President Donald Trump has already begun doing so, but to suit his own grandiose political agenda instead.
Unlike any leader of any free-market economy around the world, President Trump has seized control of private enterprise’s strategic decision-making and investment policies while invading corporate board rooms so that he may dictate leadership staffing, punish corporate critics, and demand public compliance with his political agenda. This is far more dangerous to capitalism than a city-run grocery store.
Many free-market economists and business leaders who have long worshipped the free-market ideals of Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek, Ayn Rand, and Milton Friedman should be aware that their idols would be rolling in their graves right now, as rather than pursue standard laissez-faire conservative economic policies, MAGA has gone Marxist and even, increasingly, Maoist
That sounds dour, doesn’t it?
As Greg Ip warned this week in The Wall Street Journal, “The US marches toward state capitalism with American characteristics … President Trump is imitating [the] Chinese Communist Party by extending political control ever deeper into the economy.” Ip pointed out that in the past, crisis-driven government bailouts of the banking and automotive sectors, such as TARP, were acute, targeted assistance, with brief and bipartisan rescue aims. Similarly, government incentives to drive investments in chips manufacturing, oil exploration, space exploration, internet development, agricultural vitality, cancer detection, disease treatment, and clean energy were not ownership deals with preferred companies or corporate cronies.
Indeed, Ip’s warnings mirror our own, as we were the first to accurately, presciently warn—over a year ago—that many of Trump’s economic positions more closely resemble communism than capitalism, as part of what we called “the coming MAGA assault on capitalism.” It certainly looks like MAGA is going Marxist if not even Maoist, especially across Trump’s vicious personal targeting of individual business leaders; government crackdown on business freedom of expression; weaponization of government powers; apparent extortion of businesses; and insertion of government into an unprecedented, outsized role in private sector strategic investment, capital flows and business decision-making.
Marxism and Maoism were both, of course, expressions of the communist theory that spilled forth from Karl Marx’s pen in the 19th century, brought to life in the brutal one-party states of the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China under its leader Mao Zedong, before it evolved into “capitalism with Chinese characteristics” starting in the 1970s, around the time of President Richard Nixon’s fateful visit to Beijing.
Both Marxism and Maoism claimed to champion “ordinary people” against corrupt or exploitative elites, while both targeted intellectuals, bureaucrats, and traditionalists, and purged institutions to enforce ideological purity, especially during Stalin’s “Great Terror” and Mao’s “Cultural Revolution.” Both centralized leadership to the point of creating a cult of personality, demanding intense loyalty and the glorification of the sole figure who could fix the country’s problems. Both prized loyalty over expertise, sidelining critics and dissenters in favor of a tightly controlled political narrative. Sound familiar?
The essence of market capitalism is that owners—shareholders and the management they appoint share in the profits. These deals give share of profits to government in return for favors. Friedman said that federal government should never own anything—that it should not run a surplus because it would have funds to invest in the private sector. What strategic decision-making rights would the government have in such deals, then?
So, I have studied all of these things in both comparative economic systems and comparative political systems, as well as Russian and Chinese history courses. If you ever did any of this, you would be as scared as I am. You may also watch the latest South Park episode, where all these institutional leaders line up and gift solid gold and silver gee-gaws to Yam Tits. Once again, dark humor mimics a dark regime.
You may read all the listed evidence at the link. This is not normal. This is heavy-handed interference in all our markets. Evidently, regulation is good if it’s the #FARTUS openly demanding he be cut in on all deals. There are so many things going on that are not normal; all alarms should be blaring loudly by now. “Trump’s FBI Raid of John Bolton’s Home Looks Like a ‘Five-Alarm Fire. Thus far, little is known about Friday’s law enforcement action against a top Trump critic. But we’re seeing an escalation of authoritarian power on many fronts that has grown unmistakable.” This is from the New Republic. It’s written by Greg Sargent.
Whatever we end up learning about the rationale for the FBI’s early-morning raid on former national security adviser John Bolton’s Bethesda, Maryland, home on Friday, there’s plainly a major escalation underway in President Donald Trump’s use of law enforcement to persecute his perceived enemies and entrench his authoritarian power. Consider the pattern:
Assaults targeting individual business leaders
Trump has a long history of targeting individual CEOs in highly vicious, personal terms for perceived offenses. This week, Trump called for the firing of Goldman Sachs’ renowned economist Jan Hatzius who accurately called the 2008 financial crisis over the economist’s concern regarding the tariff overhand on the US economy. He also attacked a top-performing financier, David Solomon, the non-partisan CEO of Goldman Sachs, telling him to quit and just be a disc jockey. (Solomon has a famous side hustle as an electronic dance music DJ, known as DJ D-Sol.)
- The targeting of Bolton, a major critic of Trump, appears to have been personally authorized by Kash Patel. An apparently official leak to the New York Post deliberately underscored Patel’s involvement, probably to make sure it’s understood by Trump’s other enemies. Remember: Trump installed Patel as FBI director for this very purpose. Patel had openly declared in 2023 that “the conspirators,” that is enemies of Trump and MAGA, must be prosecuted, and also that more loyalists with the resolve to see this through would be recruited to carry this out. Bolton was on Patel’s enemies list.
- Trump is now targeting Fed governor Lisa Cook, another proclaimed enemy, and he’s escalating the use of law enforcement and the manipulation of the bureaucracy to do so. Trump loyalist William Pulte, head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, is alleging that Cook committed mortgage fraud, and this has been referred to the Justice Department. Whether or not there’s anything to the fraud claims, they’re minor at best, and it’s already highly suspect that Pulte, an agency head, has taken such an active interest in investigations into individual mortgages that happen to belong to Trump’s highest-profile enemies. Given that Trump personally promoted an article about the referral of the Cook matter to DOJ, Pulte’s move looks even more suspect.
- Tellingly, Trump also heavily promoted the news of another supposedly fraudulent mortgage held by an enemy, Senator Adam Schiff. Schiff flatly denies the charges, yet DOJ is now criminally investigating them. Here again, Trump loyalist Pulte was directly involved in the manufacturing of the pretext for this, and experts say the process employed was dubiously manipulated. The same tactic has been used against New York Attorney General Letitia James, another major Trump foe. The question now is whether the White House is directing Pulte to rummage through the mortgages of Trump enemies for material that can serve as a pretext for potential DOJ prosecutions. It’s hard to imagine something of this magnitude proceeding without the White House’s blessing.
- After protests broke out over Trump’s attempted takeover of the Washington, D.C. police force and his deployment of the National Guard there—which is itself a major escalation—White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller expressly declared that protests would be met with a surge of additional law enforcement and/or military resources. Notably, there’s been no serious effort to reassure Americans that Trump’s militarization of the city, or of Los Angeles, is rooted in benign intentions. In fact, this week Trump suggested he would personally ride through the city with the National Guard. Though he scrapped the plan, that was probably for logistical reasons, and he plainly wants all this military activity in urban centers to be seen as affirmative confirmation of his ongoing consolidation of power.
- Longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon explicitly declared the other day that ICE officers will indeed be employed during the 2026 midterm elections in large numbers to monitor voting booths, again floating undocumented voters as the bullshit pretext to justify it. Bannon is not in a position to compel this, of course, but it’s clear the MAGA movement now sees Trump’s militarization of cities as a precursor to the use of law enforcement and/or the military to intimidate voters in large numbers, or foment a crisis atmosphere designed to help the GOP, or both.
- Last but not least, as we reported, a recent internal Department of Homeland Security memo outlines the hopes of senior DHS officials for substantially escalated military involvement in domestic law enforcement going forward. It even declares that military operations like the one in L.A. may be needed “for years to come.”
The raid of Bolton’s home was authorized by a court, and it is seeking to “determine whether he illegally shared or possessed classified information,” according to The New York Times. Trump told reporters Friday that he’d been unaware of the raid, but responded to it ominously.
WTF is going on? This is not normal. This is not democratic. This is not how our republic is supposed to work. Meanwhile, Donald’s dash for the Nobel Peace Prize is dashed again. Put so played him. This is from Politico. “Trump’s peace bid flops as Kremlin says no plans for Putin-Zelenskyy summit. Moscow obfuscates again in new remarks by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.” Well, inadequate Yam Tits strike again and cost the country more of our hard-earned dollars.
Russia’s top diplomat said Friday the Kremlin is “not ready at all” for a meeting between President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, pouring cold water on U.S. President Donald Trump’s efforts to set up a summit.
Trump announced Monday on social media that he was arranging a bilateral meeting between Zelenskyy and Putin, following crunch talks with European leaders at the White House — but gave scant details.
But Moscow has since been reluctant to commit to a confab between the two leaders, with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov saying Tuesday such a meeting would need to be prepared “step by step, gradually, starting from the expert level and then going through all the necessary stages.”
He sowed further doubt Friday, claiming that Zelenskyy was the one not willing to negotiate by refusing to rule out joining NATO or concede to the Kremlin’s maximalist territorial demands.
“Putin is ready to meet with Zelenskyy when the agenda is ready for a summit, and this agenda is not ready at all,” Lavrov told U.S. channel NBC.
“Zelenskyy said no to everything. … How can we meet with a person who is pretending to be a leader?” he added.
While U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said earlier this week the Russian ruler had agreed to a face-to-face meeting, touting his supposed openness to talks as a breakthrough, European diplomats and leaders have voiced skepticism that Moscow is really interested in ending the war and willing to negotiate in good faith.
“We are forgetting that Russia has not made one single concession, and they are the ones who are the aggressor here,” the EU’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said Friday.
Zelenskyy accused Moscow on Friday of dragging out peace talks in a bid to hold off punishing American sanctions, which Trump has threatened to impose on Russia and its trading partners if the Kremlin does not participate.
#FARTUS is the most corrupt and inept president we’ve ever had. I have no idea how we’re going to survive much more of this. More things from Memeorandum to check out:
- Ian Millhiser / Vox: The Supreme Court hands down some incomprehensible gobbledygook about canceled federal grants — Late Thursday afternoon, the Supreme Court handed down an incomprehensible order concerning the Trump administration’s decision to cancel numerous public health grants.
- Daniel Dale / CNN: Fact check: Trump and the case of the nonexistent $600 billion EU ‘gift’ — Seventeen days ago, President Donald Trump made a dramatic claim in an interview on the business news channel CNBC. As part of his July trade agreement with the European Union, he said, the EU gave the United States …
- New York Times: Noem’s Spending Rule Causes Delays at Homeland Security Dept.
- New York Times: Trump’s Attacks on Institutions Threaten a Bulwark of Economic Strength
Don’t forget, Trump is destroying the Smithsonian, the entire White House, and just about every check and balance enumerated by the U.S. Constitution. You may gag over the Oval Office Changes at Business Insider. His future architectural destruction is outlined in USA Today. It includes the Lincoln Bedroom, and he’s specifically interested in its bathroom. That’s a lot of gag for your buck.
We’re certainly going to get more proof that everything Trump touches dies.
I can’t watch the news much anymore. I think I’ll go watch the Disney Channel now.
What’s on your Reading, Blogging, and Action list today?
#Repeat1968JohnBuss #economics #FARTUS #NobelPrizeEconomics #NobelPrizeForPeace #tariffs #TrumpIsAMarxistMaoist
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Finally Friday Reads: V is for Vendetta, Violence, Vengence, and Victims
“Call out the National Guard!” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I never thought our democracy would collapse so easily and so quickly, yet here we are. Our supposed checks and balances have fallen to incompetence, corruption, and the fear of a tribal cult. I don’t think anyone figured that the Supreme Court would be stacked by sycophants, one of the political parties would surrender its powers to a cult of fascists, and that the executive branch and its functions would be set on destroying itself. Nothing is more symbolic of this than the People’s House being turned into some tacky version of Versailles.
Yet, here we are. The HHS Secretary is crazy and wants to kill us with Voodoo. The DOJ has turned into a vehicle for vengeance. Homeland Security has turned on our citizens and immigrants. Other departments like Education and the EPA are being dismantled. Voodoo economics would be a kind description of the craziness that passes for economic policy.
This is from CNN. “Justice Department opens investigation into New York attorney general who won civil fraud case against Trump.”
The Justice Department has subpoenaed New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office as part of a criminal investigation into President Donald Trump’s long-time adversary, according to multiple sources, in the latest example of the Trump administration taking on the president’s perceived enemies.
Two grand jury subpoenas were issued by the US attorney’s office for the Northern District of New York seeking information about James’ investigations into the Trump Organization and National Rifle Association, the sources said.
A grand jury investigation into James has also convened in Albany, New York, according to a source familiar. The grand jury probe into James is said to be looking into deprivation of rights, which means violating someone’s constitutional rights, against Trump.
The Justice Department declined to comment on the subpoenas and grand jury investigation.
Abbe Lowell, an attorney for James, said, “Investigating the fraud case Attorney General James won against President Trump and his businesses has to be the most blatant and desperate example of this administration’s carrying out the president’s political retribution campaign.”
Lowell added: “Weaponizing the Department of Justice to try to punish an elected official for doing her job is an attack on the rule of law and a dangerous escalation by this administration. If prosecutors carry out this improper tactic and are genuinely interested in the truth, we are ready and waiting with the facts and law.”
Politico‘s Kyle Cheney questions the strategy. “MAGA world swallows a difficult truth: Arresting Trump’s opponents is easier said than done. From the Epstein saga to Texas redistricting, the far right’s bluster about criminal consequences often leads to disappointment.” Here’s hoping he’s right.
The calls from President Donald Trump’s MAGA base are getting noisier: Texas Democrats who fled the state to derail a hyperpartisan GOP redistricting maneuver should be criminally charged, arrested and dragged back to Austin.
Now, it appears the FBI is involved in the hunt.
But those screaming the loudest appear likely to wind up disappointed. There’s no known evidence that the absconding lawmakers have actually broken any federal or state laws, despite Gov. Greg Abbott’s strained suggestion that they may have committed bribery.
It’s a familiar refrain for Trump’s second term: The far right lusts to see prominent Democrats or Trump adversaries hauled off in handcuffs, only to be let down when their revenge fantasies run into reality.
“They voted for that and now they realize they can’t have retribution because it’s not legally sound,” said Gene Rossi, a white collar criminal defense lawyer who spent 30 years at the Justice Department.
This cycle — impetuous promises of criminal consequences followed by dejection when Trump’s enemies aren’t immediately arrested — has already happened with Jack Smith, with James Comey, even with Joe Biden and Barack Obama (and their top advisers). The Trump administration has ordered investigations of all these figures, but legal experts say the probes are largely performative and unlikely to prompt serious or legitimate criminal charges.
It’s also happening, perhaps most profoundly, with MAGA loyalists’ dissatisfaction over the Jeffrey Epstein saga. The base believed Trump would vindicate conspiracy theories about Democrats and other public figures being involved in Epstein’s sex trafficking, leading to a new wave of arrests and prosecutions. That hasn’t materialized.
Brash promises and MAGA backlash
Trump, of course, has long stoked his base’s hunger for criminal reprisals, even dating back to his 2016 “Lock her up” pledge against Hillary Clinton.
He escalated that rhetoric during the 2024 campaign. “I am your retribution,” he promised his supporters.
And ever since he returned to office, administration officials and influential MAGA figures have suggested that high-profile arrests are justified and imminent, often vowing that “justice is coming.”
But both Trump and his base are learning that it’s not simple to round up political opponents, even with Trump loyalists in charge of the Justice Department.
“I want arrest[s] not DOJ people making promises on Fox News,” said Trump-aligned podcaster and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in a recent post on X, which appended a list of MAGA-fueled scandals that have not led to any notable legal consequences.
Jones isn’t alone. A cascade of Trump’s influential backers have wondered aloud why the president and his Justice Department have not delivered the arrests and indictments they crave.
The issue flared most prominently last month when the Justice Department and FBI made the whiplash-inducing admission that the so-called Epstein files do not contain a “client list” of celebrity sex traffickers. The existence of such a list has been an article of faith among MAGA influencers for years, and Trump aides’ efforts to unwind the conspiracy theories have plunged the administration into weeks of turmoil and recriminations.
“What’s the time? Oh look, it’s no-one-has-been-arrested-o’clock again,” Elon Musk wrote in a July 7 post on X.
There’s more of this analysis at the link. All kinds of institutions are failing to hold Yam TIts’ government accountable, even though many court cases stall and constrain him. The Administration has taken to ignoring court orders. Back in mid-July, the Independent provided a report of this strategy. “What order? Trump team ignoring 1 in 3 major judicial rulings against them, analysis finds. Federal judges have accused the Trump administration of resisting court orders in approximately 34 percent of cases.”
Multiple federal court judges have accused the Trump administration of deliberately defying court orders by being slow to respond, misrepresenting facts in filings, and not taking prompt action as President Donald Trump continues an unprecedented campaign to expand his executive authority.
In an analysis of 165 court orders filed against the Trump administration, the Washington Post found that it was accused of resisting court orders in at least 57 of those cases – approximately 34 percent.
Since taking office, Trump has sought to implement his agenda as swiftly as possible, particularly in cases involving his immigration policies and attempts to drastically reduce the federal workforce.
Despite multiple district court judges issuing temporary injunctions to stop the administration from deporting immigrants without due process or sending them to third countries they’ve never been to, filings indicate the administration has continued its efforts.
This has, most notably, occurred in the case involving Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran immigrant who was previously granted permission to remain in the U.S. by a court. The administration inadvertently sent Abrego Garcia to a maximum security prison in El Salvador, under accusations that he was a gang member.
Multiple courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, ordered the administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return, yet officials made no swift efforts – leading to a judge’s admonishment.
“Defendants have failed to respond in good faith, and their refusal to do so can only be viewed as willful and intentional noncompliance,” Judge Paula Xinis, appointed by former president Barack Obama, said after the administration failed to provide updates on how it was returning Abrego Garcia.
It was just one of several immigration cases in which judges have raised concerns about the administration not following orders.
The DOJ’s arguments have not been able to breach the law. Now, the strategy is to stack the Federal Courts as badly as the Supreme Court. This is from NPR. It was published on the same day as the article above. “Is Emil Bove the face of a new MAGA judiciary?” No wonder they also went after funding for NPR. You may listen to the nine-minute analysis at the link. The Alliance for Justice created a huge list of reasons the man should be put on the bench. “10 Reasons Emil Bove Should Not Become a Judge (A Non-Exhaustive List).” However, the Senate has become as bad as the House of Representatives and the man was put on the bench despite protest.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, Chancellor Palpatine shattered the Jedi by taking Anakin Skywalker, a member of the Jedi Council, as his Sith apprentice, Darth Vader. In becoming Palpatine’s apprentice, Vader relinquished his commitment to peace and justice, bowed his knee to power, and became the Emperor’s attack dog. He then used his power to ruthlessly purge Jedis from the Galactic Empire.
In the here and now, fiction may forecast reality, as Emil Bove, a partisan henchman from Trump’s inner circle, is about to be elevated to a lifelong position on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals — not because he embodies qualities that a federal judge should possess, but because he has served as Trump’s personal hit man.
A judgeship on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals is not an obscure role. The Third Circuit decides major cases on civil rights, voting, immigration, and more. Many of its decisions never even reach the Supreme Court. If confirmed, Bove will create a majority of Republican appointees on the Third Circuit, guaranteeing him many opportunities to impose his will on one of the most consequential courts in the country. And yet, the man Trump has nominated has a track record that should disqualify him outright.
Right at the top of the list is this. “He Used the Justice Department for Political Prosecutions,” followed by “He Tramples on Free Speech and Due Process.”
Bove played a central role in turning the Department of Justice into a tool of political retribution. As a senior official under Trump, he helped orchestrate the sudden abandonment of a federal corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams — reportedly because Adams agreed to help implement Trump’s mass deportation plan. At least 10 DOJ attorneys, including some affiliated with the conservative legal movement, resigned in protest of the apparent quid pro quo.
As the acting deputy attorney general at the DOJ, Bove demanded the names of FBI agents investigating the January 6 insurrection so he could punish them for “insubordination.” He also removed experienced prosecutors from the Jan. 6 investigation when they wouldn’t bend to political pressure. That kind of intimidation does not belong anywhere near a courtroom.
He did get appointed thanks to the cowardly acquiescence of Republican Senators. Republicans in Congress are also doing nothing about protecting our Veterans. This is from ProPublica. “Veterans’ Care at Risk Under Trump as Hundreds of Doctors and Nurses Reject Working at VA Hospitals. Amid concerns about the stability of the agency, records show nearly 40% of the doctors offered jobs at the VA from January through March of this year turned them down — quadruple the rate of rejections for the same period a year earlier.”
Veterans hospitals are struggling to replace hundreds of doctors and nurses who have left the health care system this year as the Trump administration pursues its pledge to simultaneously slash Department of Veterans Affairs staff and improve care.
Many job applicants are turning down offers, worried that the positions are not stable and uneasy with the overall direction of the agency, according to internal documents examined by ProPublica. The records show nearly 4 in 10 of the roughly 2,000 doctors offered jobs from January through March of this year turned them down. That is quadruple the rate of doctors rejecting offers during the same time period last year.
The VA in March said it intended to cut its workforce by at least 70,000 people. The news sparked alarm that the cuts would hurt patient care, prompting public reassurances from VA Secretary Doug Collins that front-line health care staff would be immune from the proposed layoffs.
Last month, department officials updated their plans and said they would reduce the workforce by 30,000 by the end of the fiscal year, which is Sept. 30. So many staffers had left voluntarily, the agency said in a press release, that mass layoffs would not be necessary.
“VA is headed in the right direction,” Collins said in a statement.
But a review of hundreds of internal staffing records, along with interviews with veterans and employees, reveal a far less rosy picture of how staffing is affecting veterans’ care.
After six years of adding medical staff, the VA this year is down more than 600 doctors and about 1,900 nurses. The number of doctors on staff has declined each month since President Donald Trump took office. The agency also lost twice as many nurses as it hired between January and June, records viewed by ProPublica show.
In response to questions, a VA spokesperson did not dispute numbers about staff losses at centers across the country but accused ProPublica of bias and of “cherry-picking issues that are mostly routine.”
Agency spokesperson Peter Kasperowicz said that the department is “working to address” the number of doctors declining job offers by speeding up the hiring process and that the agency “has several strategies to navigate shortages,” including referring veterans to private providers and telehealth appointments. A nationwide shortage of health care workers has made hiring and retention difficult, he said.
I watched the latest episode of South Park last night. At least we have them on our side. Here are two articles about the reactions from Noem and Vance. Noem is very thin-skinned despite all the surgical and cosmetic enhancements. This is from Daily Kos. “Poor Kristi Noem doesn’t like ‘South Park’ highlighting her awfulness.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is trying to play the victim after the satirical animated show “South Park” mercilessly mocked her on Wednesday night’s episode.
“It’s so lazy to just constantly make fun of women for how they look. It’s only the liberals and the extremists who do that,” Noem told right-wing podcaster Glenn Beck on Thursday night, referring to how “South Park” made fun of her obviously Botox- and filler-filled face. “If they wanted to criticize my job, go ahead and do that, but clearly, they can’t. They just pick something petty like that.”
Of course, the show made fun of more than just Noem’s looks. It also ridiculed her cringeworthy cosplaying, the fact that she shot and killed her own puppy, and that she’s one of the biggest cheerleaders for President Donald Trump’s evil immigration plan.
But more than that, Noem claiming that only “liberals” make fun of how women look is insane, given that she works for Trump, the king of making crude and disgusting comments about how women look.
Over the years, he’s made fun of pop icon Cher’s plastic surgery, called actor Bette Midler “ugly,” said Angelina Jolie is “not a beauty,” said Rosie O’Donnell has a “fat, ugly face,” and accused MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski of “bleeding badly from a face-lift,” just to name a few.
Here’s JD Vance’s response via the Independent. “JD Vance responds to South Park’s brutal takedown of Trump admin. ‘Well, I’ve finally made it,’ Vance writes on X after mini-version of vice president seen waiting on Trump in animated episode.” They can dish it out, but they can’t take it, as the old saying goes.
Vice President JD Vance took to X on Thursday morning to respond to South Park’s brutal takedown of the Trump administration.
The South Park account shared an image of Vance and President Donald Trump with the caption “Welcome to Mar-a-Lago!”
“Well, I’ve finally made it,” Vance wrote.
The second episode of the 27th season of South Park took aim at the president and many of his colleagues and supporters. At one point, a mini version of the vice president is shown waiting on the president, who’s in bed with Satan.
The episode also includes a parody of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who became known for having shot her own dog. Meanwhile, Cartman imitates conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
The episode outlines the financial struggles of Mr. Mackey after he was laid off from South Park Elementary. Mackey’s banker suggests that he join Immigration and Customs Enforcement because of their good salaries.
Mackey ends up joining ICE, watching an orientation video with Noem, which mocks the fact that she once confessed to killing her own dog.
“A few years ago, I had to put my puppy down by shooting it in the face, because sometimes doing what’s important means doing what’s hard,” she says in the episode before shooting a number of dogs during her ICE orientation speech.
Trump campaign alum Matt Mowers responded to Vance on X, saying being featured on South Park was “A key life milestone appreciated by any millennial.”
Poor Kristi Noem doesn't like 'South Park' highlighting her awfulness https://twp.ai/4ip5ur
— Tuck The Frumpers (@realtuckfrumper.bsky.social) 2025-08-08T17:30:24.000Z
Meanwhile, our foreign policy stinks as bad as the domestic policies. Both Putin and Netanyahu feel empowered to take over whatever they want. This is from Axios. “Even Republicans have questions about Israel’s plan to occupy Gaza City.” The analysis is by Alexand Solender.
Some congressional Republicans are raising questions about Israel’s planned occupation of Gaza City as pro-Israel Democrats push back on the operation with unusual ferocity.
Why it matters: Israel’s coalition of political allies in the U.S. has become scrambled in recent weeks amid a growing humanitarian crisis is Gaza — and a coinciding drop in U.S. public opinion toward Israel.
- Lawmakers sympathetic to Israel are warning that the plan could be a logistical nightmare and warning the country to tread carefully and avoid further alienating the international community.
- It’s not just Democrats questioning the plan. “I’d like to know who is actually going to run it,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee that oversees the Middle East, told Axios.
- Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.), another member of the panel, told Axios: “Occupation for security also comes with the responsibility of providing humanitarian assistance and creating an economic future.”
State of play: The Israeli Security Cabinet on Thursday approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to have the IDF “take control” of Gaza City in an effort to defeat Hamas.
- In addition to occupying Gaza City, which is expected to take months and displace around 1 million Palestinian civilians, the IDF will also be charged with distributing humanitarian aid, Axios’ Barak Ravid reported.
- The IDF’s chief of staff pushed back during the Cabinet meeting, arguing the plan could endanger Israeli hostages in Gaza and lead to protracted Israeli military governance.
- President Trump, who has split with Netanyahu on allegations of famine in Gaza, is not planning to intervene to oppose the operation.
Driving the news: Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.), the chair of the roughly 100-member New Democrat Coalition and a vocal pro-Israel centrist, called the plan “tactically questionable and strategically self-defeating.”
“If implemented, the decision is more likely to play into Hamas’s original objectives in starting this war and further unite much of the world against Israel than it is to bring home the last surviving hostages and advance the security needs of the nation,” Schneider said in a statement.
Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.), one of Democrats’ staunchest Israel backers, said in a statement that Israel is the “ultimate arbiter of its own security” but that “the war in Gaza is in danger of becoming a quagmire.”
Trump is still looking to solve the Russian Invasion of Ukraine, but Putin has him by the balls. This is from Bloomberg. “US and Russia Plan Truce to Cement Putin’s Gains in Ukraine.”
Washington and Moscow are aiming to reach a deal to halt the war in Ukraine that would lock in Russia’s occupation of territory seized during its military invasion, according to people familiar with the matter.
US and Russian officials are working toward an agreement on territories for a planned summit meeting between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin as early as next week, the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations. The US is working to get buy-in from Ukraine and its European allies on the deal, which is far from certain, the people said.
Putin is demanding that Ukraine cede its entire eastern Donbas area to Russia as well as Crimea, which his forces illegally annexed in 2014. That would require Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to order a withdrawal of troops from parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions still held by Kyiv, handing Russia a victory that its army couldn’t achieve militarily since the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Such an outcome would represent a major win for Putin, who has long sought direct negotiations with the US on terms for ending the war that he started, sidelining Ukraine and its European allies. Zelenskiy risks being presented with a take-it-or-leave-it deal to accept the loss of Ukrainian territory, while Europe fears it would be left to monitor a ceasefire as Putin rebuilds his forces
And for all of Trump’s lying about it, The Daily Beast reports that “White House Did Have Secret Talks on Epstein Crisis. Trump had forced JD Vance to deny that a meeting was taking place.” This story is reported by Erikky Foster.
Turns out the Trump administration really did huddle behind closed doors to talk about the Jeffrey Epstein files, despite JD Vance’s public denial.
On Wednesday, the vice president dismissed mounting media reports claiming he was hosting secret Epstein talks at his house.
“It’s completely fake news,” Vance declared. President Donald Trump had told reporters, “I don’t know” and redirected them to the vice president.
Yet, top Trump administration officials did convene to map out next steps regarding the files on the late convicted sex offender, CNN reported, citing a source familiar with the logistics.
The meeting was reportedly relocated from Vance’s D.C. home to the White House. Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel were also in attendance, according to MSNBC.
It’s unclear whether the talks included Vance, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who were initially reported to be joining the dinner at the vice president’s Naval Observatory mansion.
Vance’s supposed involvement in the talks had drawn criticism. Ever since Watergate, the Justice Department has kept criminal investigations separate from White House influence, to prevent any appearance of political interference.
One last story and then I’ll leave you to your weekend. This one from VOX has me screaming. “The White House has a preferred alternative to PBS. It may already be in countless classrooms. How the right-wing network PragerU could fill the void left by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s defunding.” They’ve stuck this abomination in Louisiana classrooms, and there’s nothing truthful in any of its materials.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced last week that it would shut down after Congress voted to claw back over $500 million of federal funding from the organization. The announcement imperils local PBS and NPR stations around the country that have provided news and educational content for kids for nearly half a century.
Amid the stripping of these federal funds, last month, the White House debuted a new educational partner at its launch event for its new Founders Museum exhibit: PragerU, a nonprofit organization that specializes in creating right-leaning educational short videos for adults and children. Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon introduced the partnership, followed by PragerU CEO Marissa Streit.
For the White House exhibit, PragerU created AI-generated videos of the Founding Fathers delivering patriotic accounts of the Revolution. In one, an AI-generated John Adams borrows a catchphrase from conservative pundit Ben Shapiro and tells the viewer, “Facts do not care about our feelings.”
Since its founding in 2009, PragerU has become a juggernaut in the conservative educational media space, with their videos reaching millions of followers across social media. The organization has helped launch the media careers of right-wing figures like Candace Owens. Their popular videos elevate narratives that have been sharply criticized as climate denialist, Islamophobic, and “misleading” about slavery.
PragerU’s partnership with the Department of Education is not the first time the conservative content mill has partnered with the government. Over the past few years, the organization has partnered with states and superintendents throughout the country to make their educational material widely available to public school children and teachers.
Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram spoke with Laura Meckler, national education writer for the Washington Post, about how PragerU partnered with states to bring its content to the classroom and if the organization is poised to fill the educational void left by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
So, I agree with Rachel and Krugman. We’re a fascist state, and I don’t like it at all.
What’s on your Reading, Blogging, and Action List for today?
#Repeat1968JohnBuss #AmericanFascism #DOJToolOfVengence #SouthPark #TrumpStackingCourts
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Finally Friday Reads: V is for Vendetta, Violence, Vengence, and Victims
“Call out the National Guard!” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I never thought our democracy would collapse so easily and so quickly, yet here we are. Our supposed checks and balances have fallen to incompetence, corruption, and the fear of a tribal cult. I don’t think anyone figured that the Supreme Court would be stacked by sycophants, one of the political parties would surrender its powers to a cult of fascists, and that the executive branch and its functions would be set on destroying itself. Nothing is more symbolic of this than the People’s House being turned into some tacky version of Versailles.
Yet, here we are. The HHS Secretary is crazy and wants to kill us with Voodoo. The DOJ has turned into a vehicle for vengeance. Homeland Security has turned on our citizens and immigrants. Other departments like Education and the EPA are being dismantled. Voodoo economics would be a kind description of the craziness that passes for economic policy.
This is from CNN. “Justice Department opens investigation into New York attorney general who won civil fraud case against Trump.”
The Justice Department has subpoenaed New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office as part of a criminal investigation into President Donald Trump’s long-time adversary, according to multiple sources, in the latest example of the Trump administration taking on the president’s perceived enemies.
Two grand jury subpoenas were issued by the US attorney’s office for the Northern District of New York seeking information about James’ investigations into the Trump Organization and National Rifle Association, the sources said.
A grand jury investigation into James has also convened in Albany, New York, according to a source familiar. The grand jury probe into James is said to be looking into deprivation of rights, which means violating someone’s constitutional rights, against Trump.
The Justice Department declined to comment on the subpoenas and grand jury investigation.
Abbe Lowell, an attorney for James, said, “Investigating the fraud case Attorney General James won against President Trump and his businesses has to be the most blatant and desperate example of this administration’s carrying out the president’s political retribution campaign.”
Lowell added: “Weaponizing the Department of Justice to try to punish an elected official for doing her job is an attack on the rule of law and a dangerous escalation by this administration. If prosecutors carry out this improper tactic and are genuinely interested in the truth, we are ready and waiting with the facts and law.”
Politico‘s Kyle Cheney questions the strategy. “MAGA world swallows a difficult truth: Arresting Trump’s opponents is easier said than done. From the Epstein saga to Texas redistricting, the far right’s bluster about criminal consequences often leads to disappointment.” Here’s hoping he’s right.
The calls from President Donald Trump’s MAGA base are getting noisier: Texas Democrats who fled the state to derail a hyperpartisan GOP redistricting maneuver should be criminally charged, arrested and dragged back to Austin.
Now, it appears the FBI is involved in the hunt.
But those screaming the loudest appear likely to wind up disappointed. There’s no known evidence that the absconding lawmakers have actually broken any federal or state laws, despite Gov. Greg Abbott’s strained suggestion that they may have committed bribery.
It’s a familiar refrain for Trump’s second term: The far right lusts to see prominent Democrats or Trump adversaries hauled off in handcuffs, only to be let down when their revenge fantasies run into reality.
“They voted for that and now they realize they can’t have retribution because it’s not legally sound,” said Gene Rossi, a white collar criminal defense lawyer who spent 30 years at the Justice Department.
This cycle — impetuous promises of criminal consequences followed by dejection when Trump’s enemies aren’t immediately arrested — has already happened with Jack Smith, with James Comey, even with Joe Biden and Barack Obama (and their top advisers). The Trump administration has ordered investigations of all these figures, but legal experts say the probes are largely performative and unlikely to prompt serious or legitimate criminal charges.
It’s also happening, perhaps most profoundly, with MAGA loyalists’ dissatisfaction over the Jeffrey Epstein saga. The base believed Trump would vindicate conspiracy theories about Democrats and other public figures being involved in Epstein’s sex trafficking, leading to a new wave of arrests and prosecutions. That hasn’t materialized.
Brash promises and MAGA backlash
Trump, of course, has long stoked his base’s hunger for criminal reprisals, even dating back to his 2016 “Lock her up” pledge against Hillary Clinton.
He escalated that rhetoric during the 2024 campaign. “I am your retribution,” he promised his supporters.
And ever since he returned to office, administration officials and influential MAGA figures have suggested that high-profile arrests are justified and imminent, often vowing that “justice is coming.”
But both Trump and his base are learning that it’s not simple to round up political opponents, even with Trump loyalists in charge of the Justice Department.
“I want arrest[s] not DOJ people making promises on Fox News,” said Trump-aligned podcaster and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in a recent post on X, which appended a list of MAGA-fueled scandals that have not led to any notable legal consequences.
Jones isn’t alone. A cascade of Trump’s influential backers have wondered aloud why the president and his Justice Department have not delivered the arrests and indictments they crave.
The issue flared most prominently last month when the Justice Department and FBI made the whiplash-inducing admission that the so-called Epstein files do not contain a “client list” of celebrity sex traffickers. The existence of such a list has been an article of faith among MAGA influencers for years, and Trump aides’ efforts to unwind the conspiracy theories have plunged the administration into weeks of turmoil and recriminations.
“What’s the time? Oh look, it’s no-one-has-been-arrested-o’clock again,” Elon Musk wrote in a July 7 post on X.
There’s more of this analysis at the link. All kinds of institutions are failing to hold Yam TIts’ government accountable, even though many court cases stall and constrain him. The Administration has taken to ignoring court orders. Back in mid-July, the Independent provided a report of this strategy. “What order? Trump team ignoring 1 in 3 major judicial rulings against them, analysis finds. Federal judges have accused the Trump administration of resisting court orders in approximately 34 percent of cases.”
Multiple federal court judges have accused the Trump administration of deliberately defying court orders by being slow to respond, misrepresenting facts in filings, and not taking prompt action as President Donald Trump continues an unprecedented campaign to expand his executive authority.
In an analysis of 165 court orders filed against the Trump administration, the Washington Post found that it was accused of resisting court orders in at least 57 of those cases – approximately 34 percent.
Since taking office, Trump has sought to implement his agenda as swiftly as possible, particularly in cases involving his immigration policies and attempts to drastically reduce the federal workforce.
Despite multiple district court judges issuing temporary injunctions to stop the administration from deporting immigrants without due process or sending them to third countries they’ve never been to, filings indicate the administration has continued its efforts.
This has, most notably, occurred in the case involving Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran immigrant who was previously granted permission to remain in the U.S. by a court. The administration inadvertently sent Abrego Garcia to a maximum security prison in El Salvador, under accusations that he was a gang member.
Multiple courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, ordered the administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return, yet officials made no swift efforts – leading to a judge’s admonishment.
“Defendants have failed to respond in good faith, and their refusal to do so can only be viewed as willful and intentional noncompliance,” Judge Paula Xinis, appointed by former president Barack Obama, said after the administration failed to provide updates on how it was returning Abrego Garcia.
It was just one of several immigration cases in which judges have raised concerns about the administration not following orders.
The DOJ’s arguments have not been able to breach the law. Now, the strategy is to stack the Federal Courts as badly as the Supreme Court. This is from NPR. It was published on the same day as the article above. “Is Emil Bove the face of a new MAGA judiciary?” No wonder they also went after funding for NPR. You may listen to the nine-minute analysis at the link. The Alliance for Justice created a huge list of reasons the man should be put on the bench. “10 Reasons Emil Bove Should Not Become a Judge (A Non-Exhaustive List).” However, the Senate has become as bad as the House of Representatives and the man was put on the bench despite protest.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, Chancellor Palpatine shattered the Jedi by taking Anakin Skywalker, a member of the Jedi Council, as his Sith apprentice, Darth Vader. In becoming Palpatine’s apprentice, Vader relinquished his commitment to peace and justice, bowed his knee to power, and became the Emperor’s attack dog. He then used his power to ruthlessly purge Jedis from the Galactic Empire.
In the here and now, fiction may forecast reality, as Emil Bove, a partisan henchman from Trump’s inner circle, is about to be elevated to a lifelong position on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals — not because he embodies qualities that a federal judge should possess, but because he has served as Trump’s personal hit man.
A judgeship on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals is not an obscure role. The Third Circuit decides major cases on civil rights, voting, immigration, and more. Many of its decisions never even reach the Supreme Court. If confirmed, Bove will create a majority of Republican appointees on the Third Circuit, guaranteeing him many opportunities to impose his will on one of the most consequential courts in the country. And yet, the man Trump has nominated has a track record that should disqualify him outright.
Right at the top of the list is this. “He Used the Justice Department for Political Prosecutions,” followed by “He Tramples on Free Speech and Due Process.”
Bove played a central role in turning the Department of Justice into a tool of political retribution. As a senior official under Trump, he helped orchestrate the sudden abandonment of a federal corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams — reportedly because Adams agreed to help implement Trump’s mass deportation plan. At least 10 DOJ attorneys, including some affiliated with the conservative legal movement, resigned in protest of the apparent quid pro quo.
As the acting deputy attorney general at the DOJ, Bove demanded the names of FBI agents investigating the January 6 insurrection so he could punish them for “insubordination.” He also removed experienced prosecutors from the Jan. 6 investigation when they wouldn’t bend to political pressure. That kind of intimidation does not belong anywhere near a courtroom.
He did get appointed thanks to the cowardly acquiescence of Republican Senators. Republicans in Congress are also doing nothing about protecting our Veterans. This is from ProPublica. “Veterans’ Care at Risk Under Trump as Hundreds of Doctors and Nurses Reject Working at VA Hospitals. Amid concerns about the stability of the agency, records show nearly 40% of the doctors offered jobs at the VA from January through March of this year turned them down — quadruple the rate of rejections for the same period a year earlier.”
Veterans hospitals are struggling to replace hundreds of doctors and nurses who have left the health care system this year as the Trump administration pursues its pledge to simultaneously slash Department of Veterans Affairs staff and improve care.
Many job applicants are turning down offers, worried that the positions are not stable and uneasy with the overall direction of the agency, according to internal documents examined by ProPublica. The records show nearly 4 in 10 of the roughly 2,000 doctors offered jobs from January through March of this year turned them down. That is quadruple the rate of doctors rejecting offers during the same time period last year.
The VA in March said it intended to cut its workforce by at least 70,000 people. The news sparked alarm that the cuts would hurt patient care, prompting public reassurances from VA Secretary Doug Collins that front-line health care staff would be immune from the proposed layoffs.
Last month, department officials updated their plans and said they would reduce the workforce by 30,000 by the end of the fiscal year, which is Sept. 30. So many staffers had left voluntarily, the agency said in a press release, that mass layoffs would not be necessary.
“VA is headed in the right direction,” Collins said in a statement.
But a review of hundreds of internal staffing records, along with interviews with veterans and employees, reveal a far less rosy picture of how staffing is affecting veterans’ care.
After six years of adding medical staff, the VA this year is down more than 600 doctors and about 1,900 nurses. The number of doctors on staff has declined each month since President Donald Trump took office. The agency also lost twice as many nurses as it hired between January and June, records viewed by ProPublica show.
In response to questions, a VA spokesperson did not dispute numbers about staff losses at centers across the country but accused ProPublica of bias and of “cherry-picking issues that are mostly routine.”
Agency spokesperson Peter Kasperowicz said that the department is “working to address” the number of doctors declining job offers by speeding up the hiring process and that the agency “has several strategies to navigate shortages,” including referring veterans to private providers and telehealth appointments. A nationwide shortage of health care workers has made hiring and retention difficult, he said.
I watched the latest episode of South Park last night. At least we have them on our side. Here are two articles about the reactions from Noem and Vance. Noem is very thin-skinned despite all the surgical and cosmetic enhancements. This is from Daily Kos. “Poor Kristi Noem doesn’t like ‘South Park’ highlighting her awfulness.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is trying to play the victim after the satirical animated show “South Park” mercilessly mocked her on Wednesday night’s episode.
“It’s so lazy to just constantly make fun of women for how they look. It’s only the liberals and the extremists who do that,” Noem told right-wing podcaster Glenn Beck on Thursday night, referring to how “South Park” made fun of her obviously Botox- and filler-filled face. “If they wanted to criticize my job, go ahead and do that, but clearly, they can’t. They just pick something petty like that.”
Of course, the show made fun of more than just Noem’s looks. It also ridiculed her cringeworthy cosplaying, the fact that she shot and killed her own puppy, and that she’s one of the biggest cheerleaders for President Donald Trump’s evil immigration plan.
But more than that, Noem claiming that only “liberals” make fun of how women look is insane, given that she works for Trump, the king of making crude and disgusting comments about how women look.
Over the years, he’s made fun of pop icon Cher’s plastic surgery, called actor Bette Midler “ugly,” said Angelina Jolie is “not a beauty,” said Rosie O’Donnell has a “fat, ugly face,” and accused MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski of “bleeding badly from a face-lift,” just to name a few.
Here’s JD Vance’s response via the Independent. “JD Vance responds to South Park’s brutal takedown of Trump admin. ‘Well, I’ve finally made it,’ Vance writes on X after mini-version of vice president seen waiting on Trump in animated episode.” They can dish it out, but they can’t take it, as the old saying goes.
Vice President JD Vance took to X on Thursday morning to respond to South Park’s brutal takedown of the Trump administration.
The South Park account shared an image of Vance and President Donald Trump with the caption “Welcome to Mar-a-Lago!”
“Well, I’ve finally made it,” Vance wrote.
The second episode of the 27th season of South Park took aim at the president and many of his colleagues and supporters. At one point, a mini version of the vice president is shown waiting on the president, who’s in bed with Satan.
The episode also includes a parody of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who became known for having shot her own dog. Meanwhile, Cartman imitates conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
The episode outlines the financial struggles of Mr. Mackey after he was laid off from South Park Elementary. Mackey’s banker suggests that he join Immigration and Customs Enforcement because of their good salaries.
Mackey ends up joining ICE, watching an orientation video with Noem, which mocks the fact that she once confessed to killing her own dog.
“A few years ago, I had to put my puppy down by shooting it in the face, because sometimes doing what’s important means doing what’s hard,” she says in the episode before shooting a number of dogs during her ICE orientation speech.
Trump campaign alum Matt Mowers responded to Vance on X, saying being featured on South Park was “A key life milestone appreciated by any millennial.”
Poor Kristi Noem doesn't like 'South Park' highlighting her awfulness https://twp.ai/4ip5ur
— Tuck The Frumpers (@realtuckfrumper.bsky.social) 2025-08-08T17:30:24.000Z
Meanwhile, our foreign policy stinks as bad as the domestic policies. Both Putin and Netanyahu feel empowered to take over whatever they want. This is from Axios. “Even Republicans have questions about Israel’s plan to occupy Gaza City.” The analysis is by Alexand Solender.
Some congressional Republicans are raising questions about Israel’s planned occupation of Gaza City as pro-Israel Democrats push back on the operation with unusual ferocity.
Why it matters: Israel’s coalition of political allies in the U.S. has become scrambled in recent weeks amid a growing humanitarian crisis is Gaza — and a coinciding drop in U.S. public opinion toward Israel.
- Lawmakers sympathetic to Israel are warning that the plan could be a logistical nightmare and warning the country to tread carefully and avoid further alienating the international community.
- It’s not just Democrats questioning the plan. “I’d like to know who is actually going to run it,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee that oversees the Middle East, told Axios.
- Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.), another member of the panel, told Axios: “Occupation for security also comes with the responsibility of providing humanitarian assistance and creating an economic future.”
State of play: The Israeli Security Cabinet on Thursday approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to have the IDF “take control” of Gaza City in an effort to defeat Hamas.
- In addition to occupying Gaza City, which is expected to take months and displace around 1 million Palestinian civilians, the IDF will also be charged with distributing humanitarian aid, Axios’ Barak Ravid reported.
- The IDF’s chief of staff pushed back during the Cabinet meeting, arguing the plan could endanger Israeli hostages in Gaza and lead to protracted Israeli military governance.
- President Trump, who has split with Netanyahu on allegations of famine in Gaza, is not planning to intervene to oppose the operation.
Driving the news: Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.), the chair of the roughly 100-member New Democrat Coalition and a vocal pro-Israel centrist, called the plan “tactically questionable and strategically self-defeating.”
“If implemented, the decision is more likely to play into Hamas’s original objectives in starting this war and further unite much of the world against Israel than it is to bring home the last surviving hostages and advance the security needs of the nation,” Schneider said in a statement.
Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.), one of Democrats’ staunchest Israel backers, said in a statement that Israel is the “ultimate arbiter of its own security” but that “the war in Gaza is in danger of becoming a quagmire.”
Trump is still looking to solve the Russian Invasion of Ukraine, but Putin has him by the balls. This is from Bloomberg. “US and Russia Plan Truce to Cement Putin’s Gains in Ukraine.”
Washington and Moscow are aiming to reach a deal to halt the war in Ukraine that would lock in Russia’s occupation of territory seized during its military invasion, according to people familiar with the matter.
US and Russian officials are working toward an agreement on territories for a planned summit meeting between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin as early as next week, the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations. The US is working to get buy-in from Ukraine and its European allies on the deal, which is far from certain, the people said.
Putin is demanding that Ukraine cede its entire eastern Donbas area to Russia as well as Crimea, which his forces illegally annexed in 2014. That would require Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to order a withdrawal of troops from parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions still held by Kyiv, handing Russia a victory that its army couldn’t achieve militarily since the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Such an outcome would represent a major win for Putin, who has long sought direct negotiations with the US on terms for ending the war that he started, sidelining Ukraine and its European allies. Zelenskiy risks being presented with a take-it-or-leave-it deal to accept the loss of Ukrainian territory, while Europe fears it would be left to monitor a ceasefire as Putin rebuilds his forces
And for all of Trump’s lying about it, The Daily Beast reports that “White House Did Have Secret Talks on Epstein Crisis. Trump had forced JD Vance to deny that a meeting was taking place.” This story is reported by Erikky Foster.
Turns out the Trump administration really did huddle behind closed doors to talk about the Jeffrey Epstein files, despite JD Vance’s public denial.
On Wednesday, the vice president dismissed mounting media reports claiming he was hosting secret Epstein talks at his house.
“It’s completely fake news,” Vance declared. President Donald Trump had told reporters, “I don’t know” and redirected them to the vice president.
Yet, top Trump administration officials did convene to map out next steps regarding the files on the late convicted sex offender, CNN reported, citing a source familiar with the logistics.
The meeting was reportedly relocated from Vance’s D.C. home to the White House. Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel were also in attendance, according to MSNBC.
It’s unclear whether the talks included Vance, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who were initially reported to be joining the dinner at the vice president’s Naval Observatory mansion.
Vance’s supposed involvement in the talks had drawn criticism. Ever since Watergate, the Justice Department has kept criminal investigations separate from White House influence, to prevent any appearance of political interference.
One last story and then I’ll leave you to your weekend. This one from VOX has me screaming. “The White House has a preferred alternative to PBS. It may already be in countless classrooms. How the right-wing network PragerU could fill the void left by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s defunding.” They’ve stuck this abomination in Louisiana classrooms, and there’s nothing truthful in any of its materials.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced last week that it would shut down after Congress voted to claw back over $500 million of federal funding from the organization. The announcement imperils local PBS and NPR stations around the country that have provided news and educational content for kids for nearly half a century.
Amid the stripping of these federal funds, last month, the White House debuted a new educational partner at its launch event for its new Founders Museum exhibit: PragerU, a nonprofit organization that specializes in creating right-leaning educational short videos for adults and children. Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon introduced the partnership, followed by PragerU CEO Marissa Streit.
For the White House exhibit, PragerU created AI-generated videos of the Founding Fathers delivering patriotic accounts of the Revolution. In one, an AI-generated John Adams borrows a catchphrase from conservative pundit Ben Shapiro and tells the viewer, “Facts do not care about our feelings.”
Since its founding in 2009, PragerU has become a juggernaut in the conservative educational media space, with their videos reaching millions of followers across social media. The organization has helped launch the media careers of right-wing figures like Candace Owens. Their popular videos elevate narratives that have been sharply criticized as climate denialist, Islamophobic, and “misleading” about slavery.
PragerU’s partnership with the Department of Education is not the first time the conservative content mill has partnered with the government. Over the past few years, the organization has partnered with states and superintendents throughout the country to make their educational material widely available to public school children and teachers.
Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram spoke with Laura Meckler, national education writer for the Washington Post, about how PragerU partnered with states to bring its content to the classroom and if the organization is poised to fill the educational void left by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
So, I agree with Rachel and Krugman. We’re a fascist state, and I don’t like it at all.
What’s on your Reading, Blogging, and Action List for today?
#Repeat1968JohnBuss #AmericanFascism #DOJToolOfVengence #SouthPark #TrumpStackingCourts
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Finally Friday Reads: It’s late but I took some ME time
“Well, I don’t know why I came here tonight
I’ve got the feeling that something ain’t right
I’m so scared in case I fall off my chair
And I’m wondering how I’ll get down the stairs” John Buss, Repeat1968 with h.t t;o Stealers WheelsGood Day, Sky Dancers!
I took some time today to enjoy a friend from FDL, sushi from Lin’s at St Roch Market, and the Bywater and Marigny right up to the edge of the Quarter. The only way to explore my neighborhood is by foot or by bus. That way, you really get to know us. The stores on LA49 (better known as St. Claude Avenue) are small, locally owned, and full of surprises. I don’t think I can ever emphasize how much I love this city. It’s probably why I stay here and don’t go elsewhere anymore. I first discovered this because when I ventured around the state or country, I had dreams about not being able to find or go home, which ended immediately when I opened the front door. I really wish you this feeling. It’s amazing.
It gave me a breath from reading stuff today. So, here I go, right into the thick of it. This is from Dr. Paul Krugman’s Substack. “The Third-Worlding of America. How to destroy 80 years of credibility in less than 3 months.” Like all excellent economists, he’s got charts and numbers to prove it. I got all these degrees to help people understand financial markets and economic policy. Now, I live with knowledge; I just pray it still empowers people, even if it feels disheartening today.
Remarkably, the sanewashing continues despite the unprecedented craziness of the past 10 days. Many observers assert that Trump has backed down on tariffs and will speedily make a bunch of trade deals. The first assertion is just false, while the second is very unlikely.
In fact, savvy traders have realized that there’s no coherent economic strategy. There’s an old line about military analysis: “Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals talk about logistics.” Well, when it comes to taking the pulse of financial markets, amateurs talk about stocks, but professionals talk about bond and currency markets. That’s because bond and currency markets are generally less driven by emotion. There’s no “meme gambling investing” in bond and currency markets. And these markets are both signaling major loss of faith in America.
First, about tariffs: It’s true that for the time being Trump has scaled back some of the tariffs displayed on his big piece of cardboard last week. For example, unless we have another policy swerve, the European Union will now face a 10 percent tariff over the next three months rather than a 20 percent tariff. But the tariff on China, our third-biggest trading partner after Canada and Mexico, has gone from 34 percent to more than 130 percent. And we still have high tariffs on steel, aluminum and so on. In effect, observers who claim that tariffs have gone down are missing the biggest part of the story.
Economists who have actually run the numbers, like those at the Yale Budget Lab, estimate that the April 9 tariff regime will raise consumer prices more than the April 2 regime because of the extraordinarily high tariff rate on Chinese imports. Specifically, the budget lab estimates that the latest version of Trump’s trade war will raise consumer prices by 2.9 percent. This is roughly ten times the probable impact of the infamous Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930.
It’s hard to overstate the craziness of announcing a radical tariff plan, then announcing a quite different but equally radical plan just a week later. Furthermore, the claim that the wild zigzags in policy were always part of Trump’s plan just adds to the destruction of the administration’s credibility.
But are these tariffs just an opening gambit for trade negotiations? I doubt it. Bear in mind that Trump and Peter Navarro, his tariff guru, start from the premise that other countries are cheating, that they’re taking advantage of America and treating us unfairly. In fact, however, most of them aren’t. Take the case of the European Union. The EU imposes an average tariff on U.S. goods of just 1.7%, and there aren’t any significant hidden barriers.
So what are we supposed to be negotiating about? Nations can’t promise to lower their trade barriers when there aren’t any barriers. Navarro has been claiming that value-added taxes are de facto tariffs, but they aren’t, and EU nations literally can’t afford to give them up.
I guess other countries might make fake concessions that Trump can claim as fake victories. This is what he did with China during his first term, claiming that it had made significant concessions — claims which were, in the end, false. In fact, American soybean farmers have never fully recovered the loss of market share. And remember too how Trump made minor changes to NAFTA and claimed to have negotiated a whole new trade pact.
However, Trump is now clearly high on his own supply. Even with the April 9 tariff regime, Trump is imposing high tariff rates on our three largest trading partners. Currency and bond market traders — no fools they — are certainly not acting as if we’re on a path to successful deals.
The Chinese are pranking Trump today. This is from the Washington Post. “China raises tariffs on U.S. goods to 125 percent as trade war deepens. Beijing hit back in response to the Trump administration’s move to raise tariffs on Chinese goods to 145 percent, saying it would “fight to the end.” They can afford to. They’re making deals with South Korea and Japan, among other countries. The only group this is hurting is US importers and Exporters. This includes farmers.
The response underscored China’s decision to stand firm in the face of pressure from Washington and deepened the showdown between the world’s two largest economies.
“If the U.S. insists on substantively damaging China’s interests, China will firmly retaliate and fight to the end,” China’sState Council said in a statement.
The move came after Trump increased the levies on Chinese goods to 145 percent on Wednesday, while also announcing that the tariffs he had previously imposed on more than six dozen other countries would be fixed at 10 percent during a 90-day pause.
The State Council derided Trump’s move to continue ratcheting up the levies and said it would ignore further hikes. The tariffs are a “joke” and “no longer have any economic significance,” its statement said, because the current levels make U.S. exports to China not financially viable. The new Chinese tariffs, which increased from 84 percent, are effective Saturday.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping, in a meeting with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on Friday, stressed that trade wars have no winners and called for China and Europe to “jointly oppose unilateral bullying,” according to state media. European leaders also emphasized the damaging effects of uncertainty beyond the 90-day pause.
Experts in Beijing expressed concern about the latest turn in tensions with Washington. “U.S.-China trade will soon be almost nonexistent,” said Shi Yinhong, an international relations professor at China’s Renmin University. “To ease tensions, Trump must first make concessions.”
Turmoil over tariffs drove fluctuations in global markets on Friday.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 and Topix indexes dropped by5percent, before trimming their losses to under 3 percent by market close. South Korea’s Kospi and Australia’s ASX 200 fell by less than1 percent, while Taiwan’s bourse kicked off the day with a fall of under 1 percent before logging a 2.5 percent gain. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index and China’s Shanghai composite index were mostly flat, with the Hang Seng closing just over 1 per cent higher.
Major European markets fell slightly after opening on Friday, following rebounds the previous day. By 6 a.m. Eastern time, Germany’s DAX was down 1.62 percent, France’s benchmark CAC fell by 1.11 percent and London’s FTSE 100 was down around 0.3 percent.
It’s almost as if… and stay with me now… It’s almost as if Republicans aren’t as good at the economy as they claim to be! 🤷♂️
CNN has this headline today for a story written by Ella Nilsen. “Trump’s budget plan eviscerates weather and climate research, and it could be enacted immediately.” I guess I better hurry to put that Weather Station up in the Pergalo.
The Trump administration intends to eliminate the research arm of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, close all weather and climate labs and eviscerate its budget along with several other NOAA offices, according to internal documents obtained by CNN.
The documents describe the administration’s budget proposal for 2026, but indicate the administration expects the agency to enact the changes immediately.
The cuts would devastate weather and climate research as weather is becoming more erratic, extreme and costly. It would cripple the US industries — including agriculture — that depend on free, accurate weather and climate data and expert analysis. It could also halt research on deadly weather, including severe storms and tornadoes.
The administration intends to make significant cuts to education, grants, research and climate-related programs in NOAA, the plan says, which the administration believes “are misaligned with the … expressed will of the American people.”
While the phrase “climate change” refers to the manmade influence on the global climate system via planet-warming fossil fuel pollution, “climate” in NOAA parlance is simply the weather that has been observed over time.
CNN has reached out to the White House and the Department of Commerce, which houses NOAA, for comment on the plan.
Additionally, NASA is on the chopping block! Does this include all that money going to Elonia? This is from ars TECHICA‘s Eric Berger. “Trump White House budget proposal eviscerates science funding at NASA. “This would decimate American leadership in space.” #FARTUS seems dead set on sending us back to the Gilded Age. Even the best of the Modern Era is about to be erased.
This week, as part of the process to develop a budget for fiscal-year 2026, the Trump White House shared the draft version of its budget request for NASA with the space agency.
This initial version of the administration’s budget request calls for an approximately 20 percent overall cut to the agency’s budget across the board, effectively $5 billion from an overall topline of about $25 billion. However, the majority of the cuts are concentrated within the agency’s Science Mission Directorate, which oversees all planetary science, Earth science, astrophysics research, and more.
According to the “passback” documents given to NASA officials on Thursday, the space agency’s science programs would receive nearly a 50 percent cut in funding. After the agency received $7.5 billion for science in fiscal-year 2025, the Trump administration has proposed a science topline budget of just $3.9 billion for the coming fiscal year.
Among the proposals were: A two-thirds cut to astrophysics, down to $487 million; a greater than two-thirds cut to heliophysics, down to $455 million; a greater than 50 percent cut to Earth science, down to $1.033 billion; and a 30 percent cut to Planetary science, down to $1.929 billion.
Although the budget would continue support for ongoing missions such as the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope, it would kill the much-anticipated Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, an observatory seen as on par with those two world-class instruments that is already fully assembled and on budget for a launch in two years.
We’re also unlikely to see other countries send their best and brightest to our US Universities with all this craziness. As some with with multiple degrees and ones that aren’t that easy to achieve, I would just like to say that my teachers, my students and grad assistants, and my colleagues and fellow students were consistently the best part of higher education school. I owe so much of my math chops to fellow students from India, Iran, Hong Kong, Turkey, and Taiwan. Both of my Doctorate advisors came here as students. One from India. The other is from Bangladesh. This brain drain will put us on the road to mediocrity.
This is from the AP. “Immigration judge finds that Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil can be deported.”
Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil can be kicked out of the U.S. as a national security risk, an immigration judge in Louisiana found Friday during a hearing over the legality of deporting the activist who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
The government’s contention that Khalil’s presence in the United States posed “potentially serious foreign policy consequences” was enough to satisfy requirements for his deportation, Immigration Judge Jamee E. Comans said at the conclusion of a hearing in Jena.
Comans said the government had “established by clear and convincing evidence that he is removable.”
Lawyers for Khalil said they plan to keep fighting. The judge gave them until April 23 to seek a waiver. Meanwhile, a federal judge in New Jersey temporarily barred Khalil’s deportation.
Addressing the judge at the end of the hearing, Khalil mentioned that she said at a hearing earlier in the week that “there’s nothing more important to this court than due process rights and fundamental fairness.”
Let me just say that Jena, Louisiana, is a hell realm.
I don’t believe you is above contempt?! Right
— T GauthierⓂ️Ⓜ️🦋🦮🦮🦮 (@1redcupcake.bsky.social) 2025-04-11T21:09:49.330Z
Is it a Constitutional Crisis Yet, Momma? Brad Reed has that Raw Story headline.
The United States Department of Justice said on Friday that it will not comply with an order from Judge Paula Xinis to reveal information on the whereabouts and status of deported immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
As reported by Politico’s Kyle Cheney on BlueSky, the DOJ information Judge Xinis that it would not be able to provide the information she requested on Garcia because the court set an “impracticable” deadline to do so.
Judge Xinis had originally demanded that the DOJ provide information about Garcia’s status by 9:30 a.m. on Friday after the United States Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration needed to facilitate bringing him back from the prison in El Salvador where he had been sent improperly.
The judge extended the deadline to 11:30 a.m. on Friday morning and scheduled a court hearing on the case for 1 p.m.
So, I hope you’re trying to stay positive and calm. I’m going to go walk Temple and feed the kitties. That’s something I can do right now without feeling depressed.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMAIsqvTh7g
#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #Repeat1968JohnBuss #DisastrousDon #economicImpactOfFARTUSTariffs #kakistocracy #MarketsContinueToCrash
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Finally Friday Reads: It’s late but I took some ME time
“Well, I don’t know why I came here tonight
I’ve got the feeling that something ain’t right
I’m so scared in case I fall off my chair
And I’m wondering how I’ll get down the stairs” John Buss, Repeat1968 with h.t t;o Stealers WheelsGood Day, Sky Dancers!
I took some time today to enjoy a friend from FDL, sushi from Lin’s at St Roch Market, and the Bywater and Marigny right up to the edge of the Quarter. The only way to explore my neighborhood is by foot or by bus. That way, you really get to know us. The stores on LA49 (better known as St. Claude Avenue) are small, locally owned, and full of surprises. I don’t think I can ever emphasize how much I love this city. It’s probably why I stay here and don’t go elsewhere anymore. I first discovered this because when I ventured around the state or country, I had dreams about not being able to find or go home, which ended immediately when I opened the front door. I really wish you this feeling. It’s amazing.
It gave me a breath from reading stuff today. So, here I go, right into the thick of it. This is from Dr. Paul Krugman’s Substack. “The Third-Worlding of America. How to destroy 80 years of credibility in less than 3 months.” Like all excellent economists, he’s got charts and numbers to prove it. I got all these degrees to help people understand financial markets and economic policy. Now, I live with knowledge; I just pray it still empowers people, even if it feels disheartening today.
Remarkably, the sanewashing continues despite the unprecedented craziness of the past 10 days. Many observers assert that Trump has backed down on tariffs and will speedily make a bunch of trade deals. The first assertion is just false, while the second is very unlikely.
In fact, savvy traders have realized that there’s no coherent economic strategy. There’s an old line about military analysis: “Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals talk about logistics.” Well, when it comes to taking the pulse of financial markets, amateurs talk about stocks, but professionals talk about bond and currency markets. That’s because bond and currency markets are generally less driven by emotion. There’s no “meme gambling investing” in bond and currency markets. And these markets are both signaling major loss of faith in America.
First, about tariffs: It’s true that for the time being Trump has scaled back some of the tariffs displayed on his big piece of cardboard last week. For example, unless we have another policy swerve, the European Union will now face a 10 percent tariff over the next three months rather than a 20 percent tariff. But the tariff on China, our third-biggest trading partner after Canada and Mexico, has gone from 34 percent to more than 130 percent. And we still have high tariffs on steel, aluminum and so on. In effect, observers who claim that tariffs have gone down are missing the biggest part of the story.
Economists who have actually run the numbers, like those at the Yale Budget Lab, estimate that the April 9 tariff regime will raise consumer prices more than the April 2 regime because of the extraordinarily high tariff rate on Chinese imports. Specifically, the budget lab estimates that the latest version of Trump’s trade war will raise consumer prices by 2.9 percent. This is roughly ten times the probable impact of the infamous Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930.
It’s hard to overstate the craziness of announcing a radical tariff plan, then announcing a quite different but equally radical plan just a week later. Furthermore, the claim that the wild zigzags in policy were always part of Trump’s plan just adds to the destruction of the administration’s credibility.
But are these tariffs just an opening gambit for trade negotiations? I doubt it. Bear in mind that Trump and Peter Navarro, his tariff guru, start from the premise that other countries are cheating, that they’re taking advantage of America and treating us unfairly. In fact, however, most of them aren’t. Take the case of the European Union. The EU imposes an average tariff on U.S. goods of just 1.7%, and there aren’t any significant hidden barriers.
So what are we supposed to be negotiating about? Nations can’t promise to lower their trade barriers when there aren’t any barriers. Navarro has been claiming that value-added taxes are de facto tariffs, but they aren’t, and EU nations literally can’t afford to give them up.
I guess other countries might make fake concessions that Trump can claim as fake victories. This is what he did with China during his first term, claiming that it had made significant concessions — claims which were, in the end, false. In fact, American soybean farmers have never fully recovered the loss of market share. And remember too how Trump made minor changes to NAFTA and claimed to have negotiated a whole new trade pact.
However, Trump is now clearly high on his own supply. Even with the April 9 tariff regime, Trump is imposing high tariff rates on our three largest trading partners. Currency and bond market traders — no fools they — are certainly not acting as if we’re on a path to successful deals.
The Chinese are pranking Trump today. This is from the Washington Post. “China raises tariffs on U.S. goods to 125 percent as trade war deepens. Beijing hit back in response to the Trump administration’s move to raise tariffs on Chinese goods to 145 percent, saying it would “fight to the end.” They can afford to. They’re making deals with South Korea and Japan, among other countries. The only group this is hurting is US importers and Exporters. This includes farmers.
The response underscored China’s decision to stand firm in the face of pressure from Washington and deepened the showdown between the world’s two largest economies.
“If the U.S. insists on substantively damaging China’s interests, China will firmly retaliate and fight to the end,” China’sState Council said in a statement.
The move came after Trump increased the levies on Chinese goods to 145 percent on Wednesday, while also announcing that the tariffs he had previously imposed on more than six dozen other countries would be fixed at 10 percent during a 90-day pause.
The State Council derided Trump’s move to continue ratcheting up the levies and said it would ignore further hikes. The tariffs are a “joke” and “no longer have any economic significance,” its statement said, because the current levels make U.S. exports to China not financially viable. The new Chinese tariffs, which increased from 84 percent, are effective Saturday.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping, in a meeting with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on Friday, stressed that trade wars have no winners and called for China and Europe to “jointly oppose unilateral bullying,” according to state media. European leaders also emphasized the damaging effects of uncertainty beyond the 90-day pause.
Experts in Beijing expressed concern about the latest turn in tensions with Washington. “U.S.-China trade will soon be almost nonexistent,” said Shi Yinhong, an international relations professor at China’s Renmin University. “To ease tensions, Trump must first make concessions.”
Turmoil over tariffs drove fluctuations in global markets on Friday.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 and Topix indexes dropped by5percent, before trimming their losses to under 3 percent by market close. South Korea’s Kospi and Australia’s ASX 200 fell by less than1 percent, while Taiwan’s bourse kicked off the day with a fall of under 1 percent before logging a 2.5 percent gain. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index and China’s Shanghai composite index were mostly flat, with the Hang Seng closing just over 1 per cent higher.
Major European markets fell slightly after opening on Friday, following rebounds the previous day. By 6 a.m. Eastern time, Germany’s DAX was down 1.62 percent, France’s benchmark CAC fell by 1.11 percent and London’s FTSE 100 was down around 0.3 percent.
It’s almost as if… and stay with me now… It’s almost as if Republicans aren’t as good at the economy as they claim to be! 🤷♂️
CNN has this headline today for a story written by Ella Nilsen. “Trump’s budget plan eviscerates weather and climate research, and it could be enacted immediately.” I guess I better hurry to put that Weather Station up in the Pergalo.
The Trump administration intends to eliminate the research arm of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, close all weather and climate labs and eviscerate its budget along with several other NOAA offices, according to internal documents obtained by CNN.
The documents describe the administration’s budget proposal for 2026, but indicate the administration expects the agency to enact the changes immediately.
The cuts would devastate weather and climate research as weather is becoming more erratic, extreme and costly. It would cripple the US industries — including agriculture — that depend on free, accurate weather and climate data and expert analysis. It could also halt research on deadly weather, including severe storms and tornadoes.
The administration intends to make significant cuts to education, grants, research and climate-related programs in NOAA, the plan says, which the administration believes “are misaligned with the … expressed will of the American people.”
While the phrase “climate change” refers to the manmade influence on the global climate system via planet-warming fossil fuel pollution, “climate” in NOAA parlance is simply the weather that has been observed over time.
CNN has reached out to the White House and the Department of Commerce, which houses NOAA, for comment on the plan.
Additionally, NASA is on the chopping block! Does this include all that money going to Elonia? This is from ars TECHICA‘s Eric Berger. “Trump White House budget proposal eviscerates science funding at NASA. “This would decimate American leadership in space.” #FARTUS seems dead set on sending us back to the Gilded Age. Even the best of the Modern Era is about to be erased.
This week, as part of the process to develop a budget for fiscal-year 2026, the Trump White House shared the draft version of its budget request for NASA with the space agency.
This initial version of the administration’s budget request calls for an approximately 20 percent overall cut to the agency’s budget across the board, effectively $5 billion from an overall topline of about $25 billion. However, the majority of the cuts are concentrated within the agency’s Science Mission Directorate, which oversees all planetary science, Earth science, astrophysics research, and more.
According to the “passback” documents given to NASA officials on Thursday, the space agency’s science programs would receive nearly a 50 percent cut in funding. After the agency received $7.5 billion for science in fiscal-year 2025, the Trump administration has proposed a science topline budget of just $3.9 billion for the coming fiscal year.
Among the proposals were: A two-thirds cut to astrophysics, down to $487 million; a greater than two-thirds cut to heliophysics, down to $455 million; a greater than 50 percent cut to Earth science, down to $1.033 billion; and a 30 percent cut to Planetary science, down to $1.929 billion.
Although the budget would continue support for ongoing missions such as the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope, it would kill the much-anticipated Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, an observatory seen as on par with those two world-class instruments that is already fully assembled and on budget for a launch in two years.
We’re also unlikely to see other countries send their best and brightest to our US Universities with all this craziness. As some with with multiple degrees and ones that aren’t that easy to achieve, I would just like to say that my teachers, my students and grad assistants, and my colleagues and fellow students were consistently the best part of higher education school. I owe so much of my math chops to fellow students from India, Iran, Hong Kong, Turkey, and Taiwan. Both of my Doctorate advisors came here as students. One from India. The other is from Bangladesh. This brain drain will put us on the road to mediocrity.
This is from the AP. “Immigration judge finds that Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil can be deported.”
Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil can be kicked out of the U.S. as a national security risk, an immigration judge in Louisiana found Friday during a hearing over the legality of deporting the activist who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
The government’s contention that Khalil’s presence in the United States posed “potentially serious foreign policy consequences” was enough to satisfy requirements for his deportation, Immigration Judge Jamee E. Comans said at the conclusion of a hearing in Jena.
Comans said the government had “established by clear and convincing evidence that he is removable.”
Lawyers for Khalil said they plan to keep fighting. The judge gave them until April 23 to seek a waiver. Meanwhile, a federal judge in New Jersey temporarily barred Khalil’s deportation.
Addressing the judge at the end of the hearing, Khalil mentioned that she said at a hearing earlier in the week that “there’s nothing more important to this court than due process rights and fundamental fairness.”
Let me just say that Jena, Louisiana, is a hell realm.
I don’t believe you is above contempt?! Right
— T GauthierⓂ️Ⓜ️🦋🦮🦮🦮 (@1redcupcake.bsky.social) 2025-04-11T21:09:49.330Z
Is it a Constitutional Crisis Yet, Momma? Brad Reed has that Raw Story headline.
The United States Department of Justice said on Friday that it will not comply with an order from Judge Paula Xinis to reveal information on the whereabouts and status of deported immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
As reported by Politico’s Kyle Cheney on BlueSky, the DOJ information Judge Xinis that it would not be able to provide the information she requested on Garcia because the court set an “impracticable” deadline to do so.
Judge Xinis had originally demanded that the DOJ provide information about Garcia’s status by 9:30 a.m. on Friday after the United States Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration needed to facilitate bringing him back from the prison in El Salvador where he had been sent improperly.
The judge extended the deadline to 11:30 a.m. on Friday morning and scheduled a court hearing on the case for 1 p.m.
So, I hope you’re trying to stay positive and calm. I’m going to go walk Temple and feed the kitties. That’s something I can do right now without feeling depressed.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMAIsqvTh7g
#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #Repeat1968JohnBuss #DisastrousDon #economicImpactOfFARTUSTariffs #kakistocracy #MarketsContinueToCrash
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Finally Friday Reads: It’s late but I took some ME time
“Well, I don’t know why I came here tonight
I’ve got the feeling that something ain’t right
I’m so scared in case I fall off my chair
And I’m wondering how I’ll get down the stairs” John Buss, Repeat1968 with h.t t;o Stealers WheelsGood Day, Sky Dancers!
I took some time today to enjoy a friend from FDL, sushi from Lin’s at St Roch Market, and the Bywater and Marigny right up to the edge of the Quarter. The only way to explore my neighborhood is by foot or by bus. That way, you really get to know us. The stores on LA49 (better known as St. Claude Avenue) are small, locally owned, and full of surprises. I don’t think I can ever emphasize how much I love this city. It’s probably why I stay here and don’t go elsewhere anymore. I first discovered this because when I ventured around the state or country, I had dreams about not being able to find or go home, which ended immediately when I opened the front door. I really wish you this feeling. It’s amazing.
It gave me a breath from reading stuff today. So, here I go, right into the thick of it. This is from Dr. Paul Krugman’s Substack. “The Third-Worlding of America. How to destroy 80 years of credibility in less than 3 months.” Like all excellent economists, he’s got charts and numbers to prove it. I got all these degrees to help people understand financial markets and economic policy. Now, I live with knowledge; I just pray it still empowers people, even if it feels disheartening today.
Remarkably, the sanewashing continues despite the unprecedented craziness of the past 10 days. Many observers assert that Trump has backed down on tariffs and will speedily make a bunch of trade deals. The first assertion is just false, while the second is very unlikely.
In fact, savvy traders have realized that there’s no coherent economic strategy. There’s an old line about military analysis: “Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals talk about logistics.” Well, when it comes to taking the pulse of financial markets, amateurs talk about stocks, but professionals talk about bond and currency markets. That’s because bond and currency markets are generally less driven by emotion. There’s no “meme gambling investing” in bond and currency markets. And these markets are both signaling major loss of faith in America.
First, about tariffs: It’s true that for the time being Trump has scaled back some of the tariffs displayed on his big piece of cardboard last week. For example, unless we have another policy swerve, the European Union will now face a 10 percent tariff over the next three months rather than a 20 percent tariff. But the tariff on China, our third-biggest trading partner after Canada and Mexico, has gone from 34 percent to more than 130 percent. And we still have high tariffs on steel, aluminum and so on. In effect, observers who claim that tariffs have gone down are missing the biggest part of the story.
Economists who have actually run the numbers, like those at the Yale Budget Lab, estimate that the April 9 tariff regime will raise consumer prices more than the April 2 regime because of the extraordinarily high tariff rate on Chinese imports. Specifically, the budget lab estimates that the latest version of Trump’s trade war will raise consumer prices by 2.9 percent. This is roughly ten times the probable impact of the infamous Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930.
It’s hard to overstate the craziness of announcing a radical tariff plan, then announcing a quite different but equally radical plan just a week later. Furthermore, the claim that the wild zigzags in policy were always part of Trump’s plan just adds to the destruction of the administration’s credibility.
But are these tariffs just an opening gambit for trade negotiations? I doubt it. Bear in mind that Trump and Peter Navarro, his tariff guru, start from the premise that other countries are cheating, that they’re taking advantage of America and treating us unfairly. In fact, however, most of them aren’t. Take the case of the European Union. The EU imposes an average tariff on U.S. goods of just 1.7%, and there aren’t any significant hidden barriers.
So what are we supposed to be negotiating about? Nations can’t promise to lower their trade barriers when there aren’t any barriers. Navarro has been claiming that value-added taxes are de facto tariffs, but they aren’t, and EU nations literally can’t afford to give them up.
I guess other countries might make fake concessions that Trump can claim as fake victories. This is what he did with China during his first term, claiming that it had made significant concessions — claims which were, in the end, false. In fact, American soybean farmers have never fully recovered the loss of market share. And remember too how Trump made minor changes to NAFTA and claimed to have negotiated a whole new trade pact.
However, Trump is now clearly high on his own supply. Even with the April 9 tariff regime, Trump is imposing high tariff rates on our three largest trading partners. Currency and bond market traders — no fools they — are certainly not acting as if we’re on a path to successful deals.
The Chinese are pranking Trump today. This is from the Washington Post. “China raises tariffs on U.S. goods to 125 percent as trade war deepens. Beijing hit back in response to the Trump administration’s move to raise tariffs on Chinese goods to 145 percent, saying it would “fight to the end.” They can afford to. They’re making deals with South Korea and Japan, among other countries. The only group this is hurting is US importers and Exporters. This includes farmers.
The response underscored China’s decision to stand firm in the face of pressure from Washington and deepened the showdown between the world’s two largest economies.
“If the U.S. insists on substantively damaging China’s interests, China will firmly retaliate and fight to the end,” China’sState Council said in a statement.
The move came after Trump increased the levies on Chinese goods to 145 percent on Wednesday, while also announcing that the tariffs he had previously imposed on more than six dozen other countries would be fixed at 10 percent during a 90-day pause.
The State Council derided Trump’s move to continue ratcheting up the levies and said it would ignore further hikes. The tariffs are a “joke” and “no longer have any economic significance,” its statement said, because the current levels make U.S. exports to China not financially viable. The new Chinese tariffs, which increased from 84 percent, are effective Saturday.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping, in a meeting with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on Friday, stressed that trade wars have no winners and called for China and Europe to “jointly oppose unilateral bullying,” according to state media. European leaders also emphasized the damaging effects of uncertainty beyond the 90-day pause.
Experts in Beijing expressed concern about the latest turn in tensions with Washington. “U.S.-China trade will soon be almost nonexistent,” said Shi Yinhong, an international relations professor at China’s Renmin University. “To ease tensions, Trump must first make concessions.”
Turmoil over tariffs drove fluctuations in global markets on Friday.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 and Topix indexes dropped by5percent, before trimming their losses to under 3 percent by market close. South Korea’s Kospi and Australia’s ASX 200 fell by less than1 percent, while Taiwan’s bourse kicked off the day with a fall of under 1 percent before logging a 2.5 percent gain. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index and China’s Shanghai composite index were mostly flat, with the Hang Seng closing just over 1 per cent higher.
Major European markets fell slightly after opening on Friday, following rebounds the previous day. By 6 a.m. Eastern time, Germany’s DAX was down 1.62 percent, France’s benchmark CAC fell by 1.11 percent and London’s FTSE 100 was down around 0.3 percent.
It’s almost as if… and stay with me now… It’s almost as if Republicans aren’t as good at the economy as they claim to be! 🤷♂️
CNN has this headline today for a story written by Ella Nilsen. “Trump’s budget plan eviscerates weather and climate research, and it could be enacted immediately.” I guess I better hurry to put that Weather Station up in the Pergalo.
The Trump administration intends to eliminate the research arm of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, close all weather and climate labs and eviscerate its budget along with several other NOAA offices, according to internal documents obtained by CNN.
The documents describe the administration’s budget proposal for 2026, but indicate the administration expects the agency to enact the changes immediately.
The cuts would devastate weather and climate research as weather is becoming more erratic, extreme and costly. It would cripple the US industries — including agriculture — that depend on free, accurate weather and climate data and expert analysis. It could also halt research on deadly weather, including severe storms and tornadoes.
The administration intends to make significant cuts to education, grants, research and climate-related programs in NOAA, the plan says, which the administration believes “are misaligned with the … expressed will of the American people.”
While the phrase “climate change” refers to the manmade influence on the global climate system via planet-warming fossil fuel pollution, “climate” in NOAA parlance is simply the weather that has been observed over time.
CNN has reached out to the White House and the Department of Commerce, which houses NOAA, for comment on the plan.
Additionally, NASA is on the chopping block! Does this include all that money going to Elonia? This is from ars TECHICA‘s Eric Berger. “Trump White House budget proposal eviscerates science funding at NASA. “This would decimate American leadership in space.” #FARTUS seems dead set on sending us back to the Gilded Age. Even the best of the Modern Era is about to be erased.
This week, as part of the process to develop a budget for fiscal-year 2026, the Trump White House shared the draft version of its budget request for NASA with the space agency.
This initial version of the administration’s budget request calls for an approximately 20 percent overall cut to the agency’s budget across the board, effectively $5 billion from an overall topline of about $25 billion. However, the majority of the cuts are concentrated within the agency’s Science Mission Directorate, which oversees all planetary science, Earth science, astrophysics research, and more.
According to the “passback” documents given to NASA officials on Thursday, the space agency’s science programs would receive nearly a 50 percent cut in funding. After the agency received $7.5 billion for science in fiscal-year 2025, the Trump administration has proposed a science topline budget of just $3.9 billion for the coming fiscal year.
Among the proposals were: A two-thirds cut to astrophysics, down to $487 million; a greater than two-thirds cut to heliophysics, down to $455 million; a greater than 50 percent cut to Earth science, down to $1.033 billion; and a 30 percent cut to Planetary science, down to $1.929 billion.
Although the budget would continue support for ongoing missions such as the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope, it would kill the much-anticipated Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, an observatory seen as on par with those two world-class instruments that is already fully assembled and on budget for a launch in two years.
We’re also unlikely to see other countries send their best and brightest to our US Universities with all this craziness. As some with with multiple degrees and ones that aren’t that easy to achieve, I would just like to say that my teachers, my students and grad assistants, and my colleagues and fellow students were consistently the best part of higher education school. I owe so much of my math chops to fellow students from India, Iran, Hong Kong, Turkey, and Taiwan. Both of my Doctorate advisors came here as students. One from India. The other is from Bangladesh. This brain drain will put us on the road to mediocrity.
This is from the AP. “Immigration judge finds that Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil can be deported.”
Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil can be kicked out of the U.S. as a national security risk, an immigration judge in Louisiana found Friday during a hearing over the legality of deporting the activist who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
The government’s contention that Khalil’s presence in the United States posed “potentially serious foreign policy consequences” was enough to satisfy requirements for his deportation, Immigration Judge Jamee E. Comans said at the conclusion of a hearing in Jena.
Comans said the government had “established by clear and convincing evidence that he is removable.”
Lawyers for Khalil said they plan to keep fighting. The judge gave them until April 23 to seek a waiver. Meanwhile, a federal judge in New Jersey temporarily barred Khalil’s deportation.
Addressing the judge at the end of the hearing, Khalil mentioned that she said at a hearing earlier in the week that “there’s nothing more important to this court than due process rights and fundamental fairness.”
Let me just say that Jena, Louisiana, is a hell realm.
I don’t believe you is above contempt?! Right
— T GauthierⓂ️Ⓜ️🦋🦮🦮🦮 (@1redcupcake.bsky.social) 2025-04-11T21:09:49.330Z
Is it a Constitutional Crisis Yet, Momma? Brad Reed has that Raw Story headline.
The United States Department of Justice said on Friday that it will not comply with an order from Judge Paula Xinis to reveal information on the whereabouts and status of deported immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
As reported by Politico’s Kyle Cheney on BlueSky, the DOJ information Judge Xinis that it would not be able to provide the information she requested on Garcia because the court set an “impracticable” deadline to do so.
Judge Xinis had originally demanded that the DOJ provide information about Garcia’s status by 9:30 a.m. on Friday after the United States Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration needed to facilitate bringing him back from the prison in El Salvador where he had been sent improperly.
The judge extended the deadline to 11:30 a.m. on Friday morning and scheduled a court hearing on the case for 1 p.m.
So, I hope you’re trying to stay positive and calm. I’m going to go walk Temple and feed the kitties. That’s something I can do right now without feeling depressed.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMAIsqvTh7g
#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #Repeat1968JohnBuss #DisastrousDon #economicImpactOfFARTUSTariffs #kakistocracy #MarketsContinueToCrash
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Finally Friday Reads: The Incompetent and The Cruel
“Kristi Noem is so thoughtful.” John Buss, @repeat1968.
@johnbuss.bsky.socialGood Day, Sky Dancers!
Cartoonist John Buss continues to blow me away with his renditions of all the monsters inhabiting the Trump Regime. You never know how far they will go. Incompetency and cruelty are their defining parameters. The only thing you know about this regime is that they are negatively correlated and huge. You know the negative impact on the country in a big way, but the actual actions leading to the outcomes are unimaginable. You know they’re going to a new low that will be shocking and unimaginable. I’m beginning to think that some are designed to take our eyes away from the dismantling of our government and democracy.Today’s Featured Funny was more than I had hoped when I put this on his Facebook thread. “Hi! It’s your dark muse again. You have to do something about Kristin Noem doing a glam shot in front of all the shirtless, bearded men she likely sent to be tortured and enslaved. Abu Ghraib, but this administration has no shame!” She had paraded down here in a similar outfit during the Super Bowl, but instead of looking like a slutty ICE agent, she looked like a Slutty police officer. She just oozes psychopath, doesn’t she? She’s LARPing all those war criminals that psychologically torture whatever they capture. Just thinking about how the really bad ones torture animals first, and her poor puppy.This is from the Washington Post (article gifted). “How Kristi Noem’s $50,000 Rolex in a Salvadoran prison became a political flash point. The high-end Swiss watch lent a striking contrast to her tour of a notoriously overcrowded mega-prison in one of Latin America’s poorest countries.” I supposed she could wear that “I don’t care, do you?” jacket, but then everyone would miss her signature whitie tightie boob shot op. She must have a closet full of those. She wore them daily during her Super Bowl tour. This is reported by Drew Harwell and Alec Dent.
When Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem visited El Salvador’s most notorious mega-prison on Wednesday, she sported an eye-catching piece on her wrist that experts have identified as an 18-karat gold Rolex Cosmograph Daytona watch that sells for about $50,000.
The high-end Swiss watch lent a striking contrast to Noem’s tour of the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, where imprisoned men watched silently from a crowded cell as she recorded a video for a social media post warning undocumented immigrants not to enter the United States.
“If you come to our country illegally, this is one of the consequences you could face,” Noem said.
Noem’s choice of watch kicked off a race among internet sleuths to identify it and infuriated immigration advocates, who said the juxtaposition was insensitive to the harsh reality of mass imprisonment and deportation.
“You’re in front of all these people in a very poor country, who are in the bottom 10 or 20 percent of their country … and it looks like you’re just flaunting your wealth while you flaunt your freedom,” said Adam Isacson, an analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights group.
“This is an administration that is trying to be populist, anti-elite, appeal to the common man,” he added. Meanwhile, there’s “people stacked up like cordwood behind her.”
Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin confirmed the make of the watch in a statement, saying that “then-Governor Noem chose to use the proceeds from her New York Times best selling books to purchase an item she could wear and one day pass down to her children.”
While the #FARTUS purge of immigrants looks like an SS round-up. I fear escalation to Hitler’s Einsatzgruppen (killing squads). It is difficult to predict if they will actually go that far. We’ve already had children in cages and family separation. We also have midnight raids that have spirited away graduate students who have taken part in demonstrations or written op-eds against the bombing of Palestinian civilians in GAZA. This is from Mike Masnik from TechDirt. “Trump’s Secret Police Are Now Disappearing Students For Their Op-Eds.”
For years, we’ve been hearing breathless warnings about a “campus free speech crisis” from self-proclaimed free speech warriors. Their evidence? College students doing what college students have done for generations: protesting speakers they disagree with, challenging institutional policies, and yes, sometimes attempting to create heckler’s vetoes.This kind of campus activism — while occasionally messy and uncomfortable — has been a feature of American higher education since the 1960s. It’s how young people learn to engage with ideas and exercise their own speech rights. Sometimes that activism is silly and sometimes it’s righteous. Often it’s somewhere in between, but it’s kind of a part of being a college student, and learning what you believe in.But now we face an actual free speech crisis on campus that goes beyond just speech. It’s an attack on personal freedoms, due process, and liberty. The federal government isn’t just pressuring universities over speech — it’s literally disappearing students for their political expression. If you support actual free speech, now is the time to speak up.The latest example of this authoritarian overreach is particularly chilling: Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish PhD student at Tufts who was here legally on a student visa, was abducted by masked agents in broad daylight. She was disappeared without due process or explanation — only later did we learn she had been renditioned to a detention center in Louisiana.The video of her kidnapping (because that’s what it was) is terrifying enough.If you listen, you hear her quite understandably surprised reaction with a scream, and then she asks to call the police, only to be told “we’re the police.” None of them are in uniforms. Most of them are masked.Her supposed crime? A year ago, she co-authored an op-ed in The Tufts Daily criticizing her university administration’s stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Not advocating violence. Not supporting terrorism. Not even criticizing the U.S. government. Just exercising core First Amendment rights by publishing criticism of her own university’s policies in a student newspaper.The government has attempted to justify similar renditions (and there is a growing list of victims) by falsely painting targets as “terrorist supporters” — a dangerous conflation of political speech supporting Palestinian rights with support for terrorism. But even those cases typically involved people involved in public protests, which are themselves constitutionally protected activities. This case goes even further: disappearing someone over an innocuous piece of student journalism published a year ago.Everyone should be alarmed. Everyone should be demanding that she (and others) be released and that ICE and DHS stop this horrifying and unconscionable practice. Everyone should be demanding that Trump and Marco Rubio and Kristi Noem stop this Gestapo bullshit.Even if — especially if — you disagree with her views on Israel and Palestine. This isn’t about that. This is about the very concept of freedom. The rights everyone — even visitors — are supposed to have in this country. The right to speak your mind, even if (especially if!) it is opposed to those in power. The right to walk down a street without being kidnapped. The right to due process.If the government genuinely believed Ozturk had violated immigration law or her visa terms (she hadn’t), there are established legal procedures to address such issues. Instead, they chose to send masked goons to disappear her without warning or due process — a chilling message to every other international student that their supposed right to express political opinions comes with the risk of rendition.And, of course, the implied threat is that this won’t stop at international students.
I have taught university classes for decades. Finance and Economic policy are inherently political. We stick to established theory and mention policies in the past that did not work. The two big ones are Tariffs and Tax cuts for the very rich. We have data that shows they don’t work and years of published papers. I fear the Commerce and Labor Secretaries will kill the data, so we cannot teach the theory and the reality using current economic and financial data. Since I’m now technically retired and only teach as an adjunct, I worry a lot about the current faculty. The Republicans have been after tenure for years. Universities and research are a significant source of progress. The attacks on research and the inability to run graduate programs and graduate Doctoral students will mean a lack of qualified professors after we old folks retire, which will severely curtail our leadership in science and the exercise of free thought. That is their goal.This is from Forbes Magazine. “Trump Orders Department Of Education Closure: What Happens Next.” The story is reported by Sarah Hernholm.
President Trump has issued an executive order to close the Department of Education, a move that will reshape federal education policy and affect America’s 49.5 million public school students. The order mandates redistributing the department’s functions across multiple federal agencies by the end of the year, marking a major change in how the federal government approaches education.This decision, long championed by conservatives who believe education should remain primarily a state and local matter, has sparked disagreement about the federal government’s role in education policy, funding, and oversight.The executive order outlines specific transitions for key education functions:
- Civil rights enforcement will move to the Justice Department
- Federal student loan programs will shift to the Treasury
- Special education oversight will transition to Health and Human Services
These changes will affect the management of federal education funding streams totaling over $150 billion annually, including:
- $18.8 billion in Title I funding for high-poverty schools, serving approximately 26 million students
- $15.5 billion in IDEA funding, supporting 7.3 million students with disabilities
- $120.8 billion in Federal Student Aid programs, helping 10.8 million college students
Educational stakeholders stress the importance of ensuring these resources continue without disruption during the transition period, particularly for disadvantaged students who rely heavily on federally funded programs.This will hurt rural and poor urban schools that rely on the funding to offer help for disadvantaged students and students with disabilities. I’m also wondering what will happen to ESL (English as a second language) teachers, programs, school nurses, and psychologists. These things are incredibly expensive.
“The backpedaling is something to behold..” John Buss, @repeat1968.
@johnbuss.bsky.socialThen there’s Pete Hegseth and his keystone cops LARPing military leadership. We got all the war moves and none of the conversation about what it means to target and bomb a civilian apartment. Hey! Hey DOJ! How many kids did they kill that day? They’re all suggesting it was successful, but really? What has all that incompetence brought us?This is breaking news from CNN. “Officials say texts sent by Waltz, Ratcliffe in Signal chat may have damaged US’ ongoing ability to gather intel on Houthis.” Evidently, the intelligence they got from the Israelis was from an on-site agent. But of course, no heads are rolling in any of the meeting’s inept Cabinet. They’ve declared war on The Atlantic instead. This story is reported by Katie Bo Lillis and Zachary Cohen,
Current and former US officials have told CNN they believe two texts sent by national security adviser Mike Waltz and CIA Director John Ratcliffe in the now-infamous group chat involving senior US officials discussing battle plans to strike Houthi targets in Yemen, may have done long-term damage to the US’s ability to gather intelligence on the Iran-backed group going forward.
Although messages from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth detailing the sequencing, timing and weapons to be used in a March attack on the Houthis have drawn the most scrutiny because they could have endangered US servicemembers if revealed, the messages from Waltz and Ratcliffe, in the chat Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg was added to, contained equally sensitive information, these sources said.
In one of the messages, Ratcliffe told other Cabinet members who were discussing whether to delay the strikes that the CIA was in the act of mobilizing assets to collect intelligence on the group, but that a delay might offer them the opportunity to “identify better starting points for coverage on Houthi leadership.”
That text, according to the current and former officials, exposed the mere fact that the US is gathering intelligence on them — bad in and of itself — but also hinted at how the agency is doing it. The language about “starting points,” these people said, suggests clearly that the CIA is using technical means like overhead surveillance to spy on their leadership. That could allow the Houthis to change their practices to better protect themselves.
Then, in a later message, Waltz offered an extremely specific after-action report of the strikes, telling the thread that the military had “positive ID” of a particular senior Houthi leader “walking into his girlfriend’s building” — offering the Houthis a clear opportunity to see who the US was surveilling and potentially figure out how, thus enabling them to avoid that surveillance in the future, the sources said.
The Houthis have “always been difficult to track,” said a former intelligence official. “Now you just highlight for them that they’re in the crosshairs.”
Trump administration officials, including both Waltz and Ratcliffe, have repeatedly insisted that no classified information was shared in the text. Ratcliffe, in his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, specifically referenced his text about “starting points.”
But current and former officials have disagreed vehemently with that assessment: The kinds of information in not just Hegseth’s texts, but Ratcliffe’s and Waltz’s, included very clear references to sources and methods. Even if it wasn’t an explicit or technical description, these people say, it is information that the US government would typically withhold because it might allow an adversary to make an educated interference about US sources and methods.
Ratcliffe’s use of the Signal app in this way is raising eyebrows inside Langley, current and former officials said.
“I think he is going to be viewed skeptically for using the app for that purpose,” one US official told CNN.
“(Ratcliffe) was basically talking as if he was in a SCIF,” said another former intelligence official, referring to a secure room hardened against electronic surveillance that is designed for discussions of classified material.
“He’s the director,” said the first former official, calling Ratcliffe’s text “irresponsible.” “He should know better.”
A CIA spokesperson told CNN, “Director Ratcliffe takes his responsibility to safeguard America’s ability to gather intelligence extremely seriously.”
“Nothing he conveyed in the chat posed any risk to any sources or methods,” the spokesperson said. “The only lasting damage is to the Houthi terrorists who have been eliminated.”
CNN has reached out to the National Security Council for comment.
The primary tool of Trump’s spokespeople is to lie and deny and protect FARTUS at all times.Former Secretary of State penned this Op-Ed in the New York Times today. “Hillary Clinton: How Much Dumber Will This Get?” Remember, it will get worse; we just can’t forecast how because only the incompetent and cruel can come up with such batshit crazy pogroms. Throw in narcissism and sociopathy, and it’s a forecaster’s nightmare. Clinton’s name has been evoked recently because the same folks who were traumatized by her personal emails being released by their Russian buddies are taking this incredible breach of security cavalierly.
It’s not the hypocrisy that bothers me; it’s the stupidity. We’re all shocked — shocked! — that President Trump and his team don’t actually care about protecting classified information or federal record retention laws. But we knew that already. What’s much worse is that top Trump administration officials put our troops in jeopardy by sharing military plans on a commercial messaging app and unwittingly invited a journalist into the chat. That’s dangerous. And it’s just dumb.
This is the latest in a string of self-inflicted wounds by the new administration that are squandering America’s strength and threatening our national security. Firing hundreds of federal workers charged with protecting our nation’s nuclear weapons is also dumb. So is shutting down efforts to fight pandemics just as a deadly Ebola outbreak is spreading in Africa. It makes no sense to purge talented generals, diplomats and spies at a time when rivals like China and Russia are trying to expand their global reach.
In a dangerous and complex world, it’s not enough to be strong. You must also be smart. As secretary of state during the Obama administration, I argued for smart power, integrating the hard power of our military with the soft power of our diplomacy, development assistance, economic might and cultural influence. None of those tools can do the job alone. Together, they make America a superpower. The Trump approach is dumb power. Instead of a strong America using all our strengths to lead the world and confront our adversaries, Mr. Trump’s America will be increasingly blind and blundering, feeble and friendless.
Let’s start with the military, because that’s what he claims to care about. Don’t let the swagger fool you. Mr. Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (of group chat fame) are apparently more focused on performative fights over wokeness than preparing for real fights with America’s adversaries. Does anyone really think deleting tributes to the Tuskegee Airmen makes us more safe? The Trump Pentagon purged images of the plane that dropped the atomic bomb that ended World War II because its name is the Enola Gay. Dumb.
Instead of working with Congress to modernize the military’s budget to reflect changing threats, the president is firing top generals without credible justification. Five former secretaries of defense, Republicans and Democrats, rightly warned that this would “undermine our all-volunteer force and weaken our national security.” Mass layoffs are also hitting the intelligence agencies. As one former senior spy put it, “We’re shooting ourselves in the head, not the foot.” Not smart.
There’s more at the link, which has been gifted.It’s hard to get through the day without the next chain of what the hell did they do now coming out to beat us senseless. They’re worried about the midterms because FARTUS sent Elise Stefanik back to Congress yesterday. The poor woman won’t get that deluxe apartment in the sky now. This is from Politico. “Stefanik’s withdrawal suggests Republicans are sweating their thin margins. Democrats insist Republicans are panicking.” Democrats shouldn’t be so complacent.
President Donald Trump’s decision to keep Rep. Elise Stefanik in Congress is the clearest sign yet that the political environment has become so challenging for Republicans that they don’t want to risk a special election even in safe, red seats.
A pair of April elections in deep-red swaths of Florida next week was supposed to improve the GOP’s cushion in the House and clear the path for Stefanik’s departure, until Trump said he didn’t “want to take a chance on anyone else running for Elise’s seat.”
The decision to pull Stefanik’s nomination came as Republicans grew increasingly anxious about the race to fill the seat of National Security Advisor Mike Waltz on April 1. Polling in the district, which Trump carried by 30 points, had tightened, and the president himself is hosting a tele-town hall there to try and bail out Republican Randy Fine.An internal GOP poll from late March showed Democrat Josh Weil up 3 points over Fine, 44 to 41 percent, with 10 percent undecided, according to a person familiar with the poll and granted anonymity to discuss it. Tony Fabrizio, Trump’s pollster, conducted the survey. That result spooked Republicans and spurred them to redouble efforts to ensure a comfortable win in the district, according to two people familiar with internal conversations.Some Republican strategists said it’s not worth taking the risk of losing Stefanik’s sprawling northern New York seat, which Trump won by 20 points in 2024.
“Can they defend her seat? Absolutely. But why do you do that right now?” asked Charlie Harper, who was a top aide to former Rep. Karen Handel on her successful 2017 bid in a special election in Georgia.
Harper is not the only Republican making that calculation.
“If we’re far underperforming in seats Trump won by 30 then there’s obvious concern about having to chance special elections in seats Trump won by a lot less,” said one top GOP operative granted anonymity to speak candidly. “The juice is not worth the squeeze sweating them out.”
Okay, that’s enough shock and awe for now.What’s on your reading and blogging list today?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufw9dVys3t0
#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #Repeat1968JohnBuss #abuGhraibTortureAndPrisonerAbuse #CabinetOfIncompetentImbeciles #DepartmentOfEducationBlues #EliseStefanikIsACunt #EveryOneGoesToElSalvador_ #FARTUS #higherEducation #HillaryClintonOnSignalGate #KidnappingGraduateStudents #KristiNoemSociopathAndCunt #PeteHegsethWeirdoSexualAssaulter #TheWhiskeyLeaks
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Finally Friday Reads: The Incompetent and The Cruel
“Kristi Noem is so thoughtful.” John Buss, @repeat1968.
@johnbuss.bsky.socialGood Day, Sky Dancers!
Cartoonist John Buss continues to blow me away with his renditions of all the monsters inhabiting the Trump Regime. You never know how far they will go. Incompetency and cruelty are their defining parameters, and the only thing you know about this regime is that they are negatively correlated and huge. You know the negative impact on the country in a big way, but the actual actions leading to the outcomes are unimaginable. You know they’re going to a new low that will be shocking and unimaginable. I’m beginning to think that some are designed to take our eyes away from the dismantling of our government and democracy.
Today’s Featured Funny was more than I had hoped when I put this on his Facebook thread. “Hi! It’s your dark muse again. You have to do something about Kristin Noem doing a glam shot in front of all the shirtless, bearded men she likely sent to be tortured and enslaved. Abu Ghraib, but this administration has no shame!” She had paraded down here in a similar outfit during the Super Bowl, but instead of looking like a slutty ICE agent, she looked like a Slutty police officer. She just oozes psychopath, doesn’t she? She’s LARPing all those war criminals that psychologically torture whatever they capture. Just thinking about how the really bad ones torture animals first, and her poor puppy.
This is from the Washington Post (article gifted). “How Kristi Noem’s $50,000 Rolex in a Salvadoran prison became a political flash point. The high-end Swiss watch lent a striking contrast to her tour of a notoriously overcrowded mega-prison in one of Latin America’s poorest countries.” I supposed she could wear that “I don’t care, do you?” jacket, but then everyone would miss her signature whitie tightie boob shot op. She must have a closet full of those. She wore them daily during her Super Bowl tour. This is reported by Drew Harwell and Alec Dent.
When Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem visited El Salvador’s most notorious mega-prison on Wednesday, she sported an eye-catching piece on her wrist that experts have identified as an 18-karat gold Rolex Cosmograph Daytona watch that sells for about $50,000.
The high-end Swiss watch lent a striking contrast to Noem’s tour of the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, where imprisoned men watched silently from a crowded cell as she recorded a video for a social media post warning undocumented immigrants not to enter the United States.
“If you come to our country illegally, this is one of the consequences you could face,” Noem said.
Noem’s choice of watch kicked off a race among internet sleuths to identify it and infuriated immigration advocates, who said the juxtaposition was insensitive to the harsh reality of mass imprisonment and deportation.
“You’re in front of all these people in a very poor country, who are in the bottom 10 or 20 percent of their country … and it looks like you’re just flaunting your wealth while you flaunt your freedom,” said Adam Isacson, an analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights group.
“This is an administration that is trying to be populist, anti-elite, appeal to the common man,” he added. Meanwhile, there’s “people stacked up like cordwood behind her.”
Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin confirmed the make of the watch in a statement, saying that “then-Governor Noem chose to use the proceeds from her New York Times best selling books to purchase an item she could wear and one day pass down to her children.”
While the #FARTUS purge of immigrants looks like an SS round-up. I fear escalation to Hitler’s Einsatzgruppen (killing squads). It is difficult to predict if they will actually go that far. We’ve already had children in cages and family separation. We also have midnight raids that have spirited away graduate students who have taken part in demonstrations or written op-eds against the bombing of Palestinian civilians in GAZA. This is from Mike Masnik from TechDirt. “Trump’s Secret Police Are Now Disappearing Students For Their Op-Eds.”
For years, we’ve been hearing breathless warnings about a “campus free speech crisis” from self-proclaimed free speech warriors. Their evidence? College students doing what college students have done for generations: protesting speakers they disagree with, challenging institutional policies, and yes, sometimes attempting to create heckler’s vetoes.
This kind of campus activism — while occasionally messy and uncomfortable — has been a feature of American higher education since the 1960s. It’s how young people learn to engage with ideas and exercise their own speech rights. Sometimes that activism is silly and sometimes it’s righteous. Often it’s somewhere in between, but it’s kind of a part of being a college student, and learning what you believe in.
But now we face an actual free speech crisis on campus that goes beyond just speech. It’s an attack on personal freedoms, due process, and liberty. The federal government isn’t just pressuring universities over speech — it’s literally disappearing students for their political expression. If you support actual free speech, now is the time to speak up.
The latest example of this authoritarian overreach is particularly chilling: Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish PhD student at Tufts who was here legally on a student visa, was abducted by masked agents in broad daylight. She was disappeared without due process or explanation — only later did we learn she had been renditioned to a detention center in Louisiana.
The video of her kidnapping (because that’s what it was) is terrifying enough.
If you listen, you hear her quite understandably surprised reaction with a scream, and then she asks to call the police, only to be told “we’re the police.” None of them are in uniforms. Most of them are masked.
Her supposed crime? A year ago, she co-authored an op-ed in The Tufts Daily criticizing her university administration’s stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Not advocating violence. Not supporting terrorism. Not even criticizing the U.S. government. Just exercising core First Amendment rights by publishing criticism of her own university’s policies in a student newspaper.
The government has attempted to justify similar renditions (and there is a growing list of victims) by falsely painting targets as “terrorist supporters” — a dangerous conflation of political speech supporting Palestinian rights with support for terrorism. But even those cases typically involved people involved in public protests, which are themselves constitutionally protected activities. This case goes even further: disappearing someone over an innocuous piece of student journalism published a year ago.
Everyone should be alarmed. Everyone should be demanding that she (and others) be released and that ICE and DHS stop this horrifying and unconscionable practice. Everyone should be demanding that Trump and Marco Rubio and Kristi Noem stop this Gestapo bullshit.
Even if — especially if — you disagree with her views on Israel and Palestine. This isn’t about that. This is about the very concept of freedom. The rights everyone — even visitors — are supposed to have in this country. The right to speak your mind, even if (especially if!) it is opposed to those in power. The right to walk down a street without being kidnapped. The right to due process.
If the government genuinely believed Ozturk had violated immigration law or her visa terms (she hadn’t), there are established legal procedures to address such issues. Instead, they chose to send masked goons to disappear her without warning or due process — a chilling message to every other international student that their supposed right to express political opinions comes with the risk of rendition.
And, of course, the implied threat is that this won’t stop at international students.
I have taught university classes for decades. Finance and Economic policy are inherently political. We stick to established theory and mention policies in the past that did not work. The two big ones are Tariffs and Tax cuts for the very rich. We have data that shows they don’t work and years of published papers. I fear that the Commerce and Labor Secretaries will kill the data, so we cannot teach the theory and the reality using current economic and financial data. Since I’m now technically retired and only teach as an adjunct, I worry a lot about the current faculty. The Republicans have been after tenure for years. Universities and research are a significant source of progress. The attacks on research and the inability to run graduate programs and graduate Doctoral students we will not have teachers after we old folks retire will severely curtail our leadership in science and the exercise of free thought. That is their goal.
This is from Forbes Magazine. “Trump Orders Department Of Education Closure: What Happens Next.” The story is reported by Sarah Hernholm.
President Trump has issued an executive order to close the Department of Education, a move that will reshape federal education policy and affect America’s 49.5 million public school students. The order mandates redistributing the department’s functions across multiple federal agencies by the end of the year, marking a major change in how the federal government approaches education.
This decision, long championed by conservatives who believe education should remain primarily a state and local matter, has sparked disagreement about the federal government’s role in education policy, funding, and oversight.
The executive order outlines specific transitions for key education functions:
- Civil rights enforcement will move to the Justice Department
- Federal student loan programs will shift to the Treasury
- Special education oversight will transition to Health and Human Services
These changes will affect the management of federal education funding streams totaling over $150 billion annually, including:
- $18.8 billion in Title I funding for high-poverty schools, serving approximately 26 million students
- $15.5 billion in IDEA funding, supporting 7.3 million students with disabilities
- $120.8 billion in Federal Student Aid programs, helping 10.8 million college students
Educational stakeholders stress the importance of ensuring these resources continue without disruption during the transition period, particularly for disadvantaged students who rely heavily on federally funded programs.
This will hurt rural and poor urban schools that rely on the funding to offer help for disadvantaged students and students with disabilities. I’m also wondering what will happen to ESL (English as a second language) teachers, programs, school nurses, and psychologists. These things are incredibly expensive.
“The backpedaling is something to behold..” John Buss, @repeat1968.
@johnbuss.bsky.socialThen there’s Pete Hegseth and his keystone cops LARPing military leadership. We got all the war moves and none of the conversation about what it means to target and bomb a civilian apartment. Hey! Hey DOJ! How many kids did they kill that day? They’re all suggesting it was successful, but really? What has all that incompetence brought us?
This is breaking news from CNN. “Officials say texts sent by Waltz, Ratcliffe in Signal chat may have damaged US’ ongoing ability to gather intel on Houthis.” Evidently, the intelligence they got from the Israelis was from an on-site agent. But of course, no heads are rolling in any of the meeting’s inept Cabinet. They’ve declared war on The Atlantic instead. This story is reported by Katie Bo Lillis and Zachary Cohen,
Current and former US officials have told CNN they believe two texts sent by national security adviser Mike Waltz and CIA Director John Ratcliffe in the now-infamous group chat involving senior US officials discussing battle plans to strike Houthi targets in Yemen, may have done long-term damage to the US’s ability to gather intelligence on the Iran-backed group going forward.
Although messages from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth detailing the sequencing, timing and weapons to be used in a March attack on the Houthis have drawn the most scrutiny because they could have endangered US servicemembers if revealed, the messages from Waltz and Ratcliffe, in the chat Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg was added to, contained equally sensitive information, these sources said.
In one of the messages, Ratcliffe told other Cabinet members who were discussing whether to delay the strikes that the CIA was in the act of mobilizing assets to collect intelligence on the group, but that a delay might offer them the opportunity to “identify better starting points for coverage on Houthi leadership.”
That text, according to the current and former officials, exposed the mere fact that the US is gathering intelligence on them — bad in and of itself — but also hinted at how the agency is doing it. The language about “starting points,” these people said, suggests clearly that the CIA is using technical means like overhead surveillance to spy on their leadership. That could allow the Houthis to change their practices to better protect themselves.
Then, in a later message, Waltz offered an extremely specific after-action report of the strikes, telling the thread that the military had “positive ID” of a particular senior Houthi leader “walking into his girlfriend’s building” — offering the Houthis a clear opportunity to see who the US was surveilling and potentially figure out how, thus enabling them to avoid that surveillance in the future, the sources said.
The Houthis have “always been difficult to track,” said a former intelligence official. “Now you just highlight for them that they’re in the crosshairs.”
Trump administration officials, including both Waltz and Ratcliffe, have repeatedly insisted that no classified information was shared in the text. Ratcliffe, in his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, specifically referenced his text about “starting points.”
But current and former officials have disagreed vehemently with that assessment: The kinds of information in not just Hegseth’s texts, but Ratcliffe’s and Waltz’s, included very clear references to sources and methods. Even if it wasn’t an explicit or technical description, these people say, it is information that the US government would typically withhold because it might allow an adversary to make an educated interference about US sources and methods.
Ratcliffe’s use of the Signal app in this way is raising eyebrows inside Langley, current and former officials said.
“I think he is going to be viewed skeptically for using the app for that purpose,” one US official told CNN.
“(Ratcliffe) was basically talking as if he was in a SCIF,” said another former intelligence official, referring to a secure room hardened against electronic surveillance that is designed for discussions of classified material.
“He’s the director,” said the first former official, calling Ratcliffe’s text “irresponsible.” “He should know better.”
A CIA spokesperson told CNN, “Director Ratcliffe takes his responsibility to safeguard America’s ability to gather intelligence extremely seriously.”
“Nothing he conveyed in the chat posed any risk to any sources or methods,” the spokesperson said. “The only lasting damage is to the Houthi terrorists who have been eliminated.”
CNN has reached out to the National Security Council for comment.
The primary tool of Trump’s spokespeople is to lie and deny and protect FARTUS at all times.
Former Secretary of State penned this Op-Ed in the New York Times today. “Hillary Clinton: How Much Dumber Will This Get?” Remember, it will get worse; we just can’t forecast how because only the incompetent and cruel can come up with such batshit crazy pogroms. Throw in narcissism and sociopathy, and it’s a forecaster’s nightmare. Clinton’s name has been evoked recently because the same folks who were traumatized by her personal emails being released by their Russian buddies are taking this incredible breach of security cavalierly.
It’s not the hypocrisy that bothers me; it’s the stupidity. We’re all shocked — shocked! — that President Trump and his team don’t actually care about protecting classified information or federal record retention laws. But we knew that already. What’s much worse is that top Trump administration officials put our troops in jeopardy by sharing military plans on a commercial messaging app and unwittingly invited a journalist into the chat. That’s dangerous. And it’s just dumb.
This is the latest in a string of self-inflicted wounds by the new administration that are squandering America’s strength and threatening our national security. Firing hundreds of federal workers charged with protecting our nation’s nuclear weapons is also dumb. So is shutting down efforts to fight pandemics just as a deadly Ebola outbreak is spreading in Africa. It makes no sense to purge talented generals, diplomats and spies at a time when rivals like China and Russia are trying to expand their global reach.
In a dangerous and complex world, it’s not enough to be strong. You must also be smart. As secretary of state during the Obama administration, I argued for smart power, integrating the hard power of our military with the soft power of our diplomacy, development assistance, economic might and cultural influence. None of those tools can do the job alone. Together, they make America a superpower. The Trump approach is dumb power. Instead of a strong America using all our strengths to lead the world and confront our adversaries, Mr. Trump’s America will be increasingly blind and blundering, feeble and friendless.
Let’s start with the military, because that’s what he claims to care about. Don’t let the swagger fool you. Mr. Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (of group chat fame) are apparently more focused on performative fights over wokeness than preparing for real fights with America’s adversaries. Does anyone really think deleting tributes to the Tuskegee Airmen makes us more safe? The Trump Pentagon purged images of the plane that dropped the atomic bomb that ended World War II because its name is the Enola Gay. Dumb.
Instead of working with Congress to modernize the military’s budget to reflect changing threats, the president is firing top generals without credible justification. Five former secretaries of defense, Republicans and Democrats, rightly warned that this would “undermine our all-volunteer force and weaken our national security.” Mass layoffs are also hitting the intelligence agencies. As one former senior spy put it, “We’re shooting ourselves in the head, not the foot.” Not smart.
There’s more at the link, which has been gifted.
It’s hard to get through the day without the next chain of what the hell did they do now coming out to beat us senseless. They’re worried about the midterms because FARTUS sent Elise Stefanik back to Congress yesterday. The poor woman won’t get that deluxe apartment in the sky now. This is from Politico. “Stefanik’s withdrawal suggests Republicans are sweating their thin margins. Democrats insist Republicans are panicking.” Democrats shouldn’t be so complacent.
President Donald Trump’s decision to keep Rep. Elise Stefanik in Congress is the clearest sign yet that the political environment has become so challenging for Republicans that they don’t want to risk a special election even in safe, red seats.
A pair of April elections in deep-red swaths of Florida next week was supposed to improve the GOP’s cushion in the House and clear the path for Stefanik’s departure, until Trump said he didn’t “want to take a chance on anyone else running for Elise’s seat.”
The decision to pull Stefanik’s nomination came as Republicans grew increasingly anxious about the race to fill the seat of National Security Advisor Mike Waltz on April 1. Polling in the district, which Trump carried by 30 points, had tightened, and the president himself is hosting a tele-town hall there to try and bail out Republican Randy Fine.
An internal GOP poll from late March showed Democrat Josh Weil up 3 points over Fine, 44 to 41 percent, with 10 percent undecided, according to a person familiar with the poll and granted anonymity to discuss it. Tony Fabrizio, Trump’s pollster, conducted the survey. That result spooked Republicans and spurred them to redouble efforts to ensure a comfortable win in the district, according to two people familiar with internal conversations.
Some Republican strategists said it’s not worth taking the risk of losing Stefanik’s sprawling northern New York seat, which Trump won by 20 points in 2024.
“Can they defend her seat? Absolutely. But why do you do that right now?” asked Charlie Harper, who was a top aide to former Rep. Karen Handel on her successful 2017 bid in a special election in Georgia.
Harper is not the only Republican making that calculation.
“If we’re far underperforming in seats Trump won by 30 then there’s obvious concern about having to chance special elections in seats Trump won by a lot less,” said one top GOP operative granted anonymity to speak candidly. “The juice is not worth the squeeze sweating them out.”
Okay, that’s enough shock and awe for now.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #Repeat1968JohnBuss #abuGhraibTortureAndPrisonerAbuse #CabinetOfIncompetentImbeciles #DepartmentOfEducationBlues #EliseStefanikIsACunt #EveryOneGoesToElSalvador_ #FARTUS #higherEducation #HillaryClintonOnSignalGate #KidnappingGraduateStudents #KristiNoemSociopathAndCunt #PeteHegsethWeirdoSexualAssaulter #TheWhiskeyLeaks
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Finally Friday Reads: The Incompetent and The Cruel
“Kristi Noem is so thoughtful.” John Buss, @repeat1968.
@johnbuss.bsky.socialGood Day, Sky Dancers!
Cartoonist John Buss continues to blow me away with his renditions of all the monsters inhabiting the Trump Regime. You never know how far they will go. Incompetency and cruelty are their defining parameters. The only thing you know about this regime is that they are negatively correlated and huge. You know the negative impact on the country in a big way, but the actual actions leading to the outcomes are unimaginable. You know they’re going to a new low that will be shocking and unimaginable. I’m beginning to think that some are designed to take our eyes away from the dismantling of our government and democracy.Today’s Featured Funny was more than I had hoped when I put this on his Facebook thread. “Hi! It’s your dark muse again. You have to do something about Kristin Noem doing a glam shot in front of all the shirtless, bearded men she likely sent to be tortured and enslaved. Abu Ghraib, but this administration has no shame!” She had paraded down here in a similar outfit during the Super Bowl, but instead of looking like a slutty ICE agent, she looked like a Slutty police officer. She just oozes psychopath, doesn’t she? She’s LARPing all those war criminals that psychologically torture whatever they capture. Just thinking about how the really bad ones torture animals first, and her poor puppy.This is from the Washington Post (article gifted). “How Kristi Noem’s $50,000 Rolex in a Salvadoran prison became a political flash point. The high-end Swiss watch lent a striking contrast to her tour of a notoriously overcrowded mega-prison in one of Latin America’s poorest countries.” I supposed she could wear that “I don’t care, do you?” jacket, but then everyone would miss her signature whitie tightie boob shot op. She must have a closet full of those. She wore them daily during her Super Bowl tour. This is reported by Drew Harwell and Alec Dent.
When Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem visited El Salvador’s most notorious mega-prison on Wednesday, she sported an eye-catching piece on her wrist that experts have identified as an 18-karat gold Rolex Cosmograph Daytona watch that sells for about $50,000.
The high-end Swiss watch lent a striking contrast to Noem’s tour of the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, where imprisoned men watched silently from a crowded cell as she recorded a video for a social media post warning undocumented immigrants not to enter the United States.
“If you come to our country illegally, this is one of the consequences you could face,” Noem said.
Noem’s choice of watch kicked off a race among internet sleuths to identify it and infuriated immigration advocates, who said the juxtaposition was insensitive to the harsh reality of mass imprisonment and deportation.
“You’re in front of all these people in a very poor country, who are in the bottom 10 or 20 percent of their country … and it looks like you’re just flaunting your wealth while you flaunt your freedom,” said Adam Isacson, an analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights group.
“This is an administration that is trying to be populist, anti-elite, appeal to the common man,” he added. Meanwhile, there’s “people stacked up like cordwood behind her.”
Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin confirmed the make of the watch in a statement, saying that “then-Governor Noem chose to use the proceeds from her New York Times best selling books to purchase an item she could wear and one day pass down to her children.”
While the #FARTUS purge of immigrants looks like an SS round-up. I fear escalation to Hitler’s Einsatzgruppen (killing squads). It is difficult to predict if they will actually go that far. We’ve already had children in cages and family separation. We also have midnight raids that have spirited away graduate students who have taken part in demonstrations or written op-eds against the bombing of Palestinian civilians in GAZA. This is from Mike Masnik from TechDirt. “Trump’s Secret Police Are Now Disappearing Students For Their Op-Eds.”
For years, we’ve been hearing breathless warnings about a “campus free speech crisis” from self-proclaimed free speech warriors. Their evidence? College students doing what college students have done for generations: protesting speakers they disagree with, challenging institutional policies, and yes, sometimes attempting to create heckler’s vetoes.This kind of campus activism — while occasionally messy and uncomfortable — has been a feature of American higher education since the 1960s. It’s how young people learn to engage with ideas and exercise their own speech rights. Sometimes that activism is silly and sometimes it’s righteous. Often it’s somewhere in between, but it’s kind of a part of being a college student, and learning what you believe in.But now we face an actual free speech crisis on campus that goes beyond just speech. It’s an attack on personal freedoms, due process, and liberty. The federal government isn’t just pressuring universities over speech — it’s literally disappearing students for their political expression. If you support actual free speech, now is the time to speak up.The latest example of this authoritarian overreach is particularly chilling: Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish PhD student at Tufts who was here legally on a student visa, was abducted by masked agents in broad daylight. She was disappeared without due process or explanation — only later did we learn she had been renditioned to a detention center in Louisiana.The video of her kidnapping (because that’s what it was) is terrifying enough.If you listen, you hear her quite understandably surprised reaction with a scream, and then she asks to call the police, only to be told “we’re the police.” None of them are in uniforms. Most of them are masked.Her supposed crime? A year ago, she co-authored an op-ed in The Tufts Daily criticizing her university administration’s stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Not advocating violence. Not supporting terrorism. Not even criticizing the U.S. government. Just exercising core First Amendment rights by publishing criticism of her own university’s policies in a student newspaper.The government has attempted to justify similar renditions (and there is a growing list of victims) by falsely painting targets as “terrorist supporters” — a dangerous conflation of political speech supporting Palestinian rights with support for terrorism. But even those cases typically involved people involved in public protests, which are themselves constitutionally protected activities. This case goes even further: disappearing someone over an innocuous piece of student journalism published a year ago.Everyone should be alarmed. Everyone should be demanding that she (and others) be released and that ICE and DHS stop this horrifying and unconscionable practice. Everyone should be demanding that Trump and Marco Rubio and Kristi Noem stop this Gestapo bullshit.Even if — especially if — you disagree with her views on Israel and Palestine. This isn’t about that. This is about the very concept of freedom. The rights everyone — even visitors — are supposed to have in this country. The right to speak your mind, even if (especially if!) it is opposed to those in power. The right to walk down a street without being kidnapped. The right to due process.If the government genuinely believed Ozturk had violated immigration law or her visa terms (she hadn’t), there are established legal procedures to address such issues. Instead, they chose to send masked goons to disappear her without warning or due process — a chilling message to every other international student that their supposed right to express political opinions comes with the risk of rendition.And, of course, the implied threat is that this won’t stop at international students.
I have taught university classes for decades. Finance and Economic policy are inherently political. We stick to established theory and mention policies in the past that did not work. The two big ones are Tariffs and Tax cuts for the very rich. We have data that shows they don’t work and years of published papers. I fear the Commerce and Labor Secretaries will kill the data, so we cannot teach the theory and the reality using current economic and financial data. Since I’m now technically retired and only teach as an adjunct, I worry a lot about the current faculty. The Republicans have been after tenure for years. Universities and research are a significant source of progress. The attacks on research and the inability to run graduate programs and graduate Doctoral students will mean a lack of qualified professors after we old folks retire, which will severely curtail our leadership in science and the exercise of free thought. That is their goal.This is from Forbes Magazine. “Trump Orders Department Of Education Closure: What Happens Next.” The story is reported by Sarah Hernholm.
President Trump has issued an executive order to close the Department of Education, a move that will reshape federal education policy and affect America’s 49.5 million public school students. The order mandates redistributing the department’s functions across multiple federal agencies by the end of the year, marking a major change in how the federal government approaches education.This decision, long championed by conservatives who believe education should remain primarily a state and local matter, has sparked disagreement about the federal government’s role in education policy, funding, and oversight.The executive order outlines specific transitions for key education functions:
- Civil rights enforcement will move to the Justice Department
- Federal student loan programs will shift to the Treasury
- Special education oversight will transition to Health and Human Services
These changes will affect the management of federal education funding streams totaling over $150 billion annually, including:
- $18.8 billion in Title I funding for high-poverty schools, serving approximately 26 million students
- $15.5 billion in IDEA funding, supporting 7.3 million students with disabilities
- $120.8 billion in Federal Student Aid programs, helping 10.8 million college students
Educational stakeholders stress the importance of ensuring these resources continue without disruption during the transition period, particularly for disadvantaged students who rely heavily on federally funded programs.This will hurt rural and poor urban schools that rely on the funding to offer help for disadvantaged students and students with disabilities. I’m also wondering what will happen to ESL (English as a second language) teachers, programs, school nurses, and psychologists. These things are incredibly expensive.
“The backpedaling is something to behold..” John Buss, @repeat1968.
@johnbuss.bsky.socialThen there’s Pete Hegseth and his keystone cops LARPing military leadership. We got all the war moves and none of the conversation about what it means to target and bomb a civilian apartment. Hey! Hey DOJ! How many kids did they kill that day? They’re all suggesting it was successful, but really? What has all that incompetence brought us?This is breaking news from CNN. “Officials say texts sent by Waltz, Ratcliffe in Signal chat may have damaged US’ ongoing ability to gather intel on Houthis.” Evidently, the intelligence they got from the Israelis was from an on-site agent. But of course, no heads are rolling in any of the meeting’s inept Cabinet. They’ve declared war on The Atlantic instead. This story is reported by Katie Bo Lillis and Zachary Cohen,
Current and former US officials have told CNN they believe two texts sent by national security adviser Mike Waltz and CIA Director John Ratcliffe in the now-infamous group chat involving senior US officials discussing battle plans to strike Houthi targets in Yemen, may have done long-term damage to the US’s ability to gather intelligence on the Iran-backed group going forward.
Although messages from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth detailing the sequencing, timing and weapons to be used in a March attack on the Houthis have drawn the most scrutiny because they could have endangered US servicemembers if revealed, the messages from Waltz and Ratcliffe, in the chat Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg was added to, contained equally sensitive information, these sources said.
In one of the messages, Ratcliffe told other Cabinet members who were discussing whether to delay the strikes that the CIA was in the act of mobilizing assets to collect intelligence on the group, but that a delay might offer them the opportunity to “identify better starting points for coverage on Houthi leadership.”
That text, according to the current and former officials, exposed the mere fact that the US is gathering intelligence on them — bad in and of itself — but also hinted at how the agency is doing it. The language about “starting points,” these people said, suggests clearly that the CIA is using technical means like overhead surveillance to spy on their leadership. That could allow the Houthis to change their practices to better protect themselves.
Then, in a later message, Waltz offered an extremely specific after-action report of the strikes, telling the thread that the military had “positive ID” of a particular senior Houthi leader “walking into his girlfriend’s building” — offering the Houthis a clear opportunity to see who the US was surveilling and potentially figure out how, thus enabling them to avoid that surveillance in the future, the sources said.
The Houthis have “always been difficult to track,” said a former intelligence official. “Now you just highlight for them that they’re in the crosshairs.”
Trump administration officials, including both Waltz and Ratcliffe, have repeatedly insisted that no classified information was shared in the text. Ratcliffe, in his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, specifically referenced his text about “starting points.”
But current and former officials have disagreed vehemently with that assessment: The kinds of information in not just Hegseth’s texts, but Ratcliffe’s and Waltz’s, included very clear references to sources and methods. Even if it wasn’t an explicit or technical description, these people say, it is information that the US government would typically withhold because it might allow an adversary to make an educated interference about US sources and methods.
Ratcliffe’s use of the Signal app in this way is raising eyebrows inside Langley, current and former officials said.
“I think he is going to be viewed skeptically for using the app for that purpose,” one US official told CNN.
“(Ratcliffe) was basically talking as if he was in a SCIF,” said another former intelligence official, referring to a secure room hardened against electronic surveillance that is designed for discussions of classified material.
“He’s the director,” said the first former official, calling Ratcliffe’s text “irresponsible.” “He should know better.”
A CIA spokesperson told CNN, “Director Ratcliffe takes his responsibility to safeguard America’s ability to gather intelligence extremely seriously.”
“Nothing he conveyed in the chat posed any risk to any sources or methods,” the spokesperson said. “The only lasting damage is to the Houthi terrorists who have been eliminated.”
CNN has reached out to the National Security Council for comment.
The primary tool of Trump’s spokespeople is to lie and deny and protect FARTUS at all times.Former Secretary of State penned this Op-Ed in the New York Times today. “Hillary Clinton: How Much Dumber Will This Get?” Remember, it will get worse; we just can’t forecast how because only the incompetent and cruel can come up with such batshit crazy pogroms. Throw in narcissism and sociopathy, and it’s a forecaster’s nightmare. Clinton’s name has been evoked recently because the same folks who were traumatized by her personal emails being released by their Russian buddies are taking this incredible breach of security cavalierly.
It’s not the hypocrisy that bothers me; it’s the stupidity. We’re all shocked — shocked! — that President Trump and his team don’t actually care about protecting classified information or federal record retention laws. But we knew that already. What’s much worse is that top Trump administration officials put our troops in jeopardy by sharing military plans on a commercial messaging app and unwittingly invited a journalist into the chat. That’s dangerous. And it’s just dumb.
This is the latest in a string of self-inflicted wounds by the new administration that are squandering America’s strength and threatening our national security. Firing hundreds of federal workers charged with protecting our nation’s nuclear weapons is also dumb. So is shutting down efforts to fight pandemics just as a deadly Ebola outbreak is spreading in Africa. It makes no sense to purge talented generals, diplomats and spies at a time when rivals like China and Russia are trying to expand their global reach.
In a dangerous and complex world, it’s not enough to be strong. You must also be smart. As secretary of state during the Obama administration, I argued for smart power, integrating the hard power of our military with the soft power of our diplomacy, development assistance, economic might and cultural influence. None of those tools can do the job alone. Together, they make America a superpower. The Trump approach is dumb power. Instead of a strong America using all our strengths to lead the world and confront our adversaries, Mr. Trump’s America will be increasingly blind and blundering, feeble and friendless.
Let’s start with the military, because that’s what he claims to care about. Don’t let the swagger fool you. Mr. Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (of group chat fame) are apparently more focused on performative fights over wokeness than preparing for real fights with America’s adversaries. Does anyone really think deleting tributes to the Tuskegee Airmen makes us more safe? The Trump Pentagon purged images of the plane that dropped the atomic bomb that ended World War II because its name is the Enola Gay. Dumb.
Instead of working with Congress to modernize the military’s budget to reflect changing threats, the president is firing top generals without credible justification. Five former secretaries of defense, Republicans and Democrats, rightly warned that this would “undermine our all-volunteer force and weaken our national security.” Mass layoffs are also hitting the intelligence agencies. As one former senior spy put it, “We’re shooting ourselves in the head, not the foot.” Not smart.
There’s more at the link, which has been gifted.It’s hard to get through the day without the next chain of what the hell did they do now coming out to beat us senseless. They’re worried about the midterms because FARTUS sent Elise Stefanik back to Congress yesterday. The poor woman won’t get that deluxe apartment in the sky now. This is from Politico. “Stefanik’s withdrawal suggests Republicans are sweating their thin margins. Democrats insist Republicans are panicking.” Democrats shouldn’t be so complacent.
President Donald Trump’s decision to keep Rep. Elise Stefanik in Congress is the clearest sign yet that the political environment has become so challenging for Republicans that they don’t want to risk a special election even in safe, red seats.
A pair of April elections in deep-red swaths of Florida next week was supposed to improve the GOP’s cushion in the House and clear the path for Stefanik’s departure, until Trump said he didn’t “want to take a chance on anyone else running for Elise’s seat.”
The decision to pull Stefanik’s nomination came as Republicans grew increasingly anxious about the race to fill the seat of National Security Advisor Mike Waltz on April 1. Polling in the district, which Trump carried by 30 points, had tightened, and the president himself is hosting a tele-town hall there to try and bail out Republican Randy Fine.An internal GOP poll from late March showed Democrat Josh Weil up 3 points over Fine, 44 to 41 percent, with 10 percent undecided, according to a person familiar with the poll and granted anonymity to discuss it. Tony Fabrizio, Trump’s pollster, conducted the survey. That result spooked Republicans and spurred them to redouble efforts to ensure a comfortable win in the district, according to two people familiar with internal conversations.Some Republican strategists said it’s not worth taking the risk of losing Stefanik’s sprawling northern New York seat, which Trump won by 20 points in 2024.
“Can they defend her seat? Absolutely. But why do you do that right now?” asked Charlie Harper, who was a top aide to former Rep. Karen Handel on her successful 2017 bid in a special election in Georgia.
Harper is not the only Republican making that calculation.
“If we’re far underperforming in seats Trump won by 30 then there’s obvious concern about having to chance special elections in seats Trump won by a lot less,” said one top GOP operative granted anonymity to speak candidly. “The juice is not worth the squeeze sweating them out.”
Okay, that’s enough shock and awe for now.What’s on your reading and blogging list today?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufw9dVys3t0
#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #Repeat1968JohnBuss #abuGhraibTortureAndPrisonerAbuse #CabinetOfIncompetentImbeciles #DepartmentOfEducationBlues #EliseStefanikIsACunt #EveryOneGoesToElSalvador_ #FARTUS #higherEducation #HillaryClintonOnSignalGate #KidnappingGraduateStudents #KristiNoemSociopathAndCunt #PeteHegsethWeirdoSexualAssaulter #TheWhiskeyLeaks
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Finally Friday Reads: Shutdown or Meltdown?
“So, not even two months. Here we are.” John Buss, @repeat1968, @johnbuss.bsky.social
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I’ve always been an opponent of letting the US Government shut down. As an economist, I know what kind of misery that creates for many people as well, as the possibility of a government default, which could haunt us for many years. My worry is real, but this situation is unique, and typically, the party that tries to shut the government down takes the political heat. I understand what he’s worried about. If we default on debt we become a risky debtor. If we shut the Government down, the weakest among us will suffer needlessly. Default has incredible consequences for the Social Security trust fund, the strength of our dollar, and if anyone will ever buy a US t-bill or t-bond now or ever. That includes war bonds if we ever need them again. I don’t like it, but a default would be unbelievably destructive to the country’s future. I hate that we’re in this position.
How it played out this last night and this morning pitted Schumer against many of his most strong-willed colleagues. Schumer’s support even earned him a pat on the head from #FARTUS. Trump’s always one to take advantage of a bad situation. He interpreted the move as support of the Doge Bulldozer moving through government agencies and policy. That was something one of my Canadian friends from way back in my Fired Dog Lake days predicted. I’d like to read your thoughts on that because I’m unsure how it will be received by folks outside Beltway machinations.
Let’s review what’s out there in the Press and Social media about the move that separated many Democratic senators from the leader. This is from AXIOS as proffered by Andrew Sollender. “House Dems go into “complete meltdown” as Schumer folds”.
House Democrats erupted into apoplexy Thursday night after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he would support Republicans’ stopgap government funding measure.
Why it matters: House Democrats feel like they “walked the plank,” in the words of one member. They voted almost unanimously against the measure, only to watch Senate Democrats seemingly give it the green light.
- “Complete meltdown. Complete and utter meltdown on all text chains,” said the member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer sensitive details of members’ internal conversations.
- A senior House Democrat said “people are furious” and that some rank-and-file members have floated the idea of angrily marching onto the Senate floor in protest.
- Others are talking openly about supporting primary challenges to senators who vote for the GOP spending bill.
Driving the news: Schumer said in a floor speech Thursday that while the GOP measure is “very bad,” the possibility of a government shutdown “has consequences for America that are much, much worse.”
- “A shutdown would give Donald Trump the keys to the city, the state and the country,” Schumer said.
- The comments likely clear a path for at least eight Senate Democrats to vote for the bill — enough for Republicans to overcome the upper chamber’s 60-vote filibuster threshold.
Zoom in: All but one House Democrat voted against the bill earlier this week, in large part because it lacks language to keep the Trump administration from cutting congressionally approved spending.
- “There were many battleground Dems in the House … that were uncomfortable, semi-uncomfortable, with the vote,” said one House Democrat. “The Senate left the House at the altar.”
- House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), in remarks to his House colleagues at their annual retreat Thursday, lauded them for standing up to President Trump by voting against the bill, according to multiple sources.
- When he praised House Democrats’ votes, he received a standing ovation. When he mentioned Senate Democrats, members booed.
What we’re hearing: House Democrats’ text chains lit up Thursday night with expressions of blinding anger, according to numerous lawmakers who described the conversations on the condition of anonymity.
- “People are PISSED,” one House Democrat told Axios in a text message.
- Several members — including moderates — have begun voicing support for a primary challenge to Schumer, floating Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) as possible candidates, three House Democrats said.
- One lawmaker even vowed at the House Democratic retreat to “write a check tonight” supporting Ocasio-Cortez, said the senior House Democrat.
- Another Democrat told Axios the ideation has gone a step further: “There is definitely a primary recruitment effort happening right now … not just Schumer, but for everyone who votes no.”
More gossip and speculation at the link.
Schumer himself appeared on Chris Hayes last night as well as wrote an Op-Ed for the New York Times. “Chuck Schumer: Trump and Musk Would Love a Shutdown. We Must Not Give Them One.”
Over the past two months, the United States has confronted a bitter truth: The federal government has been taken over by a nihilist.
President Trump has taken a blowtorch to our country and wielded chaos like a weapon. Most Republicans in Congress, meanwhile, have caved to his every whim. The Grand Old Party has devolved into a crowd of Trump sycophants and MAGA radicals who seem to want to burn everything to the ground.
Now, Republicans’ nihilism has brought us to a new brink of disaster: Unless Congress acts, the federal government will shut down Friday at midnight.
As I have said many times, there are no winners in a government shutdown. But there are certainly victims: the most vulnerable Americans, those who rely on federal programs to feed their families, get medical care and stay financially afloat. Communities that depend on government services to function will suffer.
This week Democrats offered a way out: Fund the government for another month to give appropriators more time to do their jobs. Republicans rejected this proposal.
Why? Because Mr. Trump doesn’t want the appropriators to do their job. He wants full control over government spending.
He isn’t the first president to want this, but he may be the first president since Andrew Jackson to successfully cow his party into submission. That leads Democrats to a difficult decision: Either proceed with the bill before us or risk Mr. Trump throwing America into the chaos of a shutdown.
This, in my view, is no choice at all.
Emptywheel (a friend from my Fire Dog Lake Doays) wrote a scathing piece on the situation. It indicates how desperately we need the Democrats in Congress to get their acts together. It isn’t easy dealing with chaos, but it’s even worse if you contribute to it. “Democrats Have to Stop Making Political Decisions with an Eye Towards 2026.” I’m unsure if that’s all they’re thinking about or if they’re just running around like chickens with their heads caught up.
I’ve been out of pocket as events moved towards today’s cloture vote on the dogshit continuing resolution Republicans have written. It’s not yet clear whether seven Democrats (in addition to John Fetterman) will join Chuck Schumer — who has said he’ll vote for cloture — in helping Republicans pass it, or whether a Democrat will buy some time.
It’s clear that Schumer’s excuse only emphasizes that there are no good options. He says if there’s a shutdown, Republicans will only reopen those parts of government they want. In the face of the shuttering of USAID and dismantlement of Department of Education, that seems like a futile worry.
Among the best arguments I’ve seen against a shutdown, laid out but dropped here by Josh Marshall, is that a shutdown would provide Trump a way to halt legal proceedings by deeming those lawyers non-essential.
I was told yesterday that a major driver for Dems was the fear that a shutdown would slow down or stop the various court cases against DOGE. Honestly, that sounded so stupid to me that I was skeptical. But this afternoon I heard it from other key directions. I don’t know if it’s the biggest driver but just on the basis of what I heard I get a sense that it’s a major one. That seems so wrongheaded, so lawyer-brained, that when I got the final piece of the puzzle in front of me and realized this was a real thing, it was hard for me to even process.
Schumer described it this way in his speech yesterday:
Justice, and the courts, extremely troubling, I believe. A shutdown could stall Federal court cases, one of the best redoubts against Trump’s lawlessness, and could require a furlough of critical staff at the courts, denying victims and defendants alike their day in court, dragging out appeals and clogging the justice system for months and even years.
I don’t think this is lawyer-brained at all. Trump could simply call the lawyers engaged in these suits non-essential, stalling legal challenges in their current status, and then finding new test cases to establish a precedent while judges were stymied.
In both Phoenix, where a reduction in force affected all the people running the courthouse, and in the Perkins Coie lawsuit, where a hearing the other day reviewed all the Executive Branch personnel, from Marshals to GSA, who keep the courthouse running, the Executive’s ability to limit the Judiciary via manipulation of facilities and staff has already become a live issue. Here’s how Beryl Howell described the way in which Trump’s attempt to exclude Perkins Coie from federal buildings could be enforced via Executive branch personnel.
THE COURT: I just want to make sure because we, in the judiciary — we’re the third branch. We are not the executive branch. We are not subject to this guidance. But our landlord, and all of the federal courthouses around the country is GSA —
MR. BUTSWINKAS: GSA.
THE COURT: — General Services Administration. And the people who do the security at our front doors, all across the country in federal courthouses, are DOJ-component employees from the U.S. Marshals Service or court security officers. So they are all executive branch employees.
Meanwhile the court cases are making progress. Just this week, we’ve had two judges order reinstatement of all the people fired, grant FOIA status to DOGE, and grant discovery to Democratic Attorneys General (plus in one of the two reinstatement cases, Judge Alsup ordered a deposition from an OPM person involved in the firing). As of this week, DOGE now has to answer for its actions in the courts.
Imagine, for example, if a shutdown made it easier for DHS to keep Mahmoud Khalil in Louisiana for the duration of a shutdown, even if they simply said moving him back to SDNY (or New Jersey) is not a priority. There are other cases where the government is being ordered to pay back payments; a shutdown would make such recourse unavailable to anyone who has not yet sued. In the financial clawback cases (where EPA and FEMA seized funds already awarded), a shutdown would give the FBI time to try to frame the case against plaintiffs they’re pursuing, while the plaintiffs get no protection in the meantime. A key flaw was revealed in the lawsuit against Perkins Coie in the hearing the other day (which I’ll return to); if given the time, I would expect Trump to try the same trick against another law firm, fixing that flaw, in an attempt to eliminate any anti-Trump legal teams in the country.
So the concern that a shutdown would eliminate one of two sources of power is real.
I’m agnostic about whether a shutdown brings more advantage than risks.
The rest of her essay argues that everyone is far too interested in the midterm elections.
(snip)
One thing I am absolutely certain of, however, is that Democrats on both sides of this debate are framing it in terms of 2026. Those justifiably furious at Chuck Schumer are thinking in terms of primaries against any Senator who supports cloture. They’re demanding a filibuster so that elected Democrats, as Democrats, be seen wielding some power, so the party doesn’t look feckless to potential voters. Those afraid of a shutdown are discussing electoral consequences in 2026. Polls are measuring who would be blamed in the polls.
This mindset has plagued both sides of Democratic debates for two months, with disastrous consequences.
Democracy will be preserved or lost in the next three months. And democracy will be won or lost via a nonpartisan political fight over whether enough Americans want to preserve their way of life to fight back, in a coalition that includes far more than Democrats. You win this fight by treating Trump and Elon as the villain, not by making any one Democrat a hero (or worse still, squandering week after week targeting Democratic leaders while letting Elon go ignored).
Either way, this is an untenable situation.
Today is another day of the country finding out none of this is normal. NBC News has a running thread on every crazy thing on deck for the Beltway today. “Government shutdown live updates: Senate to vote on funding bill today; Dr. Mehmet Oz faces confirmation hearing. President Donald Trump will deliver remarks at the Justice Department, a frequent target of his and his allies’ government weaponization claims.” Have I mentioned I have a TV, but it’s been sitting in a box for nearly three years? I just don’t have the stamina to set it up and watch all this craziness on a big screen.
Reality TV stars and swindlers are about all Trump has to offer up these days.
Hassan grills Dr Oz about promoting a bunch of scam "medical" products on TV, including "raspberry ketones." She notes that "it seems to me you are still unwilling to take accountability for your promotion of unproven snake oil remedies to millions of your viewers."
The only good news I found today was this.
Judges order Trump to rehire thousands of fired federal workers.
Two federal courts are ruling that the firings of probationary federal workers were improper and that tens of thousands of those employees must be immediately reinstated. The Trump administration is calling the ruling absurd and unconstitutional and is vowing to fight back. NBC’s Garrett Haake reports for “TODAY.”
It seems we are fully reliant on the Judiciary Branch to stop the destruction of our Government and democracy. It’s not like we didn’t warn people, either. This is in Fortune, as reported by the AP. ” The Trump administration must bring back thousands of federal workers fired by Elon Musk’s DOGE, judge rules.” The Judge really read the riot act to the Federal attorney also.
A federal judge on Thursday ordered President Donald Trump’s administration to reinstate thousands—if not tens of thousands—of probationary workers let go in mass firings across multiple agencies last month, saying that the terminations were directed by a personnel office that had no authority to do so.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco ordered the departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Defense, Energy, the Interior and the Treasury to immediately offer reinstatement to employees terminated on or about Feb. 13 and 14 using guidance from the Office of Personnel Management and its acting director, Charles Ezell.
Alsup directed the agencies to report back within seven days with a list of probationary employees and an explanation of how the departments complied with his order as to each person.
The temporary restraining order came in a lawsuit filed by a coalition of labor unions and organizations as the Republican administration moves to dramatically downsize the federal workforce.
The White House and the Department of Justice did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
Alsup expressed frustration with what he called the government’s attempt to sidestep laws and regulations governing a reduction in its workforce — which it is allowed to do — by firing probationary workers who lack protections. He was appalled that employees were fired for poor performance despite receiving glowing evaluations just months earlier.
“It is sad, a sad day, when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that’s a lie,” he said. “That should not have been done in our country.”
Opinion: 3 ways DOGE challengers could win court cases from CNN
It’s the day before my favorite holiday, The Ides of March. For those who don’t know, if I could go back in time and eliminate before they came into power, it would be the baby that became Julius Ceasar. They offed him too late to help history. So, there’s likely a few folks walking around the White House right now that should Beware the Ides of March. Nipping the Roman Empire in the bud would have definitely put us farther away from the Dark Time Line.
Here’s tomorrow’s version of the Ides of March.
Donald Trump has suggested that the US should buy Gaza, will get Greenland “one way or another” as well as the Panama Canal, ignited a new trade war, floated the annexation of Canada, and hired the world’s richest weirdo (who also happens to be the world’s richest man) to fire tens of thousands of federal employees. And that’s just one country.
Romania’s leading presidential candidate was arrested after winning the first round of elections with the assistance of Russian bots, showing that Putin is determined to mess with all his neighbors. Look for the Moldovan election in a few months; Russia is sowing chaos with energy sabotage.
Germany’s most successful far-right party since World War II just had a record-breaking result after the the US basically endorsed them. And don’t be fooled by Friedrich Merz’s lack of flair: The Europeans are about to try to build an independent defense, give the American abdication.
China’s DeepSeek has upended the AI market, throwing Silicon Valley into full-blown panic mode. And it will soon dominate the renewable energy market and have just been given a monumental soft-power gift the US abdication of 80 years of global leadership of the free world.
Tara Palmeri writes this on her blog, Red Letter. “Fear and Loathing in the West Wing. Inside the revolt against Elon Musk…”
The tolerance for Elon Musk inside of the White House is wearing thin, as they deal with the fallout of his calamitous interview with Larry Kudlow when he touched the third rail – entitlements. Even though Trump’s staffers are terrified of Musk, they know that if you try to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, you die, politically speaking.
“It’s no longer simmering resistance, people are fucking furious,” said a source with knowledge of the situation.
“Medicaid is not just for Black people in the ghetto, these are our voters,” said a Republican operative close to the White House.
Even before the interview, I’m told that the White House communications team was adamantly against letting Musk do the interview with Kudlow, even though he’s a former administration official and ally. They know that FOX News is a network that their older, white working-class voters watch closely and this was a rare televised interview for Musk, not the same as getting high with Joe Rogan.
Now they’re playing cleanup. Sure, they sent out a “Fact Check” memo from the White House highlighting that his words were garbled when he said he’s looking at the “waste and fraud in entitlement spending,” not entitlements all together. But then Musk went further, falsely claiming in the interview that Democrats use entitlement programs to attract illegal immigrants into the country so that they can add them to their voter rolls. It doesn’t help that earlier this month, Musk referred to Social Security as “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.”
You can even see Kudlow shifting around uncomfortably during the interview.
Trump’s spokesperson Steven Cheung denied that there was an issue. “We love [Musk] doing media,” he said, pointing to his joint interview with Trump on Sean Hannity.
As promised, I want to share the ins and outs of my reporting process with you, so I first reached out to Trump’s personal pollster John McLaughlin after I learned about the meltdown over Musk’s interview to ask if he’s been polling Musk’s response in the interview. And I was shocked to learn that McLaughlin has not polled Musk at all, even though he’s clearly a political liability to the President. McLaughlin has been polling Trump for decades and was one of the main pollsters alongside Tony Fabrizio on the campaign. He said the last poll that he conducted that even remotely touched on Musk was about DOGE in November 2024 and it did not mention Musk by name.
“No one has asked us to do that poll,” McLaughlin told me.
Well, the public polling shows that the numbers for Musk – what some would call Trump’s heat shield – have been in free fall since Trump took office, with more than 53 percent of people having an unfavorable opinion of Musk, according to a new CNN poll. But surely Trump’s political operation, which to be fair is an impressive one, would want to know if Musk was starting to become a liability. No political consultant in Washington trusts public polling. They’d probably trust the opposition party’s polling over public polling. So that leaves me to believe that they are afraid of Trump’s appendage or it’s because Musk just donated $100 million to Trump’s political arm, which just so happens to be run by Trump’s other pollster Fabrizio. When I asked Fabrizio if he’s conducting polls on Musk favorables, he didn’t get back to me.
Regardless, I’ve heard that the White House is aware that Musk’s numbers are “dog shit,” according to a source. “
More at the link.
Just one more thing to ruin your weekend and I’m sorry but it’s story that needs telling. This is from The New Republic. “Trump Gives New Orders to U.S. Military on Panama Canal Takeover, Donald Trump is moving forward on his plans to seize the Panama Canal.”
The Trump administration has asked the U.S. military to draw up options for retaking the Panama Canal.
President Trump has been pushing for retaking the canal since December, and repeated his desire in a joint address to Congress last week, without any elaboration. The rest of the Trump administration hasn’t attempted to explain what he means, either.
The military is drawing up options, according to NBC News, that range from a closer partnership with the Panamanian military to soldiers seizing the Panama Canal by force, according to unnamed officials. The use of force depends on how much Panama’s military is willing to work with the United States, the officials told NBC News.
The commander of U.S. Southern Command, Admiral Alvin Holsey, presented the different strategies to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth earlier this week. The plan to use military force against Panama will only be considered if posting additional U.S. military personnel does not accomplish Trump’s goal of “reclaiming” the canal, the officials said.
Right now, the U.S. has more than 200 troops in the country, including Special Forces units working with Panamanian units to combat internal unrest. Trump claims China has troops in the canal, which Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino denies, as does China. In February, Panama decided not to renew an infrastructure agreement with China, drawing criticism from the country toward the U.S.
One tin soldier rides again.
So, I just want to watch a few more Star Wars movies and eat the tabouli I made last night. We’re seriously in trouble, and I don’t see Captain America out there anywhere, or Wonder Woman, or any of the other Super Heros we could use right now. At least it’s almost crawfish season.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
#Repeat1968JohnBuss #ChuckSchumer #Doge #FARTUS #governmentShutdown #JudgeOrdersRehireOfFederalWorkers
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Finally Friday Reads: Shutdown or Meltdown?
“So, not even two months. Here we are.” John Buss, @repeat1968, @johnbuss.bsky.social
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I’ve always been an opponent of letting the US Government shut down. As an economist, I know what kind of misery that creates for many people as well, as the possibility of a government default, which could haunt us for many years. My worry is real, but this situation is unique, and typically, the party that tries to shut the government down takes the political heat. I understand what he’s worried about. If we default on debt we become a risky debtor. If we shut the Government down, the weakest among us will suffer needlessly. Default has incredible consequences for the Social Security trust fund, the strength of our dollar, and if anyone will ever buy a US t-bill or t-bond now or ever. That includes war bonds if we ever need them again. I don’t like it, but a default would be unbelievably destructive to the country’s future. I hate that we’re in this position.
How it played out this last night and this morning pitted Schumer against many of his most strong-willed colleagues. Schumer’s support even earned him a pat on the head from #FARTUS. Trump’s always one to take advantage of a bad situation. He interpreted the move as support of the Doge Bulldozer moving through government agencies and policy. That was something one of my Canadian friends from way back in my Fired Dog Lake days predicted. I’d like to read your thoughts on that because I’m unsure how it will be received by folks outside Beltway machinations.
Let’s review what’s out there in the Press and Social media about the move that separated many Democratic senators from the leader. This is from AXIOS as proffered by Andrew Sollender. “House Dems go into “complete meltdown” as Schumer folds”.
House Democrats erupted into apoplexy Thursday night after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he would support Republicans’ stopgap government funding measure.
Why it matters: House Democrats feel like they “walked the plank,” in the words of one member. They voted almost unanimously against the measure, only to watch Senate Democrats seemingly give it the green light.
- “Complete meltdown. Complete and utter meltdown on all text chains,” said the member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer sensitive details of members’ internal conversations.
- A senior House Democrat said “people are furious” and that some rank-and-file members have floated the idea of angrily marching onto the Senate floor in protest.
- Others are talking openly about supporting primary challenges to senators who vote for the GOP spending bill.
Driving the news: Schumer said in a floor speech Thursday that while the GOP measure is “very bad,” the possibility of a government shutdown “has consequences for America that are much, much worse.”
- “A shutdown would give Donald Trump the keys to the city, the state and the country,” Schumer said.
- The comments likely clear a path for at least eight Senate Democrats to vote for the bill — enough for Republicans to overcome the upper chamber’s 60-vote filibuster threshold.
Zoom in: All but one House Democrat voted against the bill earlier this week, in large part because it lacks language to keep the Trump administration from cutting congressionally approved spending.
- “There were many battleground Dems in the House … that were uncomfortable, semi-uncomfortable, with the vote,” said one House Democrat. “The Senate left the House at the altar.”
- House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), in remarks to his House colleagues at their annual retreat Thursday, lauded them for standing up to President Trump by voting against the bill, according to multiple sources.
- When he praised House Democrats’ votes, he received a standing ovation. When he mentioned Senate Democrats, members booed.
What we’re hearing: House Democrats’ text chains lit up Thursday night with expressions of blinding anger, according to numerous lawmakers who described the conversations on the condition of anonymity.
- “People are PISSED,” one House Democrat told Axios in a text message.
- Several members — including moderates — have begun voicing support for a primary challenge to Schumer, floating Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) as possible candidates, three House Democrats said.
- One lawmaker even vowed at the House Democratic retreat to “write a check tonight” supporting Ocasio-Cortez, said the senior House Democrat.
- Another Democrat told Axios the ideation has gone a step further: “There is definitely a primary recruitment effort happening right now … not just Schumer, but for everyone who votes no.”
More gossip and speculation at the link.
Schumer himself appeared on Chris Hayes last night as well as wrote an Op-Ed for the New York Times. “Chuck Schumer: Trump and Musk Would Love a Shutdown. We Must Not Give Them One.”
Over the past two months, the United States has confronted a bitter truth: The federal government has been taken over by a nihilist.
President Trump has taken a blowtorch to our country and wielded chaos like a weapon. Most Republicans in Congress, meanwhile, have caved to his every whim. The Grand Old Party has devolved into a crowd of Trump sycophants and MAGA radicals who seem to want to burn everything to the ground.
Now, Republicans’ nihilism has brought us to a new brink of disaster: Unless Congress acts, the federal government will shut down Friday at midnight.
As I have said many times, there are no winners in a government shutdown. But there are certainly victims: the most vulnerable Americans, those who rely on federal programs to feed their families, get medical care and stay financially afloat. Communities that depend on government services to function will suffer.
This week Democrats offered a way out: Fund the government for another month to give appropriators more time to do their jobs. Republicans rejected this proposal.
Why? Because Mr. Trump doesn’t want the appropriators to do their job. He wants full control over government spending.
He isn’t the first president to want this, but he may be the first president since Andrew Jackson to successfully cow his party into submission. That leads Democrats to a difficult decision: Either proceed with the bill before us or risk Mr. Trump throwing America into the chaos of a shutdown.
This, in my view, is no choice at all.
Emptywheel (a friend from my Fire Dog Lake Doays) wrote a scathing piece on the situation. It indicates how desperately we need the Democrats in Congress to get their acts together. It isn’t easy dealing with chaos, but it’s even worse if you contribute to it. “Democrats Have to Stop Making Political Decisions with an Eye Towards 2026.” I’m unsure if that’s all they’re thinking about or if they’re just running around like chickens with their heads caught up.
I’ve been out of pocket as events moved towards today’s cloture vote on the dogshit continuing resolution Republicans have written. It’s not yet clear whether seven Democrats (in addition to John Fetterman) will join Chuck Schumer — who has said he’ll vote for cloture — in helping Republicans pass it, or whether a Democrat will buy some time.
It’s clear that Schumer’s excuse only emphasizes that there are no good options. He says if there’s a shutdown, Republicans will only reopen those parts of government they want. In the face of the shuttering of USAID and dismantlement of Department of Education, that seems like a futile worry.
Among the best arguments I’ve seen against a shutdown, laid out but dropped here by Josh Marshall, is that a shutdown would provide Trump a way to halt legal proceedings by deeming those lawyers non-essential.
I was told yesterday that a major driver for Dems was the fear that a shutdown would slow down or stop the various court cases against DOGE. Honestly, that sounded so stupid to me that I was skeptical. But this afternoon I heard it from other key directions. I don’t know if it’s the biggest driver but just on the basis of what I heard I get a sense that it’s a major one. That seems so wrongheaded, so lawyer-brained, that when I got the final piece of the puzzle in front of me and realized this was a real thing, it was hard for me to even process.
Schumer described it this way in his speech yesterday:
Justice, and the courts, extremely troubling, I believe. A shutdown could stall Federal court cases, one of the best redoubts against Trump’s lawlessness, and could require a furlough of critical staff at the courts, denying victims and defendants alike their day in court, dragging out appeals and clogging the justice system for months and even years.
I don’t think this is lawyer-brained at all. Trump could simply call the lawyers engaged in these suits non-essential, stalling legal challenges in their current status, and then finding new test cases to establish a precedent while judges were stymied.
In both Phoenix, where a reduction in force affected all the people running the courthouse, and in the Perkins Coie lawsuit, where a hearing the other day reviewed all the Executive Branch personnel, from Marshals to GSA, who keep the courthouse running, the Executive’s ability to limit the Judiciary via manipulation of facilities and staff has already become a live issue. Here’s how Beryl Howell described the way in which Trump’s attempt to exclude Perkins Coie from federal buildings could be enforced via Executive branch personnel.
THE COURT: I just want to make sure because we, in the judiciary — we’re the third branch. We are not the executive branch. We are not subject to this guidance. But our landlord, and all of the federal courthouses around the country is GSA —
MR. BUTSWINKAS: GSA.
THE COURT: — General Services Administration. And the people who do the security at our front doors, all across the country in federal courthouses, are DOJ-component employees from the U.S. Marshals Service or court security officers. So they are all executive branch employees.
Meanwhile the court cases are making progress. Just this week, we’ve had two judges order reinstatement of all the people fired, grant FOIA status to DOGE, and grant discovery to Democratic Attorneys General (plus in one of the two reinstatement cases, Judge Alsup ordered a deposition from an OPM person involved in the firing). As of this week, DOGE now has to answer for its actions in the courts.
Imagine, for example, if a shutdown made it easier for DHS to keep Mahmoud Khalil in Louisiana for the duration of a shutdown, even if they simply said moving him back to SDNY (or New Jersey) is not a priority. There are other cases where the government is being ordered to pay back payments; a shutdown would make such recourse unavailable to anyone who has not yet sued. In the financial clawback cases (where EPA and FEMA seized funds already awarded), a shutdown would give the FBI time to try to frame the case against plaintiffs they’re pursuing, while the plaintiffs get no protection in the meantime. A key flaw was revealed in the lawsuit against Perkins Coie in the hearing the other day (which I’ll return to); if given the time, I would expect Trump to try the same trick against another law firm, fixing that flaw, in an attempt to eliminate any anti-Trump legal teams in the country.
So the concern that a shutdown would eliminate one of two sources of power is real.
I’m agnostic about whether a shutdown brings more advantage than risks.
The rest of her essay argues that everyone is far too interested in the midterm elections.
(snip)
One thing I am absolutely certain of, however, is that Democrats on both sides of this debate are framing it in terms of 2026. Those justifiably furious at Chuck Schumer are thinking in terms of primaries against any Senator who supports cloture. They’re demanding a filibuster so that elected Democrats, as Democrats, be seen wielding some power, so the party doesn’t look feckless to potential voters. Those afraid of a shutdown are discussing electoral consequences in 2026. Polls are measuring who would be blamed in the polls.
This mindset has plagued both sides of Democratic debates for two months, with disastrous consequences.
Democracy will be preserved or lost in the next three months. And democracy will be won or lost via a nonpartisan political fight over whether enough Americans want to preserve their way of life to fight back, in a coalition that includes far more than Democrats. You win this fight by treating Trump and Elon as the villain, not by making any one Democrat a hero (or worse still, squandering week after week targeting Democratic leaders while letting Elon go ignored).
Either way, this is an untenable situation.
Today is another day of the country finding out none of this is normal. NBC News has a running thread on every crazy thing on deck for the Beltway today. “Government shutdown live updates: Senate to vote on funding bill today; Dr. Mehmet Oz faces confirmation hearing. President Donald Trump will deliver remarks at the Justice Department, a frequent target of his and his allies’ government weaponization claims.” Have I mentioned I have a TV, but it’s been sitting in a box for nearly three years? I just don’t have the stamina to set it up and watch all this craziness on a big screen.
Reality TV stars and swindlers are about all Trump has to offer up these days.
Hassan grills Dr Oz about promoting a bunch of scam "medical" products on TV, including "raspberry ketones." She notes that "it seems to me you are still unwilling to take accountability for your promotion of unproven snake oil remedies to millions of your viewers."
The only good news I found today was this.
Judges order Trump to rehire thousands of fired federal workers.
Two federal courts are ruling that the firings of probationary federal workers were improper and that tens of thousands of those employees must be immediately reinstated. The Trump administration is calling the ruling absurd and unconstitutional and is vowing to fight back. NBC’s Garrett Haake reports for “TODAY.”
It seems we are fully reliant on the Judiciary Branch to stop the destruction of our Government and democracy. It’s not like we didn’t warn people, either. This is in Fortune, as reported by the AP. ” The Trump administration must bring back thousands of federal workers fired by Elon Musk’s DOGE, judge rules.” The Judge really read the riot act to the Federal attorney also.
A federal judge on Thursday ordered President Donald Trump’s administration to reinstate thousands—if not tens of thousands—of probationary workers let go in mass firings across multiple agencies last month, saying that the terminations were directed by a personnel office that had no authority to do so.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco ordered the departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Defense, Energy, the Interior and the Treasury to immediately offer reinstatement to employees terminated on or about Feb. 13 and 14 using guidance from the Office of Personnel Management and its acting director, Charles Ezell.
Alsup directed the agencies to report back within seven days with a list of probationary employees and an explanation of how the departments complied with his order as to each person.
The temporary restraining order came in a lawsuit filed by a coalition of labor unions and organizations as the Republican administration moves to dramatically downsize the federal workforce.
The White House and the Department of Justice did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
Alsup expressed frustration with what he called the government’s attempt to sidestep laws and regulations governing a reduction in its workforce — which it is allowed to do — by firing probationary workers who lack protections. He was appalled that employees were fired for poor performance despite receiving glowing evaluations just months earlier.
“It is sad, a sad day, when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that’s a lie,” he said. “That should not have been done in our country.”
Opinion: 3 ways DOGE challengers could win court cases from CNN
It’s the day before my favorite holiday, The Ides of March. For those who don’t know, if I could go back in time and eliminate before they came into power, it would be the baby that became Julius Ceasar. They offed him too late to help history. So, there’s likely a few folks walking around the White House right now that should Beware the Ides of March. Nipping the Roman Empire in the bud would have definitely put us farther away from the Dark Time Line.
Here’s tomorrow’s version of the Ides of March.
Donald Trump has suggested that the US should buy Gaza, will get Greenland “one way or another” as well as the Panama Canal, ignited a new trade war, floated the annexation of Canada, and hired the world’s richest weirdo (who also happens to be the world’s richest man) to fire tens of thousands of federal employees. And that’s just one country.
Romania’s leading presidential candidate was arrested after winning the first round of elections with the assistance of Russian bots, showing that Putin is determined to mess with all his neighbors. Look for the Moldovan election in a few months; Russia is sowing chaos with energy sabotage.
Germany’s most successful far-right party since World War II just had a record-breaking result after the the US basically endorsed them. And don’t be fooled by Friedrich Merz’s lack of flair: The Europeans are about to try to build an independent defense, give the American abdication.
China’s DeepSeek has upended the AI market, throwing Silicon Valley into full-blown panic mode. And it will soon dominate the renewable energy market and have just been given a monumental soft-power gift the US abdication of 80 years of global leadership of the free world.
Tara Palmeri writes this on her blog, Red Letter. “Fear and Loathing in the West Wing. Inside the revolt against Elon Musk…”
The tolerance for Elon Musk inside of the White House is wearing thin, as they deal with the fallout of his calamitous interview with Larry Kudlow when he touched the third rail – entitlements. Even though Trump’s staffers are terrified of Musk, they know that if you try to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, you die, politically speaking.
“It’s no longer simmering resistance, people are fucking furious,” said a source with knowledge of the situation.
“Medicaid is not just for Black people in the ghetto, these are our voters,” said a Republican operative close to the White House.
Even before the interview, I’m told that the White House communications team was adamantly against letting Musk do the interview with Kudlow, even though he’s a former administration official and ally. They know that FOX News is a network that their older, white working-class voters watch closely and this was a rare televised interview for Musk, not the same as getting high with Joe Rogan.
Now they’re playing cleanup. Sure, they sent out a “Fact Check” memo from the White House highlighting that his words were garbled when he said he’s looking at the “waste and fraud in entitlement spending,” not entitlements all together. But then Musk went further, falsely claiming in the interview that Democrats use entitlement programs to attract illegal immigrants into the country so that they can add them to their voter rolls. It doesn’t help that earlier this month, Musk referred to Social Security as “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.”
You can even see Kudlow shifting around uncomfortably during the interview.
Trump’s spokesperson Steven Cheung denied that there was an issue. “We love [Musk] doing media,” he said, pointing to his joint interview with Trump on Sean Hannity.
As promised, I want to share the ins and outs of my reporting process with you, so I first reached out to Trump’s personal pollster John McLaughlin after I learned about the meltdown over Musk’s interview to ask if he’s been polling Musk’s response in the interview. And I was shocked to learn that McLaughlin has not polled Musk at all, even though he’s clearly a political liability to the President. McLaughlin has been polling Trump for decades and was one of the main pollsters alongside Tony Fabrizio on the campaign. He said the last poll that he conducted that even remotely touched on Musk was about DOGE in November 2024 and it did not mention Musk by name.
“No one has asked us to do that poll,” McLaughlin told me.
Well, the public polling shows that the numbers for Musk – what some would call Trump’s heat shield – have been in free fall since Trump took office, with more than 53 percent of people having an unfavorable opinion of Musk, according to a new CNN poll. But surely Trump’s political operation, which to be fair is an impressive one, would want to know if Musk was starting to become a liability. No political consultant in Washington trusts public polling. They’d probably trust the opposition party’s polling over public polling. So that leaves me to believe that they are afraid of Trump’s appendage or it’s because Musk just donated $100 million to Trump’s political arm, which just so happens to be run by Trump’s other pollster Fabrizio. When I asked Fabrizio if he’s conducting polls on Musk favorables, he didn’t get back to me.
Regardless, I’ve heard that the White House is aware that Musk’s numbers are “dog shit,” according to a source. “
More at the link.
Just one more thing to ruin your weekend and I’m sorry but it’s story that needs telling. This is from The New Republic. “Trump Gives New Orders to U.S. Military on Panama Canal Takeover, Donald Trump is moving forward on his plans to seize the Panama Canal.”
The Trump administration has asked the U.S. military to draw up options for retaking the Panama Canal.
President Trump has been pushing for retaking the canal since December, and repeated his desire in a joint address to Congress last week, without any elaboration. The rest of the Trump administration hasn’t attempted to explain what he means, either.
The military is drawing up options, according to NBC News, that range from a closer partnership with the Panamanian military to soldiers seizing the Panama Canal by force, according to unnamed officials. The use of force depends on how much Panama’s military is willing to work with the United States, the officials told NBC News.
The commander of U.S. Southern Command, Admiral Alvin Holsey, presented the different strategies to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth earlier this week. The plan to use military force against Panama will only be considered if posting additional U.S. military personnel does not accomplish Trump’s goal of “reclaiming” the canal, the officials said.
Right now, the U.S. has more than 200 troops in the country, including Special Forces units working with Panamanian units to combat internal unrest. Trump claims China has troops in the canal, which Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino denies, as does China. In February, Panama decided not to renew an infrastructure agreement with China, drawing criticism from the country toward the U.S.
One tin soldier rides again.
So, I just want to watch a few more Star Wars movies and eat the tabouli I made last night. We’re seriously in trouble, and I don’t see Captain America out there anywhere, or Wonder Woman, or any of the other Super Heros we could use right now. At least it’s almost crawfish season.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
#Repeat1968JohnBuss #ChuckSchumer #Doge #FARTUS #governmentShutdown #JudgeOrdersRehireOfFederalWorkers
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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 vice 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. McConnell thinks he can swiftly change roles from Macbeth to King Lear. The Democratic Party is appointing the same old group that hasn’t been able to do anything to stop this to leadership positions. I cannot be the only one who doesn’t see any of this ending well.
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 is 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 PM, and blowing up the US economy today. Canadian 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 also being all kissy-face with the UK’s Nigel Farage. 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 bought 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 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 surprised Musk got 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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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 vice 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. McConnell thinks he can swiftly change roles from Macbeth to King Lear. The Democratic Party is appointing the same old group that hasn’t been able to do anything to stop this to leadership positions. I cannot be the only one who doesn’t see any of this ending well.
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 is 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 PM, and blowing up the US economy today. Canadian 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 also being all kissy-face with the UK’s Nigel Farage. 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 bought 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 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 surprised Musk got 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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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 vice 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. McConnell thinks he can swiftly change roles from Macbeth to King Lear. The Democratic Party is appointing the same old group that hasn’t been able to do anything to stop this to leadership positions. I cannot be the only one who doesn’t see any of this ending well.
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 is 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 PM, and blowing up the US economy today. Canadian 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 also being all kissy-face with the UK’s Nigel Farage. 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 bought 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 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 surprised Musk got 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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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 vice 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. McConnell thinks he can swiftly change roles from Macbeth to King Lear. The Democratic Party is appointing the same old group that hasn’t been able to do anything to stop this to leadership positions. I cannot be the only one who doesn’t see any of this ending well.
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 is 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 PM, and blowing up the US economy today. Canadian 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 also being all kissy-face with the UK’s Nigel Farage. 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 bought 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 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 surprised Musk got 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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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: 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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Mostly Monday Reads: President Eject Incontinentia Buttocks readies the Enemies List
“And just like that, America is respecting on the world stage once again.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I’m going down a very dank, dark rabbit hole today because one of the things that concern me the most are the ongoing threats that President Eject Incontinentia Buttocks against people who make him feel bad about himself or correct his story weaving for the sake of reporting reality. We keep seeing the lists and hearing direct attacks on what he considers “enemies.” This ranges from politicians of past and present to members of the press. It is the true sign of a despot, and one of the major things the U.S. Constitution and our form of government were designed to toss in history’s trash heap. The other is the feudal tradition of bending or taking the knee. That is why public servants take an oath to uphold and protect the Constitution and not to a cult of personality.
It is evident during this transition period that these feudal and dictatorial aspirations are a serious part of the vetting of Cabinet officers and the oncoming attempt to prosecute and persecute outspoken critics of the tremendous number of unfit, immoral cretins, loyal to an insane and craven political figure. King George was the Mad King we had to dethrone to gain independence. What do we do with a Mad Politician chosen by the Electoral College and many voters who live in states with more livestock than people? He’s an obvious threat to democracy, but he managed to Pied Piper, a bunch of rubes.
An interview this weekend shows how obsessed he is with ensuring his warped reality rules the day and the country.
Let me share a few headlines that are giving me some severe heartburn. This is from CNN and is reported by Aaron Pellish. “Trump lays out sweeping early acts on deportation and January 6 pardons, says Cheney and others ‘should go to jail.’”
President-elect Donald Trump in a television interview that aired Sunday previewed a sweeping agenda for his first days in office, outlining how his administration will prioritize deporting migrants with criminal records, vowing to pursue pardons for January 6 defendants on his first day, and raising the possibility that former Rep. Liz Cheney and other political opponents could face jail time.
Trump said he would not seek “retribution” against President Joe Biden and against his political enemies, but he repeatedly left room for his appointees to decide whether to go after specific people. He suggested members of Congress who led the investigations into his conduct during the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol should be put in jail and that he’ll look on his first day at issuing pardons to supporters involved in the riot.
“These people have been there, how long is it? Three or four years? You know, by the way, they’ve been in there for years, and they’re in a filthy, disgusting place that shouldn’t even be allowed to be open,” he said. Nearly 1,200 people either have pleaded guilty or were found guilty at trial for crimes connected to the January 6 attack, according to the Justice Department. More than 645 defendants were ordered to serve some jail time.
Trump said he would not direct his Justice Department to investigate members of Congress and Biden administration officials who led the investigations into his role in January 6, but continued to suggest his DOJ would be justified in deciding to launch investigations without his input.
When asked about the possibility of investigating special counsel Jack Smith, who brought the two since-dropped federal cases against him, Trump said he wants his pick for attorney general, Pam Bondi, to “do what she wants to do.”
“She’s very experienced. I want her to do what she wants to do. I’m not going to instruct her to do it,” he said.
Trump was more direct when speaking about the members of Congress who led the January 6 committee, telling Welker that the co-chairs of the committee — Republican Cheney, who has since left Congress, and Democrat Bennie Thompson — should “go to jail.”
“Cheney was behind it. So is Bennie Thompson and everybody on that committee,” he said. “For what they did, honestly, they should go to jail.”
Trump also suggested that committee members might do well to receive preemptive pardons from Biden to protect themselves from criminal prosecution. CNN reported last week that Biden White House aides, administration officials and prominent defense attorneys in Washington were discussing potential preemptive pardons or legal aid for people who might be targeted by Trump.
“Biden can give them a pardon if he wants to,” Trump said. “And maybe he should.”
In a statement later Sunday, Cheney said, “Donald Trump’s suggestion that members of Congress who later investigated his illegal and unconstitutional actions should be jailed is a continuation of his assault on the rule of law and the foundations of our republic.”
Republican former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who served on the committee, told CNN’s Manu Raju on Sunday he’s “not worried” about the Trump administration investigating him or his fellow committee members.
The Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause protects lawmakers from certain law enforcement actions targeted at their legislative duties.
CNN has reached out to Thompson for comment.
The problem is mostly with “political enemies.” However, it does go deeper than that. This is from Phillip Bump’s column today at the Washington Post.”Trump sees the investigators, not the rioters, as the Jan. 6 criminals. It’s not just that he seeks to avoid accountability. It’s that he hopes to invert it.” So, the criminals arrested by law officers, prosecuted in courts, and found guilty in the process by a duly appointed Judge or Jury are the law breakers here? How horrifying is that?
History will tell the story of the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in direct terms. President Donald Trump, increasingly desperate to block Joe Biden’s inauguration to replace him, summoned his supporters to Washington for a “wild” protest. Tens of thousands came, including members of violent, fringe-right groups.
As legislators convened to formalize Biden’s victory, angry throngs of Trump supporters pushed toward the building, some engaging in violent altercations with law enforcement in an effort to stop Congress from counting electoral votes. Hundreds were injured, including more than 100 police officers.
Congress tried to hold Trump accountable for his role in the riot twice, first by impeaching him — enough Republican senators sided with Trump to prevent conviction — and then by launching a high-profile investigation of his broad effort to retain power. Meanwhile, the justice system went to work arresting and imprisoning those who had engaged in the riot. Special counsel Jack Smith brought federal charges against Trump.
Pressed whether he’d direct Bondi or Kash Patel, his pick to lead the FBI, to send them to jail, Trump said, “No, not at all,” before adding, “I think they’ll have to look at that.”
Asked whether he plans to follow up on his frequent campaign promise to investigate Biden — whom he repeatedly labeled as “corrupt” and a “criminal” on the campaign trail — Trump said he doesn’t want to “go back into the past.”
“I’m really looking to make our country successful. I’m not looking to go back into the past,” he said, adding, “Retribution will be through success.”
When asked about previously saying he would direct his Justice Department to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Biden, Trump said he would not do that but left the door open for top DOJ officials to make their own determinations.
“No, I’m not doing that unless I find something that I think is reasonable,” he said. “But that’s not going to be my decision. That’s going to be Pam Bondi’s decision, and, to a different extent, Kash Patel, assuming they’re both there, and I think they’re both going to get approved.” Trump has tapped Patel to lead the FBI, despite the current director, Trump appointee Christopher Wray, still having several years left in his 10-year term.
Throughout the interview, Trump at times struck a more temperate tone toward his political opponents and appeared to prioritize uniting the country over exacting vengeance. He said he plans to make unity a central theme of his inauguration address and expressed confidence that his administration will achieve a level of success that will bring the country together.
But Trump invoked similar calls for unity at various points throughout his campaign — including in the wake of the first assassination attempt against him — before often reverting to bitter, divisive rhetoric and personal attacks. During the NBC interview, Trump again refused to concede that he lost the 2020 presidential election.
President Eject Incontinentia Buttocks rejects reality for a version that suits his malignant narcissism and purposes. The New Republic’s Greg Sargent interviews Brian Beutler about this on his PodCast. “Transcript: Trump’s Private Rage at “Traitors” Reveals Dark 2025 Plans. An interview with Brian Beutler, author of the “Off Message” Substack, who explains how Democrats can and must do more to alert the public to the dangers of a second Trump term.” Dangers, indeed.
The New York Times reports that Donald Trump is telling advisers that his biggest regret from his first term was that he appointed “traitors.” Not traitors to the country, of course; traitors to him. As a result, his transition team is grilling prospective officials to gauge their loyalty to Trump; that is, loyalty to the person. Is there some way for Democrats to explain how absurd and dangerous all this is in a manner that gets through to the public? We’re talking about this today with Brian Beutler, author of the excellent Substack Off Message, who’s been arguing that Dems need to get more aggressive with their communications about all this right now before Trump takes office. Thanks for coming back on, Brian.
Brian Beutler: It’s always good to be with you.
Sargent: The New York Times reports that he’s privately telling advisors that his biggest first-term regret was appointing traitors. Importantly, traitors are those who came to see Trump accurately as a threat to the system: Chief of Staff John Kelly, Defense Secretaries Jim Madison, Mark Esper, and even Attorney General William Barr, who was relentlessly loyal up to the very last minute. That’s his regret, appointing people who describe the threat he poses accurately. Brian, in some sense, this isn’t a surprise, but it’s rarely reported quite this clearly. Your thoughts?
Beutler: It’s inauspicious. And it probably portends some conflict between him and the Senate insofar as the people that he’s vetting are going to be appointed to positions that require Senate confirmation. That’s because, as I understand, the loyalty test as reported in the article is not just, Do you support Donald Trump? Do you support the MAGA movement? Do you support its policy goals?—it’s really, Do you believe Donald Trump won or lost the 2020 election? If they acknowledge the truth that he lost, they’re out, they’re not going to get the nomination.
And similarly, with questions like, Do you think January 6 was good or bad? Do you think it was something that Donald Trump is responsible for? Are these patriots or are they insurrectionists?, if you answer that the wrong way, you’re not getting the job. And insofar as anyone who answers the way Trump wants them to answer has to go before the Senate. Well, it’s going to raise questions for both Democrats and Republicans in different ways.
Democrats are going to have to decide whether those are red lines for them that they won’t cross. If Trump finds somebody who’s qualified as in their resume is good, that they’re credentialed to do the job he’s appointed them to, but they’re also supportive of the Big Lie or they think that the insurrection was OK, will Democrats look past that to say, Well, at least you’ll know how to do the job that you’re being appointed to do? I would like Democrats to say there will be zero Democratic votes for any nominees who take that loyalty test. And if they do that, then it will fall to Republicans.
Are 50 out of 53 Republican senators willing to take that vote? An ancillary benefit of Democrats drawing a hard line here is that’ll be really tough for them because there are still at least a handful of Senate Republicans who don’t support the Big Lie, who won’t repeat it, and who think the people who peddle it are real threats to democracy. Then we’ll find out whether they just decided, You know what, Trump won, so it’s revisionist history all the way down now.
Sargent: His use of the term traitors in his conversations with his advisors, which shows that he’s still seething with anger about those who refuse to go along with his rewritten history: This is one of the keys to understanding what he really intends with current picks like Pete Hegseth as defense secretary, Kash Patel as FBI director, and Pam Bondi as attorney general. It won’t be that hard for all Democrats to oppose Pete Hegseth and Kash Patel, but I’m not sure all Democrats will oppose Pam Bondi.
We do have precedent for politicizing the FBI. I remember all of this very well, as well as the entire setup with AG John Mitchell. I had thought laws were put into place to prevent this from happening again. I also was aware that many Republicans at the time thought those laws went too far. Aaron Rupar and Thor Bensure, writing for Public Notice, share this headline. “The J. Edgar Hoover precedent for weaponizing the FBI. “Yes, we could have a repeat of that,” Frank Figliuzzi tells us.”
After serving in the FBI for more than two decades, in 2011 Frank Figliuzzi became the assistant director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division, where he worked alongside FBI Director Robert Mueller. Suffice it to say he saw a lot in his career.
So it should be taken seriously that Figliuzzi, now an MSNBC senior national security and intelligence analyst, describes Trump’s picks to run what are sometimes referred to as the power ministries — among them the DOJ (including the FBI) and the defense department — as a “hijacking of the entire national security structure.”
“My chief concern is this single characteristic that seems to run through these nominees — blind allegiance to Donald Trump,” Figliuzzi told us.
We recently connected with Figliuzzi to get his insight on Trump’s picks and what they signal about how the federal government will operate over the next four years. He warned that “we could be heading toward tremendous abuses of power, with the FBI going after Trump’s political enemies.” And he noted that a previous FBI director provided the president-elect and his choice to run the bureau, Kash Patel, with a blueprint.
Benson interviewed Figluzzi. It went like this.
Thor Benson
As someone who’s focused on national security and has a background there, what are your top concerns with Trump’s choices for national security roles?
Frank Figliuzzi
Sadly, we’ll have to rank order them.
It’s not just that many of Trump’s nominees are remarkably unqualified for the jobs, and they are — from the DNI pick with Tulsi Gabbard to the DHS with Kristi Noem to Hegseth at DOD and now Kash Patel. But the lack of competence is not my chief concern anymore.
My chief concern is this single characteristic that seems to run through these nominees — blind allegiance to Donald Trump. Yes, there are national security issues with someone like Gabbard or Hegseth — I say national security with Hegseth, particularly, because similar to the concerns about Matt Gaetz, we don’t know what we don’t know. Is there more coming with Hegseth? Is it extortion and blackmail?
He’s already written a check to a woman in California. What else do we not know about? According to the latest reporting, he appears to have an alcohol problem. He’s had to physically be carried out of events he attended because he was drunk. That’s not good with someone who’s running things at the Pentagon. Are there more women and incidents out there? According to the New Yorker, he also yells “kill all the Muslims” when he gets drunk.
Out of all of the nominees, Kash Patel lacks the capacity to have his own independent thoughts and ideology. His record is replete with nothing but kissing Trump’s ass. That’s it. You don’t have to take my word for it. Look at his public statements about persecuting the “deep state,” prosecutors, the media, for christ’s sake. Combine that with Pam Bondi’s almost identical comments, and we’ve now got a Trump hijacking of the entire national security structure.
Thor Benson
So where does that take us?
Frank Figliuzzi
Well, we could be heading toward tremendous abuses of power, with the FBI going after Trump’s political enemies.
So, my hair is on fire again, although it never really goes out, to be honest. There are warning signs all over the place, and only a small segment of the American populace appears to be aware of all of this. You can read Figliuzzi’s discussion of Nixon’s tricks at the link. The other headline grabber today is how a set of unelected and affirmed idiot billionaires will be going after our Social Security. This is from Truth Out. “DOGE Heads Musk and Ramaswamy Signal Social Security Cuts Are Coming. Trump vowed to “not cut one penny” from Social Security, but his other statements and actions suggest that he plans to.” Chris Walker has the lede and the story.
On Sunday, president-elect Donald Trump sought to assuage concerns that he will make cuts to Social Security and other safety net programs after Republicans signaled last week that Social Security could be targeted by Trump’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) initiative, managed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.
Asked by host Kristen Welker on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program whether the DOGE initiative would include cuts to Social Security, Trump said “no,” other than perhaps cuts related to allegations of “abuse” or “fraud” associated with the program.
Notably, such fraud happens at extremely low rates — by one estimate, fraud equals around just $0.40 out of every $100 in benefits Social Security doles out yearly.
“We’re not touching Social Security, other than — we might make it more efficient,” Trump said about the national insurance program that helps retirees, disabled people, widowers and children of deceased parents. “But the people are going to get what they get.”
“We’re not raising ages or any of that stuff,” he added.
Trump’s comments echo talking points from his “Agenda 47” platform during his presidential campaign, which stated that he would “not cut one penny from Medicare or Social Security.” However, he and his allies have repeatedly suggested that cuts to both programs are possible.
Musk and Ramaswamy have made it evident that cuts to Social Security will be considered. After the two met with Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill last week about the DOGE initiative, House Majority Leader Rep. Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana) said they had expressed sentiments that contradicted Trump’s comments on Sunday.
“Nothing is sacrosanct. Nothing. They’re going to put everything on the table,” Scalise told reporters after the meeting, with Fox Business elaborating that cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid would be discussed.
In September, when the idea of DOGE was first being discussed, vice president-elect J.D. Vance also indicated that there could be cuts to Social Security. A DOGE-type commission is “going to look much different in, say, the Department of Defense versus Social Security,” Vance said during a podcast interview, insinuating that cuts were going to be considered for the latter agency.
In March, Trump himself said that cuts to the program were a possibility.
“There is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements — in terms of cutting — and in terms of also the theft and the bad management of entitlements,” Trump said in a statement starkly different from his comments over the past weekend.
Perhaps most importantly, Trump attempted to make drastic cuts to Social Security and other programs in his first term as president. In one of his later proposed budgets (which didn’t go on to pass in the then-Democratic-controlled Congress), the president-elect sought to cut Social Security by $25 billion — despite promising in the 2016 presidential campaign that he wouldn’t make any cuts to the agency, just as he promised this last election cycle.
Nothing is Sacred in Trumplandia except Trump and his money. You can read more about the proposed cuts at these links.
- From Newsweek: What Elon Musk Has Said About Social Security
- From MSNBC: With the election over, Republicans are suddenly interested in cutting Social Security. Like clockwork, the party is back to talking about its favorite target
- From LA Times: GOP and Musk unveil a threat to Social Security
And, in the latest from Corruption and Kleptocracy Central, we have this headline inPolitico. “Lara Trump leaves RNC amid Senate chatter. In announcing her resignation the president-elect’s daughter-in-law said “the job I came to do is now complete.” I wonder if she can Senator better than she can sing?
Lara Trump is stepping down as co-chair of the Republican National Committee, a role she has held since March, as some of Donald Trump’s allies continue to push for her to replace Florida Sen. Marco Rubio on Capitol Hill.
In announcing her resignation on X, Lara Trump, who is the president-elect’s daughter-in-law, said “the job I came to do is now complete,” touting the RNC’s fundraising records, election integrity efforts and voter turnout.
She’s expressed openness to replacing Rubio, the president-elect’s pick to be secretary of State, in the Senate, telling The Associated Press it’s a role she “would seriously consider.”
“If I’m being completely transparent, I don’t know exactly what that would look like,” she told the AP in an article published Sunday. “And I certainly want to get all of the information possible if that is something that’s real for me. But yeah, I would 100% consider it.”
Among those supporting her as a potential Rubio replacement is billionaire Elon Musk, a close ally of the incoming president, and his mother, Maye Musk.
When did all these tacky people get a say in stuff like this? The Trump Boys will be in charge of the Merch and Grift Wing of the White House while the Kushners milk what they can from the State Department and foreign nations. We are definitely headed to a Nepocracy. Just watch out for that Douche Commission headed by First Lady Elonia and DIE hire Vivek.
What’s on your reading and blogging list?
#Repeat1968JohnBuss #Doge #kakistocracy #kleptocracy #LaraTrump #Musk #Nepocracy #Nepocrats #SocialSecurity #TrumpSTraitorList #Vivek
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Mostly Monday Reads: President Eject Incontinentia Buttocks readies the Enemies List
“And just like that, America is respecting on the world stage once again.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I’m going down a very dank, dark rabbit hole today because one of the things that concern me the most are the ongoing threats that President Eject Incontinentia Buttocks against people who make him feel bad about himself or correct his story weaving for the sake of reporting reality. We keep seeing the lists and hearing direct attacks on what he considers “enemies.” This ranges from politicians of past and present to members of the press. It is the true sign of a despot, and one of the major things the U.S. Constitution and our form of government were designed to toss in history’s trash heap. The other is the feudal tradition of bending or taking the knee. That is why public servants take an oath to uphold and protect the Constitution and not to a cult of personality.
It is evident during this transition period that these feudal and dictatorial aspirations are a serious part of the vetting of Cabinet officers and the oncoming attempt to prosecute and persecute outspoken critics of the tremendous number of unfit, immoral cretins, loyal to an insane and craven political figure. King George was the Mad King we had to dethrone to gain independence. What do we do with a Mad Politician chosen by the Electoral College and many voters who live in states with more livestock than people? He’s an obvious threat to democracy, but he managed to Pied Piper, a bunch of rubes.
An interview this weekend shows how obsessed he is with ensuring his warped reality rules the day and the country.
Let me share a few headlines that are giving me some severe heartburn. This is from CNN and is reported by Aaron Pellish. “Trump lays out sweeping early acts on deportation and January 6 pardons, says Cheney and others ‘should go to jail.’”
President-elect Donald Trump in a television interview that aired Sunday previewed a sweeping agenda for his first days in office, outlining how his administration will prioritize deporting migrants with criminal records, vowing to pursue pardons for January 6 defendants on his first day, and raising the possibility that former Rep. Liz Cheney and other political opponents could face jail time.
Trump said he would not seek “retribution” against President Joe Biden and against his political enemies, but he repeatedly left room for his appointees to decide whether to go after specific people. He suggested members of Congress who led the investigations into his conduct during the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol should be put in jail and that he’ll look on his first day at issuing pardons to supporters involved in the riot.
“These people have been there, how long is it? Three or four years? You know, by the way, they’ve been in there for years, and they’re in a filthy, disgusting place that shouldn’t even be allowed to be open,” he said. Nearly 1,200 people either have pleaded guilty or were found guilty at trial for crimes connected to the January 6 attack, according to the Justice Department. More than 645 defendants were ordered to serve some jail time.
Trump said he would not direct his Justice Department to investigate members of Congress and Biden administration officials who led the investigations into his role in January 6, but continued to suggest his DOJ would be justified in deciding to launch investigations without his input.
When asked about the possibility of investigating special counsel Jack Smith, who brought the two since-dropped federal cases against him, Trump said he wants his pick for attorney general, Pam Bondi, to “do what she wants to do.”
“She’s very experienced. I want her to do what she wants to do. I’m not going to instruct her to do it,” he said.
Trump was more direct when speaking about the members of Congress who led the January 6 committee, telling Welker that the co-chairs of the committee — Republican Cheney, who has since left Congress, and Democrat Bennie Thompson — should “go to jail.”
“Cheney was behind it. So is Bennie Thompson and everybody on that committee,” he said. “For what they did, honestly, they should go to jail.”
Trump also suggested that committee members might do well to receive preemptive pardons from Biden to protect themselves from criminal prosecution. CNN reported last week that Biden White House aides, administration officials and prominent defense attorneys in Washington were discussing potential preemptive pardons or legal aid for people who might be targeted by Trump.
“Biden can give them a pardon if he wants to,” Trump said. “And maybe he should.”
In a statement later Sunday, Cheney said, “Donald Trump’s suggestion that members of Congress who later investigated his illegal and unconstitutional actions should be jailed is a continuation of his assault on the rule of law and the foundations of our republic.”
Republican former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who served on the committee, told CNN’s Manu Raju on Sunday he’s “not worried” about the Trump administration investigating him or his fellow committee members.
The Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause protects lawmakers from certain law enforcement actions targeted at their legislative duties.
CNN has reached out to Thompson for comment.
The problem is mostly with “political enemies.” However, it does go deeper than that. This is from Phillip Bump’s column today at the Washington Post.”Trump sees the investigators, not the rioters, as the Jan. 6 criminals. It’s not just that he seeks to avoid accountability. It’s that he hopes to invert it.” So, the criminals arrested by law officers, prosecuted in courts, and found guilty in the process by a duly appointed Judge or Jury are the law breakers here? How horrifying is that?
History will tell the story of the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in direct terms. President Donald Trump, increasingly desperate to block Joe Biden’s inauguration to replace him, summoned his supporters to Washington for a “wild” protest. Tens of thousands came, including members of violent, fringe-right groups.
As legislators convened to formalize Biden’s victory, angry throngs of Trump supporters pushed toward the building, some engaging in violent altercations with law enforcement in an effort to stop Congress from counting electoral votes. Hundreds were injured, including more than 100 police officers.
Congress tried to hold Trump accountable for his role in the riot twice, first by impeaching him — enough Republican senators sided with Trump to prevent conviction — and then by launching a high-profile investigation of his broad effort to retain power. Meanwhile, the justice system went to work arresting and imprisoning those who had engaged in the riot. Special counsel Jack Smith brought federal charges against Trump.
Pressed whether he’d direct Bondi or Kash Patel, his pick to lead the FBI, to send them to jail, Trump said, “No, not at all,” before adding, “I think they’ll have to look at that.”
Asked whether he plans to follow up on his frequent campaign promise to investigate Biden — whom he repeatedly labeled as “corrupt” and a “criminal” on the campaign trail — Trump said he doesn’t want to “go back into the past.”
“I’m really looking to make our country successful. I’m not looking to go back into the past,” he said, adding, “Retribution will be through success.”
When asked about previously saying he would direct his Justice Department to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Biden, Trump said he would not do that but left the door open for top DOJ officials to make their own determinations.
“No, I’m not doing that unless I find something that I think is reasonable,” he said. “But that’s not going to be my decision. That’s going to be Pam Bondi’s decision, and, to a different extent, Kash Patel, assuming they’re both there, and I think they’re both going to get approved.” Trump has tapped Patel to lead the FBI, despite the current director, Trump appointee Christopher Wray, still having several years left in his 10-year term.
Throughout the interview, Trump at times struck a more temperate tone toward his political opponents and appeared to prioritize uniting the country over exacting vengeance. He said he plans to make unity a central theme of his inauguration address and expressed confidence that his administration will achieve a level of success that will bring the country together.
But Trump invoked similar calls for unity at various points throughout his campaign — including in the wake of the first assassination attempt against him — before often reverting to bitter, divisive rhetoric and personal attacks. During the NBC interview, Trump again refused to concede that he lost the 2020 presidential election.
President Eject Incontinentia Buttocks rejects reality for a version that suits his malignant narcissism and purposes. The New Republic’s Greg Sargent interviews Brian Beutler about this on his PodCast. “Transcript: Trump’s Private Rage at “Traitors” Reveals Dark 2025 Plans. An interview with Brian Beutler, author of the “Off Message” Substack, who explains how Democrats can and must do more to alert the public to the dangers of a second Trump term.” Dangers, indeed.
The New York Times reports that Donald Trump is telling advisers that his biggest regret from his first term was that he appointed “traitors.” Not traitors to the country, of course; traitors to him. As a result, his transition team is grilling prospective officials to gauge their loyalty to Trump; that is, loyalty to the person. Is there some way for Democrats to explain how absurd and dangerous all this is in a manner that gets through to the public? We’re talking about this today with Brian Beutler, author of the excellent Substack Off Message, who’s been arguing that Dems need to get more aggressive with their communications about all this right now before Trump takes office. Thanks for coming back on, Brian.
Brian Beutler: It’s always good to be with you.
Sargent: The New York Times reports that he’s privately telling advisors that his biggest first-term regret was appointing traitors. Importantly, traitors are those who came to see Trump accurately as a threat to the system: Chief of Staff John Kelly, Defense Secretaries Jim Madison, Mark Esper, and even Attorney General William Barr, who was relentlessly loyal up to the very last minute. That’s his regret, appointing people who describe the threat he poses accurately. Brian, in some sense, this isn’t a surprise, but it’s rarely reported quite this clearly. Your thoughts?
Beutler: It’s inauspicious. And it probably portends some conflict between him and the Senate insofar as the people that he’s vetting are going to be appointed to positions that require Senate confirmation. That’s because, as I understand, the loyalty test as reported in the article is not just, Do you support Donald Trump? Do you support the MAGA movement? Do you support its policy goals?—it’s really, Do you believe Donald Trump won or lost the 2020 election? If they acknowledge the truth that he lost, they’re out, they’re not going to get the nomination.
And similarly, with questions like, Do you think January 6 was good or bad? Do you think it was something that Donald Trump is responsible for? Are these patriots or are they insurrectionists?, if you answer that the wrong way, you’re not getting the job. And insofar as anyone who answers the way Trump wants them to answer has to go before the Senate. Well, it’s going to raise questions for both Democrats and Republicans in different ways.
Democrats are going to have to decide whether those are red lines for them that they won’t cross. If Trump finds somebody who’s qualified as in their resume is good, that they’re credentialed to do the job he’s appointed them to, but they’re also supportive of the Big Lie or they think that the insurrection was OK, will Democrats look past that to say, Well, at least you’ll know how to do the job that you’re being appointed to do? I would like Democrats to say there will be zero Democratic votes for any nominees who take that loyalty test. And if they do that, then it will fall to Republicans.
Are 50 out of 53 Republican senators willing to take that vote? An ancillary benefit of Democrats drawing a hard line here is that’ll be really tough for them because there are still at least a handful of Senate Republicans who don’t support the Big Lie, who won’t repeat it, and who think the people who peddle it are real threats to democracy. Then we’ll find out whether they just decided, You know what, Trump won, so it’s revisionist history all the way down now.
Sargent: His use of the term traitors in his conversations with his advisors, which shows that he’s still seething with anger about those who refuse to go along with his rewritten history: This is one of the keys to understanding what he really intends with current picks like Pete Hegseth as defense secretary, Kash Patel as FBI director, and Pam Bondi as attorney general. It won’t be that hard for all Democrats to oppose Pete Hegseth and Kash Patel, but I’m not sure all Democrats will oppose Pam Bondi.
We do have precedent for politicizing the FBI. I remember all of this very well, as well as the entire setup with AG John Mitchell. I had thought laws were put into place to prevent this from happening again. I also was aware that many Republicans at the time thought those laws went too far. Aaron Rupar and Thor Bensure, writing for Public Notice, share this headline. “The J. Edgar Hoover precedent for weaponizing the FBI. “Yes, we could have a repeat of that,” Frank Figliuzzi tells us.”
After serving in the FBI for more than two decades, in 2011 Frank Figliuzzi became the assistant director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division, where he worked alongside FBI Director Robert Mueller. Suffice it to say he saw a lot in his career.
So it should be taken seriously that Figliuzzi, now an MSNBC senior national security and intelligence analyst, describes Trump’s picks to run what are sometimes referred to as the power ministries — among them the DOJ (including the FBI) and the defense department — as a “hijacking of the entire national security structure.”
“My chief concern is this single characteristic that seems to run through these nominees — blind allegiance to Donald Trump,” Figliuzzi told us.
We recently connected with Figliuzzi to get his insight on Trump’s picks and what they signal about how the federal government will operate over the next four years. He warned that “we could be heading toward tremendous abuses of power, with the FBI going after Trump’s political enemies.” And he noted that a previous FBI director provided the president-elect and his choice to run the bureau, Kash Patel, with a blueprint.
Benson interviewed Figluzzi. It went like this.
Thor Benson
As someone who’s focused on national security and has a background there, what are your top concerns with Trump’s choices for national security roles?
Frank Figliuzzi
Sadly, we’ll have to rank order them.
It’s not just that many of Trump’s nominees are remarkably unqualified for the jobs, and they are — from the DNI pick with Tulsi Gabbard to the DHS with Kristi Noem to Hegseth at DOD and now Kash Patel. But the lack of competence is not my chief concern anymore.
My chief concern is this single characteristic that seems to run through these nominees — blind allegiance to Donald Trump. Yes, there are national security issues with someone like Gabbard or Hegseth — I say national security with Hegseth, particularly, because similar to the concerns about Matt Gaetz, we don’t know what we don’t know. Is there more coming with Hegseth? Is it extortion and blackmail?
He’s already written a check to a woman in California. What else do we not know about? According to the latest reporting, he appears to have an alcohol problem. He’s had to physically be carried out of events he attended because he was drunk. That’s not good with someone who’s running things at the Pentagon. Are there more women and incidents out there? According to the New Yorker, he also yells “kill all the Muslims” when he gets drunk.
Out of all of the nominees, Kash Patel lacks the capacity to have his own independent thoughts and ideology. His record is replete with nothing but kissing Trump’s ass. That’s it. You don’t have to take my word for it. Look at his public statements about persecuting the “deep state,” prosecutors, the media, for christ’s sake. Combine that with Pam Bondi’s almost identical comments, and we’ve now got a Trump hijacking of the entire national security structure.
Thor Benson
So where does that take us?
Frank Figliuzzi
Well, we could be heading toward tremendous abuses of power, with the FBI going after Trump’s political enemies.
So, my hair is on fire again, although it never really goes out, to be honest. There are warning signs all over the place, and only a small segment of the American populace appears to be aware of all of this. You can read Figliuzzi’s discussion of Nixon’s tricks at the link. The other headline grabber today is how a set of unelected and affirmed idiot billionaires will be going after our Social Security. This is from Truth Out. “DOGE Heads Musk and Ramaswamy Signal Social Security Cuts Are Coming. Trump vowed to “not cut one penny” from Social Security, but his other statements and actions suggest that he plans to.” Chris Walker has the lede and the story.
On Sunday, president-elect Donald Trump sought to assuage concerns that he will make cuts to Social Security and other safety net programs after Republicans signaled last week that Social Security could be targeted by Trump’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) initiative, managed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.
Asked by host Kristen Welker on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program whether the DOGE initiative would include cuts to Social Security, Trump said “no,” other than perhaps cuts related to allegations of “abuse” or “fraud” associated with the program.
Notably, such fraud happens at extremely low rates — by one estimate, fraud equals around just $0.40 out of every $100 in benefits Social Security doles out yearly.
“We’re not touching Social Security, other than — we might make it more efficient,” Trump said about the national insurance program that helps retirees, disabled people, widowers and children of deceased parents. “But the people are going to get what they get.”
“We’re not raising ages or any of that stuff,” he added.
Trump’s comments echo talking points from his “Agenda 47” platform during his presidential campaign, which stated that he would “not cut one penny from Medicare or Social Security.” However, he and his allies have repeatedly suggested that cuts to both programs are possible.
Musk and Ramaswamy have made it evident that cuts to Social Security will be considered. After the two met with Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill last week about the DOGE initiative, House Majority Leader Rep. Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana) said they had expressed sentiments that contradicted Trump’s comments on Sunday.
“Nothing is sacrosanct. Nothing. They’re going to put everything on the table,” Scalise told reporters after the meeting, with Fox Business elaborating that cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid would be discussed.
In September, when the idea of DOGE was first being discussed, vice president-elect J.D. Vance also indicated that there could be cuts to Social Security. A DOGE-type commission is “going to look much different in, say, the Department of Defense versus Social Security,” Vance said during a podcast interview, insinuating that cuts were going to be considered for the latter agency.
In March, Trump himself said that cuts to the program were a possibility.
“There is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements — in terms of cutting — and in terms of also the theft and the bad management of entitlements,” Trump said in a statement starkly different from his comments over the past weekend.
Perhaps most importantly, Trump attempted to make drastic cuts to Social Security and other programs in his first term as president. In one of his later proposed budgets (which didn’t go on to pass in the then-Democratic-controlled Congress), the president-elect sought to cut Social Security by $25 billion — despite promising in the 2016 presidential campaign that he wouldn’t make any cuts to the agency, just as he promised this last election cycle.
Nothing is Sacred in Trumplandia except Trump and his money. You can read more about the proposed cuts at these links.
- From Newsweek: What Elon Musk Has Said About Social Security
- From MSNBC: With the election over, Republicans are suddenly interested in cutting Social Security. Like clockwork, the party is back to talking about its favorite target
- From LA Times: GOP and Musk unveil a threat to Social Security
And, in the latest from Corruption and Kleptocracy Central, we have this headline inPolitico. “Lara Trump leaves RNC amid Senate chatter. In announcing her resignation the president-elect’s daughter-in-law said “the job I came to do is now complete.” I wonder if she can Senator better than she can sing?
Lara Trump is stepping down as co-chair of the Republican National Committee, a role she has held since March, as some of Donald Trump’s allies continue to push for her to replace Florida Sen. Marco Rubio on Capitol Hill.
In announcing her resignation on X, Lara Trump, who is the president-elect’s daughter-in-law, said “the job I came to do is now complete,” touting the RNC’s fundraising records, election integrity efforts and voter turnout.
She’s expressed openness to replacing Rubio, the president-elect’s pick to be secretary of State, in the Senate, telling The Associated Press it’s a role she “would seriously consider.”
“If I’m being completely transparent, I don’t know exactly what that would look like,” she told the AP in an article published Sunday. “And I certainly want to get all of the information possible if that is something that’s real for me. But yeah, I would 100% consider it.”
Among those supporting her as a potential Rubio replacement is billionaire Elon Musk, a close ally of the incoming president, and his mother, Maye Musk.
When did all these tacky people get a say in stuff like this? The Trump Boys will be in charge of the Merch and Grift Wing of the White House while the Kushners milk what they can from the State Department and foreign nations. We are definitely headed to a Nepocracy. Just watch out for that Douche Commission headed by First Lady Elonia and DIE hire Vivek.
What’s on your reading and blogging list?
#Repeat1968JohnBuss #Doge #kakistocracy #kleptocracy #LaraTrump #Musk #Nepocracy #Nepocrats #SocialSecurity #TrumpSTraitorList #Vivek
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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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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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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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Mostly Monday Reads: He’s a Maniac
“Whenever I hear or read the word kakistocracy, this immediately comes to mind.” John (repeat1968) Buss
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I hope the ACLU and other NGOs will be up for the next version of #DonOld’s Reign of Terror. Get ready for mass deportations by the military. If only they would deport me and my animals to the south of France or even the old family home in Hastings, England, if it’s still standing! For a guy who insists he didn’t know what Project 2025 was about, he is certainly right on top of it! This is from AXIOS. “Trump confirms plans to use military for mass deportations.”
President-elect Trump confirmed Monday that he is planning to declare a national emergency and use the U.S. military to carry out mass deportations.
Why it matters: Trump made his promise to deport millions of undocumented immigrants one of the cornerstones of his 2024 campaign, and his team has already begun strategizing how to carry its plan out.
- A Truth Social post early Monday is the first time the president-elect has confirmed how his administration will execute the controversial plan.
Driving the news: Tom Fitton, the president of the conservative group Judicial Watch, posted on Truth Social earlier this month that Trump was “prepared to declare a national emergency and will use military assets to reverse the Biden invasion through a mass deportation program.”
- Trump reposted Fitton’s comment Monday with the caption, “TRUE!!”
The big picture: There are an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. Trump’s mass deportations are expected to impact roughly 20 million families across the country.
- Immigration advocates and lawyers are preparing to counter the plan in court.
- The president-elect’s team is aiming to craft executive orders that can withstand legal challenges to avoid a similar defeat that befell Trump’s Muslim ban in his first term, Politico reported.
- Their plans also include ending the parole program for undocumented immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, per Politico.
Zoom out: Trump has also already begun filling out his Cabinet positions with immigration hardliners.
- This includes tapping Tom Homan, the former acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), to serve as his “border czar.”
- In addition, Trump nominated South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem as his secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Go deeper: How Trump’s plan for mass deportations fits into U.S. history
I will expand the garden in my side yard and extend it back to the area which has fruit trees and ginger. If the courts don’t block this, I’m betting on higher food prices by the next harvest. Also, I don’t know how anyone in a state like mine, affected by hurricanes and damage, will be getting their homes fixed and cleaned. We’d have never recovered without the workers from South of our border. However, that will be only one of the problems this regime change will bring.
David Nir, writing for Public Notice, has this information on the possibility of recess appointments for the basket of unqualified deplorable he’s chosen for his cabinet. “How Johnson could make Trump’s recess appointments a reality. Talk of cutting out Dems — and GOP dissenters — is more than just idle rhetoric.” Surely, no one believes that what comes out of his anus-looking mouth is just idle rhetoric at this point!
Donald Trump’s plan to stock his cabinet with the most appalling MAGA nihilists hinges on the obeisance of one man in particular: House Speaker Mike Johnson. And given Johnson’s track record of cowardice, Trump may indeed get what he wants — and demolish a pillar of democracy along the way.
The crescendo of increasingly nightmarish picks like Tulsi Gabbard, Matt Gaetz, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. almost makes Liz Dye’s take here at Public Notice — that Trump is trying to install the crowd at the Star Wars cantina — seem too kind.
So beyond the pale are Trump’s worst choices that even some Republicans in the Senate are balking. And it’s worth remembering that many Trump nominees during his first term in office withdrew from consideration in the face of GOP inaction or hostility.
But whether or not Republican senators are inclined to revert to subservience and greenlight these nominations, Trump is already armed with a plan to bypass the confirmation process entirely. He wants to fill vacancies without a confirmation vote by making so-called recess appointments when the Senate is not in session — a power granted to him by the Constitution. And he has a path to do it.
A will and a way
For many years, Congress has not actually taken a formal recess, precisely to deny presidents the ability to side-step lawmakers. Trump, though, has demanded that the Senate resume the practice of adjourning itself so that he can ram his picks through without any oversight.
The GOP’s new majority leader, John Thune, replied submissively to Trump’s demand, saying on Fox News last week that “all options are on the table.” And Johnson echoed that sentiment on Fox News Sunday yesterday, saying of recess appointments that “there may be a function for that.” (Watch below.)
It turns out that, even for a legislative body that often convenes for just three days a week, it’s surprisingly difficult for the Senate to take a proper, on-the-books break. Such an adjournment requires a majority vote, which even Thune acknowledged might be “a problem” for some Republican senators.
But even if Senate Republicans could muster a majority, a motion to recess can be amended, as Semafor’s Burgess Everett notes. That means Democrats could hold up such a motion indefinitely, unless Republicans were to unilaterally change Senate rules regarding recesses — a move Everett calls “a smaller-scale version of the ‘nuclear option'” that might also have a hard time garnering 50 votes.
The alt-media has been doing an excellent job tackling this garbage in and out of motivation and action. Politico has stated that the Ethics Committee in the House will discuss the report on Gaetz and his sex adventures with underage girls, also known as statutory rape. I firmly believe that if they don’t release it, someone will leak it. “House Ethics panel to meet Wednesday as Gaetz question looms. Members rescheduled the Wednesday meeting from one last week where lawmakers were widely expected to vote on whether to release the report.”
The House Ethics panel will meet Wednesday and potentially vote to release a report probing sexual misconduct allegations against former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who Donald Trump tapped to be his attorney general, according to two people familiar with the discussion.
The meeting comes as Gaetz’s confirmation is in question, with some Republican senators wary of the controversial Florida Republican serving as the nation’s top law enforcement officer.
Speaker Mike Johnson is putting pressure on members of the Ethics Committee to keep the report under wraps, saying on Friday that he is “going to strongly request” the report isn’t released because “that is not the way we do things in the House, and I think that would be a terrible precedent to set.”
Johnson furthered that stance in interviews on the Sunday shows and threw his support behind Gaetz to be attorney general.
Members rescheduled the Wednesday meeting from one last week where lawmakers were widely expected to vote on whether to release the report.
Whether or not to release the report, which some senators have said would be essential in deciding whether or not to confirm Gaetz, is placing intense pressure on the historically bipartisan Ethics Committee. Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin on Sunday told “Meet The Press” that the Senate should “absolutely” be able to see the report, but he said that doesn’t necessarily mean it should become public.
Gaetz, a fierce and loyal supporter of Trump’s, has a tough road to confirmation in the Senate. GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said she doesn’t “think it’s a serious nomination.” And fellow swing-vote Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said she was “shocked” by the choice.
Republicans will hold 53 Senate seats in the next Congress, meaning they can only afford three defectors in the confirmation process.
As I mentioned, Trump’s lies about not knowing about Project 2025 are becoming more disprovable. This is also from Politico. “Playbook: Heritage comes out of the bunker.” Natalie Allison has the lede.
But now, with Trump as president-elect, Heritage is peeking back out from its metaphorical bunker.
Two of Heritage’s visiting fellows — TOM HOMAN and JOHN RATCLIFFE, who were contributors to Project 2025 — have already been named to top Trump administration posts. That book from Roberts that was supposed to come out in September? It was released last week. The think tank even marked its reemergence with an event this past week welcoming back the Washington cocktail circuit to the group’s Massachusetts Avenue headquarters on Capitol Hill. It was a D.C. coming back out party, of sorts, for an organization that is easing its way back into influence in what’s soon to be Trump’s Washington once again.
“We’re so back,” the Heritage official told Playbook, with a nervous laugh, while a crowd in the packed but modest-sized room milled around during a book party Thursday night for Roberts.
As GOP members of Congress — Playbook spotted Reps. RALPH NORMAN (R-S.C.), BRIAN BABIN (R-Texas), ERIC BURLISON (R-Mo.) and JOSH BRECHEEN (R-Okla.) there — sipped wine and grabbed hors d’oeuvres with a smattering of ambassadors, conservative staffers and reporters on Thursday, Roberts noted that he has lost a number of his “liberal friends” this year over “that larger book we’re famous for.”
But Heritage’s stint as a social pariah due to Project 2025 is effectively over.
“The entire political spectrum in the West is represented here,” Roberts said of the crowd he had assembled Thursday. “I won’t call anyone out, but those of you who are not exactly excited about everything that Heritage does — I’m very, very grateful that you’re here, and you’re here out of friendship.”Roberts spoke about the need for conservatives to “have a certain humility” in order to continue growing the historic coalition that’s returning Trump to the White House — while still trying to fully convert new faces in the movement to a robust conservative ideology more closely resembling his own.
“What the conservative movement did for a generation — I was guilty of this, sometimes I’m still tempted to be guilty of this — is to say, ‘Oh, I’m not going to talk to you,’” Roberts said. He recalled scoffing the first time someone suggested that influential “populist conservatives” like himself should form a “political alliance with the tech bros.”
“I said, ‘What are you talking about? That’s crazy.’ Guess who was wrong? I was.”
Roberts, flanked on each side by panels quoting book endorsements from VP-elect JD VANCE and TUCKER CARLSON, noted that there are stark differences between his worldview and of some of the GOP’s newcomers, name-checking ELON MUSK and ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR., who had been announced as Trump’s nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services just hours earlier.
“I can be very grateful to Elon Musk for revitalizing free speech for the world, while also saying — very respectfully, civilly, maybe even with a smile on my face — it’s crazy to want to put microchips in the brain,” Roberts said.
And he intends to have what he said will also be a “civil” conversation with Kennedy on their differences on abortion rights. “We might agree to disagree,” Roberts said, “but we’re going to work on whatever we can that we agree on, and I will hold out hope that maybe I can change his mind.”
Roberts is sounding pretty optimistic again about the role of Heritage in Washington, about his own improving standing in Trump world, and, yes — about the likelihood of Project 2025’s much-maligned proposals getting closer to implementation. His organization, meanwhile, has prepared for the Trump administration a database of nearly 20,000 names of people who could fill jobs in the president-elect’s new federal government, a Heritage official told Playbook.
Elon Musk’s idea of free speech is anything that doesn’t personally attack him or his ideals, so let’s get rid of that notion. The Tech Bros funded this crazy train. This is from Oliver Darcy, who writes for Status. “The Verge Editor-In-Chief Nilay Patel breathes fire on Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s Big Tech enablers. “All of these men are now hopelessly trapped in a problem their own platforms and algorithms created.”” This is from Oliver’s interview with Patel.
What do you make of Elon Musk’s alliance with Donald Trump and what worries you the most about him playing such an outsized role in the Trump administration?
America now has an unelected defense contractor sitting in the White House doing ketamine and twiddling the algorithmic knobs of an influential right-wing echo chamber while fulminating against traditional standards-based journalism, threatening to revoke network broadcast licenses, and suing advertisers who don’t want to spend their money on his dwindling user base. What could go wrong?
On top of that, Trump’s most likely FCC Chairman is Brendan Carr, who was tasked in the first Trump government to crack down on platform moderation by taking control of Section 230, literally wrote the Project 2025 chapter laying out a plan to do so, and is now begging to punish NBC for having Kamala Harris on “SNL.”
To be as clear as I can be, the second Trump administration with Elon Musk embedded within it represents the most direct and sustained threat to the First Amendment and the freedom of the press any of us will ever experience. If you’re a media executive or editorial leader and you haven’t met with your legal team to understand the current landscape of First Amendment threats, let alone the ones to come, you’re already behind. Get on it.
In the wake of Trump’s victory, other Big Tech leaders (Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai, etcetera) posted congratulatory messages on X. It struck me as much different to how Silicon Valley responded to Trump’s first election. Why do you think that is?
All of these men are now hopelessly trapped in a problem their own platforms and algorithms created: they have to manipulate Trump’s narcissism to secure tariff exceptions and regulatory largesse, while knowing that the vast majority of their employees and half of their customers will see any engagement as moral bankruptcy. There’s a reason Apple and Google would not confirm the calls Donald Trump claimed Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai made to him before the election — they didn’t want to be associated with him.
Now they have no choice. Tim Cook had been quietly setting the stage to retire — but he’s stuck kissing the ring and hosting fake factory openings for another four years to avoid disastrous tariffs on Apple products. Zuck is spending billions on Nvidia H100s manufactured in Taiwan in order to dominate A.I., but all that money comes from advertising for products made overseas — a double whammy of tariff issues. (And the entire influencer economy is built on Shein sponcon — that’s about to fall off a cliff.) Elon, Marc Andreessen, and J.D. Vance all think that Google should be crushed to bits with antitrust law — Vance has specifically said that he think Lina Khan is doing a good job.
Jeff Bezos? All that money for yachts and rockets comes from Amazon’s huge ecosystem of alphabet soup dropshipping companies. I hope Lauren likes having dinner at Mar-a-Lago.
Here’s more on the FCC cabinet pick who edited Project 2025. This is from the AP. “Trump names Brendan Carr, senior GOP leader at FCC, to lead the agency.” Demons all the way down.
President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday named Brendan Carr, the senior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission, as the new chairman of the agency tasked with regulating broadcasting, telecommunications and broadband.
Carr is a longtime member of the commission and served previously as the FCC’s general counsel. He has been unanimously confirmed by the Senate three times and was nominated by both Trump and President Joe Biden to the commission.
The FCC is an independent agency that is overseen by Congress, but Trump has suggested he wanted to bring it under tighter White House control, in part to use the agency to punish TV networks that cover him in a way he doesn’t like.
Carr has of late embraced Trump’s ideas about social media and tech. Carr wrote a section devoted to the FCC in “ Project 2025,” a sweeping blueprint for gutting the federal workforce and dismantling federal agencies in a second Trump administration produced by the conservative Heritage Foundation.
Every federal worker is going to need a lawyer at this point. Get ready for that Class Action lawsuit. This in-depth look at the weirdo that will head defense is not pleasant. But, he’s the guy who would work with whatever Generals remain in all parts of the country, sniffing out undocumented workers. Judd Legume and his team sniffed him out for Popular Information. “13 things everyone should know about Pete Hegseth. Just looking at him gives me the willies.
Hegseth is a military veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and received a Bronze Star and other commendations. He also served in the National Guard. But the largest organization that Hegseth has previously run is Concerned Veterans for America, a Koch-funded right-wing advocacy organization, where he served as Executive Director from 2012 to 2016. Concerned Veterans for America had a few dozen employees and a budget of around $15 million during his tenure. In that role, Hegseth hired his younger brother, who had just graduated college, to a well-compensated media relations position at the CVA. Hegseth founded a small PAC in his native Minnesota to support conservative candidates. It managed to raise about $15,000 over several years. One-third of the raised funds were “spent on two Christmas parties and reimbursements to Hegseth.”
Even Trump’s most loyal supporters acknowledge Hegseth’s lack of relevant experience. Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist during his first term, said that Hegseth has “never run a big organization” and is “kind of a madman.”
But while Hegseth has limited management experience, he has spent many years in the public eye and has a long record of punditry. Here are 13 things everyone should know about the man Trump wants to put in charge of the nation’s military.
His top priority is getting women out of the military.
“I’m straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles,” Hegseth said in a media interview on November 10, 2024. According to Hegseth, “[e]verything about men and women serving together makes the situation more complicated, and complication in combat, means casualties are worse.”
“Dads push us to take risks. Moms put the training wheels on our bikes,” Hegseth wrote in his 2024 book The War on Warriors. “We need moms. But not in the military, and especially not in combat units.”
“There aren’t enough lesbians in San Francisco to staff the 82nd Airborne like you need, you need the boys in Kentucky and Texas and North Carolina and Wisconsin,” Hegseth said in a podcast earlier this year.
Women have formally been allowed to serve in combat roles since 2013 and have been involved in combat operations for decades. Even the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page suggested Hegseth’s position is misguided because “women have shown they can perform well in many roles” in the military.
It gets worse from there if you want to read it. And I think that it’s horrifying for all of us for now. Be aware of all the places where havoc will reign. The stock market has already been rebooted. It’s nose-dived since the cabinet officers were announced. Big Pharma and anyone in the processed food business were particularly hard hit. This is the headline today from Stock Market Watch. “Stock Market Today: Dow flat, S&P 500 attempts bounce after worst week in over 2 months. It’s not like I didn’t warn y’all. Just get ready to hunker down like an Okie during the Dust Bowl. I have mad skills, having survived post-Katrina with the lessons my Nana and Dad taught me. This is not going to be an easy time for any of us.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Songs for dwelling on Trump and his appointments
#DonOld #Repeat1968JohnBuss #EloniaMusk #OrangeCaligula #TrumpCabinetWeirdos
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Mostly Monday Reads: He’s a Maniac
“Whenever I hear or read the word kakistocracy, this immediately comes to mind.” John (repeat1968) Buss
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I hope the ACLU and other NGOs will be up for the next version of #DonOld’s Reign of Terror. Get ready for mass deportations by the military. If only they would deport me and my animals to the south of France or even the old family home in Hastings, England, if it’s still standing! For a guy who insists he didn’t know what Project 2025 was about, he is certainly right on top of it! This is from AXIOS. “Trump confirms plans to use military for mass deportations.”
President-elect Trump confirmed Monday that he is planning to declare a national emergency and use the U.S. military to carry out mass deportations.
Why it matters: Trump made his promise to deport millions of undocumented immigrants one of the cornerstones of his 2024 campaign, and his team has already begun strategizing how to carry its plan out.
- A Truth Social post early Monday is the first time the president-elect has confirmed how his administration will execute the controversial plan.
Driving the news: Tom Fitton, the president of the conservative group Judicial Watch, posted on Truth Social earlier this month that Trump was “prepared to declare a national emergency and will use military assets to reverse the Biden invasion through a mass deportation program.”
- Trump reposted Fitton’s comment Monday with the caption, “TRUE!!”
The big picture: There are an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. Trump’s mass deportations are expected to impact roughly 20 million families across the country.
- Immigration advocates and lawyers are preparing to counter the plan in court.
- The president-elect’s team is aiming to craft executive orders that can withstand legal challenges to avoid a similar defeat that befell Trump’s Muslim ban in his first term, Politico reported.
- Their plans also include ending the parole program for undocumented immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, per Politico.
Zoom out: Trump has also already begun filling out his Cabinet positions with immigration hardliners.
- This includes tapping Tom Homan, the former acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), to serve as his “border czar.”
- In addition, Trump nominated South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem as his secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Go deeper: How Trump’s plan for mass deportations fits into U.S. history
I will expand the garden in my side yard and extend it back to the area which has fruit trees and ginger. If the courts don’t block this, I’m betting on higher food prices by the next harvest. Also, I don’t know how anyone in a state like mine, affected by hurricanes and damage, will be getting their homes fixed and cleaned. We’d have never recovered without the workers from South of our border. However, that will be only one of the problems this regime change will bring.
David Nir, writing for Public Notice, has this information on the possibility of recess appointments for the basket of unqualified deplorable he’s chosen for his cabinet. “How Johnson could make Trump’s recess appointments a reality. Talk of cutting out Dems — and GOP dissenters — is more than just idle rhetoric.” Surely, no one believes that what comes out of his anus-looking mouth is just idle rhetoric at this point!
Donald Trump’s plan to stock his cabinet with the most appalling MAGA nihilists hinges on the obeisance of one man in particular: House Speaker Mike Johnson. And given Johnson’s track record of cowardice, Trump may indeed get what he wants — and demolish a pillar of democracy along the way.
The crescendo of increasingly nightmarish picks like Tulsi Gabbard, Matt Gaetz, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. almost makes Liz Dye’s take here at Public Notice — that Trump is trying to install the crowd at the Star Wars cantina — seem too kind.
So beyond the pale are Trump’s worst choices that even some Republicans in the Senate are balking. And it’s worth remembering that many Trump nominees during his first term in office withdrew from consideration in the face of GOP inaction or hostility.
But whether or not Republican senators are inclined to revert to subservience and greenlight these nominations, Trump is already armed with a plan to bypass the confirmation process entirely. He wants to fill vacancies without a confirmation vote by making so-called recess appointments when the Senate is not in session — a power granted to him by the Constitution. And he has a path to do it.
A will and a way
For many years, Congress has not actually taken a formal recess, precisely to deny presidents the ability to side-step lawmakers. Trump, though, has demanded that the Senate resume the practice of adjourning itself so that he can ram his picks through without any oversight.
The GOP’s new majority leader, John Thune, replied submissively to Trump’s demand, saying on Fox News last week that “all options are on the table.” And Johnson echoed that sentiment on Fox News Sunday yesterday, saying of recess appointments that “there may be a function for that.” (Watch below.)
It turns out that, even for a legislative body that often convenes for just three days a week, it’s surprisingly difficult for the Senate to take a proper, on-the-books break. Such an adjournment requires a majority vote, which even Thune acknowledged might be “a problem” for some Republican senators.
But even if Senate Republicans could muster a majority, a motion to recess can be amended, as Semafor’s Burgess Everett notes. That means Democrats could hold up such a motion indefinitely, unless Republicans were to unilaterally change Senate rules regarding recesses — a move Everett calls “a smaller-scale version of the ‘nuclear option'” that might also have a hard time garnering 50 votes.
The alt-media has been doing an excellent job tackling this garbage in and out of motivation and action. Politico has stated that the Ethics Committee in the House will discuss the report on Gaetz and his sex adventures with underage girls, also known as statutory rape. I firmly believe that if they don’t release it, someone will leak it. “House Ethics panel to meet Wednesday as Gaetz question looms. Members rescheduled the Wednesday meeting from one last week where lawmakers were widely expected to vote on whether to release the report.”
The House Ethics panel will meet Wednesday and potentially vote to release a report probing sexual misconduct allegations against former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who Donald Trump tapped to be his attorney general, according to two people familiar with the discussion.
The meeting comes as Gaetz’s confirmation is in question, with some Republican senators wary of the controversial Florida Republican serving as the nation’s top law enforcement officer.
Speaker Mike Johnson is putting pressure on members of the Ethics Committee to keep the report under wraps, saying on Friday that he is “going to strongly request” the report isn’t released because “that is not the way we do things in the House, and I think that would be a terrible precedent to set.”
Johnson furthered that stance in interviews on the Sunday shows and threw his support behind Gaetz to be attorney general.
Members rescheduled the Wednesday meeting from one last week where lawmakers were widely expected to vote on whether to release the report.
Whether or not to release the report, which some senators have said would be essential in deciding whether or not to confirm Gaetz, is placing intense pressure on the historically bipartisan Ethics Committee. Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin on Sunday told “Meet The Press” that the Senate should “absolutely” be able to see the report, but he said that doesn’t necessarily mean it should become public.
Gaetz, a fierce and loyal supporter of Trump’s, has a tough road to confirmation in the Senate. GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said she doesn’t “think it’s a serious nomination.” And fellow swing-vote Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said she was “shocked” by the choice.
Republicans will hold 53 Senate seats in the next Congress, meaning they can only afford three defectors in the confirmation process.
As I mentioned, Trump’s lies about not knowing about Project 2025 are becoming more disprovable. This is also from Politico. “Playbook: Heritage comes out of the bunker.” Natalie Allison has the lede.
But now, with Trump as president-elect, Heritage is peeking back out from its metaphorical bunker.
Two of Heritage’s visiting fellows — TOM HOMAN and JOHN RATCLIFFE, who were contributors to Project 2025 — have already been named to top Trump administration posts. That book from Roberts that was supposed to come out in September? It was released last week. The think tank even marked its reemergence with an event this past week welcoming back the Washington cocktail circuit to the group’s Massachusetts Avenue headquarters on Capitol Hill. It was a D.C. coming back out party, of sorts, for an organization that is easing its way back into influence in what’s soon to be Trump’s Washington once again.
“We’re so back,” the Heritage official told Playbook, with a nervous laugh, while a crowd in the packed but modest-sized room milled around during a book party Thursday night for Roberts.
As GOP members of Congress — Playbook spotted Reps. RALPH NORMAN (R-S.C.), BRIAN BABIN (R-Texas), ERIC BURLISON (R-Mo.) and JOSH BRECHEEN (R-Okla.) there — sipped wine and grabbed hors d’oeuvres with a smattering of ambassadors, conservative staffers and reporters on Thursday, Roberts noted that he has lost a number of his “liberal friends” this year over “that larger book we’re famous for.”
But Heritage’s stint as a social pariah due to Project 2025 is effectively over.
“The entire political spectrum in the West is represented here,” Roberts said of the crowd he had assembled Thursday. “I won’t call anyone out, but those of you who are not exactly excited about everything that Heritage does — I’m very, very grateful that you’re here, and you’re here out of friendship.”Roberts spoke about the need for conservatives to “have a certain humility” in order to continue growing the historic coalition that’s returning Trump to the White House — while still trying to fully convert new faces in the movement to a robust conservative ideology more closely resembling his own.
“What the conservative movement did for a generation — I was guilty of this, sometimes I’m still tempted to be guilty of this — is to say, ‘Oh, I’m not going to talk to you,’” Roberts said. He recalled scoffing the first time someone suggested that influential “populist conservatives” like himself should form a “political alliance with the tech bros.”
“I said, ‘What are you talking about? That’s crazy.’ Guess who was wrong? I was.”
Roberts, flanked on each side by panels quoting book endorsements from VP-elect JD VANCE and TUCKER CARLSON, noted that there are stark differences between his worldview and of some of the GOP’s newcomers, name-checking ELON MUSK and ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR., who had been announced as Trump’s nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services just hours earlier.
“I can be very grateful to Elon Musk for revitalizing free speech for the world, while also saying — very respectfully, civilly, maybe even with a smile on my face — it’s crazy to want to put microchips in the brain,” Roberts said.
And he intends to have what he said will also be a “civil” conversation with Kennedy on their differences on abortion rights. “We might agree to disagree,” Roberts said, “but we’re going to work on whatever we can that we agree on, and I will hold out hope that maybe I can change his mind.”
Roberts is sounding pretty optimistic again about the role of Heritage in Washington, about his own improving standing in Trump world, and, yes — about the likelihood of Project 2025’s much-maligned proposals getting closer to implementation. His organization, meanwhile, has prepared for the Trump administration a database of nearly 20,000 names of people who could fill jobs in the president-elect’s new federal government, a Heritage official told Playbook.
Elon Musk’s idea of free speech is anything that doesn’t personally attack him or his ideals, so let’s get rid of that notion. The Tech Bros funded this crazy train. This is from Oliver Darcy, who writes for Status. “The Verge Editor-In-Chief Nilay Patel breathes fire on Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s Big Tech enablers. “All of these men are now hopelessly trapped in a problem their own platforms and algorithms created.”” This is from Oliver’s interview with Patel.
What do you make of Elon Musk’s alliance with Donald Trump and what worries you the most about him playing such an outsized role in the Trump administration?
America now has an unelected defense contractor sitting in the White House doing ketamine and twiddling the algorithmic knobs of an influential right-wing echo chamber while fulminating against traditional standards-based journalism, threatening to revoke network broadcast licenses, and suing advertisers who don’t want to spend their money on his dwindling user base. What could go wrong?
On top of that, Trump’s most likely FCC Chairman is Brendan Carr, who was tasked in the first Trump government to crack down on platform moderation by taking control of Section 230, literally wrote the Project 2025 chapter laying out a plan to do so, and is now begging to punish NBC for having Kamala Harris on “SNL.”
To be as clear as I can be, the second Trump administration with Elon Musk embedded within it represents the most direct and sustained threat to the First Amendment and the freedom of the press any of us will ever experience. If you’re a media executive or editorial leader and you haven’t met with your legal team to understand the current landscape of First Amendment threats, let alone the ones to come, you’re already behind. Get on it.
In the wake of Trump’s victory, other Big Tech leaders (Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai, etcetera) posted congratulatory messages on X. It struck me as much different to how Silicon Valley responded to Trump’s first election. Why do you think that is?
All of these men are now hopelessly trapped in a problem their own platforms and algorithms created: they have to manipulate Trump’s narcissism to secure tariff exceptions and regulatory largesse, while knowing that the vast majority of their employees and half of their customers will see any engagement as moral bankruptcy. There’s a reason Apple and Google would not confirm the calls Donald Trump claimed Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai made to him before the election — they didn’t want to be associated with him.
Now they have no choice. Tim Cook had been quietly setting the stage to retire — but he’s stuck kissing the ring and hosting fake factory openings for another four years to avoid disastrous tariffs on Apple products. Zuck is spending billions on Nvidia H100s manufactured in Taiwan in order to dominate A.I., but all that money comes from advertising for products made overseas — a double whammy of tariff issues. (And the entire influencer economy is built on Shein sponcon — that’s about to fall off a cliff.) Elon, Marc Andreessen, and J.D. Vance all think that Google should be crushed to bits with antitrust law — Vance has specifically said that he think Lina Khan is doing a good job.
Jeff Bezos? All that money for yachts and rockets comes from Amazon’s huge ecosystem of alphabet soup dropshipping companies. I hope Lauren likes having dinner at Mar-a-Lago.
Here’s more on the FCC cabinet pick who edited Project 2025. This is from the AP. “Trump names Brendan Carr, senior GOP leader at FCC, to lead the agency.” Demons all the way down.
President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday named Brendan Carr, the senior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission, as the new chairman of the agency tasked with regulating broadcasting, telecommunications and broadband.
Carr is a longtime member of the commission and served previously as the FCC’s general counsel. He has been unanimously confirmed by the Senate three times and was nominated by both Trump and President Joe Biden to the commission.
The FCC is an independent agency that is overseen by Congress, but Trump has suggested he wanted to bring it under tighter White House control, in part to use the agency to punish TV networks that cover him in a way he doesn’t like.
Carr has of late embraced Trump’s ideas about social media and tech. Carr wrote a section devoted to the FCC in “ Project 2025,” a sweeping blueprint for gutting the federal workforce and dismantling federal agencies in a second Trump administration produced by the conservative Heritage Foundation.
Every federal worker is going to need a lawyer at this point. Get ready for that Class Action lawsuit. This in-depth look at the weirdo that will head defense is not pleasant. But, he’s the guy who would work with whatever Generals remain in all parts of the country, sniffing out undocumented workers. Judd Legume and his team sniffed him out for Popular Information. “13 things everyone should know about Pete Hegseth. Just looking at him gives me the willies.
Hegseth is a military veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and received a Bronze Star and other commendations. He also served in the National Guard. But the largest organization that Hegseth has previously run is Concerned Veterans for America, a Koch-funded right-wing advocacy organization, where he served as Executive Director from 2012 to 2016. Concerned Veterans for America had a few dozen employees and a budget of around $15 million during his tenure. In that role, Hegseth hired his younger brother, who had just graduated college, to a well-compensated media relations position at the CVA. Hegseth founded a small PAC in his native Minnesota to support conservative candidates. It managed to raise about $15,000 over several years. One-third of the raised funds were “spent on two Christmas parties and reimbursements to Hegseth.”
Even Trump’s most loyal supporters acknowledge Hegseth’s lack of relevant experience. Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist during his first term, said that Hegseth has “never run a big organization” and is “kind of a madman.”
But while Hegseth has limited management experience, he has spent many years in the public eye and has a long record of punditry. Here are 13 things everyone should know about the man Trump wants to put in charge of the nation’s military.
His top priority is getting women out of the military.
“I’m straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles,” Hegseth said in a media interview on November 10, 2024. According to Hegseth, “[e]verything about men and women serving together makes the situation more complicated, and complication in combat, means casualties are worse.”
“Dads push us to take risks. Moms put the training wheels on our bikes,” Hegseth wrote in his 2024 book The War on Warriors. “We need moms. But not in the military, and especially not in combat units.”
“There aren’t enough lesbians in San Francisco to staff the 82nd Airborne like you need, you need the boys in Kentucky and Texas and North Carolina and Wisconsin,” Hegseth said in a podcast earlier this year.
Women have formally been allowed to serve in combat roles since 2013 and have been involved in combat operations for decades. Even the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page suggested Hegseth’s position is misguided because “women have shown they can perform well in many roles” in the military.
It gets worse from there if you want to read it. And I think that it’s horrifying for all of us for now. Be aware of all the places where havoc will reign. The stock market has already been rebooted. It’s nose-dived since the cabinet officers were announced. Big Pharma and anyone in the processed food business were particularly hard hit. This is the headline today from Stock Market Watch. “Stock Market Today: Dow flat, S&P 500 attempts bounce after worst week in over 2 months. It’s not like I didn’t warn y’all. Just get ready to hunker down like an Okie during the Dust Bowl. I have mad skills, having survived post-Katrina with the lessons my Nana and Dad taught me. This is not going to be an easy time for any of us.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Songs for dwelling on Trump and his appointments
#DonOld #Repeat1968JohnBuss #EloniaMusk #OrangeCaligula #TrumpCabinetWeirdos
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“Voting can stop it.” John Buss @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
It was a dark and drizzly night, not one to make the rounds to all the Halloween parties in the hood. So, I settled into watching a friend from around Flagstaff, Arizona, stream a set of Horror Movies on Discord to a bunch of us who play a Zombie survival game together. It was like a pajama party with the girls, except my girls are all furry, and everyone else was scattered all over the country. I retwisted my ankle last night which was still hurting from a Tuesday mishap and feeling really old. The live Oaks of New Orleans’ Avenues drop acorns that rapidly become a coffee ground-like mess everywhere. That was the trick. I was glad that I stocked up on treats and wine earlier because I just missed the fog and the mist rolling in over the city. A very apt setting for Interview with a Vampire. I was hurting, traumatized by the DonOld Garbage Truck Cosplay spewing from the News Channels, and thought settling down to some movies would be a good break.
I saw a new version of Children of the Corn and was treated to several movies, including two of the “The Hills Have Eyes” franchises. It was hard to believe that the original version by Wes Crave had come out when I was at university. The fact the newest version of Children was centered in Nebraska was not lost on me. The original of that one came out when I was finishing my Masters. Back then, I’d take out the Beta tapes of the old Vincent Price horror movies that I recorded off the few cable channels back then.
The more I watched the Hill films, the more I could see Trump supporters in all the cannibal zombies in the Hills. Seriously, right down to their caps, their messy English, and the way they treated the two women in that National Guard Unit, I could swear I was watching a MAGA ambush. The creepy preacher in Children of the Corn and his implied “sin” against the little girl Eden was like the perfect metaphor for all those white Christian nationalist men whose arrest mug shots for crimes against children keep popping up on my X feed.
I had watched the news earlier and the meltdown that MAGA husbands are having at the idea their wives might get in the voting booth and vote their conscience instead of the will of their Patriarchal captor. One dude on Fox likened it to committing adultery, at which point the women on the panel laughed, and then he looked straight at the camera and told his chattel Emma that it would be finished if he found she’d done that. I thought she should get a lawyer to get her share, then Run Emma, RUN!! That and go have some fun with some young men that know what they’re doing! Just don’t bring them home or marry them.
This is from Vanity Fair. The analysis is provided by Bess Levin. “Fox News Host Says He’d Divorce His Wife for Voting for Kamala Harris. “If I found out Emma was going into the voting booth and pulling the lever for Harris, that’s the same thing as having an affair.” If you’d like, I can reference the part from the Hill movie where the mutant grabs a woman National Guard soldier, starts grabbing and raping her, and says, “You make nice babies!” Who among us can’t see DonOld in his prime doing that same thing?
How much respect do Donald Trump’s male supporters have for women? So much that at least one of them has said he’d end his marriage if his wife exercised her constitutional right to vote for Kamala Harris.
On an episode of The Five this week, Fox News host Jesse Watters told fellow panelists that if he learned his wife, Emma, cast her ballot for the vice president, after letting him think she was voting for Trump, he would consider it a betrayal on par with having an extramarital affair and it would be “over.”
“If I found out Emma was going into the voting booth and pulling the lever for Harris, that’s the same thing as having an affair,” Watters said. “That, to me, violates the sanctity of our marriage. What else is she keeping from me? What else has she been lying about?” Asked by cohost Jeanine Pirro, “Why would she lie to you? Have you threatened her?” Watters responded, “Why would she do that and then vote Harris? Why would she say she was voting…. And I caught her and then she said, ‘I lied to you for the last four years—’”
“So you admit you intimidate people,” Pirro interjected. “It’s over, Emma!” Watters said. “That would be D-Day!”
Watters and co. were discussing an ad put out in support of the Harris campaign that reminds women, “You can vote any way you want, and no one will ever know.” Which is apparently a necessary point to make to women who are married to extremely fragile Trump-supporting men.
I know that once they think they’ve got you, they show their true colors, but seriously, who could stand to live like that? Salon has this great article up with an even more wonderful headline. “”It is so disastrous”: MAGA men are freaking out that wives may be secretly voting for Kamala Harris, “That’s the same thing as having an affair,” Fox News host argues as women fuel early vote in key states.” The entire concept of Control Freak is not hyped enough for these guys. Charles R Davis takes them on.
When you’re a star, Donald Trump has said more than once, women will let you do whatever you want to them. As president, that meant putting three right-wing justices on the Supreme Court and stripping half the country of a constitutional right, enabling people like him — their self-proclaimed “protector” — to have the final word on what any woman does with her body.
“I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not,” the former president asserted at a campaign stop on Wednesday. “I am going to protect them.”
Women, it turns out, do not care for this — a large majority of them, at least. While millions will still vote for the Republican candidate, perhaps hating immigrants more than they love reproductive rights, the only certainty at this point is that many millions more will vote for Vice President Kamala Harris. In the latest ABC News/Ipsos national poll, the Democrat enjoyed a 14% advantage with women over Trump; among women with a college degree, that number rose to 23%; among women voters under 40, it rocketed to 34%.
According to the Brookings Institution, Harris’ strength among women angered by the 2022 Dobbs decision could explain why Democrats, for the first time in forever, are polling better with older voters than Republicans. The think tank’s Michael Hais and Morley Winograd noted that, per the ABC News/Ipsos survey, there has been a 10-point swing to Harris among voters over the age of 65 compared to 2020.
“Some observers think this shift is driven by the ‘revenge of Boomer feminists’ among the women of that famous generation, all of whom are now over 65 but who cut their political teeth in the battle for equality when they were much younger,” Hais and Winograd wrote. Younger voters may be angry over losing a right they had never lived without, but older people have seen hard-fought progress rolled back. They are also the most reliable group of voters — and they tend to vote early.
In battleground states, that appears to be exactly what’s happening. According to an analysis of early-voting tallies by Politico, women account for 55% of all ballots cast thus far in states such as Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
That, in turn, is causing some MAGA commentators to break from their usual posture of feigned confidence to outright panic.
“Early vote has been disproportionately female,” Charlie Kirk, head of Turning Point USA and helping to lead the Trump campaign’s get-out-the-vote effort, posted on social media. “If men stay at home, Kamala is president. It’s that simple.” (Kirk, seeking to motivate these voters, offered Orwellian misogyny: “If you want a vision of the future if you don’t vote, imagine Kamala’s voice cackling, forever.”)
I feel seen for once, hopefully, not by the Children of the Garbage Bags and AR-15s. DonOld really has gone over the edge. During his rally in New Mexico, he made a loosely veiled threat at former Congresswoman Liz Cheney. This is from the Bulwark, as written by Bill Kristol. Don’t Horror shows make allies out of the strangest folks? That’s what happens when your very life is on the line.
Donald Trump’s two strongest personality traits each had a moment on the campaign trail yesterday.
At a rally in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the buffoon: “I’m here for one very simple reason. I like you very much, and it’s good for my credentials with the Hispanic and Latino community.”
And later, on stage with Tucker Carlson in Glendale, Arizona, the menace. Here he was on former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney: “She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, okay? Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.”
U.S. News has this headline. “Trump Says Liz Cheney Might Not Be Such a ‘War Hawk’ if She Had Rifles Shooting at Her. Donald Trump is calling former Rep. Liz Cheney, who’s one of his most prominent Republican critics, a “war hawk” and he’s suggesting she might not be as willing to send troops to fight if she had guns shooting at her.”
Donald Trump is suggesting that former Rep. Liz Cheney, one of his most prominent Republican critics, should have rifles “shooting at her” to see how she feels about sending troops to fight. It was his latest suggestion that his rivals should be targeted with violence.
Cheney responded by branding the GOP presidential nominee a “cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant.”
The Republican presidential candidate has been using increasingly threatening rhetoric against his adversaries and talked of “enemies from within” undermining the country. Some of his former senior aides and Vice President Kamala Harris have labeled him a fascist in response.
At an event late Thursday in Arizona with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Trump was asked whether it was strange to see Cheney campaign against him. The former Wyoming congresswoman has vocally opposed Trump since the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and endorsed Democrat Kamala Harris, joining the vice president at recent stops as they try to win over Republicans disaffected with Trump.
Trump called Cheney “a deranged person” and added, “But the reason she couldn’t stand me is that she always wanted to go to war with people. If it were up to her we’d be in 50 different countries.”
The former president continued: “She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with the rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her. OK, let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face.
The results of Donald Trump’s first reign of Terror are killing women. The Republican appointees to the Supreme Court have the blood of innocents on their hands. ProPublica has once again followed the trail of deaths left in Texas by the hypocrites who scream they are “pro-life.” “A Pregnant Teenager Died After Trying to Get Care in Three Visits to Texas Emergency Rooms. It took three ER visits and 20 hours before a hospital admitted Nevaeh Crain, 18, as her condition worsened. Doctors insisted on two ultrasounds to confirm “fetal demise.” She’s one of at least two Texas women who died under the state’s abortion ban.”
Candace Fails screamed for someone in the Texas hospital to help her pregnant daughter. “Do something,” she pleaded, on the morning of Oct. 29, 2023.
Nevaeh Crain was crying in pain, too weak to walk, blood staining her thighs. Feverish and vomiting the day of her baby shower, the 18-year-old had gone to two different emergency rooms within 12 hours, returning home each time worse than before.
The first hospital diagnosed her with strep throat without investigating her sharp abdominal cramps. At the second, she screened positive for sepsis, a life-threatening and fast-moving reaction to an infection, medical records show. But doctors said her six-month fetus had a heartbeat and that Crain was fine to leave.
Now on Crain’s third hospital visit, an obstetrician insisted on two ultrasounds to “confirm fetal demise,” a nurse wrote, before moving her to intensive care.
By then, more than two hours after her arrival, Crain’s blood pressure had plummeted and a nurse had noted that her lips were “blue and dusky.” Her organs began failing.
Hours later, she was dead.
Fails, who would have seen her daughter turn 20 this Friday, still cannot understand why Crain’s emergency was not treated like an emergency.
But that is what many pregnant women are now facing in states with strict abortion bans, doctors and lawyers have told ProPublica.
“Pregnant women have become essentially untouchables,” said Sara Rosenbaum, a health law and policy professor emerita at George Washington University.
Texas’s abortion ban threatens prison time for interventions that end a fetal heartbeat, whether the pregnancy is wanted or not. It includes exceptions for life-threatening conditions, but still, doctors told ProPublica that confusion and fear about the potential legal repercussions are changing the way their colleagues treat pregnant patients with complications.
In states with abortion bans, such patients are sometimes bounced between hospitals like “hot potatoes,” with health care providers reluctant to participate in treatment that could attract a prosecutor, doctors told ProPublica. In some cases, medical teams are wasting precious time debating legalities and creating documentation, preparing for the possibility that they’ll need to explain their actions to a jury and judge.
Dr. Jodi Abbott, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Boston University School of Medicine, said patients are left wondering: “Am I being sent home because I really am OK? Or am I being sent home because they’re afraid that the solution to what’s going on with my pregnancy would be ending the pregnancy, and they’re not allowed to do that?”
There is a federal law to prevent emergency room doctors from withholding lifesaving care.
Passed nearly four decades ago, it requires emergency rooms to stabilize patients in medical crises. The Biden administration argues this mandate applies even in cases where an abortion might be necessary.
No state has done more to fight this interpretation than Texas, which has warned doctors that its abortion ban supersedes the administration’s guidance on federal law, and that they can face up to 99 years in prison for violating it.
ProPublica condensed more than 800 pages of Crain’s medical records into a four-page timeline in consultation with two maternal-fetal medicine specialists; reporters reviewed it with nine doctors, including researchers at prestigious universities, OB-GYNs who regularly handle miscarriages, and experts in emergency medicine and maternal health.
Puerto Rican Americans continue to speak out about the horrible racist slurs spoken by #DonOld about their Island home and their presence on the mainland. Does he understand that Puerto Ricans are Americans and that they live everywhere in this country? This is from The Daily Beast. “J.Lo Claps Back at Trump Rally Puerto Rico Jab: ‘We Are Americans’, “Our pain matters,” the singer said at a Las Vegas event for Kamala Harris.” This is reported by Claire Lampen.
As promised, Jennifer Lopez took the stage at Kamala Harris’s rally in Las Vegas on Thursday night, responding to racist statements about Puerto Rico made at one of Donald Trump’s recent events.
“I am an American woman. I am the daughter of Guadalupe Lupe Rodríguez and David Lopez, a proud daughter and son of Puerto Rico. I am Puerto Rican,” Lopez said, restating the final point in Spanish. “And yes, I was born here. And we are Americans.”
In his much-maligned comedy routine at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday, right-wing comedian Tony Hinchcliffe referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.” His comments, Lopez said, should offend “anyone of decent character.”
“It’s about us, all of us, no matter what we look like, who we love, who we worship, or where we’re from,” Lopez said. “[Harris’s] opponent, on the other hand, doesn’t see it that way. He has consistently worked to divide us. At Madison Square Garden, he reminded us who he really is and how he really feels.”
Trump‘s rally featured a parade of extremist speakers, though it was Hinchcliffe’s act that really dominated headlines. In it, he claimed Latinos “love making babies,” a riff whose anti-immigrant punchline fell flat, and threw in some racist stereotypes about Black people as well.
Although the Trump campaign has since attempted to distance itself from Hinchcliffe’s set—Trump trotting out a classic “I don’t know her” defense—it garnered criticism from all sides, even from his own party.
Trump’s enablers cannot stop him from his hate-filled speeches and comments.
“It wasn’t just Puerto Ricans who were offended that day,” Lopez added. “It was every Latino in this country, it was humanity.”
J.Lo went on to say that, “with an understanding of our past, and a faith in our future,” she‘s proud to vote for Harris. “You can’t even spell American without Rican,” she said. “This is our country, too, and we must exercise our right to vote.”
Towards the end of her speech, Lopez appeared to fight back tears. “I promised myself I wouldn’t get emotional,” she told the audience. “But you know what? We should be emotional. We should be upset. We should be scared and outraged, we should. Our pain matters. We matter. You matter. Your voice and your vote matters.”
“This election is about your life,” J.Lo continued. “It‘s about you, and me, and my kids, and your kids. Don‘t make it easy; make them pay attention to you. That’s your power. Your vote is your power.”
“Your vote is your power” is the line I want everyone to remember today. Another one is a quote from the late Senator Paul Wellstone from Minnesota. Five Days until we get the opportunity to never hear that man or his zombie cultists again.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
https://skydancingblog.com/2024/11/01/finally-friday-reads-pobre-diabla/
#DonOld #2024Elections #Repeat1968JohnBuss #HalloweenHorrorMovies #LizCheney #TexasAbortionLaws
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“Voting can stop it.” John Buss @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
It was a dark and drizzly night, not one to make the rounds to all the Halloween parties in the hood. So, I settled into watching a friend from around Flagstaff, Arizona, stream a set of Horror Movies on Discord to a bunch of us who play a Zombie survival game together. It was like a pajama party with the girls, except my girls are all furry, and everyone else was scattered all over the country. I retwisted my ankle last night which was still hurting from a Tuesday mishap and feeling really old. The live Oaks of New Orleans’ Avenues drop acorns that rapidly become a coffee ground-like mess everywhere. That was the trick. I was glad that I stocked up on treats and wine earlier because I just missed the fog and the mist rolling in over the city. A very apt setting for Interview with a Vampire. I was hurting, traumatized by the DonOld Garbage Truck Cosplay spewing from the News Channels, and thought settling down to some movies would be a good break.
I saw a new version of Children of the Corn and was treated to several movies, including two of the “The Hills Have Eyes” franchises. It was hard to believe that the original version by Wes Crave had come out when I was at university. The fact the newest version of Children was centered in Nebraska was not lost on me. The original of that one came out when I was finishing my Masters. Back then, I’d take out the Beta tapes of the old Vincent Price horror movies that I recorded off the few cable channels back then.
The more I watched the Hill films, the more I could see Trump supporters in all the cannibal zombies in the Hills. Seriously, right down to their caps, their messy English, and the way they treated the two women in that National Guard Unit, I could swear I was watching a MAGA ambush. The creepy preacher in Children of the Corn and his implied “sin” against the little girl Eden was like the perfect metaphor for all those white Christian nationalist men whose arrest mug shots for crimes against children keep popping up on my X feed.
I had watched the news earlier and the meltdown that MAGA husbands are having at the idea their wives might get in the voting booth and vote their conscience instead of the will of their Patriarchal captor. One dude on Fox likened it to committing adultery, at which point the women on the panel laughed, and then he looked straight at the camera and told his chattel Emma that it would be finished if he found she’d done that. I thought she should get a lawyer to get her share, then Run Emma, RUN!! That and go have some fun with some young men that know what they’re doing! Just don’t bring them home or marry them.
This is from Vanity Fair. The analysis is provided by Bess Levin. “Fox News Host Says He’d Divorce His Wife for Voting for Kamala Harris. “If I found out Emma was going into the voting booth and pulling the lever for Harris, that’s the same thing as having an affair.” If you’d like, I can reference the part from the Hill movie where the mutant grabs a woman National Guard soldier, starts grabbing and raping her, and says, “You make nice babies!” Who among us can’t see DonOld in his prime doing that same thing?
How much respect do Donald Trump’s male supporters have for women? So much that at least one of them has said he’d end his marriage if his wife exercised her constitutional right to vote for Kamala Harris.
On an episode of The Five this week, Fox News host Jesse Watters told fellow panelists that if he learned his wife, Emma, cast her ballot for the vice president, after letting him think she was voting for Trump, he would consider it a betrayal on par with having an extramarital affair and it would be “over.”
“If I found out Emma was going into the voting booth and pulling the lever for Harris, that’s the same thing as having an affair,” Watters said. “That, to me, violates the sanctity of our marriage. What else is she keeping from me? What else has she been lying about?” Asked by cohost Jeanine Pirro, “Why would she lie to you? Have you threatened her?” Watters responded, “Why would she do that and then vote Harris? Why would she say she was voting…. And I caught her and then she said, ‘I lied to you for the last four years—’”
“So you admit you intimidate people,” Pirro interjected. “It’s over, Emma!” Watters said. “That would be D-Day!”
Watters and co. were discussing an ad put out in support of the Harris campaign that reminds women, “You can vote any way you want, and no one will ever know.” Which is apparently a necessary point to make to women who are married to extremely fragile Trump-supporting men.
I know that once they think they’ve got you, they show their true colors, but seriously, who could stand to live like that? Salon has this great article up with an even more wonderful headline. “”It is so disastrous”: MAGA men are freaking out that wives may be secretly voting for Kamala Harris, “That’s the same thing as having an affair,” Fox News host argues as women fuel early vote in key states.” The entire concept of Control Freak is not hyped enough for these guys. Charles R Davis takes them on.
When you’re a star, Donald Trump has said more than once, women will let you do whatever you want to them. As president, that meant putting three right-wing justices on the Supreme Court and stripping half the country of a constitutional right, enabling people like him — their self-proclaimed “protector” — to have the final word on what any woman does with her body.
“I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not,” the former president asserted at a campaign stop on Wednesday. “I am going to protect them.”
Women, it turns out, do not care for this — a large majority of them, at least. While millions will still vote for the Republican candidate, perhaps hating immigrants more than they love reproductive rights, the only certainty at this point is that many millions more will vote for Vice President Kamala Harris. In the latest ABC News/Ipsos national poll, the Democrat enjoyed a 14% advantage with women over Trump; among women with a college degree, that number rose to 23%; among women voters under 40, it rocketed to 34%.
According to the Brookings Institution, Harris’ strength among women angered by the 2022 Dobbs decision could explain why Democrats, for the first time in forever, are polling better with older voters than Republicans. The think tank’s Michael Hais and Morley Winograd noted that, per the ABC News/Ipsos survey, there has been a 10-point swing to Harris among voters over the age of 65 compared to 2020.
“Some observers think this shift is driven by the ‘revenge of Boomer feminists’ among the women of that famous generation, all of whom are now over 65 but who cut their political teeth in the battle for equality when they were much younger,” Hais and Winograd wrote. Younger voters may be angry over losing a right they had never lived without, but older people have seen hard-fought progress rolled back. They are also the most reliable group of voters — and they tend to vote early.
In battleground states, that appears to be exactly what’s happening. According to an analysis of early-voting tallies by Politico, women account for 55% of all ballots cast thus far in states such as Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
That, in turn, is causing some MAGA commentators to break from their usual posture of feigned confidence to outright panic.
“Early vote has been disproportionately female,” Charlie Kirk, head of Turning Point USA and helping to lead the Trump campaign’s get-out-the-vote effort, posted on social media. “If men stay at home, Kamala is president. It’s that simple.” (Kirk, seeking to motivate these voters, offered Orwellian misogyny: “If you want a vision of the future if you don’t vote, imagine Kamala’s voice cackling, forever.”)
I feel seen for once, hopefully, not by the Children of the Garbage Bags and AR-15s. DonOld really has gone over the edge. During his rally in New Mexico, he made a loosely veiled threat at former Congresswoman Liz Cheney. This is from the Bulwark, as written by Bill Kristol. Don’t Horror shows make allies out of the strangest folks? That’s what happens when your very life is on the line.
Donald Trump’s two strongest personality traits each had a moment on the campaign trail yesterday.
At a rally in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the buffoon: “I’m here for one very simple reason. I like you very much, and it’s good for my credentials with the Hispanic and Latino community.”
And later, on stage with Tucker Carlson in Glendale, Arizona, the menace. Here he was on former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney: “She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, okay? Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.”
U.S. News has this headline. “Trump Says Liz Cheney Might Not Be Such a ‘War Hawk’ if She Had Rifles Shooting at Her. Donald Trump is calling former Rep. Liz Cheney, who’s one of his most prominent Republican critics, a “war hawk” and he’s suggesting she might not be as willing to send troops to fight if she had guns shooting at her.”
Donald Trump is suggesting that former Rep. Liz Cheney, one of his most prominent Republican critics, should have rifles “shooting at her” to see how she feels about sending troops to fight. It was his latest suggestion that his rivals should be targeted with violence.
Cheney responded by branding the GOP presidential nominee a “cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant.”
The Republican presidential candidate has been using increasingly threatening rhetoric against his adversaries and talked of “enemies from within” undermining the country. Some of his former senior aides and Vice President Kamala Harris have labeled him a fascist in response.
At an event late Thursday in Arizona with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Trump was asked whether it was strange to see Cheney campaign against him. The former Wyoming congresswoman has vocally opposed Trump since the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and endorsed Democrat Kamala Harris, joining the vice president at recent stops as they try to win over Republicans disaffected with Trump.
Trump called Cheney “a deranged person” and added, “But the reason she couldn’t stand me is that she always wanted to go to war with people. If it were up to her we’d be in 50 different countries.”
The former president continued: “She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with the rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her. OK, let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face.
The results of Donald Trump’s first reign of Terror are killing women. The Republican appointees to the Supreme Court have the blood of innocents on their hands. ProPublica has once again followed the trail of deaths left in Texas by the hypocrites who scream they are “pro-life.” “A Pregnant Teenager Died After Trying to Get Care in Three Visits to Texas Emergency Rooms. It took three ER visits and 20 hours before a hospital admitted Nevaeh Crain, 18, as her condition worsened. Doctors insisted on two ultrasounds to confirm “fetal demise.” She’s one of at least two Texas women who died under the state’s abortion ban.”
Candace Fails screamed for someone in the Texas hospital to help her pregnant daughter. “Do something,” she pleaded, on the morning of Oct. 29, 2023.
Nevaeh Crain was crying in pain, too weak to walk, blood staining her thighs. Feverish and vomiting the day of her baby shower, the 18-year-old had gone to two different emergency rooms within 12 hours, returning home each time worse than before.
The first hospital diagnosed her with strep throat without investigating her sharp abdominal cramps. At the second, she screened positive for sepsis, a life-threatening and fast-moving reaction to an infection, medical records show. But doctors said her six-month fetus had a heartbeat and that Crain was fine to leave.
Now on Crain’s third hospital visit, an obstetrician insisted on two ultrasounds to “confirm fetal demise,” a nurse wrote, before moving her to intensive care.
By then, more than two hours after her arrival, Crain’s blood pressure had plummeted and a nurse had noted that her lips were “blue and dusky.” Her organs began failing.
Hours later, she was dead.
Fails, who would have seen her daughter turn 20 this Friday, still cannot understand why Crain’s emergency was not treated like an emergency.
But that is what many pregnant women are now facing in states with strict abortion bans, doctors and lawyers have told ProPublica.
“Pregnant women have become essentially untouchables,” said Sara Rosenbaum, a health law and policy professor emerita at George Washington University.
Texas’s abortion ban threatens prison time for interventions that end a fetal heartbeat, whether the pregnancy is wanted or not. It includes exceptions for life-threatening conditions, but still, doctors told ProPublica that confusion and fear about the potential legal repercussions are changing the way their colleagues treat pregnant patients with complications.
In states with abortion bans, such patients are sometimes bounced between hospitals like “hot potatoes,” with health care providers reluctant to participate in treatment that could attract a prosecutor, doctors told ProPublica. In some cases, medical teams are wasting precious time debating legalities and creating documentation, preparing for the possibility that they’ll need to explain their actions to a jury and judge.
Dr. Jodi Abbott, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Boston University School of Medicine, said patients are left wondering: “Am I being sent home because I really am OK? Or am I being sent home because they’re afraid that the solution to what’s going on with my pregnancy would be ending the pregnancy, and they’re not allowed to do that?”
There is a federal law to prevent emergency room doctors from withholding lifesaving care.
Passed nearly four decades ago, it requires emergency rooms to stabilize patients in medical crises. The Biden administration argues this mandate applies even in cases where an abortion might be necessary.
No state has done more to fight this interpretation than Texas, which has warned doctors that its abortion ban supersedes the administration’s guidance on federal law, and that they can face up to 99 years in prison for violating it.
ProPublica condensed more than 800 pages of Crain’s medical records into a four-page timeline in consultation with two maternal-fetal medicine specialists; reporters reviewed it with nine doctors, including researchers at prestigious universities, OB-GYNs who regularly handle miscarriages, and experts in emergency medicine and maternal health.
Puerto Rican Americans continue to speak out about the horrible racist slurs spoken by #DonOld about their Island home and their presence on the mainland. Does he understand that Puerto Ricans are Americans and that they live everywhere in this country? This is from The Daily Beast. “J.Lo Claps Back at Trump Rally Puerto Rico Jab: ‘We Are Americans’, “Our pain matters,” the singer said at a Las Vegas event for Kamala Harris.” This is reported by Claire Lampen.
As promised, Jennifer Lopez took the stage at Kamala Harris’s rally in Las Vegas on Thursday night, responding to racist statements about Puerto Rico made at one of Donald Trump’s recent events.
“I am an American woman. I am the daughter of Guadalupe Lupe Rodríguez and David Lopez, a proud daughter and son of Puerto Rico. I am Puerto Rican,” Lopez said, restating the final point in Spanish. “And yes, I was born here. And we are Americans.”
In his much-maligned comedy routine at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday, right-wing comedian Tony Hinchcliffe referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.” His comments, Lopez said, should offend “anyone of decent character.”
“It’s about us, all of us, no matter what we look like, who we love, who we worship, or where we’re from,” Lopez said. “[Harris’s] opponent, on the other hand, doesn’t see it that way. He has consistently worked to divide us. At Madison Square Garden, he reminded us who he really is and how he really feels.”
Trump‘s rally featured a parade of extremist speakers, though it was Hinchcliffe’s act that really dominated headlines. In it, he claimed Latinos “love making babies,” a riff whose anti-immigrant punchline fell flat, and threw in some racist stereotypes about Black people as well.
Although the Trump campaign has since attempted to distance itself from Hinchcliffe’s set—Trump trotting out a classic “I don’t know her” defense—it garnered criticism from all sides, even from his own party.
Trump’s enablers cannot stop him from his hate-filled speeches and comments.
“It wasn’t just Puerto Ricans who were offended that day,” Lopez added. “It was every Latino in this country, it was humanity.”
J.Lo went on to say that, “with an understanding of our past, and a faith in our future,” she‘s proud to vote for Harris. “You can’t even spell American without Rican,” she said. “This is our country, too, and we must exercise our right to vote.”
Towards the end of her speech, Lopez appeared to fight back tears. “I promised myself I wouldn’t get emotional,” she told the audience. “But you know what? We should be emotional. We should be upset. We should be scared and outraged, we should. Our pain matters. We matter. You matter. Your voice and your vote matters.”
“This election is about your life,” J.Lo continued. “It‘s about you, and me, and my kids, and your kids. Don‘t make it easy; make them pay attention to you. That’s your power. Your vote is your power.”
“Your vote is your power” is the line I want everyone to remember today. Another one is a quote from the late Senator Paul Wellstone from Minnesota. Five Days until we get the opportunity to never hear that man or his zombie cultists again.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
https://skydancingblog.com/2024/11/01/finally-friday-reads-pobre-diabla/
#DonOld #2024Elections #Repeat1968JohnBuss #HalloweenHorrorMovies #LizCheney #TexasAbortionLaws
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“Every single time he opens his mouth…” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
If you got to look into the sky last night, you got to see the Hunter’s supermoon. There certainly was a lot of Lunacy yesterday. That causation or even correlation doesn’t stand up to scientific scrutiny, but it has a literary tradition covering nearly all periods of history. DonOld’s Yesterday fits the adage neatly.
“It is the very error of the moon.She comes more near the earth than she was wont. And makes men mad.”
—William Shakespeare, OthelloSpeaking of madness, “North Korea sends troops to support Russia in Ukraine war: NIS.” This was announced in The Korea Herald.
North Korea has dispatched special forces to support Russia in its war against Ukraine, with the first batch already having arrived in Russia and a second group of North Korean troops expected to follow soon, South Korea’s intelligence agency claimed on Friday.
The National Intelligence Service said it “confirmed that North Korea began its participation in the war by transporting special forces to Russia via Russian Navy transport ships from Oct. 8 to 13.”
However, the NIS provided no substantial evidence to support this claim, other than satellite imagery showing Russian vessels docked at the port of Chongjin in North Hamgyong Province.
Four amphibious ships and three escort ships from the Russian Pacific Fleet transported around 1,500 North Korean special forces to Vladivostok during this period, departing from areas near Chongjin and Musudan-ri in North Hamgyong Province, as well as Hamhung in South Hamgyong Province, according to the NIS.
The NIS further stated that a second operation to transport North Korean troops to Russia is “expected to take place soon.”
The North Korean soldiers deployed to Russia have been stationed at military bases in the Far East, spread across cities such as Vladivostok, Ussuriysk, Khabarovsk and Blagoveshchensk.
“They are expected to be sent to the battlefield once they complete their adaptation training,” the intelligence agency added.
According to the NIS, the North Korean soldiers were provided with Russian military uniforms and Russian-made weapons. They were also issued fake identification documents resembling residents of Siberian regions such as Yakutia and Buryatia, whose appearance is similar to North Koreans.
“This appears to be an attempt to disguise them as Russian soldiers and conceal their involvement in the war,” the NIS stated.
The NIS also reported that Kim Jong-sik, the first vice director of North Korea’s Munitions Industry Department and a key figure in the country’s missile development, was observed visiting a North Korean KN-23 missile launch site near the Russia-Ukraine front. He was accompanied by dozens of North Korean military officers to provide on-site guidance.
“It’s incomprehensible,” John Buss. @repeat1968. “More Full moon Madness!!!” me
American Madman DonOld is showing his age; finally, the legacy media have noticed and are reporting it. It only took 39 minutes of swaying to his playlist at a rally for them to start asking the real questions. He’s evidently tuckered out. “Trump cancels a streak of events with only days until election.” This is reported in AXIOS by Ivana Saric
Former President Trump’s planned appearance at a National Rifle Association event next week was cancelled Thursday, the latest in a slew of scuttled public appearances and interviews by the former president in recent weeks.
Why it matters: With only 17 days to go until Election Day, the spate of cancellations gives voters fewer chances to hear from Trump before heading to the polls in a coin toss race.
- Vice President Kamala Harris, on the other hand, has been on a media blitz after enduring criticism from Republicans about a perceived lack of interviews.
- And while Harris has ventured into the unfriendly territory of a Fox News interview, Trump has stuck to the safe spaces of conservative outlets.
- In the appearances he has made, Trump’s rhetoric has grown more violent and nativist. In recent weeks, he has decried his critics as the “enemy from within” and fanned the flames of false conspiracy theories about migrants.
Driving the news: The NRA said Thursday it had cancelled its “Defend the 2nd” event with Trump in Savannah, Georgia, next week due to “campaign scheduling changes.”
- Trump also pulled out of two mainstream media interviews this week, with NBC News and CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
- Earlier this month he backed out of a scheduled appearance on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” while Harris appeared on the program.
- The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to Axios’ request for comment.
Between the lines: Several of the events and interviews Trump has appeared at in recent weeks have raised eyebrows.
- Trump cut short a Pennsylvania town hall this week to listen and sway to music for more than half an hour. “Let’s make it into a music fest,” Trump said. “Who the hell wants to hear questions, right?”
- In an interview with Bloomberg News at the Chicago Economic Club Tuesday, Trump downplayed the Capitol riot and struggled to respond when confronted about the costs of his economic plans
- Trump later claimed he was “hoodwinked” into the interview.
- During an all-women Fox News town hall that aired Wednesday, Trump declared himself the “father of IVF,” a decades-old fertility treatment that has come under threat since overturning Roe v. Wade — which Trump has repeatedly bragged about ending.
DonOld is asking for a sitdown with Rupert Murdoch. This is from MEDIAITE’s Isaac Schorr. “Donald Trump Outlines His Demands For Rupert Murdoch Live On Fox News Ahead of Private Meeting: ‘I Don’t Know If He’s Thrilled.’”
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump outlined his demands for conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch live on Fox News Friday morning, musing that Murdoch should stop airing negative ads and allowing Democratic guests on the network in the run up to Election Day.
After Fox & Friends’ Lawrence Jones thanked Trump for appearing on the show Friday, the former president jumped back in to ask Jones and his co-hosts, “You know what the event I have now?”
“No,” said Brian Kilmeade.
“A very big event,” continued the former president. “I’m going to see Rupert Murdoch.”
A pensive Kilmeade replied, “Alright,” and Steve Doocy exclaimed, “Okay!” before Trump pressed on.
“That’s a big event. I don’t know if he’s thrilled that I say it. And I’m going to tell him, I’m gonna tell him something very simple because I can’t talk to anybody else about it: Don’t put on negative commercials for 21 days, don’t put them. And don’t put on the air their horrible people. They come and lie. I’m going to say, ‘Rupert, please do it this way.’”
“Right,” interjected Kilmeade.
“And then we’re going to have a victory, because I think everyone wants that,” concluded Trump.
Salon Fellow Griffin Eckstein reports that Faux News Reader Brett Baier is very sorry about his behavior during his interview with Vice President Harris. “”I did make a mistake”: Baier apologizes for playing edited Trump clip in Harris interview. The Fox News anchor’s deceptive video clip left out Trump’s remarks about “enemies from within.”
Fox News anchor Bret Baier is apologizing for playing a misleadingly edited clip in an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris.
Harris sat down with Baier on Wednesday for a tense interview, in which the “Special Report” host repeatedly cut off and chastised the Democratic candidate. One exchange in particular gave the game away.
When Harris admonished former President Trump over suggestions that he’d sic the military on his political opponents, Baier aired a portion of a Trump interview that omitted his comments against “the enemy from within.”
“I’m not threatening anybody,” Trump said in the clip Baier played. “They’re the ones doing the threatening.”
In a Thursday night episode of “Report,” Baier owned up his misdirection.
“I wanna say that I did make a mistake,” Baier admitted. “When I called for a soundbite, I was expecting a piece of the ‘enemy from within’ from Maria Bartiromo’s interview, to be tied to the piece from [Harris Faulkner’s ]town hall.”
Baier went on to play the intended clip for his audience, though Harris was still able to get her point across the previous night despite the misleading edit.
“You and I both know that he has talked about turning the American military on the American people,” the vice president said on Wednesday. “In a democracy, the president of the United States, in the United States of America, should be willing to be able to handle criticism without saying he would lock people up for doing it.”
Even the New York Times is noticing DonOld’s crazy demeanor and speech these days. “Trump’s Meandering Speeches Motivate His Critics and Worry His Allies. Some advisers and allies of former President Donald J. Trump are concerned about his scattershot style on the campaign trail as he continues to veer off script.” This is reported by Michael C. Bender.
Now, some Trump advisers and allies say privately they are concerned that the dynamic may be repeating itself four years later. They worry that Mr. Trump’s impetuousness and scattershot style on the campaign trail needlessly risk victory in battleground states where the margin for error is increasingly narrow.
At a time when his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, has stepped up her attacks on him as “unstable,” Mr. Trump has struggled to publicly hone his message by veering off script and ramping up personal attacks on Ms. Harris that allies have urged him to rein in.
“When he’s good, he’s great, and when he’s off message, he’s not so great,” said David Urban, a Trump adviser. “I don’t think anyone is really changing their mind at this point, but when he distracts from his biggest, broadest messaging, it’s counterproductive because the Harris campaign uses it to turn out their voters.”
During a speech on Saturday in California, he described mail-in ballots as “so corrupt,” reviving one of his false attacks on the 2020 election results, and did a play-by-play of his internal thoughts when he watched SpaceX, Elon Musk’s spaceflight company, fly a rocket back onto its launch site.
On Sunday, in response to a question on Fox News about the possibility of foreign adversaries’ meddling in the election, he reverted to autocratic language by saying “the bigger problem is the enemy from within.” On Monday, he halted a town-hall event in suburban Philadelphia after five questions when two people in the crowd needed medical attention. He spent roughly the next half-hour playing D.J., swaying and grooving in front of his crowd to a playlist he curated from the stage. “Let’s just listen to music,” he said.
Last week, he canceled a CBS interview on “60 Minutes,” in which he and Ms. Harris were both scheduled to appear — and has not stopped talking about it. He complained about it during events in Detroit and Reno, Nev., and again on Monday in a social media post at 1:12 a.m.
All of this makes me wonder if he doesn’t care about winning or if he’s just relying on a country-wide repeat J6 event and his cronies planted in positions to disrupt the voting process in many states. It might be he has other things on his rapidly disintegrating mind. Just a few hours ago, Judge Tanya Chutkin, keeper of the American Way and the U.S. Constitution, allowed the Special Counsel to open up the floodgates of evidence. This is from CNN. “Special counsel releases trove of redacted documents in 2020 election subversion case against Trump.” October Surprise, perhaps? Care to Dance in the Moonlight with me?
Special counsel Jack Smith on Friday released a massive trove of heavily redacted documents in his 2020 election subversion criminal case against former President Donald Trump.
There are nearly 2,000 pages in a massive trove of documents released Friday, but nearly all of the pages appear to be completely redacted.
The redacted appendices filed on the public docket in the case are related to Smith’s expansive filing from earlier this month that laid out his fullest picture yet of the case against Trump and Smith’s belief that his actions around the 2020 election should not be shielded by presidential immunity.
One volume is filled with sealed pages as well as tweets and other social media posts from Trump, his campaign and allies, including some posted during the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
One of the tweets include Trump’s post that day that Vice President Mike Pence “didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done” that day in supporting his effort to change the election results.
Others include a myriad of claims of voter fraud during the 2020 election.
Prosecutors have argued that these tweets from Trump should be allowed to be used in the trial because they were personal in nature or part of his campaigning efforts and not his official duties as president.
The documents were released a day after Judge Tanya Chutkan rejected a bid by Trump to pause the release. Trump argued that posting the documents now could be seen as election inference and had asked them to remain under seal until after Election Day.
“If the court withheld information that the public otherwise had a right to access solely because of the potential political consequences of releasing it, that withholding could itself constitute – or appear to be – election interference,” Chutkan wrote in a decision late Thursday.
Another volume contains memos from lawyer John Eastman with a plan for Pence to reject the congressional certification of the 2020 election. The volume also includes a public statement Trump released the night before January 6 claiming he and Pence were on the same page about the congressional certification, Trump’s prepared remarks for his speech on January 6, and fundraising emails sent out by his 2020 campaign in the days before January 6.
Pence’s letter to Congress on January 6 explaining why he could not reject certifying the election and a transcript of Trump’s 2023 CNN town hall are also included in the documents.
The redacted files were expected to include an array of materials, including grand jury transcripts and notes from FBI interviews conducted during the yearslong investigation.
This was a big news dump week. Hopefully, the death of Yahya Sinwar will lead to a peaceful conclusion to this latest Mid-Eastern War. I’m not sure that’s what Bibi wants, but I’m sure the return of the hostages and a ceasefire would be a good start to ending hostilities. This is from Reuters. “Yahya Sinwar threw stick at drone just before death, according to Israel video. “
Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was tracked by an Israeli mini drone as he lay dying in the ruins of a building in southern Gaza and filmed him slumped in a chair covered in dust, according to video released by Israeli authorities on Thursday. As the drone hovered nearby, the video showed him throwing a stick at it, in an apparent act of desperation or defiance. Not long afterwards, the military said, a tank shell was fired into the building. After an intensive manhunt that had lasted for more than a year, the Israeli troops that killed Sinwar were initially unaware that they had caught their country’s number one enemy after a gun battle on Wednesday, Israeli officials said. Dental records, fingerprints and DNA testing provided final confirmation of Sinwar’s death for Israel and on Friday, Hamas confirmed their leader had been killed. Intelligence services had been gradually restricting the area where Sinwar could operate, the military said. But unlike other militant leaders tracked down by Israel, including Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on July 13, the encounter which finally killed Sinwar was not a planned and targeted strike, or an operation carried out by elite commandos.
The seven days of Sukkot started last night. The Jewish Harvest Holiday lasts 7 days, and I’m sure there will be much celebration that there will be one less terrorist plotting another atrocity like October 7th. May all who observe find it in their hearts to search for peace and reconciliation with Israel’s innocent Palestinian neighbors. You would think eventually, we would all be way over all those who try to turn neighbors against each other. I know I’m hopeful we can get a better outcome here if we all just get out and vote for Kamala and Tim. What’s on your reading and blogging list today?https://skydancingblog.com/2024/10/18/finally-friday-reads-full-on-full-moon-crazy/
#Repeat1968JohnBuss #FullMoonMadness #SpecialCounselJackSmith #TrumpSDementia
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“Every single time he opens his mouth…” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
If you got to look into the sky last night, you got to see the Hunter’s supermoon. There certainly was a lot of Lunacy yesterday. That causation or even correlation doesn’t stand up to scientific scrutiny, but it has a literary tradition covering nearly all periods of history. DonOld’s Yesterday fits the adage neatly.
“It is the very error of the moon.She comes more near the earth than she was wont. And makes men mad.”
—William Shakespeare, OthelloSpeaking of madness, “North Korea sends troops to support Russia in Ukraine war: NIS.” This was announced in The Korea Herald.
North Korea has dispatched special forces to support Russia in its war against Ukraine, with the first batch already having arrived in Russia and a second group of North Korean troops expected to follow soon, South Korea’s intelligence agency claimed on Friday.
The National Intelligence Service said it “confirmed that North Korea began its participation in the war by transporting special forces to Russia via Russian Navy transport ships from Oct. 8 to 13.”
However, the NIS provided no substantial evidence to support this claim, other than satellite imagery showing Russian vessels docked at the port of Chongjin in North Hamgyong Province.
Four amphibious ships and three escort ships from the Russian Pacific Fleet transported around 1,500 North Korean special forces to Vladivostok during this period, departing from areas near Chongjin and Musudan-ri in North Hamgyong Province, as well as Hamhung in South Hamgyong Province, according to the NIS.
The NIS further stated that a second operation to transport North Korean troops to Russia is “expected to take place soon.”
The North Korean soldiers deployed to Russia have been stationed at military bases in the Far East, spread across cities such as Vladivostok, Ussuriysk, Khabarovsk and Blagoveshchensk.
“They are expected to be sent to the battlefield once they complete their adaptation training,” the intelligence agency added.
According to the NIS, the North Korean soldiers were provided with Russian military uniforms and Russian-made weapons. They were also issued fake identification documents resembling residents of Siberian regions such as Yakutia and Buryatia, whose appearance is similar to North Koreans.
“This appears to be an attempt to disguise them as Russian soldiers and conceal their involvement in the war,” the NIS stated.
The NIS also reported that Kim Jong-sik, the first vice director of North Korea’s Munitions Industry Department and a key figure in the country’s missile development, was observed visiting a North Korean KN-23 missile launch site near the Russia-Ukraine front. He was accompanied by dozens of North Korean military officers to provide on-site guidance.
“It’s incomprehensible,” John Buss. @repeat1968. “More Full moon Madness!!!” me
American Madman DonOld is showing his age; finally, the legacy media have noticed and are reporting it. It only took 39 minutes of swaying to his playlist at a rally for them to start asking the real questions. He’s evidently tuckered out. “Trump cancels a streak of events with only days until election.” This is reported in AXIOS by Ivana Saric
Former President Trump’s planned appearance at a National Rifle Association event next week was cancelled Thursday, the latest in a slew of scuttled public appearances and interviews by the former president in recent weeks.
Why it matters: With only 17 days to go until Election Day, the spate of cancellations gives voters fewer chances to hear from Trump before heading to the polls in a coin toss race.
- Vice President Kamala Harris, on the other hand, has been on a media blitz after enduring criticism from Republicans about a perceived lack of interviews.
- And while Harris has ventured into the unfriendly territory of a Fox News interview, Trump has stuck to the safe spaces of conservative outlets.
- In the appearances he has made, Trump’s rhetoric has grown more violent and nativist. In recent weeks, he has decried his critics as the “enemy from within” and fanned the flames of false conspiracy theories about migrants.
Driving the news: The NRA said Thursday it had cancelled its “Defend the 2nd” event with Trump in Savannah, Georgia, next week due to “campaign scheduling changes.”
- Trump also pulled out of two mainstream media interviews this week, with NBC News and CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
- Earlier this month he backed out of a scheduled appearance on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” while Harris appeared on the program.
- The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to Axios’ request for comment.
Between the lines: Several of the events and interviews Trump has appeared at in recent weeks have raised eyebrows.
- Trump cut short a Pennsylvania town hall this week to listen and sway to music for more than half an hour. “Let’s make it into a music fest,” Trump said. “Who the hell wants to hear questions, right?”
- In an interview with Bloomberg News at the Chicago Economic Club Tuesday, Trump downplayed the Capitol riot and struggled to respond when confronted about the costs of his economic plans
- Trump later claimed he was “hoodwinked” into the interview.
- During an all-women Fox News town hall that aired Wednesday, Trump declared himself the “father of IVF,” a decades-old fertility treatment that has come under threat since overturning Roe v. Wade — which Trump has repeatedly bragged about ending.
DonOld is asking for a sitdown with Rupert Murdoch. This is from MEDIAITE’s Isaac Schorr. “Donald Trump Outlines His Demands For Rupert Murdoch Live On Fox News Ahead of Private Meeting: ‘I Don’t Know If He’s Thrilled.’”
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump outlined his demands for conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch live on Fox News Friday morning, musing that Murdoch should stop airing negative ads and allowing Democratic guests on the network in the run up to Election Day.
After Fox & Friends’ Lawrence Jones thanked Trump for appearing on the show Friday, the former president jumped back in to ask Jones and his co-hosts, “You know what the event I have now?”
“No,” said Brian Kilmeade.
“A very big event,” continued the former president. “I’m going to see Rupert Murdoch.”
A pensive Kilmeade replied, “Alright,” and Steve Doocy exclaimed, “Okay!” before Trump pressed on.
“That’s a big event. I don’t know if he’s thrilled that I say it. And I’m going to tell him, I’m gonna tell him something very simple because I can’t talk to anybody else about it: Don’t put on negative commercials for 21 days, don’t put them. And don’t put on the air their horrible people. They come and lie. I’m going to say, ‘Rupert, please do it this way.’”
“Right,” interjected Kilmeade.
“And then we’re going to have a victory, because I think everyone wants that,” concluded Trump.
Salon Fellow Griffin Eckstein reports that Faux News Reader Brett Baier is very sorry about his behavior during his interview with Vice President Harris. “”I did make a mistake”: Baier apologizes for playing edited Trump clip in Harris interview. The Fox News anchor’s deceptive video clip left out Trump’s remarks about “enemies from within.”
Fox News anchor Bret Baier is apologizing for playing a misleadingly edited clip in an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris.
Harris sat down with Baier on Wednesday for a tense interview, in which the “Special Report” host repeatedly cut off and chastised the Democratic candidate. One exchange in particular gave the game away.
When Harris admonished former President Trump over suggestions that he’d sic the military on his political opponents, Baier aired a portion of a Trump interview that omitted his comments against “the enemy from within.”
“I’m not threatening anybody,” Trump said in the clip Baier played. “They’re the ones doing the threatening.”
In a Thursday night episode of “Report,” Baier owned up his misdirection.
“I wanna say that I did make a mistake,” Baier admitted. “When I called for a soundbite, I was expecting a piece of the ‘enemy from within’ from Maria Bartiromo’s interview, to be tied to the piece from [Harris Faulkner’s ]town hall.”
Baier went on to play the intended clip for his audience, though Harris was still able to get her point across the previous night despite the misleading edit.
“You and I both know that he has talked about turning the American military on the American people,” the vice president said on Wednesday. “In a democracy, the president of the United States, in the United States of America, should be willing to be able to handle criticism without saying he would lock people up for doing it.”
Even the New York Times is noticing DonOld’s crazy demeanor and speech these days. “Trump’s Meandering Speeches Motivate His Critics and Worry His Allies. Some advisers and allies of former President Donald J. Trump are concerned about his scattershot style on the campaign trail as he continues to veer off script.” This is reported by Michael C. Bender.
Now, some Trump advisers and allies say privately they are concerned that the dynamic may be repeating itself four years later. They worry that Mr. Trump’s impetuousness and scattershot style on the campaign trail needlessly risk victory in battleground states where the margin for error is increasingly narrow.
At a time when his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, has stepped up her attacks on him as “unstable,” Mr. Trump has struggled to publicly hone his message by veering off script and ramping up personal attacks on Ms. Harris that allies have urged him to rein in.
“When he’s good, he’s great, and when he’s off message, he’s not so great,” said David Urban, a Trump adviser. “I don’t think anyone is really changing their mind at this point, but when he distracts from his biggest, broadest messaging, it’s counterproductive because the Harris campaign uses it to turn out their voters.”
During a speech on Saturday in California, he described mail-in ballots as “so corrupt,” reviving one of his false attacks on the 2020 election results, and did a play-by-play of his internal thoughts when he watched SpaceX, Elon Musk’s spaceflight company, fly a rocket back onto its launch site.
On Sunday, in response to a question on Fox News about the possibility of foreign adversaries’ meddling in the election, he reverted to autocratic language by saying “the bigger problem is the enemy from within.” On Monday, he halted a town-hall event in suburban Philadelphia after five questions when two people in the crowd needed medical attention. He spent roughly the next half-hour playing D.J., swaying and grooving in front of his crowd to a playlist he curated from the stage. “Let’s just listen to music,” he said.
Last week, he canceled a CBS interview on “60 Minutes,” in which he and Ms. Harris were both scheduled to appear — and has not stopped talking about it. He complained about it during events in Detroit and Reno, Nev., and again on Monday in a social media post at 1:12 a.m.
All of this makes me wonder if he doesn’t care about winning or if he’s just relying on a country-wide repeat J6 event and his cronies planted in positions to disrupt the voting process in many states. It might be he has other things on his rapidly disintegrating mind. Just a few hours ago, Judge Tanya Chutkin, keeper of the American Way and the U.S. Constitution, allowed the Special Counsel to open up the floodgates of evidence. This is from CNN. “Special counsel releases trove of redacted documents in 2020 election subversion case against Trump.” October Surprise, perhaps? Care to Dance in the Moonlight with me?
Special counsel Jack Smith on Friday released a massive trove of heavily redacted documents in his 2020 election subversion criminal case against former President Donald Trump.
There are nearly 2,000 pages in a massive trove of documents released Friday, but nearly all of the pages appear to be completely redacted.
The redacted appendices filed on the public docket in the case are related to Smith’s expansive filing from earlier this month that laid out his fullest picture yet of the case against Trump and Smith’s belief that his actions around the 2020 election should not be shielded by presidential immunity.
One volume is filled with sealed pages as well as tweets and other social media posts from Trump, his campaign and allies, including some posted during the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
One of the tweets include Trump’s post that day that Vice President Mike Pence “didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done” that day in supporting his effort to change the election results.
Others include a myriad of claims of voter fraud during the 2020 election.
Prosecutors have argued that these tweets from Trump should be allowed to be used in the trial because they were personal in nature or part of his campaigning efforts and not his official duties as president.
The documents were released a day after Judge Tanya Chutkan rejected a bid by Trump to pause the release. Trump argued that posting the documents now could be seen as election inference and had asked them to remain under seal until after Election Day.
“If the court withheld information that the public otherwise had a right to access solely because of the potential political consequences of releasing it, that withholding could itself constitute – or appear to be – election interference,” Chutkan wrote in a decision late Thursday.
Another volume contains memos from lawyer John Eastman with a plan for Pence to reject the congressional certification of the 2020 election. The volume also includes a public statement Trump released the night before January 6 claiming he and Pence were on the same page about the congressional certification, Trump’s prepared remarks for his speech on January 6, and fundraising emails sent out by his 2020 campaign in the days before January 6.
Pence’s letter to Congress on January 6 explaining why he could not reject certifying the election and a transcript of Trump’s 2023 CNN town hall are also included in the documents.
The redacted files were expected to include an array of materials, including grand jury transcripts and notes from FBI interviews conducted during the yearslong investigation.
This was a big news dump week. Hopefully, the death of Yahya Sinwar will lead to a peaceful conclusion to this latest Mid-Eastern War. I’m not sure that’s what Bibi wants, but I’m sure the return of the hostages and a ceasefire would be a good start to ending hostilities. This is from Reuters. “Yahya Sinwar threw stick at drone just before death, according to Israel video. “
Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was tracked by an Israeli mini drone as he lay dying in the ruins of a building in southern Gaza and filmed him slumped in a chair covered in dust, according to video released by Israeli authorities on Thursday. As the drone hovered nearby, the video showed him throwing a stick at it, in an apparent act of desperation or defiance. Not long afterwards, the military said, a tank shell was fired into the building. After an intensive manhunt that had lasted for more than a year, the Israeli troops that killed Sinwar were initially unaware that they had caught their country’s number one enemy after a gun battle on Wednesday, Israeli officials said. Dental records, fingerprints and DNA testing provided final confirmation of Sinwar’s death for Israel and on Friday, Hamas confirmed their leader had been killed. Intelligence services had been gradually restricting the area where Sinwar could operate, the military said. But unlike other militant leaders tracked down by Israel, including Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on July 13, the encounter which finally killed Sinwar was not a planned and targeted strike, or an operation carried out by elite commandos.
The seven days of Sukkot started last night. The Jewish Harvest Holiday lasts 7 days, and I’m sure there will be much celebration that there will be one less terrorist plotting another atrocity like October 7th. May all who observe find it in their hearts to search for peace and reconciliation with Israel’s innocent Palestinian neighbors. You would think eventually, we would all be way over all those who try to turn neighbors against each other. I know I’m hopeful we can get a better outcome here if we all just get out and vote for Kamala and Tim. What’s on your reading and blogging list today?https://skydancingblog.com/2024/10/18/finally-friday-reads-full-on-full-moon-crazy/
#Repeat1968JohnBuss #FullMoonMadness #SpecialCounselJackSmith #TrumpSDementia
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“Kamala is correct. Trump rallies are really a sight to behold. Everyone should watch at least one. Pro-tip, they’re getting more and more entertaining.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
When you watch and read as much news as I do, you can’t help but notice that every political act committed by DonOld these days is focused on young men. I believe that watching and listening to even a minimal amount of this has given me my first bout with acid reflux. I watched this segment on Alex Wagner last night. I had to endure a quick clip of Stephen Miller, who is an unpleasant, unattractive misogynist, racist, and xenophobe, which is this year’s Trump campaign outreach. “‘Infantile, petulant masculinity’: Trump aims low in appeal for American male ‘bro’ voters.” Are there really that many of them out there?
With a yawning gender gap in his base of support as a consequence of driving women away with his own words and behavior, Donald Trump appears to have made a strategy of wringing as much support as he can from American men, which has meant plumbing the depths of bro culture and encouraging a less-than-flattering version of masculinity. Michelle Goldberg, columnist for the New York Times discusses with Alex Wagner.
The funniest thing is watching Miller telling every male the best way to demonstrate you’re an Alpha is to wear your Trump goodies. Then, he goes on to mispronounce Beta. I can’t help but remember my first reading of Brave New World, as assigned in my 9th grade English class taught by a woman who also taught me swimming when I was a kid. Alphas are the intellectuals, while Betas are designed for physically demanding but not mentally challenging labor. I suppose Miller is referring to the hierarchy of the Apes, but wow, he sure comes off as a Gamma to me.
I enjoyed watching former President Barack Obama roast Donald Trump and contrast his inept and selfish behavior with that of the brilliant and caring Kamala. So, there are a lot of strange reads today about the strong comeback of the Gender Gap, which appears to be more like a Chasm. Let’s chuckle through them. Frankly, I prefer men with a less brutish approach to manhood, and I know you’re out there. We see you. Obama’s funniest line of the night is when he discusses the cost of diapers and doing the duty, then asks the audience if they thought Donald had ever changed a diaper. My Dad bombed NAZIs from a B-25 Bomber, and he changed diapers in the 1950s. Just consider Elon Musk going all on the Trump Campaign and that his businesses are generally as bankrupt-prone and in trouble with labor laws and anti-discrimination laws as the DonOld’s. DonOld can have Tech and Dude Bros because most women don’t want them. The ones with money attract gold diggers. The ones without are known as incels. It’s going to be a brutal 24 days.
This article and link to Longwell’s podcast is from Politico. Although, I think they’re turning to voting scams for victory. They’re just warming up the next group of J6ers .”‘They’ve given up on the idea that they can get women.’ How Trump is turning to the other gender gap for victory. A profound gender gap is shaping the 2024 election. And after listening to voters in hundreds of focus groups, Sarah Longwell thinks she knows why.”
The 2024 election — it’s a contest between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. But increasingly, it also looks like it’s girls versus boys.
Poll after poll is telling the same story: a Times/Siena survey this month showing Harris up 16 with women and Trump up 11 with men; a set of Quinnipiac polls in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin showing Harris winning women by about 20 points in each. Meanwhile, according to a running average by the election quants at Split Ticket, Trump is on pace to win men by an even bigger margin than he did in 2020 — by about 9 points nationally.
But those numbers only tell part of the story.
The other half is from the mouths of the voters themselves. Which is where this episode of the Playbook Deep Dive podcast begins.
Sarah Longwell is the publisher of The Bulwark and is well known for her work as a Never Trumper.
But what she does with the rest of her time is talk to voters. Lots of them. Longwell has conducted hundreds of focus groups — you may have heard some of them on her podcast, The Focus Group.
While many of Washington’s top operatives have been digesting the election through polling datasets, she’s been taking a different approach: just asking people straight up what they think about Trump and Harris and what could change their minds.
Playbook’s Rachael Bade caught up with Sarah in her downtown Washington offices on Thursday and asked her to connect the dots from all of these hundreds of focus groups. In so doing, she laid out the stakes for what is arguably the biggest question of the 2024 election:
Why are men and women veering so far apart politically?
The answers to that may surprise you.
The Independent‘s Kelly Rissman has this analysis. “Inside the Trump campaign’s ‘edgy’ and crass approach to appeal to young men and ride them to victory.’ The Trump campaign’s crass language, wavering abortion stance, and sexist remarks about Harris have been a focus for Democrats.”
Donald Trump has proclaimed himself the “protector” of women but the tone of his messaging has become geared toward young men with crass language and put-downs in hopes the bloc will back him in November – despite the former president potentially isolating women voters.
“Alphas for Trump,” Steven Cheung, a campaign spokesperson recently tweeted, “vs Simps for Kamala.”
This seven-word tweet perhaps encompasses Trump’s years-long immersion into a stereotypical “tough” alpha male figure — a brand that some have described as “toxic masculinity.” In 2019, the then-president even tweeted a photoshopped image of himself as Rocky Balboa. Since then, he seemingly has tried to ingratiate himself into the real version of the fictional sports legend.
He has steeped himself in cryptocurrency, surrounding himself with tech bros and UFC fighters, using sexist terms to describe his Democratic rival, enters the rally stage to the Village People song “Macho Man,” all while his running mate disparages “childless cat ladies.” It could be costing him half of the electorate.
“It’s obvious Republicans have a woman problem, but it’s not just about policy differences like abortion. The GOP gender gap is just as much about how you talk about those differences,” Nachama Soloveichik, a GOP strategist and former adviser to Haley’s presidential campaign, told the Washington Post.
Soloveichik continued: “Regardless of gender, any political staffer with a pea-sized brain should know chasing away half the electorate is a bad idea. Talk to women with respect and understanding even when you disagree.”
Not only has the Republican nominee has appeared alongside “bro-y” celebrities, such as retired wrestler Hulk Hogan, wrestler-turned-YouTuber Logan Paul, Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) chief executive Dana White, and podcaster Theo Von, but his campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung was also formerly a spokesperson for the UFC.
There’s never anyone on the Trump list of celebrities that I label anything other than grrrRoss. I can even remember how I used to say it with my 6th-grade voice while wrinkling my nose. This is also from Politico. “Inside Trump’s push to win over the ‘bro’ vote. But can he get young men to vote?”
Donald Trump is betting that support from young men will help propel him to the White House. And he’s getting an assist from a crew of pro-Trump millennial pranksters who are capitalizing on college football tailgates, Tinder and even the “Hawk Tuah Girl” podcast.
The Nelk Boys, digital content creators and hosts of the popular “Full Send” podcast, are mounting a multi-million-dollar voter registration push aimed at turning out young men. They plan to sign up voters at a “Send the Vote” music festival later this month that will feature a performance by pro-Trump rapper Waka Flocka Flame, and at a pair of Penn State football games.
They will also promote the registration drive on dating apps and advertise on highly-listened to, male-friendly podcasts like “Kill Tony,” “MrBallen,” and “BS w/ Jake Paul.”
It’s the latest effort in an all-out campaign by the former president to turn out young men, a demographic his campaign views as critical to his election given the overwhelming support Kamala Harris is expected to receive from young women. The question the Trump operation faces, however, is whether it can turn out a subset of voters his allies concede are uncertain to cast ballots.
“The question is, will that podcast fan, that College GameDay fan, that USC fan, will they actually get up on November 5th and go and vote?” said John Shahidi, the president of Full Send and the co-founder of Send the Vote. “That’s the big question right now that we want to start emphasizing on and putting pressure on.”
One voter registration promo is expected to run on a podcast hosted by Haliey Welch, who rose to viral internet stardom with a sexually explicit riff. And, in the heart of football season, the Nelk Boys are exploring the possibility of advertising on sports gambling sites.
By reaching out to young men, some of whom came of age during the former president’s administration, Trump, who long before running for office had cultivated an alpha-male like image with his involvement in sports and entertainment, is capitalizing on goodwill from a demographic he hopes will support him. And there are indications Trump is making inroads with the group, which like other youth subsets traditionally tilts liberal. According to a recent Harvard Youth Poll, 35 percent of men between 18 and 24 years old said they supported Trump — an improvement of 5 percent from Trump’s performance in the same survey in the 2020 election.
I have no idea what any of this is, but I am obviously not in that demographic. My youngest son-in-law has a birthday tomorrow, but I have a good idea that he doesn’t know about either. He’s a biological engineer and has a life. I’m sure the older one, who is a Radiologist and does ultrasounds a lot, wouldn’t know or care. However, former President Obama spoke out to black men in his speech last night in Pittsburgh. This is from the Washington Post. “Obama admonishes Black men for hesitancy in supporting Harris. Former president suggests some in the Black community are uncomfortable voting for a woman and are coming up with excuses.” I think the headline is harsh compared to what I heard, but legacy media always looks for clicks.
Former president Barack Obama on Thursday made a direct, impassioned plea to Black men to support Vice President Kamala Harris — a key demographic she is struggling to mobilize — admonishing them for thinking about sitting out the presidential contest as well as suggesting sexism might be at play.
During an unannounced stop at a Harris campaign field office in Pittsburgh, just hours before he was set to appear at his first campaign rally for the Democratic nominee, Obama said he wanted to “speak some truths” and address Black men specifically, making his most direct remarks about their hesitancy in supporting Harris to date.
“My understanding, based on reports I’m getting from campaigns and communities, is that we have not yet seen the same kinds of energy and turnout in all quarters of our neighborhoods and communities as we saw when I was running,” Obama said, adding that it “seems to be more pronounced with the brothers.”
Obama questioned how voters, and Black voters specifically, could be on the fence about whether to support Harris or former president Donald Trump, the Republican nominee.
“On the one hand, you have somebody who grew up like you, knows you, went to college with you, understands the struggles and pain and joy that comes from those experiences,” Obama said, ticking off a list of Harris’s policy proposals. In Trump, he added, “you have someone who has consistently shown disregard, not just for the communities, but for you as a person … And you are thinking about sitting out?”
The former president then spoke about what he thought might be contributing to Black men’s soft support of Harris: the discomfort of some with the idea of electing the first female president.
“And you’re coming up with all kinds of reasons and excuses, I’ve got a problem with that,” he said. “Because part of it makes me think — and I’m speaking to men directly — part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you’re coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that.”
Meanwhile, we see Harris’ husband and her running mate, Tim Walz, emulate a more compassionate version of manliness. Perhaps this kind of role-modeling from powerful men will take hold. This is from Time Magazine, as analyzed by Belinda Luscombe. “The Doug Emhoff Model of Masculinity.”
Society has names for men they feel are overshadowed by their wives or partners, and they’re not terms of endearment; cuck, p-whipped, and simp are among the nicer ones. As women’s economic and social power has risen, some men have felt that theirs has receded, and have responded by doubling down on machismo. Masculinity has become contested ground. So when Doug Emhoff took to the stage to talk about his wife Kamala Harris at the Democratic National Convention, he had to walk a fine line: gushy without being slavish, supportive but not submissive, a true partner but completely self-sufficient.
Fewer than half the countries in the world have ever had female heads of state, and many of those women were unmarried, so there are not a lot of models for how to be the husband of the lady who might become the leader of the free world. Emhoff’s speech was a benchmark. How does a man handle this? How does a man talk about a strong ambitious woman gunning for arguably the most powerful job in the world, without making her look a nightmare or a nonentity? And without himself appearing to be a buffoon or puppet master?
Emhoff—and his speechwriters and his son Cole—pretty much nailed it. When he stepped down from the stage, he had given a little master class in how to be a guy’s guy as wellas a wife guy. First, he telegraphed that he was dependent on no one. He’d done name-tag jobs at McDonald’s and the valet stand when he needed to. He had partly put himself through college but wasn’t too proud to admit he had help. He had a successful career with skills that involved de-escalating rather than dominating situations.
He demonstrated a winning self-confidence by making fun of the goofy nervous first-date voicemail he left on Harris’ phone, and joking about his mother being the only person in the world who thinks Harris married up. Unlike many a divorced dad, he showed no bitterness to his ex-wife, even thanking her from the stage. While Harris’s opponents have tried to make her laugh seem bizarre or sinister, he named it as one of the things he loves most—because normal men aren’t freaked out by women who laugh.
Emhoff’s presentation also subtly played up his more traditional masculine traits. A photo from Cole’s video introduction showed how protective he was when someone threatened Harris. Emhoff let it be known that he belongs to a fantasy football league with buddies from back in the day, and that in his youth he was a fan of both The Clash and Nirvana, both classic angry-young-man bands. He slid in mentions of his ability to pivot and to sacrifice, by leaving a law practice when Harris became vice president and taking a job at Georgetown University.
In fact, many of the masculine attributes that Emhoff leaned into during his speech are similar to those also valued by conservatives: strength, pride, courage, industriousness, protecting families. In some ways, President Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance has many of the same qualities. He too came from humble beginnings, put himself through school, thrived, and married a woman who was more his equal than his helpmeet. But Emhoff—and Tim Walz, Harris’ partner in this campaign—are projecting those qualities while playing second fiddle to a woman. They’re not allowed to outshine the nominee, but they also can’t make her look like a harridan.
Emhoff’s exuberant support of his wife’s strengths (“Empathy is her superpower,” he noted) has definitely touched a nerve with some women. “THIS is a supportive husband! He gets it. Doug do you have a brother? Cousin? BFF?” asked one woman on Instagram. “If anyone would like to set me up on a blind date with the 33-45 year old NYC-based equivalent of Doug Emhoff, my DMs are open,” tweeted another. It wasn’t just among women either; there was a spate of “Teach me how to Dougie” tweets from guys as well.
I will not venture into the J Dank Vance model of weird masculinity, but I will mention Tim Walz’s impact by showing a fuller version of what it means to be a man, husband, and father. I really like this coverage by the Chicago Sun-Times, which was published around the convention. “Tim Walz is a man’s man, unlike MAGA’s man-children. A good male role model from the Democrats is an excellent foil for the cartoon version of masculinity on offer from the Republican Party.” This Op-Ed is written by Mona Charen. (Yes, THAT Mona Charen.) I’ve put in the complete piece because she handles J Dank better than I ever could.
If Kamala Harris becomes the first woman president, her first accomplishment could well have already happened — elevating and honoring the positive side of masculinity.
Tim Walz, whose politics are to the left of most Americans and certainly most swing voters, has been welcomed not as a box-checking, progressive pick, but as a Midwestern dad who poses with his hunting dog, served for 24 years in the military and coached the high school football team to a state championship. He’s a man’s man without being a strutting jackass. A good male role model is an excellent foil for the swaggering, snarling, cartoonish version of masculinity on offer from the Republican Party right now.
Men are struggling. Boys are falling behind girls in grades and graduation rates. Men are falling behind women in college attendance, participation in the labor force, and connection to family and friends. Men are more likely than women to be lonely and to succumb to deaths of despair. It’s not a man’s world anymore, even if some have been slow to notice.
Boys and men are picking up the signals that there is something inherently wrong with them. The word “masculinity” is hardly uttered in some precincts without the modifier “toxic.” Our culture has stressed girl power and female “firsts” long past the time when boys are the ones who are struggling. As Richard Reeves has noted, in 1972, the year Congress enacted Title IX to promote gender equity in higher education, the gender gap in college enrollment was 13 points in men’s favor. In 2019, the gender gap in bachelor’s degrees was 15 points the other way.
Men are feeling it. A Brookings Institution survey found that fewer Generation Z men call themselves feminists (43%) than do millennials (52%), and the gap between men and women on this self-ID is much larger for Gen Z than for older cohorts. Another sign of discontent is that nearly half of men aged 18 to 29 report that they face discrimination as men.
The right has a response that is reactionary, misogynistic and smutty. The party that once prided itself on traditional values now features at its convention, as David French put it, “an OnlyFans star, a man who publicly slapped his wife, a man who pleaded no contest to an assault charge, and another man who had sex with his friend’s wife while the friend watched — and that’s not even including any reference to Trump himself.”
Not content with being an adjudicated sexual abuser, Donald Trump continues to fill out his dance card with the vilest male “influencers” online, most recently sitting down for an interview with Adin Ross, most known for associating with accused rapist/human trafficker Andrew Tate and neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes. Trump knows there’s a longing for male affirmation out there and is choosing the very worst ways to satisfy it. His masculinity bears none of the hallmarks of manly virtue — restraint, honor, service to others, responsibility or self-sacrifice. Instead, he offers braggadocio, put-downs, disrespect for women and vulgarity.
Trump’s running mate has been fishing in these waters for several years and now trails a train of cringe-worthy quotations he must own. JD Vance chose to unburden himself to Tucker Carlson. “We’re effectively run in this country, via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made. And so they wanna make the rest of the country miserable, too.” He then name-checked Harris, Pete Buttigieg and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
What’s offensive is not just that Vance is wrong about Harris or Buttigieg but that he would use such a personal matter as an opportunity for abuse. As Jennifer Aniston, who underwent years of fruitless fertility treatments, put it: “Mr. Vance, I pray that your daughter is fortunate enough to bear children of her own one day.”
I’m about as pro-natalist as you can get. I believe the government should be generous to parents through the tax code because children are an investment in the country’s future.
But leave it to MAGA to mar a completely benign idea like pro-natalism with contempt for others. Vance recycled his insights in a fundraising appeal: “We’ve allowed ourselves to be dominated by childless sociopaths — they’re invested in NOTHING because they’re not invested in this country’s children.” Really? George Washington and James Madison might like a word.
In the face of this brutalist version of masculinity, the Democratic Party is now honoring a different kind of man in Walz. The hunter/fisherman/veteran/football coach is no pajama boy.
Walz is a regular guy at a time when the country needs reminding that being a regular guy is actually pretty great. As The Atlantic put it, “Dad is on the Ballot.”
Harris’s selection of Walz gave rise to a whole genre of warm dad memes: “Tim Walz just slipped me a 20 on my way out the door because ‘you never know if some place doesn’t take credit cards.” Another posted that Walz would “(take) care of the wasps’ nest for you.”
What unites these posts is the sense of security and comfort they exude — the very things a good dad conveys.
Tim Walz may be the father figure the Democratic Party — and the country — needs.
This is a long set of reads but I think you’ll enjoy the contrast. I really hope we can leave the minds of J Dank and Donald in the footnotes of history. Let’s give our kids the future they deserve!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
https://skydancingblog.com/2024/10/11/finally-friday-reads-the-gender-chasm/
#DonOld #Repeat1968JohnBuss #BarackObama #DonOldAndDudeBros #DougEmhoff #FatherFigures #JDank #ModernMasculinity #StephanMiller #TheGenderChasm #TheGenderGap2024 #TimWalz #ToxicMasculinity
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“Kamala is correct. Trump rallies are really a sight to behold. Everyone should watch at least one. Pro-tip, they’re getting more and more entertaining.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
When you watch and read as much news as I do, you can’t help but notice that every political act committed by DonOld these days is focused on young men. I believe that watching and listening to even a minimal amount of this has given me my first bout with acid reflux. I watched this segment on Alex Wagner last night. I had to endure a quick clip of Stephen Miller, who is an unpleasant, unattractive misogynist, racist, and xenophobe, which is this year’s Trump campaign outreach. “‘Infantile, petulant masculinity’: Trump aims low in appeal for American male ‘bro’ voters.” Are there really that many of them out there?
With a yawning gender gap in his base of support as a consequence of driving women away with his own words and behavior, Donald Trump appears to have made a strategy of wringing as much support as he can from American men, which has meant plumbing the depths of bro culture and encouraging a less-than-flattering version of masculinity. Michelle Goldberg, columnist for the New York Times discusses with Alex Wagner.
The funniest thing is watching Miller telling every male the best way to demonstrate you’re an Alpha is to wear your Trump goodies. Then, he goes on to mispronounce Beta. I can’t help but remember my first reading of Brave New World, as assigned in my 9th grade English class taught by a woman who also taught me swimming when I was a kid. Alphas are the intellectuals, while Betas are designed for physically demanding but not mentally challenging labor. I suppose Miller is referring to the hierarchy of the Apes, but wow, he sure comes off as a Gamma to me.
I enjoyed watching former President Barack Obama roast Donald Trump and contrast his inept and selfish behavior with that of the brilliant and caring Kamala. So, there are a lot of strange reads today about the strong comeback of the Gender Gap, which appears to be more like a Chasm. Let’s chuckle through them. Frankly, I prefer men with a less brutish approach to manhood, and I know you’re out there. We see you. Obama’s funniest line of the night is when he discusses the cost of diapers and doing the duty, then asks the audience if they thought Donald had ever changed a diaper. My Dad bombed NAZIs from a B-25 Bomber, and he changed diapers in the 1950s. Just consider Elon Musk going all on the Trump Campaign and that his businesses are generally as bankrupt-prone and in trouble with labor laws and anti-discrimination laws as the DonOld’s. DonOld can have Tech and Dude Bros because most women don’t want them. The ones with money attract gold diggers. The ones without are known as incels. It’s going to be a brutal 24 days.
This article and link to Longwell’s podcast is from Politico. Although, I think they’re turning to voting scams for victory. They’re just warming up the next group of J6ers .”‘They’ve given up on the idea that they can get women.’ How Trump is turning to the other gender gap for victory. A profound gender gap is shaping the 2024 election. And after listening to voters in hundreds of focus groups, Sarah Longwell thinks she knows why.”
The 2024 election — it’s a contest between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. But increasingly, it also looks like it’s girls versus boys.
Poll after poll is telling the same story: a Times/Siena survey this month showing Harris up 16 with women and Trump up 11 with men; a set of Quinnipiac polls in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin showing Harris winning women by about 20 points in each. Meanwhile, according to a running average by the election quants at Split Ticket, Trump is on pace to win men by an even bigger margin than he did in 2020 — by about 9 points nationally.
But those numbers only tell part of the story.
The other half is from the mouths of the voters themselves. Which is where this episode of the Playbook Deep Dive podcast begins.
Sarah Longwell is the publisher of The Bulwark and is well known for her work as a Never Trumper.
But what she does with the rest of her time is talk to voters. Lots of them. Longwell has conducted hundreds of focus groups — you may have heard some of them on her podcast, The Focus Group.
While many of Washington’s top operatives have been digesting the election through polling datasets, she’s been taking a different approach: just asking people straight up what they think about Trump and Harris and what could change their minds.
Playbook’s Rachael Bade caught up with Sarah in her downtown Washington offices on Thursday and asked her to connect the dots from all of these hundreds of focus groups. In so doing, she laid out the stakes for what is arguably the biggest question of the 2024 election:
Why are men and women veering so far apart politically?
The answers to that may surprise you.
The Independent‘s Kelly Rissman has this analysis. “Inside the Trump campaign’s ‘edgy’ and crass approach to appeal to young men and ride them to victory.’ The Trump campaign’s crass language, wavering abortion stance, and sexist remarks about Harris have been a focus for Democrats.”
Donald Trump has proclaimed himself the “protector” of women but the tone of his messaging has become geared toward young men with crass language and put-downs in hopes the bloc will back him in November – despite the former president potentially isolating women voters.
“Alphas for Trump,” Steven Cheung, a campaign spokesperson recently tweeted, “vs Simps for Kamala.”
This seven-word tweet perhaps encompasses Trump’s years-long immersion into a stereotypical “tough” alpha male figure — a brand that some have described as “toxic masculinity.” In 2019, the then-president even tweeted a photoshopped image of himself as Rocky Balboa. Since then, he seemingly has tried to ingratiate himself into the real version of the fictional sports legend.
He has steeped himself in cryptocurrency, surrounding himself with tech bros and UFC fighters, using sexist terms to describe his Democratic rival, enters the rally stage to the Village People song “Macho Man,” all while his running mate disparages “childless cat ladies.” It could be costing him half of the electorate.
“It’s obvious Republicans have a woman problem, but it’s not just about policy differences like abortion. The GOP gender gap is just as much about how you talk about those differences,” Nachama Soloveichik, a GOP strategist and former adviser to Haley’s presidential campaign, told the Washington Post.
Soloveichik continued: “Regardless of gender, any political staffer with a pea-sized brain should know chasing away half the electorate is a bad idea. Talk to women with respect and understanding even when you disagree.”
Not only has the Republican nominee has appeared alongside “bro-y” celebrities, such as retired wrestler Hulk Hogan, wrestler-turned-YouTuber Logan Paul, Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) chief executive Dana White, and podcaster Theo Von, but his campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung was also formerly a spokesperson for the UFC.
There’s never anyone on the Trump list of celebrities that I label anything other than grrrRoss. I can even remember how I used to say it with my 6th-grade voice while wrinkling my nose. This is also from Politico. “Inside Trump’s push to win over the ‘bro’ vote. But can he get young men to vote?”
Donald Trump is betting that support from young men will help propel him to the White House. And he’s getting an assist from a crew of pro-Trump millennial pranksters who are capitalizing on college football tailgates, Tinder and even the “Hawk Tuah Girl” podcast.
The Nelk Boys, digital content creators and hosts of the popular “Full Send” podcast, are mounting a multi-million-dollar voter registration push aimed at turning out young men. They plan to sign up voters at a “Send the Vote” music festival later this month that will feature a performance by pro-Trump rapper Waka Flocka Flame, and at a pair of Penn State football games.
They will also promote the registration drive on dating apps and advertise on highly-listened to, male-friendly podcasts like “Kill Tony,” “MrBallen,” and “BS w/ Jake Paul.”
It’s the latest effort in an all-out campaign by the former president to turn out young men, a demographic his campaign views as critical to his election given the overwhelming support Kamala Harris is expected to receive from young women. The question the Trump operation faces, however, is whether it can turn out a subset of voters his allies concede are uncertain to cast ballots.
“The question is, will that podcast fan, that College GameDay fan, that USC fan, will they actually get up on November 5th and go and vote?” said John Shahidi, the president of Full Send and the co-founder of Send the Vote. “That’s the big question right now that we want to start emphasizing on and putting pressure on.”
One voter registration promo is expected to run on a podcast hosted by Haliey Welch, who rose to viral internet stardom with a sexually explicit riff. And, in the heart of football season, the Nelk Boys are exploring the possibility of advertising on sports gambling sites.
By reaching out to young men, some of whom came of age during the former president’s administration, Trump, who long before running for office had cultivated an alpha-male like image with his involvement in sports and entertainment, is capitalizing on goodwill from a demographic he hopes will support him. And there are indications Trump is making inroads with the group, which like other youth subsets traditionally tilts liberal. According to a recent Harvard Youth Poll, 35 percent of men between 18 and 24 years old said they supported Trump — an improvement of 5 percent from Trump’s performance in the same survey in the 2020 election.
I have no idea what any of this is, but I am obviously not in that demographic. My youngest son-in-law has a birthday tomorrow, but I have a good idea that he doesn’t know about either. He’s a biological engineer and has a life. I’m sure the older one, who is a Radiologist and does ultrasounds a lot, wouldn’t know or care. However, former President Obama spoke out to black men in his speech last night in Pittsburgh. This is from the Washington Post. “Obama admonishes Black men for hesitancy in supporting Harris. Former president suggests some in the Black community are uncomfortable voting for a woman and are coming up with excuses.” I think the headline is harsh compared to what I heard, but legacy media always looks for clicks.
Former president Barack Obama on Thursday made a direct, impassioned plea to Black men to support Vice President Kamala Harris — a key demographic she is struggling to mobilize — admonishing them for thinking about sitting out the presidential contest as well as suggesting sexism might be at play.
During an unannounced stop at a Harris campaign field office in Pittsburgh, just hours before he was set to appear at his first campaign rally for the Democratic nominee, Obama said he wanted to “speak some truths” and address Black men specifically, making his most direct remarks about their hesitancy in supporting Harris to date.
“My understanding, based on reports I’m getting from campaigns and communities, is that we have not yet seen the same kinds of energy and turnout in all quarters of our neighborhoods and communities as we saw when I was running,” Obama said, adding that it “seems to be more pronounced with the brothers.”
Obama questioned how voters, and Black voters specifically, could be on the fence about whether to support Harris or former president Donald Trump, the Republican nominee.
“On the one hand, you have somebody who grew up like you, knows you, went to college with you, understands the struggles and pain and joy that comes from those experiences,” Obama said, ticking off a list of Harris’s policy proposals. In Trump, he added, “you have someone who has consistently shown disregard, not just for the communities, but for you as a person … And you are thinking about sitting out?”
The former president then spoke about what he thought might be contributing to Black men’s soft support of Harris: the discomfort of some with the idea of electing the first female president.
“And you’re coming up with all kinds of reasons and excuses, I’ve got a problem with that,” he said. “Because part of it makes me think — and I’m speaking to men directly — part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you’re coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that.”
Meanwhile, we see Harris’ husband and her running mate, Tim Walz, emulate a more compassionate version of manliness. Perhaps this kind of role-modeling from powerful men will take hold. This is from Time Magazine, as analyzed by Belinda Luscombe. “The Doug Emhoff Model of Masculinity.”
Society has names for men they feel are overshadowed by their wives or partners, and they’re not terms of endearment; cuck, p-whipped, and simp are among the nicer ones. As women’s economic and social power has risen, some men have felt that theirs has receded, and have responded by doubling down on machismo. Masculinity has become contested ground. So when Doug Emhoff took to the stage to talk about his wife Kamala Harris at the Democratic National Convention, he had to walk a fine line: gushy without being slavish, supportive but not submissive, a true partner but completely self-sufficient.
Fewer than half the countries in the world have ever had female heads of state, and many of those women were unmarried, so there are not a lot of models for how to be the husband of the lady who might become the leader of the free world. Emhoff’s speech was a benchmark. How does a man handle this? How does a man talk about a strong ambitious woman gunning for arguably the most powerful job in the world, without making her look a nightmare or a nonentity? And without himself appearing to be a buffoon or puppet master?
Emhoff—and his speechwriters and his son Cole—pretty much nailed it. When he stepped down from the stage, he had given a little master class in how to be a guy’s guy as wellas a wife guy. First, he telegraphed that he was dependent on no one. He’d done name-tag jobs at McDonald’s and the valet stand when he needed to. He had partly put himself through college but wasn’t too proud to admit he had help. He had a successful career with skills that involved de-escalating rather than dominating situations.
He demonstrated a winning self-confidence by making fun of the goofy nervous first-date voicemail he left on Harris’ phone, and joking about his mother being the only person in the world who thinks Harris married up. Unlike many a divorced dad, he showed no bitterness to his ex-wife, even thanking her from the stage. While Harris’s opponents have tried to make her laugh seem bizarre or sinister, he named it as one of the things he loves most—because normal men aren’t freaked out by women who laugh.
Emhoff’s presentation also subtly played up his more traditional masculine traits. A photo from Cole’s video introduction showed how protective he was when someone threatened Harris. Emhoff let it be known that he belongs to a fantasy football league with buddies from back in the day, and that in his youth he was a fan of both The Clash and Nirvana, both classic angry-young-man bands. He slid in mentions of his ability to pivot and to sacrifice, by leaving a law practice when Harris became vice president and taking a job at Georgetown University.
In fact, many of the masculine attributes that Emhoff leaned into during his speech are similar to those also valued by conservatives: strength, pride, courage, industriousness, protecting families. In some ways, President Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance has many of the same qualities. He too came from humble beginnings, put himself through school, thrived, and married a woman who was more his equal than his helpmeet. But Emhoff—and Tim Walz, Harris’ partner in this campaign—are projecting those qualities while playing second fiddle to a woman. They’re not allowed to outshine the nominee, but they also can’t make her look like a harridan.
Emhoff’s exuberant support of his wife’s strengths (“Empathy is her superpower,” he noted) has definitely touched a nerve with some women. “THIS is a supportive husband! He gets it. Doug do you have a brother? Cousin? BFF?” asked one woman on Instagram. “If anyone would like to set me up on a blind date with the 33-45 year old NYC-based equivalent of Doug Emhoff, my DMs are open,” tweeted another. It wasn’t just among women either; there was a spate of “Teach me how to Dougie” tweets from guys as well.
I will not venture into the J Dank Vance model of weird masculinity, but I will mention Tim Walz’s impact by showing a fuller version of what it means to be a man, husband, and father. I really like this coverage by the Chicago Sun-Times, which was published around the convention. “Tim Walz is a man’s man, unlike MAGA’s man-children. A good male role model from the Democrats is an excellent foil for the cartoon version of masculinity on offer from the Republican Party.” This Op-Ed is written by Mona Charen. (Yes, THAT Mona Charen.) I’ve put in the complete piece because she handles J Dank better than I ever could.
If Kamala Harris becomes the first woman president, her first accomplishment could well have already happened — elevating and honoring the positive side of masculinity.
Tim Walz, whose politics are to the left of most Americans and certainly most swing voters, has been welcomed not as a box-checking, progressive pick, but as a Midwestern dad who poses with his hunting dog, served for 24 years in the military and coached the high school football team to a state championship. He’s a man’s man without being a strutting jackass. A good male role model is an excellent foil for the swaggering, snarling, cartoonish version of masculinity on offer from the Republican Party right now.
Men are struggling. Boys are falling behind girls in grades and graduation rates. Men are falling behind women in college attendance, participation in the labor force, and connection to family and friends. Men are more likely than women to be lonely and to succumb to deaths of despair. It’s not a man’s world anymore, even if some have been slow to notice.
Boys and men are picking up the signals that there is something inherently wrong with them. The word “masculinity” is hardly uttered in some precincts without the modifier “toxic.” Our culture has stressed girl power and female “firsts” long past the time when boys are the ones who are struggling. As Richard Reeves has noted, in 1972, the year Congress enacted Title IX to promote gender equity in higher education, the gender gap in college enrollment was 13 points in men’s favor. In 2019, the gender gap in bachelor’s degrees was 15 points the other way.
Men are feeling it. A Brookings Institution survey found that fewer Generation Z men call themselves feminists (43%) than do millennials (52%), and the gap between men and women on this self-ID is much larger for Gen Z than for older cohorts. Another sign of discontent is that nearly half of men aged 18 to 29 report that they face discrimination as men.
The right has a response that is reactionary, misogynistic and smutty. The party that once prided itself on traditional values now features at its convention, as David French put it, “an OnlyFans star, a man who publicly slapped his wife, a man who pleaded no contest to an assault charge, and another man who had sex with his friend’s wife while the friend watched — and that’s not even including any reference to Trump himself.”
Not content with being an adjudicated sexual abuser, Donald Trump continues to fill out his dance card with the vilest male “influencers” online, most recently sitting down for an interview with Adin Ross, most known for associating with accused rapist/human trafficker Andrew Tate and neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes. Trump knows there’s a longing for male affirmation out there and is choosing the very worst ways to satisfy it. His masculinity bears none of the hallmarks of manly virtue — restraint, honor, service to others, responsibility or self-sacrifice. Instead, he offers braggadocio, put-downs, disrespect for women and vulgarity.
Trump’s running mate has been fishing in these waters for several years and now trails a train of cringe-worthy quotations he must own. JD Vance chose to unburden himself to Tucker Carlson. “We’re effectively run in this country, via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made. And so they wanna make the rest of the country miserable, too.” He then name-checked Harris, Pete Buttigieg and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
What’s offensive is not just that Vance is wrong about Harris or Buttigieg but that he would use such a personal matter as an opportunity for abuse. As Jennifer Aniston, who underwent years of fruitless fertility treatments, put it: “Mr. Vance, I pray that your daughter is fortunate enough to bear children of her own one day.”
I’m about as pro-natalist as you can get. I believe the government should be generous to parents through the tax code because children are an investment in the country’s future.
But leave it to MAGA to mar a completely benign idea like pro-natalism with contempt for others. Vance recycled his insights in a fundraising appeal: “We’ve allowed ourselves to be dominated by childless sociopaths — they’re invested in NOTHING because they’re not invested in this country’s children.” Really? George Washington and James Madison might like a word.
In the face of this brutalist version of masculinity, the Democratic Party is now honoring a different kind of man in Walz. The hunter/fisherman/veteran/football coach is no pajama boy.
Walz is a regular guy at a time when the country needs reminding that being a regular guy is actually pretty great. As The Atlantic put it, “Dad is on the Ballot.”
Harris’s selection of Walz gave rise to a whole genre of warm dad memes: “Tim Walz just slipped me a 20 on my way out the door because ‘you never know if some place doesn’t take credit cards.” Another posted that Walz would “(take) care of the wasps’ nest for you.”
What unites these posts is the sense of security and comfort they exude — the very things a good dad conveys.
Tim Walz may be the father figure the Democratic Party — and the country — needs.
This is a long set of reads but I think you’ll enjoy the contrast. I really hope we can leave the minds of J Dank and Donald in the footnotes of history. Let’s give our kids the future they deserve!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
https://skydancingblog.com/2024/10/11/finally-friday-reads-the-gender-chasm/
#DonOld #Repeat1968JohnBuss #BarackObama #DonOldAndDudeBros #DougEmhoff #FatherFigures #JDank #ModernMasculinity #StephanMiller #TheGenderChasm #TheGenderGap2024 #TimWalz #ToxicMasculinity
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“I’m sorry, but Leon Musk deserves Mr Trump’s Purple Heart after taking one for the team instead of all this ridicule.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Could the next big October Surprise be the media deciding to report how unfit DonOld is for office? Rumors are that his new brofriends are about to get him elected only to turn around and do a 25th Amendment so that we get J Dank Vance as POTUS sooner than we expected. Who would put Elon Musk in charge of a national ground game? Why would anyone want to hear or see Mister Pasty? Let’s get right to it. This is from Politico. “Musk the surrogate: The tech titan will hit the campaign trail for Trump. Those close to Musk say his primary focus is on Pennsylvania.” This report is by Alex Isenstadt. So, DonOld can’t do the rally thing very well, so they’re sending Elon? What kind of Hail Mary pass is this?
Tech billionaire Elon Musk will ramp up his personal efforts to elect Donald Trump in the remaining weeks of the election — including making visits to Pennsylvania to campaign for the former president.
Musk intends to appear in the swing state in the four weeks leading up to Nov. 5, according to a person who has spoken with his team and was granted anonymity to speak freely because they weren’t authorized to do so. He is expected to make the stops with the backing of America PAC, a pro-Trump super PAC he formed. He may make other appearances in the state independent of his super PAC — as he did on Sunday evening, when he showed up to the Pittsburgh Steelers game wearing a MAGA hat and was greeted by Steelers owner Art Rooney II, among others.
Musk, the world’s richest person, took his most aggressive steps yet over the weekend to personally show his support for Trump. Musk appeared at Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, where during a brief speech he lavished praise on the former president and urged attendees to “vote, vote, vote.” After the rally, he joined Trump backstage where he participated in a tele-town hall event.
Also over the weekend, Musk changed his profile icon on his account on X to an image of him wearing a black MAGA hat and added to his bio a link to the America PAC account. He also repeatedly promoted posts from the PAC, which is running a pro-Trump voter turnout effort with financial backing from Musk and his associates.
And on Sunday afternoon, Musk unveiled a new program in which he promised to pay $47 to people who register voters in seven swing states — Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Musk has a history of using reward initiatives: He recently unveiled a referral program for Tesla, the electric car company he owns. In the program, buyers and their referrers are awarded $500 or $1,000 in credits which can be used toward Tesla products.
“Ya gotta love Dork MAGA.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Talk about your Dark Money and what is this all about? Dark MAGA? Does this reek of desperation or what? Let’s get back to why he’s sending in the clowns. This is from The New Republic by the great Michael Tomasky. “The Media Is Finally Waking Up to the Story of Trump’s Mental Fitness. On Sunday, The New York Times finally ran a brutal piece on the topic. Let’s hope others follow—and this kick-starts the conversation the country desperately needs to have.”
If things go the way I hope they go in November, it may well turn out that Sunday’s terrific New York Times piece by Peter Baker and Dylan Freedman on Donald Trump’s age and fitness for office could stand as the single most important piece of journalism in this election. If you’ve been reading me and Greg Sargent and Parker Molloy and our Breaking News desk, then you know that The New Republic has been pretty obsessive about the topic of Trump’s mental fitness—and more importantly about the media’s general refusal to discuss it.
This is what has come to be known as the “sanewashing” of Trump: the practice by media outlets of covering him like a normal candidate and not telling their audiences in detail about all the monstrous, false, disjointed, and plain old nonsensical fountains of gibberish he serially spouts at every public appearance he makes.
We (and others) have been critical of the press in general and the Times in particular, mainly because the Times is still the most important news outlet in the country. So let’s give credit where it’s due. The Baker-Freedman piece was a deeply reported analysis that wasn’t afraid to say things most mainstream outlets won’t say. I’d also note that in recent days, Michael Gold, the paper’s Trump correspondent, has written a couple pieces that are more blunt and direct in calling out Trump’s lies and quoting some of his more outrageous comments.
The Sunday Times article puts it on the line: “He rambles, he repeats himself, he roams from thought to thought—some of them hard to understand, some of them unfinished, some of them factually fantastical. He voices outlandish claims that seem to be made up out of whole cloth. He digresses into bizarre tangents about golf, about sharks, about his own ‘beautiful’ body. He relishes ‘a great day in Louisiana’ after spending the day in Georgia. He expresses fear that North Korea is ‘trying to kill me’ when he presumably means Iran. As late as last month, Mr. Trump was still speaking as if he were running against President Biden, five weeks after his withdrawal from the race.”
That’s just for starters. The gist of the piece argues—with statistical analyses of Trump’s tropes and speech patterns—that his rhetoric is very different from what it was in 2015 and 2016. Which is to say, it’s worse in every way: more long-winded, more disconnected, more rambling; also coarser, far more prone to swearing. In sum, the article is devastating about whether Trump, who is now the old one in the race and who would be 82 at the end of a second term, is simply capable on a mental level of doing the job of president.
This is the offering today from the Lincoln Project. They always find a way to amp DonOld’s paranoia volume knob up to 11.
Trump did an interview with Hugh Hewitt, and he’s amped the Hitler rhetoric up to 11. This is written by Sydney Blumenthal at The Guardian. “Donald Trump’s Hitlerian logic is no mistake. The former president claims to have never read Mein Kampf. But his use of blood and soil rhetoric is deliberate.”
If genealogy is destiny, as Donald Trump believes, then “poison in the blood” – a phrase Trump repeatedly uses – determines the fate of nations. By Trump’s logic, “blood” is the true and final measure. Trump, like Hitler, appears to classify people and countries by “blood” on a scale of their innate racial characteristics. Those features define the essence of nations, which are themselves delineated on a racial pyramid, with the purest and whitest, the most Aryan, at the pinnacle. True to his doctrine, the Nazis on his family tree must explain his penchant for Hitlerian rhetoric.
“Poison in the blood” was the core of Hitler’s race doctrine as well. Hitler, too, believed it explained the rise and fall of civilizations. “All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning,” stated Hitler. It is also Trump’s fundamental trope. “We’re poisoning the blood of our country, and you have people coming in, think of it, mental institutions all over the world are being emptied out into the United States,” he said on Fox News in March. “Jails and prisons are being emptied out into the United States. This is poisoning our country.”
Just recently, on 31 August, addressing Moms For Liberty, a rightwing group devoted to book-banning, he raised again the menace of “poison in the blood”: “But what’s happening to our country, our country is being poisoned, poisoned!”
At a rally on 18 September, Trump elaborated: “They’re coming from the Congo, they’re coming from Africa, they’re coming from the Middle East, they’re coming from all over the world – Asia! A lot of it coming from Asia … And what’s happening to our country is we’re just destroying the fabric of life in our country, and we’re not going to take it any longer, and you got to get rid of these people.”
“Blut und Boden” – blood and soil – was adopted as an official slogan of the Nazi regime to express its ideal of the nation rooted in the authentic unity of Aryan blood. The community of its people – Volksgemeinschaft – comprised only those of shared ethnic blood. Aliens corrupting the blood, principally Jews, but also Slavs, Poles and Roma, were described as disease carriers and “vermin” – Volksshadlinge – and posed an existential threat. Only those people of the blood belonged to the Heimat, a concept the Nazis cast as the racially pure home, intrinsic to Blut und Boden.
Jews were Heimatlos – a people separate from the Heimat, without a true home, wanderers, cosmopolitans and globalists, a menace to the sanctity of the culture and the identity of the nation. They were not simply outsiders, or the Other. They were a different species – subhumans, Untermenschen – and must be eradicated to preserve the blood of the race. “Although it has features similar to a human, the subhuman is lower on the spiritual and psychological scale than any animal,” instructed a pamphlet entitled Der Untermenschen, illustrated with distorted photographs of these lower beings to depict the “bestial” nature of the subhuman Jews and Slavs. Four million copies were published in 1942 under the direction of Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS.
“In some cases, they’re not people, in my opinion,” Trump said this March. “But I’m not allowed to say that because the radical left says that’s a terrible thing to say. These are animals, OK, and we have to stop it.” When they are removed, it will be, says Trump, “a bloody story”.
Here’s the report from HuffPo on the Hitler Language by Matt Shuman. “Trump: Immigrants Have Brought ‘Bad Genes’ Into The Country. The Republican presidential candidate has long been obsessed with the racist talking point that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of America.”
During an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Monday, Donald Trump said immigrants were filling the country with “bad genes” and used lies about decades-old crime statistics to make his point.
Trump has long been obsessed with the idea that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of America — echoing Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler’s rhetoric. For years, he has lied that other countries are purposefully sending criminals to the United States.
As part of his recent weekslong racist smear campaign, Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), falsely said Haitian immigrants had raised the infectious disease rate in Springfield, Ohio. And Trump has been touting his mass deportation agenda, which he says he’ll enact as soon as he’s in office.
“How about allowing people to come through an open border, 13,000 of which were murderers?” Trump told Hewitt, referring to the Biden administration. “Many of them murdered far more than one person, and they’re now happily living in the United States. You know, now, a murderer, I believe this, it’s in their genes. And we’ve got a lot of bad genes in our country right now. They left, they had 425,000 people come into our country that shouldn’t be here that are criminals.”
The xenophobic claim that immigrants are genetically predisposed to committing violent crimes is shocking and false — but xenophobia is also a cornerstone of Trump’s presidential campaign.
Trump’s numbers are based on heavily manipulated statistics about the criminal conviction records of people with cases in immigration court — cases that span several decades, some long before President Joe Biden was in office, and which include people currently serving prison time.
You may read, hear and see more on the latest Hugh Hewitt interview today at this link. “Former President Trump On The Anniversary Of The 10/7 Massacre In Israel.” Yes, that is an weird headline, isn’t it?
HH: If Israel hits Iran and goes after the nuclear sites, will you applaud Israel and back them up?
DT: Well, you want to do what they want to do. Now they may be making a deal with Iran right now. You know, to be honest with you, because Iran’s not looking so good. You know, Iran is not looking like they looked two months ago, if you want to know the truth. They could be making a deal. They could be doing some very smart things right now. There are a lot of things they can do. But the nice thing is they’re entitled to an attack, and nobody will be upset if they attack, because they’re entitled. Because Iran hit them with 187 missiles. And by the way, how good is the shield? And the United States should have a shield.
Here’s the hot take from Morning Joe from Raw Story for what it’s worth. “‘Increasingly deranged’ Trump is inciting ‘civil war’ as election loss looms: Morning Joe.”
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough warned Monday that an “increasingly desperate” Donald Trump is inciting civil war in anticipation of another election loss.
The former president returned to the scene of his first apparent assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, where he baselessly accused Democrats of trying to kill him and his family members presented the November election as a choice between “good versus evil.
The rhetoric left the “Morning Joe” host disgusted and disturbed.
“The level of un-American activity that you just saw is stunning,” Scarborough said. “That is un-American. They know they’re lying, Donald Trump knows that’s a lie. He will tell you that the Secret Service, he thought, did the best job they could do. The fact that J.D. Vance and Trump’s family would come out and out and say what they said, takes the threat of violence, takes the threat beyond where it was even leading up to Jan. 6.
“This is an increasingly desperate person, an increasingly desperate family, who is preparing for civil war. They just are. Talking about they’re trying to kill him, Democrats are trying to kill him, and the lies. Think about this.”
“I saw part of Donald Trump’s speech this weekend,” Scarborough continued. “It was remarkable, the lies. Not just on these things, but on policy. He’d make up things and throw it out there. I was shocked that the audience was really that stupid, to believe the crazy lies that he was throwing out there.
This was a shock to me. It also comes from Raw Story, as reported by David McAfee. ‘Is that a threat?’ Trump stuns observers with a comment about Harris voter ‘getting hurt.'”
Donald Trump shocked observers on Sunday with a comment he made about a potential supporter of Vice President Kamala Harris at one of the former president’s swing-state rallies.
Trump, who has been accused of fostering violence that occurred on Jan. 6, 2021, gave a speech in Wisconsin over the weekend. At that rally, the ex-president battled a fly on stage and called his own campaign members “so stupid.”
At that same rally, Trump made an off-hand comment that had some political onlookers sounding the alarm.
“Is there anybody here who’s going to vote for lyin’ Kamala?” Trump asked his rally attendees. “Actually, I should say don’t raise your hand, it would be very dangerous. We don’t want to see anybody get hurt. Please don’t raise your hand.”
Harris’ campaign shared the video on social media, writing, “Trump says it’s ‘very dangerous’ for Kamala Harris voters to identify themselves because they’ll ‘get hurt.'”
Retired research engineer David Rommel voluntarily identified his voting preferences:
“I’m voting for Kamala! I’m a republican that is not opposed to taking on that challenge,” he wrote. “The only thing that scares me is Trump winning another term. When Trump is in prison and they are all arrested for rioting we can all take a breath of fresh air.”
A popular account called CALL TO ACTIVISM, founded by attorney Joe Gallina, replied, “What the hell does this mean? Donald Trump says it’s ‘very dangerous’ for Kamala Harris voters to identify themselves because they’ll ‘get hurt.’ Is that a threat??”
DonOld’s economic policy platform has gotten the attention of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. It’s like he’s purposefully going to tank the US economy. These folks are always deficit hawks. Here’s their bias/leaning report from Media Bias/Fact Check.
Overall, we rate The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) as slightly right-center Biased based on advocacy for a reduction in entitlement spending. We also rate them High in factual reporting based on regularly being used as a resource for IFCN fact-checkers.
And here’s their numbers and analysis.
Under our central estimate, Vice President Harris’s plan would increase the debt by $3.50 trillion through 2035, while President Trump’s plan would increase the debt by $7.50 trillion.
These estimates come with a wide range of uncertainty, reflecting both different interpretations and estimates of the policies. Under our low- and high-cost estimates, we estimate Vice President Harris’s plan could have no significant fiscal impact or increase debt by $8.10 trillion through 2035, while President Trump’s plan could increase debt by between $1.45 and $15.15 trillion. Our analysis will be updated if additional policies are introduced.
So, you can see that even deficit hawks recognize Trump’s plan as a run on the Treasury for billionaires. Things are not going very well for Trump, which is why he’s acting out so many ways, but this may not mean we’re rid of him. Don’t forget that behind the scenes in many states are crazy Maga Supporters like Tina Peters. We still have to consider the threats of violence. We also need to realize there’s a lot of damage to the country and our democracy done already. This headline from the AP is a frightening reminder. “Supreme Court declines Biden administration appeal in Texas emergency abortion case.”
The Supreme Court on Monday let stand a decision barring emergency abortions that violate the law in Texas, which has one of the country’s strictest abortion bans.
The justices did not detail their reasoning for keeping in place a lower court order that said hospitals cannot be required to provide pregnancy terminations if they would break Texas law. There were no publicly noted dissents.
The decision comes weeks before a presidential election where abortion has been a key issue after the high court’s 2022 decision overturning the nationwide right to abortion.
The justices rebuffed a Biden administration push to throw out the lower court order. The administration argues that under federal law hospitals must perform abortions if needed in cases where a pregnant patient’s health or life is at serious risk, even in states where it’s banned.
Complaints of pregnant women in medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms in Texas and elsewhere have spiked as hospitals grapple with whether standard care could violate strict state laws against abortion.
The administration pointed to the Supreme Court’s action in a similar case from Idaho earlier this year in which the justices narrowly allowed emergency abortions to resume while a lawsuit continues.s
Finally, decades of ignoring climate change have led to the fast development of Hurricane Milton into a Category 4 aimed at Tampa. This is from the Washington Post. Hurricane Milton reaches Category 5 strength on approach to Florida. The storm is expected to produce a devasting surge along Florida’s west coast, which could include the Tampa Bay area. Some decrease in strength is forecast ahead of landfall.
Milton, a top-tier Category 5 hurricane over the Gulf of Mexico, is intensifying at near-record speed as it churns toward the west coast of Florida. The storm is expected to make landfall Wednesday or early Thursday as a “large and powerful hurricane,” according to the National Hurricane Center. It is predicted to produce a potentially devastating ocean surge over 10 feet in some areas, including perhaps in flood-prone Tampa Bay.
Since Sunday night, the storm’s rate of strengthening has reached extreme levels — its intensity leaping from a Category 1 to 5. The storm’s peak winds Monday afternoon were up to 175 mph, an 85 mph increase in 12 hours.
The Hurricane Center described the storm’s rate of intensification as “remarkable.” The explosive development has occurred over record-warm waters in the Gulf, with the extreme warmth linked to human-caused climate change.
Fuck the entire “Drill baby Drill” krewe of death. Every time I hear the name Milton, I can only think of my drunk great-grandfather, who was murdered while coming home from a bar in KCMO. His death led to my mother’s parents having to take care of my grandmother’s sisters. That story has stayed with me for decades. So, anyone in the path of this thing should really get out of there. That advice comes from me, who fled Katrina with dogs and cat in tow at the very last minute. If you’re on the Gulf side of this thing there will be surreal surge levels that nothing can survive. I also can’t imagine how stretched FEMA, the country’s National Guard, and every disaster response NGO will be. Prepare like you’ll be on your own for a while because you may be. I am forever thankful that I had incredible primitive camping chops via the Girl Scouts. You’ll need all those skills to survive this.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
https://skydancingblog.com/2024/10/07/mostly-monday-reads-poor-poor-pitiful-trump/
#DonOld #DorkMaga #Repeat1968JohnBuss #BansOffOurBodies #HurricaneMilton #MisterPastyAkaElon #TrumpIncitesViolenceAgain #UnfitForOffice
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“I’m sorry, but Leon Musk deserves Mr Trump’s Purple Heart after taking one for the team instead of all this ridicule.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Could the next big October Surprise be the media deciding to report how unfit DonOld is for office? Rumors are that his new brofriends are about to get him elected only to turn around and do a 25th Amendment so that we get J Dank Vance as POTUS sooner than we expected. Who would put Elon Musk in charge of a national ground game? Why would anyone want to hear or see Mister Pasty? Let’s get right to it. This is from Politico. “Musk the surrogate: The tech titan will hit the campaign trail for Trump. Those close to Musk say his primary focus is on Pennsylvania.” This report is by Alex Isenstadt. So, DonOld can’t do the rally thing very well, so they’re sending Elon? What kind of Hail Mary pass is this?
Tech billionaire Elon Musk will ramp up his personal efforts to elect Donald Trump in the remaining weeks of the election — including making visits to Pennsylvania to campaign for the former president.
Musk intends to appear in the swing state in the four weeks leading up to Nov. 5, according to a person who has spoken with his team and was granted anonymity to speak freely because they weren’t authorized to do so. He is expected to make the stops with the backing of America PAC, a pro-Trump super PAC he formed. He may make other appearances in the state independent of his super PAC — as he did on Sunday evening, when he showed up to the Pittsburgh Steelers game wearing a MAGA hat and was greeted by Steelers owner Art Rooney II, among others.
Musk, the world’s richest person, took his most aggressive steps yet over the weekend to personally show his support for Trump. Musk appeared at Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, where during a brief speech he lavished praise on the former president and urged attendees to “vote, vote, vote.” After the rally, he joined Trump backstage where he participated in a tele-town hall event.
Also over the weekend, Musk changed his profile icon on his account on X to an image of him wearing a black MAGA hat and added to his bio a link to the America PAC account. He also repeatedly promoted posts from the PAC, which is running a pro-Trump voter turnout effort with financial backing from Musk and his associates.
And on Sunday afternoon, Musk unveiled a new program in which he promised to pay $47 to people who register voters in seven swing states — Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Musk has a history of using reward initiatives: He recently unveiled a referral program for Tesla, the electric car company he owns. In the program, buyers and their referrers are awarded $500 or $1,000 in credits which can be used toward Tesla products.
“Ya gotta love Dork MAGA.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Talk about your Dark Money and what is this all about? Dark MAGA? Does this reek of desperation or what? Let’s get back to why he’s sending in the clowns. This is from The New Republic by the great Michael Tomasky. “The Media Is Finally Waking Up to the Story of Trump’s Mental Fitness. On Sunday, The New York Times finally ran a brutal piece on the topic. Let’s hope others follow—and this kick-starts the conversation the country desperately needs to have.”
If things go the way I hope they go in November, it may well turn out that Sunday’s terrific New York Times piece by Peter Baker and Dylan Freedman on Donald Trump’s age and fitness for office could stand as the single most important piece of journalism in this election. If you’ve been reading me and Greg Sargent and Parker Molloy and our Breaking News desk, then you know that The New Republic has been pretty obsessive about the topic of Trump’s mental fitness—and more importantly about the media’s general refusal to discuss it.
This is what has come to be known as the “sanewashing” of Trump: the practice by media outlets of covering him like a normal candidate and not telling their audiences in detail about all the monstrous, false, disjointed, and plain old nonsensical fountains of gibberish he serially spouts at every public appearance he makes.
We (and others) have been critical of the press in general and the Times in particular, mainly because the Times is still the most important news outlet in the country. So let’s give credit where it’s due. The Baker-Freedman piece was a deeply reported analysis that wasn’t afraid to say things most mainstream outlets won’t say. I’d also note that in recent days, Michael Gold, the paper’s Trump correspondent, has written a couple pieces that are more blunt and direct in calling out Trump’s lies and quoting some of his more outrageous comments.
The Sunday Times article puts it on the line: “He rambles, he repeats himself, he roams from thought to thought—some of them hard to understand, some of them unfinished, some of them factually fantastical. He voices outlandish claims that seem to be made up out of whole cloth. He digresses into bizarre tangents about golf, about sharks, about his own ‘beautiful’ body. He relishes ‘a great day in Louisiana’ after spending the day in Georgia. He expresses fear that North Korea is ‘trying to kill me’ when he presumably means Iran. As late as last month, Mr. Trump was still speaking as if he were running against President Biden, five weeks after his withdrawal from the race.”
That’s just for starters. The gist of the piece argues—with statistical analyses of Trump’s tropes and speech patterns—that his rhetoric is very different from what it was in 2015 and 2016. Which is to say, it’s worse in every way: more long-winded, more disconnected, more rambling; also coarser, far more prone to swearing. In sum, the article is devastating about whether Trump, who is now the old one in the race and who would be 82 at the end of a second term, is simply capable on a mental level of doing the job of president.
This is the offering today from the Lincoln Project. They always find a way to amp DonOld’s paranoia volume knob up to 11.
Trump did an interview with Hugh Hewitt, and he’s amped the Hitler rhetoric up to 11. This is written by Sydney Blumenthal at The Guardian. “Donald Trump’s Hitlerian logic is no mistake. The former president claims to have never read Mein Kampf. But his use of blood and soil rhetoric is deliberate.”
If genealogy is destiny, as Donald Trump believes, then “poison in the blood” – a phrase Trump repeatedly uses – determines the fate of nations. By Trump’s logic, “blood” is the true and final measure. Trump, like Hitler, appears to classify people and countries by “blood” on a scale of their innate racial characteristics. Those features define the essence of nations, which are themselves delineated on a racial pyramid, with the purest and whitest, the most Aryan, at the pinnacle. True to his doctrine, the Nazis on his family tree must explain his penchant for Hitlerian rhetoric.
“Poison in the blood” was the core of Hitler’s race doctrine as well. Hitler, too, believed it explained the rise and fall of civilizations. “All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning,” stated Hitler. It is also Trump’s fundamental trope. “We’re poisoning the blood of our country, and you have people coming in, think of it, mental institutions all over the world are being emptied out into the United States,” he said on Fox News in March. “Jails and prisons are being emptied out into the United States. This is poisoning our country.”
Just recently, on 31 August, addressing Moms For Liberty, a rightwing group devoted to book-banning, he raised again the menace of “poison in the blood”: “But what’s happening to our country, our country is being poisoned, poisoned!”
At a rally on 18 September, Trump elaborated: “They’re coming from the Congo, they’re coming from Africa, they’re coming from the Middle East, they’re coming from all over the world – Asia! A lot of it coming from Asia … And what’s happening to our country is we’re just destroying the fabric of life in our country, and we’re not going to take it any longer, and you got to get rid of these people.”
“Blut und Boden” – blood and soil – was adopted as an official slogan of the Nazi regime to express its ideal of the nation rooted in the authentic unity of Aryan blood. The community of its people – Volksgemeinschaft – comprised only those of shared ethnic blood. Aliens corrupting the blood, principally Jews, but also Slavs, Poles and Roma, were described as disease carriers and “vermin” – Volksshadlinge – and posed an existential threat. Only those people of the blood belonged to the Heimat, a concept the Nazis cast as the racially pure home, intrinsic to Blut und Boden.
Jews were Heimatlos – a people separate from the Heimat, without a true home, wanderers, cosmopolitans and globalists, a menace to the sanctity of the culture and the identity of the nation. They were not simply outsiders, or the Other. They were a different species – subhumans, Untermenschen – and must be eradicated to preserve the blood of the race. “Although it has features similar to a human, the subhuman is lower on the spiritual and psychological scale than any animal,” instructed a pamphlet entitled Der Untermenschen, illustrated with distorted photographs of these lower beings to depict the “bestial” nature of the subhuman Jews and Slavs. Four million copies were published in 1942 under the direction of Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS.
“In some cases, they’re not people, in my opinion,” Trump said this March. “But I’m not allowed to say that because the radical left says that’s a terrible thing to say. These are animals, OK, and we have to stop it.” When they are removed, it will be, says Trump, “a bloody story”.
Here’s the report from HuffPo on the Hitler Language by Matt Shuman. “Trump: Immigrants Have Brought ‘Bad Genes’ Into The Country. The Republican presidential candidate has long been obsessed with the racist talking point that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of America.”
During an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Monday, Donald Trump said immigrants were filling the country with “bad genes” and used lies about decades-old crime statistics to make his point.
Trump has long been obsessed with the idea that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of America — echoing Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler’s rhetoric. For years, he has lied that other countries are purposefully sending criminals to the United States.
As part of his recent weekslong racist smear campaign, Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), falsely said Haitian immigrants had raised the infectious disease rate in Springfield, Ohio. And Trump has been touting his mass deportation agenda, which he says he’ll enact as soon as he’s in office.
“How about allowing people to come through an open border, 13,000 of which were murderers?” Trump told Hewitt, referring to the Biden administration. “Many of them murdered far more than one person, and they’re now happily living in the United States. You know, now, a murderer, I believe this, it’s in their genes. And we’ve got a lot of bad genes in our country right now. They left, they had 425,000 people come into our country that shouldn’t be here that are criminals.”
The xenophobic claim that immigrants are genetically predisposed to committing violent crimes is shocking and false — but xenophobia is also a cornerstone of Trump’s presidential campaign.
Trump’s numbers are based on heavily manipulated statistics about the criminal conviction records of people with cases in immigration court — cases that span several decades, some long before President Joe Biden was in office, and which include people currently serving prison time.
You may read, hear and see more on the latest Hugh Hewitt interview today at this link. “Former President Trump On The Anniversary Of The 10/7 Massacre In Israel.” Yes, that is an interesting headline, isn’t it?
HH: If Israel hits Iran and goes after the nuclear sites, will you applaud Israel and back them up?
DT: Well, you want to do what they want to do. Now they may be making a deal with Iran right now. You know, to be honest with you, because Iran’s not looking so good. You know, Iran is not looking like they looked two months ago, if you want to know the truth. They could be making a deal. They could be doing some very smart things right now. There are a lot of things they can do. But the nice thing is they’re entitled to an attack, and nobody will be upset if they attack, because they’re entitled. Because Iran hit them with 187 missiles. And by the way, how good is the shield? And the United States should have a shield.
Here’s the hot take from Morning Joe from Raw Story for what it’s worth. “‘Increasingly deranged’ Trump is inciting ‘civil war’ as election loss looms: Morning Joe.”
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough warned Monday that an “increasingly desperate” Donald Trump is inciting civil war in anticipation of another election loss.
The former president returned to the scene of his first apparent assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, where he baselessly accused Democrats of trying to kill him and his family members presented the November election as a choice between “good versus evil.
The rhetoric left the “Morning Joe” host disgusted and disturbed.
“The level of un-American activity that you just saw is stunning,” Scarborough said. “That is un-American. They know they’re lying, Donald Trump knows that’s a lie. He will tell you that the Secret Service, he thought, did the best job they could do. The fact that J.D. Vance and Trump’s family would come out and out and say what they said, takes the threat of violence, takes the threat beyond where it was even leading up to Jan. 6.
“This is an increasingly desperate person, an increasingly desperate family, who is preparing for civil war. They just are. Talking about they’re trying to kill him, Democrats are trying to kill him, and the lies. Think about this.”
“I saw part of Donald Trump’s speech this weekend,” Scarborough continued. “It was remarkable, the lies. Not just on these things, but on policy. He’d make up things and throw it out there. I was shocked that the audience was really that stupid, to believe the crazy lies that he was throwing out there.
This was a shock to me. It also comes from Raw Story, as reported by David McAfee. ‘Is that a threat?’ Trump stuns observers with a comment about Harris voter ‘getting hurt.'”
Donald Trump shocked observers on Sunday with a comment he made about a potential supporter of Vice President Kamala Harris at one of the former president’s swing-state rallies.
Trump, who has been accused of fostering violence that occurred on Jan. 6, 2021, gave a speech in Wisconsin over the weekend. At that rally, the ex-president battled a fly on stage and called his own campaign members “so stupid.”
At that same rally, Trump made an off-hand comment that had some political onlookers sounding the alarm.
“Is there anybody here who’s going to vote for lyin’ Kamala?” Trump asked his rally attendees. “Actually, I should say don’t raise your hand, it would be very dangerous. We don’t want to see anybody get hurt. Please don’t raise your hand.”
Harris’ campaign shared the video on social media, writing, “Trump says it’s ‘very dangerous’ for Kamala Harris voters to identify themselves because they’ll ‘get hurt.'”
Retired research engineer David Rommel voluntarily identified his voting preferences:
“I’m voting for Kamala! I’m a republican that is not opposed to taking on that challenge,” he wrote. “The only thing that scares me is Trump winning another term. When Trump is in prison and they are all arrested for rioting we can all take a breath of fresh air.”
A popular account called CALL TO ACTIVISM, founded by attorney Joe Gallina, replied, “What the hell does this mean? Donald Trump says it’s ‘very dangerous’ for Kamala Harris voters to identify themselves because they’ll ‘get hurt.’ Is that a threat??”
DonOld’s economic policy platform has gotten the attention of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. It’s like he’s purposefully going to tank the US economy. These folks are always deficit hawks. Here’s their bias/leaning report from Media Bias/Fact Check.
Overall, we rate The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) as slightly right-center Biased based on advocacy for a reduction in entitlement spending. We also rate them High in factual reporting based on regularly being used as a resource for IFCN fact-checkers.
And here’s their numbers and analysis.
Under our central estimate, Vice President Harris’s plan would increase the debt by $3.50 trillion through 2035, while President Trump’s plan would increase the debt by $7.50 trillion.
These estimates come with a wide range of uncertainty, reflecting both different interpretations and estimates of the policies. Under our low- and high-cost estimates, we estimate Vice President Harris’s plan could have no significant fiscal impact or increase debt by $8.10 trillion through 2035, while President Trump’s plan could increase debt by between $1.45 and $15.15 trillion. Our analysis will be updated if additional policies are introduced.
So, you can see that even deficit hawks recognize Trump’s plan as a run on the Treasury for billionaires. Things are not going very well for Trump, which is why he’s acting out so many ways, but this may not mean we’re rid of him. Don’t forget that behind the scenes in many states are crazy Maga Supporters like Tina Peters. We still have to consider the threats of violence. We also need to realize there’s a lot of damage to the country and our democracy done already. This headline from the AP is a frightening reminder. “Supreme Court declines Biden administration appeal in Texas emergency abortion case.”
The Supreme Court on Monday let stand a decision barring emergency abortions that violate the law in Texas, which has one of the country’s strictest abortion bans.
The justices did not detail their reasoning for keeping in place a lower court order that said hospitals cannot be required to provide pregnancy terminations if they would break Texas law. There were no publicly noted dissents.
The decision comes weeks before a presidential election where abortion has been a key issue after the high court’s 2022 decision overturning the nationwide right to abortion.
The justices rebuffed a Biden administration push to throw out the lower court order. The administration argues that under federal law hospitals must perform abortions if needed in cases where a pregnant patient’s health or life is at serious risk, even in states where it’s banned.
Complaints of pregnant women in medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms in Texas and elsewhere have spiked as hospitals grapple with whether standard care could violate strict state laws against abortion.
The administration pointed to the Supreme Court’s action in a similar case from Idaho earlier this year in which the justices narrowly allowed emergency abortions to resume while a lawsuit continues.s
Finally, decades of ignoring climate change have led to the fast development of Hurricane Milton into a Category 4 aimed at Tampa. This is from the Washington Post. Hurricane Milton reaches Category 5 strength on approach to Florida. The storm is expected to produce a devasting surge along Florida’s west coast, which could include the Tampa Bay area. Some decrease in strength is forecast ahead of landfall.
Milton, a top-tier Category 5 hurricane over the Gulf of Mexico, is intensifying at near-record speed as it churns toward the west coast of Florida. The storm is expected to make landfall Wednesday or early Thursday as a “large and powerful hurricane,” according to the National Hurricane Center. It is predicted to produce a potentially devastating ocean surge over 10 feet in some areas, including perhaps in flood-prone Tampa Bay.
Since Sunday night, the storm’s rate of strengthening has reached extreme levels — its intensity leaping from a Category 1 to 5. The storm’s peak winds Monday afternoon were up to 175 mph, an 85 mph increase in 12 hours.
The Hurricane Center described the storm’s rate of intensification as “remarkable.” The explosive development has occurred over record-warm waters in the Gulf, with the extreme warmth linked to human-caused climate change.
Fuck the entire “Drill baby Drill” krewe of death. Every time I hear the name, I can only think of my drunk great-grandfather, who was murdered while coming home from a bar in KCMO. His death led to my mother’s parents having to take care of my grandmother’s sisters. That story has stayed with me for decades. So, anyone in the path of this thing should really get out of there. That advice comes from me, who fled Katrina with dogs and cat in tow at the very last minute. If you’re on the Gulf side of this thing there will be surreal surge levels that nothing can survive. I also can’t imagine how stretched FEMA, the country’s National Guard, and every disaster response NGO will be. Prepare like you’ll be on your own for a while because you may be. I am forever thankful that I had incredible primitive camping chops via the Girl Scouts. You’ll need all those skills to survive this.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
https://skydancingblog.com/2024/10/07/mostly-monday-reads-poor-poor-pitiful-trump/
#DonOld #DorkMaga #Repeat1968JohnBuss #BansOffOurBodies #HurricaneMilton #MisterPastyAkaElon #TrumpIncitesViolenceAgain #UnfitForOffice
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“I’m sorry, but Leon Musk deserves Mr Trump’s Purple Heart after taking one for the team instead of all this ridicule.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Could the next big October Surprise be the media deciding to report how unfit DonOld is for office? Rumors are that his new brofriends are about to get him elected only to turn around and do a 25th Amendment so that we get J Dank Vance as POTUS sooner than we expected. Who would put Elon Musk in charge of a national ground game? Why would anyone want to hear or see Mister Pasty? Let’s get right to it. This is from Politico. “Musk the surrogate: The tech titan will hit the campaign trail for Trump. Those close to Musk say his primary focus is on Pennsylvania.” This report is by Alex Isenstadt. So, DonOld can’t do the rally thing very well, so they’re sending Elon? What kind of Hail Mary pass is this?
Tech billionaire Elon Musk will ramp up his personal efforts to elect Donald Trump in the remaining weeks of the election — including making visits to Pennsylvania to campaign for the former president.
Musk intends to appear in the swing state in the four weeks leading up to Nov. 5, according to a person who has spoken with his team and was granted anonymity to speak freely because they weren’t authorized to do so. He is expected to make the stops with the backing of America PAC, a pro-Trump super PAC he formed. He may make other appearances in the state independent of his super PAC — as he did on Sunday evening, when he showed up to the Pittsburgh Steelers game wearing a MAGA hat and was greeted by Steelers owner Art Rooney II, among others.
Musk, the world’s richest person, took his most aggressive steps yet over the weekend to personally show his support for Trump. Musk appeared at Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, where during a brief speech he lavished praise on the former president and urged attendees to “vote, vote, vote.” After the rally, he joined Trump backstage where he participated in a tele-town hall event.
Also over the weekend, Musk changed his profile icon on his account on X to an image of him wearing a black MAGA hat and added to his bio a link to the America PAC account. He also repeatedly promoted posts from the PAC, which is running a pro-Trump voter turnout effort with financial backing from Musk and his associates.
And on Sunday afternoon, Musk unveiled a new program in which he promised to pay $47 to people who register voters in seven swing states — Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Musk has a history of using reward initiatives: He recently unveiled a referral program for Tesla, the electric car company he owns. In the program, buyers and their referrers are awarded $500 or $1,000 in credits which can be used toward Tesla products.
“Ya gotta love Dork MAGA.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Talk about your Dark Money and what is this all about? Dark MAGA? Does this reek of desperation or what? Let’s get back to why he’s sending in the clowns. This is from The New Republic by the great Michael Tomasky. “The Media Is Finally Waking Up to the Story of Trump’s Mental Fitness. On Sunday, The New York Times finally ran a brutal piece on the topic. Let’s hope others follow—and this kick-starts the conversation the country desperately needs to have.”
If things go the way I hope they go in November, it may well turn out that Sunday’s terrific New York Times piece by Peter Baker and Dylan Freedman on Donald Trump’s age and fitness for office could stand as the single most important piece of journalism in this election. If you’ve been reading me and Greg Sargent and Parker Molloy and our Breaking News desk, then you know that The New Republic has been pretty obsessive about the topic of Trump’s mental fitness—and more importantly about the media’s general refusal to discuss it.
This is what has come to be known as the “sanewashing” of Trump: the practice by media outlets of covering him like a normal candidate and not telling their audiences in detail about all the monstrous, false, disjointed, and plain old nonsensical fountains of gibberish he serially spouts at every public appearance he makes.
We (and others) have been critical of the press in general and the Times in particular, mainly because the Times is still the most important news outlet in the country. So let’s give credit where it’s due. The Baker-Freedman piece was a deeply reported analysis that wasn’t afraid to say things most mainstream outlets won’t say. I’d also note that in recent days, Michael Gold, the paper’s Trump correspondent, has written a couple pieces that are more blunt and direct in calling out Trump’s lies and quoting some of his more outrageous comments.
The Sunday Times article puts it on the line: “He rambles, he repeats himself, he roams from thought to thought—some of them hard to understand, some of them unfinished, some of them factually fantastical. He voices outlandish claims that seem to be made up out of whole cloth. He digresses into bizarre tangents about golf, about sharks, about his own ‘beautiful’ body. He relishes ‘a great day in Louisiana’ after spending the day in Georgia. He expresses fear that North Korea is ‘trying to kill me’ when he presumably means Iran. As late as last month, Mr. Trump was still speaking as if he were running against President Biden, five weeks after his withdrawal from the race.”
That’s just for starters. The gist of the piece argues—with statistical analyses of Trump’s tropes and speech patterns—that his rhetoric is very different from what it was in 2015 and 2016. Which is to say, it’s worse in every way: more long-winded, more disconnected, more rambling; also coarser, far more prone to swearing. In sum, the article is devastating about whether Trump, who is now the old one in the race and who would be 82 at the end of a second term, is simply capable on a mental level of doing the job of president.
This is the offering today from the Lincoln Project. They always find a way to amp DonOld’s paranoia volume knob up to 11.
Trump did an interview with Hugh Hewitt, and he’s amped the Hitler rhetoric up to 11. This is written by Sydney Blumenthal at The Guardian. “Donald Trump’s Hitlerian logic is no mistake. The former president claims to have never read Mein Kampf. But his use of blood and soil rhetoric is deliberate.”
If genealogy is destiny, as Donald Trump believes, then “poison in the blood” – a phrase Trump repeatedly uses – determines the fate of nations. By Trump’s logic, “blood” is the true and final measure. Trump, like Hitler, appears to classify people and countries by “blood” on a scale of their innate racial characteristics. Those features define the essence of nations, which are themselves delineated on a racial pyramid, with the purest and whitest, the most Aryan, at the pinnacle. True to his doctrine, the Nazis on his family tree must explain his penchant for Hitlerian rhetoric.
“Poison in the blood” was the core of Hitler’s race doctrine as well. Hitler, too, believed it explained the rise and fall of civilizations. “All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning,” stated Hitler. It is also Trump’s fundamental trope. “We’re poisoning the blood of our country, and you have people coming in, think of it, mental institutions all over the world are being emptied out into the United States,” he said on Fox News in March. “Jails and prisons are being emptied out into the United States. This is poisoning our country.”
Just recently, on 31 August, addressing Moms For Liberty, a rightwing group devoted to book-banning, he raised again the menace of “poison in the blood”: “But what’s happening to our country, our country is being poisoned, poisoned!”
At a rally on 18 September, Trump elaborated: “They’re coming from the Congo, they’re coming from Africa, they’re coming from the Middle East, they’re coming from all over the world – Asia! A lot of it coming from Asia … And what’s happening to our country is we’re just destroying the fabric of life in our country, and we’re not going to take it any longer, and you got to get rid of these people.”
“Blut und Boden” – blood and soil – was adopted as an official slogan of the Nazi regime to express its ideal of the nation rooted in the authentic unity of Aryan blood. The community of its people – Volksgemeinschaft – comprised only those of shared ethnic blood. Aliens corrupting the blood, principally Jews, but also Slavs, Poles and Roma, were described as disease carriers and “vermin” – Volksshadlinge – and posed an existential threat. Only those people of the blood belonged to the Heimat, a concept the Nazis cast as the racially pure home, intrinsic to Blut und Boden.
Jews were Heimatlos – a people separate from the Heimat, without a true home, wanderers, cosmopolitans and globalists, a menace to the sanctity of the culture and the identity of the nation. They were not simply outsiders, or the Other. They were a different species – subhumans, Untermenschen – and must be eradicated to preserve the blood of the race. “Although it has features similar to a human, the subhuman is lower on the spiritual and psychological scale than any animal,” instructed a pamphlet entitled Der Untermenschen, illustrated with distorted photographs of these lower beings to depict the “bestial” nature of the subhuman Jews and Slavs. Four million copies were published in 1942 under the direction of Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS.
“In some cases, they’re not people, in my opinion,” Trump said this March. “But I’m not allowed to say that because the radical left says that’s a terrible thing to say. These are animals, OK, and we have to stop it.” When they are removed, it will be, says Trump, “a bloody story”.
Here’s the report from HuffPo on the Hitler Language by Matt Shuman. “Trump: Immigrants Have Brought ‘Bad Genes’ Into The Country. The Republican presidential candidate has long been obsessed with the racist talking point that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of America.”
During an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Monday, Donald Trump said immigrants were filling the country with “bad genes” and used lies about decades-old crime statistics to make his point.
Trump has long been obsessed with the idea that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of America — echoing Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler’s rhetoric. For years, he has lied that other countries are purposefully sending criminals to the United States.
As part of his recent weekslong racist smear campaign, Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), falsely said Haitian immigrants had raised the infectious disease rate in Springfield, Ohio. And Trump has been touting his mass deportation agenda, which he says he’ll enact as soon as he’s in office.
“How about allowing people to come through an open border, 13,000 of which were murderers?” Trump told Hewitt, referring to the Biden administration. “Many of them murdered far more than one person, and they’re now happily living in the United States. You know, now, a murderer, I believe this, it’s in their genes. And we’ve got a lot of bad genes in our country right now. They left, they had 425,000 people come into our country that shouldn’t be here that are criminals.”
The xenophobic claim that immigrants are genetically predisposed to committing violent crimes is shocking and false — but xenophobia is also a cornerstone of Trump’s presidential campaign.
Trump’s numbers are based on heavily manipulated statistics about the criminal conviction records of people with cases in immigration court — cases that span several decades, some long before President Joe Biden was in office, and which include people currently serving prison time.
You may read, hear and see more on the latest Hugh Hewitt interview today at this link. “Former President Trump On The Anniversary Of The 10/7 Massacre In Israel.” Yes, that is an interesting headline, isn’t it?
HH: If Israel hits Iran and goes after the nuclear sites, will you applaud Israel and back them up?
DT: Well, you want to do what they want to do. Now they may be making a deal with Iran right now. You know, to be honest with you, because Iran’s not looking so good. You know, Iran is not looking like they looked two months ago, if you want to know the truth. They could be making a deal. They could be doing some very smart things right now. There are a lot of things they can do. But the nice thing is they’re entitled to an attack, and nobody will be upset if they attack, because they’re entitled. Because Iran hit them with 187 missiles. And by the way, how good is the shield? And the United States should have a shield.
Here’s the hot take from Morning Joe from Raw Story for what it’s worth. “‘Increasingly deranged’ Trump is inciting ‘civil war’ as election loss looms: Morning Joe.”
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough warned Monday that an “increasingly desperate” Donald Trump is inciting civil war in anticipation of another election loss.
The former president returned to the scene of his first apparent assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, where he baselessly accused Democrats of trying to kill him and his family members presented the November election as a choice between “good versus evil.
The rhetoric left the “Morning Joe” host disgusted and disturbed.
“The level of un-American activity that you just saw is stunning,” Scarborough said. “That is un-American. They know they’re lying, Donald Trump knows that’s a lie. He will tell you that the Secret Service, he thought, did the best job they could do. The fact that J.D. Vance and Trump’s family would come out and out and say what they said, takes the threat of violence, takes the threat beyond where it was even leading up to Jan. 6.
“This is an increasingly desperate person, an increasingly desperate family, who is preparing for civil war. They just are. Talking about they’re trying to kill him, Democrats are trying to kill him, and the lies. Think about this.”
“I saw part of Donald Trump’s speech this weekend,” Scarborough continued. “It was remarkable, the lies. Not just on these things, but on policy. He’d make up things and throw it out there. I was shocked that the audience was really that stupid, to believe the crazy lies that he was throwing out there.
This was a shock to me. It also comes from Raw Story, as reported by David McAfee. ‘Is that a threat?’ Trump stuns observers with a comment about Harris voter ‘getting hurt.'”
Donald Trump shocked observers on Sunday with a comment he made about a potential supporter of Vice President Kamala Harris at one of the former president’s swing-state rallies.
Trump, who has been accused of fostering violence that occurred on Jan. 6, 2021, gave a speech in Wisconsin over the weekend. At that rally, the ex-president battled a fly on stage and called his own campaign members “so stupid.”
At that same rally, Trump made an off-hand comment that had some political onlookers sounding the alarm.
“Is there anybody here who’s going to vote for lyin’ Kamala?” Trump asked his rally attendees. “Actually, I should say don’t raise your hand, it would be very dangerous. We don’t want to see anybody get hurt. Please don’t raise your hand.”
Harris’ campaign shared the video on social media, writing, “Trump says it’s ‘very dangerous’ for Kamala Harris voters to identify themselves because they’ll ‘get hurt.'”
Retired research engineer David Rommel voluntarily identified his voting preferences:
“I’m voting for Kamala! I’m a republican that is not opposed to taking on that challenge,” he wrote. “The only thing that scares me is Trump winning another term. When Trump is in prison and they are all arrested for rioting we can all take a breath of fresh air.”
A popular account called CALL TO ACTIVISM, founded by attorney Joe Gallina, replied, “What the hell does this mean? Donald Trump says it’s ‘very dangerous’ for Kamala Harris voters to identify themselves because they’ll ‘get hurt.’ Is that a threat??”
DonOld’s economic policy platform has gotten the attention of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. It’s like he’s purposefully going to tank the US economy. These folks are always deficit hawks. Here’s their bias/leaning report from Media Bias/Fact Check.
Overall, we rate The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) as slightly right-center Biased based on advocacy for a reduction in entitlement spending. We also rate them High in factual reporting based on regularly being used as a resource for IFCN fact-checkers.
And here’s their numbers and analysis.
Under our central estimate, Vice President Harris’s plan would increase the debt by $3.50 trillion through 2035, while President Trump’s plan would increase the debt by $7.50 trillion.
These estimates come with a wide range of uncertainty, reflecting both different interpretations and estimates of the policies. Under our low- and high-cost estimates, we estimate Vice President Harris’s plan could have no significant fiscal impact or increase debt by $8.10 trillion through 2035, while President Trump’s plan could increase debt by between $1.45 and $15.15 trillion. Our analysis will be updated if additional policies are introduced.
So, you can see that even deficit hawks recognize Trump’s plan as a run on the Treasury for billionaires. Things are not going very well for Trump, which is why he’s acting out so many ways, but this may not mean we’re rid of him. Don’t forget that behind the scenes in many states are crazy Maga Supporters like Tina Peters. We still have to consider the threats of violence. We also need to realize there’s a lot of damage to the country and our democracy done already. This headline from the AP is a frightening reminder. “Supreme Court declines Biden administration appeal in Texas emergency abortion case.”
The Supreme Court on Monday let stand a decision barring emergency abortions that violate the law in Texas, which has one of the country’s strictest abortion bans.
The justices did not detail their reasoning for keeping in place a lower court order that said hospitals cannot be required to provide pregnancy terminations if they would break Texas law. There were no publicly noted dissents.
The decision comes weeks before a presidential election where abortion has been a key issue after the high court’s 2022 decision overturning the nationwide right to abortion.
The justices rebuffed a Biden administration push to throw out the lower court order. The administration argues that under federal law hospitals must perform abortions if needed in cases where a pregnant patient’s health or life is at serious risk, even in states where it’s banned.
Complaints of pregnant women in medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms in Texas and elsewhere have spiked as hospitals grapple with whether standard care could violate strict state laws against abortion.
The administration pointed to the Supreme Court’s action in a similar case from Idaho earlier this year in which the justices narrowly allowed emergency abortions to resume while a lawsuit continues.s
Finally, decades of ignoring climate change have led to the fast development of Hurricane Milton into a Category 4 aimed at Tampa. This is from the Washington Post. Hurricane Milton reaches Category 5 strength on approach to Florida. The storm is expected to produce a devasting surge along Florida’s west coast, which could include the Tampa Bay area. Some decrease in strength is forecast ahead of landfall.
Milton, a top-tier Category 5 hurricane over the Gulf of Mexico, is intensifying at near-record speed as it churns toward the west coast of Florida. The storm is expected to make landfall Wednesday or early Thursday as a “large and powerful hurricane,” according to the National Hurricane Center. It is predicted to produce a potentially devastating ocean surge over 10 feet in some areas, including perhaps in flood-prone Tampa Bay.
Since Sunday night, the storm’s rate of strengthening has reached extreme levels — its intensity leaping from a Category 1 to 5. The storm’s peak winds Monday afternoon were up to 175 mph, an 85 mph increase in 12 hours.
The Hurricane Center described the storm’s rate of intensification as “remarkable.” The explosive development has occurred over record-warm waters in the Gulf, with the extreme warmth linked to human-caused climate change.
Fuck the entire “Drill baby Drill” krewe of death. Every time I hear the name, I can only think of my drunk great-grandfather, who was murdered while coming home from a bar in KCMO. His death led to my mother’s parents having to take care of my grandmother’s sisters. That story has stayed with me for decades. So, anyone in the path of this thing should really get out of there. That advice comes from me, who fled Katrina with dogs and cat in tow at the very last minute. If you’re on the Gulf side of this thing there will be surreal surge levels that nothing can survive. I also can’t imagine how stretched FEMA, the country’s National Guard, and every disaster response NGO will be. Prepare like you’ll be on your own for a while because you may be. I am forever thankful that I had incredible primitive camping chops via the Girl Scouts. You’ll need all those skills to survive this.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
https://skydancingblog.com/2024/10/07/mostly-monday-reads-poor-poor-pitiful-trump/
#DonOld #DorkMaga #Repeat1968JohnBuss #BansOffOurBodies #HurricaneMilton #MisterPastyAkaElon #TrumpIncitesViolenceAgain #UnfitForOffice
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“I’m sorry, but Leon Musk deserves Mr Trump’s Purple Heart after taking one for the team instead of all this ridicule.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Could the next big October Surprise be the media deciding to report how unfit DonOld is for office? Rumors are that his new brofriends are about to get him elected only to turn around and do a 25th Amendment so that we get J Dank Vance as POTUS sooner than we expected. Who would put Elon Musk in charge of a national ground game? Why would anyone want to hear or see Mister Pasty? Let’s get right to it. This is from Politico. “Musk the surrogate: The tech titan will hit the campaign trail for Trump. Those close to Musk say his primary focus is on Pennsylvania.” This report is by Alex Isenstadt. So, DonOld can’t do the rally thing very well, so they’re sending Elon? What kind of Hail Mary pass is this?
Tech billionaire Elon Musk will ramp up his personal efforts to elect Donald Trump in the remaining weeks of the election — including making visits to Pennsylvania to campaign for the former president.
Musk intends to appear in the swing state in the four weeks leading up to Nov. 5, according to a person who has spoken with his team and was granted anonymity to speak freely because they weren’t authorized to do so. He is expected to make the stops with the backing of America PAC, a pro-Trump super PAC he formed. He may make other appearances in the state independent of his super PAC — as he did on Sunday evening, when he showed up to the Pittsburgh Steelers game wearing a MAGA hat and was greeted by Steelers owner Art Rooney II, among others.
Musk, the world’s richest person, took his most aggressive steps yet over the weekend to personally show his support for Trump. Musk appeared at Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, where during a brief speech he lavished praise on the former president and urged attendees to “vote, vote, vote.” After the rally, he joined Trump backstage where he participated in a tele-town hall event.
Also over the weekend, Musk changed his profile icon on his account on X to an image of him wearing a black MAGA hat and added to his bio a link to the America PAC account. He also repeatedly promoted posts from the PAC, which is running a pro-Trump voter turnout effort with financial backing from Musk and his associates.
And on Sunday afternoon, Musk unveiled a new program in which he promised to pay $47 to people who register voters in seven swing states — Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Musk has a history of using reward initiatives: He recently unveiled a referral program for Tesla, the electric car company he owns. In the program, buyers and their referrers are awarded $500 or $1,000 in credits which can be used toward Tesla products.
“Ya gotta love Dork MAGA.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Talk about your Dark Money and what is this all about? Dark MAGA? Does this reek of desperation or what? Let’s get back to why he’s sending in the clowns. This is from The New Republic by the great Michael Tomasky. “The Media Is Finally Waking Up to the Story of Trump’s Mental Fitness. On Sunday, The New York Times finally ran a brutal piece on the topic. Let’s hope others follow—and this kick-starts the conversation the country desperately needs to have.”
If things go the way I hope they go in November, it may well turn out that Sunday’s terrific New York Times piece by Peter Baker and Dylan Freedman on Donald Trump’s age and fitness for office could stand as the single most important piece of journalism in this election. If you’ve been reading me and Greg Sargent and Parker Molloy and our Breaking News desk, then you know that The New Republic has been pretty obsessive about the topic of Trump’s mental fitness—and more importantly about the media’s general refusal to discuss it.
This is what has come to be known as the “sanewashing” of Trump: the practice by media outlets of covering him like a normal candidate and not telling their audiences in detail about all the monstrous, false, disjointed, and plain old nonsensical fountains of gibberish he serially spouts at every public appearance he makes.
We (and others) have been critical of the press in general and the Times in particular, mainly because the Times is still the most important news outlet in the country. So let’s give credit where it’s due. The Baker-Freedman piece was a deeply reported analysis that wasn’t afraid to say things most mainstream outlets won’t say. I’d also note that in recent days, Michael Gold, the paper’s Trump correspondent, has written a couple pieces that are more blunt and direct in calling out Trump’s lies and quoting some of his more outrageous comments.
The Sunday Times article puts it on the line: “He rambles, he repeats himself, he roams from thought to thought—some of them hard to understand, some of them unfinished, some of them factually fantastical. He voices outlandish claims that seem to be made up out of whole cloth. He digresses into bizarre tangents about golf, about sharks, about his own ‘beautiful’ body. He relishes ‘a great day in Louisiana’ after spending the day in Georgia. He expresses fear that North Korea is ‘trying to kill me’ when he presumably means Iran. As late as last month, Mr. Trump was still speaking as if he were running against President Biden, five weeks after his withdrawal from the race.”
That’s just for starters. The gist of the piece argues—with statistical analyses of Trump’s tropes and speech patterns—that his rhetoric is very different from what it was in 2015 and 2016. Which is to say, it’s worse in every way: more long-winded, more disconnected, more rambling; also coarser, far more prone to swearing. In sum, the article is devastating about whether Trump, who is now the old one in the race and who would be 82 at the end of a second term, is simply capable on a mental level of doing the job of president.
This is the offering today from the Lincoln Project. They always find a way to amp DonOld’s paranoia volume knob up to 11.
Trump did an interview with Hugh Hewitt, and he’s amped the Hitler rhetoric up to 11. This is written by Sydney Blumenthal at The Guardian. “Donald Trump’s Hitlerian logic is no mistake. The former president claims to have never read Mein Kampf. But his use of blood and soil rhetoric is deliberate.”
If genealogy is destiny, as Donald Trump believes, then “poison in the blood” – a phrase Trump repeatedly uses – determines the fate of nations. By Trump’s logic, “blood” is the true and final measure. Trump, like Hitler, appears to classify people and countries by “blood” on a scale of their innate racial characteristics. Those features define the essence of nations, which are themselves delineated on a racial pyramid, with the purest and whitest, the most Aryan, at the pinnacle. True to his doctrine, the Nazis on his family tree must explain his penchant for Hitlerian rhetoric.
“Poison in the blood” was the core of Hitler’s race doctrine as well. Hitler, too, believed it explained the rise and fall of civilizations. “All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning,” stated Hitler. It is also Trump’s fundamental trope. “We’re poisoning the blood of our country, and you have people coming in, think of it, mental institutions all over the world are being emptied out into the United States,” he said on Fox News in March. “Jails and prisons are being emptied out into the United States. This is poisoning our country.”
Just recently, on 31 August, addressing Moms For Liberty, a rightwing group devoted to book-banning, he raised again the menace of “poison in the blood”: “But what’s happening to our country, our country is being poisoned, poisoned!”
At a rally on 18 September, Trump elaborated: “They’re coming from the Congo, they’re coming from Africa, they’re coming from the Middle East, they’re coming from all over the world – Asia! A lot of it coming from Asia … And what’s happening to our country is we’re just destroying the fabric of life in our country, and we’re not going to take it any longer, and you got to get rid of these people.”
“Blut und Boden” – blood and soil – was adopted as an official slogan of the Nazi regime to express its ideal of the nation rooted in the authentic unity of Aryan blood. The community of its people – Volksgemeinschaft – comprised only those of shared ethnic blood. Aliens corrupting the blood, principally Jews, but also Slavs, Poles and Roma, were described as disease carriers and “vermin” – Volksshadlinge – and posed an existential threat. Only those people of the blood belonged to the Heimat, a concept the Nazis cast as the racially pure home, intrinsic to Blut und Boden.
Jews were Heimatlos – a people separate from the Heimat, without a true home, wanderers, cosmopolitans and globalists, a menace to the sanctity of the culture and the identity of the nation. They were not simply outsiders, or the Other. They were a different species – subhumans, Untermenschen – and must be eradicated to preserve the blood of the race. “Although it has features similar to a human, the subhuman is lower on the spiritual and psychological scale than any animal,” instructed a pamphlet entitled Der Untermenschen, illustrated with distorted photographs of these lower beings to depict the “bestial” nature of the subhuman Jews and Slavs. Four million copies were published in 1942 under the direction of Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS.
“In some cases, they’re not people, in my opinion,” Trump said this March. “But I’m not allowed to say that because the radical left says that’s a terrible thing to say. These are animals, OK, and we have to stop it.” When they are removed, it will be, says Trump, “a bloody story”.
Here’s the report from HuffPo on the Hitler Language by Matt Shuman. “Trump: Immigrants Have Brought ‘Bad Genes’ Into The Country. The Republican presidential candidate has long been obsessed with the racist talking point that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of America.”
During an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Monday, Donald Trump said immigrants were filling the country with “bad genes” and used lies about decades-old crime statistics to make his point.
Trump has long been obsessed with the idea that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of America — echoing Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler’s rhetoric. For years, he has lied that other countries are purposefully sending criminals to the United States.
As part of his recent weekslong racist smear campaign, Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), falsely said Haitian immigrants had raised the infectious disease rate in Springfield, Ohio. And Trump has been touting his mass deportation agenda, which he says he’ll enact as soon as he’s in office.
“How about allowing people to come through an open border, 13,000 of which were murderers?” Trump told Hewitt, referring to the Biden administration. “Many of them murdered far more than one person, and they’re now happily living in the United States. You know, now, a murderer, I believe this, it’s in their genes. And we’ve got a lot of bad genes in our country right now. They left, they had 425,000 people come into our country that shouldn’t be here that are criminals.”
The xenophobic claim that immigrants are genetically predisposed to committing violent crimes is shocking and false — but xenophobia is also a cornerstone of Trump’s presidential campaign.
Trump’s numbers are based on heavily manipulated statistics about the criminal conviction records of people with cases in immigration court — cases that span several decades, some long before President Joe Biden was in office, and which include people currently serving prison time.
You may read, hear and see more on the latest Hugh Hewitt interview today at this link. “Former President Trump On The Anniversary Of The 10/7 Massacre In Israel.” Yes, that is an weird headline, isn’t it?
HH: If Israel hits Iran and goes after the nuclear sites, will you applaud Israel and back them up?
DT: Well, you want to do what they want to do. Now they may be making a deal with Iran right now. You know, to be honest with you, because Iran’s not looking so good. You know, Iran is not looking like they looked two months ago, if you want to know the truth. They could be making a deal. They could be doing some very smart things right now. There are a lot of things they can do. But the nice thing is they’re entitled to an attack, and nobody will be upset if they attack, because they’re entitled. Because Iran hit them with 187 missiles. And by the way, how good is the shield? And the United States should have a shield.
Here’s the hot take from Morning Joe from Raw Story for what it’s worth. “‘Increasingly deranged’ Trump is inciting ‘civil war’ as election loss looms: Morning Joe.”
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough warned Monday that an “increasingly desperate” Donald Trump is inciting civil war in anticipation of another election loss.
The former president returned to the scene of his first apparent assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, where he baselessly accused Democrats of trying to kill him and his family members presented the November election as a choice between “good versus evil.
The rhetoric left the “Morning Joe” host disgusted and disturbed.
“The level of un-American activity that you just saw is stunning,” Scarborough said. “That is un-American. They know they’re lying, Donald Trump knows that’s a lie. He will tell you that the Secret Service, he thought, did the best job they could do. The fact that J.D. Vance and Trump’s family would come out and out and say what they said, takes the threat of violence, takes the threat beyond where it was even leading up to Jan. 6.
“This is an increasingly desperate person, an increasingly desperate family, who is preparing for civil war. They just are. Talking about they’re trying to kill him, Democrats are trying to kill him, and the lies. Think about this.”
“I saw part of Donald Trump’s speech this weekend,” Scarborough continued. “It was remarkable, the lies. Not just on these things, but on policy. He’d make up things and throw it out there. I was shocked that the audience was really that stupid, to believe the crazy lies that he was throwing out there.
This was a shock to me. It also comes from Raw Story, as reported by David McAfee. ‘Is that a threat?’ Trump stuns observers with a comment about Harris voter ‘getting hurt.'”
Donald Trump shocked observers on Sunday with a comment he made about a potential supporter of Vice President Kamala Harris at one of the former president’s swing-state rallies.
Trump, who has been accused of fostering violence that occurred on Jan. 6, 2021, gave a speech in Wisconsin over the weekend. At that rally, the ex-president battled a fly on stage and called his own campaign members “so stupid.”
At that same rally, Trump made an off-hand comment that had some political onlookers sounding the alarm.
“Is there anybody here who’s going to vote for lyin’ Kamala?” Trump asked his rally attendees. “Actually, I should say don’t raise your hand, it would be very dangerous. We don’t want to see anybody get hurt. Please don’t raise your hand.”
Harris’ campaign shared the video on social media, writing, “Trump says it’s ‘very dangerous’ for Kamala Harris voters to identify themselves because they’ll ‘get hurt.'”
Retired research engineer David Rommel voluntarily identified his voting preferences:
“I’m voting for Kamala! I’m a republican that is not opposed to taking on that challenge,” he wrote. “The only thing that scares me is Trump winning another term. When Trump is in prison and they are all arrested for rioting we can all take a breath of fresh air.”
A popular account called CALL TO ACTIVISM, founded by attorney Joe Gallina, replied, “What the hell does this mean? Donald Trump says it’s ‘very dangerous’ for Kamala Harris voters to identify themselves because they’ll ‘get hurt.’ Is that a threat??”
DonOld’s economic policy platform has gotten the attention of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. It’s like he’s purposefully going to tank the US economy. These folks are always deficit hawks. Here’s their bias/leaning report from Media Bias/Fact Check.
Overall, we rate The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) as slightly right-center Biased based on advocacy for a reduction in entitlement spending. We also rate them High in factual reporting based on regularly being used as a resource for IFCN fact-checkers.
And here’s their numbers and analysis.
Under our central estimate, Vice President Harris’s plan would increase the debt by $3.50 trillion through 2035, while President Trump’s plan would increase the debt by $7.50 trillion.
These estimates come with a wide range of uncertainty, reflecting both different interpretations and estimates of the policies. Under our low- and high-cost estimates, we estimate Vice President Harris’s plan could have no significant fiscal impact or increase debt by $8.10 trillion through 2035, while President Trump’s plan could increase debt by between $1.45 and $15.15 trillion. Our analysis will be updated if additional policies are introduced.
So, you can see that even deficit hawks recognize Trump’s plan as a run on the Treasury for billionaires. Things are not going very well for Trump, which is why he’s acting out so many ways, but this may not mean we’re rid of him. Don’t forget that behind the scenes in many states are crazy Maga Supporters like Tina Peters. We still have to consider the threats of violence. We also need to realize there’s a lot of damage to the country and our democracy done already. This headline from the AP is a frightening reminder. “Supreme Court declines Biden administration appeal in Texas emergency abortion case.”
The Supreme Court on Monday let stand a decision barring emergency abortions that violate the law in Texas, which has one of the country’s strictest abortion bans.
The justices did not detail their reasoning for keeping in place a lower court order that said hospitals cannot be required to provide pregnancy terminations if they would break Texas law. There were no publicly noted dissents.
The decision comes weeks before a presidential election where abortion has been a key issue after the high court’s 2022 decision overturning the nationwide right to abortion.
The justices rebuffed a Biden administration push to throw out the lower court order. The administration argues that under federal law hospitals must perform abortions if needed in cases where a pregnant patient’s health or life is at serious risk, even in states where it’s banned.
Complaints of pregnant women in medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms in Texas and elsewhere have spiked as hospitals grapple with whether standard care could violate strict state laws against abortion.
The administration pointed to the Supreme Court’s action in a similar case from Idaho earlier this year in which the justices narrowly allowed emergency abortions to resume while a lawsuit continues.s
Finally, decades of ignoring climate change have led to the fast development of Hurricane Milton into a Category 4 aimed at Tampa. This is from the Washington Post. Hurricane Milton reaches Category 5 strength on approach to Florida. The storm is expected to produce a devasting surge along Florida’s west coast, which could include the Tampa Bay area. Some decrease in strength is forecast ahead of landfall.
Milton, a top-tier Category 5 hurricane over the Gulf of Mexico, is intensifying at near-record speed as it churns toward the west coast of Florida. The storm is expected to make landfall Wednesday or early Thursday as a “large and powerful hurricane,” according to the National Hurricane Center. It is predicted to produce a potentially devastating ocean surge over 10 feet in some areas, including perhaps in flood-prone Tampa Bay.
Since Sunday night, the storm’s rate of strengthening has reached extreme levels — its intensity leaping from a Category 1 to 5. The storm’s peak winds Monday afternoon were up to 175 mph, an 85 mph increase in 12 hours.
The Hurricane Center described the storm’s rate of intensification as “remarkable.” The explosive development has occurred over record-warm waters in the Gulf, with the extreme warmth linked to human-caused climate change.
Fuck the entire “Drill baby Drill” krewe of death. Every time I hear the name Milton, I can only think of my drunk great-grandfather, who was murdered while coming home from a bar in KCMO. His death led to my mother’s parents having to take care of my grandmother’s sisters. That story has stayed with me for decades. So, anyone in the path of this thing should really get out of there. That advice comes from me, who fled Katrina with dogs and cat in tow at the very last minute. If you’re on the Gulf side of this thing there will be surreal surge levels that nothing can survive. I also can’t imagine how stretched FEMA, the country’s National Guard, and every disaster response NGO will be. Prepare like you’ll be on your own for a while because you may be. I am forever thankful that I had incredible primitive camping chops via the Girl Scouts. You’ll need all those skills to survive this.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
https://skydancingblog.com/2024/10/07/mostly-monday-reads-poor-poor-pitiful-trump/
#DonOld #DorkMaga #Repeat1968JohnBuss #BansOffOurBodies #HurricaneMilton #MisterPastyAkaElon #TrumpIncitesViolenceAgain #UnfitForOffice
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“There ya go, that explains it! Trump is in serious decline.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
This week has been rather mind-blowing for me. First, I watched Former Congresswoman Liz Cheney stand beside Vice President Kamala Harris and heartily endorse her. The number of top Republicans going out of their way to stop DonOld is really heartening. The utter destruction left in the path of Hurricane Helene was beyond the warzone feeling I saw when I finally got to return home to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. I can only imagine what’s in store for us in the future if we don’t speed up policy and action on Climate Change. Then, there’s the kind of shock only practitioners of the Dismal Science could feel. “U.S. Hiring Accelerated in September, Blowing Past Expectations” is a headline in today’s Wall Street Journal. Our economy is so good we’ve booted the once-assumed takeover of the title of the largest economy in the world by China. It has been moved farther into the future if ever.
The U.S. labor market strengthened in the weeks before Election Day, as job growth accelerated in September and the unemployment rate ticked lower.
Employers added 254,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department said Friday. That was significantly more than the 150,000 economists expected, and marked the largest monthly increase since March. The unemployment rate slipped to 4.1%.
Friday’s bumper payrolls report is likely to close the door on another half-percentage-point rate cut by the Federal Reserve at its next meeting in November. It should keep officials on track to lower rates by a quarter point.
The Fed is trying to engineer what is called a soft landing, in which inflation moves down without major deterioration in the labor market. Though Friday is just one data point, it suggests that the U.S. is headed in that direction.
“It puts another set of wheels under the plane in terms of assuring a soft landing,” said Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY-Parthenon.
Friday’s report also signaled that hiring this summer wasn’t as weak as initially thought. Revised figures show employers added 72,000 more jobs in July and August combined than earlier reported.
The latest snapshot of the labor market’s health comes just a month before the U.S. presidential election, where the economy and inflation are key issues for voters. The strong jobs report could help Vice President Kamala Harris. In polls, she trails former President Donald Trump on the economy.
Stocks ticked higher. During much of the inflationary post-Covid-19 boom, stocks often quaked temporarily at stronger-than-expected economic data, because traders took such shocks as a sign that the Fed would tighten monetary policy more aggressively. Investors’ positive reaction Friday showed that they view good news as good news again—even if futures contracts tied to the federal-funds rate suggest traders are now expecting a slower pace of Fed easing.
Employers added jobs at bars and restaurants and construction, as well as in sectors that are less sensitive to the economy’s ups and downs like government, education and healthcare.
There were a few weak spots. Employers modestly cut head count in manufacturing, transportation and warehousing, and temporary help services.
Analysts also said that although September’s jobs report was unexpectedly strong, other economic data point to a slightly less robust hiring picture. Labor Department data released earlier this week showed that the share of workers quitting their jobs each month fell to its lowest rate in more than four years in August, a sign people are more hesitant about leaving their current roles for new ones.
Liz Cheney described the Republican Party as being the MAGA Party. Those left in the MAGA party are living in lies, bigotry, and a world of active sabotage of the truth and of the country. In one of the most callous moves I’ve seen in Congress, Speaker Johnson refuses to call the House back into session to provide the funding needed for FEMA. He wants it to wait until November 12. He’s wandering around Florida today.
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson said Thursday that a congressional emergency spending decision in response to Hurricane Helene “will probably correspond when Congress is expected to return to session.”
Congress will be on recess for more than a month, and is set to return to session on Nov. 12. Johnson seemed to rule out a return before then, although President Joe Biden indicated this week that he may ask Congress to convene before the break’s scheduled end.
“Right before we left on Wednesday, a week ago, Congress appropriated $20 billion to FEMA to cover the immediate aftermath of the storm,” Johnson said in Steinhatchee Thursday. “Of course, we knew it was headed into the coast at that time, so FEMA has the funding that needs to respond immediately. We’re glad to see them on the ground here.”
Johnson said damage assessments must be complete before Congress can update the disaster budget.
“It will take some time to tabulate this storm — it’s one of the biggest in our history,” Johnson said. “So, a lot of that work’s being done immediately, and I think the timing of that will probably correspond when Congress is expected to return to session right after the election, and so we’ll be on that.”
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the Federal Emergency Management Agency lacks enough funding to last through hurricane season, which ends Nov. 30.
Johnson appeared with Florida U.S. Reps. Kat Cammack and Neal Dunn at Roy’s Restaurant, which was ravaged by Helene.
The speaker of the House said that funding further disaster response will be bipartisan.
“There’ll be an appropriate amount requested to Congress, and we’ll have to dig deep and find a way to do that,” he said.
Johnson assured that Congress “will do what’s necessary to make sure that Americans are taken care of.”
What’s most impressive is to see just precisely who 175 Republicans are that voted against the aid. And, yes, it’s basically to make the Biden/Harris Administration look bad so DonOld can rant and make people forget his lousy response to disasters when he occupied the White House. This is from Newsweek. “Full List of Republicans Who Voted Against FEMA Funding Before Helene Hit,” written by Khaleda Rahman.
As Hurricane Helene careened toward Florida’s Panhandle, numerous Republicans voted against extending funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
Last week, Congress approved $20 billion for FEMA’s disaster relief fund as part of a stopgap spending bill to fund the government through December 20. But the measure left out billions of dollars in requested supplemental disaster funding.
The Senate approved the measure by a 78-18 vote on September 25 after it passed the House in a 341-82 vote. Republicans supplied the no votes in both chambers.
Some of the Republicans who voted against the bill represent states that have been hard hit by Helene, including Florida Representative Matt Gaetz.
Helene hit Florida as a Category 4 storm last Thursday, before plowing through several other states in the Southeast. The devastation could cost up to $160 billion, according to an estimate by AccuWeather.
Some Republicans railed against FEMA funding being allocated for assisting migrants after Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters on Wednesday that FEMA will run out of money before the hurricane season is over. The agency is facing a multibillion-dollar deficit, even after imposing new spending restrictions.
The New Republic has released a “Transcript: Trump’s Unhinged Handling of Disasters Revealed By Insider. An interview with Olivia Troye, a top homeland security official in the Trump administration, about how badly Trump politicized disaster response as president—as seen from the inside.” Former Republican Women are not holding back on what a disaster DonOld was. This is from Greg Sargent’s podcast, The Daily Blast.
Sargent: OK, let’s start here. The other day after Trump started pushing that lie that disaster relief is being denied to Republicans, you did a tweet that got some attention. It said this, “As a Homeland Security Advisor in the Trump White House, I witnessed firsthand how Donald Trump politicized disaster relief, leaving devastated Americans waiting for help. Leaders across the country & government were calling my office, desperate for action as Trump failed them in moments of crisis.” Can you expand on that for us?
Troye: I have a lot of memories of working in the Trump White House where there are numerous situations where the government apparatus that does the whole disaster relief declaration process would come to a halt because the disaster declaration that needed to be signed by the president was sitting on Donald Trump’s desk. It was frustrating, as you can imagine, because we as national security officials serve for the greater good of the country. Our job is to help Americans, especially someone like me, who’s in the Homeland Security role working and advising the vice president. Our jobs are to work in response to a crisis as fast as possible and manage this. There were numerous instances where I had the head of government agencies calling me saying, Can you maybe get the vice president to weigh in on this because it’s still sitting on [Trump’s] desk and he hasn’t approved it yet.
Sargent: You were working for the vice president at the time. Can you characterize your official position?
Troye: Sure. I was Mike Pence’s Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Advisor. In that role, I covered any crisis, global breaking news event that was related to whether it was global terrorism. On the Homeland space, I covered anything that was mass shootings, disaster relief like natural disasters like flooding, tornadoes, hurricanes. Anything that was a crisis domestically here that was related to the security and safety of Americans fall under me.
Sargent: All right. Just to be clear, what you just told us is that you had leaders who were trying to deal with disasters, whether in federal agencies or at the level of states or whatever, call you and try to get you to move stuff along that was being held up by the president of the United States, Donald Trump. They would try to get action by coming to you and working through the vice president. Is that what you’re telling us?
Troye: Yeah. There were numerous times when it was the secretary of DHS or the head of FEMA or even internally in the National Security Council process with the senior director we worked very closely on this effort. At times when they felt like it was stalled because Donald Trump was sitting on it or somebody had gotten to him, someone in OMB, one of whom was disagreeing with whatever was happening, depending on what state it was, they would come to me and say, We cannot get this moved forward, the people in this state are hurting right now, what can you do to help us?
I can think of a time when even Mike Pence was flying out. I believe he was flying to California and he called me. They called me from Air Force Two and said, Where is the disaster declaration? We still haven’t seen it. And I said, Well, sir, it’s sitting on the president’s desk, I can follow up on it. And he said, Please do that. I remember walking over to the West Wing and sitting outside the Oval Office saying the vice president would like to know what the status is on the disaster declaration, he would really like to get this moved along, we’ve been sitting on it for three days.
Not only do the MAGA Republicans want the country to fail and our country to fall to Tinpot dictator wannabe Donald, but they seriously want to see more death and destruction by tanking one of the most necessary and enormous FEMA responses ever. This is from NBC News. “Hurricane Helene live updates: At least 215 dead as some communities struggle to get basic supplies. People are still searching for loved ones and many residents remain isolated because of widespread damage.”
White House spokesman Andrew Bates pushed back on what he called “lies” shared by some Republican figures regarding the Hurricane Helene response.
In a new memo shared today, Bates said: “Some Republican leaders — and their partners in right wing media — are using Hurricane Helene to lie and divide us.”
“Their latest missive: baselessly claiming that FEMA is out of money to respond to Hurricane Helene — because of an existing program that supports cities and towns that are sheltering migrants. … This is FALSE,” Bates wrote.
“No disaster relief funding at all was used to support migrants housing and services. None. At. All,” he continued.
Trump echoed that false theory at a rally in Michigan yesterday, saying, “They stole the FEMA money, just like they stole it from a bank so they could give it to illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them this season.”
Bates clarified that funding for communities to support migrants is appropriated by Congress to U.S. Customs and Border Protection and is merely administered by FEMA, and the funding isn’t related to FEMA’s response and recovery efforts.
“FEMA has the funds it needs for immediate response and recovery efforts for Hurricane Helene. In fact, FEMA has been able to provide over $45 million in direct financial assistance to individuals and families affected by Hurricane Helene, including over $17 million to those recovering and rebuilding in North Carolina,” Bates added.
I also wanted to point out that Republicans are still plotting ways to overturn the election. In the middle of all of this, is the sentencing of Tina Peters. Watch this on CNN where Jim Acosta shows the incredible number of voters that still believe Trump won the 2024. Check this sentencing hearing. This Judge rocks.
She was convicted in August for the Computer Breach associated with the My Pillow Goon. This is the AP story that details that.
Former Colorado clerk Tina Peters, the first local election official to be charged with a security breach after the 2020 election as unfounded conspiracy theories swirled, was found guilty by a jury on most charges Monday.
Peters, a one-time hero to election deniers, was accused of using someone else’s security badge to give an expert affiliated with My Pillow chief executive Mike Lindell access to the Mesa County election system and deceiving other officials about that person’s identity.
Lindell is a prominent promoter of false claims that voting machines were manipulated to steal the election from Donald Trump. His online broadcasting site has been showing a livestream of Peters’ trial and sending out daily email updates, sometimes asking for prayers for Peters and including statements from her.
Prosecutors said Peters was seeking fame and became “fixated” on voting problems after becoming involved with those who had questioned the accuracy of the 2020 presidential election results.
The breach Peters was charged of orchestrating heightened concerns over potential insider threats, in which rogue election workers sympathetic to partisan lies could use their access and knowledge to launch an attack from within.
It would be nice to think that future evil-doers would take the hint and fear a 9 year-sentence, but MAGA weirdos are nuts. So, this is an interesting tidbit from Springfield, Ohio. “Someone Was Arrested For Killing Geese In Springfield — But It Wasn’t A Haitian. Brian Comer, a 64-year-old white man, was accused of illegally hunting geese at a golf course on the day Trump amplified racist lies about Haitian immigrants in the city.” Where’s fucking lying, J Dank Vance, now?
A 64-year-old white man in Springfield, Ohio, was accused of illegally hunting geese at a golf course pond as former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, were spreading racist lies that Haitian immigrants in the area were eating geese and people’s pets.
Brian Comer was charged with a misdemeanor in connection with the Sept. 10 incident. According to an arrest affidavit obtained by HuffPost, a golfer at Rocky Lakes Golf Course in Springfield reported seeing a Canada goose floating in a pond and Comer using a shotgun to shoot another bird.
Comer didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment from HuffPost, but court records show he entered a guilty plea. A court spokesperson told HuffPost he paid $200 to cover a fine and court fees.
Journalist Steven Monacelli first posted about the arrest on Thursday on X, formerly Twitter.
This headline from The Guardian is frightening. “Two men have re-engineered the US electoral system in favor of Republicans. If the right strews
Two men recognized and exploited the anti-democratic loopholes within America’s rickety democracy in order to deliver Republicans victories that they could never win at the ballot box.
Now their willfully minoritarian creations threaten the very essence of a representative democracy: if Donald Trump, rightwing courts, gerrymandered state legislatures and an extreme Republican caucus in the US House of Representatives create constitutional chaos over the certification of this presidential election, two men cleared the path.
The single-minded determination of Leonard Leo built a conservative supermajority on the US supreme court and stacked lower and state courts with Republican ideologues that have pushed the nation to the right via the least accountable branch of government.
Chris Jankowski masterminded the partisan gerrymanders that tilted state legislatures and congressional delegations across the south and the purple midwest toward extreme Republicans, ended Barack Obama’s second term before it started, and rendered elections in Wisconsin and North Carolina all but meaningless over the last decade and a half.
Leo and Jankowski understood, separately, that the courts and state legislatures were undervalued and often undefended targets for a deliberate strategy aimed at capturing important levers of power that sometimes float under the radar. They could be Moneyball-ed, to borrow the term Michael Lewis used in his book about how the Oakland A’s made an end-run around large-market teams by understanding value that their opponents overlooked.
What Leo and Jankowski built separately would soon reinforce the other’s creation (with, of course, crucial assists from chief justice John Roberts), tightening the knots around meaningful elections, pushing policy to the extreme right and making it nearly impossible for voters to do anything about it.
Leo’s relentless focus on turning the judiciary Republican, first identifying and fast-tracking conservative jurists through his various roles at the Federalist Society, then coordinating the often eight-figure efforts to secure their confirmation on the US supreme court, helped conservatives to unpopular court-imposed victories on voting rights, abortion restrictions, gun access and gutting the regulatory state that would not have been won through the political process.
As I revealed in my book Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count, Jankowski pioneered Redmap, short for the Redistricting Majority Project. That 2010 strategy, coordinated when he worked at the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC), flipped state legislative chambers in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Alabama, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Indiana, Tennessee and several other states just ahead of the decennial redistricting. Then, with complete control of those processes, as well in Florida, Georgia, Texas and elsewhere, the RSLC helped draw some of the most extreme partisan gerrymanders in history, locking in huge Republican advantages in state legislatures and congressional delegations.
The supreme court’s decision in Citizens Unitedhelped make possible the $30m that funded Redmap. Redmap’s lines then proved so stout that they could hold back electoral waves. In 2012, the Republican party would easily hold the US House of Representatives even as they won 1.4m fewer votes nationwide; Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Michigan and Wisconsin all went for Obama statewide, but the Republicans got 64 of those states’ 94 congressional seats.
Meanwhile, as Republicans drew themselves giant edges in the US House and state chambers, and packed Democrats into fewer seats they won with bigger majorities, low-turnout, base-driven Republican primaries became the key races to win, producing a new generation of lawmakers fixated on solutions for “voter fraud”.
This grim result is a US supreme court that has been captured by conservatives, which has delivered a decade of anti-democracy decisions that have advantaged the Republican party in elections, as well as an audacious plan to gerrymander Republicans into power in state legislatures nationwide and helped produce ever-more-extreme caucuses eager to adapt draconian voter restrictions in the name of stopping fraud that they cannot prove exist. The Roberts court has blessed this as well.
You better believe all these anti-democracy folks are just waiting to get Vance into the Oval Office. Trump is chaos, but Vance is single-minded, and there’s a method to his meanness. Then there is foreign interference in this election, too. The Hill reports that “Democrats suspect Netanyahu attempting to tilt Trump-Harris race.” This is written by Alexander Bolten. ( And, of course, all the end-time fundies are wild about all-out war in that area.)
Democrats increasingly suspect Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to interfere in U.S. domestic politics by ignoring President Biden’s calls to negotiate a peace deal in Gaza and by confronting Hezbollah and Iran weeks before the U.S. election.
The rapidly escalating confrontation between Israel, Hezbollah and Hezbollah’s ally, Iran, has undercut Biden’s efforts to achieve peace through diplomacy.
The growing threat of a broader conflict has opened the door for former President Trump to argue that the world is “spiraling out of control” on Biden’s watch.
Biden’s polling numbers with Muslim Americans continue to deteriorate amid the mounting violence in the region, which poses a serious political liability to Vice President Harris in Michigan, a must-win state for Democrats.
Trump traveled to Michigan on Thursday to speak at a rally in Saginaw.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s relationship with even the most pro-Israel Democrats has becoming increasingly confrontational.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) made headlines in March when he called Netanyahu a “major obstacle” to peace and urged Israel to hold new elections. Around that time, Biden called Israel’s offensive in Gaza “over the top.”
“I certainly worry that Prime Minister Netanyahu is watching the American election as he makes decisions about his military campaigns in the north and in Gaza,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told CNN’s Erin Burnett in a Tuesday interview.
I continue to write these long blog reads these days. Every day reveals more weirdness and criminal activity. I would like to note that this was a headline. “Fox News host: Trump ‘resorted to crimes’ to hold on to power.” That also was one of the shocking events that happened this week.
Fox News host Neil Cavuto said Wednesday that a newly unsealed filing in the federal Jan. 6 case revealed former President Trump “resorted to crimes” to stay in office.
“It was in this newly unsealed court paper we’re learning that former President Trump resorted to crimes to cling to power after the 2020 election. We don’t know much more than that,” Cavuto said Wednesday on Fox News.
“A lot of this stuff was going to be coming out anyway. We’re going to be getting the latest on that, and a legal look at what is being revealed here and whether it’s giving us any new information, anything we don’t know. The timing of this, of course, is little more than about five weeks before the general election,” he added.
I see more October surprises on the horizon.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
#Repeat1968JohnBuss #AntiDemocracyMAGARepublicans #AyatollahMikeJohnson #BebeNetanyahuAndAmericanElectionInterference #FEMAFunding #HurricaneHelene #MAGARepublicanParty
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“There ya go, that explains it! Trump is in serious decline.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
This week has been rather mind-blowing for me. First, I watched Former Congresswoman Liz Cheney stand beside Vice President Kamala Harris and heartily endorse her. The number of top Republicans going out of their way to stop DonOld is really heartening. The utter destruction left in the path of Hurricane Helene was beyond the warzone feeling I saw when I finally got to return home to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. I can only imagine what’s in store for us in the future if we don’t speed up policy and action on Climate Change. Then, there’s the kind of shock only practitioners of the Dismal Science could feel. “U.S. Hiring Accelerated in September, Blowing Past Expectations” is a headline in today’s Wall Street Journal. Our economy is so good we’ve booted the once-assumed takeover of the title of the largest economy in the world by China. It has been moved farther into the future if ever.
The U.S. labor market strengthened in the weeks before Election Day, as job growth accelerated in September and the unemployment rate ticked lower.
Employers added 254,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department said Friday. That was significantly more than the 150,000 economists expected, and marked the largest monthly increase since March. The unemployment rate slipped to 4.1%.
Friday’s bumper payrolls report is likely to close the door on another half-percentage-point rate cut by the Federal Reserve at its next meeting in November. It should keep officials on track to lower rates by a quarter point.
The Fed is trying to engineer what is called a soft landing, in which inflation moves down without major deterioration in the labor market. Though Friday is just one data point, it suggests that the U.S. is headed in that direction.
“It puts another set of wheels under the plane in terms of assuring a soft landing,” said Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY-Parthenon.
Friday’s report also signaled that hiring this summer wasn’t as weak as initially thought. Revised figures show employers added 72,000 more jobs in July and August combined than earlier reported.
The latest snapshot of the labor market’s health comes just a month before the U.S. presidential election, where the economy and inflation are key issues for voters. The strong jobs report could help Vice President Kamala Harris. In polls, she trails former President Donald Trump on the economy.
Stocks ticked higher. During much of the inflationary post-Covid-19 boom, stocks often quaked temporarily at stronger-than-expected economic data, because traders took such shocks as a sign that the Fed would tighten monetary policy more aggressively. Investors’ positive reaction Friday showed that they view good news as good news again—even if futures contracts tied to the federal-funds rate suggest traders are now expecting a slower pace of Fed easing.
Employers added jobs at bars and restaurants and construction, as well as in sectors that are less sensitive to the economy’s ups and downs like government, education and healthcare.
There were a few weak spots. Employers modestly cut head count in manufacturing, transportation and warehousing, and temporary help services.
Analysts also said that although September’s jobs report was unexpectedly strong, other economic data point to a slightly less robust hiring picture. Labor Department data released earlier this week showed that the share of workers quitting their jobs each month fell to its lowest rate in more than four years in August, a sign people are more hesitant about leaving their current roles for new ones.
Liz Cheney described the Republican Party as being the MAGA Party. Those left in the MAGA party are living in lies, bigotry, and a world of active sabotage of the truth and of the country. In one of the most callous moves I’ve seen in Congress, Speaker Johnson refuses to call the House back into session to provide the funding needed for FEMA. He wants it to wait until November 12. He’s wandering around Florida today.
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson said Thursday that a congressional emergency spending decision in response to Hurricane Helene “will probably correspond when Congress is expected to return to session.”
Congress will be on recess for more than a month, and is set to return to session on Nov. 12. Johnson seemed to rule out a return before then, although President Joe Biden indicated this week that he may ask Congress to convene before the break’s scheduled end.
“Right before we left on Wednesday, a week ago, Congress appropriated $20 billion to FEMA to cover the immediate aftermath of the storm,” Johnson said in Steinhatchee Thursday. “Of course, we knew it was headed into the coast at that time, so FEMA has the funding that needs to respond immediately. We’re glad to see them on the ground here.”
Johnson said damage assessments must be complete before Congress can update the disaster budget.
“It will take some time to tabulate this storm — it’s one of the biggest in our history,” Johnson said. “So, a lot of that work’s being done immediately, and I think the timing of that will probably correspond when Congress is expected to return to session right after the election, and so we’ll be on that.”
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the Federal Emergency Management Agency lacks enough funding to last through hurricane season, which ends Nov. 30.
Johnson appeared with Florida U.S. Reps. Kat Cammack and Neal Dunn at Roy’s Restaurant, which was ravaged by Helene.
The speaker of the House said that funding further disaster response will be bipartisan.
“There’ll be an appropriate amount requested to Congress, and we’ll have to dig deep and find a way to do that,” he said.
Johnson assured that Congress “will do what’s necessary to make sure that Americans are taken care of.”
What’s most impressive is to see just precisely who 175 Republicans are that voted against the aid. And, yes, it’s basically to make the Biden/Harris Administration look bad so DonOld can rant and make people forget his lousy response to disasters when he occupied the White House. This is from Newsweek. “Full List of Republicans Who Voted Against FEMA Funding Before Helene Hit,” written by Khaleda Rahman.
As Hurricane Helene careened toward Florida’s Panhandle, numerous Republicans voted against extending funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
Last week, Congress approved $20 billion for FEMA’s disaster relief fund as part of a stopgap spending bill to fund the government through December 20. But the measure left out billions of dollars in requested supplemental disaster funding.
The Senate approved the measure by a 78-18 vote on September 25 after it passed the House in a 341-82 vote. Republicans supplied the no votes in both chambers.
Some of the Republicans who voted against the bill represent states that have been hard hit by Helene, including Florida Representative Matt Gaetz.
Helene hit Florida as a Category 4 storm last Thursday, before plowing through several other states in the Southeast. The devastation could cost up to $160 billion, according to an estimate by AccuWeather.
Some Republicans railed against FEMA funding being allocated for assisting migrants after Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters on Wednesday that FEMA will run out of money before the hurricane season is over. The agency is facing a multibillion-dollar deficit, even after imposing new spending restrictions.
The New Republic has released a “Transcript: Trump’s Unhinged Handling of Disasters Revealed By Insider. An interview with Olivia Troye, a top homeland security official in the Trump administration, about how badly Trump politicized disaster response as president—as seen from the inside.” Former Republican Women are not holding back on what a disaster DonOld was. This is from Greg Sargent’s podcast, The Daily Blast.
Sargent: OK, let’s start here. The other day after Trump started pushing that lie that disaster relief is being denied to Republicans, you did a tweet that got some attention. It said this, “As a Homeland Security Advisor in the Trump White House, I witnessed firsthand how Donald Trump politicized disaster relief, leaving devastated Americans waiting for help. Leaders across the country & government were calling my office, desperate for action as Trump failed them in moments of crisis.” Can you expand on that for us?
Troye: I have a lot of memories of working in the Trump White House where there are numerous situations where the government apparatus that does the whole disaster relief declaration process would come to a halt because the disaster declaration that needed to be signed by the president was sitting on Donald Trump’s desk. It was frustrating, as you can imagine, because we as national security officials serve for the greater good of the country. Our job is to help Americans, especially someone like me, who’s in the Homeland Security role working and advising the vice president. Our jobs are to work in response to a crisis as fast as possible and manage this. There were numerous instances where I had the head of government agencies calling me saying, Can you maybe get the vice president to weigh in on this because it’s still sitting on [Trump’s] desk and he hasn’t approved it yet.
Sargent: You were working for the vice president at the time. Can you characterize your official position?
Troye: Sure. I was Mike Pence’s Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Advisor. In that role, I covered any crisis, global breaking news event that was related to whether it was global terrorism. On the Homeland space, I covered anything that was mass shootings, disaster relief like natural disasters like flooding, tornadoes, hurricanes. Anything that was a crisis domestically here that was related to the security and safety of Americans fall under me.
Sargent: All right. Just to be clear, what you just told us is that you had leaders who were trying to deal with disasters, whether in federal agencies or at the level of states or whatever, call you and try to get you to move stuff along that was being held up by the president of the United States, Donald Trump. They would try to get action by coming to you and working through the vice president. Is that what you’re telling us?
Troye: Yeah. There were numerous times when it was the secretary of DHS or the head of FEMA or even internally in the National Security Council process with the senior director we worked very closely on this effort. At times when they felt like it was stalled because Donald Trump was sitting on it or somebody had gotten to him, someone in OMB, one of whom was disagreeing with whatever was happening, depending on what state it was, they would come to me and say, We cannot get this moved forward, the people in this state are hurting right now, what can you do to help us?
I can think of a time when even Mike Pence was flying out. I believe he was flying to California and he called me. They called me from Air Force Two and said, Where is the disaster declaration? We still haven’t seen it. And I said, Well, sir, it’s sitting on the president’s desk, I can follow up on it. And he said, Please do that. I remember walking over to the West Wing and sitting outside the Oval Office saying the vice president would like to know what the status is on the disaster declaration, he would really like to get this moved along, we’ve been sitting on it for three days.
Not only do the MAGA Republicans want the country to fail and our country to fall to Tinpot dictator wannabe Donald, but they seriously want to see more death and destruction by tanking one of the most necessary and enormous FEMA responses ever. This is from NBC News. “Hurricane Helene live updates: At least 215 dead as some communities struggle to get basic supplies. People are still searching for loved ones and many residents remain isolated because of widespread damage.”
White House spokesman Andrew Bates pushed back on what he called “lies” shared by some Republican figures regarding the Hurricane Helene response.
In a new memo shared today, Bates said: “Some Republican leaders — and their partners in right wing media — are using Hurricane Helene to lie and divide us.”
“Their latest missive: baselessly claiming that FEMA is out of money to respond to Hurricane Helene — because of an existing program that supports cities and towns that are sheltering migrants. … This is FALSE,” Bates wrote.
“No disaster relief funding at all was used to support migrants housing and services. None. At. All,” he continued.
Trump echoed that false theory at a rally in Michigan yesterday, saying, “They stole the FEMA money, just like they stole it from a bank so they could give it to illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them this season.”
Bates clarified that funding for communities to support migrants is appropriated by Congress to U.S. Customs and Border Protection and is merely administered by FEMA, and the funding isn’t related to FEMA’s response and recovery efforts.
“FEMA has the funds it needs for immediate response and recovery efforts for Hurricane Helene. In fact, FEMA has been able to provide over $45 million in direct financial assistance to individuals and families affected by Hurricane Helene, including over $17 million to those recovering and rebuilding in North Carolina,” Bates added.
I also wanted to point out that Republicans are still plotting ways to overturn the election. In the middle of all of this, is the sentencing of Tina Peters. Watch this on CNN where Jim Acosta shows the incredible number of voters that still believe Trump won the 2024. Check this sentencing hearing. This Judge rocks.
She was convicted in August for the Computer Breach associated with the My Pillow Goon. This is the AP story that details that.
Former Colorado clerk Tina Peters, the first local election official to be charged with a security breach after the 2020 election as unfounded conspiracy theories swirled, was found guilty by a jury on most charges Monday.
Peters, a one-time hero to election deniers, was accused of using someone else’s security badge to give an expert affiliated with My Pillow chief executive Mike Lindell access to the Mesa County election system and deceiving other officials about that person’s identity.
Lindell is a prominent promoter of false claims that voting machines were manipulated to steal the election from Donald Trump. His online broadcasting site has been showing a livestream of Peters’ trial and sending out daily email updates, sometimes asking for prayers for Peters and including statements from her.
Prosecutors said Peters was seeking fame and became “fixated” on voting problems after becoming involved with those who had questioned the accuracy of the 2020 presidential election results.
The breach Peters was charged of orchestrating heightened concerns over potential insider threats, in which rogue election workers sympathetic to partisan lies could use their access and knowledge to launch an attack from within.
It would be nice to think that future evil-doers would take the hint and fear a 9 year-sentence, but MAGA weirdos are nuts. So, this is an interesting tidbit from Springfield, Ohio. “Someone Was Arrested For Killing Geese In Springfield — But It Wasn’t A Haitian. Brian Comer, a 64-year-old white man, was accused of illegally hunting geese at a golf course on the day Trump amplified racist lies about Haitian immigrants in the city.” Where’s fucking lying, J Dank Vance, now?
A 64-year-old white man in Springfield, Ohio, was accused of illegally hunting geese at a golf course pond as former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, were spreading racist lies that Haitian immigrants in the area were eating geese and people’s pets.
Brian Comer was charged with a misdemeanor in connection with the Sept. 10 incident. According to an arrest affidavit obtained by HuffPost, a golfer at Rocky Lakes Golf Course in Springfield reported seeing a Canada goose floating in a pond and Comer using a shotgun to shoot another bird.
Comer didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment from HuffPost, but court records show he entered a guilty plea. A court spokesperson told HuffPost he paid $200 to cover a fine and court fees.
Journalist Steven Monacelli first posted about the arrest on Thursday on X, formerly Twitter.
This headline from The Guardian is frightening. “Two men have re-engineered the US electoral system in favor of Republicans. If the right strews
Two men recognized and exploited the anti-democratic loopholes within America’s rickety democracy in order to deliver Republicans victories that they could never win at the ballot box.
Now their willfully minoritarian creations threaten the very essence of a representative democracy: if Donald Trump, rightwing courts, gerrymandered state legislatures and an extreme Republican caucus in the US House of Representatives create constitutional chaos over the certification of this presidential election, two men cleared the path.
The single-minded determination of Leonard Leo built a conservative supermajority on the US supreme court and stacked lower and state courts with Republican ideologues that have pushed the nation to the right via the least accountable branch of government.
Chris Jankowski masterminded the partisan gerrymanders that tilted state legislatures and congressional delegations across the south and the purple midwest toward extreme Republicans, ended Barack Obama’s second term before it started, and rendered elections in Wisconsin and North Carolina all but meaningless over the last decade and a half.
Leo and Jankowski understood, separately, that the courts and state legislatures were undervalued and often undefended targets for a deliberate strategy aimed at capturing important levers of power that sometimes float under the radar. They could be Moneyball-ed, to borrow the term Michael Lewis used in his book about how the Oakland A’s made an end-run around large-market teams by understanding value that their opponents overlooked.
What Leo and Jankowski built separately would soon reinforce the other’s creation (with, of course, crucial assists from chief justice John Roberts), tightening the knots around meaningful elections, pushing policy to the extreme right and making it nearly impossible for voters to do anything about it.
Leo’s relentless focus on turning the judiciary Republican, first identifying and fast-tracking conservative jurists through his various roles at the Federalist Society, then coordinating the often eight-figure efforts to secure their confirmation on the US supreme court, helped conservatives to unpopular court-imposed victories on voting rights, abortion restrictions, gun access and gutting the regulatory state that would not have been won through the political process.
As I revealed in my book Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count, Jankowski pioneered Redmap, short for the Redistricting Majority Project. That 2010 strategy, coordinated when he worked at the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC), flipped state legislative chambers in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Alabama, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Indiana, Tennessee and several other states just ahead of the decennial redistricting. Then, with complete control of those processes, as well in Florida, Georgia, Texas and elsewhere, the RSLC helped draw some of the most extreme partisan gerrymanders in history, locking in huge Republican advantages in state legislatures and congressional delegations.
The supreme court’s decision in Citizens Unitedhelped make possible the $30m that funded Redmap. Redmap’s lines then proved so stout that they could hold back electoral waves. In 2012, the Republican party would easily hold the US House of Representatives even as they won 1.4m fewer votes nationwide; Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Michigan and Wisconsin all went for Obama statewide, but the Republicans got 64 of those states’ 94 congressional seats.
Meanwhile, as Republicans drew themselves giant edges in the US House and state chambers, and packed Democrats into fewer seats they won with bigger majorities, low-turnout, base-driven Republican primaries became the key races to win, producing a new generation of lawmakers fixated on solutions for “voter fraud”.
This grim result is a US supreme court that has been captured by conservatives, which has delivered a decade of anti-democracy decisions that have advantaged the Republican party in elections, as well as an audacious plan to gerrymander Republicans into power in state legislatures nationwide and helped produce ever-more-extreme caucuses eager to adapt draconian voter restrictions in the name of stopping fraud that they cannot prove exist. The Roberts court has blessed this as well.
You better believe all these anti-democracy folks are just waiting to get Vance into the Oval Office. Trump is chaos, but Vance is single-minded, and there’s a method to his meanness. Then there is foreign interference in this election, too. The Hill reports that “Democrats suspect Netanyahu attempting to tilt Trump-Harris race.” This is written by Alexander Bolten. ( And, of course, all the end-time fundies are wild about all-out war in that area.)
Democrats increasingly suspect Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to interfere in U.S. domestic politics by ignoring President Biden’s calls to negotiate a peace deal in Gaza and by confronting Hezbollah and Iran weeks before the U.S. election.
The rapidly escalating confrontation between Israel, Hezbollah and Hezbollah’s ally, Iran, has undercut Biden’s efforts to achieve peace through diplomacy.
The growing threat of a broader conflict has opened the door for former President Trump to argue that the world is “spiraling out of control” on Biden’s watch.
Biden’s polling numbers with Muslim Americans continue to deteriorate amid the mounting violence in the region, which poses a serious political liability to Vice President Harris in Michigan, a must-win state for Democrats.
Trump traveled to Michigan on Thursday to speak at a rally in Saginaw.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s relationship with even the most pro-Israel Democrats has becoming increasingly confrontational.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) made headlines in March when he called Netanyahu a “major obstacle” to peace and urged Israel to hold new elections. Around that time, Biden called Israel’s offensive in Gaza “over the top.”
“I certainly worry that Prime Minister Netanyahu is watching the American election as he makes decisions about his military campaigns in the north and in Gaza,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told CNN’s Erin Burnett in a Tuesday interview.
I continue to write these long blog reads these days. Every day reveals more weirdness and criminal activity. I would like to note that this was a headline. “Fox News host: Trump ‘resorted to crimes’ to hold on to power.” That also was one of the shocking events that happened this week.
Fox News host Neil Cavuto said Wednesday that a newly unsealed filing in the federal Jan. 6 case revealed former President Trump “resorted to crimes” to stay in office.
“It was in this newly unsealed court paper we’re learning that former President Trump resorted to crimes to cling to power after the 2020 election. We don’t know much more than that,” Cavuto said Wednesday on Fox News.
“A lot of this stuff was going to be coming out anyway. We’re going to be getting the latest on that, and a legal look at what is being revealed here and whether it’s giving us any new information, anything we don’t know. The timing of this, of course, is little more than about five weeks before the general election,” he added.
I see more October surprises on the horizon.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
#Repeat1968JohnBuss #AntiDemocracyMAGARepublicans #AyatollahMikeJohnson #BebeNetanyahuAndAmericanElectionInterference #FEMAFunding #HurricaneHelene #MAGARepublicanParty
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“The empathy just oozes from this one. Hurricane Helene was apparently wet.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Morning, Sky Dancers!
The signs of the results of lousy decision-making based on greed and mythology are everywhere. Hurricanes are no longer coastal phenomena but can make their way 300 miles inland and hold a Cat 2 status. You would think enough people in this country have critical thinking skills and conscience to vote the pols out who are doing this to us. It would help, of course, if the press were still on the side of democracy instead of creating clickbait to earn a buck for stockholders and top management. But, here we are deeper down the rat hole of “The Medium is the Message published in 1964.” McLuhan understood clickbait before just about anyone.
The title “The Medium Is the Massage” is a teaser—a way of getting attention. There’s a wonderful sign hanging in a Toronto junkyard which reads, ‘Help Beautify Junkyards. Throw Something Lovely Away Today.’ This is a very effective way of getting people to notice a lot of things. And so the title is intended to draw attention to the fact that a medium is not something neutral—it does something to people. It takes hold of them. It rubs them off, it massages them and bumps them around, chiropractically, as it were, and the general roughing up that any new society gets from a medium, especially a new medium, is what is intended in that title”
This is more true than ever. We have more than a few TV channels, newspapers, and radio to influence us these days. Most people treat their news and information more like boutique shopping, where they can find the look that suits them every time. Substack is one medium where I have seen public intellectuals. I feel comfortable reading a lot of people there, and I must admit that it’s because they are a lot like me. They write about things that bug them about the institutions and country that house them and likely educated them. However, they do bring reasoned thought and data with them. But anyway, enough of that rabbit hole. Let’s just say I’m not beyond shopping my own boutique. Also, the positive thing about the web is that you have access to authentic information and don’t have to spend days in dark, moldy library stacks to find it. The negative thing is that not all people want to be challenged. They want to feel good about what they already think is real.
Margaret Sullivan’s Substack–aptly called American Crisis–has this headline today. “The three phases of normalizing Trump’s attack on Harris in Wisconsin. The media did what it always does, and it’s not good enough.” Trump is so far off the sanity scale these days that it is indeed frightening.
- The use of neutral language. If you merely read about Donald Trump’s deeply offensive rally this weekend in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, you probably thought it was about immigration. And about Trump up to his usual tricks of disparaging his rivals.
Here the lead of the report from Axios, for example:
“Former President Trump, in a self-described ‘dark speech,’ told a rally in Wisconsin yesterday that his opponent, Vice President Harris, is “mentally impaired’ and “mentally disabled.’”
Axios, which favors bullet points and boldface help for the tuned-out, let us know “Why It Matters”: “Even for Trump, it was weird, nasty and nonsensical — when he needed to be swaying ‘national security moms’ and other undecideds.”
Or here’s the top paragraph of the Washington Post report: “Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump criticized Vice President Harris’s mental capacity Saturday, falsely claiming she was born ‘mentally impaired’ and comparing her actions to that of a ‘mentally disabled person.’ The remarks prompted criticism from advocates for people with disabilities.”
Here’s the Associated Press’s headline: “Trump lists his grievances in a Wisconsin speech intended to link Harris to illegal immigration.”
But if you watched the speech, or even snippets of it, you saw something quite different — an absolutely ugly and brutal attack on Kamala Harris, full of lies and racist misogyny. In case you missed it, watch a bit of it here.
Sullivan has written two more of them and a lot of examples to follow. Please go read it.
- The lack of substantial followup. Once the outrageous rally was over, and the stories with their neutral language written, the political media was ready — more than ready — to move on. The media does know how to follow up, as you may recall from, for instance, President Biden’s bad debate this summer. But in the case of Trump’s unhinged and ugly attack on Harris’s intelligence, the spot-news coverage was about it. I did not see countless outraged opinion pieces; I did not see days of stories examining every aspect of this. It was just, cover the speech and let’s get out of here.
- The pivot to safety. Like waves rushing to the shore, the media relentlessly returns to the familiar. The thinking seems to go something like this: Whew, that was a pretty crazy rally, but let’s leave that behind and get back to what we’re good at. When in doubt, cover the horserace. One thing I did see after Saturday’s rally were many, many, many stories about polls. A New York Times headline Sunday rendered it this way: “Harris and Trump are Neck and Neck in Michigan and Wisconsin, Polls Find.” And that’s about as horserace-oriented as it gets.
This New Yorker’s The Lede, published three days ago, has similar warnings. It’s written by Clare Malone. “Is There a Method to Donald Trump’s Madness? The former President’s appeal has always been his sui-generis persona and politics—take him as he is—but, this year, the campaign seems more devoted to fan service than anything else.” Why try to make sense out of acts stemming from severe Personality Disorders and likely advanced dementia? Are the lessons from Journalism school to just blandly report the unspeakable? Was there ever a method in madness?
Vance is now a historically unpopular Vice-Presidential nominee. Mainstream Republican contenders, such as Senator Marco Rubio or Governor Doug Burgum, might have appealed to the sort of Nikki Haley voters that can’t stand Trump. Rubio, who is Cuban American, might have been a good pick to attract Latino voters, who, polls showed, were less interested in voting Democratic this year. Instead, Trump’s selection of Vance and all that he brings with him emphasized a doubling-down on MAGA culture. It could end up being politically ill-advised, but it’s not without its logic. Trump’s team knows that America is a hyperpartisan country. Polls show that just four per cent of voters are undecided in this election, the smallest share of the electorate in any U.S. contest this century. For the Trump campaign, the theory goes: Why expend all your energy trying to convince people to vote for one of the most unpopular Presidents in American history? Work to amp up your base and find Trump fans who don’t usually vote and make sure they turn out on November 5th.
The Trump campaign calls these voters “low-propensity,” and they’re working to turn them out in swing states like Arizona, where a canvassing effort is being run by the conservative group Turning Point USA. An Elon Musk-backed PAC is doing the same in Nevada and Michigan. Some Republicans have expressed reservations about the strategy, but it’s not a new idea in Trumpworld. In 2016, when I was a reporter at FiveThirtyEight, I obtained a Trump campaign memo written during that year’s primaries that explained the unusual practice of targeting low-propensity voters. “Our candidate commands unheard amounts of earned media,” the memo read, calling the strategy “more akin to evangelization than persuasion.” The job, then, was to teach Trump fans how to become Trump voters. “These are people who may not know where to vote, whether or not they are eligible to participate, and what the hours are,” the memo read. “They may have to work on the actual election day and are unaware of early voting opportunities on Saturdays. Many of them may have simply never been asked for their vote.” Turning Point’s focus this year—one of its employees told Semafor—is on small groups of thirty thousand to forty thousand potential voters in swing states, a testament to the slim margins of 2024.
Trump’s appeal has always been his sui-generis persona and politics—take him as he is—but, this year, the campaign seems more devoted to fan service than anything else. Steven Cheung, Trump’s top spokesman, recently retweeted a three-minute tongue-in-cheek hard-rock music video titled “MAGA ENERGY,” which nicely captured the movement’s aesthetics. It features lyrics like “Our world is frightening / Globals want to burn it down,” images of American flags and Trump’s face overlaid on that of a lion, and a montage of the jiggling, mostly bare bottoms of women shooting automatic weapons. Trump, a marketer to his core, has also built a promotional flywheel that he hopes his voters will get stuck in: If you like Trump’s crazy persona, you might go to your first Trump rally. If you go to enough rallies, you might like Trump’s digital trading cards—collect enough and you’ll get a physical piece of the suit that he wore to his debate with Biden (really!). If you like the trading cards, maybe you’ll buy Melania’s new book (she stands by her nude photos). Somewhere in there, Trump and company are hoping their low-propensity supporters register to vote and do so early.
The purpose of Trump’s campaign is to bolster his ego and keep him out of jail. Then, he’ll likely be replaced either by death or the 25th Amendment, and Vance will put the entire 2025 plan into play. Because all the players will be set up in the Federal Government. Additionally, all the work of Pat Robertson and others from the Reagan administration to enslave us to White Christian Nationalism will come to fruition.
Yesterday, I read this article from Mother Jones where one of the so-called Christians in that movement finally realizes that what he was doing wasn’t very ‘Christ-like,’ has repented, and is now trying to reverse the hell they bring to the political system. The title is “Confessions of a (Former) Christian Nationalist. When religion is placed at the service of a political party, it corrupts both.” and it’s written by The Reverend Rob Schenck. Anyone who read the history of the Roman Empire and its use of Christianity to conquer Northern Europe should know this by now. The story on how they captured SCOTUS is even more interesting than the narrative on capturing members of Congress.
Federal judges and especially Supreme Court justices, unlike politicians, never need to shake hands across a rope line. Accessing their world required creativity. I found it through the little-known Supreme Court Historical Society. Founded by the late Chief Justice Warren Burger, the independent nonprofit holds an annual dinner hosted by the chief justice and attended by most associate justices. Tickets are strictly controlled. By establishing a close relationship with the society’s staff, I managed to secure seats each year for several of my donors, whom I would coach on how to connect with the justices attending the event. As a result, two of my most active participants, Don and Gayle Wright of Dayton, Ohio, ingratiated themselves with the Alitos, Scalias, and Thomases.
When I trained my donors to interact with conservative justices on the court, I told them to reinforce for their powerful new friends how important their decisions were to the country’s future, and how critical Judeo-Christian values are to America’s success. I encouraged them to underscore how millions of citizens thanked God for their presence on the top court.
In a notable instance, the Wrights were tipped off about a pending decision before it was announced to the public. As I later told the House Judiciary Committee, “Gayle relayed that she had learned the outcome of the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby case while at the meal with the Alitos, that it was in Hobby Lobby’s favor, and that ‘Sam is writing it.’” The ruling would affirm that companies with religious objections were not required to provide contraceptive coverage in their health insurance packages. I also told the House committee that Gayle had shared the news with me and that I told the president of Hobby Lobby, Steve Green—his parents were donors to my organization—that they had won the case. The Green family found themselves in the enviable position of using the advance notice to prep their spokespeople so they could be ready at the microphone outside the court following Alito’s reading of the majority opinion. They could shape the public narrative, a distinct advantage over their opponents.
When word of our campaign eventually broke in the New York Times, Justice Alito responded, “I never detected any effort on the part of the Wrights to obtain confidential information or to influence anything that I did in either an official or private capacity, and I would have strongly objected if they had done so.” He added, “I have no knowledge of any project that they allegedly undertook for ‘Faith and Action.’” Gayle Wright denied obtaining or passing along any such information. Steve Green declined to comment to the Times, and his mother told the paper he hadn’t been notified in advance. Let’s just say this is not how I remember what had happened.
It took years for the scales to fall from my eyes. A major turning point occurred when I took a leave of absence from Faith and Action to pursue a late-in-life doctorate. Part of my research involved the German Christian movement of the 1930s, which supported the Nazi Party. One of the most respected Bible scholars of that period, Paul Althaus, declared Hitler’s ascent to the chancellorship to be a “gift and miracle from God.” I began to suspect that we evangelicals were similarly allowing our faith to be co-opted for political purposes. Devastating consequences seemed inevitable for evangelicalism and for our country.
These fears were reinforced when I attended a tribute banquet for Pat Robertson around 2010. Virtually every evangelical luminary was there. When Robertson introduced his guest of honor, Donald J. Trump, I was shocked. In Bible college, my preaching instructor had suggested that the New York playboy was a perfect illustration for what it meant to not live as a Christian. I asked a friend of Pat’s why Trump was there. They both were “members of the billionaires’ club,” he explained. “Besides, he may make a good president someday.” Trump worked the room, filled with the biggest names on the religious right, garnering hearty applause.
The article is long and can make you angry, but it gives you more insight into that influential movement. Know Thy Enemy.
The New York Times finally read the writing on the wall today and endorsed Kamala Harris for President. I’m using the Politico analysis rather than trying to get into the NYT again, so you can notice the subheading, which says a lot about Politoco as a source. “NYT endorses Harris as ‘the only choice’ for president. The editorial board has not backed a Republican for president since Dwight Eisenhower in 1956.” The analysis also says something about the New York Times.
The New York Times editorial board on Monday endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, calling her “the only patriotic choice for president” while painting a grim picture of a second term for former President Donald Trump.
Rather than praise for its preferred candidate, the board led its endorsement of Harris by listing off disqualifying arguments against Trump. “It is hard to imagine a candidate more unworthy to serve as president of the United States,” the Times editorial board wrote.
“This unequivocal, dispiriting truth — Donald Trump is not fit to be president — should be enough for any voter who cares about the health of our country and the stability of our democracy to deny him re-election,” the board, made up of 14 opinion journalists, wrote. “For this reason, regardless of any political disagreements voters might have with her, Kamala Harris is the only patriotic choice for president.”
The endorsement of Harris is unsurprising — the editorial board has not backed a Republican for president since Dwight Eisenhower in 1956 — though still important given the paper’s influence. In July, 10 days before President Joe Biden left the race (and after the board called on him to do so), the board published a five-part, scathing editorial against Trump that struck many of the same chords as Monday’s story.
Okay, enough of that. Trump has become utterly void of self-censoring, even when it’s something that would behoove him to hide. This is from MSNBC and Steven Benen. “On overtime pay, Trump slips up by accidentally telling the truth. Donald Trump admitted that he concocted a private-sector scheme to avoid paying his employees overtime compensation. So much for his “pro-worker” pitch.”
Five of the most interesting words in Donald Trump’s rhetorical repertoire are, “I shouldn’t say this, but…” While it’s obviously impossible to read the former president’s mind, whenever the Republican uses the phrase, it’s an apparent acknowledgement that he knows the rest of the sentence will be politically problematic, but he’s simply unable to help himself.
As his first year in the White House came to an end, for example, Trump declared, “I shouldn’t say this, but we essentially repealed Obamacare.” He was, of course, lying, but the comments served as a reminder of his anti-health care vision. About a year later, campaigning in Montana, the then-president publicly praised Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte for physically assaulting a journalist who asked a question the governor didn’t like.
“I shouldn’t say this [but] there’s nothing to be embarrassed about,” Trump said in reference to the violence.
Six years later, the Republican is still stumbling into inadvertent moments of candor. HuffPost reported:
Former president and current GOP nominee Donald Trump on Sunday admitted he ‘hated’ to pay his staff overtime and would instead replace them with other workers to avoid doing so. Trump’s confession came during a campaign rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, after promising to deliver ‘gigantic tax cuts’ via his pledge to end tax on tips, on overtime and on social security benefits for seniors.”
“I know a lot about overtime,” the Republican candidate boasted. “I hated to give overtime. I hated it. I’d get other people, I shouldn’t say this, but I’d get other people in. I wouldn’t pay.”
The public comments stood out for a few reasons.
Right off the bat, there are still some political observers who like to pretend that the former president is some kind of ally to working-class Americans. It’s against that backdrop that Trump thought it’d be a good idea to admit that he, as a boss, deliberately took steps to deny his own employees overtime compensation to which they were entitled.
Meanwhile, the DonOld Cult is up to more domestic terrorism. This is from Raw Story. “Trump-supporting Ohio businessman gets MAGA death threats for defending Haitian workers.” This analysis is by Brad Reed.
A Trump-supporting Ohio businessman is getting major blowback from fellow Trump supporters after he publicly defended the honor of the Haitian immigrants he has hired to work for him.
The New York Times reports that Jamie McGregor, a lifelong Republican who twice voted for former President Donald Trump and owner of the McGregor Metal manufacturing shop, has been hit with “death threats, a lockdown at his company and posters around town branding him a traitor” because he praised the Haitian immigrants who work at his company.
In fact, McGregor says the situation as gotten so scary that he’s arming both himself and his family members to defend against would-be MAGA assailants.
“I have struggled with the fact that now we’re going to have firearms in our house — like, what the hell?” he told the Times. “And now we’re taking classes, we’re going to shooting ranges, we’re being fitted for handguns.”
McGregor decided to hire newly arrived Haitian immigrants in recent years because he had trouble finding dependable workers, and he has praised them for having a strong work ethic that has benefitted his business.
McGregor’s home city of Springfield, Ohio has become the focus of MAGA anger in recent weeks after former President Donald Trump made false claims about Haitian immigrants there eating locals’ dogs and cats.
When confronted with evidence debunking this claim, Trump and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), have doubled down on attacking the Haitian immigrant community.
It’s beginning to feel like Lord of the Flies in Trumplandia. I wonder if said businessman will vote for Trump again? Has that book been banned yet in Florida?
Oh, and now we get to speak of The Purge. They filmed the TV series at the Abandoned Navy Base down the block from me, which was weird enough. I didn’t see the movie or the series, but I know enough of the franchise to recognize it in Donald’s speech. This is from Politico. “Trump says ‘violent day’ of policing will end crime. The remarks at a campaign rally Sunday did not amount to a policy proposal allowing police retaliation, the former president’s campaign said.” Adam Wren reports the story.
Former President Donald Trump on Sunday called for “one real rough, nasty” and “violent day” of police retaliation in order to eradicate crime “immediately.”
The remarks — delivered by Trump at a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, just 36 days before the election — did not amount to a new policy proposal, according to a Trump campaign official.
Asked whether the former president’s idea amounted to a new proposal and how such an operation would work, a campaign official said Trump was “clearly just floating it in jest.”
“President Trump has always been the law and order President and he continues to reiterate the importance of enforcing existing laws,” Steven Cheung, the campaign’s communications director, wrote in a statement to POLITICO. “Otherwise it’s all-out anarchy, which is what Kamala Harris has created in some of these communities across America, especially during her time as [California] Attorney General when she emboldened criminals.
The best analysis of what’s ahead and what’s happened is by Marcy at EmptyWheel. “As Kamala Harris Passes the Two-Thirds Mark, Trump Adopts Apocalyptic Language.”
Back on August 17, I laid out six things that could destabilize the race. We’ve gotten versions of four of those, though without yet serious impact on the race.
- There were no mass protests at the DNC. Neither, however, was there someone speaking for Palestinian people from the Convention podium.
- With the assassination last week of Hassan Nasrallah and Israel’s expanding operations against Iranian proxies in Lebanon and Yemen, we have seen unforeseen escalation in the Middle East. Joe Biden seems incapable of understanding that Bibi Netanyahu was never a good faith negotiator. On top of the instability this will bring (and the ongoing threat of Iranian violence targeted at Trump), I worry that Harris’ choice to prioritize Republican endorsements over Palestinian speakers could harm her in Michigan (as Elissa Slotkin issues warnings about Michigan).
- We did get a superseding indictment in Trump’s January 6 case (though without any new charges), but Trump succeded in delaying sentencing in his NY case. We may find out this week whether we’re going to get to see a redacted version of Jack Smith’s argument that Trump is not immune; indeed, given how Judge Tanya Chutkan issued a deadline for noon tomorrow, we may even see the argument itself this week. If we do, Trump’s attacks on Mike Pence will be at the center of the argument. Remember: Trump’s increasing fascistic language over the weekend has come after he got a first look at Smith’s argument, and his lawyers seem terrified of some of the claims made by witnesses that could get unsealed.
- Kamala Harris did have a historically successful debate, but it has done little more than bump polling, slightly. That said, her campaign continues to goad Trump to make him look weak, most recently in a national ad and plane advertisement at the Alabama-Georgia game yesterday. Whether or not Harris pushes him to accept a second debate, the continued goading seems to keep him unbalanced. In recent campaign appearances, Trump has denied he fell into her trap at the debate, directly addressed rally-goers who were leaving (denying they were leaving), and freaked out about a fly.
- Whatever the cause, Trump is increasingly unhinged in public appearances, though much of the press continues to sanewash his coverage. More and more, his rants adopt fascist language, such as yesterday when he either endorsed The Purge or Kristallnacht. Donald Trump looks weak and Donald Trump looks violent, but that is not yet a persistent news coverage theme (indeed, in his polling update, Nate Silver claims there’s nothing “like Joe Biden’s deteriorating public performances” that might be affecting the race in ways polling is not accounting for). If the press does begin to capture Trump’s weakness and violence, it may impact the race — but I’m not holding my breath.
- Trump’s right wing running mate has drummed up terrorist threats against his own constituents in Springfield, OH, and more recently drummed up threats against a beloved Pittsburgh restaurant (while trying to tamp them down). We have not yet gotten right wing violence, neither localized nor mass. But understand that the far right Christian nationalists that Trump has been cultivating, most notably with JD Vance’s appearance with Lance Wallnau, have been an absolutely central factor in past political violence, including January 6. When Donald Trump mobilizes Christian imagery, he does so not because he believes in any of it, but because he believes in power, and he knows he can get people who mistake him for the Messiah to go to war for him. (An Evangelicals for Harris group just rolled out an ad interspersing Billy Graham warnings of the anti-Christ with clips of Trump.) We have not yet seen political violence against marginalized groups, but Trump is doing everything that has fostered it in the past. Nevertheless, most horserace journalists are ignoring that, just like they and their colleagues dismissed the risk of political violence in advance of January 6.
In my earlier post, I said we should be unsurprised by a Black Swan event (I suggested all-out war was one possibility, and given the escalation in the Middle East, it remains one).
The floods caused by Helene could be another. Right wingers are already trying to ensure this works like Katrina did for George W Bush. And whatever else, the flooding disproportionately affected the rural areas that Trump needs to win North Carolina (though North Carolina voters can forego voter ID requirements under an emergency exception). That said, the Helene response may also highlight two things — FEMA and NOAA — that Project 2025 aims to defund. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee’s attempt to forgo federal help may provide a contrast that shows how Federal help can make a difference in a catastrophe. And a whole bunch of conservative people just got bowled over by the impact of climate change, hundreds of miles from the nearest coast. If the Feds can respond to the damage on I-40 like they did to the I-95 or the Francis Scott Key Bridge disaster, it may convince people in North Carolina that the government can too do something good.
As for the flood, Biden promises the Federal Government will stay until the work is done. This is from USA. Today.”Biden on Helene disaster: ‘We’re not leaving until the job is done.'” Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy reports the story.
President Joe Biden assured communities reeling from Hurricane Helene that the “nation has your back,” and that help was on the way in a speech Monday from the White House.
“We’ll continue to serve resources including food, water, communications, and lifesaving equipment will be there,” Biden said. “I mean it − as long as it takes to finish this job.”
He also said he’s committed to travel later this week to affected communities.
“I’ve been told that it would be disruptive if I did it right now,” he said.
Authorities are dealing with the storm’s aftermath, which saw caused widespread devastation and power outages across the Southeast and killed at least 100. Biden, who said he’s been in touch with governors, mayors and local leaders, said 600 people were still unaccounted for.
I remember Hurricane Katrina all too well and while I loved spending time with Anderson Cooper et al, I’d rather no one have to live through that again. So, why don’t we keep going with renewable energy, develop a workable immigration plan, and continue to fund a government that works for the people? I’m tired of seeing billionaires and grifting politicians get the goodies.
Cheer up folks! Coach Tim debates J Dank Vance tomorrow night!!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
https://skydancingblog.com/2024/09/30/mostly-monday-reads-the-final-meltdown/
#Repeat1968JohnBuss #DonaldSDankPennsylvaniaRally #HurricaneHelene #TheMediaAndTrump #TheMediaSUCKS #TheMediumIsTheMessage
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“The empathy just oozes from this one. Hurricane Helene was apparently wet.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Morning, Sky Dancers!
The signs of the results of lousy decision-making based on greed and mythology are everywhere. Hurricanes are no longer coastal phenomena but can make their way 300 miles inland and hold a Cat 2 status. You would think enough people in this country have critical thinking skills and conscience to vote the pols out who are doing this to us. It would help, of course, if the press were still on the side of democracy instead of creating clickbait to earn a buck for stockholders and top management. But, here we are deeper down the rat hole of “The Medium is the Message published in 1964.” McLuhan understood clickbait before just about anyone.
The title “The Medium Is the Massage” is a teaser—a way of getting attention. There’s a wonderful sign hanging in a Toronto junkyard which reads, ‘Help Beautify Junkyards. Throw Something Lovely Away Today.’ This is a very effective way of getting people to notice a lot of things. And so the title is intended to draw attention to the fact that a medium is not something neutral—it does something to people. It takes hold of them. It rubs them off, it massages them and bumps them around, chiropractically, as it were, and the general roughing up that any new society gets from a medium, especially a new medium, is what is intended in that title”
This is more true than ever. We have more than a few TV channels, newspapers, and radio to influence us these days. Most people treat their news and information more like boutique shopping, where they can find the look that suits them every time. Substack is one medium where I have seen public intellectuals. I feel comfortable reading a lot of people there, and I must admit that it’s because they are a lot like me. They write about things that bug them about the institutions and country that house them and likely educated them. However, they do bring reasoned thought and data with them. But anyway, enough of that rabbit hole. Let’s just say I’m not beyond shopping my own boutique. Also, the positive thing about the web is that you have access to authentic information and don’t have to spend days in dark, moldy library stacks to find it. The negative thing is that not all people want to be challenged. They want to feel good about what they already think is real.
Margaret Sullivan’s Substack–aptly called American Crisis–has this headline today. “The three phases of normalizing Trump’s attack on Harris in Wisconsin. The media did what it always does, and it’s not good enough.” Trump is so far off the sanity scale these days that it is indeed frightening.
- The use of neutral language. If you merely read about Donald Trump’s deeply offensive rally this weekend in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, you probably thought it was about immigration. And about Trump up to his usual tricks of disparaging his rivals.
Here the lead of the report from Axios, for example:
“Former President Trump, in a self-described ‘dark speech,’ told a rally in Wisconsin yesterday that his opponent, Vice President Harris, is “mentally impaired’ and “mentally disabled.’”
Axios, which favors bullet points and boldface help for the tuned-out, let us know “Why It Matters”: “Even for Trump, it was weird, nasty and nonsensical — when he needed to be swaying ‘national security moms’ and other undecideds.”
Or here’s the top paragraph of the Washington Post report: “Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump criticized Vice President Harris’s mental capacity Saturday, falsely claiming she was born ‘mentally impaired’ and comparing her actions to that of a ‘mentally disabled person.’ The remarks prompted criticism from advocates for people with disabilities.”
Here’s the Associated Press’s headline: “Trump lists his grievances in a Wisconsin speech intended to link Harris to illegal immigration.”
But if you watched the speech, or even snippets of it, you saw something quite different — an absolutely ugly and brutal attack on Kamala Harris, full of lies and racist misogyny. In case you missed it, watch a bit of it here.
Sullivan has written two more of them and a lot of examples to follow. Please go read it.
- The lack of substantial followup. Once the outrageous rally was over, and the stories with their neutral language written, the political media was ready — more than ready — to move on. The media does know how to follow up, as you may recall from, for instance, President Biden’s bad debate this summer. But in the case of Trump’s unhinged and ugly attack on Harris’s intelligence, the spot-news coverage was about it. I did not see countless outraged opinion pieces; I did not see days of stories examining every aspect of this. It was just, cover the speech and let’s get out of here.
- The pivot to safety. Like waves rushing to the shore, the media relentlessly returns to the familiar. The thinking seems to go something like this: Whew, that was a pretty crazy rally, but let’s leave that behind and get back to what we’re good at. When in doubt, cover the horserace. One thing I did see after Saturday’s rally were many, many, many stories about polls. A New York Times headline Sunday rendered it this way: “Harris and Trump are Neck and Neck in Michigan and Wisconsin, Polls Find.” And that’s about as horserace-oriented as it gets.
This New Yorker’s The Lede, published three days ago, has similar warnings. It’s written by Clare Malone. “Is There a Method to Donald Trump’s Madness? The former President’s appeal has always been his sui-generis persona and politics—take him as he is—but, this year, the campaign seems more devoted to fan service than anything else.” Why try to make sense out of acts stemming from severe Personality Disorders and likely advanced dementia? Are the lessons from Journalism school to just blandly report the unspeakable? Was there ever a method in madness?
Vance is now a historically unpopular Vice-Presidential nominee. Mainstream Republican contenders, such as Senator Marco Rubio or Governor Doug Burgum, might have appealed to the sort of Nikki Haley voters that can’t stand Trump. Rubio, who is Cuban American, might have been a good pick to attract Latino voters, who, polls showed, were less interested in voting Democratic this year. Instead, Trump’s selection of Vance and all that he brings with him emphasized a doubling-down on MAGA culture. It could end up being politically ill-advised, but it’s not without its logic. Trump’s team knows that America is a hyperpartisan country. Polls show that just four per cent of voters are undecided in this election, the smallest share of the electorate in any U.S. contest this century. For the Trump campaign, the theory goes: Why expend all your energy trying to convince people to vote for one of the most unpopular Presidents in American history? Work to amp up your base and find Trump fans who don’t usually vote and make sure they turn out on November 5th.
The Trump campaign calls these voters “low-propensity,” and they’re working to turn them out in swing states like Arizona, where a canvassing effort is being run by the conservative group Turning Point USA. An Elon Musk-backed PAC is doing the same in Nevada and Michigan. Some Republicans have expressed reservations about the strategy, but it’s not a new idea in Trumpworld. In 2016, when I was a reporter at FiveThirtyEight, I obtained a Trump campaign memo written during that year’s primaries that explained the unusual practice of targeting low-propensity voters. “Our candidate commands unheard amounts of earned media,” the memo read, calling the strategy “more akin to evangelization than persuasion.” The job, then, was to teach Trump fans how to become Trump voters. “These are people who may not know where to vote, whether or not they are eligible to participate, and what the hours are,” the memo read. “They may have to work on the actual election day and are unaware of early voting opportunities on Saturdays. Many of them may have simply never been asked for their vote.” Turning Point’s focus this year—one of its employees told Semafor—is on small groups of thirty thousand to forty thousand potential voters in swing states, a testament to the slim margins of 2024.
Trump’s appeal has always been his sui-generis persona and politics—take him as he is—but, this year, the campaign seems more devoted to fan service than anything else. Steven Cheung, Trump’s top spokesman, recently retweeted a three-minute tongue-in-cheek hard-rock music video titled “MAGA ENERGY,” which nicely captured the movement’s aesthetics. It features lyrics like “Our world is frightening / Globals want to burn it down,” images of American flags and Trump’s face overlaid on that of a lion, and a montage of the jiggling, mostly bare bottoms of women shooting automatic weapons. Trump, a marketer to his core, has also built a promotional flywheel that he hopes his voters will get stuck in: If you like Trump’s crazy persona, you might go to your first Trump rally. If you go to enough rallies, you might like Trump’s digital trading cards—collect enough and you’ll get a physical piece of the suit that he wore to his debate with Biden (really!). If you like the trading cards, maybe you’ll buy Melania’s new book (she stands by her nude photos). Somewhere in there, Trump and company are hoping their low-propensity supporters register to vote and do so early.
The purpose of Trump’s campaign is to bolster his ego and keep him out of jail. Then, he’ll likely be replaced either by death or the 25th Amendment, and Vance will put the entire 2025 plan into play. Because all the players will be set up in the Federal Government. Additionally, all the work of Pat Robertson and others from the Reagan administration to enslave us to White Christian Nationalism will come to fruition.
Yesterday, I read this article from Mother Jones where one of the so-called Christians in that movement finally realizes that what he was doing wasn’t very ‘Christ-like,’ has repented, and is now trying to reverse the hell they bring to the political system. The title is “Confessions of a (Former) Christian Nationalist. When religion is placed at the service of a political party, it corrupts both.” and it’s written by The Reverend Rob Schenck. Anyone who read the history of the Roman Empire and its use of Christianity to conquer Northern Europe should know this by now. The story on how they captured SCOTUS is even more interesting than the narrative on capturing members of Congress.
Federal judges and especially Supreme Court justices, unlike politicians, never need to shake hands across a rope line. Accessing their world required creativity. I found it through the little-known Supreme Court Historical Society. Founded by the late Chief Justice Warren Burger, the independent nonprofit holds an annual dinner hosted by the chief justice and attended by most associate justices. Tickets are strictly controlled. By establishing a close relationship with the society’s staff, I managed to secure seats each year for several of my donors, whom I would coach on how to connect with the justices attending the event. As a result, two of my most active participants, Don and Gayle Wright of Dayton, Ohio, ingratiated themselves with the Alitos, Scalias, and Thomases.
When I trained my donors to interact with conservative justices on the court, I told them to reinforce for their powerful new friends how important their decisions were to the country’s future, and how critical Judeo-Christian values are to America’s success. I encouraged them to underscore how millions of citizens thanked God for their presence on the top court.
In a notable instance, the Wrights were tipped off about a pending decision before it was announced to the public. As I later told the House Judiciary Committee, “Gayle relayed that she had learned the outcome of the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby case while at the meal with the Alitos, that it was in Hobby Lobby’s favor, and that ‘Sam is writing it.’” The ruling would affirm that companies with religious objections were not required to provide contraceptive coverage in their health insurance packages. I also told the House committee that Gayle had shared the news with me and that I told the president of Hobby Lobby, Steve Green—his parents were donors to my organization—that they had won the case. The Green family found themselves in the enviable position of using the advance notice to prep their spokespeople so they could be ready at the microphone outside the court following Alito’s reading of the majority opinion. They could shape the public narrative, a distinct advantage over their opponents.
When word of our campaign eventually broke in the New York Times, Justice Alito responded, “I never detected any effort on the part of the Wrights to obtain confidential information or to influence anything that I did in either an official or private capacity, and I would have strongly objected if they had done so.” He added, “I have no knowledge of any project that they allegedly undertook for ‘Faith and Action.’” Gayle Wright denied obtaining or passing along any such information. Steve Green declined to comment to the Times, and his mother told the paper he hadn’t been notified in advance. Let’s just say this is not how I remember what had happened.
It took years for the scales to fall from my eyes. A major turning point occurred when I took a leave of absence from Faith and Action to pursue a late-in-life doctorate. Part of my research involved the German Christian movement of the 1930s, which supported the Nazi Party. One of the most respected Bible scholars of that period, Paul Althaus, declared Hitler’s ascent to the chancellorship to be a “gift and miracle from God.” I began to suspect that we evangelicals were similarly allowing our faith to be co-opted for political purposes. Devastating consequences seemed inevitable for evangelicalism and for our country.
These fears were reinforced when I attended a tribute banquet for Pat Robertson around 2010. Virtually every evangelical luminary was there. When Robertson introduced his guest of honor, Donald J. Trump, I was shocked. In Bible college, my preaching instructor had suggested that the New York playboy was a perfect illustration for what it meant to not live as a Christian. I asked a friend of Pat’s why Trump was there. They both were “members of the billionaires’ club,” he explained. “Besides, he may make a good president someday.” Trump worked the room, filled with the biggest names on the religious right, garnering hearty applause.
The article is long and can make you angry, but it gives you more insight into that influential movement. Know Thy Enemy.
The New York Times finally read the writing on the wall today and endorsed Kamala Harris for President. I’m using the Politico analysis rather than trying to get into the NYT again, so you can notice the subheading, which says a lot about Politoco as a source. “NYT endorses Harris as ‘the only choice’ for president. The editorial board has not backed a Republican for president since Dwight Eisenhower in 1956.” The analysis also says something about the New York Times.
The New York Times editorial board on Monday endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, calling her “the only patriotic choice for president” while painting a grim picture of a second term for former President Donald Trump.
Rather than praise for its preferred candidate, the board led its endorsement of Harris by listing off disqualifying arguments against Trump. “It is hard to imagine a candidate more unworthy to serve as president of the United States,” the Times editorial board wrote.
“This unequivocal, dispiriting truth — Donald Trump is not fit to be president — should be enough for any voter who cares about the health of our country and the stability of our democracy to deny him re-election,” the board, made up of 14 opinion journalists, wrote. “For this reason, regardless of any political disagreements voters might have with her, Kamala Harris is the only patriotic choice for president.”
The endorsement of Harris is unsurprising — the editorial board has not backed a Republican for president since Dwight Eisenhower in 1956 — though still important given the paper’s influence. In July, 10 days before President Joe Biden left the race (and after the board called on him to do so), the board published a five-part, scathing editorial against Trump that struck many of the same chords as Monday’s story.
Okay, enough of that. Trump has become utterly void of self-censoring, even when it’s something that would behoove him to hide. This is from MSNBC and Steven Benen. “On overtime pay, Trump slips up by accidentally telling the truth. Donald Trump admitted that he concocted a private-sector scheme to avoid paying his employees overtime compensation. So much for his “pro-worker” pitch.”
Five of the most interesting words in Donald Trump’s rhetorical repertoire are, “I shouldn’t say this, but…” While it’s obviously impossible to read the former president’s mind, whenever the Republican uses the phrase, it’s an apparent acknowledgement that he knows the rest of the sentence will be politically problematic, but he’s simply unable to help himself.
As his first year in the White House came to an end, for example, Trump declared, “I shouldn’t say this, but we essentially repealed Obamacare.” He was, of course, lying, but the comments served as a reminder of his anti-health care vision. About a year later, campaigning in Montana, the then-president publicly praised Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte for physically assaulting a journalist who asked a question the governor didn’t like.
“I shouldn’t say this [but] there’s nothing to be embarrassed about,” Trump said in reference to the violence.
Six years later, the Republican is still stumbling into inadvertent moments of candor. HuffPost reported:
Former president and current GOP nominee Donald Trump on Sunday admitted he ‘hated’ to pay his staff overtime and would instead replace them with other workers to avoid doing so. Trump’s confession came during a campaign rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, after promising to deliver ‘gigantic tax cuts’ via his pledge to end tax on tips, on overtime and on social security benefits for seniors.”
“I know a lot about overtime,” the Republican candidate boasted. “I hated to give overtime. I hated it. I’d get other people, I shouldn’t say this, but I’d get other people in. I wouldn’t pay.”
The public comments stood out for a few reasons.
Right off the bat, there are still some political observers who like to pretend that the former president is some kind of ally to working-class Americans. It’s against that backdrop that Trump thought it’d be a good idea to admit that he, as a boss, deliberately took steps to deny his own employees overtime compensation to which they were entitled.
Meanwhile, the DonOld Cult is up to more domestic terrorism. This is from Raw Story. “Trump-supporting Ohio businessman gets MAGA death threats for defending Haitian workers.” This analysis is by Brad Reed.
A Trump-supporting Ohio businessman is getting major blowback from fellow Trump supporters after he publicly defended the honor of the Haitian immigrants he has hired to work for him.
The New York Times reports that Jamie McGregor, a lifelong Republican who twice voted for former President Donald Trump and owner of the McGregor Metal manufacturing shop, has been hit with “death threats, a lockdown at his company and posters around town branding him a traitor” because he praised the Haitian immigrants who work at his company.
In fact, McGregor says the situation as gotten so scary that he’s arming both himself and his family members to defend against would-be MAGA assailants.
“I have struggled with the fact that now we’re going to have firearms in our house — like, what the hell?” he told the Times. “And now we’re taking classes, we’re going to shooting ranges, we’re being fitted for handguns.”
McGregor decided to hire newly arrived Haitian immigrants in recent years because he had trouble finding dependable workers, and he has praised them for having a strong work ethic that has benefitted his business.
McGregor’s home city of Springfield, Ohio has become the focus of MAGA anger in recent weeks after former President Donald Trump made false claims about Haitian immigrants there eating locals’ dogs and cats.
When confronted with evidence debunking this claim, Trump and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), have doubled down on attacking the Haitian immigrant community.
It’s beginning to feel like Lord of the Flies in Trumplandia. I wonder if said businessman will vote for Trump again? Has that book been banned yet in Florida?
Oh, and now we get to speak of The Purge. They filmed the TV series at the Abandoned Navy Base down the block from me, which was weird enough. I didn’t see the movie or the series, but I know enough of the franchise to recognize it in Donald’s speech. This is from Politico. “Trump says ‘violent day’ of policing will end crime. The remarks at a campaign rally Sunday did not amount to a policy proposal allowing police retaliation, the former president’s campaign said.” Adam Wren reports the story.
Former President Donald Trump on Sunday called for “one real rough, nasty” and “violent day” of police retaliation in order to eradicate crime “immediately.”
The remarks — delivered by Trump at a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, just 36 days before the election — did not amount to a new policy proposal, according to a Trump campaign official.
Asked whether the former president’s idea amounted to a new proposal and how such an operation would work, a campaign official said Trump was “clearly just floating it in jest.”
“President Trump has always been the law and order President and he continues to reiterate the importance of enforcing existing laws,” Steven Cheung, the campaign’s communications director, wrote in a statement to POLITICO. “Otherwise it’s all-out anarchy, which is what Kamala Harris has created in some of these communities across America, especially during her time as [California] Attorney General when she emboldened criminals.
The best analysis of what’s ahead and what’s happened is by Marcy at EmptyWheel. “As Kamala Harris Passes the Two-Thirds Mark, Trump Adopts Apocalyptic Language.”
Back on August 17, I laid out six things that could destabilize the race. We’ve gotten versions of four of those, though without yet serious impact on the race.
- There were no mass protests at the DNC. Neither, however, was there someone speaking for Palestinian people from the Convention podium.
- With the assassination last week of Hassan Nasrallah and Israel’s expanding operations against Iranian proxies in Lebanon and Yemen, we have seen unforeseen escalation in the Middle East. Joe Biden seems incapable of understanding that Bibi Netanyahu was never a good faith negotiator. On top of the instability this will bring (and the ongoing threat of Iranian violence targeted at Trump), I worry that Harris’ choice to prioritize Republican endorsements over Palestinian speakers could harm her in Michigan (as Elissa Slotkin issues warnings about Michigan).
- We did get a superseding indictment in Trump’s January 6 case (though without any new charges), but Trump succeded in delaying sentencing in his NY case. We may find out this week whether we’re going to get to see a redacted version of Jack Smith’s argument that Trump is not immune; indeed, given how Judge Tanya Chutkan issued a deadline for noon tomorrow, we may even see the argument itself this week. If we do, Trump’s attacks on Mike Pence will be at the center of the argument. Remember: Trump’s increasing fascistic language over the weekend has come after he got a first look at Smith’s argument, and his lawyers seem terrified of some of the claims made by witnesses that could get unsealed.
- Kamala Harris did have a historically successful debate, but it has done little more than bump polling, slightly. That said, her campaign continues to goad Trump to make him look weak, most recently in a national ad and plane advertisement at the Alabama-Georgia game yesterday. Whether or not Harris pushes him to accept a second debate, the continued goading seems to keep him unbalanced. In recent campaign appearances, Trump has denied he fell into her trap at the debate, directly addressed rally-goers who were leaving (denying they were leaving), and freaked out about a fly.
- Whatever the cause, Trump is increasingly unhinged in public appearances, though much of the press continues to sanewash his coverage. More and more, his rants adopt fascist language, such as yesterday when he either endorsed The Purge or Kristallnacht. Donald Trump looks weak and Donald Trump looks violent, but that is not yet a persistent news coverage theme (indeed, in his polling update, Nate Silver claims there’s nothing “like Joe Biden’s deteriorating public performances” that might be affecting the race in ways polling is not accounting for). If the press does begin to capture Trump’s weakness and violence, it may impact the race — but I’m not holding my breath.
- Trump’s right wing running mate has drummed up terrorist threats against his own constituents in Springfield, OH, and more recently drummed up threats against a beloved Pittsburgh restaurant (while trying to tamp them down). We have not yet gotten right wing violence, neither localized nor mass. But understand that the far right Christian nationalists that Trump has been cultivating, most notably with JD Vance’s appearance with Lance Wallnau, have been an absolutely central factor in past political violence, including January 6. When Donald Trump mobilizes Christian imagery, he does so not because he believes in any of it, but because he believes in power, and he knows he can get people who mistake him for the Messiah to go to war for him. (An Evangelicals for Harris group just rolled out an ad interspersing Billy Graham warnings of the anti-Christ with clips of Trump.) We have not yet seen political violence against marginalized groups, but Trump is doing everything that has fostered it in the past. Nevertheless, most horserace journalists are ignoring that, just like they and their colleagues dismissed the risk of political violence in advance of January 6.
In my earlier post, I said we should be unsurprised by a Black Swan event (I suggested all-out war was one possibility, and given the escalation in the Middle East, it remains one).
The floods caused by Helene could be another. Right wingers are already trying to ensure this works like Katrina did for George W Bush. And whatever else, the flooding disproportionately affected the rural areas that Trump needs to win North Carolina (though North Carolina voters can forego voter ID requirements under an emergency exception). That said, the Helene response may also highlight two things — FEMA and NOAA — that Project 2025 aims to defund. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee’s attempt to forgo federal help may provide a contrast that shows how Federal help can make a difference in a catastrophe. And a whole bunch of conservative people just got bowled over by the impact of climate change, hundreds of miles from the nearest coast. If the Feds can respond to the damage on I-40 like they did to the I-95 or the Francis Scott Key Bridge disaster, it may convince people in North Carolina that the government can too do something good.
As for the flood, Biden promises the Federal Government will stay until the work is done. This is from USA. Today.”Biden on Helene disaster: ‘We’re not leaving until the job is done.'” Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy reports the story.
President Joe Biden assured communities reeling from Hurricane Helene that the “nation has your back,” and that help was on the way in a speech Monday from the White House.
“We’ll continue to serve resources including food, water, communications, and lifesaving equipment will be there,” Biden said. “I mean it − as long as it takes to finish this job.”
He also said he’s committed to travel later this week to affected communities.
“I’ve been told that it would be disruptive if I did it right now,” he said.
Authorities are dealing with the storm’s aftermath, which saw caused widespread devastation and power outages across the Southeast and killed at least 100. Biden, who said he’s been in touch with governors, mayors and local leaders, said 600 people were still unaccounted for.
I remember Hurricane Katrina all too well and while I loved spending time with Anderson Cooper et al, I’d rather no one have to live through that again. So, why don’t we keep going with renewable energy, develop a workable immigration plan, and continue to fund a government that works for the people? I’m tired of seeing billionaires and grifting politicians get the goodies.
Cheer up folks! Coach Tim debates J Dank Vance tomorrow night!!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
https://skydancingblog.com/2024/09/30/mostly-monday-reads-the-final-meltdown/
#Repeat1968JohnBuss #DonaldSDankPennsylvaniaRally #HurricaneHelene #TheMediaAndTrump #TheMediaSUCKS #TheMediumIsTheMessage
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“The empathy just oozes from this one. Hurricane Helene was apparently wet.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Morning, Sky Dancers!
The signs of the results of lousy decision-making based on greed and mythology are everywhere. Hurricanes are no longer coastal phenomena but can make their way 300 miles inland and hold a Cat 2 status. You would think enough people in this country have critical thinking skills and conscience to vote the pols out who are doing this to us. It would help, of course, if the press were still on the side of democracy instead of creating clickbait to earn a buck for stockholders and top management. But, here we are deeper down the rat hole of “The Medium is the Message published in 1964.” McLuhan understood clickbait before just about anyone.
The title “The Medium Is the Massage” is a teaser—a way of getting attention. There’s a wonderful sign hanging in a Toronto junkyard which reads, ‘Help Beautify Junkyards. Throw Something Lovely Away Today.’ This is a very effective way of getting people to notice a lot of things. And so the title is intended to draw attention to the fact that a medium is not something neutral—it does something to people. It takes hold of them. It rubs them off, it massages them and bumps them around, chiropractically, as it were, and the general roughing up that any new society gets from a medium, especially a new medium, is what is intended in that title”
This is more true than ever. We have more than a few TV channels, newspapers, and radio to influence us these days. Most people treat their news and information more like boutique shopping, where they can find the look that suits them every time. Substack is one medium where I have seen public intellectuals. I feel comfortable reading a lot of people there, and I must admit that it’s because they are a lot like me. They write about things that bug them about the institutions and country that house them and likely educated them. However, they do bring reasoned thought and data with them. But anyway, enough of that rabbit hole. Let’s just say I’m not beyond shopping my own boutique. Also, the positive thing about the web is that you have access to authentic information and don’t have to spend days in dark, moldy library stacks to find it. The negative thing is that not all people want to be challenged. They want to feel good about what they already think is real.
Margaret Sullivan’s Substack–aptly called American Crisis–has this headline today. “The three phases of normalizing Trump’s attack on Harris in Wisconsin. The media did what it always does, and it’s not good enough.” Trump is so far off the sanity scale these days that it is indeed frightening.
- The use of neutral language. If you merely read about Donald Trump’s deeply offensive rally this weekend in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, you probably thought it was about immigration. And about Trump up to his usual tricks of disparaging his rivals.
Here the lead of the report from Axios, for example:
“Former President Trump, in a self-described ‘dark speech,’ told a rally in Wisconsin yesterday that his opponent, Vice President Harris, is “mentally impaired’ and “mentally disabled.’”
Axios, which favors bullet points and boldface help for the tuned-out, let us know “Why It Matters”: “Even for Trump, it was weird, nasty and nonsensical — when he needed to be swaying ‘national security moms’ and other undecideds.”
Or here’s the top paragraph of the Washington Post report: “Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump criticized Vice President Harris’s mental capacity Saturday, falsely claiming she was born ‘mentally impaired’ and comparing her actions to that of a ‘mentally disabled person.’ The remarks prompted criticism from advocates for people with disabilities.”
Here’s the Associated Press’s headline: “Trump lists his grievances in a Wisconsin speech intended to link Harris to illegal immigration.”
But if you watched the speech, or even snippets of it, you saw something quite different — an absolutely ugly and brutal attack on Kamala Harris, full of lies and racist misogyny. In case you missed it, watch a bit of it here.
Sullivan has written two more of them and a lot of examples to follow. Please go read it.
- The lack of substantial followup. Once the outrageous rally was over, and the stories with their neutral language written, the political media was ready — more than ready — to move on. The media does know how to follow up, as you may recall from, for instance, President Biden’s bad debate this summer. But in the case of Trump’s unhinged and ugly attack on Harris’s intelligence, the spot-news coverage was about it. I did not see countless outraged opinion pieces; I did not see days of stories examining every aspect of this. It was just, cover the speech and let’s get out of here.
- The pivot to safety. Like waves rushing to the shore, the media relentlessly returns to the familiar. The thinking seems to go something like this: Whew, that was a pretty crazy rally, but let’s leave that behind and get back to what we’re good at. When in doubt, cover the horserace. One thing I did see after Saturday’s rally were many, many, many stories about polls. A New York Times headline Sunday rendered it this way: “Harris and Trump are Neck and Neck in Michigan and Wisconsin, Polls Find.” And that’s about as horserace-oriented as it gets.
This New Yorker’s The Lede, published three days ago, has similar warnings. It’s written by Clare Malone. “Is There a Method to Donald Trump’s Madness? The former President’s appeal has always been his sui-generis persona and politics—take him as he is—but, this year, the campaign seems more devoted to fan service than anything else.” Why try to make sense out of acts stemming from severe Personality Disorders and likely advanced dementia? Are the lessons from Journalism school to just blandly report the unspeakable? Was there ever a method in madness?
Vance is now a historically unpopular Vice-Presidential nominee. Mainstream Republican contenders, such as Senator Marco Rubio or Governor Doug Burgum, might have appealed to the sort of Nikki Haley voters that can’t stand Trump. Rubio, who is Cuban American, might have been a good pick to attract Latino voters, who, polls showed, were less interested in voting Democratic this year. Instead, Trump’s selection of Vance and all that he brings with him emphasized a doubling-down on MAGA culture. It could end up being politically ill-advised, but it’s not without its logic. Trump’s team knows that America is a hyperpartisan country. Polls show that just four per cent of voters are undecided in this election, the smallest share of the electorate in any U.S. contest this century. For the Trump campaign, the theory goes: Why expend all your energy trying to convince people to vote for one of the most unpopular Presidents in American history? Work to amp up your base and find Trump fans who don’t usually vote and make sure they turn out on November 5th.
The Trump campaign calls these voters “low-propensity,” and they’re working to turn them out in swing states like Arizona, where a canvassing effort is being run by the conservative group Turning Point USA. An Elon Musk-backed PAC is doing the same in Nevada and Michigan. Some Republicans have expressed reservations about the strategy, but it’s not a new idea in Trumpworld. In 2016, when I was a reporter at FiveThirtyEight, I obtained a Trump campaign memo written during that year’s primaries that explained the unusual practice of targeting low-propensity voters. “Our candidate commands unheard amounts of earned media,” the memo read, calling the strategy “more akin to evangelization than persuasion.” The job, then, was to teach Trump fans how to become Trump voters. “These are people who may not know where to vote, whether or not they are eligible to participate, and what the hours are,” the memo read. “They may have to work on the actual election day and are unaware of early voting opportunities on Saturdays. Many of them may have simply never been asked for their vote.” Turning Point’s focus this year—one of its employees told Semafor—is on small groups of thirty thousand to forty thousand potential voters in swing states, a testament to the slim margins of 2024.
Trump’s appeal has always been his sui-generis persona and politics—take him as he is—but, this year, the campaign seems more devoted to fan service than anything else. Steven Cheung, Trump’s top spokesman, recently retweeted a three-minute tongue-in-cheek hard-rock music video titled “MAGA ENERGY,” which nicely captured the movement’s aesthetics. It features lyrics like “Our world is frightening / Globals want to burn it down,” images of American flags and Trump’s face overlaid on that of a lion, and a montage of the jiggling, mostly bare bottoms of women shooting automatic weapons. Trump, a marketer to his core, has also built a promotional flywheel that he hopes his voters will get stuck in: If you like Trump’s crazy persona, you might go to your first Trump rally. If you go to enough rallies, you might like Trump’s digital trading cards—collect enough and you’ll get a physical piece of the suit that he wore to his debate with Biden (really!). If you like the trading cards, maybe you’ll buy Melania’s new book (she stands by her nude photos). Somewhere in there, Trump and company are hoping their low-propensity supporters register to vote and do so early.
The purpose of Trump’s campaign is to bolster his ego and keep him out of jail. Then, he’ll likely be replaced either by death or the 25th Amendment, and Vance will put the entire 2025 plan into play. Because all the players will be set up in the Federal Government. Additionally, all the work of Pat Robertson and others from the Reagan administration to enslave us to White Christian Nationalism will come to fruition.
Yesterday, I read this article from Mother Jones where one of the so-called Christians in that movement finally realizes that what he was doing wasn’t very ‘Christ-like,’ has repented, and is now trying to reverse the hell they bring to the political system. The title is “Confessions of a (Former) Christian Nationalist. When religion is placed at the service of a political party, it corrupts both.” and it’s written by The Reverend Rob Schenck. Anyone who read the history of the Roman Empire and its use of Christianity to conquer Northern Europe should know this by now. The story on how they captured SCOTUS is even more interesting than the narrative on capturing members of Congress.
Federal judges and especially Supreme Court justices, unlike politicians, never need to shake hands across a rope line. Accessing their world required creativity. I found it through the little-known Supreme Court Historical Society. Founded by the late Chief Justice Warren Burger, the independent nonprofit holds an annual dinner hosted by the chief justice and attended by most associate justices. Tickets are strictly controlled. By establishing a close relationship with the society’s staff, I managed to secure seats each year for several of my donors, whom I would coach on how to connect with the justices attending the event. As a result, two of my most active participants, Don and Gayle Wright of Dayton, Ohio, ingratiated themselves with the Alitos, Scalias, and Thomases.
When I trained my donors to interact with conservative justices on the court, I told them to reinforce for their powerful new friends how important their decisions were to the country’s future, and how critical Judeo-Christian values are to America’s success. I encouraged them to underscore how millions of citizens thanked God for their presence on the top court.
In a notable instance, the Wrights were tipped off about a pending decision before it was announced to the public. As I later told the House Judiciary Committee, “Gayle relayed that she had learned the outcome of the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby case while at the meal with the Alitos, that it was in Hobby Lobby’s favor, and that ‘Sam is writing it.’” The ruling would affirm that companies with religious objections were not required to provide contraceptive coverage in their health insurance packages. I also told the House committee that Gayle had shared the news with me and that I told the president of Hobby Lobby, Steve Green—his parents were donors to my organization—that they had won the case. The Green family found themselves in the enviable position of using the advance notice to prep their spokespeople so they could be ready at the microphone outside the court following Alito’s reading of the majority opinion. They could shape the public narrative, a distinct advantage over their opponents.
When word of our campaign eventually broke in the New York Times, Justice Alito responded, “I never detected any effort on the part of the Wrights to obtain confidential information or to influence anything that I did in either an official or private capacity, and I would have strongly objected if they had done so.” He added, “I have no knowledge of any project that they allegedly undertook for ‘Faith and Action.’” Gayle Wright denied obtaining or passing along any such information. Steve Green declined to comment to the Times, and his mother told the paper he hadn’t been notified in advance. Let’s just say this is not how I remember what had happened.
It took years for the scales to fall from my eyes. A major turning point occurred when I took a leave of absence from Faith and Action to pursue a late-in-life doctorate. Part of my research involved the German Christian movement of the 1930s, which supported the Nazi Party. One of the most respected Bible scholars of that period, Paul Althaus, declared Hitler’s ascent to the chancellorship to be a “gift and miracle from God.” I began to suspect that we evangelicals were similarly allowing our faith to be co-opted for political purposes. Devastating consequences seemed inevitable for evangelicalism and for our country.
These fears were reinforced when I attended a tribute banquet for Pat Robertson around 2010. Virtually every evangelical luminary was there. When Robertson introduced his guest of honor, Donald J. Trump, I was shocked. In Bible college, my preaching instructor had suggested that the New York playboy was a perfect illustration for what it meant to not live as a Christian. I asked a friend of Pat’s why Trump was there. They both were “members of the billionaires’ club,” he explained. “Besides, he may make a good president someday.” Trump worked the room, filled with the biggest names on the religious right, garnering hearty applause.
The article is long and can make you angry, but it gives you more insight into that influential movement. Know Thy Enemy.
The New York Times finally read the writing on the wall today and endorsed Kamala Harris for President. I’m using the Politico analysis rather than trying to get into the NYT again, so you can notice the subheading, which says a lot about Politoco as a source. “NYT endorses Harris as ‘the only choice’ for president. The editorial board has not backed a Republican for president since Dwight Eisenhower in 1956.” The analysis also says something about the New York Times.
The New York Times editorial board on Monday endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, calling her “the only patriotic choice for president” while painting a grim picture of a second term for former President Donald Trump.
Rather than praise for its preferred candidate, the board led its endorsement of Harris by listing off disqualifying arguments against Trump. “It is hard to imagine a candidate more unworthy to serve as president of the United States,” the Times editorial board wrote.
“This unequivocal, dispiriting truth — Donald Trump is not fit to be president — should be enough for any voter who cares about the health of our country and the stability of our democracy to deny him re-election,” the board, made up of 14 opinion journalists, wrote. “For this reason, regardless of any political disagreements voters might have with her, Kamala Harris is the only patriotic choice for president.”
The endorsement of Harris is unsurprising — the editorial board has not backed a Republican for president since Dwight Eisenhower in 1956 — though still important given the paper’s influence. In July, 10 days before President Joe Biden left the race (and after the board called on him to do so), the board published a five-part, scathing editorial against Trump that struck many of the same chords as Monday’s story.
Okay, enough of that. Trump has become utterly void of self-censoring, even when it’s something that would behoove him to hide. This is from MSNBC and Steven Benen. “On overtime pay, Trump slips up by accidentally telling the truth. Donald Trump admitted that he concocted a private-sector scheme to avoid paying his employees overtime compensation. So much for his “pro-worker” pitch.”
Five of the most interesting words in Donald Trump’s rhetorical repertoire are, “I shouldn’t say this, but…” While it’s obviously impossible to read the former president’s mind, whenever the Republican uses the phrase, it’s an apparent acknowledgement that he knows the rest of the sentence will be politically problematic, but he’s simply unable to help himself.
As his first year in the White House came to an end, for example, Trump declared, “I shouldn’t say this, but we essentially repealed Obamacare.” He was, of course, lying, but the comments served as a reminder of his anti-health care vision. About a year later, campaigning in Montana, the then-president publicly praised Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte for physically assaulting a journalist who asked a question the governor didn’t like.
“I shouldn’t say this [but] there’s nothing to be embarrassed about,” Trump said in reference to the violence.
Six years later, the Republican is still stumbling into inadvertent moments of candor. HuffPost reported:
Former president and current GOP nominee Donald Trump on Sunday admitted he ‘hated’ to pay his staff overtime and would instead replace them with other workers to avoid doing so. Trump’s confession came during a campaign rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, after promising to deliver ‘gigantic tax cuts’ via his pledge to end tax on tips, on overtime and on social security benefits for seniors.”
“I know a lot about overtime,” the Republican candidate boasted. “I hated to give overtime. I hated it. I’d get other people, I shouldn’t say this, but I’d get other people in. I wouldn’t pay.”
The public comments stood out for a few reasons.
Right off the bat, there are still some political observers who like to pretend that the former president is some kind of ally to working-class Americans. It’s against that backdrop that Trump thought it’d be a good idea to admit that he, as a boss, deliberately took steps to deny his own employees overtime compensation to which they were entitled.
Meanwhile, the DonOld Cult is up to more domestic terrorism. This is from Raw Story. “Trump-supporting Ohio businessman gets MAGA death threats for defending Haitian workers.” This analysis is by Brad Reed.
A Trump-supporting Ohio businessman is getting major blowback from fellow Trump supporters after he publicly defended the honor of the Haitian immigrants he has hired to work for him.
The New York Times reports that Jamie McGregor, a lifelong Republican who twice voted for former President Donald Trump and owner of the McGregor Metal manufacturing shop, has been hit with “death threats, a lockdown at his company and posters around town branding him a traitor” because he praised the Haitian immigrants who work at his company.
In fact, McGregor says the situation as gotten so scary that he’s arming both himself and his family members to defend against would-be MAGA assailants.
“I have struggled with the fact that now we’re going to have firearms in our house — like, what the hell?” he told the Times. “And now we’re taking classes, we’re going to shooting ranges, we’re being fitted for handguns.”
McGregor decided to hire newly arrived Haitian immigrants in recent years because he had trouble finding dependable workers, and he has praised them for having a strong work ethic that has benefitted his business.
McGregor’s home city of Springfield, Ohio has become the focus of MAGA anger in recent weeks after former President Donald Trump made false claims about Haitian immigrants there eating locals’ dogs and cats.
When confronted with evidence debunking this claim, Trump and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), have doubled down on attacking the Haitian immigrant community.
It’s beginning to feel like Lord of the Flies in Trumplandia. I wonder if said businessman will vote for Trump again? Has that book been banned yet in Florida?
Oh, and now we get to speak of The Purge. They filmed the TV series at the Abandoned Navy Base down the block from me, which was weird enough. I didn’t see the movie or the series, but I know enough of the franchise to recognize it in Donald’s speech. This is from Politico. “Trump says ‘violent day’ of policing will end crime. The remarks at a campaign rally Sunday did not amount to a policy proposal allowing police retaliation, the former president’s campaign said.” Adam Wren reports the story.
Former President Donald Trump on Sunday called for “one real rough, nasty” and “violent day” of police retaliation in order to eradicate crime “immediately.”
The remarks — delivered by Trump at a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, just 36 days before the election — did not amount to a new policy proposal, according to a Trump campaign official.
Asked whether the former president’s idea amounted to a new proposal and how such an operation would work, a campaign official said Trump was “clearly just floating it in jest.”
“President Trump has always been the law and order President and he continues to reiterate the importance of enforcing existing laws,” Steven Cheung, the campaign’s communications director, wrote in a statement to POLITICO. “Otherwise it’s all-out anarchy, which is what Kamala Harris has created in some of these communities across America, especially during her time as [California] Attorney General when she emboldened criminals.
The best analysis of what’s ahead and what’s happened is by Marcy at EmptyWheel. “As Kamala Harris Passes the Two-Thirds Mark, Trump Adopts Apocalyptic Language.”
Back on August 17, I laid out six things that could destabilize the race. We’ve gotten versions of four of those, though without yet serious impact on the race.
- There were no mass protests at the DNC. Neither, however, was there someone speaking for Palestinian people from the Convention podium.
- With the assassination last week of Hassan Nasrallah and Israel’s expanding operations against Iranian proxies in Lebanon and Yemen, we have seen unforeseen escalation in the Middle East. Joe Biden seems incapable of understanding that Bibi Netanyahu was never a good faith negotiator. On top of the instability this will bring (and the ongoing threat of Iranian violence targeted at Trump), I worry that Harris’ choice to prioritize Republican endorsements over Palestinian speakers could harm her in Michigan (as Elissa Slotkin issues warnings about Michigan).
- We did get a superseding indictment in Trump’s January 6 case (though without any new charges), but Trump succeded in delaying sentencing in his NY case. We may find out this week whether we’re going to get to see a redacted version of Jack Smith’s argument that Trump is not immune; indeed, given how Judge Tanya Chutkan issued a deadline for noon tomorrow, we may even see the argument itself this week. If we do, Trump’s attacks on Mike Pence will be at the center of the argument. Remember: Trump’s increasing fascistic language over the weekend has come after he got a first look at Smith’s argument, and his lawyers seem terrified of some of the claims made by witnesses that could get unsealed.
- Kamala Harris did have a historically successful debate, but it has done little more than bump polling, slightly. That said, her campaign continues to goad Trump to make him look weak, most recently in a national ad and plane advertisement at the Alabama-Georgia game yesterday. Whether or not Harris pushes him to accept a second debate, the continued goading seems to keep him unbalanced. In recent campaign appearances, Trump has denied he fell into her trap at the debate, directly addressed rally-goers who were leaving (denying they were leaving), and freaked out about a fly.
- Whatever the cause, Trump is increasingly unhinged in public appearances, though much of the press continues to sanewash his coverage. More and more, his rants adopt fascist language, such as yesterday when he either endorsed The Purge or Kristallnacht. Donald Trump looks weak and Donald Trump looks violent, but that is not yet a persistent news coverage theme (indeed, in his polling update, Nate Silver claims there’s nothing “like Joe Biden’s deteriorating public performances” that might be affecting the race in ways polling is not accounting for). If the press does begin to capture Trump’s weakness and violence, it may impact the race — but I’m not holding my breath.
- Trump’s right wing running mate has drummed up terrorist threats against his own constituents in Springfield, OH, and more recently drummed up threats against a beloved Pittsburgh restaurant (while trying to tamp them down). We have not yet gotten right wing violence, neither localized nor mass. But understand that the far right Christian nationalists that Trump has been cultivating, most notably with JD Vance’s appearance with Lance Wallnau, have been an absolutely central factor in past political violence, including January 6. When Donald Trump mobilizes Christian imagery, he does so not because he believes in any of it, but because he believes in power, and he knows he can get people who mistake him for the Messiah to go to war for him. (An Evangelicals for Harris group just rolled out an ad interspersing Billy Graham warnings of the anti-Christ with clips of Trump.) We have not yet seen political violence against marginalized groups, but Trump is doing everything that has fostered it in the past. Nevertheless, most horserace journalists are ignoring that, just like they and their colleagues dismissed the risk of political violence in advance of January 6.
In my earlier post, I said we should be unsurprised by a Black Swan event (I suggested all-out war was one possibility, and given the escalation in the Middle East, it remains one).
The floods caused by Helene could be another. Right wingers are already trying to ensure this works like Katrina did for George W Bush. And whatever else, the flooding disproportionately affected the rural areas that Trump needs to win North Carolina (though North Carolina voters can forego voter ID requirements under an emergency exception). That said, the Helene response may also highlight two things — FEMA and NOAA — that Project 2025 aims to defund. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee’s attempt to forgo federal help may provide a contrast that shows how Federal help can make a difference in a catastrophe. And a whole bunch of conservative people just got bowled over by the impact of climate change, hundreds of miles from the nearest coast. If the Feds can respond to the damage on I-40 like they did to the I-95 or the Francis Scott Key Bridge disaster, it may convince people in North Carolina that the government can too do something good.
As for the flood, Biden promises the Federal Government will stay until the work is done. This is from USA. Today.”Biden on Helene disaster: ‘We’re not leaving until the job is done.'” Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy reports the story.
President Joe Biden assured communities reeling from Hurricane Helene that the “nation has your back,” and that help was on the way in a speech Monday from the White House.
“We’ll continue to serve resources including food, water, communications, and lifesaving equipment will be there,” Biden said. “I mean it − as long as it takes to finish this job.”
He also said he’s committed to travel later this week to affected communities.
“I’ve been told that it would be disruptive if I did it right now,” he said.
Authorities are dealing with the storm’s aftermath, which saw caused widespread devastation and power outages across the Southeast and killed at least 100. Biden, who said he’s been in touch with governors, mayors and local leaders, said 600 people were still unaccounted for.
I remember Hurricane Katrina all too well and while I loved spending time with Anderson Cooper et al, I’d rather no one have to live through that again. So, why don’t we keep going with renewable energy, develop a workable immigration plan, and continue to fund a government that works for the people? I’m tired of seeing billionaires and grifting politicians get the goodies.
Cheer up folks! Coach Tim debates J Dank Vance tomorrow night!!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
https://skydancingblog.com/2024/09/30/mostly-monday-reads-the-final-meltdown/
#Repeat1968JohnBuss #DonaldSDankPennsylvaniaRally #HurricaneHelene #TheMediaAndTrump #TheMediaSUCKS #TheMediumIsTheMessage
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“The empathy just oozes from this one. Hurricane Helene was apparently wet.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Morning, Sky Dancers!
The signs of the results of lousy decision-making based on greed and mythology are everywhere. Hurricanes are no longer coastal phenomena but can make their way 300 miles inland and hold a Cat 2 status. You would think enough people in this country have critical thinking skills and conscience to vote the pols out who are doing this to us. It would help, of course, if the press were still on the side of democracy instead of creating clickbait to earn a buck for stockholders and top management. But, here we are deeper down the rat hole of “The Medium is the Message published in 1964.” McLuhan understood clickbait before just about anyone.
The title “The Medium Is the Massage” is a teaser—a way of getting attention. There’s a wonderful sign hanging in a Toronto junkyard which reads, ‘Help Beautify Junkyards. Throw Something Lovely Away Today.’ This is a very effective way of getting people to notice a lot of things. And so the title is intended to draw attention to the fact that a medium is not something neutral—it does something to people. It takes hold of them. It rubs them off, it massages them and bumps them around, chiropractically, as it were, and the general roughing up that any new society gets from a medium, especially a new medium, is what is intended in that title”
This is more true than ever. We have more than a few TV channels, newspapers, and radio to influence us these days. Most people treat their news and information more like boutique shopping, where they can find the look that suits them every time. Substack is one medium where I have seen public intellectuals. I feel comfortable reading a lot of people there, and I must admit that it’s because they are a lot like me. They write about things that bug them about the institutions and country that house them and likely educated them. However, they do bring reasoned thought and data with them. But anyway, enough of that rabbit hole. Let’s just say I’m not beyond shopping my own boutique. Also, the positive thing about the web is that you have access to authentic information and don’t have to spend days in dark, moldy library stacks to find it. The negative thing is that not all people want to be challenged. They want to feel good about what they already think is real.
Margaret Sullivan’s Substack–aptly called American Crisis–has this headline today. “The three phases of normalizing Trump’s attack on Harris in Wisconsin. The media did what it always does, and it’s not good enough.” Trump is so far off the sanity scale these days that it is indeed frightening.
- The use of neutral language. If you merely read about Donald Trump’s deeply offensive rally this weekend in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, you probably thought it was about immigration. And about Trump up to his usual tricks of disparaging his rivals.
Here the lead of the report from Axios, for example:
“Former President Trump, in a self-described ‘dark speech,’ told a rally in Wisconsin yesterday that his opponent, Vice President Harris, is “mentally impaired’ and “mentally disabled.’”
Axios, which favors bullet points and boldface help for the tuned-out, let us know “Why It Matters”: “Even for Trump, it was weird, nasty and nonsensical — when he needed to be swaying ‘national security moms’ and other undecideds.”
Or here’s the top paragraph of the Washington Post report: “Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump criticized Vice President Harris’s mental capacity Saturday, falsely claiming she was born ‘mentally impaired’ and comparing her actions to that of a ‘mentally disabled person.’ The remarks prompted criticism from advocates for people with disabilities.”
Here’s the Associated Press’s headline: “Trump lists his grievances in a Wisconsin speech intended to link Harris to illegal immigration.”
But if you watched the speech, or even snippets of it, you saw something quite different — an absolutely ugly and brutal attack on Kamala Harris, full of lies and racist misogyny. In case you missed it, watch a bit of it here.
Sullivan has written two more of them and a lot of examples to follow. Please go read it.
- The lack of substantial followup. Once the outrageous rally was over, and the stories with their neutral language written, the political media was ready — more than ready — to move on. The media does know how to follow up, as you may recall from, for instance, President Biden’s bad debate this summer. But in the case of Trump’s unhinged and ugly attack on Harris’s intelligence, the spot-news coverage was about it. I did not see countless outraged opinion pieces; I did not see days of stories examining every aspect of this. It was just, cover the speech and let’s get out of here.
- The pivot to safety. Like waves rushing to the shore, the media relentlessly returns to the familiar. The thinking seems to go something like this: Whew, that was a pretty crazy rally, but let’s leave that behind and get back to what we’re good at. When in doubt, cover the horserace. One thing I did see after Saturday’s rally were many, many, many stories about polls. A New York Times headline Sunday rendered it this way: “Harris and Trump are Neck and Neck in Michigan and Wisconsin, Polls Find.” And that’s about as horserace-oriented as it gets.
This New Yorker’s The Lede, published three days ago, has similar warnings. It’s written by Clare Malone. “Is There a Method to Donald Trump’s Madness? The former President’s appeal has always been his sui-generis persona and politics—take him as he is—but, this year, the campaign seems more devoted to fan service than anything else.” Why try to make sense out of acts stemming from severe Personality Disorders and likely advanced dementia? Are the lessons from Journalism school to just blandly report the unspeakable? Was there ever a method in madness?
Vance is now a historically unpopular Vice-Presidential nominee. Mainstream Republican contenders, such as Senator Marco Rubio or Governor Doug Burgum, might have appealed to the sort of Nikki Haley voters that can’t stand Trump. Rubio, who is Cuban American, might have been a good pick to attract Latino voters, who, polls showed, were less interested in voting Democratic this year. Instead, Trump’s selection of Vance and all that he brings with him emphasized a doubling-down on MAGA culture. It could end up being politically ill-advised, but it’s not without its logic. Trump’s team knows that America is a hyperpartisan country. Polls show that just four per cent of voters are undecided in this election, the smallest share of the electorate in any U.S. contest this century. For the Trump campaign, the theory goes: Why expend all your energy trying to convince people to vote for one of the most unpopular Presidents in American history? Work to amp up your base and find Trump fans who don’t usually vote and make sure they turn out on November 5th.
The Trump campaign calls these voters “low-propensity,” and they’re working to turn them out in swing states like Arizona, where a canvassing effort is being run by the conservative group Turning Point USA. An Elon Musk-backed PAC is doing the same in Nevada and Michigan. Some Republicans have expressed reservations about the strategy, but it’s not a new idea in Trumpworld. In 2016, when I was a reporter at FiveThirtyEight, I obtained a Trump campaign memo written during that year’s primaries that explained the unusual practice of targeting low-propensity voters. “Our candidate commands unheard amounts of earned media,” the memo read, calling the strategy “more akin to evangelization than persuasion.” The job, then, was to teach Trump fans how to become Trump voters. “These are people who may not know where to vote, whether or not they are eligible to participate, and what the hours are,” the memo read. “They may have to work on the actual election day and are unaware of early voting opportunities on Saturdays. Many of them may have simply never been asked for their vote.” Turning Point’s focus this year—one of its employees told Semafor—is on small groups of thirty thousand to forty thousand potential voters in swing states, a testament to the slim margins of 2024.
Trump’s appeal has always been his sui-generis persona and politics—take him as he is—but, this year, the campaign seems more devoted to fan service than anything else. Steven Cheung, Trump’s top spokesman, recently retweeted a three-minute tongue-in-cheek hard-rock music video titled “MAGA ENERGY,” which nicely captured the movement’s aesthetics. It features lyrics like “Our world is frightening / Globals want to burn it down,” images of American flags and Trump’s face overlaid on that of a lion, and a montage of the jiggling, mostly bare bottoms of women shooting automatic weapons. Trump, a marketer to his core, has also built a promotional flywheel that he hopes his voters will get stuck in: If you like Trump’s crazy persona, you might go to your first Trump rally. If you go to enough rallies, you might like Trump’s digital trading cards—collect enough and you’ll get a physical piece of the suit that he wore to his debate with Biden (really!). If you like the trading cards, maybe you’ll buy Melania’s new book (she stands by her nude photos). Somewhere in there, Trump and company are hoping their low-propensity supporters register to vote and do so early.
The purpose of Trump’s campaign is to bolster his ego and keep him out of jail. Then, he’ll likely be replaced either by death or the 25th Amendment, and Vance will put the entire 2025 plan into play. Because all the players will be set up in the Federal Government. Additionally, all the work of Pat Robertson and others from the Reagan administration to enslave us to White Christian Nationalism will come to fruition.
Yesterday, I read this article from Mother Jones where one of the so-called Christians in that movement finally realizes that what he was doing wasn’t very ‘Christ-like,’ has repented, and is now trying to reverse the hell they bring to the political system. The title is “Confessions of a (Former) Christian Nationalist. When religion is placed at the service of a political party, it corrupts both.” and it’s written by The Reverend Rob Schenck. Anyone who read the history of the Roman Empire and its use of Christianity to conquer Northern Europe should know this by now. The story on how they captured SCOTUS is even more interesting than the narrative on capturing members of Congress.
Federal judges and especially Supreme Court justices, unlike politicians, never need to shake hands across a rope line. Accessing their world required creativity. I found it through the little-known Supreme Court Historical Society. Founded by the late Chief Justice Warren Burger, the independent nonprofit holds an annual dinner hosted by the chief justice and attended by most associate justices. Tickets are strictly controlled. By establishing a close relationship with the society’s staff, I managed to secure seats each year for several of my donors, whom I would coach on how to connect with the justices attending the event. As a result, two of my most active participants, Don and Gayle Wright of Dayton, Ohio, ingratiated themselves with the Alitos, Scalias, and Thomases.
When I trained my donors to interact with conservative justices on the court, I told them to reinforce for their powerful new friends how important their decisions were to the country’s future, and how critical Judeo-Christian values are to America’s success. I encouraged them to underscore how millions of citizens thanked God for their presence on the top court.
In a notable instance, the Wrights were tipped off about a pending decision before it was announced to the public. As I later told the House Judiciary Committee, “Gayle relayed that she had learned the outcome of the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby case while at the meal with the Alitos, that it was in Hobby Lobby’s favor, and that ‘Sam is writing it.’” The ruling would affirm that companies with religious objections were not required to provide contraceptive coverage in their health insurance packages. I also told the House committee that Gayle had shared the news with me and that I told the president of Hobby Lobby, Steve Green—his parents were donors to my organization—that they had won the case. The Green family found themselves in the enviable position of using the advance notice to prep their spokespeople so they could be ready at the microphone outside the court following Alito’s reading of the majority opinion. They could shape the public narrative, a distinct advantage over their opponents.
When word of our campaign eventually broke in the New York Times, Justice Alito responded, “I never detected any effort on the part of the Wrights to obtain confidential information or to influence anything that I did in either an official or private capacity, and I would have strongly objected if they had done so.” He added, “I have no knowledge of any project that they allegedly undertook for ‘Faith and Action.’” Gayle Wright denied obtaining or passing along any such information. Steve Green declined to comment to the Times, and his mother told the paper he hadn’t been notified in advance. Let’s just say this is not how I remember what had happened.
It took years for the scales to fall from my eyes. A major turning point occurred when I took a leave of absence from Faith and Action to pursue a late-in-life doctorate. Part of my research involved the German Christian movement of the 1930s, which supported the Nazi Party. One of the most respected Bible scholars of that period, Paul Althaus, declared Hitler’s ascent to the chancellorship to be a “gift and miracle from God.” I began to suspect that we evangelicals were similarly allowing our faith to be co-opted for political purposes. Devastating consequences seemed inevitable for evangelicalism and for our country.
These fears were reinforced when I attended a tribute banquet for Pat Robertson around 2010. Virtually every evangelical luminary was there. When Robertson introduced his guest of honor, Donald J. Trump, I was shocked. In Bible college, my preaching instructor had suggested that the New York playboy was a perfect illustration for what it meant to not live as a Christian. I asked a friend of Pat’s why Trump was there. They both were “members of the billionaires’ club,” he explained. “Besides, he may make a good president someday.” Trump worked the room, filled with the biggest names on the religious right, garnering hearty applause.
The article is long and can make you angry, but it gives you more insight into that influential movement. Know Thy Enemy.
The New York Times finally read the writing on the wall today and endorsed Kamala Harris for President. I’m using the Politico analysis rather than trying to get into the NYT again, so you can notice the subheading, which says a lot about Politoco as a source. “NYT endorses Harris as ‘the only choice’ for president. The editorial board has not backed a Republican for president since Dwight Eisenhower in 1956.” The analysis also says something about the New York Times.
The New York Times editorial board on Monday endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, calling her “the only patriotic choice for president” while painting a grim picture of a second term for former President Donald Trump.
Rather than praise for its preferred candidate, the board led its endorsement of Harris by listing off disqualifying arguments against Trump. “It is hard to imagine a candidate more unworthy to serve as president of the United States,” the Times editorial board wrote.
“This unequivocal, dispiriting truth — Donald Trump is not fit to be president — should be enough for any voter who cares about the health of our country and the stability of our democracy to deny him re-election,” the board, made up of 14 opinion journalists, wrote. “For this reason, regardless of any political disagreements voters might have with her, Kamala Harris is the only patriotic choice for president.”
The endorsement of Harris is unsurprising — the editorial board has not backed a Republican for president since Dwight Eisenhower in 1956 — though still important given the paper’s influence. In July, 10 days before President Joe Biden left the race (and after the board called on him to do so), the board published a five-part, scathing editorial against Trump that struck many of the same chords as Monday’s story.
Okay, enough of that. Trump has become utterly void of self-censoring, even when it’s something that would behoove him to hide. This is from MSNBC and Steven Benen. “On overtime pay, Trump slips up by accidentally telling the truth. Donald Trump admitted that he concocted a private-sector scheme to avoid paying his employees overtime compensation. So much for his “pro-worker” pitch.”
Five of the most interesting words in Donald Trump’s rhetorical repertoire are, “I shouldn’t say this, but…” While it’s obviously impossible to read the former president’s mind, whenever the Republican uses the phrase, it’s an apparent acknowledgement that he knows the rest of the sentence will be politically problematic, but he’s simply unable to help himself.
As his first year in the White House came to an end, for example, Trump declared, “I shouldn’t say this, but we essentially repealed Obamacare.” He was, of course, lying, but the comments served as a reminder of his anti-health care vision. About a year later, campaigning in Montana, the then-president publicly praised Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte for physically assaulting a journalist who asked a question the governor didn’t like.
“I shouldn’t say this [but] there’s nothing to be embarrassed about,” Trump said in reference to the violence.
Six years later, the Republican is still stumbling into inadvertent moments of candor. HuffPost reported:
Former president and current GOP nominee Donald Trump on Sunday admitted he ‘hated’ to pay his staff overtime and would instead replace them with other workers to avoid doing so. Trump’s confession came during a campaign rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, after promising to deliver ‘gigantic tax cuts’ via his pledge to end tax on tips, on overtime and on social security benefits for seniors.”
“I know a lot about overtime,” the Republican candidate boasted. “I hated to give overtime. I hated it. I’d get other people, I shouldn’t say this, but I’d get other people in. I wouldn’t pay.”
The public comments stood out for a few reasons.
Right off the bat, there are still some political observers who like to pretend that the former president is some kind of ally to working-class Americans. It’s against that backdrop that Trump thought it’d be a good idea to admit that he, as a boss, deliberately took steps to deny his own employees overtime compensation to which they were entitled.
Meanwhile, the DonOld Cult is up to more domestic terrorism. This is from Raw Story. “Trump-supporting Ohio businessman gets MAGA death threats for defending Haitian workers.” This analysis is by Brad Reed.
A Trump-supporting Ohio businessman is getting major blowback from fellow Trump supporters after he publicly defended the honor of the Haitian immigrants he has hired to work for him.
The New York Times reports that Jamie McGregor, a lifelong Republican who twice voted for former President Donald Trump and owner of the McGregor Metal manufacturing shop, has been hit with “death threats, a lockdown at his company and posters around town branding him a traitor” because he praised the Haitian immigrants who work at his company.
In fact, McGregor says the situation as gotten so scary that he’s arming both himself and his family members to defend against would-be MAGA assailants.
“I have struggled with the fact that now we’re going to have firearms in our house — like, what the hell?” he told the Times. “And now we’re taking classes, we’re going to shooting ranges, we’re being fitted for handguns.”
McGregor decided to hire newly arrived Haitian immigrants in recent years because he had trouble finding dependable workers, and he has praised them for having a strong work ethic that has benefitted his business.
McGregor’s home city of Springfield, Ohio has become the focus of MAGA anger in recent weeks after former President Donald Trump made false claims about Haitian immigrants there eating locals’ dogs and cats.
When confronted with evidence debunking this claim, Trump and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), have doubled down on attacking the Haitian immigrant community.
It’s beginning to feel like Lord of the Flies in Trumplandia. I wonder if said businessman will vote for Trump again? Has that book been banned yet in Florida?
Oh, and now we get to speak of The Purge. They filmed the TV series at the Abandoned Navy Base down the block from me, which was weird enough. I didn’t see the movie or the series, but I know enough of the franchise to recognize it in Donald’s speech. This is from Politico. “Trump says ‘violent day’ of policing will end crime. The remarks at a campaign rally Sunday did not amount to a policy proposal allowing police retaliation, the former president’s campaign said.” Adam Wren reports the story.
Former President Donald Trump on Sunday called for “one real rough, nasty” and “violent day” of police retaliation in order to eradicate crime “immediately.”
The remarks — delivered by Trump at a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, just 36 days before the election — did not amount to a new policy proposal, according to a Trump campaign official.
Asked whether the former president’s idea amounted to a new proposal and how such an operation would work, a campaign official said Trump was “clearly just floating it in jest.”
“President Trump has always been the law and order President and he continues to reiterate the importance of enforcing existing laws,” Steven Cheung, the campaign’s communications director, wrote in a statement to POLITICO. “Otherwise it’s all-out anarchy, which is what Kamala Harris has created in some of these communities across America, especially during her time as [California] Attorney General when she emboldened criminals.
The best analysis of what’s ahead and what’s happened is by Marcy at EmptyWheel. “As Kamala Harris Passes the Two-Thirds Mark, Trump Adopts Apocalyptic Language.”
Back on August 17, I laid out six things that could destabilize the race. We’ve gotten versions of four of those, though without yet serious impact on the race.
- There were no mass protests at the DNC. Neither, however, was there someone speaking for Palestinian people from the Convention podium.
- With the assassination last week of Hassan Nasrallah and Israel’s expanding operations against Iranian proxies in Lebanon and Yemen, we have seen unforeseen escalation in the Middle East. Joe Biden seems incapable of understanding that Bibi Netanyahu was never a good faith negotiator. On top of the instability this will bring (and the ongoing threat of Iranian violence targeted at Trump), I worry that Harris’ choice to prioritize Republican endorsements over Palestinian speakers could harm her in Michigan (as Elissa Slotkin issues warnings about Michigan).
- We did get a superseding indictment in Trump’s January 6 case (though without any new charges), but Trump succeded in delaying sentencing in his NY case. We may find out this week whether we’re going to get to see a redacted version of Jack Smith’s argument that Trump is not immune; indeed, given how Judge Tanya Chutkan issued a deadline for noon tomorrow, we may even see the argument itself this week. If we do, Trump’s attacks on Mike Pence will be at the center of the argument. Remember: Trump’s increasing fascistic language over the weekend has come after he got a first look at Smith’s argument, and his lawyers seem terrified of some of the claims made by witnesses that could get unsealed.
- Kamala Harris did have a historically successful debate, but it has done little more than bump polling, slightly. That said, her campaign continues to goad Trump to make him look weak, most recently in a national ad and plane advertisement at the Alabama-Georgia game yesterday. Whether or not Harris pushes him to accept a second debate, the continued goading seems to keep him unbalanced. In recent campaign appearances, Trump has denied he fell into her trap at the debate, directly addressed rally-goers who were leaving (denying they were leaving), and freaked out about a fly.
- Whatever the cause, Trump is increasingly unhinged in public appearances, though much of the press continues to sanewash his coverage. More and more, his rants adopt fascist language, such as yesterday when he either endorsed The Purge or Kristallnacht. Donald Trump looks weak and Donald Trump looks violent, but that is not yet a persistent news coverage theme (indeed, in his polling update, Nate Silver claims there’s nothing “like Joe Biden’s deteriorating public performances” that might be affecting the race in ways polling is not accounting for). If the press does begin to capture Trump’s weakness and violence, it may impact the race — but I’m not holding my breath.
- Trump’s right wing running mate has drummed up terrorist threats against his own constituents in Springfield, OH, and more recently drummed up threats against a beloved Pittsburgh restaurant (while trying to tamp them down). We have not yet gotten right wing violence, neither localized nor mass. But understand that the far right Christian nationalists that Trump has been cultivating, most notably with JD Vance’s appearance with Lance Wallnau, have been an absolutely central factor in past political violence, including January 6. When Donald Trump mobilizes Christian imagery, he does so not because he believes in any of it, but because he believes in power, and he knows he can get people who mistake him for the Messiah to go to war for him. (An Evangelicals for Harris group just rolled out an ad interspersing Billy Graham warnings of the anti-Christ with clips of Trump.) We have not yet seen political violence against marginalized groups, but Trump is doing everything that has fostered it in the past. Nevertheless, most horserace journalists are ignoring that, just like they and their colleagues dismissed the risk of political violence in advance of January 6.
In my earlier post, I said we should be unsurprised by a Black Swan event (I suggested all-out war was one possibility, and given the escalation in the Middle East, it remains one).
The floods caused by Helene could be another. Right wingers are already trying to ensure this works like Katrina did for George W Bush. And whatever else, the flooding disproportionately affected the rural areas that Trump needs to win North Carolina (though North Carolina voters can forego voter ID requirements under an emergency exception). That said, the Helene response may also highlight two things — FEMA and NOAA — that Project 2025 aims to defund. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee’s attempt to forgo federal help may provide a contrast that shows how Federal help can make a difference in a catastrophe. And a whole bunch of conservative people just got bowled over by the impact of climate change, hundreds of miles from the nearest coast. If the Feds can respond to the damage on I-40 like they did to the I-95 or the Francis Scott Key Bridge disaster, it may convince people in North Carolina that the government can too do something good.
As for the flood, Biden promises the Federal Government will stay until the work is done. This is from USA. Today.”Biden on Helene disaster: ‘We’re not leaving until the job is done.'” Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy reports the story.
President Joe Biden assured communities reeling from Hurricane Helene that the “nation has your back,” and that help was on the way in a speech Monday from the White House.
“We’ll continue to serve resources including food, water, communications, and lifesaving equipment will be there,” Biden said. “I mean it − as long as it takes to finish this job.”
He also said he’s committed to travel later this week to affected communities.
“I’ve been told that it would be disruptive if I did it right now,” he said.
Authorities are dealing with the storm’s aftermath, which saw caused widespread devastation and power outages across the Southeast and killed at least 100. Biden, who said he’s been in touch with governors, mayors and local leaders, said 600 people were still unaccounted for.
I remember Hurricane Katrina all too well and while I loved spending time with Anderson Cooper et al, I’d rather no one have to live through that again. So, why don’t we keep going with renewable energy, develop a workable immigration plan, and continue to fund a government that works for the people? I’m tired of seeing billionaires and grifting politicians get the goodies.
Cheer up folks! Coach Tim debates J Dank Vance tomorrow night!!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
https://skydancingblog.com/2024/09/30/mostly-monday-reads-the-final-meltdown/
#Repeat1968JohnBuss #DonaldSDankPennsylvaniaRally #HurricaneHelene #TheMediaAndTrump #TheMediaSUCKS #TheMediumIsTheMessage
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“Yes, it’s quite insane. I think it hurts my brain.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I stayed up too late last night watching Hurricane Helene come on shore. It’s difficult to explain that dual feeling of relief that it went east of you while realizing the number of people whose lives have been turned upside down. I get a flashback full of feelings about my hurricane and tornado experience. I’ve been fortunate to date even though Hurricane Katrina upended my life; it was nothing compared to many, many others’ lives.
I remember sitting on the dorm hall floor at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln during the massive 1975 Omaha Hurricane. I was one of the few with a TV and a phone in my room. Those of us who had such luxuries were surrounded by others who took turns trying to call home and watching to see if there was news available on the limited number of channels then on my tiny black and white portable. The only way we really got to know was to pack up and go back home. Almost everyone I knew living along the 72nd Street corridor had severe damage. Fortunately, living in Hurricane Alley meant you had basements. Friends of mine in apartments did less well. I’ve also driven alongside, almost into, and surrounded by tornadoes. I became interested in severe weather early in my teens when I watched an oversized double garage door spin over my house in Omaha from the basement window while strumming and singing, “The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.” This was 1968. Irony and sarcasm have always been my friend and best defense when in the middle of these terrifying events.
I am still waiting to hear from family and friends. Even though Helene was still a Cat 2 Hurricane in Georgia, JJ and her family are okay. We’ll be hearing more from many folks north of Florida who also took a hit of intense rain and wind. Thank goodness the guy with the Sharpie isn’t in charge of the Federal response to all of this in all those states. And yes, De Santis has those white boots on again.
The severe damage and the death toll in Florida today should humble us all. We can build all kinds of places, but the sciences of climatology and meteorology show that we can only do so much with these massive storms. “Hurricane Helene ravages the Southeast, killing at least 22 and leaving millions without power. The storm made landfall overnight as a Category 4 hurricane, bringing devastating flooding and high-speed winds.” This is from NBC News.
Hurricane Helene killed at least 22 people and left millions without power across the Southeast before weakening on its way north Friday morning, officials said.
Widespread damage was expected in Florida’s Big Bend region, where Helene made landfall as a Category 4 shortly after 11 p.m. ET on Thursday. It was the strongest storm to ever strike the area, which connects Florida’s panhandle and peninsula.
Water levels in some parts of the region reached more than 15 ft. above ground level, the National Hurricane Center said, citing preliminary storm surge models.
In Perry, Florida, where officials urged residents who refused to evacuate to write their information on their bodies for identification, police chief Jamie Cruse braced himself for the storm’s aftermath as first responders began rescue operations.
“We’re starting to get the first glimpse of what we actually have laying on the ground and what we’re going to be dealing with,” he told NBC News. “The only regret I have at this moment is we weren’t aggressive enough in the notification to tell people to evacuate the areas that were prone to flooding.”
“I just hope that when we finally discover what we’re dealing with that we don’t have a big loss of life,” he added.
Officials in Clearwater, further south along Florida’s Gulf Coast, also feared the worst after seeing overnight footage of first responders rescuing elderly locals in knee-deep flood water.
“We had some homes burn to the ground out on the island. There were some folks that we just couldn’t get to because of high waters to rescue,” Clearwater mayor Bruce Rector told NBC’s “TODAY” show.
By Friday morning, Floridians woke up to extensive damage from the devastating flooding, high-speed winds, and heavy rain.
Helene’s name will be retired and she will be one for the records. “Helene is now a tropical depression, catastrophic flooding still likely.” This is also from NBC News. More deaths are being reported in Georgia. Atlanta and Valdosta, Georgia, have a lot of flooding and are powerless.
Helene, now a tropical depression, is located 125 miles southeast of Louisville, Kentucky, with maximum sustained winds of 35 mph, moving northwest at 28 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center’s 2 p.m. ET advisory.
All tropical storm warnings have been discontinued and there are now no coastal watches or warnings in effect.
It’s forecast to slowdown and will stall over the Tennessee Valley through the weekend.
Helene will still produce more rainfall for the Central and Southern Appalachians, resulting in “catastrophic and potentially life-threatening flash and urban flooding.” Tornadoes are possible today across eastern South Carolina, central and eastern North Carolina and southern Virginia.
Many blessings to you, my American Family, on your recovery journey.
One journalist has published the Iran-hacked JD Vance dossier. X and Thread censored it after Klippenstein announced that he had published it on social media. “Read the JD Vance Dossier. We’re publishing the supposed Iran-hacked document. Here’s why.” This is from Ken Klippenstein.
Behold the dossier.
It reportedly comes from an alleged Iranian government hack of the Trump campaign, and since June, the news media has been sitting on it (and other documents), declining to publish in fear of finding itself at odds with the government’s campaign against “foreign malign influence.”
I disagree. The dossier has been offered to me and I’ve decided to publish it because it’s of keen public interest in an election season. It’s a 271-page research paper the Trump campaign prepared to vet now vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance. As far as I can tell, it hasn’t been altered, but even if it was, its contents are publicly verifiable. I’ll let it speak for itself.
“The terror regime in Iran loves the weakness and stupidity of Kamala Harris, and is terrified of the strength and resolve of President Donald J. Trump,” Steven Cheung, communications director for the Trump campaign, responded when I asked him about the hack.
If the document had been hacked by some “anonymous” like hacker group, the news media would be all over it. I’m just not a believer of the news media as an arm of the government, doing its work combatting foreign influence. Nor should it be a gatekeeper of what the public should know.
On August 19, the U.S. intelligence community issued a statement on Iranian election interference, including cyber operations attempting to gain sensitive information. “This includes the recently reported activities to compromise former President Trump’s campaign, which the IC [intelligence community] attributes to Iran.”
On September 18, the intelligence community issued another statement going into further detail about Iran’s efforts. “Iranian malicious cyber actors” were still undertaking efforts since June, the press release says, “to send stolen, non-public material associated with former President Donald Trump’s campaign to U.S. media organizations.”
The intelligence community would not confirm to me whether the stolen campaign materials included the Vance Dossier. “We don’t have anything beyond what’s noted in the September 18 joint statement,” Lauren Frost, a spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, told me this week.
You may download and read the document at Klippenstein’s Substack at the above link.
Today, Newsweek stood up. “JD Vance Dossier—What We Know.”
The alleged vetting documents of Ohio Senator JD Vance before he was chosen as the Republican vice presidential candidate have been made public after they were allegedly obtained via an Iranian hack on Donald Trump‘s campaign.
Journalist Ken Klippenstein published the 271-page report into Vance which was carried out by the Trump team on his Substack on Thursday.
The Vance dossier is said to have been part of a trove of sensitive materials which Iranian hackers stole from Trump’s campaign team. At least three news organizations—Politico, The New York Times and The Washington Post—were said to have received the documents, but refused to report on them.
Klippenstein said he disagreed with the suggestion that publishing the materials allegedly obtained by Iranian hackers amounted to helping a foreign country influence the outcome of the 2024 election. The FBI previously confirmed that Iran had attempted to disrupt both the Republican and Democratic presidential campaigns.
…
The report is a detailed examination of Vance’s background based on hundreds of his public statements, media interviews and available official records.
The document highlights the potential vulnerabilities Vance could face if selected as Trump’s running mate, including his previous stances and political views.
The dossier delves deep into times Vance has publicly criticized Trump over the years. Included in the document, for instance, is the transcript of an October 2016 appearance on Charlie Rose, where Vance said he was a “Never Trump guy.”
The document also cites social media posts apparently to highlight issues surrounding Vance being added to the 2024 GOP presidential ticket.
The dossier includes a reference to a tweet Vance reportedly sent in 2016 asking “what percentage of the American population has @RealDonaldTrump sexually assaulted?” The post said to be from Vance has since been deleted. Trump has been accused by multiple women of sexual assault. He has denied all the allegations against him.
The document also notes Vance’s positions on numerous issues including potentially contentious views, or what the dossier cites as “controversial” such as supporting higher taxes for people without children.
Vance’s phone number, home address, photos of his properties and email address are in the document, but have been redacted.
Klippenstein’s account on X, formerly Twitter, was suspended soon after he published the Vance dossier on his Substack.
In a statement, X said: “Ken Klippenstein was temporarily suspended for violating our rules on posting unredacted private personal information, specifically Sen. Vance’s physical addresses and the majority of his Social Security number.”
Newsweek has contacted X for further comment via email.
Users on X are prevented from sharing a link to Klippenstein’s Substack page where he posted the dossier.
Time magazine has this interesting breaking news of proposed legislation by Rep. Adam Schiff.”Exclusive: New Bill Would Prevent Trump From Quashing His Criminal Cases.”
A prominent House Democrat is introducing legislation Friday that would prevent former President Donald Trump from dismissing his ongoing criminal prosecutions if he were to win the presidency again.
The new bill, shared exclusively with TIME ahead of its release, is being led by Rep. Adam Schiff, the Democratic nominee for California’s Senate seat who has been a leading Trump antagonist. He says his bill, which would prevent a sitting President from quashing a criminal prosecution against him or herself, aims to ensure that no President can use their position to evade accountability.
“This is about protecting our democracy and ensuring a President can’t place themselves above the law,” Schiff tells TIME in a statement. “There is every indication that Donald Trump will use the Justice Department to do away with any effort to hold him accountable.”
There’s a reason Schiff feels urgency to introduce the bill now. Trump is currently facing multiple criminal prosecutions, including charges related to his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. “The need for swift passage of this bill could become even more pressing,” Schiff says, “depending on the outcome of the election.”
Some more shocking news on Vance with the vice-presidential debate on the horizon. This is from The Daily Beast. “Vance’s Pre-Debate Prep Includes Christian Nationalist Who Called Harris a Witch. The veep hopeful will hold a town hall with a notorious televangelist who said last year that opponents of Donald Trump would soon suffer “sudden deaths” at the hands of God.” You never know if you should laugh, cry, or throw a rotten tomato at these guys. This is written by Josh Fiallo.
JD Vance’s embrace of far-right Christian nationalists will reach a whole new level this weekend.
Donald Trump’s running mate is set to spend one of his final afternoons before Tuesday’s vice presidential debate by hosting a town hall with Lance Wallnau, a notorious conspiracist who recently praised the 2021 Capitol riot as “an election fraud intervention.”
Vance is set to appear alongside Wallnau at 1 p.m. Saturday, platforming the self-described “prophet” who said in earnest this month that Kamala Harris is a “Jezebel spirit” who uses “witchcraft” to emasculate Trump.
“She can look presidential and that’s—and we’ll get to this later—that’s the seduction of what I would say is witchcraft,” Wallnau said of Harris after her Sept. 10 debate. “That spirit, that occult spirit, is operating on her and through her.”
This is from Right Wing Watch. “Lance Wallnau Blames the Seduction of Witchcraft for Kamala Harris’ Success written by Kyle Mantyla.” This guy makes me want Insane Asylums back.
Shortly after President Joe Biden announced in July that he would not be running for reelection and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, self-proclaimed Christian nationalist and unabashed Trump cultist Lance Wallnau immediately began posting videos in which he warned that Harris represents “the spirit of Jezebel” and declared that she is “the devil’s choice.”
When Harris bested former President Donald Trump in a debate earlier this week, Wallnau was quick to blame it on “witchcraft,” and then doubled down on that attack Wednesday when he appeared on the “FirePower” show, hosted by fellow Trump cultists Mario Murillo and Todd Coconato.
“What you’re seeing now is a real Jezebel,” Wallnau declared. “When you’ve got somebody operating in manipulation, intimidation and domination—especially when it’s in a female role trying to emasculate a man who is standing up for truth—you’re dealing with the Jezebel spirit. … So, with Kamala, you have a Jezebel spirit, a characteristic in the Bible that is the personification of intimidation, seduction, domination and manipulation.”
“She can look presidential,” he continued. “That’s the seduction of what I would say is witchcraft. That’s the manipulation of imagery that creates an impression contrary to the truth, but it seduces you into seeing it. So that spirit, that occult spirit, I believe is operating on her and through her.”
While Harris is supposedly operating under an occult Jezebel spirit, Wallnau claimed that Trump has “an Elijah mantle on him, probably from the intercession of a million Christians.”
“So, we have to double down in intercessory prayer in the warfare mode of Pentecostals,” Wallnau proclaimed. “We need to close ranks and actually begin to get in a superlative agreement over what we believe we’re hearing God say he wants to manifest, because this election is coming five days after Halloween—another high holy day for all the Satanist crazy people.”
“We’ve got to lean into this thing because the Elijah mantle can break the spell of witchcraft off America,” he concluded. “God can tear the veil and unless that veil is torn, we have a lot working against us.”
Yes, this guy is real. I put the CBS interview up to demonstrate he’s not a movie character. I’m not sure what’s wrong with these people, but I want them nowhere around any human being. They are insane. They run wicked cults that target the vulnerable, and it’s sickening.
This is the sheet music, and yes, I own one. It’s from 1969.
The formidable dowager Violet Crawley, Maggie Smith’s scene-stealing character in Downton Abbey, made Smith a bona fide celebrity.
“It’s ridiculous. I led a perfectly normal life until Downton Abbey,” said Smith, who has died at 89. “I’m not kidding. I’d go to theaters. I’d go to galleries. Things like that, on my own, and now I can’t. And that’s—you know—awful. It’s all… It’s truly television. I mean, I’ve been working around for a very long time before Downton Abbey. And life was fine. Nobody knew who the hell I was. Now, it’s all—it has changed.”
…
Dame Margaret Natalie Smith CH DBE was born Dec. 28, 1934 in Ilford, Essex. Her own version of her life thereafter was terse but to the point: “One went to school, one wanted to act, one started to act, and one’s still acting,” she said. “I love it. I’m privileged to do it, and I don’t know where I’d be without it.”
She was first nominated for an Oscar for her portrayal of Desdemona in the 1965 film version of Othello (in an Academy first, all four principal actors in the movie were Oscar nominees). She had originated the role in the National Theatre Company’s production in London in 1964.
Four years later she won the best actress Oscar for the title role in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and ten years later won a best supporting actress Oscar for California Suite, for which she also won a Golden Globe.
So, the closer we come to November 5th, the more insane it will get with the Party of Weirdos doing what they do. My birthday is the day before, and the only thing I want as a gift is for everyone and their cousins to go and vote for the Democratic Party up and down the ballot. It’s as essential as bombing NAZIs, taking the beaches, and writing The Constitution at this point. We lose all of that if they don’t win. And you don’t have to take it from me.
To say all this is unusual is an understatement.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
https://skydancingblog.com/2024/09/27/finally-friday-reads-12/
#SomeWeirdShit_ #Repeat1968JohnBuss #DameMaggieSmith #HurricaneHelene #Weirdos
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“Yes, it’s quite insane. I think it hurts my brain.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I stayed up too late last night watching Hurricane Helene come on shore. It’s difficult to explain that dual feeling of relief that it went east of you while realizing the number of people whose lives have been turned upside down. I get a flashback full of feelings about my hurricane and tornado experience. I’ve been fortunate to date even though Hurricane Katrina upended my life; it was nothing compared to many, many others’ lives.
I remember sitting on the dorm hall floor at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln during the massive 1975 Omaha Hurricane. I was one of the few with a TV and a phone in my room. Those of us who had such luxuries were surrounded by others who took turns trying to call home and watching to see if there was news available on the limited number of channels then on my tiny black and white portable. The only way we really got to know was to pack up and go back home. Almost everyone I knew living along the 72nd Street corridor had severe damage. Fortunately, living in Hurricane Alley meant you had basements. Friends of mine in apartments did less well. I’ve also driven alongside, almost into, and surrounded by tornadoes. I became interested in severe weather early in my teens when I watched an oversized double garage door spin over my house in Omaha from the basement window while strumming and singing, “The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.” This was 1968. Irony and sarcasm have always been my friend and best defense when in the middle of these terrifying events.
I am still waiting to hear from family and friends. Even though Helene was still a Cat 2 Hurricane in Georgia, JJ and her family are okay. We’ll be hearing more from many folks north of Florida who also took a hit of intense rain and wind. Thank goodness the guy with the Sharpie isn’t in charge of the Federal response to all of this in all those states. And yes, De Santis has those white boots on again.
The severe damage and the death toll in Florida today should humble us all. We can build all kinds of places, but the sciences of climatology and meteorology show that we can only do so much with these massive storms. “Hurricane Helene ravages the Southeast, killing at least 22 and leaving millions without power. The storm made landfall overnight as a Category 4 hurricane, bringing devastating flooding and high-speed winds.” This is from NBC News.
Hurricane Helene killed at least 22 people and left millions without power across the Southeast before weakening on its way north Friday morning, officials said.
Widespread damage was expected in Florida’s Big Bend region, where Helene made landfall as a Category 4 shortly after 11 p.m. ET on Thursday. It was the strongest storm to ever strike the area, which connects Florida’s panhandle and peninsula.
Water levels in some parts of the region reached more than 15 ft. above ground level, the National Hurricane Center said, citing preliminary storm surge models.
In Perry, Florida, where officials urged residents who refused to evacuate to write their information on their bodies for identification, police chief Jamie Cruse braced himself for the storm’s aftermath as first responders began rescue operations.
“We’re starting to get the first glimpse of what we actually have laying on the ground and what we’re going to be dealing with,” he told NBC News. “The only regret I have at this moment is we weren’t aggressive enough in the notification to tell people to evacuate the areas that were prone to flooding.”
“I just hope that when we finally discover what we’re dealing with that we don’t have a big loss of life,” he added.
Officials in Clearwater, further south along Florida’s Gulf Coast, also feared the worst after seeing overnight footage of first responders rescuing elderly locals in knee-deep flood water.
“We had some homes burn to the ground out on the island. There were some folks that we just couldn’t get to because of high waters to rescue,” Clearwater mayor Bruce Rector told NBC’s “TODAY” show.
By Friday morning, Floridians woke up to extensive damage from the devastating flooding, high-speed winds, and heavy rain.
Helene’s name will be retired and she will be one for the records. “Helene is now a tropical depression, catastrophic flooding still likely.” This is also from NBC News. More deaths are being reported in Georgia. Atlanta and Valdosta, Georgia, have a lot of flooding and are powerless.
Helene, now a tropical depression, is located 125 miles southeast of Louisville, Kentucky, with maximum sustained winds of 35 mph, moving northwest at 28 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center’s 2 p.m. ET advisory.
All tropical storm warnings have been discontinued and there are now no coastal watches or warnings in effect.
It’s forecast to slowdown and will stall over the Tennessee Valley through the weekend.
Helene will still produce more rainfall for the Central and Southern Appalachians, resulting in “catastrophic and potentially life-threatening flash and urban flooding.” Tornadoes are possible today across eastern South Carolina, central and eastern North Carolina and southern Virginia.
Many blessings to you, my American Family, on your recovery journey.
One journalist has published the Iran-hacked JD Vance dossier. X and Thread censored it after Klippenstein announced that he had published it on social media. “Read the JD Vance Dossier. We’re publishing the supposed Iran-hacked document. Here’s why.” This is from Ken Klippenstein.
Behold the dossier.
It reportedly comes from an alleged Iranian government hack of the Trump campaign, and since June, the news media has been sitting on it (and other documents), declining to publish in fear of finding itself at odds with the government’s campaign against “foreign malign influence.”
I disagree. The dossier has been offered to me and I’ve decided to publish it because it’s of keen public interest in an election season. It’s a 271-page research paper the Trump campaign prepared to vet now vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance. As far as I can tell, it hasn’t been altered, but even if it was, its contents are publicly verifiable. I’ll let it speak for itself.
“The terror regime in Iran loves the weakness and stupidity of Kamala Harris, and is terrified of the strength and resolve of President Donald J. Trump,” Steven Cheung, communications director for the Trump campaign, responded when I asked him about the hack.
If the document had been hacked by some “anonymous” like hacker group, the news media would be all over it. I’m just not a believer of the news media as an arm of the government, doing its work combatting foreign influence. Nor should it be a gatekeeper of what the public should know.
On August 19, the U.S. intelligence community issued a statement on Iranian election interference, including cyber operations attempting to gain sensitive information. “This includes the recently reported activities to compromise former President Trump’s campaign, which the IC [intelligence community] attributes to Iran.”
On September 18, the intelligence community issued another statement going into further detail about Iran’s efforts. “Iranian malicious cyber actors” were still undertaking efforts since June, the press release says, “to send stolen, non-public material associated with former President Donald Trump’s campaign to U.S. media organizations.”
The intelligence community would not confirm to me whether the stolen campaign materials included the Vance Dossier. “We don’t have anything beyond what’s noted in the September 18 joint statement,” Lauren Frost, a spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, told me this week.
You may download and read the document at Klippenstein’s Substack at the above link.
Today, Newsweek stood up. “JD Vance Dossier—What We Know.”
The alleged vetting documents of Ohio Senator JD Vance before he was chosen as the Republican vice presidential candidate have been made public after they were allegedly obtained via an Iranian hack on Donald Trump‘s campaign.
Journalist Ken Klippenstein published the 271-page report into Vance which was carried out by the Trump team on his Substack on Thursday.
The Vance dossier is said to have been part of a trove of sensitive materials which Iranian hackers stole from Trump’s campaign team. At least three news organizations—Politico, The New York Times and The Washington Post—were said to have received the documents, but refused to report on them.
Klippenstein said he disagreed with the suggestion that publishing the materials allegedly obtained by Iranian hackers amounted to helping a foreign country influence the outcome of the 2024 election. The FBI previously confirmed that Iran had attempted to disrupt both the Republican and Democratic presidential campaigns.
…
The report is a detailed examination of Vance’s background based on hundreds of his public statements, media interviews and available official records.
The document highlights the potential vulnerabilities Vance could face if selected as Trump’s running mate, including his previous stances and political views.
The dossier delves deep into times Vance has publicly criticized Trump over the years. Included in the document, for instance, is the transcript of an October 2016 appearance on Charlie Rose, where Vance said he was a “Never Trump guy.”
The document also cites social media posts apparently to highlight issues surrounding Vance being added to the 2024 GOP presidential ticket.
The dossier includes a reference to a tweet Vance reportedly sent in 2016 asking “what percentage of the American population has @RealDonaldTrump sexually assaulted?” The post said to be from Vance has since been deleted. Trump has been accused by multiple women of sexual assault. He has denied all the allegations against him.
The document also notes Vance’s positions on numerous issues including potentially contentious views, or what the dossier cites as “controversial” such as supporting higher taxes for people without children.
Vance’s phone number, home address, photos of his properties and email address are in the document, but have been redacted.
Klippenstein’s account on X, formerly Twitter, was suspended soon after he published the Vance dossier on his Substack.
In a statement, X said: “Ken Klippenstein was temporarily suspended for violating our rules on posting unredacted private personal information, specifically Sen. Vance’s physical addresses and the majority of his Social Security number.”
Newsweek has contacted X for further comment via email.
Users on X are prevented from sharing a link to Klippenstein’s Substack page where he posted the dossier.
Time magazine has this interesting breaking news of proposed legislation by Rep. Adam Schiff.”Exclusive: New Bill Would Prevent Trump From Quashing His Criminal Cases.”
A prominent House Democrat is introducing legislation Friday that would prevent former President Donald Trump from dismissing his ongoing criminal prosecutions if he were to win the presidency again.
The new bill, shared exclusively with TIME ahead of its release, is being led by Rep. Adam Schiff, the Democratic nominee for California’s Senate seat who has been a leading Trump antagonist. He says his bill, which would prevent a sitting President from quashing a criminal prosecution against him or herself, aims to ensure that no President can use their position to evade accountability.
“This is about protecting our democracy and ensuring a President can’t place themselves above the law,” Schiff tells TIME in a statement. “There is every indication that Donald Trump will use the Justice Department to do away with any effort to hold him accountable.”
There’s a reason Schiff feels urgency to introduce the bill now. Trump is currently facing multiple criminal prosecutions, including charges related to his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. “The need for swift passage of this bill could become even more pressing,” Schiff says, “depending on the outcome of the election.”
Some more shocking news on Vance with the vice-presidential debate on the horizon. This is from The Daily Beast. “Vance’s Pre-Debate Prep Includes Christian Nationalist Who Called Harris a Witch. The veep hopeful will hold a town hall with a notorious televangelist who said last year that opponents of Donald Trump would soon suffer “sudden deaths” at the hands of God.” You never know if you should laugh, cry, or throw a rotten tomato at these guys. This is written by Josh Fiallo.
JD Vance’s embrace of far-right Christian nationalists will reach a whole new level this weekend.
Donald Trump’s running mate is set to spend one of his final afternoons before Tuesday’s vice presidential debate by hosting a town hall with Lance Wallnau, a notorious conspiracist who recently praised the 2021 Capitol riot as “an election fraud intervention.”
Vance is set to appear alongside Wallnau at 1 p.m. Saturday, platforming the self-described “prophet” who said in earnest this month that Kamala Harris is a “Jezebel spirit” who uses “witchcraft” to emasculate Trump.
“She can look presidential and that’s—and we’ll get to this later—that’s the seduction of what I would say is witchcraft,” Wallnau said of Harris after her Sept. 10 debate. “That spirit, that occult spirit, is operating on her and through her.”
This is from Right Wing Watch. “Lance Wallnau Blames the Seduction of Witchcraft for Kamala Harris’ Success written by Kyle Mantyla.” This guy makes me want Insane Asylums back.
Shortly after President Joe Biden announced in July that he would not be running for reelection and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, self-proclaimed Christian nationalist and unabashed Trump cultist Lance Wallnau immediately began posting videos in which he warned that Harris represents “the spirit of Jezebel” and declared that she is “the devil’s choice.”
When Harris bested former President Donald Trump in a debate earlier this week, Wallnau was quick to blame it on “witchcraft,” and then doubled down on that attack Wednesday when he appeared on the “FirePower” show, hosted by fellow Trump cultists Mario Murillo and Todd Coconato.
“What you’re seeing now is a real Jezebel,” Wallnau declared. “When you’ve got somebody operating in manipulation, intimidation and domination—especially when it’s in a female role trying to emasculate a man who is standing up for truth—you’re dealing with the Jezebel spirit. … So, with Kamala, you have a Jezebel spirit, a characteristic in the Bible that is the personification of intimidation, seduction, domination and manipulation.”
“She can look presidential,” he continued. “That’s the seduction of what I would say is witchcraft. That’s the manipulation of imagery that creates an impression contrary to the truth, but it seduces you into seeing it. So that spirit, that occult spirit, I believe is operating on her and through her.”
While Harris is supposedly operating under an occult Jezebel spirit, Wallnau claimed that Trump has “an Elijah mantle on him, probably from the intercession of a million Christians.”
“So, we have to double down in intercessory prayer in the warfare mode of Pentecostals,” Wallnau proclaimed. “We need to close ranks and actually begin to get in a superlative agreement over what we believe we’re hearing God say he wants to manifest, because this election is coming five days after Halloween—another high holy day for all the Satanist crazy people.”
“We’ve got to lean into this thing because the Elijah mantle can break the spell of witchcraft off America,” he concluded. “God can tear the veil and unless that veil is torn, we have a lot working against us.”
Yes, this guy is real. I put the CBS interview up to demonstrate he’s not a movie character. I’m not sure what’s wrong with these people, but I want them nowhere around any human being. They are insane. They run wicked cults that target the vulnerable, and it’s sickening.
This is the sheet music, and yes, I own one. It’s from 1969.
The formidable dowager Violet Crawley, Maggie Smith’s scene-stealing character in Downton Abbey, made Smith a bona fide celebrity.
“It’s ridiculous. I led a perfectly normal life until Downton Abbey,” said Smith, who has died at 89. “I’m not kidding. I’d go to theaters. I’d go to galleries. Things like that, on my own, and now I can’t. And that’s—you know—awful. It’s all… It’s truly television. I mean, I’ve been working around for a very long time before Downton Abbey. And life was fine. Nobody knew who the hell I was. Now, it’s all—it has changed.”
…
Dame Margaret Natalie Smith CH DBE was born Dec. 28, 1934 in Ilford, Essex. Her own version of her life thereafter was terse but to the point: “One went to school, one wanted to act, one started to act, and one’s still acting,” she said. “I love it. I’m privileged to do it, and I don’t know where I’d be without it.”
She was first nominated for an Oscar for her portrayal of Desdemona in the 1965 film version of Othello (in an Academy first, all four principal actors in the movie were Oscar nominees). She had originated the role in the National Theatre Company’s production in London in 1964.
Four years later she won the best actress Oscar for the title role in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and ten years later won a best supporting actress Oscar for California Suite, for which she also won a Golden Globe.
So, the closer we come to November 5th, the more insane it will get with the Party of Weirdos doing what they do. My birthday is the day before, and the only thing I want as a gift is for everyone and their cousins to go and vote for the Democratic Party up and down the ballot. It’s as essential as bombing NAZIs, taking the beaches, and writing The Constitution at this point. We lose all of that if they don’t win. And you don’t have to take it from me.
To say all this is unusual is an understatement.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
https://skydancingblog.com/2024/09/27/finally-friday-reads-12/
#SomeWeirdShit_ #Repeat1968JohnBuss #DameMaggieSmith #HurricaneHelene #Weirdos
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Modern Day Moses Mike Johnson has achieved Rinocchio status as Trumplicans demand a motion to vacate the chair. John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
There’s been good news on the U.S. economy and other issues like a decreasing crime rate. Weirdly, the legacy media wouldn’t cover history-making- statistics like the ones we’ve experienced over the last 4 years. But 48% of the country seems to prefer dark, weird lies for some reason. “Murder and other violent crime dropped across the U.S. last year, FBI data shows. Murder dropped 11.6% from 2022 to 2023, the largest single-year decline in the last 20 years. Property crime was also down overall, while motor vehicle theft and shoplifting rose.” This crime report is from NBC News.
Crime, including serious violent incidents like murder and rape, dropped nationally from 2022 to 2023, according to new data released by the FBI on Monday.
Violent crime was down about 3% from 2022 to 2023 and property crime took a similar drop of 2.4%, the FBI reported in its annual “Summary of Crime in the Nation.” The most serious crimes went down significantly: Murder and non-negligent manslaughter were down an estimated 11.6% — the largest single year decline in two decades — while rape decreased by an estimated 9.4%.
Preliminary numbers showed that 2024 crime numbers were also dropping for the early part of this year, continuing a trend of crime easing as America has come out of the pandemic.
The Economic Data from the U.S. is impressive. This is from The Real Economic Blog. “American outperformance in the post-pandemic global economy.” This analysis is by Joseph Brusuelas. American Economists can no longer claim to be practitioners of the dismal science during the Biden administration. Everything is going much better than expected.
One of the more underdiscussed economic developments following the shocks of the pandemic has been the United States’ outperformance compared to its peers.
This success can be traced to bold monetary and fiscal policies put in place that have hardened supply chains, bolstered energy independence and started to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure.
Since 2020 real U.S. GDP has increased 9.4% compared with:
- Canada 4.9%
- Italy 4.7%
- EU 4%
- France 3.8%
- Japan 3.1%
- UK 2.3%
- Germany 0.3%
Perhaps more important, the U.S. is approaching what I think is a productivity boom.
If one asks how the U.S. can grow so fast even as hiring slows, the answer is productivity. With productivity increasing at 2.7% year over year, the American economy is experiencing its best gains in that area since the boom from 1995 to 2004.
That is why wages are rising above inflation, corporate earnings and profits are increasing and the U.S. continues to outperform its peers.
It’s all a result of smart decisions after the pandemic that increased supplies across the economy and encouraged long-term investments that integrate sophisticated technology into the production process.
Canada is our mini-me. They shadow and follow are economic results so it’s not surprising they’re number two on that list. But, the same reason we could not get a bi-partisan immigration bill is the same reason we may get a government shut-down right before the election. Just 3 days ago, the FED cut the FedFunds rate by 1/2%. As a Financial Economist, I can tell you this is a BFD. Did you know that Biden spoke at the New York Economic Club? Of course, it wasn’t covered the way the Trump debacle was. This is from ABC News. “Biden calls rate cut ‘an important day for the country.’ Biden told The Economic Club how far the U.S. has come since the COVID pandemic.”
President Joe Biden on Thursday called the Federal Reserve’s rate cut the day before an “important signal” from the Fed to Americans that inflation is cooling, but he cautioned that it “doesn’t mean the work is done” to improve the economy.
In remarks on Thursday at the Economic Club of Washington, D.C., Biden said, “Yesterday was an important day for the country.”
“Two and a half years after the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates, it announced that it began lowering interest rates,” Biden said. “I think it’s good news for consumers, and that means the cost of buying a home, a car, and so much more would be going down. And it’s good news in my view, for the overall economy.”
The president in his remarks discussed how far the U.S. has come since the COVID-19 pandemic, including supply chain issues, high costs of food and goods, and baby formula shortages. He also checked through all of his legislative achievements such as the American Rescue Plan, Inflation Reduction Act, Chips and Science Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
“At its peak, as you all know, inflation was 9.1% in the United States. Today it’s much closer to 2%,” Biden said. “It doesn’t mean our work is done. Far from it. Far from it, no one should confused why I’m here. I’m not here to take a victory lap. I’m not here to say, ‘A job well done.’ I’m not here to say ‘We don’t have a hell of a lot more work to do.’ We do have more work to do.”
“Secret Service stepping up its game on the campaign trail.” John Buss, @repeat1968
If you search the legacy media, you can find a few stories about the normalcy and improvements the Biden/Harris administration has provided our country. Ronald Reagan’s economic stewardship has been mischaracterized for years and these stories are still hanging around. I think the treatment that the press gave Reagan prepared us for the total media meltdown on Trump Coverage. Max Boot has a new book that will hopefully demonstrate it’s mostly myth,. Boot, you may recall, was a Republican Operative at the time. This is the Washington Post‘s review of his Reagan biography “Reagan: His Life and Legend.” Geoffrey Kabaservice wrote the review, and the lede states, “How Important was Reagan? Max Boot’s biography deflates the Gipper’s legacy.”
This splendid new account of the 40th president’s life shows that Reagan’s influence doesn’t loom so large 35 years after he left the White House.
Reagan’s conservatism, in Boot’s telling, was little more than a farrago of erroneous statistics, spurious quotations and incendiary claims about an ever-present communist conspiracy — many of them derived from his reading of tracts from the lunatic-right John Birch Society. Boot suggests that Reagan didn’t care about factual accuracy because he “was convinced his larger moral point was correct and that was all that mattered.” Yet Boot notes with some irritation that throughout Reagan’s career, “reporters seldom held him to account for his falsehoods,” and that on the rare occasions when they did, “they found that most readers did not care.”
To some extent such criticisms bounced off Reagan simply because reporters and the public liked him. His mastery of symbolism, largely derived from his Hollywood experience, also meant he never suffered politically for the contradictions between, for example, the traditional values he preached and his dysfunctional family life. (Reagan’s two children with his previous wife, the actress Jane Wyman, and his two children with Nancy were alienated from their emotionally detached parents as well as each other and engaged in a range of self-destructive behaviors.) As Boot perceptively observes, “The trappings of family, displayed in photographs and videos, conveyed the right image even if they were disassociated from the underlying reality.”
Reagan’s presidency likewise was more symbol than substance. Boot goes so far as to say that Reagan was “an oddly passive chief executive,” “a disengaged president who had little interest in, or aptitude for, running the federal government.”
In Boot’s telling, few of Reagan’s apparent successes owed much to Reagan himself. Several significant bipartisan bills were passed during his presidency, including a comprehensive tax overhaul and Defense Department restructuring, but “he did not take an active role in crafting any of them.” The most important economic policymaker was not the president but Paul Volcker, the chairman of the quasi-independent Federal Reserve Board — though Boot does credit Reagan for showing “considerable courage and perspicacity” in backing Volcker despite the economic costs of his anti-inflationary policies. In any case, “there was nothing particularly impressive or unusual about the Reagan economic record,” given that, according to the statistics Boot cites, annual growth in the gross domestic product during his presidency was about the same as what it had been under Richard Nixon and below the rates during the presidencies of Bill Clinton, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson
The worst headlines still fill today’s papers and are always about you-know-who or the candidates running with MAGA status. North Carolina Gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson is the latest in the MAGA lineage of someone who shouldn’t hold public office. The CNN headline is “Nearly all of Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson’s campaign staff quits after CNN report.” But the big question is, why did they go to work for him before? It’s not like he just turned into a deplorable overnight! As usual, CNN goes with normalizing MAGA behavior even when each story about them is more abnormal than the last.
Days after a CNN report about racist and sexual comments posted on a pornography forum, all but a few of Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson’s campaign team quit their jobs on Sunday.
A campaign news release said that four top staffers have left the campaign: Conrad Pogorzelski, general consultant and senior advisor who’s worked for Robinson since his initial 2020 lieutenant governor campaign; Chris Rodriguez, campaign manager; Heather Whillier, finance director; and Jason Rizk, deputy campaign manager.
But WUNC has confirmed that other staffers have quit as well, leaving Robinson with just three people working on his campaign — two campaign spokesmen and a bodyguard. The list of departures also include longtime director of operations Patrick Riley and political directors John Kontoulas and Jackson Lohrer.
Sunday’s news release says that new staff hires will be announced “in the coming days.” But hiring a new campaign team less than two months from Election Day will be tough for a campaign rocked by scandal.
The lengthy CNN report, published Thursday afternoon, highlights comments posted to an online pornography forum called “Nude Africa” from an user calling themselves Mark Robinson with many of his personal biographical details and an email address associated with the man who’s now the Republican nominee for governor.
The report includes a long list of sexually explicit and racist comments posted to the site between 2008 and 2012, long before Robinson entered politics as a candidate for lieutenant governor in 2020. The commenter describes himself as a “Black Nazi,” calls for the reinstatement of slavery, says he enjoys watching transgender pornography and describes a time he spied on women taking showers in a locker room.
Robinson has denied that he wrote the posts, but other Republicans have been distancing themselves from the GOP nominee for governor in recent days. President Donald Trump made no mention of Robinson during a Saturday rally in Wilmington, even as the GOP nominee for attorney general, Congressman Dan Bishop, spoke to the crowd.
Controversies have been present in most of the MAGA set. I mean, what type of weirdo can vote for a guy who’s about to get his sentence for committing 34 felons, is an adjudicated felon, and still has plenty of my felonies lined up to get him if he doesn’t get into office. His wife won’t even be seen with him, and she was just paid to show up at a Log Cabin Republican meeting by some unknown person. “Melania Trump was paid for a rare appearance at a political event. It’s not clear who cut the unusual six-figure check.” She made another weird, rare appearance at the RNC. It was filled with the visual rebuffs of her husband. For a Political Party obsessed with a traditional family and flying so-called Christian Values, something is very wrong here.
Also, the Barron Trump allegations are beginning to come out since he’s no longer considered a kid. Oy, and what a kid he was! “The shocking Barron Trump allegations just keep getting worse.” This is from MSN.
Yesterday, we learned that Barron Trump—according to an insider—allegedly “slapped the sh*t” out of his nanny years ago. But apparently Barron’s behavior is far worse than that.
After one poster—who nannied for a kid who went to the same New York school as Barron after every DC school allegedly refused to take him—started dishing the dirt on the young psycho-in-training, even more stories started to come out about the youngest Trump.
“The more y’all annoy me, the more Imma keep telling the Trumps business,” original poster @WonderKing82, aka Mr. Weeks, promised Trump supporters in his replies. And boy, did he deliver. Soon after telling the story about the nanny, a few other damning details came to light, mostly about Barron’s treatment of small animals.
For Barron, the bad behavior allegedly didn’t stop with animals. He also directed his abuse at other classmates, according to Mr. Weeks.
The part about the inappropriate touching and investigation is especially disturbing. And for the people in the comments claiming that these are somehow signs of autism, that’s not only incredibly untrue, it’s irresponsible and harmful for individuals who are actually autistic. Folks on the autism spectrum don’t tend to harm animals or classmates, and it’s a little bit ridiculous that this has to be said out loud.
There are even people in the replies trying to find a way to blame Barron’s behavior on Hillary Clinton. Good luck with that!
Whatever the truth is about Barron Trump, you can be sure it will eventually come to light. For now, we’re going to keep a close eye on these disturbing, utterly believable claims.
We’re basically seeing a family tree full of sociopaths! And blame that on Hillary??? WTF? So, there appears to be a spending deal that my avoid the government shutdown Trump wants. This is from the AP. “Spending deal averts a possible federal shutdown and funds the government into December.” I’m not sure how dumb you must be to know that the party that doesn’t deliver the deal gets blamed. The Citizens get really pissed if they start missing all kinds of things owed them, like Vet Benefits and paychecks.
Congressional leaders announced an agreement Sunday on a short-term spending bill that will fund federal agencies for about three months, averting a possible partial government shutdown when the new budget year begins Oct. 1 and pushing final decisions until after the November election.
Temporary spending bills generally fund agencies at current levels, but an additional $231 million was included to bolster the Secret Service after the two assassination attempts against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, and additional money was added to aid with the presidential transition, among other things.
Lawmakers have struggled to get to this point as the current budget year winds to a close at month’s end. At the urging of the most conservative members of his conference, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., had linked temporary funding with a mandate that would have compelled states to require proof of citizenship when people register to vote.
But Johnson abandoned that approach to reach an agreement, even as Trump insisted there should not be a stop-gap measure without the voting requirement.
Bipartisan negotiations began in earnest shortly after that, with leadership agreeing to extend funding into mid-December. That gives the current Congress the ability to fashion a full-year spending bill after the Nov. 5 election, rather than push that responsibility to the next Congress and president.
In a letter to Republican colleagues, Johnson said the budget measure would be “very narrow, bare-bones” and include “only the extensions that are absolutely necessary.”
“While this is not the solution any of us prefer, it is the most prudent path forward under the present circumstances,” Johnson wrote. “As history has taught and current polling affirms, shutting the government down less than 40 days from a fateful election would be an act of political malpractice.”
I have just a few other recommendations. The first one comes from Emptywheel. Also, if you haven’t watched From Russia, with Lev, You should. “Why No One Went to Prison for Rudy Giuliani’s Hunter Biden Corruption.”
As I said, the film leaves the impression that Lev was arrested to protect Trump during impeachment by silencing the key witness.
But that’s not why Lev went to prison (as a news clip in the movie tacitly admits).
Lev and Igor Fruman (along with David Correia and Andrey Kukushkin) were first charged on October 9, 2019, via indictment that was (according to then US Attorney for SDNY Geoffrey Berman’s memoir) drafted quickly overnight in advance of Lev and Igor’s trip to meet Dmitry Firtash in Vienna. From Berman’s memoir, I’m not 100% sure whether he pushed it because he genuinely feared they were about to flee the country, felt he had to do so before Barr intervened … or for more nefarious reasons.
The charges were:
- Conspiring to make a bunch of political donations in the name of Global Energy Producers
- Lying to the Federal Election Commission
- Falsifying a document to the FEC
- Laundering donations from Russian Andrey Muraviev to pay pro-cannabis politicians
As Bondy described, the indictment implied that Lev and Igor’s political contributions to Pete Sessions were tied to an attempt to fire Marie Yovanovitch. But that was not charged as FARA.
On September 17, 2020, the indictment was superseded. Lev and Correia’s longterm Fraud Guarantee fraud was added and the charges tied to Muraviev (who was secretly indicted that same day) were bumped up. The paragraph describing a payment to Sessions took out the reference to an Ambassador, describing it instead as to “further their political goals.” There were still no FARA charges though.
Ultimately, Lev was convicted at trial in October 2021 of the GEP and Muraviev donations, and in March 2022, pled guilty to the fraud guarantee charges. He was never charged with FARA violations.
Bondy’s insinuation that SDNY took out the foreign agent aspect to protect Rudy is wholly inconsistent with the warrants (linked below) targeting Lev and Rudy unsealed last year.
They show that the investigation into Lev, which started based on a Campaign Legal Center complaint, initially focused on campaign finance crimes. In August 2019 — after the firing of Marie Yovanovitch but before the disclosure of the Perfect Phone Call — SDNY began to turn to Foreign Agent suspicions (though one of two warrants obtained in August 2019 was not executed). After the arrest, SDNY more aggressively turned to developing the Foreign Agent prong of the investigation. On November 4, 2019, SDNY obtained warrants targeting Rudy (which were not released last year). On December 10, 2019, the Foreign Agent prong continued.
That’s when Bill Barr intervened to kill that prong of the investigation, certainly as it pertained to Rudy, as I’ll lay out below.
After that point, SDNY focused on the Fraud Guarantee fraud.
It’s not that Lev went to prison for this but Rudy did not. On the contrary, Barr worked hard to ensure no one could go to prison on such charges.
While Barr was doing that, SDNY appears to have put that investigation on ice and attempted, without success, to resuscitate once Barr was out of office.
There are also a few more articles analyzing DonOLD. I’ll be brief with these. From the Washington Post and Phillip Bump: “The ‘policy’ mirage that undergirds Donald Trump’s support. The former president and his supporters insist he wins a race centered on policy. It’s not because of Trump’s detailed policy platform.”
A central reason for this is the deep polarization in American politics, particularly around Trump himself. In 2016 and 2020, he earned a bit under 50 percent of the vote, about where he is in most recent polls. The shift from Biden to Harris helped firm up the Democratic electorate, which may be crucially important in who actually turns out to vote — but the race generally went from a narrow national Trump lead to a narrow Harris one. The 2024 race continues to be largely a referendum on Trump, much as the 2020 race was.
There has been one notable difference this year, though. While Trump’s 2016 campaign was unabashedly indifferent to policy specifics and his 2020 campaign centered on his incumbency, his 2024 effort has often — largely through the energies of his boosters — been presented as a campaign centered on the policies he seeks to implement.
It’s an unexpected argument, but a common one. You will often hear that Trump has an advantage on policy; that, if the campaign set aside all of the fluff of personal emotion, Trump would prevail simply by virtue of the popularity of his positions. That his support is rooted in what he stands for, not who he is.
Juan Williams dives in further at The Hill. “Trump is at 48 percent. How could this be possible but for widespread racism?”
At this point, the racism is obvious. How else does it make sense that 48 percent of registered voters in last week’s Fox News poll say they have no problem putting Donald Trump back in the White House?
Who are these people who look the other way when their candidate tells a bold lie about Black immigrants eating a mostly white Ohio town’s cats and dogs?
How can it be that not a soul among the 48 percent cares that Trump’s vice-presidential pick, JD Vance, says it is okay to “create” racist lies about immigrants eating pets “so the American media actually pays attention”?
How can 48 percent of voters back a candidate who says immigrants coming from “infested” places are “poisoning the blood of our country?”
Is it just snowflakes who notice when one of Trump’s close allies says, “The White House will smell like curry” if Vice President Kamala Harris, the daughter of an Indian immigrant, wins the presidency?
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R- Ga.), no snowflake, condemned the comment as “appalling,” “racist” and “hateful.”
Do these voters also prefer to sail past Trump once calling a Black woman and former aide a “dog”? And he called Alvin Bragg, the Black Manhattan district attorney who successfully prosecuted him for business fraud, an “animal.”
Maybe Trump’s 48 percent don’t excuse his racism so much as get the message. They are inside a Republican Party that is 82 percent white. Most of those white Republicans are in small towns and rural areas.
Harris said Trump can’t be trusted to serve as president after “engaging in…hateful rhetoric that, as usual, is designed to divide us as a country…to have people pointing fingers at each other.”
In this year’s campaign, one of Trump’s regular dog-whistles at his rallies is his false claim that big cities, full of racial minorities and immigrants, are scary places full of crime and failure. Last week he flatly lied at a rally when he said a parent who leaves a child alone on the New York subway has “about a 75 percent chance that [they’ll] never see [their] child again. What the hell has happened here?”
Trump’s use of racism to stir up his white supporters was called out by writer Fran Lebowitz back in 2018. Trump, she wrote, has “allowed people to express their racism and bigotry in a way that they haven’t been able to in quite a while and they really love him for that…It’s a shocking thing to realize people love their hatred more than they care about their own actual lives.”
Ashley Parker writes this at The Washington Post. “Donald Trump’s imaginary and frightening world. His extreme caricatures serve as a way to paint an alarming picture of America under the Biden-Harris administration.”
In Donald Trump’s imaginary world, Americans can’t venture out to buy a loaf of bread without getting shot, mugged or raped. Immigrants in a small Ohio town eat their neighbors’ cats and dogs. World War III and economic collapse are just around the corner. And kids head off to school only to return at day’s end having undergone gender reassignment surgery.
The former president’s imaginary world is a dark, dystopian place, described by Trump in his rallies, interviews, social media posts and debate appearances to paint an alarming picture of America under the Biden-Harris administration.
It is a distorted, warped and, at times, absurdist portrait of a nation where the insurrectionists who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to deadly effect were merely peaceful protesters, and where unlucky boaters are faced with the unappealing choice between electrocution or a shark attack. His extreme caricatures also serve as another way for Trump to traffic in lies and misinformation, using an alternate reality of his own making to create an often terrifying — and, he seems to hope — politically devastating landscape for his political opponents.
Trump, for instance, regularly claims that Democrats favor abortions up until the day of birth — and, in some cases, even after birth.
Speaking at the Sept. 10 presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris in Philadelphia, Trump falsely claimed that Harris’s running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, has said “abortion in the ninth month is absolutely fine.”
“He also says, ‘execution after birth’ — execution, no longer abortion because the baby is born — is okay,” Trump continued.
In fact, Walz has not said this, The Washington Post Fact Checker found, and “execution after birth” — or infanticide — is illegal in all states. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2021, nearly all abortions — 93.5 percent — occur at or before 13 weeks, and fewer than 1 percent were performed after 21 weeks. World War III, too, is another all-but-certainty should Trump not be elected in November, the former president frequently claims. In July, before a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his private Mar-a-Lago Club, Trump told reporters that only his electoral victory could stave off another global conflagration.
“If we win, it’ll be very simple. It’s all going to work out and very quickly,” Trump said. “If we don’t, you’re going to end up with major wars in the Middle East and maybe a Third World War. You are closer to a Third World War right now than at any time since the Second World War. You’ve never been so close, because we have incompetent people running our country.”
Seeing this dark stuff, or as Dubya put it back at his inauguration, “some weird shit,” we can only ask ourselves what causes people to swallow this hook, line, and sinker. Is this what makes you feel better about yourself? I keep wondering if it’s their brand of religion, their lack of education, or just their Iron Age tribalistic hate of any “other than them.” I had to even call it weird because, to me, the word evil is far more descriptive. It’s certainly no way to run a country. And, it’s not the way to have fun.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
#SomeWeirdShit_ #DonOld #Repeat1968JohnBuss #AyatollahMikeJohnson #Bidenomics #GovernmentShutdownBlues #Reaganomics #TrumpAndRacism #TrumpLiesAndDarkShit
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Modern Day Moses Mike Johnson has achieved Rinocchio status as Trumplicans demand a motion to vacate the chair. John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
There’s been good news on the U.S. economy and other issues like a decreasing crime rate. Weirdly, the legacy media wouldn’t cover history-making- statistics like the ones we’ve experienced over the last 4 years. But 48% of the country seems to prefer dark, weird lies for some reason. “Murder and other violent crime dropped across the U.S. last year, FBI data shows. Murder dropped 11.6% from 2022 to 2023, the largest single-year decline in the last 20 years. Property crime was also down overall, while motor vehicle theft and shoplifting rose.” This crime report is from NBC News.
Crime, including serious violent incidents like murder and rape, dropped nationally from 2022 to 2023, according to new data released by the FBI on Monday.
Violent crime was down about 3% from 2022 to 2023 and property crime took a similar drop of 2.4%, the FBI reported in its annual “Summary of Crime in the Nation.” The most serious crimes went down significantly: Murder and non-negligent manslaughter were down an estimated 11.6% — the largest single year decline in two decades — while rape decreased by an estimated 9.4%.
Preliminary numbers showed that 2024 crime numbers were also dropping for the early part of this year, continuing a trend of crime easing as America has come out of the pandemic.
The Economic Data from the U.S. is impressive. This is from The Real Economic Blog. “American outperformance in the post-pandemic global economy.” This analysis is by Joseph Brusuelas. American Economists can no longer claim to be practitioners of the dismal science during the Biden administration. Everything is going much better than expected.
One of the more underdiscussed economic developments following the shocks of the pandemic has been the United States’ outperformance compared to its peers.
This success can be traced to bold monetary and fiscal policies put in place that have hardened supply chains, bolstered energy independence and started to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure.
Since 2020 real U.S. GDP has increased 9.4% compared with:
- Canada 4.9%
- Italy 4.7%
- EU 4%
- France 3.8%
- Japan 3.1%
- UK 2.3%
- Germany 0.3%
Perhaps more important, the U.S. is approaching what I think is a productivity boom.
If one asks how the U.S. can grow so fast even as hiring slows, the answer is productivity. With productivity increasing at 2.7% year over year, the American economy is experiencing its best gains in that area since the boom from 1995 to 2004.
That is why wages are rising above inflation, corporate earnings and profits are increasing and the U.S. continues to outperform its peers.
It’s all a result of smart decisions after the pandemic that increased supplies across the economy and encouraged long-term investments that integrate sophisticated technology into the production process.
Canada is our mini-me. They shadow and follow are economic results so it’s not surprising they’re number two on that list. But, the same reason we could not get a bi-partisan immigration bill is the same reason we may get a government shut-down right before the election. Just 3 days ago, the FED cut the FedFunds rate by 1/2%. As a Financial Economist, I can tell you this is a BFD. Did you know that Biden spoke at the New York Economic Club? Of course, it wasn’t covered the way the Trump debacle was. This is from ABC News. “Biden calls rate cut ‘an important day for the country.’ Biden told The Economic Club how far the U.S. has come since the COVID pandemic.”
President Joe Biden on Thursday called the Federal Reserve’s rate cut the day before an “important signal” from the Fed to Americans that inflation is cooling, but he cautioned that it “doesn’t mean the work is done” to improve the economy.
In remarks on Thursday at the Economic Club of Washington, D.C., Biden said, “Yesterday was an important day for the country.”
“Two and a half years after the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates, it announced that it began lowering interest rates,” Biden said. “I think it’s good news for consumers, and that means the cost of buying a home, a car, and so much more would be going down. And it’s good news in my view, for the overall economy.”
The president in his remarks discussed how far the U.S. has come since the COVID-19 pandemic, including supply chain issues, high costs of food and goods, and baby formula shortages. He also checked through all of his legislative achievements such as the American Rescue Plan, Inflation Reduction Act, Chips and Science Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
“At its peak, as you all know, inflation was 9.1% in the United States. Today it’s much closer to 2%,” Biden said. “It doesn’t mean our work is done. Far from it. Far from it, no one should confused why I’m here. I’m not here to take a victory lap. I’m not here to say, ‘A job well done.’ I’m not here to say ‘We don’t have a hell of a lot more work to do.’ We do have more work to do.”
“Secret Service stepping up its game on the campaign trail.” John Buss, @repeat1968
If you search the legacy media, you can find a few stories about the normalcy and improvements the Biden/Harris administration has provided our country. Ronald Reagan’s economic stewardship has been mischaracterized for years and these stories are still hanging around. I think the treatment that the press gave Reagan prepared us for the total media meltdown on Trump Coverage. Max Boot has a new book that will hopefully demonstrate it’s mostly myth,. Boot, you may recall, was a Republican Operative at the time. This is the Washington Post‘s review of his Reagan biography “Reagan: His Life and Legend.” Geoffrey Kabaservice wrote the review, and the lede states, “How Important was Reagan? Max Boot’s biography deflates the Gipper’s legacy.”
This splendid new account of the 40th president’s life shows that Reagan’s influence doesn’t loom so large 35 years after he left the White House.
Reagan’s conservatism, in Boot’s telling, was little more than a farrago of erroneous statistics, spurious quotations and incendiary claims about an ever-present communist conspiracy — many of them derived from his reading of tracts from the lunatic-right John Birch Society. Boot suggests that Reagan didn’t care about factual accuracy because he “was convinced his larger moral point was correct and that was all that mattered.” Yet Boot notes with some irritation that throughout Reagan’s career, “reporters seldom held him to account for his falsehoods,” and that on the rare occasions when they did, “they found that most readers did not care.”
To some extent such criticisms bounced off Reagan simply because reporters and the public liked him. His mastery of symbolism, largely derived from his Hollywood experience, also meant he never suffered politically for the contradictions between, for example, the traditional values he preached and his dysfunctional family life. (Reagan’s two children with his previous wife, the actress Jane Wyman, and his two children with Nancy were alienated from their emotionally detached parents as well as each other and engaged in a range of self-destructive behaviors.) As Boot perceptively observes, “The trappings of family, displayed in photographs and videos, conveyed the right image even if they were disassociated from the underlying reality.”
Reagan’s presidency likewise was more symbol than substance. Boot goes so far as to say that Reagan was “an oddly passive chief executive,” “a disengaged president who had little interest in, or aptitude for, running the federal government.”
In Boot’s telling, few of Reagan’s apparent successes owed much to Reagan himself. Several significant bipartisan bills were passed during his presidency, including a comprehensive tax overhaul and Defense Department restructuring, but “he did not take an active role in crafting any of them.” The most important economic policymaker was not the president but Paul Volcker, the chairman of the quasi-independent Federal Reserve Board — though Boot does credit Reagan for showing “considerable courage and perspicacity” in backing Volcker despite the economic costs of his anti-inflationary policies. In any case, “there was nothing particularly impressive or unusual about the Reagan economic record,” given that, according to the statistics Boot cites, annual growth in the gross domestic product during his presidency was about the same as what it had been under Richard Nixon and below the rates during the presidencies of Bill Clinton, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson
The worst headlines still fill today’s papers and are always about you-know-who or the candidates running with MAGA status. North Carolina Gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson is the latest in the MAGA lineage of someone who shouldn’t hold public office. The CNN headline is “Nearly all of Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson’s campaign staff quits after CNN report.” But the big question is, why did they go to work for him before? It’s not like he just turned into a deplorable overnight! As usual, CNN goes with normalizing MAGA behavior even when each story about them is more abnormal than the last.
Days after a CNN report about racist and sexual comments posted on a pornography forum, all but a few of Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson’s campaign team quit their jobs on Sunday.
A campaign news release said that four top staffers have left the campaign: Conrad Pogorzelski, general consultant and senior advisor who’s worked for Robinson since his initial 2020 lieutenant governor campaign; Chris Rodriguez, campaign manager; Heather Whillier, finance director; and Jason Rizk, deputy campaign manager.
But WUNC has confirmed that other staffers have quit as well, leaving Robinson with just three people working on his campaign — two campaign spokesmen and a bodyguard. The list of departures also include longtime director of operations Patrick Riley and political directors John Kontoulas and Jackson Lohrer.
Sunday’s news release says that new staff hires will be announced “in the coming days.” But hiring a new campaign team less than two months from Election Day will be tough for a campaign rocked by scandal.
The lengthy CNN report, published Thursday afternoon, highlights comments posted to an online pornography forum called “Nude Africa” from an user calling themselves Mark Robinson with many of his personal biographical details and an email address associated with the man who’s now the Republican nominee for governor.
The report includes a long list of sexually explicit and racist comments posted to the site between 2008 and 2012, long before Robinson entered politics as a candidate for lieutenant governor in 2020. The commenter describes himself as a “Black Nazi,” calls for the reinstatement of slavery, says he enjoys watching transgender pornography and describes a time he spied on women taking showers in a locker room.
Robinson has denied that he wrote the posts, but other Republicans have been distancing themselves from the GOP nominee for governor in recent days. President Donald Trump made no mention of Robinson during a Saturday rally in Wilmington, even as the GOP nominee for attorney general, Congressman Dan Bishop, spoke to the crowd.
Controversies have been present in most of the MAGA set. I mean, what type of weirdo can vote for a guy who’s about to get his sentence for committing 34 felons, is an adjudicated felon, and still has plenty of my felonies lined up to get him if he doesn’t get into office. His wife won’t even be seen with him, and she was just paid to show up at a Log Cabin Republican meeting by some unknown person. “Melania Trump was paid for a rare appearance at a political event. It’s not clear who cut the unusual six-figure check.” She made another weird, rare appearance at the RNC. It was filled with the visual rebuffs of her husband. For a Political Party obsessed with a traditional family and flying so-called Christian Values, something is very wrong here.
Also, the Barron Trump allegations are beginning to come out since he’s no longer considered a kid. Oy, and what a kid he was! “The shocking Barron Trump allegations just keep getting worse.” This is from MSN.
Yesterday, we learned that Barron Trump—according to an insider—allegedly “slapped the sh*t” out of his nanny years ago. But apparently Barron’s behavior is far worse than that.
After one poster—who nannied for a kid who went to the same New York school as Barron after every DC school allegedly refused to take him—started dishing the dirt on the young psycho-in-training, even more stories started to come out about the youngest Trump.
“The more y’all annoy me, the more Imma keep telling the Trumps business,” original poster @WonderKing82, aka Mr. Weeks, promised Trump supporters in his replies. And boy, did he deliver. Soon after telling the story about the nanny, a few other damning details came to light, mostly about Barron’s treatment of small animals.
For Barron, the bad behavior allegedly didn’t stop with animals. He also directed his abuse at other classmates, according to Mr. Weeks.
The part about the inappropriate touching and investigation is especially disturbing. And for the people in the comments claiming that these are somehow signs of autism, that’s not only incredibly untrue, it’s irresponsible and harmful for individuals who are actually autistic. Folks on the autism spectrum don’t tend to harm animals or classmates, and it’s a little bit ridiculous that this has to be said out loud.
There are even people in the replies trying to find a way to blame Barron’s behavior on Hillary Clinton. Good luck with that!
Whatever the truth is about Barron Trump, you can be sure it will eventually come to light. For now, we’re going to keep a close eye on these disturbing, utterly believable claims.
We’re basically seeing a family tree full of sociopaths! And blame that on Hillary??? WTF? So, there appears to be a spending deal that my avoid the government shutdown Trump wants. This is from the AP. “Spending deal averts a possible federal shutdown and funds the government into December.” I’m not sure how dumb you must be to know that the party that doesn’t deliver the deal gets blamed. The Citizens get really pissed if they start missing all kinds of things owed them, like Vet Benefits and paychecks.
Congressional leaders announced an agreement Sunday on a short-term spending bill that will fund federal agencies for about three months, averting a possible partial government shutdown when the new budget year begins Oct. 1 and pushing final decisions until after the November election.
Temporary spending bills generally fund agencies at current levels, but an additional $231 million was included to bolster the Secret Service after the two assassination attempts against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, and additional money was added to aid with the presidential transition, among other things.
Lawmakers have struggled to get to this point as the current budget year winds to a close at month’s end. At the urging of the most conservative members of his conference, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., had linked temporary funding with a mandate that would have compelled states to require proof of citizenship when people register to vote.
But Johnson abandoned that approach to reach an agreement, even as Trump insisted there should not be a stop-gap measure without the voting requirement.
Bipartisan negotiations began in earnest shortly after that, with leadership agreeing to extend funding into mid-December. That gives the current Congress the ability to fashion a full-year spending bill after the Nov. 5 election, rather than push that responsibility to the next Congress and president.
In a letter to Republican colleagues, Johnson said the budget measure would be “very narrow, bare-bones” and include “only the extensions that are absolutely necessary.”
“While this is not the solution any of us prefer, it is the most prudent path forward under the present circumstances,” Johnson wrote. “As history has taught and current polling affirms, shutting the government down less than 40 days from a fateful election would be an act of political malpractice.”
I have just a few other recommendations. The first one comes from Emptywheel. Also, if you haven’t watched From Russia, with Lev, You should. “Why No One Went to Prison for Rudy Giuliani’s Hunter Biden Corruption.”
As I said, the film leaves the impression that Lev was arrested to protect Trump during impeachment by silencing the key witness.
But that’s not why Lev went to prison (as a news clip in the movie tacitly admits).
Lev and Igor Fruman (along with David Correia and Andrey Kukushkin) were first charged on October 9, 2019, via indictment that was (according to then US Attorney for SDNY Geoffrey Berman’s memoir) drafted quickly overnight in advance of Lev and Igor’s trip to meet Dmitry Firtash in Vienna. From Berman’s memoir, I’m not 100% sure whether he pushed it because he genuinely feared they were about to flee the country, felt he had to do so before Barr intervened … or for more nefarious reasons.
The charges were:
- Conspiring to make a bunch of political donations in the name of Global Energy Producers
- Lying to the Federal Election Commission
- Falsifying a document to the FEC
- Laundering donations from Russian Andrey Muraviev to pay pro-cannabis politicians
As Bondy described, the indictment implied that Lev and Igor’s political contributions to Pete Sessions were tied to an attempt to fire Marie Yovanovitch. But that was not charged as FARA.
On September 17, 2020, the indictment was superseded. Lev and Correia’s longterm Fraud Guarantee fraud was added and the charges tied to Muraviev (who was secretly indicted that same day) were bumped up. The paragraph describing a payment to Sessions took out the reference to an Ambassador, describing it instead as to “further their political goals.” There were still no FARA charges though.
Ultimately, Lev was convicted at trial in October 2021 of the GEP and Muraviev donations, and in March 2022, pled guilty to the fraud guarantee charges. He was never charged with FARA violations.
Bondy’s insinuation that SDNY took out the foreign agent aspect to protect Rudy is wholly inconsistent with the warrants (linked below) targeting Lev and Rudy unsealed last year.
They show that the investigation into Lev, which started based on a Campaign Legal Center complaint, initially focused on campaign finance crimes. In August 2019 — after the firing of Marie Yovanovitch but before the disclosure of the Perfect Phone Call — SDNY began to turn to Foreign Agent suspicions (though one of two warrants obtained in August 2019 was not executed). After the arrest, SDNY more aggressively turned to developing the Foreign Agent prong of the investigation. On November 4, 2019, SDNY obtained warrants targeting Rudy (which were not released last year). On December 10, 2019, the Foreign Agent prong continued.
That’s when Bill Barr intervened to kill that prong of the investigation, certainly as it pertained to Rudy, as I’ll lay out below.
After that point, SDNY focused on the Fraud Guarantee fraud.
It’s not that Lev went to prison for this but Rudy did not. On the contrary, Barr worked hard to ensure no one could go to prison on such charges.
While Barr was doing that, SDNY appears to have put that investigation on ice and attempted, without success, to resuscitate once Barr was out of office.
There are also a few more articles analyzing DonOLD. I’ll be brief with these. From the Washington Post and Phillip Bump: “The ‘policy’ mirage that undergirds Donald Trump’s support. The former president and his supporters insist he wins a race centered on policy. It’s not because of Trump’s detailed policy platform.”
A central reason for this is the deep polarization in American politics, particularly around Trump himself. In 2016 and 2020, he earned a bit under 50 percent of the vote, about where he is in most recent polls. The shift from Biden to Harris helped firm up the Democratic electorate, which may be crucially important in who actually turns out to vote — but the race generally went from a narrow national Trump lead to a narrow Harris one. The 2024 race continues to be largely a referendum on Trump, much as the 2020 race was.
There has been one notable difference this year, though. While Trump’s 2016 campaign was unabashedly indifferent to policy specifics and his 2020 campaign centered on his incumbency, his 2024 effort has often — largely through the energies of his boosters — been presented as a campaign centered on the policies he seeks to implement.
It’s an unexpected argument, but a common one. You will often hear that Trump has an advantage on policy; that, if the campaign set aside all of the fluff of personal emotion, Trump would prevail simply by virtue of the popularity of his positions. That his support is rooted in what he stands for, not who he is.
Juan Williams dives in further at The Hill. “Trump is at 48 percent. How could this be possible but for widespread racism?”
At this point, the racism is obvious. How else does it make sense that 48 percent of registered voters in last week’s Fox News poll say they have no problem putting Donald Trump back in the White House?
Who are these people who look the other way when their candidate tells a bold lie about Black immigrants eating a mostly white Ohio town’s cats and dogs?
How can it be that not a soul among the 48 percent cares that Trump’s vice-presidential pick, JD Vance, says it is okay to “create” racist lies about immigrants eating pets “so the American media actually pays attention”?
How can 48 percent of voters back a candidate who says immigrants coming from “infested” places are “poisoning the blood of our country?”
Is it just snowflakes who notice when one of Trump’s close allies says, “The White House will smell like curry” if Vice President Kamala Harris, the daughter of an Indian immigrant, wins the presidency?
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R- Ga.), no snowflake, condemned the comment as “appalling,” “racist” and “hateful.”
Do these voters also prefer to sail past Trump once calling a Black woman and former aide a “dog”? And he called Alvin Bragg, the Black Manhattan district attorney who successfully prosecuted him for business fraud, an “animal.”
Maybe Trump’s 48 percent don’t excuse his racism so much as get the message. They are inside a Republican Party that is 82 percent white. Most of those white Republicans are in small towns and rural areas.
Harris said Trump can’t be trusted to serve as president after “engaging in…hateful rhetoric that, as usual, is designed to divide us as a country…to have people pointing fingers at each other.”
In this year’s campaign, one of Trump’s regular dog-whistles at his rallies is his false claim that big cities, full of racial minorities and immigrants, are scary places full of crime and failure. Last week he flatly lied at a rally when he said a parent who leaves a child alone on the New York subway has “about a 75 percent chance that [they’ll] never see [their] child again. What the hell has happened here?”
Trump’s use of racism to stir up his white supporters was called out by writer Fran Lebowitz back in 2018. Trump, she wrote, has “allowed people to express their racism and bigotry in a way that they haven’t been able to in quite a while and they really love him for that…It’s a shocking thing to realize people love their hatred more than they care about their own actual lives.”
Ashley Parker writes this at The Washington Post. “Donald Trump’s imaginary and frightening world. His extreme caricatures serve as a way to paint an alarming picture of America under the Biden-Harris administration.”
In Donald Trump’s imaginary world, Americans can’t venture out to buy a loaf of bread without getting shot, mugged or raped. Immigrants in a small Ohio town eat their neighbors’ cats and dogs. World War III and economic collapse are just around the corner. And kids head off to school only to return at day’s end having undergone gender reassignment surgery.
The former president’s imaginary world is a dark, dystopian place, described by Trump in his rallies, interviews, social media posts and debate appearances to paint an alarming picture of America under the Biden-Harris administration.
It is a distorted, warped and, at times, absurdist portrait of a nation where the insurrectionists who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to deadly effect were merely peaceful protesters, and where unlucky boaters are faced with the unappealing choice between electrocution or a shark attack. His extreme caricatures also serve as another way for Trump to traffic in lies and misinformation, using an alternate reality of his own making to create an often terrifying — and, he seems to hope — politically devastating landscape for his political opponents.
Trump, for instance, regularly claims that Democrats favor abortions up until the day of birth — and, in some cases, even after birth.
Speaking at the Sept. 10 presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris in Philadelphia, Trump falsely claimed that Harris’s running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, has said “abortion in the ninth month is absolutely fine.”
“He also says, ‘execution after birth’ — execution, no longer abortion because the baby is born — is okay,” Trump continued.
In fact, Walz has not said this, The Washington Post Fact Checker found, and “execution after birth” — or infanticide — is illegal in all states. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2021, nearly all abortions — 93.5 percent — occur at or before 13 weeks, and fewer than 1 percent were performed after 21 weeks. World War III, too, is another all-but-certainty should Trump not be elected in November, the former president frequently claims. In July, before a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his private Mar-a-Lago Club, Trump told reporters that only his electoral victory could stave off another global conflagration.
“If we win, it’ll be very simple. It’s all going to work out and very quickly,” Trump said. “If we don’t, you’re going to end up with major wars in the Middle East and maybe a Third World War. You are closer to a Third World War right now than at any time since the Second World War. You’ve never been so close, because we have incompetent people running our country.”
Seeing this dark stuff, or as Dubya put it back at his inauguration, “some weird shit,” we can only ask ourselves what causes people to swallow this hook, line, and sinker. Is this what makes you feel better about yourself? I keep wondering if it’s their brand of religion, their lack of education, or just their Iron Age tribalistic hate of any “other than them.” I had to even call it weird because, to me, the word evil is far more descriptive. It’s certainly no way to run a country. And, it’s not the way to have fun.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
#SomeWeirdShit_ #DonOld #Repeat1968JohnBuss #AyatollahMikeJohnson #Bidenomics #GovernmentShutdownBlues #Reaganomics #TrumpAndRacism #TrumpLiesAndDarkShit
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“One Quadruple Bogey at a time.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I saw some of Oprah’s Zoom interview with Vice President Harris Last night. Watching the back tier with 1000 individual screens showing the faces of celebrities and folks around the country was fascinating. Tonight, the Vice President will give a speech on the preventable deaths of two young women from complications in Atlanta. I’m sure that the Republicans and the Christian Right will go after mifepristone and misoprostol since incomplete medical abortions were involved. This is even though the procedure would be used for a miscarriage as well. This is from the New York Times. “Harris Will Give Abortion Speech in Georgia After Deaths of Two Women. The vice president has said the stories of pregnant women who have been denied or have been unable to gain access to medical care show the consequences of former President Donald J. Trump’s actions.” This is reported by Lisa Lerer.
Vice President Kamala Harris will give remarks in Atlanta on Friday focused on the stories of two Georgia mothers whose deaths she has argued show the consequences of the strict abortion bans passed by Republicans after Roe v. Wade was overturned.
The speech is part of an effort by the Harris campaign to push reproductive rights to the center of the presidential election, according to a person with knowledge of the event who insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the plans.
The deaths, reported this week by ProPublica, occurred in the months after Georgia passed a law banning abortion at six weeks. Amber Thurman died of sepsis resulting from an incomplete medication abortion after waiting 20 hours in a suburban Atlanta hospital for medical care. A second woman, Candi Miller, died after declining to seek medical care for complications from abortion medication.
Throughout her campaign, Ms. Harris has sought to tie former President Donald J. Trump, who has taken credit for appointing the Supreme Court justices who provided the key votes to overturn the federal right to abortion, to dire medical situations faced by women seeking the procedure in states where it is banned or heavily restricted.
Georgia is very much in play. This is why so much attention has been paid to it with positive and negative actions. This kind of shenanigans is likely why Trump is only playing to his base and not heading to the middle to appeal to swing voters and voters in the suburbs. Although, when I watch the snippets of his speeches I think he may be incapable of actually doing that. He seems to repeat some of the golden oldies, then goes off on some unintelligible tangent. The Guardian reported this yesterday. “Network of Georgia election officials strategizing to undermine 2024 result. Emails reveal Georgia Election Integrity Coalition, a group of officials and election deniers, coordinating in swing state.”
Emails obtained by the Guardian reveal a behind-the-scenes network of county election officials throughout Georgia coordinating on policy and messaging to both call the results of November’s election into question before a single vote is cast, and push rules and procedures favored by the election denial movement.
The emails were obtained by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew) as a result of a public records request sent to David Hancock, an election denier and member of the Gwinnett county board of elections. Crew shared the emails with the Guardian.
Spanning a period beginning in January, the communications expose the inner workings of a group that includes some of the most ardent supporters of the former president Donald Trump’s election lies as well as ongoing efforts to portray the coming election as beset with fraud. Included in the communications are agendas for meetings and efforts to coordinate on policies and messaging as the swing state has once again become a focal point of the presidential campaign.
The Georgia Election Board continues to make a mess of voting in Georgia. The idea appears to make it impossible to certify the vote count by the Constitutionally required Date. That way, the Trump campaign may start a lawsuit that lands in his Supreme Court. “Pro-Trump Georgia election board votes to require hand counts of ballots. Critics plan to sue, saying the new requirement would almost certainly lead to errors and could disrupt the process of certifying the vote in a crucial battleground state.” This headline is in today’s Washington Post. Amy Gardner reports the story.
The Georgia State Election Board approved a rule Friday requiring counties in the critical presidential battleground to hand-count all ballots this year, potentially upending the November election by delaying reporting of results by weeks if not months.
The change was spearheaded by a pro-Trump majority that has enacted a series of changes to the state’s election rules in recent weeks and approved the hand-count requirement despite a string of public commenters who begged them not to. Critics included democracy advocates who accused the board of intentionally injecting chaos and uncertainty into the presidential contest as well as election supervisors and poll workers who said hand counts would take too long, cost money and almost certainly produce counting errors.
The board voted 3-2 to approve the measure, which would require the hand count in addition to the customary machine count in each precinct. The rule requires the hand count to take place the night of the November election or the next day. But dozens of election officials said that would be physically impossible in all but the smallest counties. Many also said in public comments Friday that it is far too late in the year to adopt new procedures for which their staffs have not been trained and for which they have no funds.
“Military ballots have already been issued,” said Ethan Compton, elections supervisor in south Georgia’s Irwin County. “The election has begun. This is not the time to change the rules. That will only lower the integrity of our elections.”
The hand-count requirement was one of 11 rules expected to be voted on Friday, the latest batch the State Election Board has considered in recent weeks in an effort, proponents say, to make state elections more secure and transparent. The flurry is the work of a new right-wing majority that took control of the board in May with an avowed mission of preventing fraud and other irregularities from tainting the presidential result this year.
All three are supporters of former president Donald Trump, and the rules they are pushing have been promoted by the state’s leading proponents of the false claim that Joe Biden stole the Georgia election in 2020.
JD Vance is not experiencing the issues of advanced age like DonOLD. He’s just admitted to making up stories to make his point. His reprehensible talking points and speeches are just that, reprehensible. “JD Vance Makes Light of Actual Foreign Interference in His State.” This is from EmptyWheel
At a press conference on Ohio’s efforts to respond to the chaos created in Springfield by a slew of bomb threats, Governor Mike DeWine revealed that a number of the bomb threats came from “one particular country” overseas.
We have people, unfortunately, overseas, who are taking these actions. Some of them are coming from one particular country. We think that this is one more opportunity to mess with the United States. And they’re continuing to do that.
After that, in a truly deranged Xitter manifesto basically arguing that if the media doesn’t platform the false claims of Nazis attacking migrants, they’ll shoot someone, JD Vance falsely claimed that that’s proof a double standard from the media, then continued to lie that Kamala Harris was responsible for the assassination attempts against Trump.
[R]eports today suggest they came from a foreign country, not–as the media suggested–a deranged Trump fan.
The double standard is breathtaking. Donald Trump and I are, by their account, directly responsible for bomb threats from foreign countries. Why? Because we had the audacity to repeat what residents told us about the problems in their town. Meanwhile, Harris allies call for Trump to be eliminated as the media publishes arguments that he deserved to be shot.
Vance integrated this attack into his stump speech in Sparta Michigan, claiming that, “the American media has been laundering foreign disinformation” and deliberately lying — before DeWine revealed this — when they noted the bomb threats followed Trump and JD’s false attacks on Haitians.
Meanwhile, ABC News reports that “Ohio Haitian immigrants say they are afraid to leave home after recent backlash In Springfield, Ohio, Haitian immigrants claim they are terrified.” This is stochastic terrorism.
Haitian migrants residing in Springfield, Ohio, shared with ABC News their harrowing experiences of living in constant fear, expressing deep concerns about their safety that prevent them from venturing outside their homes.
In a town of more than 58,000 residents, threats of bombings and shootings led to the closure of city buildings and schools for several days. Wittenberg University canceled all activities on Sunday and classes on Monday as a precautionary measure.
James Fleurijean, a Haitian Community Help & Support Center member, stated that the continual spread of false and divisive statements from prominent politicians was fostering an environment of fear.
The entire small city will need therapy and Federal disaster help when this happens. And still, the despicable dotard and his sidekick Vance Viscious are still spinning lies to the deplorables. Even Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, wrote this in the New York Times. ” I’m the Governor of Ohio. I Don’t Recognize the Springfield That Trump and Vance Describe.”
Sydney Blumenthal published this piece in The Guardian today. “Trump and Vance’s Springfield smear is a microcosm of their entire campaign. The Republicans desperately need to distract voters away from abortion. They’ve now found the perfect new scapegoat “
After Donald Trump’s disastrous debate with Kamala Harris on 10 September he decided to center his campaign on a single incendiary issue: “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
When Trump was corrected during the debate by the ABC moderator David Muir, who pointed out that his statement about the Haitian community in the Ohio town was erroneous, he insisted it was factual. “Well,” he said, “I’ve seen people on television, people on television say, ‘My dog was taken and used for food.’” But there were no such “people on television”. There were no dogs taken for food. Trump called Muir a “foolish fool”, and said, “He’s a guy with good hair, but not as good as it was five years ago.”
…
After the debate left him staggering into the spin room to proclaim, “It’s the best debate I ever had,” before confusedly retreating, Trump’s imperative has been to hold on to his base. He can afford no erosion. Losing even a point might be a falling rock that starts a landslide.
Trump desperately needed to distract the national discussion away from abortion. His pre-debate charade of gyrating positions failed to beguile women voters. His charm offensive was offensive without the charm. The gender gap widened to an even greater chasm.
The day before the debate, he held a commanding lead on the economy, 10 points over Harris, 55% to 45%, in a Pew poll. But afterwards, the FT-Michigan Ross polls showed Harris with an advantage on trust in her handling of the economy by 44% to 42%, and 48% to 42% among those who watched the debate.
Trump knows in his bones that his supporters will believe anything he says. If he ever feels they will abandon him, he cannot shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue. He does not require any evidence, not even spectral, to trigger their need to demonstrate unswerving faith. Once he speaks, declaring miracles, he is certain his supporters will fall to their knees. And, mirabile dictu, a majority, 52%, say it’s true that “Haitian immigrants are abducting and eating pet dogs and cats,” according to a post-debate YouGov poll. Only 5% are willing to confess the heresy that it is “definitely false”, while 25% are agnostically “unsure”.
Trump’s lie about “eating pet dogs and cats” is his best-polling lie. It polled nine points better among his supporters than his lie that “in some states it is legal to kill a baby after birth”. It polled 24 points better than his lie that “public schools are providing students with sex-change operations” and 44 points better than his lie that “noise from wind turbines has been shown to cause cancer.” The raw numbers dictated the emphasis of his fiction.
The illogic of his demagogy gives Trump no pause. He has railed that immigrants are stealing “Black jobs”. He says the Haitians of Springfield are illegal. But they are in fact legal and of course black. They are the black people usurping the “Black jobs”.
Trump knew before he uttered his lie in the debate about “eating pets” that it was untrue. The morning of the debate, according to the Wall Street Journal, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, Trump’s running mate, had a staffer call the office of the Springfield city manager. “He asked point-blank, ‘Are the rumors true of pets being taken and eaten?’” that official, Bryan Heck, told the Journal. “I told him no. There was no verifiable evidence or reports to show this was true. I told them these claims were baseless.”
Rather than debunk the rumor he had been informed was untrue, Vance spread the falsehood immediately. “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country. Where is our border czar?” he tweeted, pinning the blame for the presence of the Haitian community, which had settled in the town a decade earlier, on Harris, who was incidentally not the “border czar”. Within a half-hour of Vance’s post, the Springfield News-Sun reported that police stated that there were no incidents of pets being stolen or eaten and that the story was “not something that’s on our radar right now”.
Trump repeated the lie in the debate and kept repeating it. His incitement was followed by 33 bomb threats that shut down schools, hospitals and municipal buildings in Springfield. The town’s CultureFest was cancelled. Classes at Clark State College and Wittenberg University were suspended because of bomb threats. (Wittenberg was founded in 1845 at Springfield by devout German-American abolitionists. The last time classes were suspended there was for the send-off of a volunteer military company of students to fight for the Union in the civil war. When Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, the school held a day of prayer and fasting in celebration.)
“Do you denounce the bomb threats in Springfield?” a reporter asked Trump on 14 September.
“I don’t know what happened with the bomb threats,” Trump lied. “I know that it’s been taken over by illegal migrants, and that’s a terrible thing that happened.” He pledged: “We will do large deportations from Springfield, Ohio. Large deportations. We’re gonna get these people out.” He said they would be the first to be rounded up. He would use “local law enforcement” and the national guard, despite the Posse Comitatus Act that prohibits such deployments against civilians. “Well, these aren’t civilians,” he claimed. “These are people that aren’t legally in our country. This is an invasion of our country.” “And you know,” he had previously told a cheering crowd, “it’s going to be a bloody story.”
Trump’s sidekicks are just as despicable as he is. This story came across live while I was watching Nicole yesterday afternoon. I’ve gotten to the point that I think this guy represents the modern Republican party to a t. This is from The Bulwark, and the headline says it all. “Uh, Gross.” I’m with Andrew Egger on that one.
When the rumor mill started churning yesterday that some major, potentially campaign-shaking news was coming on North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the GOP nominee for governor this year, people’s minds began going to truly dark places. After all, Robinson was already one of the most insanely controversial figures in today’s politics: a Holocaust denier; a modest enthusiast of political violence; a walking, talking Breitbart comments section who’d been posting unhinged stuff online for years. A story that he used to be a frequent patron of video porn stores was barely a blip in the race. What could possibly be worse?
Well, uh, we found out. CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski had tracked down a bunch of old online profiles of Robinson—most notably, an account he’d frequently used to comment on a porn site, Nude Africa, in the early 2010s. Those posts included some of the most insane ranting you’ll ever see:
- “I’m a black NAZI!”
- “I’d take Hitler over any of the shit that’s in Washington right now!”
- “Slavery is not bad. Some people need to be slaves. I wish they would bring it back. I would certainly buy a few.”
- Of Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Get that fucking commie bastard off the National Mall. . . . I’m not in the KKK. They don’t let blacks join. If I was in the KKK I would have called him Martin Lucifer Koon!”
- Of a story about a woman who said she was sexually assaulted by her taxi driver: “The moral of this story . . . . . Don’t fuck a white bitch!”
There was more beyond that. What’s really incredible is that all this was the sanitized version. CNN tiptoed politely around a heap of other Robinson comments that were simply some of the most obscene, degraded sexual stuff you could imagine.
I’d say North Carolina is really in play now. How could you vote for anyone that’s on the ballot with this deplorable? I suppose it’s all fine and reasonable by the MAGA crowd, but I can’t see a suburban mom or dad going for any of this. Independents will likely head to the Democratic Party’s offerings. Then there’s this information on the deplorable Matt Gaetz from NOTUS. Why are Republican men so obsessed with women’s bodies? “New Court Filings Place Matt Gaetz at a Party at the Center of the Sex Trafficking Scandal. This is the first public filing that cites sworn testimony alleging that Gaetz attended one of the long-rumored parties with a teenage girl.” This is just one of many Florida stories that put Florida into play.
Rep. Matt Gaetz attended a drug-fueled sex party in 2017 with the 17-year-old girl at the center of the alleged sex trafficking scandal, according to legal documents filed to a Florida federal court shortly before midnight Thursday, which cite sealed affidavits from three eyewitness testimonies.
The minor, who was a junior in high school at the time, arrived in her mother’s car for a July 15, 2017, party at the Florida home of Chris Dorworth, a lobbyist and friend of Gaetz’s, according to a court filing written by defense attorneys who interviewed witnesses as part of an ongoing civil lawsuit Dorworth brought in 2023.
The lobbyist claimed he had been unfairly dragged into the alleged sex trafficking scandal that has dogged Gaetz and his allies for years. Dorworth ultimately dropped the case, but lawyers filed these documents in an attempt to recoup attorneys fees for a lawsuit they say should never have been brought.
One eyewitness cited in the court filings, a young woman referred to as K.M., provided a sworn affidavit that claimed the teenage girl was naked, partygoers were there to “engage in sexual activities,” and “alcohol, cocaine, ecstasy … and marijuana” were present. The teenage girl was identified in the filings only as A.B.
“The discovery taken in this case to date reflects that on Saturday, July 15, 2017 … Dorworth, hosted a party at his residence … with the following guests present: (1) A.B.; (2) K.M.; (3) B.G.; (4) Matt Gaetz,” lawyers wrote in the filing, also listing several others. The defense lawyers filed testimonies from those three women — who the attorneys say placed Gaetz at Dorworth’s house that night — under seal pending a judge’s approval to make the records public.
Additionally, Gaetz’s own ex-girlfriend — who was present at the party — provided testimony that lawyers say rebuts Dorworth’s claims that he was not there.NOTUS independently verified that Gaetz and one of the women who testified were previously involved in a relationship; she is only identified in the court filing by her initials, B.G.
The congressman’s ex-girlfriend’s eleventh hour testimony on Sept. 3 came just two days before Dorworth dropped his lawsuit, defense attorneys said in the filing. The defense lawyers also relied on Dorworth’s geolocated cell phone records, which showed that he communicated constantly with the congressman that day.The defense’s court filings show a hired digital forensic examiner identified Gaetz’s number, which has a Florida panhandle 850 area code and texted back and forth 30 times that day and then called Dorworth twice in the hours before the evening revelry. “B.G., another attendee at that party, confirmed A.B.’s testimony under penalty of perjury,” defense lawyers wrote.
This marks the first time that sworn testimony has been referenced in public court filings alleging that the congressman attended one of the long-rumored parties tied to an alleged underage sex scandal.Previous reports have revealed details of ex-politician and Gaetz friend Joel Greenberg’s confession letter that was never made public, which described how Gaetz would allegedly pay him to arrange several sexual encounters with young women — including a 17-year-old girl. Greenberg is serving an 11-year prison sentence for a list of charges, including fraud and sex trafficking with a child.
Deplorable Louisiana Senator John Neely Kennedy set a new level of low. This is from MSNBC. “Sen. John Kennedy used a Senate hearing on hate crimes to spew hate. A senator’s racist attack on a witness in a hearing was appalling even by Trump-era standards.” This Op-Ed was written by Zeeshan Aleem, MSNBC Opinion Writer/Editor.
On Tuesday, the executive director of the Arab American Institute, Maya Berry, appeared as a witness before the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify on an issue that should garner concern across the political spectrum: hate crimes. In both her prepared statement and her testimony, Berry apprised lawmakers of the need for stronger enforcement of the law to tackle the country’s growing “hate crime crisis.”
She acknowledged both Jewish and Arab American victims of hate crimes, and shared statistics on those crimes’ effects on all kinds of demographic groups, including Black Americans, Asian Americans and members of the LBGTQ community.
It’s difficult to imagine how a reasonable person could take issue with Berry’s comments, other than to interrogate how effective the hate crime enforcement model is. But in a shocking display, Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., demonstrated that he is not a reasonable person.
Instead, Kennedy used the hearing as an opportunity to launch a series of racist attacks on Berry, centered around accusations that she supports terrorism. His repugnant broadsides were a stunning illustration both of why the panel was being held in the first place and how politicians use ad hominem attacks to try to silence criticism of Israel.
Shortly after beginning to question Berry, Kennedy abruptly asked her: “You support Hamas, do you not?”
“Senator, oddly enough, I’m going to say thank you for that question, because it demonstrates the purpose of our hearing today in a very effective way,” Berry replied.
Kennedy interjected: “Let’s start first with a yes or no.”
“Hamas is a foreign terrorist organization that I do not support,” Berry responded, “but you asking the executive director of the Arab American Institute that question very much puts the focus on the issue of hate in our country.”
“You support Hezbollah, too, don’t you?” Kennedy then asked — implying that he didn’t believe her answer on Hamas.
Berry replied, “I find this line of questioning extraordinarily disappointing.”
“Is that a no?” Kennedy demanded.
“I don’t support violence, whether it’s Hezbollah or Hamas or any other entity that invokes it, so no, sir,” she said.
“You just can’t bring yourself to say no, can you? Kennedy said, even though Berry’s answer could not have been clearer. He continued his absurd line of questioning, asking her if she supports or opposes Iran “and their hatred of Jews?”
You may watch this reprehensible behavior below. I would also like to reference Kennedy’s use of the word “Jews” can be a hate word itself. The Deplorable in Chief demonstrates this. This is from the Jewish Journal Forward. “Trump says Jews would deserve much of the blame if he loses. The speech was supposed to be about antisemitism but instead trafficked in it, Trump’s critics said.” This is written by Jacob Kornbluh.
In a speech Thursday billed as former President Donald Trump’s answer to rising antisemitism, he said Jews would bear much of the responsibility if he loses the presidential election.
And in a second speech later in the evening, to the Israeli American Council, Trump elaborated on his past assertions in recent weeks that Israel would not survive if he doesn’t win in November, by painting a doomsday scenario in which Iran launches nuclear weapons and invoking the Holocaust.
“The Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss,” Trump said during the first speech of the evening, an hourlong address at an event called “Fighting Antisemitism in America,” organized with GOP megadonor Miriam Adelson, at the Hyatt Regency hotel on Capitol Hill.
“You can’t let this happen,” he told his largely Jewish audience.
Trump in recent weeks has offended many Jews by questioning their mental health for voting for Democrats — as most Jews do — and predicting Israel’s demise should Harris win. But Thursday night’s comments seem to represent an escalation in Trump’s rhetoric, in that he singled out Jewish Americans — who represent only about 2% of the electorate — as a significant reason he might lose the election, one whose results he has never pledged to accept.
Amy Spitalnick, CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, said after the speech that Trump’s remarks endanger Jews.
“Treating Jews and Israel as political footballs makes Jews, Israel, and all of us less safe,” she said in a statement.
“Dividing Jews into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ camps and engaging in dual loyalty tropes further normalizes antisemitism.”
“Anyone who cares about Jewish safety should call it out,” she added. “This is not partisan politics — it’s about the fundamental safety of the Jewish community.”
This is running at nearly 5000 words now, and there are more of these examples of stupidity, hatred, fear-mongering, lying, and trying to divide the country in the news today. I’m unsure if fear of a significant loss, panic, or finally dropping the sheep’s clothing to expose the wolves is for these examples of keeping the audio relentlessly at 11. So, I will end with something the Vice President said last night in her interview with Oprah. These quotes come from Australia’s The Nightly.
Speaking with Winfrey in an exclusive sit-down interview, aired on Thursday, local time, Ms Harris described the sense of responsibility she felt when President Joe Biden announced she would not seek re-election.
She described the race to the White House as being about America — not herself.
“I felt a sense of responsibility,” Ms Harris said. “With that comes a sense of purpose.
“We are here because there really is so much at stake.”
“There’s so much about this campaign I love because it’s about the people. This movement is about reminding each other that there is so much more we have in common.
“I don’t ask people if they are a Democrat or a Republican, I ask if they are okay.
“I do know that I am in a position to do something about it. I felt a great sense of responsibility.”
I want the grown-ups, the ordinary people, the ones who want to unite us to serve us. I want the weirdos and the red meanies to leave the buildings permanently. I want people that will fight for us! Do everything within your power for the Harris/Walz campaign and the local Democratic candidates in your jurisdiction.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
https://skydancingblog.com/2024/09/20/finally-friday-reads-11/
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