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.
Finally Friday Reads: The Incompetent and The Cruel
Posted: March 28, 2025 Filed under: Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, education, FARTUS, Hillary Clinton, kakistocracy, kleptocracy, MAGA Assholes | Tags: @johnbuss.bsky.social John Buss, @repeat1968. John Buss, abu ghraib torture and prisoner abuse, Cabinet of incompetent imbeciles, Department of Education Blues, Elise Stefanik is a cunt, Every one goes to El Salvador!, FARTUS, higher education, Hillary Clinton on SignalGate, Kidnapping Graduate Students, Kristi Noem Sociopath and Cunt, Pete Hegseth weirdo sexual assaulter, The Whiskey Leaks 11 Comments
“Kristi Noem is so thoughtful.” John Buss, @repeat1968.
@johnbuss.bsky.social
Good 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.“If you come to our country illegally, this is one of the consequences you could face,” Noem said.
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.”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.”
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:
These changes will affect the management of federal education funding streams totaling over $150 billion annually, including:
- 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
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.
- $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
“The backpedaling is something to behold..” John Buss, @repeat1968.
@johnbuss.bsky.social
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.
The primary tool of Trump’s spokespeople is to lie and deny and protect FARTUS at all times.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.
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.
There’s more at the link, which has been gifted.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.
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.
Okay, that’s enough shock and awe for now. What’s on your reading and blogging list today? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufw9dVys3t0President 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.”
Finally Friday Reads: Musk and Authoritarian Overreach
Posted: March 21, 2025 Filed under: #FARTUS, Agency Purges, American Fascists, Breaking News, Broligarchy, FARTUS, kakistocracy | Tags: @johnbuss.bsky.social John Buss, DOGE sees Dead People, Every one goes to El Salvador!, FARTUS, FARTUS and Elonia, Miss Linda's DOE Romper Room, Social Security Administration, Tesla Take Down, Whistle Blower portal for reporting DOGE 10 Comments
“More Oval Office updates” John Buss, @repeat1969,
@johnbuss.bsky.social
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
It’s come to the point where I don’t know where to start. There are so many alarming headlines today that it’s difficult to prioritize them. We’re barely 2 months into this regime, and we’re already seeing folks sent to gulags in El Salvador. Mislabelling people as terrorists is the latest tactic. His attacks on Veterans’ Benefits, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and funds for educational programs for disabled and disadvantaged children aren’t going over well. I think he’s decided that overplaying the terrorist card will be the red meat his KKKult needs. So, today’s Truth Social screed is a warning to anyone picking on poor little Elon Musk and his cars with doors that fall off and engines that explode. He’s the King of “Rapid unscheduled disassembly” (RUD). Does he really think he has this kind of power? Can the courts stop this Evil Moron?
This is from the Daily Beast. “Trump Threatens to Send Tesla Vandals to Prisons in El Salvador. The president also implied attacks on cars were part of a national conspiracy against his megadonor Elon Musk.” We’re already finding his ability to disappear people on the immigration front; now, this? What has happened to Due Process? Does this include toilet papering the car lots? This is reported by Janet Brancolini.
President Donald Trump has joined the chorus of threats from his administration against anyone found guilty of vandalizing Teslas.
“People that get caught sabotaging Teslas will stand a very good chance of going to jail for up to 20 years, and that includes the funders,” Trump wrote in a post on his social media platform Truth Social. “WE ARE LOOKING FOR YOU!!!”
Hours later, he followed up with a second post musing that anyone who damages a Tesla could be deported to El Salvador.
“I look forward to watching the sick terrorist thugs get 20-year jail sentences for what they are doing to Elon Musk and Tesla,” he wrote. “Perhaps they could serve them in the prisons of El Salvador, which have become so recently famous for such lovely conditions!”
Deporting U.S. citizens is unconstitutional, the American Civil Liberties Union told NPR. Even deporting non-citizens to Salvadoran jails, as the administrative has already done, is legally suspect, given the documented human rights abuses that take place there, experts told the outlet.
A 2023 State Department report found that inmates in El Salvador have been electrocuted, tortured, and beaten to death.
The message came after Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that three defendants who had allegedly tried to use Molotov cocktails to light Teslas and charging stations on fire in Oregon, Colorado, and South Carolina were being charged with crimes that carried sentences of five to 20 years in prison. Those arrests were actually made weeks ago, The New York Times reported, but Bondi appeared to time the announcements in response to a fresh wave of attacks this week. Arsonists in Las Vegas set a row of Teslas ablaze at a service center on Tuesday, and two Cybertrucks went up in flames at a dealership in Kansas City, Missouri, on Monday.
I guess our new AG is a Bondage girl. Owners are trading in their Teslas at record rates. “Tesla confirms it can’t sell the Cybertruck even with tax credit and discounts,” according to Electrek. Evidently, things are so bad that Elon took time away from getting Top Secret meetings at the White House on China to ensure employees and stockholders that he’s on top of things. “Tesla’s Elon Musk holds surprise all-hands meeting to assuage employees and investors. ‘It feels like Armageddon out there,’ Musk said about vandalism of Tesla EVs. The CEO also gave updates on a number of future products like the Cybercab and Optimus robot.”
Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk held an impromptu company all-hands Thursday night, giving an update on the progress of a number of products while also attempting to assuage fears that the CEO is ignoring his post.
Tesla stock has been in free fall since the start of the year, with sales slipping in key regions like Europe and China and even in the US. Though the changeover to the new Model Y SUV has been seen as a drag on sales, Musk’s closeness to President Trump and embrace of right-wing politicians in Europe has seen Musk — and Tesla’s brand — suffer. Protests both in the US and abroad at Tesla showrooms are growing, as are acts of vandalism on Tesla EVs.
After delivering some opening remarks and a few quick updates on Tesla’s milestones, such as 7 million EVs produced and the new Model Y’s status, Musk addressed the elephant in the room: blowback to the Tesla brand from Musk’s foray into politics and leadership of the President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative. “If you read the news, it feels like Armageddon. I can’t walk past a TV without seeing a Tesla on fire,” Musk said, referencing protesters setting Tesla vehicles on fire at dealerships and vandalism at Supercharger locations. “I understand if you don’t want to buy our product, but you don’t have to burn it down. That’s a bit unreasonable.”
I’m still laughing (mostly crying) that this is what Musk thinks is Armageddon, and it doesn’t include Veterans, Seniors, and kids with Special Needs not getting the help they need. So, why then does he feel taking away my Social Security that I am entitled to or doing something obscene to the remains of my Student Loans is reasonable?
I accidentally went back to X, and the account I supposedly deleted popped up while trying to read a post. But no worries! Glory of all Glories! They suspended me! Imagine this! I have the power! I have no idea what this is and didn’t bother to look. But I sure am having a delicious laughing fit over it all. Check with the President of El Salvador, Nayib Armando Bukele Ortez, if I disappear! Hey, if I didn’t have a sick, dark sense of humor, I wouldn’t have any sense of humor at all.
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I wasn’t aware the X even had integrity. Also, wtf is inauthentic activity? But the weird thing is Tesla stock is on the rise today. Well, it’s not that weird, given the Secretary of Commerce just gave a speech suggesting the KKKult buy the stock since it will never be as cheap as it is now. That White House Car Ad was filmed with the Hype Master FARTUS probably tickled the KKKult’s fancy. Wait, that wasn’t it, according to AXIOS. “Tesla falls after Commerce Secretary recommends buying stock.” This analysis is by Ben Berkowitz
Tesla shares fell early Thursday after Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick used a TV appearance to urge Americans to buy stock in Elon Musk’s car company. Why it matters: Cabinet secretaries don’t typically recommend individual stocks, much less those linked to the president’s closest adviser.What they’re saying: “I think, if you want to learn something on this show tonight, buy Tesla,” Lutnick said on Fox News Wednesday evening. “It’s unbelievable that this guy’s stock is this cheap. It’ll never be this cheap again.”
- His recommendation was potentially overshadowed, though, by one of Tesla’s most fervent defenders on Wall Street calling the company’s situation a “crisis.”
By the numbers: Tesla shares were down about 1.7% in premarket trading Thursday to $231.75.
- “I mean, who wouldn’t invest in Elon Musk? You gotta be kidding me.”
Between the lines: Lutnick’s comments are part of what has effectively become a Trump administration campaign to defend Tesla.
- The stock is down 5% in the last five days, 35% in the last month and 42% so far this year.
- “We struggle to think of anything analogous in the history of the automotive industry, in which a brand has lost so much value so quickly,” JPMorgan analyst Ryan Brinkman said in a research note last week.
Of note: Just hours before Lutnick’s comments, Cantor Fitzgerald — the investment bank where he was previously CEO, which is now managed by his sons — upgraded Tesla’s stock. The intrigue: Lutnick’s recommendation came as one of Wall Street’s most bullish Tesla analysts sounded the alarm on the company’s future.
- Last week President Trump held a public showcase of Tesla’s cars at the White House.
- Amid a wave of “Tesla Takedown” rallies at dealerships nationwide, top administration officials have pledged to investigate protesters for domestic terrorism.
- Trump said on Truth Social late Thursday, without elaborating further: “People that get caught sabotaging Teslas will stand a very good chance of going to jail for up to twenty years, and that includes the funders. WE ARE LOOKING FOR YOU!!!”
- “Lets call it like it is: Tesla is going through a crisis and there is one person who can fix it….Musk,” Wedbush Securities’ Dan Ives wrote in a research note Wednesday night.
- “As someone who is a core bull and believer in the Telsa long term growth story…..I loudly urge Musk and the Board to step up, stop being silent, and help resolve this crisis forming at Tesla,” Ives said.
Well, that ‘of note’ is certainly of note. I’d say this post today is enough to get me permanently banned from X, wouldn’t you? I just hope I get a crown, a sash, and a nice bouquet of flowers. Maybe not; let’s try some more headlines before the fat lady over there sings.
This is from Politico. “Elon Musk threatens Pentagon leakers after NYT report on secret China war briefing, “They will be found,” warns U.S. President Donald Trump’s billionaire adviser as White House lashes out at the media.” So, my big question is under what authority can he call out the hounds?
Donald Trump’s top adviser Elon Musk has openly threatened Pentagon employees who may have leaked information that the tech billionaire was due to get a briefing on a potential American war with China. The story, published by the New York Times on Thursday evening U.S. time, said that — according to anonymous American officials — the Pentagon planned to brief Musk on Friday about the U.S. military’s plan for any war that might break out with China. After the story went live, the planned meeting was confirmed by Pentagon officials and President Trump — but both denied that the session would discuss military plans involving China. “China will not even be mentioned or discussed,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform. “How disgraceful it is that the discredited media can make up such lies. Anyway, the story is completely untrue!!!” Trump’s comments were then reposted on X by Musk, who called the New York Times “pure propaganda” and issued a threat, saying he looks “forward to the prosecution of those at the Pentagon who are leaking maliciously false information to NYT.” “They will be found,” the tech billionaire warned. The New York Times report that infuriated the White House emphasized that such a briefing by the Pentagon would expand Musk’s already wide-ranging role, and would highlight questions about potential conflicts of interest, as Musk reaches deep into the federal bureaucracy while continuing to run his companies like SpaceX, a major government contractor, and doing business in China.
It’s a tag team! Looks like Linda McMahon has taken them to school! But, wait, she’s trying to dismantle schools. Maybe they went to the woodshed instead for a little tête-à-tête. This is breaking news from the AP. “Live updates: Education Secretary says she plans to ‘unwind’ regulations of department.” Well, she’s sure not the Miss Linda from the New Orleans Romper Room!
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday calling for the dismantling of the U.S. Education Department, advancing a campaign promise to take apart an agency that’s been a longtime target of conservatives. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said on Friday that she is preparing to relocate the department’s core operations to other agencies and roll back federal regulations.You may hear her describe her “visions” for the DOE at Fox News if you can stomach it. I’d rather read this article from ProPublica. “Parents Sue Trump Administration for Allegedly Sabotaging Education Department’s Civil Rights Division. The lawsuit claims that decimating the agency’s Office for Civil Rights will leave it unable to address issues of discrimination at school — violating the equal protection clause of the Fifth Amendment.” Nothing like another lawsuit to give Pam Bondage something to do.
Saying the Trump administration is sabotaging civil rights enforcement by the Department of Education, a federal lawsuit filed Friday morning seeks to stop the president and Secretary Linda McMahon from carrying out the mass firing of civil rights investigators and lawyers. Two parents and the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, a national disability rights group, jointly filed the lawsuit. It alleges that decimating the department’s Office for Civil Rights will leave the agency unable to handle the public’s complaints of discrimination at school. That, they said, would violate the equal protection clause of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The complaint comes three days after the Education Department notified about 1,300 employees — including the entire staff in seven of the 12 regional civil rights offices — that they are being fired, and the day after a group of 21 Democratic attorneys general sued McMahon and the president. That lawsuit alleges the Trump administration does not have the authority to circumvent Congress to effectively shutter the department. The complaint filed on Friday argues that the “OCR has abdicated its responsibility to enforce civil rights protections” and that the administration has made a “decision to sabotage” the Education Department’s civil rights functions. That, the lawsuit alleges, overrides Congress’ authority. It names the Education Department, McMahon and the acting head of OCR, Craig Trainor. “Through a series of press releases, policy statements, and executive orders, the administration has made clear its contempt for the civil rights of marginalized students,” the lawsuit says. The parents’ lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. It asks the court to declare the “decimation” of the OCR unlawful and seeks an injunction to compel the office to “process OCR complaints promptly and equitably.”
For once, I’m really happy that this country has way too many lawyers. So, the Democrats in Congress have announced a Whistle Blower site to encourage folks who are or have been Federal Employees to come forward with their stories about DOGE. This is from AXIOS. “Scoop: Democrats open whistleblower portal aimed at DOGE.” This is reported by Stephen Neukam.
enate Democrats are launching a new whistleblower portal for public and private workers to dish on how President Trump and DOGE are slashing the federal government.
Why it matters: Democrats hope whistleblowers will expose what they argue are the White House’s illegal moves to unilaterally dismantle federal agencies and programs.
- Democrats say they want to hear from workers who are witnessing how Trump and Elon Musk have withheld funding and fired federal workers without the approval of Congress.
- The effort comes as Trump on Thursday signed an order aimed at shuttering the Education Department, an agency with a $268 billion budget.
- The portal, which launches Friday, is spearheaded by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), whose staff on the Senate Budget Committee will conduct oversight of the new tool.
- But they have launched an anti-DOGE messaging offensive, betting that a sense Trump has overreach by Trump will be unpopular with voters. Polling has shown voters — especially younger ones — are concerned by DOGE’s actions.
- And all of the cuts have happened without the approval of Congress, which the Constitution entrusts with the power of the purse. Democrats see the DOGE cuts as an assault on the power of Congress.”The President is not a king, and we will make sure he is held accountable,” Merkley said in a statement.
I guess we’ll see.
Meanwhile, Trump threatens to shut down the Social Security Administration in a pique over a Judge’s decision to block Doge and Elon from going near the Agency. This is from Bloomberg News. “Social Security Says DOGE Ruling Could Force Agency to Shut Down.” Gregory Korte and Zoe Tillman have the story.
The Trump administration is threatening to all but shut down the Social Security Administration in response to a judge’s ruling blocking activities by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency — an action that could delay payments to millions of beneficiaries caught in the middle of the legal battle. Acting Social Security Commissioner Leland Dudek said the temporary restraining order issued Thursday is so broad in blocking access to data by “DOGE affiliates” that it could apply to any Social Security employee. “My anti-fraud team would be DOGE affiliates. My IT staff would be DOGE affiliates,” Dudek said. “As it stands, I will follow it exactly and terminate access by all SSA employees to our IT systems.” He said he would ask the judge to immediately clarify her order. “Really, I want to turn it off and let the courts figure out how they want to run a federal agency,” he said. The judge concluded that the unions and the retiree-advocacy group that sued were likely to succeed in arguing that DOGE access to the agency’s systems violated US laws meant to safeguard sensitive information.The standoff represents a new escalation in the multifront battle between President Donald Trump and the judiciary, potentially putting 73 million Americans who receive old-age or disability benefits in the crossfire.
‘All Legal Remedies’
The White House said Trump would “continue to seek all legal remedies available to ensure the will of the American people goes into effect.”
“In an 134-page decision, a radical leftist-judge ordered Social Security Administration employees not to implement the President’s government-efficiency agenda,” said White House deputy press secretary Harrison Fields. “This is yet another activist judge abusing the judicial system to try and sabotage the President’s attempts to rid the government of waste, fraud, and abuse.”
Courts have previously restricted access by DOGE staffers to sensitive Treasury payment systems until they certify that they’ve received proper clearance and training. But Thursday’s order by US District Judge Ellen Hollander goes even further, forbidding access to any non-anonymized data. She also ordered DOGE staff to delete or purge any Social Security Administration data that it already had in its possession.
“The DOGE Team is essentially engaged in a fishing expedition at SSA, in search of a fraud epidemic, based on little more than suspicion,” Hollander wrote. “It has launched a search for the proverbial needle in the haystack, without any concrete knowledge that the needle is actually in the haystack.”
DOGE is still looking for dead people. If you want to read more about that, you may at the Indian Times. The SSA is more worried about people being erroneously removed. They’ve put up information on their site to help all who may have been prematurely marked by Doge as Dead. CBS News has more information here. Kate Gibson has the information. “What Social Security says to do if you’re incorrectly listed as dead.”
More than 3 million deaths are reported to the Social Security Administration each year. Among them, a small portion — less than 10,000 — are erroneous and need to be corrected, according to the agency. “Our records are highly accurate,” the SSA stated Monday in a blog post following up on an update released Sunday by the SSA on its death record. Of the millions of death reports received by Social Security each year, less than one-third of 1% are incorrect and need to be fixed, it stated. Still, a person wrongly reported as deceased “can be devastating to the individual, spouse and dependent children,” as benefits are stopped and the process of restoring them can be long and challenging, according to SSA. The agency’s statements come nearly a month after the new SSA head contradicted claims that tens of millions of dead people over the age of 100 were receiving checks. Instead, those individuals “are people in our records with a Social Security number who do not have a date of death associated with their record,” said Lee Dudek, the new acting Social Security Administration commissioner who was placed in the role by President Trump, in a Feb. 19 statement. “These individuals are not necessarily receiving benefits,” he said.So that’s it for me today. I think that’s about all I can stomach. What’s on your Reading and Blogging list today? Get Over It! An Eagles Shout out to Elon!
Finally Friday Reads: Backpfeifengesicht
Posted: March 7, 2025 Filed under: Economy, Equity Markets, FARTUS, kakistocracy, MAGA Assholes, MAGA Political Carnage, Polycrisis, Psychopaths in charge | Tags: a face worthy of being slapped, Backpfeifengesicht, CryptoCurrency Ponzi Scheme from Trump and Musk, Declaration of Independence, FARTUS, martial-law, People are not Illegal, Space X explosion, The Insurrection Act, White Male Christian Supremacists 8 Comments
“EEK!” John Buss, @repeat1968, @johnbuss.bsky.social
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Backpfeifengesicht is the German word for “a face worthy of being slapped.” That might be the most usable word in the dark timeline, which is the second term of #FARTUS (Felon, Adjudicated Rapist, Traitor of the United States). JJ found this sweet article at The Guardian and shared it with BB and me this morning. It’s an Op-Ed written by Marina Hyde about JD Vance, but it could apply to any subhuman of the modern MAGA movement. “There are 1,000 grotesque memes of JD Vance – and they’re all more likable than the real thing. Angry, rude and addicted to web troll-ery, the vice-president has the Make America Awful Again portfolio. Seems a perfect fit.” Ayup.
You may well be aware that Backpfeifengesicht is the German word for a face that is worthy of being slapped. Even so, how has this not been internationalised? Or at the very least Americanised, where its dictionary definition would presumably be adorned by a picture of the face of US vice-president JD Vance – already faultlessly playing the role of worst American at your hotel. You can immediately picture him at breakfast, can’t you? Every single other guest on the terrace with their shoulders up round their ears, just thinking: “Where is he now? How unbearable is he being NOW?” Next, imagine breakfast lasting four years.
I say the Backpfeifengesicht definition would be accompanied by JD Vance’s face … but then again, what is the face of JD Vance? The internet is awash with people suffering an acute case of not being able to remember it any more, having seen so many hideous comic distortions of Vance that those meme versions are not simply the only results on the first page of your own mental Google search, but stretch deep beyond the second and into the third. Somewhere on page four, where you might as well publish the nuclear codes or pictures of Taylor Swift giving cocaine to babies, is an unmodified snap of what JD Vance actually looks like. Or at least what he looks like with eyeliner.
Before you get there – and you don’t, really – your synaptic filing systems throw up every variety of Photoshopped Vancefake: swollen manboy, face wearing a Minion suit, a bearded egg … I’m hoping that sooner or later, an American news outlet will accidentally use a modified photo, because even the picture editor has forgotten what the vice-president looks like, and then we can have one of those massively self-regarding legacy media-blow-ups, where the entire staff has to resign after a remorseless investigation by the executive editor reveals Vance isn’t actually a big purple grape. “This is a stain on our newspaper’s history. A big purple stain.”
Vance is more meme than man, now, and it is, of course, something of a consolation that he is so extremely online that he can’t help but have noticed this. The VP is like a one-man government troll-feeding programme – please don’t cut him, Elon! – which is probably why people have become so heroically committed to taking the piss. The probability of the vice-president seeing you insulting him is basically one.
Just as previous holders of his office like Teddy Roosevelt and Richard Nixon once did, Vance spent a notable amount of this week both denying he suggested Britain and France were random countries that hadn’t fought a war in 40 years, and replying to random X posters called things like “Jeff Computers” to counter the suggestion that he wasn’t loved and feted on his recent skiing holiday.
While JJ found that amusing read today. BB brought home the rancid bacon. This is an op-ed by Brett Wagner in The San Francisco Chronicle today. “Is Trump preparing to invoke the Insurrection Act? Signs are pointing that way. A joint Department of Defense and Homeland Security report will soon recommend whether or not to invoke the Insurrection Act over illegal migration.”
The clock is ticking down on a crucial but little-noticed part of President Donald Trump’s first round of executive orders — the one tasking the secretaries of the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security to submit a joint report, within 90 days, recommending “whether to invoke the Insurrection Act.”
Many of us are now holding our collective breath, knowing that the report and what it contains could put us on the slippery slope toward unchecked presidential power under a man with an affinity for ironfisted dictators.
Adding to the suspense was the recent “Friday Night Massacre” at the Pentagon — the firing of the nation’s top uniformed officer and removing other perceived guardrails (i.e., the top uniformed lawyers at the Army, Navy and Air Force) standing between the president and his long-stated intention to declare martial law upon returning to power.
Coincidence?
As we wait to find out, this would be a good time to take a closer look.
Say, for example, that Trump were to invoke the Insurrection Act and declare martial law. He wouldn’t even be required, by the letter of the law, to allege an “insurrection.” All that would be required is to assert that “unlawful obstruction” has made it “impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States” (as President Dwight D. Eisenhower did when he ordered the Arkansas National Guard to enforce the desegregation of Little Rock, Ark., schools).
This is where all the false claims and outright lies Trump and his political allies have been pushing will come into play: Trump falsely alleging, for example, that an entire city in Colorado has been taken over by Venezuelan street gangs, that a city in Ohio has been overrun by Haitian refugees who are eating all the cats and dogs, and other vague assertions that “millions and millions” of “illegals” are pouring into our country every week (or “day” depending on who’s telling the lie at the moment).
Each of these false claims and outright lies could be distilled, to declare martial law, into catchy phrases (beginning with the legalese word “Whereas”) to establish the legal premise for invoking the Insurrection Act, and to lay the predicate to begin going door-to-door, wherever they please, under the pretense of searching for undocumented immigrants who don’t exist.
I bring you the reality on the ground from Joy Reid on Threads. “This is inhumane, hideous and repugnant. If this is what MAGA America is, count me out. I’m ashamed that this is what our government is doing. Shame on them. Shame.” What it is is a 21-year-old girl with cancer who relies completely on her immigrant mother, who is in no way a criminal or bothering anyone. When protesters came to protest, they were arrested. How many laws and constitutional rights can this miserable administration break before they completely break all of us? This story comes from El Monte, California. You can read the hatred of the MAGA monsters in the threads below on YouTube. I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t want to leave the house and take a chance at seeing a FARTUS supporter in my neighborhood. I’m fine with all the immigrants, though. Everything they do makes my neighborhood a better place.
“I can’t even wake up properly… she helps me, she bathes me, she changes me, she makes my food.”Deportation didn’t protect anyone it only stole a mother from the child who needs her most-Blake Coronadowww.threads.net/@blakecorona…
— Audrey (@parickards.bsky.social) 2025-03-06T23:59:31.294Z
The US Military and US Vets are under attack from this Administration. This cannot be denied. This is from the AP this morning. FARTUS has always had a thing against military service and those who fight for values that he seems to hate very much. “War heroes and military firsts are among 26,000 images flagged for removal in Pentagon’s DEI purge.” So much of this just comes as an attack against the diversity of our nation being represented in all of its institutions. But is that really it? Why the disappearance of all people of color, women, and the LGBTQ community? Are white cis men really that sensitive?
References to a World War II Medal of Honor recipient, the Enola Gay aircraft that dropped an atomic bomb on Japan and the first women to pass Marine infantry training are among the tens of thousands of photos and online posts marked for deletion as the Defense Department works to purge diversity, equity and inclusion content, according to a database obtained by The Associated Press.
The database, which was confirmed by U.S. officials and published by AP, includes more than 26,000 images that have been flagged for removal across every military branch. But the eventual total could be much higher.
One official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to provide details that have not been made public, said the purge could delete as many as 100,000 images or posts in total, when considering social media pages and other websites that are also being culled for DEI content. The official said it’s not clear if the database has been finalized.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had given the military until Wednesday to remove content that highlights diversity efforts in its ranks following President Donald Trump’s executive order ending those programs across the federal government.
The vast majority of the Pentagon purge targets women and minorities, including notable milestones made in the military. And it also removes a large number of posts that mention various commemorative months — such as those for Black and Hispanic people and women.
Are they just trying to up their odds that one will be less likely to disrupt the plan when martial law is declared? Everything they’ve been doing shows their delight in being the worst kind of bullies. Just yesterday, they announced they will deport Ukrainians who fled to the US for safety. We are no longer a safe harbor. Not even close. Heather Cox Richardson discusses this in detail this morning in her Substack Letters from an American.
This morning, Ted Hesson and Kristina Cooke of Reuters reported that the Trump administration is preparing to deport the 240,000 Ukrainians who fled Russia’s attacks on Ukraine and have temporary legal status in the United States. Foreign affairs journalist Olga Nesterova reminded Americans that “these people had to be completely financially independent, pay tax, pay all fees (around $2K) and have an affidavit from an American person to even come here.”
“This has nothing to do with strategic necessity or geopolitics,” Russia specialist Tom Nichols posted. “This is just cruelty to show [Russian president Vladimir] Putin he has a new American ally.”
The Trump administration’s turn away from traditional European alliances and toward Russia will have profound effects on U.S. standing in the world. Edward Wong and Mark Mazzetti reported in the New York Times today that senior officials in the State Department are making plans to close a dozen consulates, mostly in Western Europe, including consulates in Florence, Italy; Strasbourg, France; Hamburg, Germany; and Ponta Delgada, Portugal, as well as a consulate in Brazil and another in Turkey.
In late February, Nahal Toosi reported in Politico that President Donald Trump wants to “radically shrink” the State Department and to change its mission from diplomacy and soft power initiatives that advance democracy and human rights to focusing on transactional agreements with other governments and promoting foreign investment in the U.S.
Elon Musk and the “Department of Government Efficiency” have taken on the process of cutting the State Department budget by as much as 20%, and cutting at least some of the department’s 80,000 employees. As part of that project, DOGE’s Edward Coristine, known publicly as “Big Balls,” is embedded at the State Department.
As the U.S. retreats from its engagement with the world, China has been working to forge greater ties. China now has more global diplomatic posts than the U.S. and plays a stronger role in international organizations. Already in 2025, about 700 employees, including 450 career diplomats, have resigned from the State Department, a number that normally would reflect a year’s resignations.
Shutting embassies will hamper not just the process of fostering goodwill, but also U.S. intelligence, as embassies house officers who monitor terrorism, infectious disease, trade, commerce, militaries, and government, including those from the intelligence community. U.S. intelligence has always been formidable, but the administration appears to be weakening it.
Trump, bitcoin, political cartoon
We’re being turned into part of the Trump Grift Mafia. Nothing will be left standing of any of the good we have done in the world. This is neocolonialism and neomercantilism. We’ve retreated to some of the worst historical ideologies ever. The most symbolic thing happened yesterday. The latest Space X project blew up in the sky and shut down many flights yesterday. “Breakup of SpaceX’s Starship Rocket Disrupts Florida Airports. The video showed the upper stage of the most powerful rocket ever built spinning out of control in space, a repeat of an unsuccessful test flight in January that led to debris falling over the Caribbean.” This is what we’re spending money for? Elonia is pushing his company to the brink of getting to Mars and looking down at the rest of us. The report is from The New York Times‘s Kenneth Chang.
Starship — the huge spacecraft that Elon Musk says will one day take people to Mars — failed during its latest test flight on Thursday when its upper stage exploded in space, raining debris and disrupting air traffic at airports from Florida to Pennsylvania.
It was the second consecutive test flight of the most powerful rocket ever built where the upper-stage spacecraft malfunctioned. It started spinning out of control after several engines went out and then lost contact with mission control.
Photographs and videos posted on the social media site X by users saying they were along the Florida coast showed the spacecraft breaking up. The falling debris disrupted flights at airports in Miami, Orlando, Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale, and as far away as Philadelphia International Airport.
The Starship rocket system is the largest ever built. At 403 feet tall, it is nearly 100 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty atop its pedestal.
It has the most engines ever in a rocket booster: The Super Heavy booster is powered by 33 of SpaceX’s Raptor engines. As those engines lift Starship off the launchpad, they will generate 16 million pounds of thrust at full throttle.
The upper part, also called Starship or Ship for short, looks like a shiny rocket from science fiction movies of the 1950s, is made of stainless steel with large fins. This is the upper stage that will head toward orbit, and ultimately could carry people to the moon or even Mars.
The rocket lifted off a little after 6:30 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday from the SpaceX site known as Starbase at the southern tip of Texas near the city of Brownsville.
Starship’s mammoth booster again successfully returned to the launchpad, just as it had during the previous test flight. In the last half minute before the upper-stage engines were to shut off, several of them malfunctioned. Video from the rocket showed a tumbling view of Earth and space until it cut off.
Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer wrote this analysis for The Atlantic. “Trump’s Own Declaration of Independence. The president, who has flirted with regal rhetoric, wants a historic copy of America’s founding document placed in the Oval Office.”
Long live the king!
Down with the king!
President Donald Trump sees the appeal of both.
Trump jokingly declared himself a sovereign last month, while his advisers distributed AI-generated photos of him wearing a crown and an ermine robe to celebrate his order to end congestion pricing in New York City. “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” he’d decreed a few days earlier, using a phrase sometimes attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, the emperor of the French.
I had no idea one of my greats who signed the Declaration had made of the copies of it. But the weird thing here is that Trump seriously wants the document to hang in the Oval Office. My question is, why take it from the people who can see it in the archives?
Since returning to power, Trump has moved quickly to redesign his working space. He has announced plans to pave over the Rose Garden to make it more like the patio at his private Mar-a-Lago club, as well as easier to host events with women wearing heels. He has also revived planning for a new ballroom on the White House grounds. “It keeps my real-estate juices flowing,” Trump explained in a recent interview with The Spectator.
Golden trophies now line the Oval Office’s mantlepiece. Military flags adorned with campaign streamers have returned. And portraits of presidents past now climb the walls—George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Martin Van Buren, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan, among others. Gilded mirrors hang upon the recessed doors. A framed copy of his Georgia mug shot appears in the outside hallway. And the bright-red valet button, encased in a wooden box, is back on the desk.
In addition to the National Archives’ original Declaration, the government has in its possession other versions of the document. The collection includes drafts by Jefferson and copies of contemporaneous reprintings, known as broadsides, that were distributed among the colonies.
Alarmed by the deterioration of the original Declaration in the 1820s, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams commissioned William J. Stone to create an engraving of it with the signatures appended. That version forms the basis of the document since reproduced in school history books—the one with which most Americans are familiar. Adams tasked Stone with engraving 200 copies—but in what passes for a mini 19th-century scandal, Stone made an extra facsimile to keep for himself, the documents dealer and expert Seth Kaller told us.
Many of those Stone copies of the document have now been lost; roughly 50 are known to survive, Kaller said. The White House already has in its archives at least one of the Stone printings. Kaller told us that one of his clients who had recently purchased a Stone facsimile was visiting the White House when President Barack Obama asked him whether he could help procure a Stone printing for the White House.
“The client called me, and I said, ‘I can’t—because, one, there aren’t any others on the market right now, and two, the White House already has one,’” Kaller told us. In 2014, Kaller visited the White House to view the Stone Declaration, which the curator displayed for him in one of the West Wing’s rooms. (The White House curator’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment, including on whether the Stone copy still resides under its purview.)
It is unclear where Trump first got the idea to add a Declaration to the Oval Office’s decor. Since returning, Trump has shown interest in the planning for celebrations next year of the 250th anniversary of the document’s signing. Days after taking office, he issued an executive order to create “Task Force 250,” a White House commission that will work with another congressionally formed commission to plan the festivities.
I hope he’s not trying to go with one of those grandiose military parades again. And if he does, will he eliminate everyone but the white guys? It can’t be anything other than another way for him to get attention, that’s for sure. Again, this all continues to be an appalling cosplay of how FARTUS wants to view himself in relation to his imagined ideas of American History. I can’t even with the economy today. Just know he’s changed his mind on tariffs again for Canada and Mexico, and employment figures are worsening. He’s turned a strong economy into a weak one in a matter of weeks. He’s also shaken the Equity markets to their core. What’s on is this: “Trump’s “Crypto Reserve” is a world historical grift. Corruption doesn’t get much more blatant than this.” My Finance Daughter and I both find crypto to be a huge Ponzi scheme. I lecture against it. She doesn’t consider it a product that brokers should be involved in. In short, we stay as far away as possible. But, you know, grifters gotta grift. This is from Public Notice.
Authoritarian regimes by definition have no accountability to voters or the public. That means autocrats and their cronies can gorge themselves at the public trough and blatantly steal from taxpayers with few if any consequences.
It’s not really a surprise, then, that as part of his authoritarian power grab, Trump has embraced brazen and open self-dealing. The most ludicrous example of this is the scheme he announced last Sunday for a national crypto reserve.
As with many of Trump’s big orange dreams, it’s not exactly clear what the crypto reserve will entail or how it will work. But the brilliance of the half-baked idea is that Trump and his cronies can make bank just by talking about it. The president can use his bully pulpit to manipulate markets. And who’s going to stop him?
Trump, fresh off avoiding 88 felony charges, obviously feels confident that the answer is “no one.”
Government on the blockchain
Crypto refers to digital currencies which are generated and stored in a digital ledger, or blockchain. In theory, cryptocurrencies do not rely on a central government authority. Proponents say they are useful for quick or anonymous transactions. Critics point out that cryptocurrency seems designed for hiding illegal transactions and/or creating what are essentially Ponzi investment schemes.
Because of the downsides, President Biden created moderate guidelines to try to regulate some of the worst excesses of the industry, which made him an enemy of hardcore crypto boosters. But Trump in his first term expressed even deeper skepticism about cryptocurrencies, saying they are based on “thin air.”
During the 2024 election, though, crypto investors spent tens of millions on Republican campaigns. Trump, who never saw a quid pro quo he didn’t love, changed his tune, embracing crypto-friendly policies. After his victory, he followed through by appointing venture capitalist and Elon Musk crony David Sacks as a White House crypto czar.
Another reason Trump flip-flopped on crypto is that his family figured out how to cash in. Following the election, Trump squandered some of the goodwill he had built up with the crypto industry when he and his wife Melania launched memecoins — essentially valueless crypto confidence games — that both surged in value, making the Trumps billions (but undermining the credibility of crypto in the process). That came after his two adult sons, Eric and Don Jr, launched their own crypto company during the campaign called World Liberty Financial. Boosting crypto as president, then, allows Trump and his family to profit directly from his public office.
Trump announced his thank you to the industry last Sunday, when he declared that he would create a “Crypto Strategic Reserve” in order to make the US “the Crypto Capital of the World.” He of course claimed the move is part of “MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.”
But the actual point of the crypto reserve, much less the details, are sketchy at best. Proponents argue crypto is a store of value, like gold, and could help damp inflation. But the major cryptocurrencies tend to rise and fall in value based on broader macroeconomic sentiment. And since crypto is volatile and, unlike gold, has no intrinsic value, it’s hard to credit its usefulness as a currency stabilizer.
If you have any questions about any of this, I’d be glad to try to answer them. Seeing such craziness in our economic policy has been hard on me. I’m just waiting for the major attack on the Federal Reserve Bank. They’re the only ones that bring credibility to the dollar these days, and I’m afraid he’ll have a go at them. The mess at the Treasury is already impacting the banking business. Don’t even get me started on the Budget Crisis, either. I’m tired of the repeats of that one by disingenuous Republicans.
I hope all of you can close your doors and stay sane inside the one place you can control, home. I have a few more tests next week, so I will be out at clinics again, being poked and prodded. This weekend, I will just relax and try to avoid the ever-changing Trump Surreality Show.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Mostly Monday Reads: Another Fine Mess
Posted: February 24, 2025 Filed under: Black Women Lead, Broligarchy, FARTUS, kakistocracy, kleptocracy, The American Triumvirate and Shadow Minister Putin | Tags: 2, @johnbuss.bsky.social, Bernie Sanders, Elonia Musk, FARTUS, HUD hack, John Buss, Joy Reid, Medicaid, NYC Mayor, sanctuary cities 5 Comments
“Of course, they’ll blame Biden for the missing gold. The plan all along. John Buss, @johnbuss.bsky.social
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
The grift and chaos are real. There is nothing golden about this new Gilded Age. The rich guys may have been rotten back then, but they did it by building railroads and steel plants. This new set throws their Dad’s money at things and tells everyone they are smart when they are anything but intelligent.
The Republican party deserves ignominious defeat at the polls.
Musk’s claws are all over Medicaid, and he’s being aided by Republican Congress Critters. Trump’s recent shake-down of the mayor of New York City is already giving Musk his jollies by throwing immigrants housed at the Roosevelt Hotel the boot. But that’s only one of 53 sites that will be shuttered without indicating who is waiting to hear their case in a court of law, which is likely a good portion if not all of them. Neo-Nazi encampments are on the rise too. But take heart: hackers have joined voters in trolling these folks. The midterm elections cannot come fast enough for me. Let’s take this news in order.
This analysis of the coming Medicare evisceration is provided by the site The Last Billionaires and is written by Jason Sattler. Guillotines one? “Here’s how Republicans are planning to throw millions off Medicaid and lie about it. Trump is teaching his minions to say, “We didn’t insure anyone”/”They deserved it.”
A lot of the horror in the Donald Trump sequel is new.
Sure, he was terrible the first time James Comey and Vladimir Putin made him president. But his misery couldn’t measured in donated kidneys that had to be junked, cures for diseases that won’t be found, and intentional infant deaths due to HIV.
That’s what Elon Musk has given us by singlehandedly electing Trump a second time.
However, one aspect of this Trump administration is nearly identical to the last. He wants to give rich people sloppy, unnecessary tax cuts and then “pay” for those tax cuts by basically ending Medicaid as we know it.
You’ll remember that he succeeded in the giveaways to the rich, but thanks to millions of activated Americans and John McCain’s thumb, he failed to gut Medicaid. Thankfully, because you may also remember that Trump bungled us into the worst response to COVID-19 in the rich world with a yearlong supercut of unforced errors that would have been infinitely worse if he’d succeeded in his dream of swiping insurance from masses of struggling workers and their families.
This time around, Trump, MAGA, and the Nerd Reich are determined to punish us for the few weeks rich people had to take out Olive Garden rather than enjoying the lush dining room by destroying the best medical research system ever created and simultaneously gutting the worst health insurance system in the rich world.
To be clear, we’re not sure how the details of this will look.
Republicans only need 50 votes in the Senate, which they have for pretty much anything Trump wants. The House is a mess. Speaker Mike Johnson only has a few votes to lose. While there are no true moderate Republicans in Congress, there are Republicans in losable districts—more than enough of them to lose the House in 2026 if democracy continues somewhat usually. If things go wrong enough, the GOP could even conceivably lose the House in special elections before November 2026.
One way they could go wrong is if Republicans touch a third rail and gut the largest provider of insurance in America. And that’s Trump’s plan. He has endorsed $880 billion in cuts for Medicaid, which is actually $44 billion MORE than House Republicans under his and Paul Ryan’s direction tried to cut Medicaid last time.
Because they tried this before, we have a decent idea of what the result would be, according to the Congressional Budget Office:
“In calendar year 2026, Medicaid enrollment is estimated to be 8 million lower under the AHCA than under current law due to the combination of two factors: (i) a decline of 6 million in enrollment for newly eligible adults under current law and (ii) a decline of 2 million in enrollment for all other Medicaid enrollees attributable to more frequent — 2 — eligibility redeterminations, the repeal of retroactive eligibility, and optional State work requirements for adults.”
That’s at least 8 million who’d be thrown off the program due to paperwork and ridiculous requirements that undermine the very nature of Medicaid, which exists to supplement Americans who can’t get insurance because they’re aged and not rich or taking care of a family member or trying to find a job or a kid.
As Kelly Hooper of Politico reminds us “Republicans’ plans for Medicaid have a political problem. GOP lawmakers expected to vote soon on slashing the insurance program for low-income people represent tens of millions reliant on it.
House Republicans who represent large numbers of Medicaid recipients are pushing back on their leaders’ plans to slash billions in funding for the insurance program for low-income people.
That dissension could grow considering that President Donald Trump has made the GOP more appealing to the working class. Republicans rely on low-income voters more than they have in decades, with Trump the first Republican presidential candidate to win the poorest third of the electorate since the 1960s.
A POLITICO review of enrollment in Medicaid by congressional district found that 11 Republicans in competitive seats represent larger-than-average Medicaid populations — collectively nearly 2.7 million recipients. A vote to cut the program presents a politically sensitive decision that may come back to haunt them in 2026.
With a 218-215 House split — the tightest in modern history — Republicans will be fighting for every seat during the midterms to keep control of the chamber. And they can only lose one vote in the House and still pass their budget bill.
House Republican leaders plan to use Medicaid cuts to pay for tax relief, border security and energy production in the coming weeks.
“The bulk of these cuts would have to be in Medicaid, and that’s why they’re not going to get the requisite votes they need to get it passed with the margins that they have right now,” said Bill Hoagland, senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center and a former GOP Senate Budget Committee staffer. “Leaders are going to have a lot of difficulty getting the votes to pass this resolution.”
Nationally, about 24 percent of people in the United States are enrolled in Medicaid, according to an estimate compiled by NYU Langone Health. Just over 72 million people nationwide had Medicaid coverage as of October 2024, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Garret Graff has written “An Obituary for the FBI. America’s dream of a politically independent bureau is officially dead” at his blog Dooms Day Scenario. This year, Richard Nixon’s FBI and DOJ will be a quaint takeover by comparison.
The Sunday night announcement that Dan Bongino — a bombastic MAGA podcast host, fiery right-wing troll, one-time Secret Service agent, and three-time failed Republican congressional candidate — would be the new FBI deputy director and join the newly confirmed director Kash Patel, another MAGA loyalist better known for his hucksterism of Trump merchandise than his management, leadership, or law enforcement experience, and lead the FBI marked an almost certainly permanent alteration of the fabric of the institution.
In the entire modern history of the bureau, the deputy director — the #2 person who serves as the day-to-day operational leader of the FBI — has always been a civil servant and career special agent, one who has worked his (they’ve always been men) way up the ranks over a two-decade career and is deeply familiar with the workings of the bureau, its wide-ranging missions, and curious culture.
All previous modern directors, meanwhile, have had deep experience with the FBI — working in senior roles in law enforcement, atop the Justice Department, or as federal judges. Patel and Bongino, who does not require Senate confirmation in the role, bring none of that acquired expertise or wisdom to the role; neither has worked for the FBI for a single day and neither has meaningful senior management experience.
Both have been installed, effectively, to troll the libs — and, more dangerously for every American, to weaponize the normally fiercely independent bureau in service to Donald Trump personally. Don’t take my word for it — Bongino said it himself in 2018: “My entire life right now is about owning the libs.” He added then: “We win, you lose, the new rules are in effect.” Or try this video:
More recently, he said this on his podcast: “What matters? Anyone? Power.” Listen to that clip, watch the glee on his face as he says, and imagine him as the second most-powerful person in a vital national law enforcement agency that holds enormous sway over Americans of all stripes, and tell me that isn’t one of the darkest things you’ve seen yet out of the Trump administration.
Dan Bongino, who hosts a popular pro-Trump podcast and has appeared regularly on Fox News, will serve under Kash Patel. http://www.ft.com/content/510e…
— Financial Times (@financialtimes.com) 2025-02-24T17:46:58.462Z
FARTUS’ shakedown of the Mayor of New York City is already paying off big time. This is from NBC News. “NYC Mayor Eric Adams to close Roosevelt Hotel migrant center targeted by Musk, Trump administration. The hotel’s closure comes as Adams promises to close another 53 emergency shelter sites by June.” I wonder if they’ll ship The Statue of Liberty out, too?
New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced Monday that the city will close the Asylum Seeker Arrival Center at the Roosevelt Hotel, a site that was the frequent target of criticism from Elon Musk and the Trump administration.
Over 173,000 migrants completed registrations at the Manhattan hotel since its opening in May 2023, accounting for nearly three quarters of the 232,000 migrants who entered the city since the spring of 2022, the Adams administration reported.
“While we’re not done caring for those who come into our care, today marks another milestone in demonstrating the immense progress we have achieved in turning the corner on an unprecedented international humanitarian effort,” Adams said in a Monday statement.
The mayor added that his administration has “skillfully managed this crisis,” and that the Roosevelt Hotel has been “key in allowing us to effectively manage our operations.”
On top of closing the arrival center at the hotel, Adams also announced the closure of the Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center located at Roosevelt.
The mayor cited a downtick of migrant registrations as well as the success of migrants who have “sought care” from the city to take their “next steps in their journeys,” as inspiring the move to shut down the core center at Roosevelt Hotel.
Adams’ administration said that while an average 4,000 migrants were arriving each week to New York City during the “height of the international asylum seeker crisis,” the average number of registrants in the city has dropped down to the about 350 migrants per week in recent months.
“Now, thanks to the sound policy decisions of our team, we are able to announce the closure of this site and help even more asylum seekers take the next steps in their journeys as they envision an even brighter future, while simultaneously saving taxpayers millions of dollars,” Adams said in a statement.
Remember, seeking asylum is not illegal in the US. It’s a process that’s part of an international treaty that we signed. Our government’s site about the process is still online. You may read about it here. However, bribing foreign politicians is a big no-no. The BBC reports that “Ex-Reform UK Wales leader accused of taking Russian-linked bribes.” Sound familiar?
The former leader of Reform UK in Wales has appeared in court accused of accepting bribes to make statements in the European Parliament that would benefit Russia.
Nathan Gill, 51, from Llangefni on Anglesey, is facing eight counts of bribery and one count of conspiracy to commit bribery.
The court heard Mr Gill, who was a UKIP and later a Brexit Party MEP between 2014 and 2020, was alleged to have received money from his co-defendant and former Ukrainian politician Oleg Voloshyn.
He appeared at Westminster Magistrates Court by video link on Monday, speaking to confirm his name, date of birth and address.
While FARTUS is still trying to turn the US Military into his own private force, he still has these guys and they are building. This is from The Guardian. “Neo-Nazi group plots rebuild as Trump’s FBI chief takes helm, audio reveals. Exclusive: Terrorist group the Base appears defiant as new administration aims to deprioritize threat from far right.”
An international neo-Nazi terrorist group with origins in the US appears to be quickly rebuilding its global and stateside ranks, according to information obtained by the Guardian from its digital accounts.
Founded in 2018, the Base has been the intense focus of a years-long FBI counter-terrorism investigation that has resulted in more than a dozen of its members arrested. It has plotted an assassination, mass shootings and other actions in Europe, which made it a proscribed terrorist organization in several countries.
By 2022, it seemed to disappear. Yet its founder and leader, Rinaldo Nazzaro, a former US special forces contractor residing in Russia, used the safety of Russian apps before the November election to recruit and reorganize during a tense political moment. At one point, he even solicited ex-American soldiers with an offer of $1,200 a month to put members through paramilitary training somewhere in the Pacific north-west.
The Base’s regrouping comes at a time when the Trump administration has made it a policy goal to move away from policing far-right extremism and during the appointment of Kash Patel – a Maga acolyte who lauds January 6 attackers and has peddled Qanon conspiracy theories – to helm the FBI. Experts say federal law enforcement ignoring far-right groups such as the Base could expose Americans to increased domestic terror threats.
Nazzaro’s efforts, so far, appear to be paying off: the Guardian was tipped to an audio message released in mid-February from an assumed new leader of the Base with an American accent, discussing the ambitious future of the group.
After criticizing other neo-Nazi organizations such as Blood Tribe for publicly protesting against drag-queen story hours in the midwest, the voice preached covert action and quiet preparations for armed cells throughout the US rather than flashy activism.
“Are we just going to be reactionary? Or are we going to be part of the solution? The military solution,” they said. “Because inevitably we’re going to end up in some sort of military situation, what are the choices?”
The voice then describes a “black scenario” where the US government soon collapses and there’s a need to “provide for your family” and for “white women”.
“There is no political solution, only a military solution,” they can be heard saying under heavy voice modulation. “So act accordingly.”
So, there have been various ways to express concern about what has happened these first 6 weeks under the FARTUS Triumvarite and Kakistocracy. MTN has this about recent contributions by hackers. “Hack at Department of Housing and Urban Development Trolls Donald Trump and Elon Musk | Report
The hack has ended, but the images are circulating on the internet.”
A hack at the Department of Housing and Urban Development this morning has now trolled Donald Trump and Elon Musk by playing a short, AI-generated video of Donald Trump kissing Elon Musk’s feet with the title “Long Live The Real King” over the video. Below is a screen grab taken by reporters this morning at the Department:
The video was on display for a short period of time this morning before being taken down by Housing and Urban Development officials. The “long live the real king” message on the video likely refers to a recent statement made by Donald Trump stating “long live the king” after he said that he would be ending congestion pricing in New York City.
It is unclear at this point who is responsible for the hack this morning, whether it was done internally by a HUD employee, or whether authorities have any leads.
Well, it stands to irritate them more than many of our protests since internet surfing, trolling, and golfing appear to be the only presidential duty these days. I’m not sure how long it will take to stop all of this and try to rebuild our infrastructure, but this sure will kill a lot of people in the process. Just the firing of all the best and brightest of the top brass in the military is a huge loss of knowledge and leadership. The Republicans are working on those billionaire tax cuts already, so the bilking of the Treasury continues.
The U.S. Army Chorus sang ‘Les Mis’ at the White House Governors’ Ball. The U.S. Army Chorus ‘Do You Hear the People Sing?’ performance from ‘Les Misérables’ is going viral?
So, our lonely eyes turn to the Democratic Party. Nicholas Wu, writing for Politico, filed this report today. “House Democrats are ramping up their attacks on the GOP agenda. Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries urged “maximum attendance” this week ahead of a tight vote.”
House Democrats are sharpening their attacks on the Republican policy agenda ahead of an expected Tuesday budget vote, with Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries laying out a plan for pushback in a letter to Democratic colleagues Monday.
With one House Republican, Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.) already publicly opposing the plan and others privately dug in against it, Jeffries urged “maximum attendance” from his caucus to keep the pressure on Speaker Mike Johnson and his minuscule GOP majority. Democrats are also playing up the backlash some Republican members of Congress faced at recent town halls (some of it organized by liberal advocacy groups) as they try to harness grassroots resistance to the GOP.
House Democrats will gather Tuesday on the House steps, Jeffries said, to “make sure that the country can hear from everyday Americans whose lives will be devastated by the Republican budget scheme.”
Even Bernie Sanders is back on the road again. This time, he’s holding town meetings in deeply red republican states and cities. So, I’m going to use this article from the Nebraska Examiner. “Overflow Omaha crowd launches U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ ‘Fighting Oligarchy’ tour. ‘We are living in two Americas,’ says the Vermont senator and former presidential candidate.” Hey, it’s an improvement over giving speeches on the floor to a camera.
U.S. Sen Bernie Sanders kicked off his “Fighting Oligarchy” nationwide tour in Omaha Friday night, drawing an overflow crowd of more than 2,500, with hundreds more turned away.
The progressive independent from Vermont spoke to supporters about what he said is division in the United States under the leadership of President Donald Trump and billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk of the Department of Government Efficiency.
Sanders said he chose Omaha as his first tour stop because of its working-class voters who were swayed toward Republican candidates in the 2024 election. The former presidential candidate said he wants to encourage people, similar to those living in the Omaha-based 2nd Congressional District, to recognize policies that could hurt them and their livelihoods.
He said that 60% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck while rich people are receiving tax cuts.
His tour continues Saturday in Iowa, aimed at promoting democracy and encouraging the working class to stand up to signs of oligarchy.
“We are living in two Americas,” said Sanders. “What we do now will impact our lives. [Americans] need a grassroots movement that says no to oligarchy.”
Kitty Brougham, 65, of Omaha was among those cheering at the Omaha Marriott Downtown at the Capitol District.
She said she wanted to attend the event because she was losing hope. She is the mother of Sammie Peterson, 24, a transgender woman, and is worried for her future.
“I am watching my country be taken away from me,” said Brougham. “I needed hope.”
Sanders’ call to stand up inspired Peterson as well. She said she has not been very politically active in the past but feels that now is the time. As she worries for her future, she finds the ability to speak out.
Sanders spoke for about 30 minutes, at one point reciting the Gettysburg Address and reminding supporters that America was built on pushback against oligarchs. He encouraged people to speak up and said they are stronger when they come together — regardless of political party.
Originally set for the Laborers International Union building, the event was moved to the larger Marriott to accommodate a turnout estimated at 2,580 in the ballroom and two overflow rooms. Organizers said hundreds of others were turned away due to space constraints.
Alexander Beavers, 13, a middle school student from Omaha, was with his family cheering from the front row.
“Trump already ruined the state,” said Beavers.
Now, if these folks’ comments could only show up on the front page of any of the legacy national newspapers.
I don’t look forward to MSNBC really making a big effort for anything if this is typical of their reactions. You may have been here when I did an interview as one of the original “Reiders” back in the day on Zerlina Maxwell’s podcast. I’ve been a fan of hers forever. I attended her book signing at Baldwin Books when she launched a tour of her book on the Evers. This has me both sad and mad. They’ve canceled her show. They’re also moving Jen Psaki to Rachel’s current and old spot. Two women of color out their shows. Alex Wagner will be an at-large reporter. That is sure to be tough on her young family.
I just want to say thank you to everyone who has reached out with kindness and encouragement, both personally and in these social media streets. So very proud of The Reidout @joy.msnbc.com team, who are truly family, and all of our supporters & friends. See you tomorrow night at 7, one more time ‼️
— Joy-Ann Reid (@joyannreid.bsky.social) 2025-02-24T05:16:06.613Z
This is from The Independent. “Joy Reid’s staff had ‘tense’ meeting with MSNBC chiefs after learning her show was being axed in media, report says. Joy Reid hosted ‘The ReidOut’ for more than four years on MSNBC.”
MSNBC has canceled Joy Reid’s evening news show and held a “tense” meeting with her staff after the news was leaked to the press.
The final episode ofThe ReidOutwill air this week, The New York Times reports. Her slot will be replaced by a show led by a trio of hosts: Democratic strategist Symone Sanders Townsend, former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele and journalist Alicia Menendez. They currently host The Weekend, which airs on Saturday and Sunday mornings.
Rebecca Kutler, the network’s newly-appointed leader, made the call amid larger plans to overhaul MSNBC’s programming, according to the Times.
Now, media journalist Oliver Darcy reports Reid’s staff found out they were losing their jobs in a tense and emotional 30-minute impromptu meeting Sunday morning. Staffers were reportedly frustrated they learned about the show shutting down from media reports, rather than directly from leadership.
Reid has hosted a 7 p.m. show on the network since 2020. She had been with the company since 2014.
The network has also removed Alex Wagner from her weekday evening spot, and Darcy reports Kutler held a “similar” meeting with the show’s staff. However, Wagner is expected to stay with MSNBC as a contributor.
Now, many are mourning Reid’s departure.
“I owe the television part of my career to Joy Reid, as do so many other Black voices y’all never would have heard of if not for her,” journalist Elie Mystal wrote on X. “And *that’s* why she’s gone. They can treat black folks as interchangeable, but everybody Black knows that Joy was indispensable.”
I’m getting too old for this shit.
#BlueskyResistance #Voices4Victory #ProudBlurAdvertisement at a London bus stop. Ya gotta love the British…
— Libby Whittemore (@libbage55.bsky.social) 2025-02-24T14:58:45.189Z
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Finally Friday Reads: The American Triumvirate is Underwater
Posted: February 21, 2025 Filed under: democracy is threatened, Diplomacy Nightmares, Elon Musk, executive orders, executive privilege, FARTUS, kakistocracy | Tags: @johnbuss.bsky.social John Buss, @repeat1968, FARTUS and Elonia, Hockey Politics, Polls show disgust with the Trump Administration, Trump Russian Asset 4 Comments
“The latest retaliatory executive order.” @repeat1968 John Buss
Good Morning, Sky Dancers!
I usually check polls pretty carefully whenever they are presented by reliable pollsters. It’s because folks generally read too much into one observation. It’s really just a snapshot of the current moment. When you start to see coverage of multiple polls or many polls that provide the same results, and the results point to black swan events and are outside the margin of error, I pay attention. I follow the Consumer Confidence Index, an index of how folks feel about the economy and their well-being. It’s been continually polled for some time, and the snapshots have consistently predicted whether folks will spend or hunker down.
“The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index® declined by 5.4 points in January to 104.1 (1985=100). December’s reading was revised up by 4.8 points to 109.5 but was still down 3.3 points from the previous month. The Present Situation Index—based on consumers’ assessment of current business and labor market conditions—fell sharply in January, dropping 9.7 points to 134.3. The Expectations Index—based on consumers’ short-term outlook for income, business, and labor market conditions—fell 2.6 points to 83.9, but remained above the threshold of 80 that usually signals a recession ahead. The cutoff date for preliminary results was January 20, 2025.
“Consumer confidence has been moving sideways in a relatively stable, narrow range since 2022. January was no exception. The Index weakened for a second straight month, but still remained in that range, even if in the lower part,” said Dana M. Peterson, Chief Economist at The Conference Board. “All five components of the Index deteriorated but consumers’ assessments of the present situation experienced the largest decline. Notably, views of current labor market conditions fell for the first time since September, while assessments of business conditions weakened for the second month in a row. Meanwhile, consumers were also less optimistic about future business conditions and, to a lesser extent, income. The return of pessimism about future employment prospects seen in December was confirmed in January.”
The latest numbers on Consumer Sentiment, another poll of consumer intent, were reported today by Reuters. “US consumer sentiment plunges in February on tariff worries.” I’m glad to see that so many folks have finally figured out that tariffs are paid by the consumers. This is another set of polling of American households. The more these separate pollings converge, the more you can take stock of their numbers.
U.S. consumer sentiment dropped more than expected in February to a 15-month low and inflation expectations rocketed as households worried that President Donald Trump’s plans for steep and broad-based tariffs would eat into their purchasing power.
The University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers on Friday said its Consumer Sentiment Index dropped to 64.7 from January’s revised final reading of 71.7. The reading, the lowest since November 2023, was lower than the preliminary reading of 67.8, which was also the consensus expectation among economists polled by Reuters.
Meanwhile households saw inflation over the next year surging to 4.3% – the highest since November 2023 – from 3.3% last month. That was unchanged from the preliminary reading two weeks ago.
Over the next five years households saw inflation running at 3.5% – the highest since 1995 – compared with 3.2% in January. That was up from the preliminary reading two weeks ago for 3.3%.
So, since I follow the variables that influence people, like prices or job market expectations, I can usually eke out some valuable information. However, it’s still difficult to draw a line between the association of the variables and direct causality. Political polls are a different animal because the poll questions are fixed and the variables defined, but there is a lot more subtlety in the responses because of hidden preferences, so they vary a lot more. However, you can see when a poll is an outlier if it’s been consistently applied over time. The latest polls for FARTUS, Elonia, and JDank are historically bad. And yes, they’re polling for Musk because we’re basically being ruled by a Triumvirate. So far, there’s no polling on the Shadow Minister over there in Russia.
Rachel Maddow focused on this last night. It was seriously shocking. This is from The Daily Beast. She holds a doctorate in political science from the University of Oxford, so I know she knows polls and statistics even though the MSNBC point man on this is Steve Kornacki. “Even Rachel Maddow Is Surprised by Trump’s Historically Bad Approval Ratings. “Nobody has ever started off a presidential term this poorly in the eyes of the American people,” the MSNBC anchor explained.” So, yes, it’s special. This summary was written by William Vaillancourt.
MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow said Thursday that Donald Trump’s historically poor approval ratings for a newly inaugurated president are “sinking like a cinderblock in the ocean” due to the unpopularity of many of his policies.
Last month, Trump again became the only elected president with an initial approval rating of under 50 percent. Additionally, his disapproval rating in January of 48 percent was 3 points higher than in the beginning of his first term.
Currently, Trump’s approval rating is 45 percent—2points below his January mark. “We probably should have seen this coming,” Maddow said.
“I didn’t necessarily believe that it was coming this far, this fast,” she added, before showing the data from Gallup.
“Nobody has ever started off a presidential term this poorly in the eyes of the American people,” Maddow emphasized. “Trump was underwater with the American public from Day One. And since then, he’s been sinking like a cinderblock in an ocean trench. I did not know to expect that.”
“To be fair, part of the reason I’d expected that that Gallup number might go up and not down is because Gallup is not the only game in town. There were other national, well-regarded quality polls that came out right at the start of Trump’s term that did show him in positive territory—not big positive territory—but still positive,” she explained.
But those other polls,like from CNN, Reuters and Washington Post/Ipsos, grew bad for Trump as well.
“And what the data shows is that almost every single thing he has done is soundly and clearly and—in some cases—wildly unpopular with the American people,” Maddow continued, citing a Quinnipiac poll from last week showing Trump underwater on foreign policy, trade, the federal workforce, the Russia-Ukraine war, the Israel-Hamas war and the economy.
Turning to Trump’s “signature issues,” or “the stuff that he thinks makes him look great,” Maddow noted he’s losing public opinion there as well.
“For those categories, the stuff he’s doing is catastrophically unpopular,” she said, pointing to Trump’s plan for the U.S. to take control of Gaza, his dismantling of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs and policies, his institution of tariffs, and him saying he trusts Russian President Vladimir Putin.
On that last issue, the same Quinnipiac poll found that only 9 percent of registered voters held Trump’s view.
Maddow noted that other Trump administration figures like DOGE’s Elon Musk, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, FBI Director Kash Patel, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Vice President JD Vance don’t have positive approval ratings, either.
“All of them are underwater in the new polling,” she said. “The American public does not like any of them.”
Politico focused on the polling for Elon Musk, which was terrible. “Musk underwater in public opinion, 2 polls show. Both Quinnipiac and Pew Research Center reported a majority of voters hold an unfavorable view of Musk’s role in the Trump administration.”
Elon Musk is underwater in public opinion, according to polls published Wednesday.
The surveys by Quinnipiac University and Pew Research Center show that a majority of Americans have an unfavorable view of President Donald Trump’s senior adviser — and the richest man in the world.
Pew’s findings put Musk 12 points under, with 54 percent of respondents reporting an unfavorable view of the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, compared to 42 percent with a favorable view. More specifically, 36 percent reported a very unfavorable view of Musk, and 11% reported a very favorable opinion.
Broken down by party lines, Musk was well-regarded among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents at 73 percent favorability. But far more Democrats disapprove than Republicans, with 85 percent reporting an unfavorable view. Pew did not do a breakdown of only independent voters.
Quinnipiac’s poll results Monday paint a similar picture, but with different questions. 55 percent of voters polled believe Musk has too big a role in the government, compared to 36 percent who think he’s got just enough power and a small minority of 3 percent who said they think he has too little power. This also breaks down by party lines, with 78 percent of Republicans surveyed saying Musk’s power is just right versus 96 percent of Democrats who said they think he has too much.
Of the independent voters polled, 56 percent said they thought Musk has too much power, versus 33 percent who said he has the right amount and 4 percent who think he needs more.
“That didn’t take long. “Russia, Russia, Russia” is back!” John Buss, @repeat1968
Grassroots Republicans are actually getting mad at the Republicans who are not standing up to the Triumvirate. Senators and Representatives are hearing from their Constituents. This is reported by Raw Story’s Matthew Chapman. “‘Stand up for us!’ Republican shouted down as he defends DOGE cuts at town hall.”
Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA) tried to tout massive federal spending cuts proposed by tech billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency task force at a town hall in his heavily Republican district on Thursday evening — and attendees let him have it.
Most constituents who turned up at the packed-house event, laid out by Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Greg Bluestein in a series of posts to X, appeared angry over Musk’s takeover, and more broadly the Trump administration’s attempt to control spending powers. One woman shouted at him that Congress controls the budget, “not the president.”
“And you are doing us a disservice to set that down and not stand up for us,” she yelled.
When McCormick tried to sideline the comment, saying it was being “litigated,” the crowd erupted in anger.
He received similar shout-downs while proposing “bipartisan” ideas to cut the budget, and when he doubled down on his comments from last month that teens in school should not be entitled to lunches and take jobs at McDonald’s rather than “sponge off the government.”
“We’ll have to disagree,” he said as the crowd roared.
The whole spectacle drew a wide reaction from commenters on social media.
“After getting booed for defending DOGE cuts, McCormick (a Republican from Georgia) is trying to sell the constituents at his town hall on cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid,” wrote Aaron Fritschner, deputy chief of staff to Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA). “It’s going about how you’d expect.”
NEW: U.S. consumer sentiment plunges—down 10% from January over tariff and inflation fears.Most people I know think the economy is cooked thanks to Trump’s policies—designed to help the rich and screw working folks.He’s not doing shit to fix the economy or lower costs. Just broken promises.
— Christopher Webb (@cwebbonline.com) 2025-02-21T15:47:44.712Z
This year’s CPAC gathering was more odious than usual. Musk’s weirdness and substance abuse were on full display. This is from The Verge. Sarah Jeong has the coverage. “I cannot describe how strange Elon Musk’s CPAC appearance was. So here’s a literal transcript instead.” I’ve chosen to clip the entrance description for you.
Schmitt: How you guys doing? Nice vibe this month, right? After the best month we’ve ever had. Nice to see you. Thanks for coming out. It’s good to see you. Let’s not kill any more time, let’s bring out Elon Musk.
Crowd goes wild. Elon Musk enters stage, pumping both fists high in the air, walking slightly unsteadily. He is wearing a black MAGA baseball cap and sunglasses that look like they were bought in a gas station in 1989. He continues to pump his fists as he makes his way in front of the beige armchairs at the front of the stage. Rob Schmitt attempts to get his attention, but he turns and waves at the crowd.
Schmitt: We’ve got one more surprise, in case this wasn’t enough.
Musk: Well, President, uh, President Milei has a gift for me.
Schmitt: [hamming at camera] Javier Milei from Argentina, you guys know who that is, right?
Milei, a friendly-looking figure who resembles Bilbo Baggins right before he Smeagolifies, enters the stage carrying a chainsaw. He presents the chainsaw to the billionaire, who then waves it around unsteadily.
Musk: This… is… the chainsaw for bureaucracy. [pumps the chainsaw in the air] CHAINSAAAW!
He takes a beat to examine the chainsaw. He is still wearing his sunglasses. He turns around and starts wandering to the other side of the stage, waving the chainsaw around.
Musk: Uwaaauwaargh!
Milei lurks awkwardly in the background, trying to wave goodbye to Musk, before Schmitt takes notice.
Bannon’s appearance was so noticeably appalling that “French leader cancels CPAC speech after Bannon’s apparent Nazi salute.” The Europeans must think the entire country is on ketamine. This is the French leader of the Right Wing party, the National Rally. This is from Axios.
French far-right leader Jordan Bardella canceled planned remarks at CPAC Friday, after ex-Trump adviser Steve Bannon made a “gesture referring to Nazi ideology,” according to a statement to French news agency Agence France-Presse.
Why it matters: Bardella’s change of plans is the strongest rebuke yet of Bannon, who, during his remarks at the annual conservative conference made a gesture that appeared to mimic a Hitlergruß, or Nazi salute.
- Bannon did not immediately respond to Axios’ request for comment.
- A CPAC representative did not respond to a request for comment Friday.
Driving the news: “At this forum, (Thursday), while I was not present in the room, one of the speakers allowed himself, out of provocation, a gesture referring to Nazi ideology,” Bardella said in a statement to AFP.
- “As a result, I have taken the immediate decision to cancel my speech scheduled for this afternoon at the event.”
The big picture: TheBannon incident comes about a month after Trump-ally Elon Musk also made a hand gesture that drew comparisons to a Nazi salute.
- Despite blowback, Musk dismissed the criticisms, writing on X: “Frankly, they need better dirty tricks. The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired.”
Go deeper: ADL condemns Musk’s Nazi “jokes” after salute controversy
Bannon’s drug abuse must have cleared his memory of the NAZI occupation of France. Semaphor reports that “Steve Bannon calls France’s far-right leader Jordan Bardella ‘a boy, not a man’ after CPAC cancelation.” My personal observation is that Bannon and Musk are not even human.
Donald Trump ally Steve Bannon said French far-right party leader Jordan Bardella was “unworthy to lead France” because he was “a boy, not a man,” after Bardella canceled his scheduled speech at a conservative political event in Washington.
Bardella, the president of the National Rally party, said he decided to drop out of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) after Bannon “allowed himself a gesture alluding to Nazi ideology” during his speech there.
“Yesterday, while I was not present in the room, one of the speakers out of provocation allowed himself a gesture alluding to Nazi ideology,” Bardella said in a statement. “I therefore took the immediate decision to cancel my speech that had been scheduled this afternoon.”
Bannon denied the accusation Friday, saying the gesture was “a wave” that he regularly did at the end of his speeches “to thank the crowd,” including at a National Rally event several years prior. Speaking to a Le Point reporter, Bannon attacked Bardella for the decision to withdraw from CPAC, saying he was “wetting himself like a little child.”
The incident reflects mounting tensions between Trump allies, such as Elon Musk, and Europe’s far-right leaders, some of whom have expressed discomfort with a few of the administration’s positions.
As we appear to be a Russian asset, the big question we all have been asking is, was Trump a Russian Asset the entire time? This is interesting. If you believe this, he was and definitely is. It is still the best explanation for Trump’s bromance with the dude.
A former Soviet intelligence officer alleges Trump was recruited by the KGB in 1987 and given the codename “Krasnov.” Alnur Mussayev served in the 6th Directorate, responsible for counter-intelligence support in the economy. One key objective was “recruiting businessmen from capitalist countries.”
— Jon Cooper (@joncooper-us.bsky.social) 2025-02-21T16:26:52.263Z
This was reported by The Daily Beast. We’ll have to wait for the fact-checking to start.
A former Soviet intelligence officer has alleged that Donald Trump was recruited by the KGB in 1987 and given the codename “Krasnov.”
Alnur Mussayev, 71, a former head of intelligence in Kazakhstan and before that a Soviet KGB officer, made the explosive claim in a Facebook post on Thursday. He claimed that he served in the 6th Directorate of the KGB in Moscow, which was responsible for counter-intelligence support within the economy. One of its key objectives, he claimed, was “recruiting businessmen from capitalist countries.”
The allegation revives claims of Russian collusion or even of being a Russian asset which Trump has denounced as “the Russia hoax,” and which dogged his first term in the White House. Even before he was elected, the FBI had secretly opened an investigation into whether his campaign had illegal ties to Russia, which eventually morphed into the Robert Mueller inquiry—which ended without Trump being charged.
Mussayev wrote that in 1987 “our directorate recruited Donald Trump, a 40-year-old American businessman, under the pseudonym Krasnov.” He offered no corroborating evidence, but is a well-known former senior intelligence agent. The Daily Beast has reached out to him for comment.
In his Facebook post, he said that his department specialized in recruiting spies and intelligence sources from the West, asserting once again that Trump had been brought into the fold.
He made another shocking allegation in another comment, saying: “Today, the personal file of resident ‘Krasnov’ has been removed from the FSB. It is being privately managed by one of Putin’s close associates.”
The Russian family name “Krasnov” stems from the Russian word “krasota,” which means beautiful.
The Soviet Union and its KGB fell in 1991, and Mussayev returned to his native Kazakhstan—a former Soviet republic—from Moscow and then rose to run the new nation’s intelligence apparatus. The KGB’s most direct successor was the Russian FSB which kept its Moscow files.
The timing of his intervention is intriguing, coming as Trump seeks to meet Vladimir Putin—himself a former KGB operative—to discuss a possible deal to end the Ukraine war, in the teeth of opposition from the government in Kyiv.
So, I managed to get through a post without writing about what agencies they are disassembling now. Here are a few other interesting reads for you via Memeorandum.
- Lauren del Valle / CNN: Judge vacates Eric Adams corruption trial but doesn’t immediately dismiss charges
- Jacob Bogage / Washington Post: Trump expected to take control of USPS, fire postal board, officials say
- Qasim Nauman / New York Times: Justice Dept. to Drop Discrimination Case Against Elon Musk’s SpaceX
- Catie Edmondson / New York Times: Senate G.O.P. Passes Budget Resolution, and Punts on Tough Questions
- Amy Maxmen / KFF Health News: Texas Measles Outbreak Nears 100 Cases, Raising Concerns About Undetected Spread
- Catherine Rampell / Washington Post: Why Gen Z men love Trump’s reign of destruction
And then there is this from the AP. (Points up to the Featured Funny today by John Buss.) “Singer of Canadian anthem at 4 Nations Face-Off changes lyric to protest Trump’s 51st state remarks.”
The anthem singer who performed the Canadian anthem prior to the 4 Nations Face-Off championship game Thursday night changed a lyric in “O Canada” as a response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s repeated remarks about making the country the 51st state.
Publicist Adam Gonshor in an email to The Associated Press confirmed Chantal Kreviazuk changed the lyric from “in all of us command” to “that only us command” and confirmed Trump’s 51st state comments were the reason why. During Canada’s 3-2 overtime victory, Kreviazuk told the AP she did it “because I believe in democracy, and a sovereign nation should not have to be defending itself against tyranny and fascism.”
“I’m somebody who grew up on music that spoke to the heart and the moment, and it shaped me as a songwriter and really as a human being,” she added. “I don’t think it would be authentic to me to be given a world stage and not express myself and be true to myself.”
But in Boston, this happened during the Hockey Finals via NewsWeek. “Video Shows Canadian National Anthem Being Booed in Hockey Final Against US.”
Before the puck was dropped for Thursday’s title game, the announcer prefaced the opening ceremony: “In the spirit of the game, we kindly ask that you respect the national anthems and the players that represent each country.”
Still, some boos and jeers rippled across TD Garden in Boston during the rendition of “O Canada.”
The jeering came days after fans in Montreal loudly booed “The Star-Spangled Banner” during the weekend’s testy matchup between the two teams, which the U.S. won 3-1. Days earlier, hockey fans similarly booed the U.S. national anthem when the American squad played Finland in Montreal.
Trump alluded to his gripes with Canada in a Truth Social post earlier Thursday, saying he would “be calling our GREAT American Hockey Team this morning to spur them on towards victory tonight against Canada, which with FAR LOWER TAXES AND MUCH STRONGER SECURITY, will someday, maybe soon, become our cherished, and very important, Fifty First State.”
This is crazy.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
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