Finally Friday Reads: The Incompetent and The Cruel

Posted: March 28, 2025 | Author: dakinikat | 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.

The high-end Swiss watch lent a striking contrast to Noem’s tour of the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, where imprisoned men watched silently from a crowded cell as she recorded a video for a social media post warning undocumented immigrants not to enter the United States.

“If you come to our country illegally, this is one of the consequences you could face,” Noem said.

Noem’s choice of watch kicked off a race among internet sleuths to identify it and infuriated immigration advocates, who said the juxtaposition was insensitive to the harsh reality of mass imprisonment and deportation.

“You’re in front of all these people in a very poor country, who are in the bottom 10 or 20 percent of their country … and it looks like you’re just flaunting your wealth while you flaunt your freedom,” said Adam Isacson, an analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights group.

“This is an administration that is trying to be populist, anti-elite, appeal to the common man,” he added. Meanwhile, there’s “people stacked up like cordwood behind her.”

Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin confirmed the make of the watch in a statement, saying that “then-Governor Noem chose to use the proceeds from her New York Times best selling books to purchase an item she could wear and one day pass down to her children.”

While the #FARTUS purge of immigrants looks like an SS round-up. I fear escalation to Hitler’s Einsatzgruppen (killing squads). It is difficult to predict if they will actually go that far. We’ve already had children in cages and family separation. We also have midnight raids that have spirited away graduate students who have taken part in demonstrations or written op-eds against the bombing of Palestinian civilians in GAZA. This is from Mike Masnik from TechDirt. “Trump’s Secret Police Are Now Disappearing Students For Their Op-Eds.”

For years, we’ve been hearing breathless warnings about a “campus free speech crisis” from self-proclaimed free speech warriors. Their evidence? College students doing what college students have done for generations: protesting speakers they disagree with, challenging institutional policies, and yes, sometimes attempting to create heckler’s vetoes. This kind of campus activism — while occasionally messy and uncomfortable — has been a feature of American higher education since the 1960s. It’s how young people learn to engage with ideas and exercise their own speech rights. Sometimes that activism is silly and sometimes it’s righteous. Often it’s somewhere in between, but it’s kind of a part of being a college student, and learning what you believe in. But now we face an actual free speech crisis on campus that goes beyond just speech. It’s an attack on personal freedoms, due process, and liberty. The federal government isn’t just pressuring universities over speech — it’s literally disappearing students for their political expression. If you support actual free speech, now is the time to speak up. The latest example of this authoritarian overreach is particularly chilling: Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish PhD student at Tufts who was here legally on a student visa, was abducted by masked agents in broad daylight. She was disappeared without due process or explanation — only later did we learn she had been renditioned to a detention center in Louisiana. The video of her kidnapping (because that’s what it was) is terrifying enough. If you listen, you hear her quite understandably surprised reaction with a scream, and then she asks to call the police, only to be told “we’re the police.” None of them are in uniforms. Most of them are masked. Her supposed crime? A year ago, she co-authored an op-ed in The Tufts Daily criticizing her university administration’s stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Not advocating violence. Not supporting terrorism. Not even criticizing the U.S. government. Just exercising core First Amendment rights by publishing criticism of her own university’s policies in a student newspaper. The government has attempted to justify similar renditions (and there is a growing list of victims) by falsely painting targets as “terrorist supporters” — a dangerous conflation of political speech supporting Palestinian rights with support for terrorism. But even those cases typically involved people involved in public protests, which are themselves constitutionally protected activities. This case goes even further: disappearing someone over an innocuous piece of student journalism published a year ago. Everyone should be alarmed. Everyone should be demanding that she (and others) be released and that ICE and DHS stop this horrifying and unconscionable practice. Everyone should be demanding that Trump and Marco Rubio and Kristi Noem stop this Gestapo bullshit. Even if — especially if — you disagree with her views on Israel and Palestine. This isn’t about that. This is about the very concept of freedom. The rights everyone — even visitors — are supposed to have in this country. The right to speak your mind, even if (especially if!) it is opposed to those in power. The right to walk down a street without being kidnapped. The right to due process. If the government genuinely believed Ozturk had violated immigration law or her visa terms (she hadn’t), there are established legal procedures to address such issues. Instead, they chose to send masked goons to disappear her without warning or due process — a chilling message to every other international student that their supposed right to express political opinions comes with the risk of rendition. And, of course, the implied threat is that this won’t stop at international students.

I have taught university classes for decades. Finance and Economic policy are inherently political. We stick to established theory and mention policies in the past that did not work. The two big ones are Tariffs and Tax cuts for the very rich. We have data that shows they don’t work and years of published papers. I fear the Commerce and Labor Secretaries will kill the data, so we cannot teach the theory and the reality using current economic and financial data. Since I’m now technically retired and only teach as an adjunct, I worry a lot about the current faculty. The Republicans have been after tenure for years. Universities and research are a significant source of progress. The attacks on research and the inability to run graduate programs and graduate Doctoral students will mean a lack of qualified professors after we old folks retire, which will severely curtail our leadership in science and the exercise of free thought. That is their goal. This is from Forbes Magazine. “Trump Orders Department Of Education Closure: What Happens Next.” The story is reported by Sarah Hernholm.

President Trump has issued an executive order to close the Department of Education, a move that will reshape federal education policy and affect America’s 49.5 million public school students. The order mandates redistributing the department’s functions across multiple federal agencies by the end of the year, marking a major change in how the federal government approaches education. This decision, long championed by conservatives who believe education should remain primarily a state and local matter, has sparked disagreement about the federal government’s role in education policy, funding, and oversight. The executive order outlines specific transitions for key education functions:

Civil rights enforcement will move to the Justice Department

Federal student loan programs will shift to the Treasury

Special education oversight will transition to Health and Human Services

These changes will affect the management of federal education funding streams totaling over $150 billion annually, including:

$18.8 billion in Title I funding for high-poverty schools, serving approximately 26 million students

$15.5 billion in IDEA funding, supporting 7.3 million students with disabilities

$120.8 billion in Federal Student Aid programs, helping 10.8 million college students

Educational stakeholders stress the importance of ensuring these resources continue without disruption during the transition period, particularly for disadvantaged students who rely heavily on federally funded programs. This will hurt rural and poor urban schools that rely on the funding to offer help for disadvantaged students and students with disabilities. I’m also wondering what will happen to ESL (English as a second language) teachers, programs, school nurses, and psychologists. These things are incredibly expensive.

“The backpedaling is something to behold..” John Buss, @repeat1968.
@johnbuss.bsky.social

Then there’s Pete Hegseth and his keystone cops LARPing military leadership. We got all the war moves and none of the conversation about what it means to target and bomb a civilian apartment. Hey! Hey DOJ! How many kids did they kill that day? They’re all suggesting it was successful, but really? What has all that incompetence brought us? This is breaking news from CNN. “Officials say texts sent by Waltz, Ratcliffe in Signal chat may have damaged US’ ongoing ability to gather intel on Houthis.” Evidently, the intelligence they got from the Israelis was from an on-site agent. But of course, no heads are rolling in any of the meeting’s inept Cabinet. They’ve declared war on The Atlantic instead. This story is reported by Katie Bo Lillis and Zachary Cohen,

Current and former US officials have told CNN they believe two texts sent by national security adviser Mike Waltz and CIA Director John Ratcliffe in the now-infamous group chat involving senior US officials discussing battle plans to strike Houthi targets in Yemen, may have done long-term damage to the US’s ability to gather intelligence on the Iran-backed group going forward.

Although messages from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth detailing the sequencing, timing and weapons to be used in a March attack on the Houthis have drawn the most scrutiny because they could have endangered US servicemembers if revealed, the messages from Waltz and Ratcliffe, in the chat Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg was added to, contained equally sensitive information, these sources said.

In one of the messages, Ratcliffe told other Cabinet members who were discussing whether to delay the strikes that the CIA was in the act of mobilizing assets to collect intelligence on the group, but that a delay might offer them the opportunity to “identify better starting points for coverage on Houthi leadership.”

That text, according to the current and former officials, exposed the mere fact that the US is gathering intelligence on them — bad in and of itself — but also hinted at how the agency is doing it. The language about “starting points,” these people said, suggests clearly that the CIA is using technical means like overhead surveillance to spy on their leadership. That could allow the Houthis to change their practices to better protect themselves.

Then, in a later message, Waltz offered an extremely specific after-action report of the strikes, telling the thread that the military had “positive ID” of a particular senior Houthi leader “walking into his girlfriend’s building” — offering the Houthis a clear opportunity to see who the US was surveilling and potentially figure out how, thus enabling them to avoid that surveillance in the future, the sources said.

The Houthis have “always been difficult to track,” said a former intelligence official. “Now you just highlight for them that they’re in the crosshairs.”

Trump administration officials, including both Waltz and Ratcliffe, have repeatedly insisted that no classified information was shared in the text. Ratcliffe, in his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, specifically referenced his text about “starting points.”

But current and former officials have disagreed vehemently with that assessment: The kinds of information in not just Hegseth’s texts, but Ratcliffe’s and Waltz’s, included very clear references to sources and methods. Even if it wasn’t an explicit or technical description, these people say, it is information that the US government would typically withhold because it might allow an adversary to make an educated interference about US sources and methods.

Ratcliffe’s use of the Signal app in this way is raising eyebrows inside Langley, current and former officials said.

“I think he is going to be viewed skeptically for using the app for that purpose,” one US official told CNN.

“(Ratcliffe) was basically talking as if he was in a SCIF,” said another former intelligence official, referring to a secure room hardened against electronic surveillance that is designed for discussions of classified material.

“He’s the director,” said the first former official, calling Ratcliffe’s text “irresponsible.” “He should know better.”

A CIA spokesperson told CNN, “Director Ratcliffe takes his responsibility to safeguard America’s ability to gather intelligence extremely seriously.”

“Nothing he conveyed in the chat posed any risk to any sources or methods,” the spokesperson said. “The only lasting damage is to the Houthi terrorists who have been eliminated.”

CNN has reached out to the National Security Council for comment.

The primary tool of Trump’s spokespeople is to lie and deny and protect FARTUS at all times.

Former Secretary of State penned this Op-Ed in the New York Times today. “Hillary Clinton: How Much Dumber Will This Get?” Remember, it will get worse; we just can’t forecast how because only the incompetent and cruel can come up with such batshit crazy pogroms. Throw in narcissism and sociopathy, and it’s a forecaster’s nightmare. Clinton’s name has been evoked recently because the same folks who were traumatized by her personal emails being released by their Russian buddies are taking this incredible breach of security cavalierly.

It’s not the hypocrisy that bothers me; it’s the stupidity. We’re all shocked — shocked! — that President Trump and his team don’t actually care about protecting classified information or federal record retention laws. But we knew that already. What’s much worse is that top Trump administration officials put our troops in jeopardy by sharing military plans on a commercial messaging app and unwittingly invited a journalist into the chat. That’s dangerous. And it’s just dumb.

This is the latest in a string of self-inflicted wounds by the new administration that are squandering America’s strength and threatening our national security. Firing hundreds of federal workers charged with protecting our nation’s nuclear weapons is also dumb. So is shutting down efforts to fight pandemics just as a deadly Ebola outbreak is spreading in Africa. It makes no sense to purge talented generals, diplomats and spies at a time when rivals like China and Russia are trying to expand their global reach.

In a dangerous and complex world, it’s not enough to be strong. You must also be smart. As secretary of state during the Obama administration, I argued for smart power, integrating the hard power of our military with the soft power of our diplomacy, development assistance, economic might and cultural influence. None of those tools can do the job alone. Together, they make America a superpower. The Trump approach is dumb power. Instead of a strong America using all our strengths to lead the world and confront our adversaries, Mr. Trump’s America will be increasingly blind and blundering, feeble and friendless.

Let’s start with the military, because that’s what he claims to care about. Don’t let the swagger fool you. Mr. Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (of group chat fame) are apparently more focused on performative fights over wokeness than preparing for real fights with America’s adversaries. Does anyone really think deleting tributes to the Tuskegee Airmen makes us more safe? The Trump Pentagon purged images of the plane that dropped the atomic bomb that ended World War II because its name is the Enola Gay. Dumb.
Instead of working with Congress to modernize the military’s budget to reflect changing threats, the president is firing top generals without credible justification. Five former secretaries of defense, Republicans and Democrats, rightly warned that this would “undermine our all-volunteer force and weaken our national security.” Mass layoffs are also hitting the intelligence agencies. As one former senior spy put it, “We’re shooting ourselves in the head, not the foot.” Not smart.

There’s more at the link, which has been gifted.

It’s hard to get through the day without the next chain of what the hell did they do now coming out to beat us senseless. They’re worried about the midterms because FARTUS sent Elise Stefanik back to Congress yesterday. The poor woman won’t get that deluxe apartment in the sky now. This is from Politico. “Stefanik’s withdrawal suggests Republicans are sweating their thin margins. Democrats insist Republicans are panicking.” Democrats shouldn’t be so complacent.

President Donald Trump’s decision to keep Rep. Elise Stefanik in Congress is the clearest sign yet that the political environment has become so challenging for Republicans that they don’t want to risk a special election even in safe, red seats.

A pair of April elections in deep-red swaths of Florida next week was supposed to improve the GOP’s cushion in the House and clear the path for Stefanik’s departure, until Trump said he didn’t “want to take a chance on anyone else running for Elise’s seat.”
The decision to pull Stefanik’s nomination came as Republicans grew increasingly anxious about the race to fill the seat of National Security Advisor Mike Waltz on April 1. Polling in the district, which Trump carried by 30 points, had tightened, and the president himself is hosting a tele-town hall there to try and bail out Republican Randy Fine. An internal GOP poll from late March showed Democrat Josh Weil up 3 points over Fine, 44 to 41 percent, with 10 percent undecided, according to a person familiar with the poll and granted anonymity to discuss it. Tony Fabrizio, Trump’s pollster, conducted the survey. That result spooked Republicans and spurred them to redouble efforts to ensure a comfortable win in the district, according to two people familiar with internal conversations. Some Republican strategists said it’s not worth taking the risk of losing Stefanik’s sprawling northern New York seat, which Trump won by 20 points in 2024.
“Can they defend her seat? Absolutely. But why do you do that right now?” asked Charlie Harper, who was a top aide to former Rep. Karen Handel on her successful 2017 bid in a special election in Georgia.

Harper is not the only Republican making that calculation.

“If we’re far underperforming in seats Trump won by 30 then there’s obvious concern about having to chance special elections in seats Trump won by a lot less,” said one top GOP operative granted anonymity to speak candidly. “The juice is not worth the squeeze sweating them out.”

Okay, that’s enough shock and awe for now. What’s on your reading and blogging list today? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufw9dVys3t0

Finally Friday Reads: Shutdown or Meltdown?

Posted: March 14, 2025 | Author: dakinikat | Filed under: #FARTUS, #MAGAnomics, Elon Musk, kakistocracy, kleptocracy, Polycrisis, Psychopaths in charge | Tags: @repeat1968. John Buss, Chuck Schumer, Doge, FARTUS, government shutdown, Judge orders rehire of Federal workers | 12 Comments

“So, not even two months. Here we are.” John Buss, @repeat1968, @johnbuss.bsky.social

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

I’ve always been an opponent of letting the US Government shut down. As an economist, I know what kind of misery that creates for many people as well, as the possibility of a government default, which could haunt us for many years. My worry is real, but this situation is unique, and typically, the party that tries to shut the government down takes the political heat. I understand what he’s worried about. If we default on debt we become a risky debtor. If we shut the Government down, the weakest among us will suffer needlessly. Default has incredible consequences for the Social Security trust fund, the strength of our dollar, and if anyone will ever buy a US t-bill or t-bond now or ever. That includes war bonds if we ever need them again. I don’t like it, but a default would be unbelievably destructive to the country’s future. I hate that we’re in this position.

How it played out this last night and this morning pitted Schumer against many of his most strong-willed colleagues. Schumer’s support even earned him a pat on the head from #FARTUS. Trump’s always one to take advantage of a bad situation. He interpreted the move as support of the Doge Bulldozer moving through government agencies and policy. That was something one of my Canadian friends from way back in my Fired Dog Lake days predicted. I’d like to read your thoughts on that because I’m unsure how it will be received by folks outside Beltway machinations.

Let’s review what’s out there in the Press and Social media about the move that separated many Democratic senators from the leader. This is from AXIOS as proffered by Andrew Sollender. “House Dems go into “complete meltdown” as Schumer folds”.

House Democrats erupted into apoplexy Thursday night after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he would support Republicans’ stopgap government funding measure.

Why it matters: House Democrats feel like they “walked the plank,” in the words of one member. They voted almost unanimously against the measure, only to watch Senate Democrats seemingly give it the green light.

“Complete meltdown. Complete and utter meltdown on all text chains,” said the member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer sensitive details of members’ internal conversations.

A senior House Democrat said “people are furious” and that some rank-and-file members have floated the idea of angrily marching onto the Senate floor in protest.

Others are talking openly about supporting primary challenges to senators who vote for the GOP spending bill.

Driving the news: Schumer said in a floor speech Thursday that while the GOP measure is “very bad,” the possibility of a government shutdown “has consequences for America that are much, much worse.”

“A shutdown would give Donald Trump the keys to the city, the state and the country,” Schumer said.

The comments likely clear a path for at least eight Senate Democrats to vote for the bill — enough for Republicans to overcome the upper chamber’s 60-vote filibuster threshold.

Zoom in: All but one House Democrat voted against the bill earlier this week, in large part because it lacks language to keep the Trump administration from cutting congressionally approved spending.

“There were many battleground Dems in the House … that were uncomfortable, semi-uncomfortable, with the vote,” said one House Democrat. “The Senate left the House at the altar.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), in remarks to his House colleagues at their annual retreat Thursday, lauded them for standing up to President Trump by voting against the bill, according to multiple sources.

When he praised House Democrats’ votes, he received a standing ovation. When he mentioned Senate Democrats, members booed.

What we’re hearing: House Democrats’ text chains lit up Thursday night with expressions of blinding anger, according to numerous lawmakers who described the conversations on the condition of anonymity.

“People are PISSED,” one House Democrat told Axios in a text message.

Several members — including moderates — have begun voicing support for a primary challenge to Schumer, floating Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) as possible candidates, three House Democrats said.

One lawmaker even vowed at the House Democratic retreat to “write a check tonight” supporting Ocasio-Cortez, said the senior House Democrat.

Another Democrat told Axios the ideation has gone a step further: “There is definitely a primary recruitment effort happening right now … not just Schumer, but for everyone who votes no.”

More gossip and speculation at the link.

Schumer himself appeared on Chris Hayes last night as well as wrote an Op-Ed for the New York Times. “Chuck Schumer: Trump and Musk Would Love a Shutdown. We Must Not Give Them One.”

Over the past two months, the United States has confronted a bitter truth: The federal government has been taken over by a nihilist.

President Trump has taken a blowtorch to our country and wielded chaos like a weapon. Most Republicans in Congress, meanwhile, have caved to his every whim. The Grand Old Party has devolved into a crowd of Trump sycophants and MAGA radicals who seem to want to burn everything to the ground.

Now, Republicans’ nihilism has brought us to a new brink of disaster: Unless Congress acts, the federal government will shut down Friday at midnight.

As I have said many times, there are no winners in a government shutdown. But there are certainly victims: the most vulnerable Americans, those who rely on federal programs to feed their families, get medical care and stay financially afloat. Communities that depend on government services to function will suffer.

This week Democrats offered a way out: Fund the government for another month to give appropriators more time to do their jobs. Republicans rejected this proposal.

Why? Because Mr. Trump doesn’t want the appropriators to do their job. He wants full control over government spending.

He isn’t the first president to want this, but he may be the first president since Andrew Jackson to successfully cow his party into submission. That leads Democrats to a difficult decision: Either proceed with the bill before us or risk Mr. Trump throwing America into the chaos of a shutdown.

This, in my view, is no choice at all.

Emptywheel (a friend from my Fire Dog Lake Doays) wrote a scathing piece on the situation. It indicates how desperately we need the Democrats in Congress to get their acts together. It isn’t easy dealing with chaos, but it’s even worse if you contribute to it. “Democrats Have to Stop Making Political Decisions with an Eye Towards 2026.” I’m unsure if that’s all they’re thinking about or if they’re just running around like chickens with their heads caught up.

I’ve been out of pocket as events moved towards today’s cloture vote on the dogshit continuing resolution Republicans have written. It’s not yet clear whether seven Democrats (in addition to John Fetterman) will join Chuck Schumer — who has said he’ll vote for cloture — in helping Republicans pass it, or whether a Democrat will buy some time.

It’s clear that Schumer’s excuse only emphasizes that there are no good options. He says if there’s a shutdown, Republicans will only reopen those parts of government they want. In the face of the shuttering of USAID and dismantlement of Department of Education, that seems like a futile worry.

Among the best arguments I’ve seen against a shutdown, laid out but dropped here by Josh Marshall, is that a shutdown would provide Trump a way to halt legal proceedings by deeming those lawyers non-essential.

I was told yesterday that a major driver for Dems was the fear that a shutdown would slow down or stop the various court cases against DOGE. Honestly, that sounded so stupid to me that I was skeptical. But this afternoon I heard it from other key directions. I don’t know if it’s the biggest driver but just on the basis of what I heard I get a sense that it’s a major one. That seems so wrongheaded, so lawyer-brained, that when I got the final piece of the puzzle in front of me and realized this was a real thing, it was hard for me to even process.

Schumer described it this way in his speech yesterday:

Justice, and the courts, extremely troubling, I believe. A shutdown could stall Federal court cases, one of the best redoubts against Trump’s lawlessness, and could require a furlough of critical staff at the courts, denying victims and defendants alike their day in court, dragging out appeals and clogging the justice system for months and even years.

I don’t think this is lawyer-brained at all. Trump could simply call the lawyers engaged in these suits non-essential, stalling legal challenges in their current status, and then finding new test cases to establish a precedent while judges were stymied.

In both Phoenix, where a reduction in force affected all the people running the courthouse, and in the Perkins Coie lawsuit, where a hearing the other day reviewed all the Executive Branch personnel, from Marshals to GSA, who keep the courthouse running, the Executive’s ability to limit the Judiciary via manipulation of facilities and staff has already become a live issue. Here’s how Beryl Howell described the way in which Trump’s attempt to exclude Perkins Coie from federal buildings could be enforced via Executive branch personnel.

THE COURT: I just want to make sure because we, in the judiciary — we’re the third branch. We are not the executive branch. We are not subject to this guidance. But our landlord, and all of the federal courthouses around the country is GSA —

MR. BUTSWINKAS: GSA.

THE COURT: — General Services Administration. And the people who do the security at our front doors, all across the country in federal courthouses, are DOJ-component employees from the U.S. Marshals Service or court security officers. So they are all executive branch employees.

Meanwhile the court cases are making progress. Just this week, we’ve had two judges order reinstatement of all the people fired, grant FOIA status to DOGE, and grant discovery to Democratic Attorneys General (plus in one of the two reinstatement cases, Judge Alsup ordered a deposition from an OPM person involved in the firing). As of this week, DOGE now has to answer for its actions in the courts.

Imagine, for example, if a shutdown made it easier for DHS to keep Mahmoud Khalil in Louisiana for the duration of a shutdown, even if they simply said moving him back to SDNY (or New Jersey) is not a priority. There are other cases where the government is being ordered to pay back payments; a shutdown would make such recourse unavailable to anyone who has not yet sued. In the financial clawback cases (where EPA and FEMA seized funds already awarded), a shutdown would give the FBI time to try to frame the case against plaintiffs they’re pursuing, while the plaintiffs get no protection in the meantime. A key flaw was revealed in the lawsuit against Perkins Coie in the hearing the other day (which I’ll return to); if given the time, I would expect Trump to try the same trick against another law firm, fixing that flaw, in an attempt to eliminate any anti-Trump legal teams in the country.

So the concern that a shutdown would eliminate one of two sources of power is real.

I’m agnostic about whether a shutdown brings more advantage than risks.

The rest of her essay argues that everyone is far too interested in the midterm elections.

(snip)

One thing I am absolutely certain of, however, is that Democrats on both sides of this debate are framing it in terms of 2026. Those justifiably furious at Chuck Schumer are thinking in terms of primaries against any Senator who supports cloture. They’re demanding a filibuster so that elected Democrats, as Democrats, be seen wielding some power, so the party doesn’t look feckless to potential voters. Those afraid of a shutdown are discussing electoral consequences in 2026. Polls are measuring who would be blamed in the polls.

This mindset has plagued both sides of Democratic debates for two months, with disastrous consequences.

Democracy will be preserved or lost in the next three months. And democracy will be won or lost via a nonpartisan political fight over whether enough Americans want to preserve their way of life to fight back, in a coalition that includes far more than Democrats. You win this fight by treating Trump and Elon as the villain, not by making any one Democrat a hero (or worse still, squandering week after week targeting Democratic leaders while letting Elon go ignored).

Either way, this is an untenable situation.

Today is another day of the country finding out none of this is normal. NBC News has a running thread on every crazy thing on deck for the Beltway today. “Government shutdown live updates: Senate to vote on funding bill today; Dr. Mehmet Oz faces confirmation hearing. President Donald Trump will deliver remarks at the Justice Department, a frequent target of his and his allies’ government weaponization claims.” Have I mentioned I have a TV, but it’s been sitting in a box for nearly three years? I just don’t have the stamina to set it up and watch all this craziness on a big screen.

Reality TV stars and swindlers are about all Trump has to offer up these days.

Hassan grills Dr Oz about promoting a bunch of scam "medical" products on TV, including "raspberry ketones." She notes that "it seems to me you are still unwilling to take accountability for your promotion of unproven snake oil remedies to millions of your viewers."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-03-14T16:04:34.209Z

The only good news I found today was this.

Judges order Trump to rehire thousands of fired federal workers.

Two federal courts are ruling that the firings of probationary federal workers were improper and that tens of thousands of those employees must be immediately reinstated. The Trump administration is calling the ruling absurd and unconstitutional and is vowing to fight back. NBC’s Garrett Haake reports for “TODAY.”

It seems we are fully reliant on the Judiciary Branch to stop the destruction of our Government and democracy. It’s not like we didn’t warn people, either. This is in Fortune, as reported by the AP. ” The Trump administration must bring back thousands of federal workers fired by Elon Musk’s DOGE, judge rules.” The Judge really read the riot act to the Federal attorney also.

A federal judge on Thursday ordered President Donald Trump’s administration to reinstate thousands—if not tens of thousands—of probationary workers let go in mass firings across multiple agencies last month, saying that the terminations were directed by a personnel office that had no authority to do so.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco ordered the departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Defense, Energy, the Interior and the Treasury to immediately offer reinstatement to employees terminated on or about Feb. 13 and 14 using guidance from the Office of Personnel Management and its acting director, Charles Ezell.

Alsup directed the agencies to report back within seven days with a list of probationary employees and an explanation of how the departments complied with his order as to each person.

The temporary restraining order came in a lawsuit filed by a coalition of labor unions and organizations as the Republican administration moves to dramatically downsize the federal workforce.

The White House and the Department of Justice did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

Alsup expressed frustration with what he called the government’s attempt to sidestep laws and regulations governing a reduction in its workforce — which it is allowed to do — by firing probationary workers who lack protections. He was appalled that employees were fired for poor performance despite receiving glowing evaluations just months earlier.

“It is sad, a sad day, when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that’s a lie,” he said. “That should not have been done in our country.”

Opinion: 3 ways DOGE challengers could win court cases from CNN

It’s the day before my favorite holiday, The Ides of March. For those who don’t know, if I could go back in time and eliminate before they came into power, it would be the baby that became Julius Ceasar. They offed him too late to help history. So, there’s likely a few folks walking around the White House right now that should Beware the Ides of March. Nipping the Roman Empire in the bud would have definitely put us farther away from the Dark Time Line.

Here’s tomorrow’s version of the Ides of March.

Donald Trump has suggested that the US should buy Gaza, will get Greenland “one way or another” as well as the Panama Canal, ignited a new trade war, floated the annexation of Canada, and hired the world’s richest weirdo (who also happens to be the world’s richest man) to fire tens of thousands of federal employees. And that’s just one country.
Romania’s leading presidential candidate was arrested after winning the first round of elections with the assistance of Russian bots, showing that Putin is determined to mess with all his neighbors. Look for the Moldovan election in a few months; Russia is sowing chaos with energy sabotage.
Germany’s most successful far-right party since World War II just had a record-breaking result after the the US basically endorsed them. And don’t be fooled by Friedrich Merz’s lack of flair: The Europeans are about to try to build an independent defense, give the American abdication.
China’s DeepSeek has upended the AI market, throwing Silicon Valley into full-blown panic mode. And it will soon dominate the renewable energy market and have just been given a monumental soft-power gift the US abdication of 80 years of global leadership of the free world.

Tara Palmeri writes this on her blog, Red Letter. “Fear and Loathing in the West Wing. Inside the revolt against Elon Musk…”

The tolerance for Elon Musk inside of the White House is wearing thin, as they deal with the fallout of his calamitous interview with Larry Kudlow when he touched the third rail – entitlements. Even though Trump’s staffers are terrified of Musk, they know that if you try to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, you die, politically speaking.

“It’s no longer simmering resistance, people are fucking furious,” said a source with knowledge of the situation.

“Medicaid is not just for Black people in the ghetto, these are our voters,” said a Republican operative close to the White House.

Even before the interview, I’m told that the White House communications team was adamantly against letting Musk do the interview with Kudlow, even though he’s a former administration official and ally. They know that FOX News is a network that their older, white working-class voters watch closely and this was a rare televised interview for Musk, not the same as getting high with Joe Rogan.

Now they’re playing cleanup. Sure, they sent out a “Fact Check” memo from the White House highlighting that his words were garbled when he said he’s looking at the “waste and fraud in entitlement spending,” not entitlements all together. But then Musk went further, falsely claiming in the interview that Democrats use entitlement programs to attract illegal immigrants into the country so that they can add them to their voter rolls. It doesn’t help that earlier this month, Musk referred to Social Security as “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.”

You can even see Kudlow shifting around uncomfortably during the interview.

Trump’s spokesperson Steven Cheung denied that there was an issue. “We love [Musk] doing media,” he said, pointing to his joint interview with Trump on Sean Hannity.

As promised, I want to share the ins and outs of my reporting process with you, so I first reached out to Trump’s personal pollster John McLaughlin after I learned about the meltdown over Musk’s interview to ask if he’s been polling Musk’s response in the interview. And I was shocked to learn that McLaughlin has not polled Musk at all, even though he’s clearly a political liability to the President. McLaughlin has been polling Trump for decades and was one of the main pollsters alongside Tony Fabrizio on the campaign. He said the last poll that he conducted that even remotely touched on Musk was about DOGE in November 2024 and it did not mention Musk by name.

“No one has asked us to do that poll,” McLaughlin told me.

Well, the public polling shows that the numbers for Musk – what some would call Trump’s heat shield – have been in free fall since Trump took office, with more than 53 percent of people having an unfavorable opinion of Musk, according to a new CNN poll. But surely Trump’s political operation, which to be fair is an impressive one, would want to know if Musk was starting to become a liability. No political consultant in Washington trusts public polling. They’d probably trust the opposition party’s polling over public polling. So that leaves me to believe that they are afraid of Trump’s appendage or it’s because Musk just donated $100 million to Trump’s political arm, which just so happens to be run by Trump’s other pollster Fabrizio. When I asked Fabrizio if he’s conducting polls on Musk favorables, he didn’t get back to me.

Regardless, I’ve heard that the White House is aware that Musk’s numbers are “dog shit,” according to a source. “

Frustrating Friday Reads: Where are the pitchforks, torches, and guillotines?

Posted: February 14, 2025 | Author: dakinikat | Filed under: "presidential immunity", kakistocracy, misogyny, Project 2025, Psychopaths in charge, public corruption, racism in MAGA, religious extremists | Tags: @johnbuss.bsky.social John Buss, @repeat1968. John Buss, CDC massive firings, From Russia with bad intentions, JD Vance Weirdo and perv, Kash Patel, My funny valentine, Pete Hegseth weirdo sexual assaulter, Saturday Night Massacre, Thursday Night Slaughter, US Attorneys | 5 Comments

“Resist!”
John (repeat1968) Buss
‪@johnbuss.bsky.social‬

It’s another Sad Day, Sky Dancers!

This may be the only hope we have left. Three GOP seats are heading to Special Elections. A Democratic Party Trifecta would be enough for Dems to regain control! The rest of the news has the indicators of a Constitutional Crisis and, as BB and JJ have said, a Coup. Former US Attorneys Barbara McQuade and Harry Littman have inside information on something that makes Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre look like a picnic. JJ and BB are flooding my sms with some of the worst headlines I have ever seen.

The last three weeks have been unending and brutal. The roll-out of Project 2025 is the most consequential threat to our Republic since the Civil War. And it’s coming from the White House. This headline from The Salt Lake Tribune shows how horrifying it’s getting in the states that are Republican Red have gone down the War Path against everything decent, just, and fair. “Nazi flags can fly in Utah schools, but not pride flags, GOP lawmaker says. A new bill would allow for Nazi and Confederate flags to be displayed in some instances in Utah schools and government buildings, but pride flags would be banned.”

Here are the Litman and McQuade conversations about the DOJ’s Thursday night Slaughter.

Strong rumor with credible sourcing: DOJ has put all of public integrity line attorneys in a room and told them they have an hour for someone to choose who will sign motion to dismiss and if nobody does, they will all be fired. The nastiest strong-arming in DOJ history by a long shot.

— Harry Litman (@harrylitman.bsky.social) 2025-02-14T16:07:55.931Z

This is Saturday night massacre in free fall. A day that will live in infamy in DOJ. 22 people in room. it's savage. hard to imagine greater disrespect for DOJ professionals.

— Harry Litman (@harrylitman.bsky.social) 2025-02-14T16:11:12.111Z

Very proud of the 8 DOJ attorneys who have refused to dismiss the Adams case. Their oath is to the Constitution, not the president.

— Barb McQuade (@barbmcquade.bsky.social) 2025-02-14T12:28:35.393Z

McQuade shared this from the New York Times.

In less than a month in power, President Trump’s political appointees have embarked on an unapologetic, strong-arm effort to impose their will on the Justice Department, seeking to justify their actions as the simple reversal of the “politicization” of federal law enforcement under their Biden-era predecessors.

The ferocious campaign, executed by Emil Bove III — Mr. Trump’s former criminal defense lawyer who is now the department’s acting No. 2 official — is playing out in public, in real time, through a series of moves that underscore Mr. Trump’s intention to bend the traditionally nonpartisan career staff in federal law enforcement to suit his ends.

That strategy has quickly precipitated a crisis that is an early test of how resilient the norms of the criminal justice system will prove to be against the pressures brought by a retribution-minded president and his appointees.

On Thursday, the interim U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Danielle R. Sassoon, resigned rather than sign off on Mr. Bove’s command to dismiss the corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams of New York. Ms. Sassoon is no member of the liberal resistance: She clerked for the conservative Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, and had been appointed to her post by Mr. Trump’s team.

Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of the Department of Defense Pete Hegseth headed to Europe to evidently blow up the relationships with all of our major allies. The two surly men’s visit was not appreciated. This happened while Trump announced that he and Putin would be visiting each other’s country to tie up Ukraine’s surrender. Vance has been sent to chat with Ukriane’s President Zelensky at the Munich Conference, which they are both attending. Analysis of his speech can be found at this link. ‘Threat I worry most is threat from within,’ Vance criticises European leaders – summary.”

US vice-president JD Vance has urged Europe to put forward a positive case for freedom and act against “the threat that I worry most, the threat from within” which he put as “the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values” through restrictions on free speech, content moderation rules online, and political firewalls against radical parties.

Meanwhile, The Guardian also reports a drone attack on Chornobyl. “Russian drone detonates on Chornobyl nuclear plant containment shell.” The International Atomic Energy Agency has some astounding pictures shown in the article.

A Russian drone carrying a high-explosive warhead struck the protective containment shell of the Chornobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine overnight, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said.

He described the move, coming amid speculation about potential peace talks with Russian president Vladimir Putin, as “a very clear greeting from Putin and Russian Federation to the security conference.”

Ukrainian security services said the drone was a Geran-2, the Russian name for the Iranian-designed Shahed-136, and had been intended to hit the reactor enclosure, Reuters noted.

Zelenskyy said the damage to the shelter was “significant” and had started a fire, but he added that radiation levels at the plant had not increased.

The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, denied Moscow was responsible for the attack. Without presenting evidence, he said Ukrainian officials wanted to thwart efforts to end the war through negotiations between Trump and Putin.

In a wide-ranging and fiery speech peppered with European references, he accused European leaders of abandoning their roots as “defenders of democracy” during the cold war by what he believes is the process of shutting down dissenting voices (14:51).

He said they were increasingly looking “like old entrenched interests hiding behind ugly Soviet era words like misinformation … who simply don’t like that idea that somebody with an alternative viewpoint might express a different opinion” (14:55).

He criticised “cavalier” statements from European officials “sounding delighted” about the cancelled presidential elections in Romania or expansive content moderation powers or other free speech restrictions in the US, Germany and Sweden, saying there were “shocking to American ears” (14:46).

He also criticised European leaders for “running in fear of your own voters,” including on migration, saying that risks destroying democracy from within by disenchanting the population from taking part in democratic processes (15:01).

He dismissed any criticism of Elon Musk’s alleged interference in European elections, saying “if American democracy can survive 10 years of Greta Thunberg’s scolding, you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk.”

He called for an end of political “firewalls,” a pointed reference to the German arrangement keeping out the far-right parties such as the Alternative für Deutschland, just nine days before the federal election next Sunday (15:01).

But notably, he doesn’t say much about Ukraine, other than a brief comment that the US administration “believes we can come to a reasonable settlement between Russia and Ukraine” (14:44).

The New Republic’s Hafiz Rashid has this take. “JD Vance Escalates Conflict With Europe in Alarming Speech at Munich.”

The vice president criticized European leaders for being afraid of their own voters, in a nod to European far-right parties, such as the AfD in Germany, seeming to threaten a chilling of relations with governments whose ideologies differ from his and Trump’s.

“If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you, nor, for that matter, is there anything that you can do for the American people who elected me and elected President Trump,” Vance said.

Hanging over the conference was Thursday’s attack in the German city, where a car driven by an Afghan immigrant ran into a crowd of people, injuring at least 28. Vance used the incident to bolster a nativist argument for restricting immigration.

“How many times must we suffer these appalling setbacks before we change course and take our shared civilization in a new direction?” Vance asked.

“If American democracy can survive 10 years of Greta Thunberg’s scolding, you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk,” Vance said, downplaying a man currently threatening America’s democracy, as well as that of Germany, and drawing a false equivalence between a climate activist and the world’s richest man.

The vice president may think he struck a blow for the Trump administration’s worldview in Munich Friday, but he’s missing the hypocrisy of his own words. The Trump administration has so far rammed through executive orders instead of passing laws, gutted the federal workforce, undermined the right to a free press, and ignored the outcry from all Americans outside of the MAGA bubble.

Politico has the hot take on Pete Hegseth’s visit to the Munich Security Conference. An actual Republic Congress critter may have a criticism! Amazing! Well, he did try to soften the blow with some obvious ass kissing too. Read for yourself. “Senior Republican senator ‘puzzled’ and ‘disturbed’ by Hegseth’s Ukraine remarks. Senate Armed Services Chair Roger Wicker is breaking with the line from the Trump White House.”

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made a “rookie mistake” when he said a return to Ukraine’s pre-war borders was “unrealistic,” Senate Armed Services Chair Roger Wicker said Friday.

Hegseth on Thursday pulled back some of the comments he made about Ukraine a day earlier, where he said that NATO membership for Kyiv was off the table and that the country could not return to its internationally recognized borders.

“Hegseth is going to be a great defense secretary, although he wasn’t my choice for the job,” the Mississippi Republican told POLITICO on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. “But he made a rookie mistake in Brussels and he’s walked back some of what he said but not that line.”

“I don’t know who wrote the speech — it is the kind of thing Tucker Carlson could have written, and Carlson is a fool,” Wicker said, referring to the pro-Putin broadcaster.

Speaking to Jonathan Martin at the POLITICO Pub in the Munich conference, Wicker — a staunch Ukraine supporter — said he was “surprised” by Hegseth’s original comments and “heartened” that the new defense secretary had reversed course. Wicker said he favors a firm posture with Moscow.

“Everybody knows … and people in the administration know you don’t say before your first meeting what you will agree to and what you won’t agree to,” Wicker said, adding that he was “puzzled” and “disturbed” by Hegseth’s comments.

While I just criticized the governor of Utah, let me not forget to kick the governor of Lousyana in the balls a few times. He’s trying to kill us. This is also from Politico. “Louisiana to end mass vaccine promotion, state’s top health official says. The department will still “stock and provide vaccines,” according to a department memo.”

The Louisiana Department of Health “will no longer promote mass vaccination” according to a Thursday memo written by the state’s top health official and obtained by The Associated Press.

A department spokesperson confirmed Louisiana Surgeon General Ralph Abraham had ordered his staff to stop engaging in media campaigns and community health fairs to encourage vaccinations, even as the state has experienced a surge in influenza.

Abraham’s announcement occurred the same day vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was sworn in by the U.S. Senate to serve as President Donald Trump’s health secretary.

In a separate letter posted on the department’s website, Louisiana’s surgeon general decried “blanket government mandates” for vaccines and criticized the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s COVID-19 vaccination push. Individuals should make their own decisions about vaccinations, Abraham said.

“Government should admit the limitations of its role in people’s lives and pull back its tentacles from the practice of medicine,” said Abraham, a Republican.

I gagged on that last statement because that certainly doesn’t apply to women and girls with functioning ovaries and uteruses. Meanwhile, Trump is planning mass firings at the CDC. Bird Flu, anyone? This is from STAT. “Trump administration to fire thousands at health agencies. Employees across agencies who were hired in the past one to two years are being targeted.” Considering he also wants to end Medicaid, I would say we are about to have a serious amount of deaths on our hands.

The Trump administration is set to eliminate thousands of federal health care jobs Friday, targeting employees across public health and science agencies who were hired in the past one to two years.

Senior officials were informed in meetings Friday morning that roughly 5,200 people on probationary employment — recent hires — across agencies including the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will be fired that afternoon, according to sources briefed on the meetings. CDC leadership was told the Atlanta-based agency would lose about 1,300 workers. The numbers at the NIH are not clear, but exceptions are being made for certain probationary employees, according to a memo viewed by STAT.

The workers will be given a month’s paid leave but lose access to work systems by the end of Friday, according to sources.

In addition to the probationary workers, an unspecified number of contract workers at the CDC and other Health and Human Services agencies have been informed over the course of the past week that their jobs had been terminated, including dozens at the Vaccine Research Center housed at NIH. Many jobs at these agencies are done by contract workers.

Other changes are expected, particularly at the leadership levels of organizations. When Susan Monarez, a former ARPA-H official, was named acting director of the CDC, she informed staff she would transition into the role of acting principal deputy director once Dave Weldon, the nominee to lead the agency, is confirmed. That move signaled that the current acting principal deputy director, Nirav Shah, who joined the CDC in March 2023, was likely out of a job. Earlier this week, Shah told CDC staff that his last day at the agency would be Feb. 28, a source told STAT.

Head of ARPA-H and Biden appointee Renee Wegrzyn told staff Friday morning that she was fired, a source told STAT. The agency, established in 2022 by Biden to work with the private sector on breakthrough medical technology, employs less than 200 workers. Because of the agency’s newness, most employees are considered probationary and could be targeted for layoffs.

Once again, I feel the need to share Tim Miller’s latest at The Bulwark. Trying to preserve American democracy makes for strange bedfellows. Also, they have a Valentine’s poem for everyone!

Roses are red,
The Bulwark is rad—
As we’ve always said:
Orange Man Bad.

Here’s Miller’s lede. “Kash’s Honesty Problem.” Ya think?

For all the many, many, MANY faults of Trump’s other nominees, none of them impulse-lied to senators’ faces while under oath in a confirmation hearing, as if they were a troublemaking toddler telling their parents they didn’t drop the cake, hoping no one noticed their face was covered in chocolate icing.

But that seems to be what Kash Patel did—and not on a matter of negligible import. Patel told the Senate Judiciary Committee that “I don’t know what’s going on right now over there” in the FBI, and that he was “not aware” of plans to fire FBI agents and officials who had investigated Donald Trump and January 6th. But according to several whistleblowers and contemporaneous notes, this was not true. From the Washington Post:

“KP wants movement at FBI,” one attendee purportedly wrote in the notes Durbin reviewed.

This was just the latest in a string of ostentatious lies that Patel told the senators set to confirm him—and basically anyone else who has had the displeasure of recently encountering him. Here’s just a modest sampling:

Patel had previously said “we went to the studio and recorded [the J6 Prison Choir], mastered it, digitized it, and put it out as a song” but during his confirmation hearing he told Sen. Adam Schiff that the “we” repeatedly invoked in that sentence did not actually include him because he was not involved. He claimed he was using “the proverbial we”—I guess he means the royal “We”—you know, the editorial. It is the type of semantic lie that would make even Slick Willy blush.

A state court judge overseeing one of the January 6th cases said Patel was “not a credible witness” because his testimony was “not only illogical . . . but completely devoid of any evidence in the record.”

Patel has vastly exaggerated his résumé, claiming, among other things, that he was the “the Main Justice lead prosecutor for Benghazi” when in fact he had a junior supportive role—one he began after the investigation had started and left before the first case went to trial.

A Trump adviser told the Atlantic that Patel had more than once claimed he was the person who “‘gave the order’ for U.S. forces to move in and kill the ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2019”—even though he was not even in the Situation Room.

Former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper wrote in his book that Patel’s lies about a Seal Team Six hostage rescue in Africa led to an international incident that put their lives at risk.

Patel has repeatedly lied about the FBI having a role in January 6th, advancing the absurd Ray Epps conspiracy theory.

Then there were his claims that he was present when Trump magically declassified the documents he was keeping at Mar-a-Lago, and then pleaded the Fifth when asked about it in front of a grand jury.

I could keep going, but really, the story of Kash is best summed up in this anecdote from Elaina Plott Calabro’s Atlantic profile. Calabro wrote that Patel often says he and Trump are “just a ‘couple of guys from Queens,’” when Patel isn’t even from Queens. He’s from Garden City! That’s not the 313.

We’re still not living in the United States of America, are we? The abhorrent actions of Trump, Musk, and underlings puts the word Banana in the Republic.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Finally Friday Reads: The Turn of the Screw

Posted: December 20, 2024 | Author: dakinikat | Filed under: kakistocracy, kleptocracy, Polycrisis | Tags: @johnbuss.bsky.social, @repeat1968. John Buss, Bayou Moses, Elon Musk is a NAZI, Federal Budget and Deficit, House Speaker Mike Johnson, President-Eject Incontinentia Buttocks | 9 Comments

“Meanwhile, at Mars-a-Lago… Donold’s training pays off..” John Buss, @repeat1968,@johnbuss.bsky.social

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

With its tumultuous and ineffective leadership, the aptly named chaos caucus again plays a game of brinkmanship that risks American lives and the economy. I’m getting way too old for this kind of torment. The Republican-led Congress has completely forgotten its role in governance and its duties, ensuring the stability required for all the entities that rely on that and the rule of law to function. They only seem to air grievances and feed their raging ids. This year’s version comes with a dangerous twist. The prime chaos factor is the richest man on earth who was not elected or officially appointed to anything. His claim to fame is funding the Trump campaign and those of other Republican elected officials, and he has no clue about our system of government, our institutions, our Constitution, or, for that matter, anything. He’s also bugfuck crazy.

President Eject Incontinentia Buttocks is huddled down in Florida doing God knows what, and J Dank has gone missing. Milk cartons will soon have to show his picture and ask, “Have you seen this vice president?” Bayou Moses looks to be the next biggest loser of the House Speaker’s Gavel. The country looks like some twisted version of The Mouse That Roared. How are we to deal with a Cabal of Billionaires empowered by an angry crew of religious nuts, bigots, and know-nothings? They appear to own the house and the Supreme Court at the moment.

Meanwhile, back in the world of the same old shit, we get Mitch McConnell suddenly lecturing everyone and seemingly trying to protect the old magic ways of the US Senate. McConnell thinks he can swiftly change roles from Macbeth to King Lear. The Democratic Party is appointing the same old group that hasn’t been able to do anything to stop this to leadership positions. I cannot be the only one who doesn’t see any of this ending well.

So, how on earth did Elon Musk blow up a bipartisan deal on the budget? This is from Sam Stein writing at The Bulwark. “Elon Killed the Budget Deal. Cancer Research for Kids Was Collateral Damage. Advocates were celebrating the inclusion of money and provisions to help fund pediatric research. And then the tweets started.”

THE DECISION BY REPUBLICAN LEADERSHIP to scuttle a bipartisan funding deal on Thursday night has left lawmakers scrambling and others anxiously bracing for a government shutdown.

For a host of issue advocates, however, the prevailing mood in Washington, D.C. was one not of chaos but utter devastation.

The initial deal that congressional leaders had agreed to included a number of key priorities that, in the course of hours, were jettisoned by GOP leaders looking to calm Elon Musk’s pique and satisfy Donald Trump’s demands. And though the slimmed-down bill that Trump endorsed in its place failed to pass the House, few people expected that the initial deal would make a comeback—meaning that many of its components were likely gone for good.

The list of provisions left in the dust heap was lengthy. The initial compromise bill included language to ensure that providers of internet service to rural areas weren’t ripping off customers, to protect consumers from hidden hotel fees, to secure semiconductor supply chains, to restrict U.S. outbound investment in China, even to prohibit deepfake pornography. All those were all gone in the successor bill.

But some of the hardest cuts to swallow involved medical research. In particular, advocates say, the revised funding bill delivered a devastating blow to the fight against pediatric cancer.

The slimmed-down version was stripped of language that would have allowed children with relapsed cancer to undergo treatments with a combination of cancer drugs and therapies. (Currently the Food and Drug Administration is only authorized to direct pediatric cancer trials of single drugs.) The bill also didn’t include an extension of a program that gave financial lifelines, in the form of vouchers, to small pharmaceutical companies working on rare pediatric diseases. It was also missing earlier provisions that would have allowed for kids on Medicaid or CHIP—that is, poor children—to access medically complex care across state lines.

And, of course, Trump wants to ensure that there’s a two-year extension of the Debt Ceiling so that he can give away the Treasury to his Cabal and grift off the nation without having to take on the burden of once again landing the Federal Budget into record-setting red zones. He seriously believes that the voters will blame all these shenanigans on Biden, who is trying to Trump-proof things and get Federal judges appointed to the bench. Musk is on a rampage to replace the governments that once fought NAZIs with NAZIs all over the world and evidently has the money to attempt it. This is from New York Magazine. “Musk Pauses Torment of GOP to Praise German Extremists.” Nia Prater has the analysis.

Elon Musk has spent the better part of this week working to derail Congress’s attempt to fund the government, but he found time early Friday morning to express support for the politics of Alternative für Deutschland or Alternative for Germany, the country’s most prominent far-right political party.

“Only the AfD can save Germany,” Musk wrote on X early Friday morning.

The comment was in response to a video posted by Naomi Seibt, a German far-right activist, that criticized Friedrich Merz, the leader of the conservative party Christian Democratic Union of Germany. Recently, Merz has been leading in the polls to become the nation’s next chancellor next year. The caption for Seibt’s video read, “The presumptive next chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) is horrified by the idea that Germany should follow Elon Musk’s and Javier Milei’s example. He staunchly rejects a pro-freedom approach and refuses any discussion with the AfD.”

The AfD is a nationalist and anti-immigration party that has seen its popularity steadily grow over the last several years. In September, the party won its first state election, becoming the first far-right party to win an election in Germany since the Nazis, per CNN. AfD’s candidate in that race, Björn Höcke, is a controversial figure who has been fined for using a Nazi slogan and criticized for a speech many denounced as antisemitic.

Olaf Scholz, the current chancellor of Germany, was dismissive of Musk’s words when asked about them during an unrelated press conference with Estonian prime minister Kristen Michal on Friday. “We have freedom of speech, and that also applies to multibillionaires,” Scholz said, per Bloomberg. “But freedom of speech also means that you can say things that are not right and do not contain good political advice.”

This is not the first time that Musk has indicated support for AfD. Last year, The Guardian reported that Musk shared a pro-AfD post that criticized Germany funding charity groups that operate ships that rescued migrants, referring to the migrants as “illegal immigrants.”

“Let’s hope AfD wins the elections to stop this European suicide,” the post read.

Musk, who intends to play an starring role in Donald Trump’s second term, has similarly shown an affinity for other conservative leaders in Europe. He’s been pictured with Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni and Nigel Farage, a British politician who leads the right-wing populist party Reform UK. In recent days, there’s been speculation that Musk might be considering a massive multimillion-dollar donation to Farage’s party, prompting worries among watchdog groups.

Musk has such a manic schedule, given he’s also trying to give parts of Ukraine to Putin, threatening to oust the Canadian PM, and blowing up the US economy today. Canadian TV had this headline last week. “Elon Musk calls Justin Trudeau ‘insufferable tool’ in new social media post.” Musk is channeling his inner Lex Luther!

Billionaire Elon Musk is calling Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “an insufferable tool” in a new social media post on Wednesday.

“Won’t be in power for much longer,” Musk also wrote about the prime minister on “X.”

Musk was responding to a video posted of Trudeau, in which the prime minister described Kamala Harris’ U.S. presidential loss as a setback for women’s progress.

“We were supposed to be on a steady, if difficult sometimes, march towards progress. And yet, just a few weeks ago, the United States voted for a second time to not elect its first woman president,” Trudeau said during a speech at the Equal Voice Foundation Gala in Ottawa on Tuesday night.

Trudeau also said women’s rights and women’s progress are “under attack overtly and subtly,” and that he “always will be a proud feminist.”

Musk, who is the CEO of Tesla and founder of space company SpaceX, has been tasked to co-chair U.S. president-elect Donald Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency. He was also a prominent figure in Trump’s election campaign.

Wednesday’s post is Musk’s latest swipe at the prime minister since Trump was re-elected in November. Responding to a user on “X” on Nov. 7 asking for Musk’s help to get rid of Trudeau, Musk wrote “He will be gone in the upcoming election.”

Ontario Premier Doug Ford says he let Trudeau know his comments were “not helpful.”

Ford, who with the rest of Canada’s premiers, met with the prime minister and several of his cabinet ministers on Wednesday to discuss how Canada would respond to Trump’s tariff threats.

“Donald Trump was elected democratically,” Ford said, adding that the premiers made sure Trudeau “got the message loud and clear.”

Musk’s post also comes during a tense time in Canada-U.S. relations.

Trudeau has been facing social media jabs from Trump following the prime minister’s visit to Mar-a-Lago nearly two weeks ago to discuss Trump’s tariff threat. Last month, Trump threatened to impose a 25 per cent tariff on all Canadian imports on his first day in office unless Canada addresses his border security concerns.

Following that meeting, U.S. network Fox News reported Trump joked during the dinner in Florida that if the potential tariffs would harm the Canadian economy — as the prime minister conveyed to him — perhaps Canada should become America’s 51st state(opens in a new tab).

Days later, Trump posted an A.I.-generated image to social media that depicted him standing next to a Canadian flag(opens in a new tab) and overlooking a mountain range with the caption “Oh Canada!”

Evidently, since he managed to buy the US Presidency and dupe enough dolts into voting for the Dotard, he thinks he can do it with Canada and a good portion of Europe. He’s also being all kissy-face with the UK’s Nigel Farage. The AP characterizes all these shenanigans thusly. “Musk ascends as a political force beyond his wealth by tanking budget deal.” Is the legacy media going to sleep through all of this and cover it like mundane news? Thomas Beaumont has the analysis.

In the first major flex of his influence since Donald Trump was elected, Elon Musk brought to a sudden halt a bipartisan budget proposal by posting constantly on his X megaphone and threatening Republicans with primary challenges.

The social media warnings from the world’s wealthiest man preceded Trump’s condemnation of a measure negotiated by GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson, which effectively killed the stopgap measure that was designed to prevent a partial shutdown of the federal government.

Washington was scrambled a day after Musk’s public pressure campaign. Trump on Thursday first declined to say whether he had confidence in Johnson. But later in the day, Trump praised him and House leaders for producing “a very good Deal,” after they announced a new plan to fund the government and lift the debt ceiling.

Before the new deal was reached, Congressional Democrats mocked their GOP counterparts, with several suggesting Trump had been relegated to vice president.

“Welcome to the Elon Musk presidency,” Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia of California wrote on X.

What was clear, though, is Musk’s ascendance as a political force, a level of influence enabled by his great wealth. In addition to owning X, Musk is the CEO of Tesla and Space X.

Since the Supreme Court decided Citizens United, unelected billionaires have bought Supreme Court Decisions and Justices. That’s taken a while to ferret out because the crooked Supreme Court Justices haven’t reported their spoils, and they have no ethics standards. We know they’ve got lobbyists that hand out checks, but most of them do not want to be caught in the act of kleptocracy. Musk has the audacity of a Bond villain. It’s just out there for all to see and the press to cover.

House Speaker Bayou Moses has yet another agreement to put forward as the clock ticks to midnight EST. This is from The Hill. “Johnson says he has plan C to avert shutdown, vote expected.” I’ll believe it when I see it, frankly.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said he has a plan C to avert a shutdown and the House will vote Friday morning on the legislation — but Republicans indicated there is not yet widespread agreement.

“Yeah, yeah, we have a plan,” Johnson said Friday morning as he entered the Capitol. “We’re expecting votes this morning, so you all stay tuned. We’ve got a plan.”

He did not say what it entails. And lawmakers leaving meetings in Johnson’s office Friday morning indicated that there was not yet an agreement on a path forward.

“Anybody who’s telling you there’s an agreement is just a little bit ahead of themselves,” Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), chair of the Republican Main Street Caucus, said as he left the Speaker’s office later Friday morning.

Lawmakers have little time to avoid a shutdown: Government funding runs out when the clock strikes midnight late Friday.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) said on CNBC on shortly after Johnson’s comments Friday morning that he thinks Washington will probably avoid a shutdown since “we’re pushed up against Christmas here,” saying a “clean” funding extension is likely.

“There’s a chance today a clean CR [continuing resolution], short-term clean CR — it may be for two, three weeks,” Mullin said. “That was something that was discussed, you know, late last night, you know, even some discussions this morning. I’m not going to say that’s going to happen, but you know, that’s really the option that’s on the table.”

This is the usual way for them to avoid the problems. Just keep kicking that can. This just prolongs things. This process has historically been messy and difficult. We may see a technical shutdown tonight, and that does not bode well, given the current antics and players. This is from The Hill. “NY Democrat: ‘Elon Musk has Donald Trump in a vise.” Joanne Haner has the lede.

Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) on Thursday suggested Elon Musk is the one directing the Trump administration, not President-elect Trump, pointing to the tech entrepreneur’s leading position in opposing the government funding stopgap measure.

“Elon Musk has Donald Trump in a vise,” Goldman said on MSNBC on Thursday. “And it is very clear that Elon Musk is now calling the shots.”

Musk made several social media posts Wednesday criticizing the spending measure deal unveiled by House Republicans this week. He called the more than 1,500-page measure a big “piece of pork” while calling on GOP lawmakers to oppose it.

Trump later in the day also called for the bill to be dismissed, suggesting instead that Congress pass a clean continuing resolution with a debt hike increase. That proposal was rejected Thursday night, and Congress is now working on a plan C with less than 24 hours to go before the deadline.

“We need to face the reality: Right now, we have President Elon Musk. And Trump? Maybe he’s vice president, I guess,” Goldman said. “Vice presidents don’t do much, so that makes sense. He might be the chief of staff. I don’t know what you call him, but he is not calling the shots.”

Goldman is not the only Democrat saying Musk is the one calling the shots in the administration; a number of Democrats have made similar arguments, while the White House has said Trump and the GOP are doing the bidding of billionaires.

Meanwhile, the government is making plans for a shutdown. This is from the Washington Post.

House Republicans are discussing the latest plan from leadership to fund the government and avoid a shutdown before a midnight deadline. Several Republicans said the Rules Committee will meet to send two separate bills to the floor, which would need a simple majority to pass. They are: A clean extension of current fiscal levels until mid-March that includes an extension of a farm bill that requires reauthorization, and a $110 billion relief bill to help natural disaster survivors and aid farmers. Republicans had no plans for an immediate vote on suspending the debt limit, despite President-elect Donald Trump’s repeated demands. At the White House, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre lashed out at Republicans who had agreed to a bipartisan deal and then abandoned it. “This is a mess that Speaker [Mike] Johnson created, that is his mess to fix,” she told reporters at the daily briefing, adding that there was “still time” for Republicans to “do the right thing.” The Office of Management and Budget alerted federal agencies Friday morning to prepare for an imminent government shutdown.

The budget fiasco isn’t the only thing threatening the US and the Global Economies. Trump is just not giving up on his ignorant view of tariffs. This is from CNBC. Trade negotiations are not subject to the art of the Deal. They are gamesmanship on an entirely different level. “‘Tariffs all the way’: Trump says European Union must buy U.S. oil and gas in trade ultimatum.” He thinks he looks like a tough guy, but anyone who knows about economic policy knows he just looks like an idiot.

Trump has made threats of sweeping tariffs on U.S. trading partners including China, Mexico and Canada a signature part of his presidential campaign — and he’s continued the narrative as he prepares to enter office, despite economists warning of risks to domestic inflation.

Analysts say there is high uncertainty over the extent of the tariffs Trump will be willing — or able — to follow through with, and how much of his rhetoric is a starting point for striking deals.

His latest comment comes after EU heads of state held their final meeting of the year on Thursday, during which the topic of Europe-U.S. relations was discussed.

“The message is clear: the European Union is committed to continue working with the United States, pragmatically, to strengthen transatlantic ties,” European Council President António Costa said following the meeting.

Enrico Letta, former prime minister of Italy and dean of the IE School of Politics, Economics and Global Affairs, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Friday that the EU needed to be prepared to retaliate to Trump’s threat.

“I think it is a transactional approach, we have to respond to this transactional approach. [Trump] mixes together energy and tariffs on goods, manufacturing and so on. I think it’s incorrect because the two topics are completely different,” Letta said.

“If the deal is proposed by Trump — such an asymmetric deal on topics that are not linked one to the other — I think we have to do the same.”

“Considering that the most asymmetric part is the relationship on the financial side, we have to start considering that maybe replying on the financial side could be a solution,” he said.

Ahead of the U.S. election in November, EU officials spent months preparing for a lurch toward U.S. protectionism and for a more confrontational relationship with the White House, in the event of a Trump victory. The EU has also made moves toward strengthening its relationship with the U.K., which left the bloc in 2020, as a guard against potential clashes over trade and defense.

It’s disturbing that many folks and the media are acting like Joe Biden is already out of the picture. However, Republican dysfunction could also deal the final blow to the Republican Party. Jeffries has control over his congress critters. It’s obvious Johnson doesn’t. You may remember that John Boehner threw up his arms and retired over the many chaotic factions. It hasn’t improved since then. Digby has an interesting view in her Salon column. “Elon Musk just killed Donald Trump’s honeymoon. We are seeing is an emerging crack in the GOP coalition.”

The activist base that had recently fashioned itself as the Tea Party after Obama’s election in 2008, quietly reinvented itself as the MAGA movement and lost all interest in fiscal austerity the minute Trump came on the scene. But there has always been some restiveness among the right-wing ideologues in the House and Senate who really want to massively cut discretionary spending and the so-called entitlements to the bone. They’re true believers in the idea that government should not help people, period. They were relegated to the back bench during Trump’s first term and spent most of their time tilting at windmills because Trump was happily spending like the treasury was his own credit line at Deutsche Bank.

He had no appetite for big spending cuts that might hurt his chances for re-election. After all, he didn’t run as a budget-cutting deficit hawk. He always claimed that he didn’t need to drastically cut spending because the debt would disappear with tariffs and unprecedented growth. He said the same thing during the 2024 campaign, insisting that it would even pay for government-funded child care, the worst of all possible worlds.

He pays lip service to cutting spending but he doesn’t really care about it. He’s told people he’s not worried about a U.S. debt crisis as he’ll be out of office by then. And he’s got stuff he wants to spend a lot of money on, like deporting millions of immigrants!

That’s never been clearer than this week when Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., presented the bipartisan continuing resolution to fund the government until March and all hell broke loose in the House. Those rascally, backbench Tea Party/Freedom Caucus ideologues finally got the leader they’ve been waiting for and his name is Elon Musk, the richest man in the world.

It was a given that the Freedom Caucus gang would not vote for the bill. They vote no on everything. It had been negotiated by the bipartisan negotiators in both chambers with the knowledge that the Senate was still in Democratic hands and the tiny GOP majority in the House required a bipartisan compromise. Everyone knew that the screamers in the House would have a fit and call for Mike Johnson’s head (which is why they changed the rule raising the threshold from one member to nine.) And since the speaker knows better than to go to the john without getting Trump’s permission, you can be sure that Trump was kept informed of all of this. They all agreed that they would get rid of this hot potato, adjourn quickly and go home for the holidays.

That didn’t work out the way they planned it. Trump thought he had cleverly boxed Musk out of real power by creating a powerless “commission” for him and his sidekick Vivek Ramaswamy to come up with enormous spending cuts to reduce the federal government by as much as a third, which he knows won’t happen. However, Trump has essentially empowered Musk to speak for him by having him by his side every minute for the last three months. And seeing as he’s the richest man in the world who owns a major social media platform, he has plenty of power all on his own.

I have actually heard several talking heads think that Trump’s disinterest in the actual work for the job is worse this time around. The suggestions that he just ran for office to stay out of jail and that he would just be a figurehead may come to fruition. His dementia has worsened. He disappears from the public a lot. He doesn’t appear to have a craving for attention or energy. It may be that Doddering Don will be happy for everyone else to do his work as long as he can cuddle up to foreign dictators. I’m surprised Musk got this much press coverage and went rogue on the budget negotiations. The Donald that stalked Hillary wouldn’t have liked that.

But, who am I but a mostly retired economics professor who sometimes would just rather play the piano or guitar all day than think about this and have to unravel it for students.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Mostly Monday Reads: The Press Bends the Knee

Posted: December 16, 2024 | Author: dakinikat | Filed under: Vive la résistance | Tags: @johnbuss.bsky.social, @repeat1968. John Buss, Do Not Surrender in Advance, Edward R Murrow, Francis Perkins, Grace United Methodist Church New Orleans, idiocracy, kakistocracy, kleptocracy, Polycrisis, President-Eject Incontinentia Buttocks, The Legacy Media Sucks | 12 Comments

“So I’m guessing reducing everyone’s electric bill by half isn’t gonna happen either..” John Buss, @johnbuss.bsky.social

Good Day, Sky Dancing!

I wanted to start this morning with something very normal, American, and positive. Today, President Biden will designate a National Monument in Maine for the late great Secretary of Labor under FDR Francis Perkins. She was the first woman to serve as a Secretary in a President’s Cabinet. She inspired me since she played a major role in economic and labor policy during the Great Depression. She was appointed in 1933 and served 12 years. She should be known as the Mother of Social Security. Her role in implementing and determining policy during the New Deal programs cannot be underestimated. She has touched the lives of all of us even though she left office in 1945.

The Hill has an article up today about her tenure and the memorial today.

During Perkins’s tenure, the Labor Department oversaw Immigration and Naturalization Services, a role she used to aggressively lobby to admit larger numbers of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi-occupied Europe.

Perkins was considered a stalwart ally of labor unions during her tenure, which included her counseling Roosevelt against breaking a 1934 waterfront strike that shut down much of the West Coast. She also refused to deport Australian-born longshoremen’s union head Harry Bridges for his membership in the Communist Party, which led the House Un-American Activities Committee to introduce an unsuccessful impeachment resolution against her.

Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, arrives for a special meeting, September 16, 1938 Image: Library of Congress ID hec.25045

She claimed to have been radicalized after she witnessed the notorious Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York in 1911, in which 146 garment workers were burned or leaped to their deaths after they were locked inside for the workday.

The national monument will comprise the nearly 60 acres that were once Perkins’s family’s homestead in Newcastle, which her family has owned for nearly three centuries.

The designation comes after Biden earlier in March signed an executive order calling on the Interior Department to identify sites with significance in women’s history in America.

You may read the Biden announcement at this link to the White House. I found this journal article written about her by Harris Chaiklin, Ph.D. at VCU Libraries Social Welfare History Project. “Perkins, Frances, Change Agent in: Eras in Social Welfare History, Great Depression, People, Recollections. Frances Perkins: She Boldly Went Where No Woman Had Gone Before.” A wealthy daughter of a wealthy Boston family, she had the type of education that generally sent a woman to ‘spinsterhood.’ Her upbringing prepared her for her role, shaping some of the most strategic and important policies of the time. Fannie Perkins persisted. She eventually landed in Greenwich Village, where she became a mediator. Her friends included Sinclair Lewis and Robert Moses.

A transforming event occurred while she was having tea with a wealthy friend who lived in Washington Square. Word came that the Triangle Shirtwaist factory was on fire. They rushed to it. The horror they saw there helped forge in Frances a lifelong commitment to worker’s safety and rights. That she was with a wealthy friend is significant. Though not wealthy she knew this life style and associated with wealthy people. Good friends from this group provided a place for her to live at key points in her career when her earnings were not enough to meet her needs.

After the fire there was increasing activity in campaigning for worker’s rights and safety while the social work job continued. Once a social worker who lived in the settlement house with Frances asked for help in getting a teenage boy out of jail because he was supporting his family. Frances went to the Charity Organization Society which after a long investigation deemed him “unworthy.” A friend suggested she try the Tammany Hall in the client’s district. The problem was helped within 24 hours. Her lobbying activities also put her in contact with other machine politicians. She met and struck up a close relationship with Al Smith. Working together they succeeded in getting a bill passed that limited women to a 54 hour work week. It was a compromise and liberals attacked her for giving up too much to get it passed. She knew that without the compromise there would have been no bill and not even the limited protection this bill offered. The lessons in becoming a skilled politician were piling up. In the past she had looked down on politicians but now concluded, “…that venal politicians can sometimes be more useful than upstanding reformers (Downey, 2009,p. 39).” Understanding and accepting the value of working within the political order was one of the secrets of her success.

Her experiences in these activities taught her another valuable lesson. A politician told her that men trusted women who were motherly and not seductive sirens. Downey says, “She began to see her gender, a liability in many ways, could actually be an asset. To accentuate this opportunity to gain influence she began to dress and comport herself in a way that reminded men of their mothers, rather than doing what women usually like to do which is making themselves more physically attractive to men (Downey, 2009, p. 45). At this time she was 33 years old. Up to then the papers had characterized her as “perky” “pretty” “dimpled.” They now began to label her as “Mother Perkins” a name she disliked only a little less than being called “Ma Perkins.” Such was the price for shaping herself into a highly effective politician. In these activities Frances was aware of her limitations as a woman and avoided places where women did not usually go. She did her lobbying in hallways and not bars. This too became a lifelong skill. When people were brought together to work out differences she stayed in the background. Others often got credit for her greatest accomplishments. Who today identifies her as the moving force behind achieving Social Security?

Well, me. I know what it took to get that kind of great change written into law and policy. You may read more at the link.

And, unfortunately, we have the antithesis to her and the people she worked with and for today. This is from Mark Jacob’s writing on his blog Stop the Presses. “Here’s what we WON’T do when Trump takes over. We won’t shut up and give up – we’ll stand up and power up.” This is necessary since we have learned yet another big Media outlet has caved to President-Eject Incontinentia Buttocks. The brilliant suggestions continue past this bit.

As democracy defenders, we’re facing hard times when authoritarian Donald Trump takes office Jan. 20. But what will we do about it? For now, I’m focusing on what we won’t do:

We won’t shut up.

We won’t retreat from the news.

We won’t lose our ability to be outraged.

We won’t be duped by a fake “crisis” that serves as a pretext to send the military against American citizens and turn our country into a police state.

We won’t sit on our couch and watch protests on TV when we should be out protesting in front of the TV cameras.

We won’t tolerate abuse of women simply because the person who won the last presidential election is a sexual predator.

We won’t get exhausted. Instead, we’ll pace ourselves, find ways to relax and enjoy life, and be ready to go at the crucial moments.

We won’t accept the notion that “all politicians lie.” More politicians lie when the news media and public accept lying and thus make it advantageous to lie.

We won’t forget to be kind.

We won’t expect the New York Times, the Washington Post and the TV networks to wake up and seriously confront the threat of fascism when they didn’t do it before the election.

We won’t forget that Trump won by just 1.5 percentage points — not a mandate, and certainly not a statement that most Americans want to surrender their rights to him.

The little tomboy girl I was who wanted to do everything boys do and do it better is still in me. Not backing down. Nope. Not gonna do it. Wouldn’t be prudent at this juncture. This is from Lisa Needham at Public Notice. ABC was never a station we watched much as my Dad was a big fan of Huntley-Brinkley. Also, George Stephanopoulos has never been on my list to receive any news or advice. This disappoints me but doesn’t surprise me at all. “ABC bends the knee. Corporate media is surrendering already.” That’s exactly what a stumbling despot wants on his way to power. He wants control of the media. Wouldn’t want the truth sneaking out while you’ve got that propaganda thing going.

Since the election, plenty of the richest among us have rushed to curry favor with Donald Trump by showering him with cash.

Meta’s Mark Zuckerburg is giving Trump $1 million for his inauguration, as is OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Amazon, which will also stream the ceremony on Prime. But perhaps even more galling is ABC’s move to settle an absurd defamation lawsuit brought by Trump over George Stephanopoulos’s completely defensible on-air statement that Trump had been found liable for rape.

ABC will donate $15 million to Trump’s presidential library — a thing that has not yet been built and currently exists only as a website maintained by the National Archives. The network also agreed to pay $1 million toward Trump’s lawyer fees, continuing Trump’s streak of never paying for his own legal bills. And ABC and Stephanopoulos pledged to make a statement saying they “regret” the remarks.

It’s a bad omen for mainstream media coverage of Trump 2.0 and speaks to the importance of independent outlets that won’t be so easily intimidated.

Trump’s lawsuit rested on the incredibly flimsy argument that it defamed him to say he was found liable for the rape of E. Jean Carroll when he was actually found liable for forced digital penetration. But Stephanopoulos’s comments were consistent with how the presiding judge described the case.

So, since I seem to be going all economist on you these days, let me just say that I love Paul Krugman’s substack. I’m glad he left the New York Times, even though he really didn’t state a reason other than it was time. Here’s today’s offering at Krugman Wonks Out. “Crypto is for Criming. It’s not digital gold — it’s digital Benjamins.” You can write me down as a crypto hater. I will never know how this Ponzi scheme took root, but then I can’t explain the appeal of President-Eject Incontinentia Buttocks to me either. I have decided that some folks just want to be lied to if it feeds their raging ID and be told lies and sold a bill of goods just to think they may have something going for themselves and take a breather from their anger and resentment.

‘The tech bros who helped put Trump back in power expect many favors in return; one of the more interesting is their demand that the government intervene to guarantee crypto players the right to a checking account, stopping the “debanking” they claim has hit many of their friends.

The hypocrisy here is thick enough to cut with a knife. If you go back to the 2008 white paper by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto that gave rise to Bitcoin, its main argument was that we needed to replace checking accounts with blockchain-based payments because you can’t trust banks; crypto promoters also tend to preach libertarianism, touting crypto as a way to escape government tyranny. Now we have crypto boosters demanding that the evil government force the evil banks to let them have conventional checking accounts.

What’s going on here? Elon Musk, Marc Andreesen and others claim that there’s a deep state conspiracy to undermine crypto, because of course they do. But the real reason banks don’t want to be financially connected to crypto is that they believe, with good reason, that to the extent that cryptocurrencies are used for anything besides speculation, much of that activity is criminal — and they don’t want to be accused of acting as accessories.

You may take the Good Doctor’s Monetary Theory lecture at the link. I can’t believe Milton Friedman would have anything positive to say about this development at all. He wrote the book on money and was awarded a Nobel Prize in Economics. And I also am having a huge hissy over the potential targeting of the FDIC. I worked in banking. I’ve worked for the Fed. This is my bailiwick. My daughter, the finance guru, didn’t fall for crypto, so I must have done something right. Don’t fall for this, either! This is from Reuters. “Trump’s floated idea to shutter FDIC would be political heavy lift, say analysts.” Fannie Perkins would really be in the fray on this one. How could they forget the Great Recession? It started with financial overreach in the banking industry too. CEOs and their marketing execs are more interested in becoming bigger than running an effective business.

U.S. bank stocks were unfazed on Friday after a report that President-elect Donald Trump’s team had floated the idea of shrinking or eliminating a top banking regulator, with analysts saying such a plan would not win the necessary political backing.

In recent interviews with bank regulator candidates, Trump advisers have asked whether the incoming president could abolish the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC) and move its deposit insurance function into the Treasury Department, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.

Officials from the newly founded Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has been tasked with finding major government savings, participated in the interviews, the WSJ said.
However, while the current system comprising three federal and multiple state bank regulators is complex, a major restructure would struggle to garner the political support needed to get through Congress, which is also expected to be tied up on tax reform and crypto legislation next year, analysts and academics said.

“It would require congressional action and despite the Republican party majority in both the Senate and the House, it would require support from the Democrats which remains very unlikely,” ING sector strategist Marine Leleux wrote in a note.

Bank stocks were little changed on Friday.

The Trump transition team has been interviewing candidates for financial agency roles, including the bank regulators, in recent days, said two people with direct knowledge of the matter. DOGE officials have been involved in some of those interviews, one said

I cannot see Senator Elizabeth Warren being quiet about any of this. However, the ink of the press is focused on the man with the most responsibility for this mess. Senator Mitch McConnell is objecting a lot now that he’s an ineffective backbencher. Look, he doesn’t like Polio! He wants the vaccine still! Look, he’s got something to say about how wonderful the Bush years were because we tried and failed to bomb “American Exceptionalism” into the Middle East, but it’s good policy!. But just because we know better doesn’t mean Legacy Media does. This is from MSNBC and Steve Benen, which means I assume Rachel saw this, too. “Why Mitch McConnell’s latest clashes with Trump matter. Despite his recent partisan history, Mitch McConnell has thrown a lot of brushback pitches in Donald Trump’s direction lately.” WTAF?

It was hard not to wonder how Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a polio survivor, would respond to the news. As it turned out, we didn’t have to wait too long to find out.

In a statement to NBC News, the Kentucky Republican — who’ll soon step down from his GOP leadership post — didn’t mention Kennedy by name, but the longtime senator said anyone seeking a confirmation vote must be specific about their intentions related to the polio vaccine.

“Anyone seeking the Senate’s consent to serve in the incoming Administration would do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts,” McConnell wrote. He added that “efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed — they’re dangerous.”

It was a notable brushback pitch from a key GOP official, but it was also part of a recent pattern: McConnell has thrown a lot of these pitches at Trump and his team lately.

In an interview with the Financial Times, published last week, McConnell warned about the dangers of isolationism, which he seemed to tie directly to his party’s incoming president. “We’re in a very, very dangerous world right now, reminiscent of before World War II,” the senator said, adding, “Even the slogan is the same. ‘America First’ — that was what they said in the ’30s.”

McConnell has a newly published essay in Foreign Affairs magazine, warning against the “right-wing flirtation with isolation and decline.” Referencing a signature phrase from Trump, the Kentucky Republican added, “America will not be made great again by those who simply want to manage its decline.”

The senator’s written piece echoed a speech he delivered earlier this month, rejecting his party’s isolationist wing.

In Congress last month, Matt Gaetz’s bid to become the next attorney general collapsed in the face of opposition from GOP senators. While there was no official tally on the scope of the Republican opposition to the former Florida congressman, The New York Times reported that McConnell was among those staunchly opposed to his prospective nomination.

When political observers take stock on Capitol Hill, looking for Republicans who might be a thorn in the president-elect’s side, they tend to focus on members such as Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski and Maine’s Susan Collins. But what if McConnell — who’s expected to retire at the end of his term, and who doesn’t appear to have anything to lose by standing up to Trump — unexpectedly joins the faction of Trump skeptics?

To be sure, it’d be a mistake to get one’s hopes up.

These folks are the heirs of Edward R. Murrow? Seriously? Let me just leave you with a quote from the guy that covered the NAZIs running rampant over Europe and didn’t mince words. Extra points if you know this was his sign-off!

Good Night and Good Luck!

“Surely we shall pay for using this most powerful instrument of communications to insulate the citizenry from the hard and demanding realities that must be faced if we are to survive”

Edward R. Murrow

So here I am at the keyboard, your nerdy friend. We don’t have the same number of folks reading us that we used to back in the day when we were one of the top 25 Political Blogs. But we’re here, and we’re still fearless. It is actually nice to see the country’s public intellectuals doing the Old School Blog thing these days on Substack. Throw them some bling if you can! I started out on Fire Dog Lake way back in the day. I know BB was at The Daily Kos until the anti-Hillary stuff flared. We’re here because we don’t like one-sided stories. We like to find the facts.

We’ve had terrible technical trouble with WordPress since they seem to have turned something that can’t figure out how to let people comment. Half the time, I can’t even comment on my posts here. I have to dive behind the front page to the dashboard. But, you know what … there’s a lot of stuff here from many people, and it’s still in the files. It’s been very close to 20 years now, too. I’m unsure how to get it to any place safer now. So, we’re here. We won’t shut up. We’re a Refuge.

I have one more thing to share with you. It’s important. Please read it. This is the Methodist church I want to remember. It’s also a story I’m familiar with. Our neighbors from south of our border were here helping us clean up after Katrina when everyone else wasn’t. I still want a taco truck on every corner, and we’re a lot closer to that down here in New Orleans than we used to be. It just occurred to me that I likely wrote a lesson plan for my high school students when I was in my 20s, and my heart was an open book. I actually taught civics then. Can you believe it? This story is important.

In a world full of Kari Lakes, be a Francis Perkins. In a world full of George Stephanopoulos, be an Edward Murrow.

My church kept ICE from deporting our neighbor Jose. The Bible told us so.President-elect Donald Trump has plans to end a policy that generally restricts ICE from arresting undocumented people at or near so-called sensitive locations. http://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnb…

— Democracy Skies in Blueness – Resist (@democracyblue.bsky.social) 2024-12-15T14:10:26.674Z

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