Finally Friday Reads: Let’s talk Kleptocracy!!

Posted: December 13, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: kakistocracy, kleptocracy, self dealing | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

“Felon of the Year!” John Buss, @johnbuss.bsky.social

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

The Golden Age of Self-Dealing is about upon us! This year, we’ve had all kinds of new descriptions to assign the type of government the dumbest among us will usher in on Jan 20th. We’re in a polycrisis that will be managed by the least qualified and skilled among us; a kakistocracy.  We will be governed by the least fit, the most incompetent, and the proven corrupt. I spent a lot of time in my doctoral program studying Corporate Governance. However, we, the People, are much more than mere stockholders in our government. The powers invested in our Federal Government could lead to more serious crimes than even the worst things committed by companies like Enron.  Corporations can not print that universally accepted thing called government-backed currency. They cannot declare war and make and break treaties and alliances.  That’s probably the biggest responsibility. But our health, happiness, justice, and liberty are at stake. Are we really that expendable to them?

Much of what’s being discussed right now is dismantling agencies that have been vested with the responsibility to ensure many things businesses do won’t kill us or bilk us. So, what will likely happen if we are left to the wolves of Wall Street with no oversight? What about putting the conspiracy crowd in charge of guarding our public health or our safety when we fly, drive, or use any form of transportation? What about letting anyone with the financial ability to set up shop call themselves a university, a daycare, or any other form of school? Should we leave children to the likes of the folks who tell pollsters they don’t think Arabic numbers should be taught in school? The overlords will ship off their kids to the top boarding schools in the country while everyone else gets stuck with whatever the undereducated in their community will scream about. It’s a pretty depressing future.

So, I’m not even sure where to start, but how about with RFK Jr, the one with the worm that ate his brain, and the television and web-based Snake Oil Salesman, Mehmet Oz.  A USA Today headline blares this bit of happy news. “Dr. Mehmet Oz had up to $33 million in companies doing business with agency he’d run.” I don’t care if it’s in a blind trust; he knows if he owns it. Erin Mansfield has the analysis.

President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to be the top health insurance regulator in the country, Dr. Mehmet Oz, has invested in companies that do business with the agency he would run.

Oz, Trump’s choice to run Medicare, Medicaid and the insurance marketplace under the Affordable Care Act, owned up to $33.7 million stock in these companies when he filed a financial disclosure during his unsuccessful 2022 campaign for Senate in Pennsylvania.

The TV talk show host owned between $280,000 and $600,000 in UnitedHealth Group and between $50,000 and $100,000 in CVS Health, which both provide health insurance plans under Medicare Advantage.

He also owned between $5.8 million and $26.7 million in Amazon and between $1.6 million and $6.3 million in Microsoft, two major technology providers for the Centers for Medicare and Medicare Services, the agency he would run.

Accountable.US, a left-leaning group that compiled some of the research, said it reviewed filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and was unable to find evidence that Oz sold stocks in Amazon or Microsoft since the 2022 filing.

“All nominees and appointees will comply with the ethical obligations of their respective agencies,” Brian Hughes, a spokesperson for the Trump-Vance transition, said in a statement to USA TODAY when asked if Oz still owns these stocks.

Oz will be required to fill out the same form after his official nomination as administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Oz in 2020 said the federal government should allow all Americans to purchase coverage through Medicare Advantage, a program in which private insurance sell Medicare-regulated plans to seniors and people with disabilities.

In 2022, Oz owned stock in the parent company of UnitedHealthcare, which covered 29% of Medicare Advantage patients in 2024, according to the health care organization KFF, formerly known as the Kaiser Family Foundation. CVS Health covers another 12%.

I won’t give you my usual microeconomics lectures on monopoly, but for all that shouting about free markets these billionaires do, they sure love themselves markets that are so concentrated that you can count the number of providers with one hand.  This year’s study from this 2024 report by the US Government Accountability Office will give you the willies. Oh, and DOGE is after that Federal Agency, along with others. Just to make it short, these markets are dysfunctional.  The producer side of the equation has too much power in the market.  In this case, it’s literally the power of life and death.  And, it’s made based on whether they hit their profit goals for their stockholders.  Businesses only make money by cutting costs because doing anything inventive is hard.  You know what that leads to. “Private Health Insurance: Market Concentration Generally Increased from 2011 through 2022.GAO-25-107194.”

Several companies may be selling health insurance in a given market, but, as we previously reported, most people usually enroll with one of a small number of insurers. Known as market concentration, this can result in fewer choices of insurers and higher premiums due to less competition in the market.

Market concentration generally increased from 2011 through 2022, with three or fewer insurers holding at least 80% of the market share for the individual and employer group markets in at least 35 states. However, the markets for individuals became slightly less concentrated from 2020 to 2022.

In November 2022, GAO reported that, from 2011 through 2020, enrollment in private health insurance plans was concentrated, meaning a small number of issuers of those plans enrolled most of the people in a given market (GAO-23-105672). Specifically, GAO considered a market concentrated in a state if three or fewer issuers held at least 80 percent of the market share of enrollment. For this report, GAO examined the individual (coverage primarily sold to individuals who lack access to group coverage), small-group (coverage offered by small employers), and large-group (coverage offered by large employers) health insurance markets from 2011 through 2022 and found that concentration generally increased. Specifically:

  • The overall individual market became more concentrated from 2011 through 2022. Concentration in this market peaked in 2019 and became slightly less concentrated through 2022.

  • The small-group market became more concentrated from 2011 through 2022, but the rate of increase slowed more recently.

  • The large-group market remained concentrated with only slight increases from 2011 through 2022 (see figure).

Companies do not merge for the purpose of cost efficiencies.  They merge because they think they will own more of the market and have more market power. This concentration will lead to much higher profits and less for everyone else.  I can spend an entire semester showing how broken concentrated markets are and that they desperately need supervision. But that serves everyone but the guys at the top, so these studies are written, empirical evidence is provided by nerds like me and think tanks, and nothing gets done policy-wise.

In the case of this market, people die for the illusion that all markets set free of oversight magically function on their own.  That’s a philosophical hypothesis that tests wrong over and over. Few markets meet the critical structure that makes them efficient by leaving them alone.  Most of those are wholesale commodities markets and not complex markets like those that try to find a price for financial contracts that tend to be very specific and unique, involve middlemen and market confusion, and can’t find a price with just interaction between buyer and seller.

I ran across this Blue Sky thread by billionaire Mark Cuban.  He gets it.  There’s more of this thread here. I can tell you anecdotally what it took me to get out of the Mutual of Omaha provide providers, which was basically Catholic Management sending patients to Catholic hospitals when I had my high-risk pregnancy.  I basically told my ex, who was one of these ghoulish cost cutters for that company, that he better get them to pay for me delivering at Methodist or that I would go there to deliver, and he could fricking pay for it for the rest of his natural born days.

He got the person in charge to send me to Methodist since it was the only hospital with a neonatologist at the time. He was a nice Jewish OB/GYN who later was in charge of Doctor Daughter’s residency.  Methodist Hospital obviously cared if their patients lived while having a complicated pregnancy.  You might notice that the way I got this treatment was to send an AVP of the company to twist their arm.  I remember that one of my friends doing his rotation in OB/GYN watched a patient at Creighton Medical Center get a lecture from a Priest brought in by her doctor on why she should carry her pregnancy to term despite the condition the baby had was a brain undeveloped so badly that it was spilling out from a lack of skull. There was no chance of survival, but there was a lot of risk to the mother.  I was not about to go through that. I was a happy little Methodist then, and that’s where I wanted to deliver my youngest.  The C-section went fine, and we both went home, although I did drive myself to the emergency room 10 weeks before she was due to hemorrhaging.

All this leads to Mark Cuban.  Leave these decisions to Doctors. not cost-cutting paper pushers like my MBA ex-husband.

If you want to understand why healthcare pricing is horrific, the first thing to know is that our system puts 100% of the credit risk for deductibles, copays and co-insurance on hospitals and doctors. That's insane. We have turned them into Sub Prime Lenders 🧵

— Mark Cuban (@mcuban.bsky.social) 2024-12-10T18:46:28.948Z

When they can't collect payment, they raise prices to make up that loss. Plus they need to have all the administration of a mortgage loan servicer to try to collect those amounts. Which of course also puts people who can't afford the cost, in medical debt, which often leads to bankruptcy

— Mark Cuban (@mcuban.bsky.social) 2024-12-10T18:46:28.949Z

Then there are insurance companies. The crazy thing is that for more than 50m people,those covered by self insured entities,ins comps don't actually provide insurance. They act as Care Authorizers and payment processors. Can the care occur and how much will be paid.

— Mark Cuban (@mcuban.bsky.social) 2024-12-10T18:46:28.950Z

Their primary role is to make sure that there is not fraud by providers (think overuse of operations to inflate revenue , or services not covered by the plan the user is covered by and/or determine if care is "medically necessary "

— Mark Cuban (@mcuban.bsky.social) 2024-12-10T18:46:28.951Z

That authorization process is one we should not be asking ins comps to do. That role should be performed by INDEPENDENT TPAs. With zero economic incentive to approve or deny. The first step is for self insured entities to use 3rd party TPAs and move away from insurance companies for this service

— Mark Cuban (@mcuban.bsky.social) 2024-12-10T18:46:28.952Z

If they do this, they can use the insurance companies for their networks and software. But better yet, I think direct contracting is the future. For my employees, we are direct contracting with providers. We are stipulating that there will be no pre authorizations. We will trust the provider

— Mark Cuban (@mcuban.bsky.social) 2024-12-10T18:46:28.953Z

Imagine that!  He says to trust the Doctors, not the guys making money off the ill.

So, I am staying with the theme of Health Care because BB alerted me to this while preparing to write this post. JJ couldn’t believe they would actually do this to us.  This headline is horrifying!  It’s from Reuters. “Trump to discuss ending childhood vaccination programs with RFK Jr.”  This is what happens when idiots vote for supposed “businessmen.”  WTF do either of these men know about vaccines? 

  • Trump says could get rid of some vaccinations “if I think it’s dangerous”

  • Kennedy is known for anti-vaccine stance, linked to debunked autism claims

  • Experts warn ending vaccine programs could lead to disease outbreaks, deaths

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump in an interview published on Thursday said he will be talking to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his nominee to run the Department of Health and Human Services, about ending childhood vaccination programs.

When asked if he would sign off if Kennedy decided to end childhood vaccinations programs, Trump told Time magazine, “we’re going to have a big discussion. The autism rate is at a level that nobody ever believed possible. If you look at things that are happening, there’s something causing it.”

When asked if the discussion could result in his administration getting rid of some vaccinations, Trump said: “It could if I think it’s dangerous, if I think they are not beneficial, but I don’t think it’s going to be very controversial in the end.

Asked in the Nov. 25 interview if he thinks childhood autism is linked to vaccines, Trump said: “No, I’m going to be listening to Bobby,” referring to Kennedy. Trump said he had a lot of respect for Kennedy and his views on vaccinations.

Can you hear me screaming all the way from the Mississippi River way down yonder in New Orleans?  And this is the headline that did it to me from The Guardian. “RFK Jr key adviser petitioned regulators to revoke approval of polio vaccine. Aaron Siri is helping Trump’s health secretary pick to select top jobs despite long history of attacking vaccines.” I wonder what Mitch McConnell might say if he could.

A key legal adviser to Robert Kennedy Jr, Donald Trump’s pick for health secretary, is at the center of efforts to push federal drug regulators to revoke approval for the polio and hepatitis B vaccines and block distribution of 13 other critical vaccines.

Aaron Siri, a lawyer who has been helping Kennedy select top health administrators as part of the Trump transition process, is deeply embedded in longstanding efforts to force the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to withdraw a raft of vaccines that have saved the lives and health of millions of Americans.

Siri has been sitting alongside Kennedy in interviews in which they have asked candidates for top health jobs where they stand on vaccines, the New York Times reported on Friday.

Kennedy, a leading vaccine sceptic, has insisted he has no plans to revoke vaccines should he be confirmed by the US Senate for the health secretary position. But his close ties with Siri are raising concerns about the incoming Trump administration’s intentions, given the lawyer’s intimate involvement in the anti-vaccine movement.

Siri works closely with the Informed Consent Action Network (Ican), a “medical freedom” non-profit founded by Del Bigtree, whose has long waged war on vaccines including as producer of the anti-vaccination documentary, Vaxxed. The New York Times report noted that Siri filed the 2022 petition calling for the FDA to revoke approval for the polio vaccine on behalf of ICAN.

Poliovirus, the cause of a disease that used to be one of the most feared by Americans, has been eliminated from the country by the US through polio vaccines. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that the best way to avoid its return and keep people safe is through vaccination.

Siri has not only been involved in lawsuits calling for the withdrawal or suspension of the polio and hepatitis B vaccines, but he has also petitioned the FDA to “pause distribution” of 13 other vaccines, according to the Times.

Trump said this week that Kennedy may investigate vaccines for a supposed link with autism. The remark to NBC suggests that his pick for health secretary may run with the conspiracy theory that there is a connection between childhood vaccinations and autism that has been thoroughly debunked yet is repeatedly peddled by Kennedy.

Kennedy’s spokesperson, Katie Miller, confirmed to the Times that Siri has been advising Kennedy but said his vaccine petitions had not been discussed.

“Mr Kennedy has long said that he wants transparency in vaccines and to give people choice,” she said.

When you have a savior complex, you think nothing will get you. There are a lot of those types up for Cabinet jobs.  Kari Lake is about to become the Voice of America.  I’ve already dubbed her Lady Haw-Haw after an American NAZI sympathizer who was a propagandist on the radio during World War 2.  NPR has a lot to say about that.  “Trump says Kari Lake will lead Voice of America. He attacked it during his first term.”  Our taxes are funding MAGA propaganda here. 

President-elect Donald Trump says Kari Lake, a local television news anchor-turned-MAGA politician, will lead the federally funded broadcaster Voice of America.

If successful, the move would put a loyalist at the helm of a news outlet that Trump sought to bring to heel under his appointee during the final year of his first term. Trump officials sought to strip the network and its parent agency of their independence during his first term, including actions later found to be illegal and in one case, unconstitutional.

But Trump doesn’t have the authority to unilaterally install Lake; the hire is dependent on a bipartisan board beneath the chief executive of its parent agency.

Voice of America (VOA), which is funded by Congress, operates in nearly 50 languages and reaches an estimated 354 million people weekly across the globe. It is part of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, the government agency that oversees all non-military, U.S. international broadcasting.

Trump said Wednesday on Truth Social that Lake will be appointed by and work closely with the incoming head of that agency, “who I will announce soon.”

A free press is central to VOA’s mission: It aims to bring unfettered reporting to places that do not have it, and show political debate and dissent in the U.S. even when that reflects critically on the administration in power.

Trump’s White House took the unprecedented step in spring 2020 of openly attacking VOA in public statements over its perceived failures to explicitly blame the Chinese government for the pandemic.

On Wednesday, Trump wrote that Lake and his as-yet-unnamed agency leader will “ensure that the American values of Freedom and Liberty are broadcast around the World FAIRLY and ACCURATELY, unlike the lies spread by the Fake News Media.”

I’d say it’s highly likely that Tulsi Gabbard will be more than willing to provide material for those broadcasts.  I’m sure Putin will oblige.  The latest outrage, for me, anyway, is that all the Trump TechBros are funding his inauguration with millions of dollars, and  Presidential Reject Incontinentia Buttocks is inviting all the favorite despots from the world over.  This is from CNN. “Xi’s RSVP is a snub to Trump, but the inauguration invite is still a big deal.”

Getting Xi to fly across the world would be an enormous coup for the president-elect — a fact that would make it politically unfeasible for the Chinese leader. Such a visit would put the Chinese president in the position of paying homage to Trump and American might — which would conflict with his vision for China’s assumption of a rightful role as a preeminent global power. At the inaugural ceremony, Xi would be forced to sit and listen to Trump without having any control over what the new president might say while lacking a right of reply. Xi’s presence would also be seen as endorsing a democratic transfer of power — anathema for an autocrat in a one-party state obsessed with crushing individual expression.

Still, even without a favorable response, Trump’s invitation to Xi marks a significant development that sheds light on the president-elect’s confidence and ambition as he wields power ahead of his second term. CNN’s team covering Trump reported that he’s also been asking other world leaders if they want to come to the inauguration — in a break with convention.

This is a reminder of Trump’s fondness for foreign policy by grand gesture and his willingness to trample diplomatic codes with his unpredictable approach. The Xi invitation also shows that Trump believes that the force of his personality alone can be a decisive factor in forging diplomatic breakthroughs. He’s far from the only president to pursue this approach — which rarely works since hostile US adversaries make hardnosed choices on national interest rather than vibes.

Then, when will his cult figure this one out about his lie about being able to bring prices down, which he just admitted he can’t do?

Wake me up when this is all over.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Finally Friday Reads: Another Fine Mess by the Butt-Wipers of Incontinentia Buttocks

Posted: December 6, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Incontinentia Buttocks Cabinet picks | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

“Updated version of an oldie. Probably will be doing a lot of that since it’s like deja vu all over again.” John Buss

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

I still have this dreadful sinus infection.  Last night, the temperature dropped to what usually doesn’t appear until the end of January here. The last two years have been insane, climate-wise.  We’ve got many active candidates for the next probable pandemic.  We’ve got an economy that’s currently the envy of the world.  The number of ongoing hot wars is frightening, with one being labeled a genocide by the well-respected Amnesty International.  “Polycrisis” is the term now used by folks who form the intellectual community of Strategic Advisors.   That would imply “military, geopolitical, economic, political, climate, and other crises.”

The convergence of all these crises creates a situation where we need to work globally more than ever.  So, the country, usually seen as the leader on the global stage, has a voting populace that just sent a clown car. Tom Nichols has this analysis written in The Atlantic.  “Trump Voters Got What They Wanted. Those who expect Donald Trump will hurt others, and not them, are likely to be unpleasantly surprised.”  The pathology of Trump voters is clearly stated in the clip below from The Bulwark Podcast. “The American people made their choice, and the fight to preserve the global democratic coalition against the global authoritarian movement continues. But maybe letting those voters see unadulterated Trumpism in the White House, without the baby bumpers—at least for a little while—is how we save America. Plus, the price of eggs v fascism, and Trump is going to inherit a great economy and claim responsibility for it.”

What do we do now that the lemmings are plunging over the cliff while chanting, “We really owned the libs”?

I think we can sum it up with a simple quote by George Carlin. “Think of how stupid the average person is and realize half of them are stupider than that.”

So, given that we’re firmly in a state of Polycrisis, what can be made of Trump’s ill-suited cabinet choices? For one, we know they’re there to throw out every specialist in each Federal Department to cripple that department and to lessen the number of folks that carry out the mandates (i.e., laws) established by Congress over the years over a few centuries. Are we really going to be stuck with Patel of the Crazy Eyes and crazier thoughts? RFK jr, who is responsible for killing children in Samoa with his bizarre, unschooled thoughts on vaccines?  Will he really yank all the passports of his so-called enemies, and how long will that list eventually be? The entire west wing will be filled with sociopaths, narcissists, and conspiracy nuts at this rate.

So here’s Pete again.  Is Trump still trying to inflict him on our military?  You know, the ones that President-Reject Incontinentia Buttocks called ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’? Here are some thoughts by writer Cathy Young. “In Pete Hegseth’s Totalitarian Vision, Opponents of Christian Nationalism Are Commies and Political Enemies. Trump’s defense pick will help him pave the way to an authoritarian America.”

President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, is in trouble. While initial reactions to his nomination focused on the absurdity of this former Fox News anchor being elevated to second in command of the military, the main obstacles to Hegseth’s confirmation remain his various problems with women: a sexual assault allegation from 2017, disparaging comments about women in the military, and a newly surfaced 2018 email from his mother berating him for habitual mistreatment of the opposite sex.

But even more alarmingly: Hegseth is an ideological extremist who views political opponents as “the enemy” and political differences as war by another name. Worse, he’s a Christian nationalist of the stridently militaristic kind, which raises disturbing questions about his potential willingness to misuse the U.S. military for political purposes. This is not a characterization pieced together from the odd soundbite or two—Hegseth himself tells us who he is in his books. The image of Hegseth that emerges from The War on Warriors (2024), Battle for the American Mind (2022), and American Crusade (2020), is of a militant Christian extremist who is obsessed with the Crusades and whose highest aspiration is redesigning the U.S. military into his ideological mold.

The central idea of American Crusade is that the survival of the United States as a free country requires a “holy war” to achieve “a single paramount objective: the categorical defeat of the Left.” Hegseth accuses the left—by which he doesn’t just mean an extremist fringe but the Democratic Party and its supporters in general—of seeking the “utter annihilation” of true patriots. “We are two Americas; a house divided,” he declares, and the other half is full of people whose “ignorance and ideologies threaten America’s very survival.” Hegseth writes: “Only the categorical defeat of the Left will secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. We must reelect Donald Trump in 2020 and continue the cultural counterattack until Leftists are no longer electorally viable.” The implication is clear: liberty requires one-party rule. This is far from an unrepresentative line. In The War on Warriors, complaining that “the Left has never fought fair,” Hegseth lists “electing Obama” among its dirty tricks, despite the fact that Obama won a greater share of both the popular and the electoral vote in 2008 and 2012 than Trump did in 2016 and 2024.

Amanda Marcotte also writes about his love affair with White Christian Nationalism, a truly perverse twist on the New Testament, at Salon.

The central idea of American Crusade is that the survival of the United States as a free country requires a “holy war” to achieve “a single paramount objective: the categorical defeat of the Left.” Hegseth accuses the left—by which he doesn’t just mean an extremist fringe but the Democratic Party and its supporters in general—of seeking the “utter annihilation” of true patriots. “We are two Americas; a house divided,” he declares, and the other half is full of people whose “ignorance and ideologies threaten America’s very survival.” Hegseth writes: “Only the categorical defeat of the Left will secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. We must reelect Donald Trump in 2020 and continue the cultural counterattack until Leftists are no longer electorally viable.” The implication is clear: liberty requires one-party rule. This is far from an unrepresentative line. In The War on Warriors, complaining that “the Left has never fought fair,” Hegseth lists “electing Obama” among its dirty tricks, despite the fact that Obama won a greater share of both the popular and the electoral vote in 2008 and 2012 than Trump did in 2016 and 2024.

In addition to treating a broadly defined “Left” as the enemy, American Crusade also heaps scorn on ostensibly patriotic but overly complacent “fifty-fifty Americans.” The term comes from Theodore Roosevelt, who is quoted in the epigraph to the first part of the book: “There is not room in the country for any fifty-fifty American, nor can there be but one loyalty—to the Stars and Stripes.” The quote appears to be a garbled amalgam of several passages in Roosevelt’s speeches and writings, all of them from a very specific context: divided loyalties among some German-Americans during World War I. Hegseth’s “fifty-fifty American,” by contrast, refers to a well-meaning non-combatant in the culture war: a “squish” who disapproves of the perceived excesses of the progressive left but shrugs them off in the hope that “common sense will prevail,” or who doesn’t want to be “overly political,” or who thinks his or her local public school is great. For all his talk of reverence for America’s founding ideals, Hegseth’s version of Americanism sounds at times more like proto-totalitarian French Jacobinism, whose ideologues asserted that not only “traitors” but the “indifferent” and the “passive” must be punished.

After reading these analyses and their supporting citations, you can only be left with the idea that this man will have no problem turning the military on Americans out of step with his bizarre beliefs. I focus on this because Incontinentia Buttocks’ most recent picks have to do with ICE and his planned massive deportations and establishment of Concentration Camps.  This is from Politico‘s Myah Ward.  “Trump names ICE chief and makes another round of immigration announcements. The president-elect is planning an ambitious immigration agenda during his first 100 days.”

Trump said he was nominating Rodney Scott as commissioner of Customs and Border Protection. Scott served for almost three decades in the Border Patrol, and as the chief of the agency during the last year of the Trump administration and beginning of the Biden administration. He helped implement Trump’s Remain in Mexico Policy, Title 42 and Safe Third Country agreements.

Trump also announced he was tapping Caleb Vitello, who’s currently the assistant director of the Office of Firearms and Tactical Programs in Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to serve as acting director of ICE.

And the president-elect picked Tony Salisbury, who serves as the special agent in charge for ICE Homeland Security Investigations in Miami, to serve as the deputy homeland security adviser on the White House Homeland Security Council. Brandon Judd, the president of the National Border Patrol Council, which represents more than 17,000 Border Patrol Agents and support staff, was also announced as Trump’s nominee to be ambassador to Chile.

Immigration was Trump’s top priority on the campaign trail, and in his first 100 days he plans to begin the process of deporting hundreds of thousands of people and to roll back President Joe Biden’s immigration policies. Outside allies expect the administration’s immigration policy, similar to Trump’s first term, to be run out of the White House by incoming Border Czar Tom Homan and Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser.

So, what happens with those Concentration Camps once he starts outloading Hispanic Americans?  Also, will we ever rid ourselves of Biggest Dickus? More about his funding of the Trump campaign is coming out, and it’s horrifying!  This is from NBC. “Elon Musk spent a quarter-billion dollars electing Trump, including financing mysterious ‘RBG PAC’. The super PAC, which defended Trump on abortion, got its more than $20 million from the “Elon Musk Revocable Trust.”  This guy’s the Make American Apartheid South Africa freak!

Billionaire Elon Musk poured more than $20 million into a mysterious super PAC at the end of the 2024 campaign, part of more than $250 million he spent overall to boost President-elect Donald Trump, new campaign finance reports show.

Musk financed RBG PAC, according to the report the group filed Thursday night with the Federal Election Commission. The super PAC, which did not disclose its donors before the election, launched ads contending that Trump did not support a federal abortion ban.

All of the money the group pulled in — $20.5 million — came from a single donation from the Elon Musk Revocable Trust in Austin, Texas. RBG PAC spent almost all of its money on digital ads, mailers and text messages, according to the campaign finance report, which covered Oct. 17 through Nov. 25.

Robert Reich believes that Trump might just bring on a Civil War.  That’s a frightening thought that was discussed during his first term. But that was before he figured out how to blow things up. “How Trump could bring on a second civil war. “With his plans to use the military to root out undocumented immigrants and to use the Justice Department and FBI to punish his political enemies.”

Trump may force a second civil war on America with his plan to use the military to round up at least 11 million undocumented people inside the United States — even if it means breaking up families — send them to detention camps, and then deport them.

As well as his plan to target his political enemies for prosecution — including Democrats, journalists, and other critics.

What happens when we, especially those of us in blue states and cities, resist these authoritarian moves — as we must, as we have a moral duty to?

What happens when we try to protect hardworking members of our communities who have been our neighbors and friends for years, from Trump’s federal troops?

What happens when we refuse to allow Trump’s lackeys to wreak revenge on his political enemies who live within our states and communities?

Will our resistance give Trump an excuse to use force against us?

This is not far-fetched. We need to answer these questions for ourselves. We should prepare.

Trump has said he’ll use the Insurrection Act — which grants a president the power to “take such measures as he considers necessary” to suppress “any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy.”

He’s also said he’ll use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to end sanctuary cities. Such cities now limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Trump told Fox News’s Harris Faulkner that “we can do things in terms of moving people out.”

Those are all very good questions.  Senators Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal are trying to get some changes made to the Insurrection Act right now.  The Brennan Center has this analysis. “The Insurrection Act: A Presidential Power That Threatens Democracy. Congress must reform the outdated law, which is ripe for abuse.”

When former President Trump says he would conduct mass deportations of millions of people if elected again, some of his advisers talk about deploying the states’ National Guard to help carry out the task, even in states that oppose this extreme immigration policy.

But would he have the legal authority to do that? The answer is yes, it is legally possible under the Insurrection Act, an outdated law that is in urgent need of reform to prevent abuses of power and adapt  to modern times.

The Insurrection Act is among the most powerful emergency powers at the disposal of a president, who can use it to deploy the U.S. armed forces and the militia to suppress insurrections, quell civil unrest or domestic violence, and enforce the law when it is being obstructed.

There are few constraints to this presidential power — neither Congress nor the courts play a role in deciding what constitutes an obstruction or rebellion — and the law does not limit what actions military forces may take once deployed.

The law, which was last amended in the 1870s, has been rarely invoked. But it has been both used and misused in the past. Past uses include enforcing civil rights laws, helping companies break strikes, and suppressing so-called “race riots.”

Currently, there are calls for President Biden to invoke it to gain control of the Texas National Guard and order it to stand down in the city of Eagle Pass, where National Guard soldiers have occupied a park along the southern border to militarize the border and deny federal border protection agents access.

And let’s not forget Trump’s supporters urged him to use it to impede the transition of power after the 2020 presidential election.

Although there is no question that Biden could turn to the Insurrection Act to respond to a deliberate obstruction that prevents the federal government from performing immigration duties, he should refrain from doing so and instead seek to assert federal authority through the courts. The act should be a tool of last resort, and any power of this magnitude requires robust checks and balances that it currently lacks.

That’s why the Brennan Center has proposed comprehensive reforms that would narrow the criteria for deployment, specify what actions are and are not authorized when the act is invoked, and give Congress and the courts approval and review authority to serve as checks against abuse or overreach.

The current changes asked for by Warren and Blumenthal are outlined here by the Washington Insider. “Democratic Senators Urge Biden to Restrict Military Deployment, Citing Concerns Over Trump’s Plans.” Stacy M. Brown reports the details.

Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) have called on President Joe Biden and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to issue a directive limiting the use of military personnel for domestic purposes, warning against potential misuse by President-elect Donald Trump after he takes office on Jan. 20.

The senators stressed the importance of clear guidelines to prevent the military from being deployed against American citizens without explicit constitutional or congressional authorization.

The request is rooted in the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits using federal troops in domestic law enforcement unless authorized by the Constitution or Congress.

While the Insurrection Act provides a narrow exception in cases of insurrection, rebellion, or extreme unrest, Warren and Blumenthal called for further restrictions to prevent abuse.

“Any deployment of federal forces must occur only when state or local authorities are overwhelmed and unable to ensure public safety,” the senators wrote.

They also emphasized the importance of consulting Congress before deploying troops and ensuring service members understand their obligations to reject unlawful orders.

The senators’ letter notes growing concerns over Trump’s rhetoric and past actions.

During his first term, Trump considered invoking the Insurrection Act to respond to Black Lives Matter protests, and some allies urged him to declare martial law after his 2020 election defeat. More recently, Trump has suggested using the military to deport immigrants without permanent legal status and relocating troops from overseas to the southern border.

Trump has picked a deputy for Kristy Noem at Homeland Security. This is reported by South Florida’s Channel 6 News. “Trump picks Miami HSI special agent in charge for deputy homeland security advisor. Anthony Salisbury is currently a Miami Homeland Security Investigations special agent in charge.”

In his current role, Anthony W. Salisbury “manages all of HSI’s complex Federal Law Enforcement investigative programs related to National Security and smuggling violations, including counter-proliferation, financial crimes, commercial fraud, human trafficking, human smuggling, narcotics smuggling, transnational,” the former president shared in a post on Truth Social.

He has previously served as the acting deputy executive associate director of HSI in Miami, and supervised the activities of HSI offices throughout the Republic of Mexico as the deputy attaché.

In his post, Trump wrote: “Tony will bring his vast Law Enforcement, counter-narcotics, and counter-cartel experience to the White House where he will serve under Stephen Miller, Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security Advisor.”

Miller is Trump’s pick for deputy chief of policy, longtime adviser and an immigration hard-liner, AP News reports.

The more deeply these picks get embedded and embed The True Believers, the more difficult it will be to find and remove them as needed.  Again, I see most of the action needed to stop this lies within the courts and Congress.  Fortunately and unfortunately, the House and Senate are quite close even though they will be controlled by Republicans.  Are there enough sane people to stand up to these MAGA terrorists? The courts will likely follow the law until we hit  SCOTUS.  There are obviously embedded MAGA nuts there who continue to rewrite the Constitution and precedent.

We’ve got less than a month to develop a strategy that lets them know that We, the People, are not interested in becoming MAGA-compliant serfs. This won’t be pretty, but I’m not gonna quietly take it.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

S0, this is for all of you butt-wipers for Incontinentia Buttocks …

Mostly Monday Reads: He’s a Maniac

Posted: November 18, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: A thread for Ranting, American Fascists | Tags: , , , , | 2 Comments

“Whenever I hear or read the word kakistocracy, this immediately comes to mind.” John (repeat1968) Buss

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

I hope the ACLU and other NGOs will be up for the next version of #DonOld’s Reign of Terror. Get ready for mass deportations by the military. If only they would deport me and my animals to the south of France or even the old family home in Hastings, England, if it’s still standing! For a guy who insists he didn’t know what Project 2025 was about, he is certainly right on top of it! This is from AXIOS. “Trump confirms plans to use military for mass deportations.”

President-elect Trump confirmed Monday that he is planning to declare a national emergency and use the U.S. military to carry out mass deportations.

Why it matters: Trump made his promise to deport millions of undocumented immigrants one of the cornerstones of his 2024 campaign, and his team has already begun strategizing how to carry its plan out.

  • A Truth Social post early Monday is the first time the president-elect has confirmed how his administration will execute the controversial plan.

Driving the news: Tom Fitton, the president of the conservative group Judicial Watch, posted on Truth Social earlier this month that Trump was “prepared to declare a national emergency and will use military assets to reverse the Biden invasion through a mass deportation program.”

  • Trump reposted Fitton’s comment Monday with the caption, “TRUE!!”

The big picture: There are an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. Trump’s mass deportations are expected to impact roughly 20 million families across the country.

  • Immigration advocates and lawyers are preparing to counter the plan in court.
  • The president-elect’s team is aiming to craft executive orders that can withstand legal challenges to avoid a similar defeat that befell Trump’s Muslim ban in his first term, Politico reported.
  • Their plans also include ending the parole program for undocumented immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, per Politico.

Zoom out: Trump has also already begun filling out his Cabinet positions with immigration hardliners.

  • This includes tapping Tom Homan, the former acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), to serve as his “border czar.”
  • In addition, Trump nominated South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem as his secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Go deeper: How Trump’s plan for mass deportations fits into U.S. history

I will expand the garden in my side yard and extend it back to the area which has fruit trees and ginger.  If the courts don’t block this, I’m betting on higher food prices by the next harvest.  Also, I don’t know how anyone in a state like mine, affected by hurricanes and damage, will be getting their homes fixed and cleaned. We’d have never recovered without the workers from South of our border.  However, that will be only one of the problems this regime change will bring.

David Nir, writing for Public Notice, has this information on the possibility of recess appointments for the basket of unqualified deplorable he’s chosen for his cabinet. “How Johnson could make Trump’s recess appointments a reality. Talk of cutting out Dems — and GOP dissenters — is more than just idle rhetoric.”  Surely, no one believes that what comes out of his anus-looking mouth is just idle rhetoric at this point!

Donald Trump’s plan to stock his cabinet with the most appalling MAGA nihilists hinges on the obeisance of one man in particular: House Speaker Mike Johnson. And given Johnson’s track record of cowardice, Trump may indeed get what he wants — and demolish a pillar of democracy along the way.

The crescendo of increasingly nightmarish picks like Tulsi Gabbard, Matt Gaetz, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. almost makes Liz Dye’s take here at Public Notice — that Trump is trying to install the crowd at the Star Wars cantina — seem too kind.

So beyond the pale are Trump’s worst choices that even some Republicans in the Senate are balking. And it’s worth remembering that many Trump nominees during his first term in office withdrew from consideration in the face of GOP inaction or hostility.

But whether or not Republican senators are inclined to revert to subservience and greenlight these nominations, Trump is already armed with a plan to bypass the confirmation process entirely. He wants to fill vacancies without a confirmation vote by making so-called recess appointments when the Senate is not in session — a power granted to him by the Constitution. And he has a path to do it.

A will and a way

For many years, Congress has not actually taken a formal recess, precisely to deny presidents the ability to side-step lawmakers. Trump, though, has demanded that the Senate resume the practice of adjourning itself so that he can ram his picks through without any oversight.

The GOP’s new majority leader, John Thune, replied submissively to Trump’s demand, saying on Fox News last week that “all options are on the table.” And Johnson echoed that sentiment on Fox News Sunday yesterday, saying of recess appointments that “there may be a function for that.” (Watch below.)

It turns out that, even for a legislative body that often convenes for just three days a week, it’s surprisingly difficult for the Senate to take a proper, on-the-books break. Such an adjournment requires a majority vote, which even Thune acknowledged might be “a problem” for some Republican senators.

But even if Senate Republicans could muster a majority, a motion to recess can be amended, as Semafor’s Burgess Everett notes. That means Democrats could hold up such a motion indefinitely, unless Republicans were to unilaterally change Senate rules regarding recesses — a move Everett calls “a smaller-scale version of the ‘nuclear option'” that might also have a hard time garnering 50 votes.

The alt-media has been doing an excellent job tackling this garbage in and out of motivation and action. Politico has stated that the Ethics Committee in the House will discuss the report on Gaetz and his sex adventures with underage girls, also known as statutory rape. I firmly believe that if they don’t release it, someone will leak it.  “House Ethics panel to meet Wednesday as Gaetz question looms. Members rescheduled the Wednesday meeting from one last week where lawmakers were widely expected to vote on whether to release the report.”

The House Ethics panel will meet Wednesday and potentially vote to release a report probing sexual misconduct allegations against former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who Donald Trump tapped to be his attorney general, according to two people familiar with the discussion.

The meeting comes as Gaetz’s confirmation is in question, with some Republican senators wary of the controversial Florida Republican serving as the nation’s top law enforcement officer.

Speaker Mike Johnson is putting pressure on members of the Ethics Committee to keep the report under wraps, saying on Friday that he is “going to strongly request” the report isn’t released because “that is not the way we do things in the House, and I think that would be a terrible precedent to set.”

Johnson furthered that stance in interviews on the Sunday shows and threw his support behind Gaetz to be attorney general.

Members rescheduled the Wednesday meeting from one last week where lawmakers were widely expected to vote on whether to release the report.

Whether or not to release the report, which some senators have said would be essential in deciding whether or not to confirm Gaetz, is placing intense pressure on the historically bipartisan Ethics Committee. Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin on Sunday told “Meet The Press” that the Senate should “absolutely” be able to see the report, but he said that doesn’t necessarily mean it should become public.

Gaetz, a fierce and loyal supporter of Trump’s, has a tough road to confirmation in the Senate. GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said she doesn’t “think it’s a serious nomination.” And fellow swing-vote Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said she was “shocked” by the choice.

Republicans will hold 53 Senate seats in the next Congress, meaning they can only afford three defectors in the confirmation process.

As I mentioned, Trump’s lies about not knowing about Project 2025 are becoming more disprovable. This is also from Politico. “Playbook: Heritage comes out of the bunker.” Natalie Allison has the lede.

But now, with Trump as president-elect, Heritage is peeking back out from its metaphorical bunker.

Two of Heritage’s visiting fellows — TOM HOMAN and JOHN RATCLIFFE, who were contributors to Project 2025 — have already been named to top Trump administration posts. That book from Roberts that was supposed to come out in September? It was released last week. The think tank even marked its reemergence with an event this past week welcoming back the Washington cocktail circuit to the group’s Massachusetts Avenue headquarters on Capitol Hill. It was a D.C. coming back out party, of sorts, for an organization that is easing its way back into influence in what’s soon to be Trump’s Washington once again.

“We’re so back,” the Heritage official told Playbook, with a nervous laugh, while a crowd in the packed but modest-sized room milled around during a book party Thursday night for Roberts.

As GOP members of Congress — Playbook spotted Reps. RALPH NORMAN (R-S.C.), BRIAN BABIN (R-Texas), ERIC BURLISON (R-Mo.) and JOSH BRECHEEN (R-Okla.) there — sipped wine and grabbed hors d’oeuvres with a smattering of ambassadors, conservative staffers and reporters on Thursday, Roberts noted that he has lost a number of his “liberal friends” this year over “that larger book we’re famous for.”

But Heritage’s stint as a social pariah due to Project 2025 is effectively over.
“The entire political spectrum in the West is represented here,” Roberts said of the crowd he had assembled Thursday. “I won’t call anyone out, but those of you who are not exactly excited about everything that Heritage does — I’m very, very grateful that you’re here, and you’re here out of friendship.”

Roberts spoke about the need for conservatives to “have a certain humility” in order to continue growing the historic coalition that’s returning Trump to the White House — while still trying to fully convert new faces in the movement to a robust conservative ideology more closely resembling his own.

“What the conservative movement did for a generation — I was guilty of this, sometimes I’m still tempted to be guilty of this — is to say, ‘Oh, I’m not going to talk to you,’” Roberts said. He recalled scoffing the first time someone suggested that influential “populist conservatives” like himself should form a “political alliance with the tech bros.”

“I said, ‘What are you talking about? That’s crazy.’ Guess who was wrong? I was.”

Roberts, flanked on each side by panels quoting book endorsements from VP-elect JD VANCE and TUCKER CARLSON, noted that there are stark differences between his worldview and of some of the GOP’s newcomers, name-checking ELON MUSK and ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR., who had been announced as Trump’s nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services just hours earlier.

“I can be very grateful to Elon Musk for revitalizing free speech for the world, while also saying — very respectfully, civilly, maybe even with a smile on my face — it’s crazy to want to put microchips in the brain,” Roberts said.

And he intends to have what he said will also be a “civil” conversation with Kennedy on their differences on abortion rights. “We might agree to disagree,” Roberts said, “but we’re going to work on whatever we can that we agree on, and I will hold out hope that maybe I can change his mind.”

Roberts is sounding pretty optimistic again about the role of Heritage in Washington, about his own improving standing in Trump world, and, yes — about the likelihood of Project 2025’s much-maligned proposals getting closer to implementation. His organization, meanwhile, has prepared for the Trump administration a database of nearly 20,000 names of people who could fill jobs in the president-elect’s new federal government, a Heritage official told Playbook.

Elon Musk’s idea of free speech is anything that doesn’t personally attack him or his ideals, so let’s get rid of that notion.  The Tech Bros funded this crazy train.  This is from Oliver Darcy, who writes for Status. “The Verge Editor-In-Chief Nilay Patel breathes fire on Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s Big Tech enablers. “All of these men are now hopelessly trapped in a problem their own platforms and algorithms created.””  This is from Oliver’s interview with Patel.

What do you make of Elon Musk’s alliance with Donald Trump and what worries you the most about him playing such an outsized role in the Trump administration?

America now has an unelected defense contractor sitting in the White House doing ketamine and twiddling the algorithmic knobs of an influential right-wing echo chamber while fulminating against traditional standards-based journalism, threatening to revoke network broadcast licenses, and suing advertisers who don’t want to spend their money on his dwindling user base. What could go wrong?

On top of that, Trump’s most likely FCC Chairman is Brendan Carr, who was tasked in the first Trump government to crack down on platform moderation by taking control of Section 230, literally wrote the Project 2025 chapter laying out a plan to do so, and is now begging to punish NBC for having Kamala Harris on “SNL.”

To be as clear as I can be, the second Trump administration with Elon Musk embedded within it represents the most direct and sustained threat to the First Amendment and the freedom of the press any of us will ever experience. If you’re a media executive or editorial leader and you haven’t met with your legal team to understand the current landscape of First Amendment threats, let alone the ones to come, you’re already behind. Get on it.

In the wake of Trump’s victory, other Big Tech leaders (Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai, etcetera) posted congratulatory messages on X. It struck me as much different to how Silicon Valley responded to Trump’s first election. Why do you think that is?

All of these men are now hopelessly trapped in a problem their own platforms and algorithms created: they have to manipulate Trump’s narcissism to secure tariff exceptions and regulatory largesse, while knowing that the vast majority of their employees and half of their customers will see any engagement as moral bankruptcy. There’s a reason Apple and Google would not confirm the calls Donald Trump claimed Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai made to him before the election — they didn’t want to be associated with him.

Now they have no choice. Tim Cook had been quietly setting the stage to retire — but he’s stuck kissing the ring and hosting fake factory openings for another four years to avoid disastrous tariffs on Apple products. Zuck is spending billions on Nvidia H100s manufactured in Taiwan in order to dominate A.I., but all that money comes from advertising for products made overseas — a double whammy of tariff issues. (And the entire influencer economy is built on Shein sponcon — that’s about to fall off a cliff.) Elon, Marc Andreessen, and J.D. Vance all think that Google should be crushed to bits with antitrust law — Vance has specifically said that he think Lina Khan is doing a good job.

Jeff Bezos? All that money for yachts and rockets comes from Amazon’s huge ecosystem of alphabet soup dropshipping companies. I hope Lauren likes having dinner at Mar-a-Lago.

Here’s more on the FCC cabinet pick who edited Project 2025. This is from the AP. “Trump names Brendan Carr, senior GOP leader at FCC, to lead the agency.” Demons all the way down.

President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday named Brendan Carr, the senior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission, as the new chairman of the agency tasked with regulating broadcasting, telecommunications and broadband.

Carr is a longtime member of the commission and served previously as the FCC’s general counsel. He has been unanimously confirmed by the Senate three times and was nominated by both Trump and President Joe Biden to the commission.

The FCC is an independent agency that is overseen by Congress, but Trump has suggested he wanted to bring it under tighter White House control, in part to use the agency to punish TV networks that cover him in a way he doesn’t like.

Carr has of late embraced Trump’s ideas about social media and tech. Carr wrote a section devoted to the FCC in “ Project 2025,” a sweeping blueprint for gutting the federal workforce and dismantling federal agencies in a second Trump administration produced by the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Every federal worker is going to need a lawyer at this point.  Get ready for that Class Action lawsuit.  This in-depth look at the weirdo that will head defense is not pleasant. But, he’s the guy who would work with whatever Generals remain in all parts of the country, sniffing out undocumented workers.  Judd Legume and his team sniffed him out for Popular Information. “13 things everyone should know about Pete Hegseth. Just looking at him gives me the willies.

Hegseth is a military veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and received a Bronze Star and other commendations. He also served in the National Guard. But the largest organization that Hegseth has previously run is Concerned Veterans for America, a Koch-funded right-wing advocacy organization, where he served as Executive Director from 2012 to 2016. Concerned Veterans for America had a few dozen employees and a budget of around $15 million during his tenure. In that role, Hegseth hired his younger brother, who had just graduated college, to a well-compensated media relations position at the CVA. Hegseth founded a small PAC in his native Minnesota to support conservative candidates. It managed to raise about $15,000 over several years. One-third of the raised funds were “spent on two Christmas parties and reimbursements to Hegseth.”

Even Trump’s most loyal supporters acknowledge Hegseth’s lack of relevant experience. Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist during his first term, said that Hegseth has “never run a big organization” and is “kind of a madman.”

But while Hegseth has limited management experience, he has spent many years in the public eye and has a long record of punditry. Here are 13 things everyone should know about the man Trump wants to put in charge of the nation’s military.

His top priority is getting women out of the military.

“I’m straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles,” Hegseth said in a media interview on November 10, 2024. According to Hegseth, “[e]verything about men and women serving together makes the situation more complicated, and complication in combat, means casualties are worse.”

“Dads push us to take risks. Moms put the training wheels on our bikes,” Hegseth wrote in his 2024 book The War on Warriors. “We need moms. But not in the military, and especially not in combat units.”

“There aren’t enough lesbians in San Francisco to staff the 82nd Airborne like you need, you need the boys in Kentucky and Texas and North Carolina and Wisconsin,” Hegseth said in a podcast earlier this year.

Women have formally been allowed to serve in combat roles since 2013 and have been involved in combat operations for decades. Even the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page suggested Hegseth’s position is misguided because “women have shown they can perform well in many roles” in the military.

It gets worse from there if you want to read it.  And I think that it’s horrifying for all of us for now. Be aware of all the places where havoc will reign.  The stock market has already been rebooted. It’s nose-dived since the cabinet officers were announced.  Big Pharma and anyone in the processed food business were particularly hard hit.  This is the headline today from Stock Market Watch. “Stock Market Today: Dow flat, S&P 500 attempts bounce after worst week in over 2 months.  It’s not like I didn’t warn y’all.  Just get ready to hunker down like an Okie during the Dust Bowl.  I have mad skills, having survived post-Katrina with the lessons my Nana and Dad taught me. This is not going to be an easy time for any of us.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Songs for dwelling on Trump and his appointments