Mostly Monday Reads: Oops!  He did it again! 

Posted: April 21, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: #FARTUS | Tags: , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

“King of kings..” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

The Trump Kakistocracy continues to upset the operations of every agency in the country. Unfortunately, some of the most necessary and strategic posts have been filled with village idiots.  After the revelation of the first SignalGate, you would think there would be more quick changes to protect the conversations at the top of the Pentagon and the Department of Defense.  Party Boy, sexual predator, and all-around dumb guy, Pete Hegseth, has done it again.  No need for spies when the head of the nation’s military broadcasts stuff on commercial software that everyone’s hacked.  There is total chaos at the Pentagon. This headline from Politico says it all. “White House backs Hegseth, Leavitt says ‘entire Pentagon’ is resisting him. Hegseth “is doing phenomenal leading the Pentagon,” Leavitt said during a Monday “Fox & Friends” appearance.”

“President Donald Trump “stands strongly behind Pete Hegseth,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday morning, defending the scandal-plagued Defense secretary against escalating criticism from Democrats and former senior officials.

Hegseth “is doing phenomenal leading the Pentagon,” Leavitt said in a “Fox & Friends” appearance. “This is what happens when the entire Pentagon is working against you and working against the monumental change you are trying to implement.”

Her comments came a day after The New York Times reported that Hegseth shared sensitive information about military operations in Yemen in a private chat on the Signal app that included his wife, brother and personal lawyer — the second reported instance of the secretary sharing operational plans in an unclassified chat. The revelations have reignited the so-called Signalgate scandal and deepened scrutiny over Hegseth’s judgment and leadership.

Former top Pentagon spokesperson John Ullyot, who stepped down last week, also bashed the Pentagon leader for allegedly plunging the department into dysfunction in a POLITICO Magazine opinion piece published Sunday night.

Ullyot — once a vocal supporter of the Defense secretary — accused Hegseth’s team of spreading unverified claims about three top officials who were fired last week, falsely accusing them of leaking sensitive information to media outlets.

“President Donald Trump has a strong record of holding his top officials to account,’” Ullyot wrote. “Given that, it’s hard to see Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth remaining in his role for much longer.”

Hegseth brushed off the allegations Monday and blamed it on backlash for his efforts to reshape the Pentagon.

I love this headline from Rolling Stone. “Turns Out It Wasn’t Such a Great Idea to Put Pete Hegseth in Charge of the Military. The former Fox News host’s tenure at the top of the Pentagon has been riddled with scandal and broader institutional turmoil.”  The article was filed by Ryan Bort and Asawin Suebsaeng

Pete Hegseth barely received enough votes to win confirmation as Donald Trump’s defense secretary. Three Republicans even bucked their own party’s president to oppose him. One of them, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), cited “accusations of financial mismanagement and problems with the workplace culture he fostered.” Another, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), said Hegseth had “failed to demonstrate” that he could manage “nearly 3 million military and civilian personnel, an annual budget of nearly $1 trillion.”

It hasn’t taken long for Hegseth to prove them — along with every Senate Democrat and the countless others who warned about him taking over the Pentagon — right.

The New York Times reported on Sunday that Hegseth shared attack plans in a second unsecured Signal group chat, following the revelation last month that he shared the plans to attack Houthi militants in Yemen in a Signal chat group that included a journalist. The second chat included Hegseth’s wife, brother, and personal lawyer, underscoring the former Fox News host’s recklessness with highly sensitive information.

The news came after a tumultuous week in the Pentagon that saw Hegseth fire three senior officials — ostensibly because of an internal investigation into leaking, although the officials seemed confused about what happened. “We still have not been told what exactly we were investigated for, if there is still an active investigation, or if there was even a real investigation of ‘leaks’ to begin with,” they wrote in a joint statement Friday night, adding that, although the experience was “unconscionable,” they will continue to support Trump’s plans for the Pentagon.

John Ullyot, who resigned as a spokesperson for the Pentagon last week, put a button on the turmoil in an op-ed for Politico on Sunday. “It’s been a month of total chaos at the Pentagon,” the piece began. “From leaks of sensitive operational plans to mass firings, the dysfunction is now a major distraction for the president — who deserves better from his senior leadership.”

Ullyot went on to bash the week’s firings, calling the purge “strange and baffling”; detail Hegeth’s “horrible crisis-communications” following the initial Signal scandal; and predict that “many in the secretary’s own inner circle will applaud quietly” if Trump decides to hold him accountable. Ullyot also predicted that the drama isn’t going to let up anytime soon: “There are very likely more shoes to drop in short order, with even bigger bombshell stories coming this week, key Pentagon reporters have been telling sources privately.”

We’ve already received notice in Louisiana about the number of student VISAS yanked by the party.  If it happens here, it’s undoubtedly happening all over the country. Jennifer Rubin has this advice on her Substack, The Contrarian. “Stop Waiting for a Formal Declaration of ‘Crisis’. It is here. We are living through it. No shit cupcake.

Are we in a “constitutional crisis”?

You have likely heard that question innumerable times over the past three months, followed by a discussion as to whether our president has actually, explicitly, openly violated a court order (make that a Supreme Court order). When a question is so pervasive, it is safe to assume that yes, we are already there.

When does the combo of authoritarian bullying, revenge seeking, stooge-nominating, retaliatory prosecuting, contemptuous litigating, and lawless usurpation of congressional power become a “crisis”? The word is defined by Merriam-Webster as “an unstable or crucial time or state of affairs in which a decisive change is impending…especiallyone with the distinct possibility of a highly undesirable outcome.” Frankly, we have been in that “crisis” since the first day of the Trump presidency.

When a Republican Congress allows the president to seize the power of the purse and does nothing, when the secretary of defense commits the worst breach of national security protocols in memory (and evidently doesn’t learn his lesson), or when Republicans refuse to reclaim the power to lay tariffs—despite a recession-inducing presidential trade war—the question is not if we are in a constitutional crisis, but just how bad it is.

For Kilmar Abrego Garcia, Rumeysa Ozturk, Mahmoud Khalil, Mohsen Mahdawi, and scores of others who are legally present in the United States have been snatched up, incarcerated (or are facing incarceration) in a foreign gulag, and are deprived of their right to contest their confinement and visa revocation, the “constitutional crisis” is well underway.

When the Supreme Court convenes “literally in the middle of the night” to stop the government from spiriting away Venezuelans in apparent contradiction of their instruction to give every individual a meaningful opportunity to oppose their deportation, the “constitutional crisis” has arrived.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) knows a constitutional crisis. When asked explicitly whether we were in one on Meet the Press, he affirmed, “Yes, we are.” He had to fly down to El Salvador to see for himself Abrego Garcia’s condition, and upon his return, called out the president and his flacks for abject lies, even revealing the clumsy attempt to stage a scene suggesting he and Kilmar were tossing down margaritas on a tropical holiday.

When such steps are required to confirm whether or not a lawful American resident is alive, we know this is not only the least trustworthy White House in modern history, but one seemingly eager to foment a constitutional crisis. “They wanted to create this appearance that life was just lovely for Kilmar, which of course is a big, fat lie,” Van Hollen said. Calling out the White House’s baseless allegations that Abrego Garcia is a gang member and terrorist, Van Hollen declared, “…In other words, put up in court or shut up.”

If you are interested in tracking foreign students who have lost their VISAS, you may look at this from Inside Higher Education. “What We’ve Learned So Far From Tracking Student Visa Data. More than 1,500 students from nearly 250 colleges have had their visas revoked, but who they are—and why they’ve been targeted—is still largely unknown.” Two international students from UNO, where I teach, have had theirs removed.

On April 7, amid reports that the federal government was detaining international students and revoking their visas, Inside Higher Ed began collecting and cross-checking data in an effort to track exactly how many students were affected—and at which institutions. Our goal was to understand the scope of the federal government’s involvement in the visa process and what it means for international students and the colleges and universities they attend.

Over the past two weeks, more than 1,500 students—representing several hundred colleges and universities, as well as state systems—have had a sudden or unexpected change in their Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) listing, or their F-1 or J-1 visa status.

Luke Garrett, writing for NPR, has this headline today. “House Democrats land in El Salvador, demand Abrego Garcia’s return.”  They need to start showing up in ICE detention centers, like the one down here, before more folks get shipped off despite all the court decisions.

Four House Democrats were scheduled to land in El Salvador Monday to demand the release and return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran citizen who lived in Maryland and was deported by the administration to a prison in El Salvador due to what the Trump administration an “administrative error.”

The group — Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., Rep. Yassamin Ansari, D-Ariz., and Rep. Maxine Dexter, D-Ore. — said in a statement they hope “to pressure” the White House “to abide by a Supreme Court order.”

“While Donald Trump continues to defy the Supreme Court, Kilmar Abrego Garcia is being held illegally in El Salvador after being wrongfully deported,” Rep. Garcia said. “That is why we’re here — to remind the American people that kidnapping immigrants and deporting them without due process is not how we do things in America.”

The Trump administration has refused to bring back Abrego Garcia despite a Supreme Court order to “facilitate” his return — and is receiving bipartisan criticism for it. The Salvadoran citizen entered the country illegally; an immigration judge said he should not be deported to El Salvador because Abrego Garcia was able to prove he was likely to suffer persecution in his home country. The Trump administration says it deported him because he was a member of MS-13; his lawyers deny that Abrego Garcia belongs to the gang.

The White House has said it can’t force the Salvadoran government to release one of its citizens, while El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele called the idea of Abrego Garcia’s release “preposterous.”

On Thursday, a federal court denied the Trump administration’s appeal of the court’s return-order.

Last week, Reps. Garcia and Frost requested congressional travel funds and security for the trip to El Salvador. Rep. James Comer, the Kentucky Republican who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, rejected the request. Rep. Mark Green, the Tennessee Republican who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, said Thursday he’d also deny any such request.

The group’s visit to El Salvador is not a taxpayer funded CODEL trip.

At least members of the Democratic Party are beginning to do something.  Will it be enough?  Some of the worst news came when an Executive Order leaked that basically removed all the Eisenhower reforms of the Diplomatic Corps and turned them all back into Ugly Americans.  The Substack PastPresentFuture, written by Dan Gardner, will give you some background on the changes made during Eisenhower’s presidency.

If one is of a certain vintage, the phrase “ugly American” has a vivid meaning.

Picture the worst stereotype of an American abroad. Loud, abrasive, arrogant. Incurious about local culture and politics because Americans have nothing to learn from foreigners. Incapable of delivering even a few words in another language and certain they can always make themselves understood by speaking English at a higher volume. Smugly confident that the United States is the most advanced of civilizations, in every way that matters, and all the rest of the world silently dreams of being American, or least meeting one of God’s chosen.

That’s an “ugly American.”

Curiously, though, that’s not what the phrase meant when it was coined. In fact, what it originally described was the opposite of all that.

The history of “ugly American” is worth reviewing because in that one phrase we can see how American foreign aid — and foreign policy more generally — is changing in the second Trump administration. There is even a direct connection between “ugly American” and today’s headlines, notably the hostile takeover of USAID by Elon Musk and his band of young zealots.

This isn’t a happy story, I’m afraid. But it is an important one.

You may read about the story at the link.  Here’s the information on the linked EO from The Daily Beast. “Diplomats Are Freaking Out About Trump’s Leaked Executive Order. One official said monkeys with a typewriter could have come up with a more logical plan for the State Department.”

American diplomats spent the weekend panicking about a possible plan to radically reshape the State Department in President Donald Trump’s image.

A 16-page document that appears to be a draft for an executive order has been circulating among diplomatic staff since last week. It calls for the elimination of dozens of positions and departments, slashing diplomatic operations in Canada, and closing “non-essential” embassies and consulates in sub-Saharan Africa.

It would also overhaul the traditionally non-partisan foreign service exam to test applicants on whether they share Trump’s MAGA foreign policy views, according to Bloomberg.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio called a New York Times report on the draft document “fake news‚” though he didn’t offer any details about which part was wrong.

Diplomats, however, worried the document was real, especially in light of the administration asking Congress to cut the State Department’s budget almost in half this year, to $28.4 billion, Politico reported.

“There’s a lot that could be reformed, but you could give infinite monkeys infinite typewriters, and they would come up with something better than that,” one diplomat told Politico.

Many of the document’s items violate the laws that govern the State Department’s operations, while other parts contradict the Trump administration’s communications to Congress about its plans for the department, according to Politico.

Other parts are internally inconsistent. For example, the Fulbright Program would be recast as “solely for master’s-level study in national security-related disciplines” with priority given to programs offering intense instruction in critical languages, including Russian and Mandarin Chinese.

At the same time, the entire African Affairs bureau would be replaced by a single special envoy reporting directly to the National Security Council. Experts say pulling out of Africa would leave a void that Russia and China are both eager to exploit.

Already, Kremlin-backed groups are handing out boxes of tuberculosis and HIV medication on the continent after the Trump administration froze U.S. aid funding, The Washington Post reported. Chinese officials have given interviews and taken out advertisements branding the country as a reliable partner.

The purported State Department draft order would also lead to a major disruption in services for Americans living and traveling in the affected countries, including those who lose their passports or need to register births abroad.

“Something tells me that Steven Miller is one of the monkeys with a typewriter. So, this is about all I’m up for today.  I’ll leave some suggested reads below.

I imagine you’ve all heard that Pope Francis has exited the Earthly Door.  I’m just sorry that one of the last faces he saw was that of J Dank. But maybe he wanted to give him a test after the Cardinal gave him a lecture on why deporting innocent people is not very Catholic of him.

This headline has raised my torch and pitchfork.

You may check for more at Memeorandum.

Have as nice a week as possible!

What’s on your reading and blogging list?

 

Friday Reads: Headlines I never thought I’d read in this country

Posted: January 11, 2019 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads | Tags: , , , | 54 Comments

Barbara Stevenson, Apple Vendor, 1933-1934

Good Morning Sky Dancers!

It’s a sunny,crisp, cold morning here in New Orleans. I start this day like most others. Temple has had her morning walk. I have been blessed by the gifts bestowed by the morning’s first cup of coffee. Now I do what my parents and grandparents did before me.  I reach for the morning news before starting my work of grading student homework. I think about the the headlines that have greeted the last four or five generations of my family. I still marvel thinking about waking up to the Dust Bowl like my father’s family did or waking up to the start and end of two world wars like both sets of grandparents.

I was already settled into this family pattern in high school when all the Watergate goings on and the Vietnam war news filled the pages. It has been a couple of bombastic modern centuries but some of the worst of it was never quite in everyone’s backyard here. This is when we always would find the gumption–eventually–to be neighborly and come to the support of a neighbor in need. We frequently stumbled on the path to right our country’s wrongs. But,we eventually muster the righteousness to move–eventually and frequently with Judicial encouragement–in that direction.

Today’s art is “Public Art” that was commissioned during The New Deal.  It is something with no future in Trump’s America.   I don’t mean the angst of the artists living through the Great Depression but the relief they must’ve felt when they were paid to produce these great works in public spaces.  Reading through today’s headlines I feel the chill of the season and of the times. Ours is a country that no longer helps its neighbors at all. We’re a country that turns its backs on every one but the extremely wealthy who pass laws to take and keep what they want. The topmost government political officials are nothing more than grifters.

This makes me profoundly sad.

Mutiny on the Amistad,Hale Woodruff.,1938

Here’s a WAPO headline for you to think about. “Now on Craigslist, Facebook: Household items from furloughed workers trying to make ends meet.”  These are members of the US coast Guard tasked with protecting our shores and water. They are officials that look for contraband and bad people at ports like the TSO and the customs folks. They are our park rangers who protect everything in the borders of our national parks.  We are failing them as they do our work.

A federal worker in Morgantown, W.Va., took to Facebook this week to sell welding tools, left behind by his deceased father-in-law. Another, a die-hard Star Wars fan in Woodbridge, Va., did the same with a life-size replica of Kylo Ren’s lightsaber. A single father in Indiana hosted a sale on eBay with five pages of things found around the house, including Bibles, Nintendo bedsheets and Dr. Seuss neckties.

“Sells for $93.88 at Walmart. Asking $10,” a government worker wrote on a Craigslist ad for a Lulu Ladybug rocking chair. “We need money to pay bills.”

As hundreds of thousands of federal workers brace for their first missed paychecks of the government shutdown this week, some have become immersed in the frantic financial calculus of choosing what they can live without.

In the United States, living paycheck to paycheck is disturbingly common, regardless of profession or location. A recent report from the Federal Reserve revealed how little cushion most Americans have in their budgets: Four in 10 adults say they couldn’t produce $400 in an emergency without sliding into debt or selling something, according to the figures that surveyed households in 2017, a relatively prosperous year for the American economy.

But the shutdown, which began just before Christmas, took many federal workers by surprise and is lasting longer than most expected. That has left furloughed employees stuck at home, sifting through garages and closets, basements and bookshelves to find possessions and personal treasures to sell.

“You have to take a kind of coldhearted look at things around you and decide what would be marketable to someone else,” said Jay Elhard, on furlough from his job as a media specialist at Acadia National Park in Maine.

Baseball at Night by Morris Kantor, 1934

This is behavior deemed appropriate and necessary by a President of the United States so he can get his way on something that all evidence says is a complete waste of treasure. Today, millions of Federal Workers have missed a paycheck. Many are working. A lawsuit has been filed by a Federal Worker’s union.  There was a protest this week by workers. The Senate passed a law to guarantee backpay but for many that could be too little and too late. I’ve watched my pay erode and my work load increase over the last 7 years at this teaching job. I’m beyond pay check to pay check because I never know when the terms of my pay will change and they definitely have and so have benefits and it’s never been for the  better.

These  workers will return to a pay freeze this year when they do get starting getting paid.  However, the accumulating interest and late fees on loans and other payments will not freeze and I’ve yet to go a year when life’s little essentials like electricity, water, and access to the internet or tv hasn’t gone up way more than any one’s salary. I’m not sure how much longer these things can continue before a recession really takes hold.  Main Street does not depend on the Trump family’s buying whims.  It depends on every day people.  (Via VOX)

As an official for the American Federation of Government Employees union recently laid out, it takes at least two to three days for the government to process payroll, so workers would likely receive their back pay after at least that much time elapsed.

While Trump has refused to sign a package of seven appropriations bills, forcing about a quarter of the federalgovernment into a lengthy shutdown over this fight, he’s already agreed to sign this back pay legislation, according to a spokesperson for Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA). Kaine, who was one of more than 20 sponsors for the unanimously passed bill, is optimistic the House will take it up soon, the spokesperson added.

The bill aims to address one of the chief pain points of the shutdown, which has left federal workers scrambling to cover day-to-day costs like rent, utilities, and medication while they wait for their next paycheck to come in. Its benefits, however, won’t be felt for some time since workers won’t receive the back pay until the shutdown has been resolved.

In the interim,Democrats have also proposed other measures to protect workers from the fallout of what will soon be the longest shutdown in US history. Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) and Rep. Derek Kilmer (D-WA) have introduced legislation, according to HuffPost, that would “prohibit landlords and creditors from taking action against federal workers or contractors who are hurt by the shutdown and cannot pay rent or repay loans.” And Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) is drafting a bill that would cover back pay for federal contractors as well.

The shutdown is now in its 20th day and there still isn’t a clear end in sight. At the very least, the Senate’s latest action helps ensure that hundreds of thousands of federal workers will get the pay they missed once it’s over.

WPA Mural “New Deal”, Charles Wells,1935

Now, Trump is threatening to take Federal Disaster Relief funds for his misadventure along the Southern Border. How many lives and livelihoods will this mean?  (Via NBC)

President Donald Trump has been briefed on a plan that would use the Army Corps of Engineers and a portion of $13.9 billion of Army Corps funding to build 315 miles of barrier along the U.S.-Mexico border, according to three U.S. officials familiar with the briefing.

The money was set aside to fund projects all over the country including storm-damaged areas of Puerto Rico through fiscal year 2020, but the checks have not been written yet and, under an emergency declaration, the president could take the money from these civil works projects and use it to build the border wall, said officials familiar with the briefing and two congressional sources.

The plan could be implemented if Trump declares a national emergency in order to build the wall and would use more money and build more miles than the administration has requested from Congress. The president had requested $5.7 billion for a wall stretching 234 miles.

Under the proposal, the officials said, Trump could dip into the $2.4 billion allocated to projects in California, including flood prevention and protection projects along the Yuba River Basin and the Folsom Dam, as well as the $2.5 billion set aside for reconstruction projects in Pueto Rico, which is still recovering from Hurricane Maria.

There are other headlines I find deeply disturbing today.  Here are a few.

New York Times:  Prosecutors Examining Ukrainians Who Flocked to Trump Inaugural

Associated Press: US official says troop withdrawal from Syria has started

 Colleen Long / Associated Press: APNewsBreak: US approved thousands of child bride requests

Laura Rozen / Al-Monitor: Pompeo’s Cairo speech panned as ‘tone-deaf,’ ‘hyper-partisan,’ ‘offensive’

Bob Bauer / The Atlantic: 

What Someone Needs to Explain to Trump About ‘National Emergencies’

Matt Lewis / The Daily Beast:

How Steve King’s Idiotic and Odious Words Help the Left Destroy Western Civilization

Frank Bruni / New York Times:

Will the Media Be Trump’s Accomplice Again in 2020?

The Pompeo Speech at American University in Cairo is particularly offensive and disturbing.  I don’t think it does much use to place a xenophobic religious nutter as the face of American outreach to the world.

Subway, Lily Furedi, 1934

It’s really difficult not to be embarrassed by the realization that your country’s chief diplomat is a shining example of the “ugly American”.

Pompeo’s speech “was a regurgitation of what they have been saying for two years. There was nothing new, and it was offensive,” former career US diplomat and ambassador to Yemen Gerald Feierstein told Al-Monitor. “That they think that anyone still wants to hear about Barack Obama’s 2009 Cairo speech — get over it.”

“You own the issue now, you own the policy,” Feierstein continued. “People want to know what you are going to do, not what you think Barack Obama did wrong. And on that score, there was nothing there, Just a lot of empty rhetoric of all things they are going to do and how wonderful the United States is and it never occupied anybody. So what.”

Pompeo’s speech is unlikely to reassure American allies and partners frustrated by constantly shifting Donald Trump administration positions on the region that they are not properly consulted about, said former FBI and Treasury Department official Matthew Levitt.

“I do not think they [the Trump administration] fully appreciate the level of anxiety among our allies and potential allies in the region and beyond in Europe in terms of how reliable we are as a partner,” Levitt, now with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told Al-Monitor.

“It is not just the decision to withdraw US forces in Syria,” Levitt continued. “Much more than that, it is the way the decision was arrived at and announced. [US Syria envoy Jim] Jeffrey said one thing one day, Trump says the opposite the next day. … People can’t keep up with the pace of the back and forth, ping pong. The lack of clarity, the lack of procedure in the policy making process — the allies see that.”

“While it is great to go to the region in a time of anxiety to reassure people you mean to have a reinvigorated role in the Middle East, it is not enough to say it,” Levitt said.

The extensive swipes in the speech at the previous administration were also discomfiting, Levitt said.

Whether it is done by Republicans or Democrats, “I always felt uncomfortable when Americans travel abroad and hang out dirty laundry,” he said.

“Embarrassing and shameful speech by the small, hyper-partisan Trump suck-up Pompeo,” Ellen Tauscher, a former undersecretary of state for arms control in the Obama administration and a former member of Congress, wrote on Twitter. “There’s not a ‘non-partisan statesman’ pore in his body.”

While I don’t think our country has to send our soldiers to every corner of the globe, I don’t think our country has ever been so small and headed towards insignificance.   If the goal was to get us off the international stage, that’s been done.  But how is ruining day to day life for ordinary Americans making us ‘great again’? The regime of Tariffs is killing many US businesses.  The combination of tariffs and shutdowns is probably hitting US farmers worse than any industry. I’m pretty sure they aren’t getting what they voted for.

In Georgia, a pecan farmer lost out on his chance to buy his first orchard. The local Farm Service Agency office that would have processed his loan application was shut down.

In Wisconsin’s dairy country, a 55-year-old woman sat inside her new dream home, worried she would not be able to pay her mortgage. Her loan had come from an Agriculture Department program for low-income residents in rural areas, but all of the account information she needed to make her first payment was locked away in an empty government office.

And in upstate New York, Pam Moore was feeding hay to her black-and-white cows at a small dairy that tottered on the brink of ruin. She and her husband had run up $350,000 in debt to keep the dairy running after 31 of their cows died of pneumonia, and their last lifeline was an emergency federal farm loan. But the money had been derailed by the government shutdown.

“It has just been one thing after another, after another, after another,” Ms. Moore, 57, said.

Farm country has stood by President Trump, even as farmers have strained under two years of slumping incomes and billions in losses from his trade wars. But as the government shutdown now drags into a third week, some farmers say the loss of crucial loans, payments and other services has pushed them — and their support — to a breaking point.

They thing Trump country never really understood is they’re the ones that need their neighboring states and their beneficence more than any one.  I assume they’re learning that painful lesson with the rest of us whose livelihood is running the stuff of the country instead of selling it stuff it really doesn’t need.

What’s on you reading and blogging list today?