Trump Administration 2.0

YEAR ONE

The Senate tie vote involving Hegseth was resolved by a Vance vote!

>1 Molly3028: No, just week one - 6 months from now people will reminisce about the good old days "like we had back in week one."

>3 alco261: This.

What astounds me about the Hegseth bit is that nobody seems to have brought up the fact that the man was basically drummed out of the National Guard for being a Nazi.

(he says he resigned, but he resigned after being told that he was not deployable, because he was a Nazi... it's those little details that matter, isn't it?)

Drudge Report

US taxpayers apparently paid over $850,000 to fly 80 migrants out of the country.

>6 Molly3028: soooooo.... that works out to $10,625 per migrant. Therefore, if the nightmare continues and the individuals in charge of Monsters Authorizing Greater Atrocities ships 1.3 million that's going to come to $13,812,500,000 which will be added to the tax burden of anyone whose annual income is less than one million a year.

DRUDGE REPORT

Trump Says He Wants to ‘Clean Out’ Gaza, Send Refugees to Egypt and Jordan

The president said the move could be temporary or long-term

>8 Molly3028: And there you have it. Any further questions?

US freeze on foreign aid funding is a 'death sentence' for people in need, NGOs warn (euronews)

US President Donald Trump has ordered most foreign assistance to be halted for 90 days pending a review, causing alarm among aid agencies worldwide. From life-saving HIV treatment to shelter for refugees to food for malnourished children, US-funded aid projects around the world are being paused, downsized or scrapped due to the Trump administration's unprecedented freeze on almost all foreign assistance... "The aid community is grappling with just how existential this aid suspension is," said Abby Maxman, president of Oxfam America, one of the few aid officials willing to speak publicly about the impact of the freeze amid Trump administration warnings to stay quiet. The decision "could have life or death consequences" for children and families worldwide, Maxman said. The US is the world's top source of foreign assistance by far, although other nations give a bigger share of their budgets... On Monday, the Trump administration placed more than 50 senior officials at USAID on leave due to suspicions that they had been resisting the order and helping aid groups to cope with the freeze. The agency's staff have been told not to communicate with partners apart from to let them know that funding has been halted. One of the biggest projects affected by the aid freeze is the President’s Emergency Relief Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). The groundbreaking HIV programme is credited with saving 25 million lives — including those of 5.5 million children — in more than 50 countries since it was started by Republican President George W Bush in 2003. "This is a matter of life or death," said Beatriz Grinsztejn, president of the International AIDS Society. If funding stops, "people are going to die and HIV will resurge," she warned...

BIG Short 2025

Hedge funds are shorting (betting against) the tRump economy!

AND

Friday afternoon tRump spooked the marketeers.

**********
The 'BIG Short' 2015 movie (housing/banking crises of 07/08)
is fascinating, educational and on point right now.

St. Embolism, why have you forsaken us?

Trump 2.0 is now Musk's twitter 2.0!

Unfortunately, this is what the 5th grade adults in the country gifted to us on election day last November.

posted on Bluesky

50 PROTESTS in 50 STATE CAPITOLS

February 5

Well, shit, I certainly hope so.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/musk-treasury-access
'It's a Coup': Musk's DOGE Granted Access to Treasury System That Pays Out Social Security
"I can think of no good reason why political operators who have demonstrated a blatant disregard for the law would need access to these sensitive, mission-critical systems," Sen. Ron Wyden said.
Olivia Rosane
Feb 02, 2025

Elon Musk and his team at the Department of Government Efficiency—or DOGE—have been granted access to a sensitive Treasury Department payment system that contains the personal information of every American who receives tax refunds, Medicare, Social Security, and other payments from the government.

Newly approved Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave Musk surrogates access to the system late on Friday, five people familiar with the situation toldThe New York Times. Bessent's decision came the same day as news that David Lebryk, a career Treasury official who was acting secretary before Bessent's confirmation, would step down after arguing with DOGE members over access to the system run by the Bureau of Fiscal Service that pays out over $6 trillion a year.

"Sources tell my office that Treasury Secretary Bessent has granted DOGE *full* access to this system," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) wrote on social media on Saturday. "Social Security and Medicare benefits, grants, payments to government contractors, including those that compete directly with Musk's own companies. All of it."

"Americans don't want an unelected and unaccountable billionaire dictating what working families can and cannot afford."

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich also responded with shock to the news: "An unelected billionaire, with no actual congressional authority or governmentt experience, now has access to Treasury payment systems and sensitive information about millions of Americans who receive Social Security checks, tax refunds, and other payments. What could go wrong?"

The news heightens fears that Musk and the Trump administration are attempting to gain authoritarian control over the federal government by ousting or sidelining career civil servants and undermining Congress, which has the constitutional authority to decide how the government should spend its money.

DOGE gained access to the Treasury payment system on the same day that an official at the Office of Personnel Management said that Musk allies had locked career civil servants out of a computer system containing the personal information of federal employees. The news also capped a week in which the Trump administration attempted to freeze all federal grants and loans, a move that has been temporarily blocked by two judges.

Wyden, the ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee, sent a letter demanding answers from Bessent on Friday when reports first emerged that Musk's team had tried to gain access to the system.

"To put it bluntly, these payment systems simply cannot fail, and any politically motivated meddling in them risks severe damage to our country and the economy," Wyden wrote. "I am deeply concerned that following the federal grant and loan freeze earlier this week, these officials associated with Musk may have intended to access these payment systems to illegally withhold payments to any number of programs. I can think of no good reason why political operators who have demonstrated a blatant disregard for the law would need access to these sensitive, mission-critical systems."

Other Democratic lawmakers also voiced concerns on social media about the news.

"Elon Musk, the richest man on Earth, is rooting around in Social Security and Medicare payment systems. He's reaching his hands into our pockets and firing anyone who tries to stop him. This reeks of corruption—it must stop," Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D.-Wash.) wrote.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called the news "alarming' and said that Congress must investigate

https://www.masslive.com/news/2025/02/elon-musk-us-financial-data-grab-a-coup-he...

By Dave Eisenstadter | deisen@masslive.comThe Associated Press | MassLive
Boston College history professor Heather Cox Richardson — a longtime commentator putting current political events in historical perspective — summarized actions taken by political appointee Elon Musk over the weekend as a “coup,” as well as “the largest data breach in human history.”

In a 30-minute video on Facebook Live Sunday, Cox Richardson provided an explainer on how Musk’s government-inspection teams gained access both to nationally secure State Department information as well as sensitive financial information for every taxpaying American.

Heather Cox Richardson explainer: https://www.facebook.com/heathercoxrichardson/videos/590837890530283

Is Elon Musk Staging a Coup? Unelected Billionaire Seizes Control at Treasury Dept. & Other Agencies

https://www.democracynow.org/2025/2/3/elon_musk_gov
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBmFx5rUglA

>14 Molly3028: https://x.com/YourAnonCentral/status/1886187729127608554
https://www.batimes.com.ar/news/argentina/demonstrators-challenge-milei-with-mar...

The Argentines haven't forgotten how to protest.
(Greetings from Mendoza this month, BTW).

>17 davidgn: Thanks for the update.

Unfortunately, the truism about power corrupting is being re-established every single hour of each and every day of this Trump 2.0 administration. The GOP is now the skeletal remains of what was a slowly rotting carcass.

Rep. Jimmy Panetta’s rejection of the rule of law (Santa Cruz Sentinel)

With Donald Trump’s return to the White House, concerns have been raised about the politicization of the American legal system, with fears that our centuries-old tradition of equal justice under the law is now threatened by a president who has pledged to block legal accountability for him and his supporters while punishing the prosecutors and investigators. Unfortunately, our congressman, Rep. Jimmy Panetta (D-Carmel) has adopted a similar position regarding international law, being one of only a handful of Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives to support a Republican-sponsored bill that would punish anyone who directly or indirectly participates in the prosecution or investigation of those suspected of war crimes if they are part of a government allied with the United States. The bill (H.R. 8282), which passed the House earlier this month, is rooted in the assumption that the prosecution of suspected war criminals by the International Criminal Court (ICC) should be based not upon the available evidence or the severity of the crimes, but on the geopolitical orientation of the government of those accused. While Panetta has no objections to prosecuting war criminals belonging to organizations or governments Washington opposes, he apparently believes those supported by Washington should somehow be unaccountable to international humanitarian law...

Mark Cuban ‪@mcuban.bsky.social‬ | February 4, 2025 at 10:01 PM:

Anyone out there ever work in Treasury Payments? I'm curious if this is actually the case:

The Secure Payment System (SPS) employs a strict separation of duties as a core security measure. {See text excerpt below: Data Entry Operator (DEO), Certifying Operator (CO)}

The point of the ? Is to know how many people are required to approve a payment and where are they located

Text excerpt, Secure Payment System (3)
https://bsky.app/profile/mcuban.bsky.social/post/3lhflewoqrk2z

Take that, China, small businesses, TEMU customers, stock exchange, USPS ...

Bloomberg ‪@bloomberg.com‬ | February 4, 2025 at 9:31 PM:

The US Postal Service said that it would temporarily suspend the acceptance of inbound international packages from China and Hong Kong Posts until further notice.

US Postal Service Suspends Inbound Parcels From China, HK
The US Postal Service said that it would temporarily suspend the acceptance of inbound international packages from China and Hong Kong Posts until further notice.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-05/us-postal-service-suspends-in...

‪James Fallows‬ ‪@jfallows.bsky.social‬ | February 4, 2025 at 8:32 PM

Playing 5D chess: How to make prospect of war vs NATO allies (Denmark, Canada) seem normal and reasonable. Take over Gaza!
/sarc

Ones really playing 5D chess: Musk Thiel Vought Vance etc. A buffoon in mental collapse draws attention, while they run roughshod. And no GOP Senator dares speak up.

0:59 Trump presser w Nethanyahu "The US will take over the Gaza Strip."
(https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lhfbc4srys22)

Sanders on our emerging kleptocracy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWf_b-_4uXg

Donald Trump to Sell Off Half of All Federal Property: What to Know

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-sell-off-half-all-federal-property-what-kn...

(and) GSA regional managers last week received messages from the agency's headquarters in Washington directing them to terminate the leases on all of the roughly 7,500 federal offices across the country, the Associated Press reported.
...
It's just getting so weird!
What will he be in power over if he wipes the board clean?

Army recruiting shatters records after President Trump election win

https://www.foxnews.com/video/6368302199112

"America's youth want to serve."

>25 2wonderY: Hey, it's nice to know the wrongthinkers' escorts to Salvadoran prisons will be enthusiastic.

>25 2wonderY: Typically, army enrollment reflects a lack of other available opportunities - people who can get good jobs or get into good schools tend to prefer those options. So this is probably not good news, economically speaking.

Have you seen the banner headlines in the Times, saying:
"Congress abdicates. Control of US Purse passes to unelected billionaire private citizen, with conivance of the FFOTUS. Coup in Progress " ?

Yeah, I haven't either.

So much for the Fourth Estate.

Does anyone doubt the following?

If what is happening in the country now was happening during a 21st century Dem administration, the GOP reps would be initiating an immediate impeachment and militia members in all fifty states would be running amuck.

Sudan's civil war is starving thousands of children. Aid workers say Trump's aid freeze could cost more lives (CBS)

It is the largest humanitarian crisis in the world, but probably the one you've heard the least about. Fueled by nearly two years of civil war, Sudan is in the grip of a man-made famine. More than 25 million people are starving — more than half of the African nation's population — and of those, 3.2 million are children under the age of 5 who are suffering from acute malnutrition. Despite those harrowing figures, Sudan's brutal conflict is often called "the forgotten war." It has raged in the shadows of other global conflicts, including the wars in Gaza and Ukraine. Aid organizations were already battling to address the country's devastating hunger crisis, and those organizations warn President Trump's 90-day suspension of U.S. foreign aid now threatens to turn the Sudanese disaster into an all-out catastrophe...

Thousands protest USAid workers being recalled from abroad or put on leave (Guardian)

Thousands gathered at the US Capitol on Wednesday after the shock announcement on Tuesday evening that the US Agency for International Development (USAid) was putting nearly all of its employees on leave and recalling thousands of officers from their postings abroad. The news came only days after nearly a thousand contractors were laid off or furloughed, the USAid website was taken down, and its X account was deleted... “The attempt to kill USAid will kill people.” Competitors such as Russia and China were cheering this decision...

UN chief warns against ‘ethnic cleansing’ after Trump’s Gaza proposal (Guardian)

Donald Trump’s proposal for a US takeover of Gaza was met with anger and blunt rejection from regional allies, delight from Israel’s far right and a warning against “ethnic cleansing” from the head of the UN. The secretary general, António Guterres, planned to tell a UN meeting on Wednesday that “it is essential to avoid any form of ethnic cleansing” after the US president said he wanted to “own” Gaza and resettle its Palestinian residents elsewhere. An unusually broad wave of international outrage and condemnation followed Trump’s shock announcement... Germany warned that the plan violated international law and Brazil’s president described it as “incomprehensible”, with China stating it opposed “forced transfer”... Saudi Arabia was among the first countries to reject Trump’s project to reimagine Gaza as a real-estate prospect, and perhaps the most consequential... Jordan’s King Abdullah, who faces a difficult face-to-face meeting with Trump in Washington next week, also rejected “any attempts to annex land and displace the Palestinians”...

Bill Kristol ‪@billkristolbulwark.bsky.social‬ | February 5, 2025 at 9:10 PM:
Editor at large, The Bulwark. Director, Defending Democracy Together. Host, Conversations with Bill Kristol. Never Trump.

Not a Parody.

"The White House says Elon Musk will determine if there are conflicts of interest between his work reviewing federal spending and his companies."

White House Says Musk Will Police His Own Conflicts of Interest
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-05/white-house-says-musk-will-po...
----------------------------------
35%!!

Politics In The Wild ‪@politicsinthewild.bsky.social‬ | February 5, 2025 at 12:23 PM
Slightly unserious. Very leftist. Sort of a Democrat.

Around 35% of SpaceX’s revenue comes directly from the federal govt.
Less than 1% of NPR’s budget comes from the federal govt.

Musk: "Defund NPR. It should survive on its own."
https://bsky.app/profile/politicsinthewild.bsky.social/post/3lhh3lb4uzc2d
-----------------------------------

Katie Phang ‪@katiephang.bsky.social‬ | February 5, 2025
Host of @katiephangshow, MSNBC | Legal Contributor & Legal Correspondent, NBC and MSNBC

119 national organizations, including the AFL-CIO and the National Women’s Law Center, write to Congressional leadership demanding they investigate Elon Musk’s “illegally interfering and disrupting essential government operations”.

https://nwlc.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Urge-Congress-to-Investigate-Illegal...

‪Hugo Lowell‬ ‪@hugolowell.bsky.social‬ | February 5, 2025 at 1:27 PM

New via NYT — The CIA sent the White House an unclassified email listing all employees hired by the spy agency over the last two years to comply with an executive order to shrink the federal work force. One former agency officer called the reporting of names a “counterintelligence disaster.”
------------------------------------------------------------

Hugo Lowell ‪@hugolowell.bsky.social‬ | February 5, 2025 at 4:56 PM
Senior Political Correspondent @theguardian.com covering Trump and the Justice Dept.

Top Dem on the House Intel Committee Jim Himes says in a statement that he understands that the White House “insisted” on the CIA transmitting the list in an unclassified email

Federal health workers terrified after 'DEI' website publishes list of 'targets'
The site calls out workers who have been involved with DEI initiatives. A majority are Black.
Berkeley Lovelace Jr. and Erika Edwards | Feb. 4, 2025

Federal health workers are expressing fear and alarm after a website called “DEI Watch List” published the photos, names and public information of a number of workers across health agencies, describing them at one point as “targets.”

It’s unclear when the website, which lists mostly Black employees who work in agencies primarily within the Department of Health and Human Services, first appeared.

“Offenses” for the workers listed on the website include working on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, donating to Democrats and using pronouns in their bios.

... On Tuesday evening, the site listed photos of employees and linked to further information about them under the headline “Targets.” Later Tuesday night, the headline on each page had been changed to “Dossiers.” ...

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/federal-health-workers-terrified-dei-...

https://mattlabash.substack.com/p/when-your-country-hits-the-skids

George Orwell to the world: “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.”

Americans to themselves: “If we close our eyes tightly enough, maybe reality will go away.”

sorry ~ post appeared twice

I'm all for as many lawsuits, petitions, lobbying one's representatives and Senators as possibly can be; but relaistically, is that going to go anywhere unless or untill Mr and Mrs America, TC Mits, John Q Public, whomever, work themselves up into torches and pitchforks level of engagement ?

Sen Thune, they tell me, has a large circular file into which all such petitions are immediatly relegated, and lawsuits eventually end up at the Supreme Court which has been known make decisions which have legal scholars, even conservative ones like Judge Luttig, frothing.

It is also unclear whether the FFOTUS or Pres Musk would obey any court order. Who would make them?

I think someone above quoted Lincoln to the effect that with public sentiment everything is possible but without it nothing is.

I wish all "right thinking people" could get the public in general to come out in mass to support plain old boring constitutiinal republicanism. You know: rule of law, representational democracy, due process, civil rights ...the worst system of government ever devised except for all the others.

All is not yet lost, but boy is it close!

>36 modalursine: So we need...
https://www.google.com/search?q=334.9+*0.035&oq=&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqBgg...

Yeah, about 12 million people chronically in the streets. That should do it per Erica Chenoweth
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190513-it-only-takes-35-of-people-to-change...

Maybe.
https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/carr/publications/questions-answers-and-some...

Egads! I read her book about 4 years ago and had completely forgotten about it.

So all we need is about 11 or 12 million active people willing to do general strikes and boycotts, and we can succeed just like 53% of all other such atempts.

Best odds I've seen all day.

OK, that's not quite right, she says 53% of all non violent uprisings succeed and all in her data set except 1, the Bahrain thing, succeeded if they had 3.5% of the population or more.

So there's a smaller but still finite probability of getting the job done even if the participation percent is under the maybe-not-so-magic number of 3.5%.

Now all we need is a coherent movement with honest and competent people stepping up into leadesrship roles. What could go wrong?

Farmers have already gotten letters from USDA agencies that the government will not be able to honor loan and grant commitments.
This could mean widespread liquidations.

https://instagram.com/p/DFvxsOVSQrF/

>39 2wonderY: Sounds like a land grab.

>39 2wonderY: Well, that solves the problem of not having enough labourers to pick crops, doesn't it?

what a bunch of trump glazers like lol depressing

>41 MsMixte: WTFFFFFFF????!!!!!!!!!!?????

>38 modalursine: Keep Goodhart's law in mind: if you make a metric into a target, it is no longer a useful metric. So if you say "we need to get 12 million people", then you've lost any predictive value from the number, since you will have gathered those people with the metric in mind, but the metric was gleaned the other way, by looking at people who came together in some way and noting that the 3.5% rule seemed to hold in most cases.

So it's useful to know that 3.5% of the population can be a powerful minority, but you don't want to make plans based on getting to that number (or any other number derived from it).

I would be interested in knowing more about how those numbers work - for example, do we know anything more about the level of support for the 3.5% among the remainder of the population? I would hope that would matter.

Thinking about that 3.5% figure, which translates to 11 or 12 million Americans.

The bad news is that Agent Orange could very well have that number of cult followers or near enough for government work.

DOGE Emails Went Out to Federal Judges by Mistake

https://www.newsweek.com/doge-emails-went-out-federal-judges-mistake-2027514

One of the people who received an email from allies of Elon Musk was a federal judge overseeing a lawsuit aimed at blocking these messages.

"I, like probably every other judge in the country, also received the Office of Personnel Management email," U.S. District Judge Randolph Daniel Moss said during a hearing related to the lawsuit on Thursday. "I did not respond to it. I suspect it was sent to the judges by mistake."

>45 modalursine: Cult followers? Way more. Including a good portion of my extended family.
Hardcore paramilitary types? Probably not that many. But plenty enough.
cf.
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/donald-trump-squadristi-nazis/
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/01/dangerous-trump-paramilitar...

>45 modalursine: Yes, that's exactly what I was thinking of in the last line of my previous post.

If having >3 alco261:.5% of the population behind a nonviolent insurgency is a near guarantee of success, and if the FFOTUS has got that many flying monkeys or more......

As as fictional "sage" C3PO opined "We're doomed master Luke, doomed!"

I think it was Mark Twain who remarked that it's easier to fool people than to convince them they've been fooled; but who knows what miraculous sea change amongst the MAGA heads can occur when the leapord comes to eat *their* face.

Kansas farmers getting stiffed because there's no USAID to buy their surplus. Oops!

>36 modalursine: constitutional republicanism... rule of law, representational democracy, due process, civil rights

And ironically these are the elements of US life which made much of the world think that the USA truly was great, yet they are the very elements which those who claim to want to "make America great again" are jettisoning.

>37 davidgn:

Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan's book Why Civil Resistance Works was groundbreaking in that for the first time empirical evidence was presented to demonstrate that nonviolent civil resistance can and does work, indeed twice as often as a violent struggle. Many people perhaps think that nonviolence would be nice, but have been totally brainwashed by the mliitarism of most of our cultures into thinking that only violence works. In fact violence usually doesn't work, and even in the 25% of the cases where it can be considered to have been successful, it is often short-lived and leaves a legacy of violence which soon comes back to haunt us. There's no point in violently overthrowing a fascist regime if the end result is just another authoritarian regime, whether left or right oriented. And for those who want to focus on the cases where nonviolence doesn't work, it's worth remembering that in 25% of cases neither violence nor nonviolence succeed in removing the violent regime.

The British Empire was shaken to its core by the nonviolent resistance of Gandhi. The USA has its own proud history of nonviolent resistance through your civil rights movement, led by towering figures such as Rev Martin Luther King but implemented by tens (hundreds?) of thousands of ordinary people of all genders, all ages, all races, all religions, and differing political affiliations. One of the strengths of nonviolent resistance is that it can draw in everybody to whatever level of commitment each one is capable and willing; it can include the elderly, children, the sick, disabled, the weak, housebound, those who can only spare a few hours a week, those who only wish to participate in low risk activities, etc. There's a fun Irish song, The Lid of Me Granny's Bin, about how everybody would bang the lids of their bins (trashcans) and blow whistles during British Army raids.

As well as reading Erica and Maria's book, it's also worth looking at Gene Sharp's work, particularly his 198 Methods of Nonviolent Action, although the number has been increased since he wrote that in 1973. And it's always inspiring to reread King's 1963 Letter from a Birmingham City Jail.

But whatever happens, the worst possible outcome in the USA would be to form armed militias to counter the right wing militias, and to escalate the violence (even potentially to the full scale civil war which many right wingers threatened before their candidate attained the presidency) in the name of peace, civil rights and justice.

>49 modalursine: I think you may have found a bug in the >-reference trick :)

> If having > 3.5% of the population behind a nonviolent insurgency is a near guarantee of success, and if the FFOTUS has got that many flying monkeys or more......

The key word there is "nonviolent". While the right wing has got a lot of adherents, I don't think they're planning for a nonviolent campaign. That might sound like it's bad for the rest of us, but Chenoweth and Stephan's research suggests that nonviolent change is both more likely to be successful and more durable when it succeeds than violent methods of change. The underlying idea is that nonviolent change is convincing, while violence relies on compulsion - and once convinced, people have to be convinced again before they change, while compulsion only lasts as long as there is a compelling force applied.

Also, I want to stress that the 3.5% number is not a promise, it's simply an observation. It is not a claim that 3.5% is a guarantee of success. This seems quite important: in the past, uprisings constituting 3.5% of the population have been successful. There is nothing in this to promise that it will be true in the future.

>51 John5918: Your last paragraph describes one of my biggest fears. The absolute and unforgivable incompetence of the left in recent years has left me quite concerned that the scenario you describe is increasingly likely. Unfortunately, we know that there are plenty of people (people with no training in violence at all, for the most part) who seem to believe that violence will somehow rescue this situation.

Oddly, I find that the best cure for this is martial arts training. Once you know something about violence, it's a lot harder to believe that it'll help.

>53 kiparsky: Once you know something about violence, it's a lot harder to believe that it'll help

Absolutely. I used to believe that there might be cases where violence could be justified under certain limited conditions, the classic "just war" doctrine. After living through 22 years of civil war in Sudan, as a noncombatant often in the front line, often under fire, often up close and personal to violence, I have radically changed my view. After 2.5 million deaths and millions more injured, raped, looted, tortured, traumatised and displaced from their homes and their country, eventually negotiations had to take place, and "peace" arrived. Within two years of the independence of the new state of South Sudan in 2011, it descended into civil war again, and now languishes under an authoritarian regime, while the rump of the old Sudan experienced an inspiring nonviolent intifada (popular uprising) led by women and youth in 2018-19, but the legacy of decades of violence was too strong and again within two years the military seized power again, and two years later began a new civil war amongst themselves. But it's not only me who has changed my view. Many of the former protagonists in the two countries are also now embracing active nonviolent resistance. A luta continua!

Judge John Coughenour reads his final order

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DFwSh5KNN26/?igsh=ejBwcHN5aWxmZGpy

Judge slams Trump while extending block on birthright citizenship order

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/06/judge-slams-trump-birthright-citizenshi...

Bondi ends FBI effort to combat foreign influence in U.S. politics

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/bondi-ends-fbi-effort-combat-...

Buried on the fourth page of one of 14 policy memos Bondi issued Wednesday, the order disbands the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force and pares back enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, despite years of warnings by U.S. intelligence agencies that foreign malign influence operations involving disinformation were a growing and dangerous threat.

Nothing more important than to read Gil Duran (cf. the Fascist States thread)

https://newrepublic.com/article/183971/jd-vance-weird-terrifying-techno-authorit...
https://www.thenerdreich.com/the-network-state-coup-is-happening-right-now/
https://www.thenerdreich.com/dark-gothic-maga-unleashes-destruction/
https://www.thenerdreich.com/reboot-elon-musk-ceo-dictator-doge/

Unfortunately, we have to take these people seriously. It is impossible to understand what is happening without reference to the above.
And all this time I thought we would be dealing with the Christian Nationalists. Now it looks like we've got to deal with both.

This would be a wild Twilight Zone 2026 movie.

A dude hands over his newly gained presidency of the USA to a techie billionaire. He then states that the leader of a Jewish entity is going to hand over control of a third entity to him. The techie billionaire runs the USA while the elected dude and his other billionaire buddies create a Riviera-type playground on the other side of the globe for the super-rich.

I hope someone is writing the screenplay as I type this ~ Happy 250th!

>58 Molly3028: It has already been done. The chances are we are looking at the real life version of The Manchurian Candidate. Musk Global buys himself a mouthpiece who has the capacity to attract crowds who vote for the mouthpiece and put him in power. His best buddy Peter Thiel gets onboard with his boy toy, JD, whom he owns by virtue of having bought JD everything - Silicon Valley boss, Ohio Senator, and the Vice Presidency.

While the mouthpiece rambles and distracts by doing things like dumping two reservoirs of fresh water into the Pacific Ocean, President Musk trashes anything in the government that gets in his way and paves the way for his complete exploitation of an entire country for his personal gain. If the mouthpiece croaks then the boy toy moves to the "top" spot and takes his orders from Musk and Thiel.

>59 alco261: And if the mouthpiece balks, the mouthpiece croaks.

Is there an app to tell which is the organ grinder and which the monkey ?

Even if the FFOTUS thought he was the organ grinder, once the Elon gets control of the US Power of the Purse, the FFOTUS will not be able to dislodge him from his perch.

The Elon would not be wise dispose of the monkey because that particular monkey has a loyal following, the so called "flying monkeys" wheras the Elon has, if anything, negative "rizz".

Boy! Ain't we got fun!

>61 modalursine: No doubt you're correct. But they've certainly covered their bases in the event of any stray infarcts.

Lincoln Project being good for something. People are saying this needs to be a Super Bowl ad. They're goddamn right. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QXQWHdSMcM

There's an old cartoon showing a senior devil type behind a desk, a team of junior devils are picthing him some sort of delish scheme or other. Sr Devil says: "Love the apple, love the snake, love the concept, shoot the works!"

Just so. But why the devil do we have to leave it to the Lincoln project, Republican's all, for this sort of thing?

Where the blazes are the Dems and the self declared "progressives" ?

Why aren't they producing scorching videos, tik-tok memes, whatever, and blasting it to beat the band?

A famous quote from Haruki Murakami in his 1Q84 novel ~

“Everyone, deep in their hearts, is waiting for the end of the world”

FFOTUS isn't waiting. He and his "pals" are trying to make it happen on their watch. Eeek!

>63 davidgn: propaganda and lies, yes, they're always good for that as long as they can monetize it to benefit themselves

Interview with Gil Duran.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rn52wL1b334

Latest on-line op-ed by M. Gessen. Worth a glom
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/08/opinion/trump-power-surrender.html

In same on line issue, there's an article that asks "Are we sleep walking into autocracy?".

Good question!

>69 modalursine: Gessen? Always.

PS: Talking about obeying in advance:
Rachel Maddow had a segment on her show last night about how a member of the Federal Elections Commision was (illegally) "fired" by the FFOTUS, reducing the board to 2 members. It takes 3 members to take any official action, and therefore, lacking that third member could not certify an important win for a union of Whole Feeds workers, allowing whole foods to fail to recognize the union on the grounds (talk about Chutzpah!) that the FEC had not certified it.

Can somebody tell me why, given the illegal nature of the "fireing", that the board could not have simply declared that the third member was still employed, still a member, still on the board, that the board does not recognize the illegal so called "fireing" and then proceed to certify the union?
That would change the nature of the anti union suite from a techical issue of whether the boss has to recognise the union given that it was not certified formally by the FEC, to whether the board was in fact fully constituted and the "firing" null and void.

By acting as if the dismissal of the board member is a fact, they are "obeying in advance" and shame on them!

sorry, wrong thread

https://www.mediaite.com/news/our-democracy-is-under-siege-former-treasury-secre...
‘Our Democracy Is Under Siege’ Former Treasury Secretaries Write Scathing NY Times Op-Ed Warning Against DOGE’s ‘Threat to America’

Five former Treasury Secretaries issued a stark warning calling out President Donald Trump’s latest moves at the Treasury as a direct threat to American democracy’s financial backbone in a show of rising alarm.

George Conway very recently made a prediction that the First Felon and President Musk would openly defy the courts.

Conway points out that the Marshall's service works for the DOJ, so if the Judge says "Go and bring in the bloke!" the Marshalls can be ordered to ignore the judge and refuse to act against the First Felon or any of his cabal. At that point, if the defiance is allowed to stand, the constitution is a dead duck.

In Conway's telling it's "When" that happens, not "if" it happens.

>74 modalursine: https://www.rawstory.com/george-conway-trump-constitution/ A reasonable writeup.

Here we go. NBC: Federal judge rules White House failed to comply with court order on funding
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BN-JfRh_QI

It is still not clear whether various "failures to comply" are a matter of not moving fast enough to suite the court, of of technical failures that the administration is seriously moving to repair vs open defiance.
The rhetoric of JD Vance would be a case of lobbying for defiance, and the First Felons remarks, as almost anything he says, can be taken to mean something or nothing...either as just whining that he doesn't like being checked or as a foreshadowing of open defiance to come.

At least one legal talking head has opined that as far as open defiance goes "We're not there yet". so I guess there's still time to place your bets before the croipier calls "Les Jeux sont faites, rien ne va plus!"

croupier

The comments under this one are deeply depressing.
JUST IN: Speaker Johnson Says That House Republicans Are 'Fully Supportive' Of Elon Musk's DOGE (Forbes Breaking News)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnPZH2OeyWg
I fear mine is a country too stupid to be saved.

Musk's young hirees:

"It's not an audit, because they're not auditors. They are software engineers whose prefrontal cortexes have yet to fully develop."

- Science Enthusiast (Facebook)

They're not "Engineers". Engineers build things. These freaks are a wrecking crew.

Big difference.

TRUMP 2.0 three weeks in ~

Today’s hot inflation data has led to ‘trumpflation’ trending on Musk’s social media platform!!!

GOP Congressman critiques spending cuts

https://www.facebook.com/newshour/videos/gop-rep-david-schweikert-of-arizona-cri...

We are a consumer society ~ we are programmed to consume. The Super Bowl, for instance, televised 57 ads on Sunday. And people wonder why inflation is a national issue.

We're in the middle of an attempted autogolpe, which seems to be coming along pretty much as planed, and so far, only a few academics and left of center journalists are calling it by its right name.

If you listen closely for the cries of outrage and condemnation of every complicit Republican operative from the organized opposition, you'll hear mostly .....crickets.

Oh wait. There is no organized opposition party. As Will Rodgers famously quipped "I don't belong to any organized political party....I'm a Democrat"

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) is diverging from many Republican lawmakers by arguing that Congress needs to stand up to President Donald Trump as he overrides their authority, Alaska Public Media reported Wednesday.

“To have the executive basically come in and dismantle something that was legislatively created — that's outside the bounds of the executive,” she said. “So it requires us, in the legislative branch, to then assert our responsibility, which is to not cede the authority.”

https://www.alternet.org/senate-republican-push-trump/

State Department Removes Tesla’s Name From Planned $400M Contract Amid Musk Scrutiny
Chad de Guzman | February 13, 2025

he State Department was planning to buy $400 million worth of “Armored Tesla” later this year, according to its 2025 procurement forecast, a document outlining projections of anticipated contracts, which was published in December. But after reports emerged on Wednesday of the potential for conflict of interest given Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s prominent role in the Trump Administration, the document was updated, removing mention of Tesla and changing the line item to “Armored Electric Vehicles” instead.

As of late Wednesday, both versions of the 2025 procurement forecast remained available on different State Department webpages...

https://time.com/7221880/state-department-2025-procurement-forecast-tesla-armore...

>87 margd: Yeah. I saw a misleading headline on that story that implied a much more significant change; a reversal of the plan.

Just heard that RFK has been confirmed.

Well, once is happenstance (Hexseth), twice is coincidence (Gabbard) and three times (RFK) is enemy action.

The Senate, or rather the "Republican" ones, have completely abdicated their constitutioal role wrt confirmation of officials, and are now themselves simply a tool aided the autogolpe.

Too bad there's no active opposition party in the field.

In today's interview by a NYTimes deputy editor in the on-line times, M Gessen gets it right about "obeying in advance" and trying to compromise with a lawless entity hell-bent on destroying the existing order.

Definitely worth a glom. Also, check out the comments, most of which are spot on.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/13/opinion/trump-authoritarianism-surrender.html

A New York Times editorial talks about a coming consitutional crisis IF the president openly defies the courts.

No.

We are already in a constitutional crisis.

When the president actively mobilises plans to gut the civil service, remove any officials committed to upholding the constitution so as to replace them with his own loyalists, and when he nominates and gets the Senate to rubber stamp at the same time that his billionaire patron is putting himself in a position to control the government's payment infrastructure, able to pay or not pay any party regardless of what an impotent congress may have to say about it, that's a constiutional crisis in my book, whether or not the First Felon cares to stand up in public and literally make the mudra of defiance at the courts.

>90 modalursine: The New York Times neglects that we already know the plan, mutatis mutandis. A guy going by Moldbug wrote it up three years ago. But the media still won't talk about that. Of course they're going to ignore the courts. But they're probably going to make a show of ambivalence as a tactical measure to avoid triggering too much resistance too soon. They're not entirely stupid.

My kvetch is that I'm hearing or seeing clear articulations about what is going on how we're watching an autogolpe play uot right before our eyes only from academics, and left-of center journalists.
The MAGA hats from the First Felon on down are not shy about demonizing the Dems, calling them "illegitimate", criminals, and whatever other epithets count as nasty, while the Dems and the "respectable" (ha!) media are basically refusing to call a spade a spade, pretending that we can "work with" and "seek compromise" with a party dedicated to establishing an autocracy, right here in River City. Move along, nothing to see here, no use getting hysterical.

Yeah, right!

>91 davidgn: Is the Times not part of "the media"? https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/22/opinion/trump-vance-yarvin-monarchy.html

I would suggest that while it was fine to carp about "the media" in normal times - meaningless, but fine - we're not in normal times, and right now we do need to be smarter than that. "The respectable media" might not say all of the things you want to hear, but that's not their job. Their job is to provide sourced reporting, which you're not going to get without them.

Yes, listen to the podcasts when you want your opinion echoed back at you, but read the Times in the morning with your coffee so you can actually have some baseline grounding in reality.

>93 kiparsky: Right. Because the importance of maintaining the Constitution is just, like, my opinion, man.
Sources like the Times will be waffling and providing both-sides coverage on whether or not this is a coup until they get shut down.
Sorry, I'd rather read William Boot.

https://www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/white-nationalist-forces-consolidate-power-alo...

White Nationalist Forces Consolidate Power Alongside Musk’s Junta
A second update on Elon Musk's coup from our intrepid imaginary foreign correspondent
Garrett Graff
February 08, 2025

Last week, I wrote a dispatch from Washington aimed at showing how the rise and return of Donald Trump would be covered by the media if it was happening overseas in a foreign country, where US correspondents are more likely to call a spade a spade and more likely to make sweeping historical assertions.

Your response to that column was incredible, both from Americans who feel like they’re being gaslit by the tepid headlines and couched language most mainstream US news outlets are still using to describe grave assaults on our Constitution and legal system and also from readers overseas (including foreign correspondents who are writing about the collapse of our constitutional order) who agreed in dismay that my satirical portrayal was precisely how they were viewing the events in Washington from afar.

I thought — for now at least — I’d offer this as a weekly Saturday column, one that helps both to round up the firehose of news and events on multiple fronts that we’re living through each day as well provide some larger, clear-eyed context about the effects of these events. Without further ado, I give you William Boot’s latest dispatch from our troubled country

https://www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/white-nationalist-forces-consolidate-power-alo...

>94 davidgn: I honestly don't know what you want to mean there, but it seems like you're looking more at the opinion pages than I do.
I focus more on the facty bits.

Mark Joseph Stern ‪@mjsdc.bsky.social‬ | February 13, 2025 at 10:46 PM
Senior writer at Slate covering courts and the law.

A huge decision from Judge Amir Ali, meticulously reasoned and utterly scathing, finding that Trump’s foreign aid freeze is almost certainly an illegal and arbitrary abuse of power. He orders the immediate restoration of all international assistance.

https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/25535268/aliorder.pdf
EXCERPT
"Consistent with the reasoning above, it is hereby ORDERED that Defendants Marco Rubio, Peter Marocco, Russell Vought, the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the Office of Management and Budget (the "Restrained Defendants") and their agents are temporarily enjoined from enforcing or giving effect to Sections 1, 5, 7, 8, and 9 of Dep't of State, Memorandum, 25 STATE 6828 (Jan. 24, 2025) and any other
directives that implement Sections 3(a) and 3(c) of Executive Order Number 14169, "Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid" (Jan. 20, 2025), including by:
• suspending, pausing, or otherwise preventing the obligation or disbursement appropriated foreign-assistance funds in connection with any contracts, grants, cooperative agreements, loans, or other federal foreign assistance award that was in existence as of January 19, 2025; or
• issuing, implementing, enforcing, or otherwise giving effect to terminations, suspensions, or stop-work orders in connection with any contracts, grants, cooperative agreements, loans, or other federal foreign assistance award that was in existence as of January 19, 2025."

"It is further hereby ORDERED that nothing in this order shall prohibit the Restrained Defendants from enforcing the terms of contracts or grants."

"It is further hereby ORDERED that the Restrained Defendants shall take all steps necessary to effectuate this order and shall provide written notice of this order to all recipients of existing contracts, grants, and cooperative agreements for foreign assistance."

"It is further hereby ORDERED that the Restrained Defendants shall file a status report by February 18, 2025, apprising the Court of the status of their compliance with this order, including by providing a copy of the written notice described above."

"The parties shall meet and confer and file a joint status report by February 14, 2025, at 5:00 p.m. proposing an expedited preliminary injunction briefing schedule."

"AMIR H. ALI
United States District Judge"

I would say that intentional and persistent flauting of the law by the First Felon (as documented above and elswere) counts as "a facty bit" that is being reported by the Times, if at all, as if from their private Datcha in East Mars.

You're in a burning house house on Elm Street, flames rising up from the floor boards and you write: "Firefighters said to have been dispatched to investigate possible blaze on Elm Street"

>97 modalursine: That's funny. Do you actually read the Times, or is this something you heard on a podcast? Because all of the things you're talking about have been covered in the Times. I wouldn't say "as if from a private dacha in East Mars", I would have said it was more in the standard journalistic register. Maybe the problem is just that they're reporting the facts without telling you what to think about them?

I read both the dead tree version and the on line times.

I notice that very often a column by Masha Gessen , to take a random example, will appear on line, but not in the dead tree version.

Most of the information, say about Curtis Yarvin's relevance to Trump2.0 (all boo!) is in opinion colums.
I think Jamelle Bouie did one not long ago.

If you read the paper cover to cover, and the Op-Eds (yeah, I know, they're calling them something else these days,
"guest editorials" or some such) you'll find most of the info I'm kvetching about, but you need to be paying attention
and come in with a prior conviction that little things like preserving the constitutional order, warts and all, is preferable
to a successful autocratic breakthrough.

It is within the journalists remit, or so it seems to me, to point out the importance or relevance of the information
being presented. They dont "tell you what to think", but by golly they alert you (or should) to what, in their journalistic opinion, is important and consequntial "news", worth prioritizing over many another item clamboring for your attention.

Yes, you can find out from the NYtines that the First Felon is running a program that echoes the advice of a tecno-fascist crackpot like Mencius Moldbug (assuming you didn't mess that day's edition), but shouldn't that rather be first page and large banner news, instead of discreetly revealed in an Op-Ed?

Well, "you need to be paying attention" is always true, whatever the source. I guess if you're mostly looking for interpretation (including someone to tell you what matters) then the Times isn't something that's going to give you what you want. The point of a newspaper, I would have thought, is more to give you the facts that you're supposed to be interpreting, and then to get out of the way. For interpretation, I really recommend the American Prospect, which I believe can be consumed freely online. They keep a nice eye on the economics - I usually describe it as "the magazine for fans of Elizabeth Warren".

I honestly don't bother much with the opinion pages these days, since I've noticed that I don't learn a lot new there. Typically I'll scan them and read anything that looks like it might be interesting, but there's a lot of stuff that can just be skipped.

Oh, good, someone's finally taking meaningful action: Royal Society urged to expel Elon Musk as fellows sign open letter

Well, I suppose in a more perfect world, a newspaper would be presenting "Just the facts ma'am" as Sgt Joe Friday would ask his informants.

But with the best will in the world it would seem to me impossible not to "editorialize" to some extent.

After all, which of all the myriad things that are going on in the world is "news" ? And of all the news (man bites dog and all that), which deserve space in the paper?

And of those that do deserve space on the paper, which is "Front Page" and which is "page 18" ?

And on every page; which stories go where, how much physical real estate on the page to they take up, what is the text of the headline and what is the tone and physical impact of the piece?

But whatever the truth of the matter, if you're happy with the way the NYTimes and other major outlets package the news, well, de gustibus non est disputandum.

Maybe I'm just a grumpy old guy who thinks they are dropping the ball.
Reminds me of that alleged interchange:

Boswell: Calm yourself Johnson
Johnson: No, excite yourself.

THE BLIND LEADING THE BLIND

https://www.mediaite.com/trump/trump-administration-mistakenly-fired-staff-overs...
Trump Administration Mistakenly Fired Staff Overseeing Nation’s Nuclear Weapons: Report

Officials in the Trump administration fired more than 300 employees of the National Nuclear Security Administration on Thursday night, only to reverse course upon learning the workers’ responsibilities, CNN reported Friday night.

***
The USA's 5th grade adults voted for this!!!

>103 Molly3028: Maybe it was a mistake, who is to know, but maybe is was "Accidentally on purpose".

Katie Couric and Lawrence Tribe

"A Hostile Takeover of the US Government" — Trump's Legal Maneuvers with Laurence Tribe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SEkxi7HpR4

Just read another M.Gessen piece in the NYTimes on-line.
It wasn't in today's dead tree version. Let's if it shows up in the Sunday Opinions section.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/15/opinion/trump-autocracy-bad-ideas.html

She makes a good argument that I was wrong to be so harsh about the NYTimes and others' coverage, on the grounds that the First Felon (not her term) is not devoid of ideas, but full of very bad ones, and that the Dems have not countered those very bad ideas with good ideas of their own; but rather attempt to counter the bad ideas with a defence of proceduralism. She argues that while lawful procedure and adherence to norms are vital to democracy, nonetheless it is an argument that falls flat with the general public.

Since the US public responds best to anecdotes and not facts why isn't the front page of the nytimes full of stories about people who are hurt by the cancellation of usaid programs?

>107 jjwilson61: How about a black front page?

>106 modalursine: Could that be because newspapers like to report on things that are consequential and at this time that means court cases where the arguments are procedural. Democrats are out of power so covering them, whose arguments are more about the substance of Trump's policies, are going to get covered in the back pages

On the other hand, David Corn in Mother Jones shows Two Headlines:

One from the NY Times:
"Senate Confirms Kennedy, a prominent vaccine skeptic, as Health Secretary"

and another from the Wall St Journal:
"The Senate confirmed RFK Jr as HHS secretary, putting a long time critic of vaccines and the medical establishment in ch..... "

Then goes on to say:

"The first headline above, courtesy of the New York Times, calls Kennedy a “vaccine skeptic,” as the newspaper often does. The second, from the Wall Street Journal, describes him as a “critic of vaccines.” Neither is accurate. He is an opponent of vaccines, who has said none are safe or effective and who has participated in campaigns to end vaccination. Calling him a “skeptic”—which can have a positive connotation—or a “critic” downplays his radical and dangerous stance. It’s the normalization of a very abnormal crackpot.

>110 modalursine: If there's any regular reader of the Times, or of any newspaper, who has not figured out what they think about Kennedy's positions by now then I'm not sure there's any help for them.

At the risk of repeating myself, I see the purpose of a paper to inform the reader about noteworthy events, not to interpret them. If you want a newspaper whose purpose is to tell you your opinions so you know what they are, you might have to start that paper and see if there's a market for it. In the meantime, even if a paper like the Times or the Post isn't giving you the editorializing you're looking for in a news article, that doesn't mean they're somehow the enemy. You need to get facts from somewhere if you want to opine about them, and as far as I can see the handful of daily papers still in operation are valuable in that regard. It seems like there might be better targets to go after.

The NY Times has been garbage for many years now. Maybe always, depending on when one places the foundering of any notion that the Democratic party represents/ought to represent the interests of the working class.

That they are now increasingly platforming not just right wing shit like that Douthat and Stephens guy, but don't baulk at even openly murderous fascists like the shit who published that women who have abortions ought to be hanged... well that's just their business as usual.

We live in a target rich environment, worse luck.

Members of the party still ironically named "Republican" have abdicated their roles in the house and senate. As long as they hold both houses the congress is "down for the count"

The Supremes are highly compromised although there are still some brave souls on the supreme court and in the lower courts.

Local newspapers have all but disappeared, though of course that's no something they cleverly planned.

If anyone thinks that the major players in the fourth estate are as robust as they should be or need to be, we'll just have to agree to disagree on that point.

The authoritarian playbook, which we can see having been quite effective in Hungary, will surely be turned against the American press with both barrels. They first salvos have already been fired.

A free press, even if they are more mealy mouthed than I would like them to be, are still, as you point out quite rightly, are far from the enemy. They are vital to the preservation of constitutional order and need to be supported warts and all.

I just read Chris Hayes' "The Siren Call". He points out that attention is a limited resource. With so much "stuff" flying around, true stuff, false stuff, and stuff that isn't even false, capturing a potential consumer's attention is the name of the game.

It seems that outside the seemingly limited set of those who are already tuned in and paying attention to national and international events, the ordinary voter's attention has not been captured by reliable news sources, but rather by various shiny objects of dubious quality.

If I knew the answer to the puzzle of how to change all that for the better, I guess I would be getting a suprise call from Oslo. No danger of that, in case anybody was wondering.

A salvo from Dartmouth
https://bsky.app/profile/brendannyhan.bsky.social/post/3liasfhmhzk26

Brendan Nyhan
‪@brendannyhan.bsky.social‬
Utter failure to grasp what we are facing
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/15/us/politics/trump-foreign-policy-government-f...
1. People lack the framework to recognize an attempt to overthrow the constitutional order
2. The lack of elites *acting* like point 1 is true makes it illegible. Without Ds behaving as if it's a crisis, it's not a crisis.

>113 modalursine:

They banned Associated Press from White House infomercials, and I heard Reuters and Agence France Presse are or were having problems too.

But American press? I guess from my POV I wonder if they need to do anything about American press at all, since they are all completely cowed. There is no real resistance from the likes of MSNBC millionaires; they don't like Trump but they are OK with the American establishment, and that's the core problem.

What little real leftist press there exists in the US is already not represented there--The Nation? Democracy Now? Mother Jones? The Jacobin? lol

Liberals don't defeat fascism; liberals enable fascism; liberals acquiesce to fascism as a means of preserving capitalism. That's why your so-called liberal press is such a joke.

>113 modalursine: Yes, the "shiny objects of dubious quality" seem to be getting most of the attention. I'll stick with reliable news sources instead of blitherings from the blogosphere, but to each their own.

"attention is a limited resource"

Indeed. This is why I get two papers delivered in the morning rather than day-trading the rumors from the internet.

I wouldn't turn up my noble nose in scorn at blogs from Bruce Schneier who knows a bit about cryptography when he has his hair on fire about what Musk and his band of merry pranksters are up to, calling that a "national cyber attack".

Paul Krubman probably knows something about international trade. It's hardly a kings ransom to subscribe to his blog.
He has an interview with Kim Lane Scheppelewho provided some interesting input about the connections between Orhan's Hungary and the Heritage society, and some scoop about Angela Merkle, German car companies operating in Hungary, and the concessions that Orban has made to those companies in order to keep the Hunarian economy from totally tanking.

We got blogs from Heather Cox Richardson and from Joyce Vance.

David Corn of Mother Jones often has interesting mateiral as does Gil Duran of "The Nerd Reich".

Short version: Not everything available on the web is (you should pardon the expression) total drek.

>115 LolaWalser: It seems to me that at the moment, that in terms of infrastructure and ecosystem support, the far right has the field to themselves. There's nothing left of center that has any unity or organizational coherence to match it. There is, as you point out, no left wing press to counter the right wing blogoshphere and there's no organized party providing "The vision thing" with any mass following.

There are fragmented groups and movments, "Indivisible", "Move On", various ad hoc groupings, even former Republican "Lincoln Project" people like Geoge Conway and never Trumpers like Liz Chainy (some bargains!), but they don't really add up to a movement with enough mass and momentum to counter the ongoing autogolpe.

The First Felon is not yet, at lest I think not yet, ready to openly defy the courts, but if things carry on as they have he soon will be. And when he does openly defy the court, what then? Who is there to object and how would they turn their protests and objections into effective policy?

We have plenty of academics and journalists, some judges and some elected officials, even some professional organizations that will put up some resistance. Will that be too little too late, or will it turn out to be the leading edge of a developing but as yet not so visible ground swell of public support for the continuance of the present constitutional order?

>117 modalursine: Been years since I read Schneier regularly. Heading over there right now.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2025/02/doge-as-a-national.html

THE DRUDGE REPORT

Now He's Napoleon (Trump's face on Napoleon's body)

******
Apparently, Trump believes it is impossible for him to break any laws.

Remember the Nixon doctrine: If the president does it, its not illeagal.

>118 modalursine:

To me Krugman is emblematic of the problem. Smart, writes well, by all appearances is not a bunny-crushing child molester, Nobelist, and yet has spent decades on gilding the neoliberal turd, pointing to the stock market when people were groaning under inflation.

It's comfy people economics--nice and dandy when one belongs (or is dumb enough to think one still might).

>122 LolaWalser: When it comes to what we should think of Krugmean... cheers? boos? meh? ..., a line from former Representative Barney Frank comes to mind: Compared to what ?

He strikes me as a smart cookie who is honestly trying to understand how it all works, and willing to recognize when or where he makes a wrong call and tries to figure out what went wrong.

He seems genuinely to believe that a huge concentration of wealth and power in a small minority of the population is "a bad thing".
He seems to be interested in Piketty's methods (says he wants to emulate them in his own work) and I think agrees with Pikkety that wealth should be taxed to prevent private individuals from having inordinate influence over the economy and politics.

A saw a video of his (on one of his recent blogs) where he said that one thing he really got wrong was the impact of globalization on ordinary working people. His first calculation, he says, was to estimate the number of jobs that could be lost, compated that to the usual "churn" and decided that the impact wouldn't be all that horrible. What he didn't count on, he now says, is that though relatively small in macroeconomic terms, the particular jobs lost would be concentrated in various small communities, pretty much devastating them because such a high percentage of people in those towns would be thrown out of work with no compensation for the the losses they incur.

>115 LolaWalser: Liberals don't defeat fascism; liberals enable fascism; liberals acquiesce to fascism as a means of preserving capitalism.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_Germany : Under Thälmann's leadership the party directed most of its attacks against the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), which it regarded as its main adversary and referred to as "social fascists"; the KPD considered all other parties in the Weimar Republic to be "fascists".

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1930_German_federal_election : The 1930 election left the Social Democrats and KPD with almost 40 per cent of the seats in the Reichstag between them. In November 1931, the SPD suggested the two parties work together but Thälmann rejected the offer, with the KPD newspaper Die Rote Fahne calling for an “intensification of the fight against Social Democracy”. Addressing the Nazi electoral breakthrough in the 1930 elections, Thälmann insisted that if Hitler came to power he was sure to fail and drive Nazi voters into the arms of the KPD. As late as February 1932, Thälmann was arguing that “Hitler must come to power first, then the requirements for a revolutionary crisis will arrive more quickly”.

We can see how that worked out for them. There seems to be a history of far left groups attacking the center left and then blaming the center left when the far right and center right join up and end up giving the far right power.

Bloomberg News ‪@bloomberg.com‬ | February 16, 2025 at 12:24 PM:

The US health department fired employees Saturday across some of its biggest agencies including Medicare, Medicaid and the FDA.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-16/us-health-department-layoffs-...
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Bloomberg News ‪@bloomberg.com‬ | February 16, 2025 at 9:53 AM

A quiet rebellion among Republicans representing working-class and low-income areas against Donald Trump’s legislative agenda has picked up some powerful new allies: US hospitals and conservative agitator Steve Bannon.

Steve Bannon, US Hospitals Join GOP Rebellion Over Medicaid Cuts
A quiet rebellion among Republicans representing working-class and low-income areas against President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda has picked up some powerful new allies: US hospitals and ... Steve Bannon
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-16/steve-bannon-us-hospitals-joi...

Physician Senators, What Have You Done?
— They have betrayed the Hippocratic Oath in voting to confirm RFK Jr.
Joseph V. Sakran, MD, MPH, MPA, and Samuel Okum | February 14, 2025

... We believe {Senator Bill Cassidy, MD (R-La.) -- a physician, longtime advocate for healthcare policy, and potential swing vote on the Finance Committee} prioritized political expediency over medical integrity. He arguably chose to align himself with President Donald Trump and conspiracy rather than the national interest and public health.

Meanwhile, Cassidy set the stage for his physician colleagues -- Republican senators Roger Marshall, MD (Kan.), John Barrasso, MD (Wyo.), and Rand Paul, MD (Ky.) -- to follow suit. They have all betrayed their oath as doctors...

... the HHS secretary oversees critical health institutions like the CDC, FDA, and CMS {Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services}. ... these agencies impact patient care, from ensuring access to safe medications to shaping life-saving public health policies. Entrusting this role to Kennedy -- a man with no qualifications beyond his fame as a purveyor of medical disinformation -- isn't just reckless. It endangers us all...

https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/second-opinions/114231

Bill Kristol ‪@billkristolbulwark.bsky.social‬ | February 16, 2025 at 8:06 PM
YGTBFKM

Musk’s DOGE seeks access to personal taxpayer data, raising alarm at IRS
www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/02/16/doge-irs-access-taxpayer-data/

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kimwynne11.bsky.social ‪@kimwynne11.bsky.social‬ | February 16, 2025 at 11:03 PM

Under 26 U.S.C. §7213A unauthorized access of taxpayer records is punishable by fines & imprisonment. Unauthorized disclosure of taxpayer info is a felony (26 U.S.C.§7213), w penalties of fines & 5 yrs in prison. Taxpayers can seek civil damages (26 U.S.C. §7431) if their info is unlawfully accessed

>127 margd: Opportunity to sign ACLU message deamnding that senators and reps protect our privacy:
https://action.aclu.org/send-message/keep-doge-out-our-data

"The message:
In Trump's latest power grab, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has seized access to multiple federal computer systems that house the sensitive personal information of millions of Americans – including our bank accounts, health records, and Social Security numbers. They're also reportedly using AI to decide what critical public services and programs to cut, opening up our personal information to enormous cybersecurity vulnerabilities. This is a massive and potentially illegal invasion of our privacy."

"Our data is protected by laws that limit who can access it and how it can be used. But DOGE is forcing its way into the government's most protected systems without consideration of the longstanding privacy safeguards mandated by Congress. We need to demand that our private records not be illegally accessed, analyzed, or weaponized by Trump, DOGE, and an unaccountable team of unvetted outsiders. Congress must step up, do its job, and check the president's violations of our rights."

"The recipients:
U.S. Senate and House"

I've noticed (unless its just wishful thinking?) that in the last few days the Old Gray Lady seems to have woken up a bit to Trump2.0's existential threat to democracy.

Could it be that they are beginning to shake off their Cleopatra syndrome* , becoming aware that they are in the crosshairs?

* Cleopatra was de Queen of de Nile.

The actions which have taken place over the last four weeks have encouraged me to make two contributions ~

Today ~ the AP ~ tRump has barred them from the WH, etc.

Last month ~ The Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press (RCFP)

Here's Gil Duran of "thenerdreich" commenting on Jamie Raskins' description of the ongoing autogolpe

"It's crucial for politicians to begin talking about this issue* non-stop because that will force the press to cover it. For whatever reason, the major newspapers have decided to censor this narrative even as it becomes increasingly obvious with each passing day. But if our elected leaders keep bringing it up, even those mush-brained editors will have no choice but to acknowledge it."

*The issue being (from Raskin as quoted by Duran):
"This guy Elon Musk is taking us for a ride and, like all authoritarian and fascist movements around the world in history, corruption is at the heart of it. It's all about allowing people who have lots of wealth and power to seize ever greater parts of the national wealth."

I think Trump and the GOP are very happy with the Trump-Musk duo. Musk is carrying out all of the conservative plans which have been discussed in think tanks for many years, but which reps didn't have the guts to implement. Trump, on the other hand, is getting the opportunity to carry out his much-discussed revenge plans. Musk is getting all of the hate vibes from around the country while Trump is bathing in the sunshine of the love-you vibes!

The Trump/Musk tag team does fit the Yarvin model: a "Chairman of the Board" who appoints the CEO (which has a nicer ring than dicttatory or Duce) , and who in theory could fire the CEO, while the CEO is the enegetic agent actively running the show, under the presumably approving gaze of said Chairman.

Psychologically , and here I'm on weak ground, I dojn't really know those twisted minds work, I can see a bit of a struggle between the First Felon's wish to be the cynosure of all eyes in the one hand, and his wanting to mostly go around "isimo-ing"* and golfing, with plenty of er..."executive" time. The CEO can do all the heavy lifting, and leave the verbal bomb throwing to the Chairman of the Board.

There's also something in the First Felon, either psychologically or in his "circunstances", that seems to drive him to be beholden to some financial patron or other. As a practical matter, Musk et all could get such a firm grip on the US Government's infrastructure that the Elon would have such leverage as to make giving him the boot rather difficult.

*Gen'l Stilwell who liked to call Generalisimo Chang Kai Shek "peanuts", said of him, "not enough generaling and too much isimo-ing"

I seem to recall a major program of assistance to Russia in the 1990s, at the time when its oligarchs were asset-stripping it to the bone, aimed at ensuring that ex-Soviet nuclear weapons remained in secure hands. Given that this administration just fired many of the NNSA people who monitor our own nukes and is complaining that it can't contact them to re-hire them, amidst the incipient wholesale asset-stripping of our own country by its own oligarchs, I'm beginning to wonder whether it might soon be time to flip the script.

Pssssst! Hey meester! Wanna buy a feelthty bomb?

ONE MONTH DOWN

Unfortunately, people around the globe are witnessing America's national suicide saga in real time.

I suppose you could view Trump2.0 as the US's version of Brittain's Brexit fiasco.

In Brittain, or so I am told, there's a lot of re-grEXIT , but a lot of good that does them.

Some genies are really hard to put back in the bottle.

Low information Trump voters, aside from the hard core cult membership, are already expressing some buyer's remorse.

How widespread that is or will become, and just how that will effect the evolution of the ongoing autogolpe remains to be seen. I suppose much depends on how fully intact the voting system is by the time the mideterm elections roll around.
After all, a good part of the First Felon's power depends on a totally flacid congress, a condition that in turn is perpetuated by the complicity of the party still called "Republican". If the First Felon's party should lose control of congress, much of the damage could be meliorated, and who knows, maybe some adults could get elected in 2028.

Stranger things have happened.

>136 Molly3028: I guess I was too conservative with respect to my estimate way back when >3 alco261:

"Hegseth orders senior leaders at the Pentagon to develop plans to cut 8% of the defense budget in each of the next five years, the Washington Post reports"
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2025/feb/19/trump-musk-ukraine-executiv...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/02/19/trump-pentagon-budge...

>137 modalursine: If you follow British politics you'll have noticed that Labour has made the not-necessarily-obvious decision to put any rollback of Brexit off the table. This seems like a good idea to me, not because I think that Britain is "better out than in" (sorry) but because stepping back into that quagmire would be a guaranteed way to ensure that nothing of any use, including a Brexit rollback, would happen over the next five years.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about what we're going to rebuild, and how we're going to do it. This might be a topic for a separate thread (if anyone is interested), but basically I'm thinking that there's going to be a time, and it's not going to be that far in the future, when we have to rebuild a sustainable "normal order of business", and it's not clear to me that the default position ("put it back the way it was") is the best plan, and it's also not clear to me that there is an obvious better plan, so it seems like this is a good time to figure out what it is we're going to want to do when we get the chance. If nothing else, this gets us to a place where we can have a positive agenda rather than simply opposing everything the Musk administration does.

>140 kiparsky: I suppose a lot depends on how long the Trumpocene lasts...5 years like the Lord Protector of England, or
26 years like Franco in Spain.

Who knows what the world will look like or what the "constelation of forces" will be like in the next Republic.

"There are no recipes for the dishes of the future" and all that.

Oops! 36 years for Franco, worse luck.

>141 modalursine: Yes, it's possible that it could be that long - but I think it's a lot more likely that these people will blow out their base before the end of Musk's first term. They're betting a lot on their ability to inflict damage on their supporters and pass it off as the result of woke DEI immigrant shenanigans, and I don't think they realize just how fast people will turn on them when the idiocy of their policies really starts to bite. Right now it looks like they're going to get away with everything forever, but I think that's unlikely to be the case.

The main thing that both spurs and tempers this optimism for me is that in a time of falling expectations, the people in power are going to be blamed for the fact that the world is not living up to the promises people believed were made. This is why Harris lost, and it's why Biden was forced out, and I think it'll also be why Musk will get the boot as well.

>143 kiparsky: The king is responsible for the weather , or rather he's held responsible for anything that happens on his watch regardless of irrelevant fact that it might be totally out of his hands.

So it's a bit of what the asynchronous finite state machine people used to call a "race" condition. The destination state depends on which switches flip first.

Will the situation rise to a popular "pitchforks and torches" moment before, or after the junta is safely ensconsed beyond the reach of public opinion?

They're trying to get the reins of power in their hands quickly, before the marks have time to realize what just happened.

That's another reason why it's so vexing to me that the Dems, who have had 8 years to ponder what Agent Orange and the radical right were all about, have only just begun to take the assault against the constitution seriously and to call a coup a coup and a constitutional crisis a constitutional crisis.

Better late than never, I suppose but Jeez Louise! why does it have to be such a "by the skin of our teeth" thing?

>144 modalursine: They still call it a race condition in industry, though I do recall hearing a professor recently refer to it as a "data race" which seems to me to miss some of the point since it's not the data that's racing but the concurrent processes.

But yeah, that's kind of a massive bug in our structures of government, and I'm not sure how it can be fixed. A responsible government which responds to the conditions that currently hold seems to be destined to lose elections, while a breathtakingly irresponsible one which ignores the conditions that currently hold and invents mendacious causes for the symptoms of those conditions seems to gain the voters' favor. It's almost as if the populace is voting based on emotion instead of reason, which would be a terrible state of affairs, wouldn't it?

Rush Limbaugh and Donald Trump played a decades-long "divide and conquer" game that turned tens of millions of Americans against each other and their government. Rush Limbaugh built an empire convincing tens of millions of Americans that they were the victims of the actions of their fellow Americans. Trump, a billionaire, picked up the baton and used the same tactic to gain the presidency twice. Other observant dudes in the country are surely ready and willing to pick up the baton going forward.

>146 Molly3028: That is all true, for sure. However, there is also the reality that must be faced, which is that we are no longer in the 20th century but we still cling to that period to guide our expectations, both in specific false beliefs like the long-term viability of internal combustion and in more abstract notions like the idea that people can reasonably expect, in general, to have better outcomes than their parents had. This was true in the 20th century, particularly in the USA but also more broadly (though obviously the progress of that period was not in any way evenly allocated)

This is not true today, and will not be generally true again in the lifetime of anyone now living, if ever, but it is still widely held as a basic "ought to be" of American society. How does a progressive, fact-based, well-meaning left govern under these conditions?

The fact that the right has used the decline of expectations to their advantage does not invalidate the fact that expectations are now locked in to a decline which, while it may not be permanent, is surely permanent for all practical purposes, in that none of us will live to see it turn around.

Jamie Schler ‪@lifesafeast.bsky.social‬ | February 19, 2025 at 3:27 AM

This is Luke Farritor. He is the 23 year old that fired all the staff in charge of our nuclear arsenal.
Don't worry, though. He completed an internship with SpaceX, so I'm sure he is clearly qualified to determine whether our nuclear arms should be adequately staffed by qualified persons. 🤯🤯🤯

Photo: https://bsky.app/profile/lifesafeast.bsky.social/post/3lije57twlk2m
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From UNL to DOGE: Nebraska prodigy's role in Musk overhaul shocks, pleases back home - Flatwater Free Press
Chris Bowling | Feb. 12, 2025

A Nebraska congressman says he's proud of Luke Farritor. His uncle says Farritor will make the right decisions. A Nebraska tech mentor says Farritor's involvement is "a dagger to the heart."...

...Farritor ... helped dismantle an agency that oversaw $40 billion in foreign aid, ProPublica reported. He’s looking at another that controls millions of poor and elderly Americans’ health care, The New York Times wrote. He has access to the Energy Department’s IT system, including email and Microsoft accounts, CNN published. DOGE employees are working 120-hour weeks and have accessed 15 agencies as Musk adapts his corporate strategy to the federal government ...

https://flatwaterfreepress.org/from-unl-to-doge-nebraska-prodigys-role-in-musk-o...

>148 margd: DOGE employees are working 120-hour weeks
Sleep deprivation: the straightest way to good decision-making. /s Also, they should be tested for drugs.

ETA: On second thought, the way things are going, and since Thiel is pushing for a pro-doping Olympics alternative, we're probably weeks from performance-enhancing drugs being compulsory for state workers who want to keep their jobs.

Sometime in the early 1980's, I think, a book came out, written by somebody whose name escapes me, someone deemed a "soviet dissident", as they were known at the time. I don't remember the name of the book, the name of the author, or even it's exact title, but the thesis, which was reflected in the title, was that the Soviet Union, despite is seeming strength and its acknowledged place as one of the two contending superpowers, was in fact rotten to the core and so tottery that it could collapse tomorrow or at any moment.

At the time I that that surely he was a victim of wishful thinking.

In retrospect, he was not that far off. In the early 1990's I thought "Holy Cow! He was right after all.

Before I continue, (this is not a thought disorder, trust me a bit here) let me recall a comic routine that Steve Martin did on Saturday Night Live, called "Theodoric of Yorik". There was basically one comic idea, which he worked and re-worked in a number of sketches, all involving a cartoonish version of a "Medieval" character, Theodoric, would would be confronted with some problem or other, contemplate a solution, stumbling somehow on what we would consider a modern enlightened view "....wait. maybe instead of trial by ordeal, some sort of panel to sort out the truth...10 men, ... make that 12 men of jurisprudence, .... a jury of 12 men ...." Then he would look thoughtful, stand up, turn around and say "Nah!".

When the Soviet Union collapsed, and I considered the proposition that just as the USSR seemed to there for the duration but was actually just a house of cards, could it be that the US was in a similar state, that we too could go "poof" a whole lots sooner than anyone now considers possible?

I pondered a bit, considered the different histories of the US vs the USSR, contemplated the deep roots of the US Constitution in the ideas of the radical enlightenment, the history of the US and it's second founding as Eric Foner would have it after the civil war, the history of the the progressive era, the new deal, the civil rights movement. Thought a bit, got up, turned around, and said " Nah!"

Was that my Theodoric of Yorik moment?

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/21/economy/consumer-sentiment-inflation-tariffs
US consumer sentiment plunges over tariff and inflation fears

Washington CNN —
Inflation is picking up again and President Donald Trump said this week it’s all his predecessor’s fault. But no matter who Trump blames for inflation, America’s economic mood is now souring — and Trump is getting the heat for it.

The University of Michigan’s latest survey, released Friday, showed that US consumer sentiment declined in February for the second consecutive month, according to a final reading, down by a steep 10% from January. That was double the decline initially reported earlier this month.

Eggs at $6.19 a dozen in my town.

JD Vance funded AcreTrader. Here’s why that matters

https://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/32430-jd-vance-funded-acretrader-here-s-why-th...
——
Have you seen the social media posts of farmers caught short because the USDA isn’t honoring its commitments?

>153 2wonderY: Take a wild guess at who will benefit when those farmers are forced to sell their farms because they made an own goal (aka, voted against their own best interests).

Perhaps the farmers did the usual 'I didn't think he actually meant what he said!'.