A bunch of technocrats, who are also welfare queens

Alex Samuels of Daily Kos does not like Laura Loomer because Loomer is so far right. But recently Loomer said something quite good. She was on Steve Bannon’s right-wing podcast “War Room” where she said:

I don’t think it’s acceptable for billionaires to have this much power and this much access. What is it going to mean for the future of our country, our national security, and the incoming Trump administration if we have a bunch of technocrats, who are also essentially welfare queens because their companies are receiving government subsidies, and they want to take over our defense industry?

Loomer was also on Eric Bolling’s show. He was on Fox News, though the article doesn’t say who is hosting the show. On that show Loomer responded to Musk spending more than a quarter billion dollars to help the nasty guy win.

This is the problem when you allow for a billionaire to make a $200 million donation and so maybe we really do need to have campaign finance regulations in this country.

Loomer added that Republicans don’t want to annoy Musk because he’s so rich. I add that rich people have been playing Republican campaign bills, like Musk did for the nasty guy, so of course they don’t want to annoy him. This is all part of the spat within the Republican Party between the billionaires and the white supremacists. Each hates what the other is saying and doing that might thwart their own goals. For the sake of democracy what Loomer said is important. Alas, she’s not in favor of democracy. What will come of this Republican spat is simply more chaos. Speaking up for democracy... Morgan Stephens of Kos wrote Democrats are talking about how to invigorate their party and some are saying things I’m glad to hear. These voices say the party needs to focus on the huge economic inequality. Sen. Chris Murphy suggested on MSNBC the breaking up of monopolies, raising the minimum wage, and focusing on the needs of the working class. The economic institutions propped up by neoliberalism should be reformed. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines neoliberalism as saying

a society’s political and economic institutions should be robustly liberal and capitalist, but supplemented by a constitutionally limited democracy and a modest welfare state.

That definition is part of a long article on the term. I note the terms “limited democracy” and “modest welfare state.” To me that translates as the rich as saying they’ll tolerate a little bit of democracy but don’t forget we control everything. And we don’t want to share with the unfortunate because that means less money flowing to us. As part of that visit to MSNBC Murphy said:

Attacking power is not easy for everybody in the Democratic party because we have become a party that is dependent on high-income elites.

For a long time Democrats received money from high-income liberal elites. In recent decades they also gladly accepted money from high-income conservative elites – and tempered their message to accommodate their donors. Murphy proposes a “common-good capitalism” in which workers are valued as much as shareholders and some things – like health care – should never be for profit. Greg Casar is the new chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. He notes that voters tend towards the left of Democrats on economic issues and to the right of them on cultural issues. He says he will make sure Democrats support workers over corporations. Populism says the system is rigged against the workers and for the wealthy. There is a broad sense of economic discontent. Republicans exploited that through lying. Democrats allowed that to happen by not doing very much to dismantle the rigged system. Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have already been calling for Medicare for All, livable wages, and breaking up monopolies. Outgoing Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison, who is black, doesn’t want to lessen the impact of “identity politics” that draws black and LGBTQ voters. Harrison says his identity – his skin – is how he is seen and treated. Even so, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez say economic issues are more important. Back at the start of December Emily Singer of Kos wrote that the nasty guy nominated Rep. Billy Long to head the IRS. Long sponsored the Fair Tax Act that would have abolished the income tax and replaced it with a 23% sales tax, a move that would be a huge tax increase on the middle class and poor and a huge cut for the wealthy. That bill also sought abolish the IRS and to repeal the 16th Amendment which authorizes income taxes. He also wants to repeal the estate tax. He left Congress in 2023 and has been working as a tax advisor, encouraging businesses to use the Employee Retention Tax Credit from the pandemic. There was a lot of fraud with the ERTC, though the article doesn’t say if Long was a part of it. That work is what attracted the nasty guy’s attention. There is a current head of the IRS, Daniel Werfel, his term doesn’t end until November 2027. So the nasty guy would have to fire him to install Long. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Jill Lawrence of The Bulwark discussing that if Republicans really were populists they would not try to chop IRS resources.

A better, more consumer-friendly IRS? One that has the people, expertise, and technology it needs to answer taxpayer phone calls, clear 24 million backlogged paper tax returns, contact high-income taxpayers who owe more, delve into complicated tax-evasion schemes, and offer more online digital services? And collects far more money from rich and corporate tax evaders than it spends on audits, thus helping to reduce deficits and the need to raise taxes? “It seems like a fiscal no-brainer to me,” Maya MacGuineas, head of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said in November. Count me in, too.

In the comments exlrrp quoted a meme created by Occupy Democrats based on the words of Sen. Murphy.

Trump is intentionally lying about the New Orleans attacker being an immigrant – he wasn’t. Why does this matter? Because he is going to use episodes of violence to justify his crack down on immigrants and his attack on dissent – whether the facts line up or not. This is just the start!”

exlrrp also quoted a meme from Betty Bowers:

If your response when people are killed by someone driving thru a celebrating crowd is to opportunistically make up facts about the driver to further your preexisting prejudices, instead of mourn the dead, your indifference to the lives of those killed means you have much in common with that driver.

Nick Anderson posted a cartoon about that New Orleans attack. A man behind an FBI podium says, “We now believe the New Orleans attacker acted alone.” Beside him is a man dressed to only show his eyes and identified as Islamic State Propaganda says, “Not entirely.” And another meme from exlrrp shows a bunch of teen boys. One asks “Why do they call us ‘the left?’” Another replies, “Because if you take away all of the fascists, corporate sycophants, warmongers, racists, and traitors, we are what’s left.” David Hayward, the naked pastor, posted a cartoon, saying “Too many of us are blind to our privilege.” The cartoon shows a group that includes a gay person, a trans person, a pregnant person, a disabled person, and several more. Facing them is a white man who says, “But why would you call him a fascist when my privilege is only improving?”

If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power

An Associated Press article posted on Daily Kos noted that the states that have banned abortion tend to have the fewest social services for new mothers.

It is clear that from the time a Tennessee woman gets pregnant, she faces greater obstacles to a healthy pregnancy, a healthy child and a financially stable family than the average American mom.

What services exist require confusing and convoluted applications. Some people feel the process was made difficult on purpose. Mark Kreidler wrote in an article for Capital and Main posted on Kos that Gov. Gavin Newsom of California signed some pretty good bills over the last few months. A new law helps speed the creation of tiny homes to get homeless people into temporary shelter. These homes are prefabs, are self-contained, and can be moved with a forklift as needs change. They cost $50K instead of the $800K for affordable housing. Other new laws provide more protection from evictions, paid leave for family needs and for acts of violence, and banning medical debt from credit reports. And a company is banned from holding mandatory “captive audience” anti-union meetings. Oliver Willis of Kos explained why Musk wants to buy Wikipedia, which says it is not for sale. The reason goes back to Stephen Colbert saying during the 2006 White House Correspondents’ Dinner that “reality has a well-known liberal bias.”

Conservatives believe that sources of information must reflect a conservative worldview rather than objective reality, which is why Trump has gone after news outlets like ABC News and The New York Times for not repeating right-wing propaganda. Even though many of these outlets have promoted conservative narratives and buckled under right-wing criticism and legal threats, it still isn’t enough for Trump. Now Wikipedia is under fire for promoting facts instead of right-wing talking points, further proving that conservatives believe everything must bend to their will—even the encyclopedia.

In a pundit roundup for Kos from December 22 Chitown Kev quoted Renée Graham of the Boston Globe:

When Trump refuses to recognize his mistakes, he’s not just broadcasting his insecurities. With his total disregard for facts, and especially the expertise of those smarter than him, he’s positioning himself as an omnipotent arbiter of truth. If he says a hurricane will hit Alabama, it will hit Alabama. If he says massive tariffs will be the best thing ever, then the more than 20 Nobel Prize-winning economists who’ve disputed his comments are wrong. In his essential book, “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century,” Timothy Snyder, a Yale University professor and historian, warns, “To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle.” It’s well-documented that Trump loves spectacle as much as he despises truth. That’s why he’s threatening retribution against the media and fellow politicians — any truthteller who knocks down his lies. He doesn’t care about party or country; his intent is to unleash an infestation of misinformation that magnifies his power and replaces truth with whatever best serves his authoritarian goals.

In the comments of the pundit roundup for December 24 are a couple memes posted by exlrrp that haven’t disappeared yet. The first one: “A Christmas Carol is the heartwarming tale of how rich people must be supernaturally terrorized into sharing.” The second one is for fun. “If your gingerbread house fails, just add a dinosaur!” It shows a crumbled gingerbread house and a plastic t-rex with a piece of gingerbread in its mouth. Last Sunday I saw the 1922 silent movie Robin Hood and wrote about it a few posts back. Here are a few things about the movie from IMDb and it’s trivia page about the movie. The set included a castle, which was designed by Lloyd Wright, junior to architect Frank Lloyd Wright. It was the largest set created for a silent era film. The “banquet hall” was actually open air and was larger than the waiting area of Penn Station in New York. The budget for the sets was $248,000 (in 1922 dollars), required a million feet of lumber and 30 tons of nails. Douglas Fairbanks allowed the set to be open to the public as a charity benefit. Bleachers were set up so the public could watch filming. The costume department had to make several thousand costumes. They used 20,000 yards of fabric and the output of three tanneries to make the shoes, and had a budget of $82,000 (in 1922 dollars). Larger scenes had up to 1,200 extras. Total production costs topped $930,000. The movie was the first one to have a gala premier, which was held at Sid Grauman’s new Egyptian Theater in Hollywood. The film ran there long enough that street car conductors didn’t announce the theater, instead said, “All out for Robin Hood!” Another AP article lists Merriam-Webster’s word of the year for 2024, then listed the rest of the top ten. At the top: Polarization – causing strong disagreement between opposing factions. The word has extended beyond politics to pop culture and elsewhere. Demure – reserved or modest. It got a big bump through a makeup influencer. Fortnight – two weeks, got a bump from a Taylor Swift song of that name. Totality – where the moon fully blocked the sun, from the April eclipse. It also means the full amount or wholeness. Resonate – to affect someone in a personal or emotional way. And AI uses it too much. Allision – when two things are moving and hit, that’s a collision. When one thing is stationary and another hits it – like a ship and that Baltimore bridge – that’s an allision. Weird – popularized by Tim Walz. Cognitive – used often with “decline” to describe Biden and that debate performance. The pair should also be applied to the nasty guy. Pander – say or do what someone demands even though it is not good, proper, or reasonable. Frequently used in political campaigns. Democracy – the word of the year in 2003 and towards the top of the list since then. Lake Superior State University has released its 2025 “List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Mis-Use, Over-Use and General Uselessness.” I don’t have an opinion about banishing words from the Queen’s English, banishing words from American English is good enough. A few of this year’s words: Cringe – Describing someone as “cringe” now makes others cringe. Game Changer – If everything is a game changer, nothing is. Era – Yeah, Taylor Swift can use it, but a man’s “fatherhood era” is overuse. Dropped – Used and overused to describe music and movies that have been released. Sorry not sorry – Sounds like an excuse to be a jerk. Utilize – Most of the time “use” is just fine. This has long been an annoyance of mine.

A completely new vector of chaos

Yesterday I went down to the Detroit Film Theater for a third silent film with live accompaniment. This one was The Last Laugh, made in Germany in 1924. This is from the “Golden Age” of silent films, known for its innovative camera work. This time the accompaniment was by the ensemble Little Bang Theory. The central character is the head doorman of the posh Atlantic Hotel in Berlin. He wears a fine uniform that, when he goes home at night, gives him a lot of prestige with his neighbors. He lives in an apartment with his daughter, who is about to get married. But he’s getting old. He’s been such a valued employee for so long he isn’t fired, but demoted to washroom attendant, handing towels to the gentlemen who use the facilities. So he steals the uniform. Alas, that doesn’t restore his prestige and his life goes downhill. The last laugh is that the movie decides his story needs a better ending. Little Bang Theory played various drums, metallic percussion, a few instruments, and a couple synthesizers. They added sound effects, such as car horns. I felt the music matched the mood of the movie a bit better than the two earlier silent films. But the music was way too repetitive, endlessly repeating just a few notes. I finished the book The New Guys by Meredith Bagby. It’s the history of the NASA astronaut class of 1978 and of the space shuttle. This class, 35 of them, was the first class that wasn’t all white men with military backgrounds. Yeah, there were some of those kinds of men, but there were also women, black men, and a Japanese-American man. Their occupations included doctor, scientist, and engineer. They significantly expanded the definition of astronaut. They were hired before the first shuttle flight and a few were still around at the last shuttle flight. The book focuses on about a dozen of the New Guys, starting with why they chose to apply to NASA. Nichelle Nichols, Uhura of Star Trek, was a big reason. We see why NASA thought it was necessary to broaden its pool of applicants beyond white men. And we learn that the shuttle design – many details being filled in after this class was hired – had some significant flaws, such as the ceramic tiles serving as the heat shield. Yes, about 20% of the book deals with the 1986 Challenger disaster. There is a thorough recounting of what went wrong and of how they learned what went wrong. Another 5% deals with the Columbia disaster in 2003. The second failure was around different circumstances, but caused by the same lack of management not listening to the engineers who had strong doubts about the safety of the spacecraft. We get the story of Sally Ride, the first American woman in space. She was afraid managers would discover she was lesbian, very much a reason not to hire her back in 1978. After her historic flight she had to deal with the public relations tour that seemed relentless. She also served in both the Challenger and Columbia investigation teams and was the one who noticed the same managerial problems. The reason to end the shuttle program was rather simple. Since the late 1990s it’s primary purpose was to get the International Space Station built. After it was, many recognized its original design flaws and its outdated technology and recommended it be replaced. Alas, its replacement by NASA hasn’t materialized in the dozen years since the shuttle program ended and we’re stuck with SpaceX. I’ve now read several books on the lives of astronauts and my book shopping list includes a few more. This is a good one, an enjoyable read for anyone interested in space. In 2024 I read 48 books, plus one more I gave up on halfway through. That’s almost a book per week. The pundit roundup for New Year’s Eve by Chitown Kev for Daily Kos included several discussions of Jimmy Carter. His Chief Domestic Policy Advisor Stuart E. Eizenstat writing for Haaretz noted how he embraced the suggestion to establish the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Since the museum opened in September 1993 there have been over 47 million visitors from the US and around the world, over 90 percent of them not Jewish. In the comments is a cartoon by Peter Schrank showing a living room with the nasty guy on TV as a man reads a newspaper with headline announcing Carter’s death. A boy asks, “Hey Grandpa... Can nice guys really become president?” For New Year’s Day the pundit roundup for Kos dispensed with the pundits and went straight to the cartoons, both in the body of the post and in the comments. Of course, there are several about Jimmy Carter. David Horsey posted one showing the old man labeled 2024 saying, “Hey! Where’s the little New Year’s baby?!” Another old man, labeled “2017 2025” replies, “2025 is kind of a Déjà Vu year, so they just brought me out of retirement.” One about Carter is by Pat Bagley of the Salt Lake Tribune and uses the words from a song I learned in the 1960s.

If I had a hammer I’d hammer in the morning (building respect) I’d hammer in the evening (building a roof of justice) All over this land. I’d hammer out danger (bars over the door to extremism) I’d hammer out a warning (hanging a sign saying “Hate has no home here!”) I’d hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters All over this land.

A Calvin and Hobbes Fan Account posted one of Calvin shouting

If the new year requires resolutions, I say it’s up to everyone else, not me! I don’t need to improve! Everyone else does!”

Tom Gauld posted a cartoon showing a room with one side tidy and the other side messy. The guy on the tidy side says:

My New Year’s resolutions are to jog to work every day, choose the healthy option at lunch, and run a pleasant, well-ordered workspace.

Th messy guys replies:

In the interests of scientific rigor, I’ll be the control, and change absolutely nothing.

Mike Luckovich posted a cartoon on Kos showing two billionaire hands, one with a nasty guy puppet and the other with a Clarence Thomas puppet. The nasty guy puppet says, “Remember when yachts were status symbols?” A couple older pundit roundups. A roundup from December 19 by Chitown Kev quoted Ari Breland of The Atlantic talking about the MAGA desire for revenge displayed at a MAGA gathering.

Trump and his supporters haven’t exactly been quiet about their fantasies and promises. Trump talked about mass deportations all throughout the campaign, and has doubled down since his victory. But there is a meaningful difference between being aware of the rhetoric and truly experiencing its full force. As a reporter who covers the far-right internet, I’ve seen countless posts from people like Gill and Bannon talking about deporting as many immigrants as possible or incarcerating Democrats and the press. But to hear these men fervently say it and watch a crowd of more than 1,000 erupt into cheers and laughter in response added a new dimension. They don’t just want policies, and they’re not just s---posting to provoke people online; they want their enemies to suffer, and they want to relish in their pain. “Reckoning is coming, and there will be retribution and there will be accountability,” Lewandowski said onstage. “And that accountability will be to the highest levels.”

Heather Digby Parton of Salon wrote the current Great Capitulation by the media. The first time was when Bush II came to the Oval Office.

The media completely capitulated to him for more than two years. The propaganda spread by the Bush administration was slick and professional but it was deadly. In their quest to fulfill their long-held dream of toppling Iraq leader Saddam Hussein and remake the Middle East as a democratic paradise (at the end of a gun), they lied repeatedly and the news media helped them do it. One of the lowest points in New York Times history was when they allowed a Bush sycophant named Judith Miller to publish front page stories about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction which later turned out to be non-existent. But it wasn't just lies about the war. The media turned themselves into gushing super fans of George W. Bush. They exalted his brilliance when he stood on the rubble of the World Trade Center with a bullhorn and declared to the assembled workers "I hear you! The whole world hears you, and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!" Soon after, he threw out the first pitch in the third game of the World Series at Yankee Stadium and the media swooned over his perfect delivery.

Matt Waite of NiemanLab wrote we should rethink journalism

Maybe, just maybe, we’ll put everything on the table. And I mean everything. Like how we write and who we write for. Like what we write about. Like the very assumption that people can even read our stuff. Gallup in 2022 found that half of Americans aged 16 to 74 had low literacy skills. Most people read at an eighth-grade level. Billions of words (it feels like) have been spilled dissecting why news organizations are in the state they’re in. (Radio! Television! Cable! Corporate ownership! The internet! Craigslist! Google! Facebook! TikTok!) Meanwhile, 130 million people struggle to read stories written by people who either went to grad school or have thought about it far more than people who read at the eighth-grade level. If journalism is going to live up to its lofty billing as being essential to an informed democracy, it has to stop thinking that anything is above replacement.

In the comments a cartoon by David Hayward shows a book labeled “Theology” strapped to a gurney and the nurse tells the doctor, “We had to restrain him. He was hurting a lot of people.” Hayward added, “Bad theology hurts good people.” In a roundup from December 21 Greg Dworkin quoted Joe Perticone of The Bulwark discussing the first time the nasty guy was in the Oval Office.

Chaos was visited on anything unfortunate enough to elicit the interest of the administration. There were sudden changes, ego-driven showdowns, and more backstabbing than you’d see in a Real Housewives episode. There were also multiple government shutdowns, including the longest one in U.S. history. And now, the decision by a re-empowered Trump to appoint Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to be his terminally online enforcers adds a completely new vector of chaos. Also, Vice President-elect JD Vance is there, too. Somewhere.

David Dayen of The American Prospect wrote about the spending bill that Musk railed against and was able to kill.

That brings us back to the initial reason for the blowup: Elon’s endless scroll. Which appears to be tied to none of the inaccurate reasons he offered on X, but an old standby for billionaires: personal financial and business incentives. The original bill would have made it harder for Musk to build Tesla factories in Shanghai.

Michael Tomasky of The New Republic about why people seem to be shrugging off the nasty guy picking rich people for government positions:

People don’t really know about these Cabinet picks because average Americans just aren’t as read-in to the news as they once were. They watch the news on their phones in 30-second snippets. If they read, it’s headlines and social media posts, maybe. So they know, probably, that Trump nominated Dr. Oz to something or other. But do they know that he has a roughly $30 million financial stake in companies that will be doing business with the very Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that he is probably going to lead? I very much doubt it.

In the comments PragmaticDem posted a cartoon (author not named) showing a woman talking to a man, “My desire to be well-informed is currently at odds with my desire to remain sane.”