If they had the votes they would be voting

Brother is coming for a visit, arriving tomorrow and staying the weekend. I won’t post in the meantime. Some weirdness out of Michigan. In December the state House ended the session in confusion. In a not-quite evenly divided House Republicans refused to show up. Then a Democrat also refused to show up. House leadership saw a stalemate and canceled the rest of the session. In the chaos nine bills, which had been approved by both House and Senate, were not forwarded to the governor for signature or veto, in spite of that demand being spelled out in the state constitution. With the New Year the House switched from Democrat to Republican. New House Speaker Matt Hall has kept the bills on the House clerk’s desk. Rick Pluta of Michigan Public reported that Democrats filed a lawsuit to get Republicans to act. That case was before the Michigan Court of Claims early this week There is no ruling yet, with plenty of space to appeal. Senate Democrats say that bills must be forwarded to the governor. While the constitution does not give a deadline there is and understanding (at least by Democrats) the implied intent is to do so with all possible haste. Failure to do so means “every bill then can be held hostage,” as Dem attorney Mark Brewer said. Speaker Hall said a “previous legislature cannot dictate the actions of the current legislature.” He also said this is a legislature issue and courts should not be come involved. But if the two chambers are locked in their position (as they are now) who has the right or ability to to get the other chamber to act as they should? Overall, who can compel a recalcitrant Republic Party to act like grownups? Whatever the ruling it will be appealed to the state Supreme Court. Back in 2004 Michigan was one of a dozen states to add a ban of same-sex marriage to the state constitution. I suppose I should be glad the amendment passed by a smaller margin than most other states. That amendment became void when, in 2015, the federal Supreme Court ruled the ban unconstitutional and couples could enjoy marriage equality. That amendment is void, but it it still there. Pluta also reported that on Tuesday state Rep Josh Schriver called on the US Supreme court to reinstate the national ban on same-sex marriage. Justices Alito and Thomas have been calling for the right case to come to them. If the Supreme do overturn same-sex marriage this Michigan amendment immediately becomes valid again. As part of his rebuttal, Sen. Jeremy Ross, who is gay and has sponsored bills to add LGBTQ rights, said of the new bill, “This was just as buffoonish as I expected it to be.” Schriver had a handful of cosponsors, which stuck around only until they had to face the cameras. His bill will go to the Government Operations Committee. It’s reputation is known as the graveyard for disfavored legislation and Hall has said he will never bring the legislation to the floor. If the Supremes do withdraw federal recognition of marriage equality Michigan will have to put an appeal amendment on the ballot and explain why voters need to vote for it. Kos of Daily Kos discussed the reports that the nasty guy and Ukrainian President Zelenskyy have agreed to a mineral rights deal. Other sources say Zelenskyy will be in Washington tomorrow to sign it. The nasty guy is well known for his extortions. Even so, Kos thinks this is “Ukraine’s best bet to win the war.” It’s good because giving up $0.5 trillion of mineral rights, out of estimated $15 trillion, is a worthwhile price – so long as it produces significant military aid. The vast majority of the wealth is in areas occupied by Russia. And future US administrations will have no problem ripping it up if they feel it gets in the way of Ukraine’s development.

As for the mineral rights deal, we don’t know many of the details. Apparently, Trump dropped his $500 billion asking price, and Ukraine didn’t get the security guarantees they wanted (i.e., NATO membership). Also, there doesn’t appear to be a specific promise of new American weapons and aid. But if Trump wants some of those minerals, those Russian-occupied lands need to be liberated, and Trump said that the deal would give Ukraine “the right to fight on.” Also, when asked if American supplies to Ukraine would continue, Trump said, "Maybe until we have a deal with Russia. ... We need to have a deal. Otherwise, it's going to continue."

A problem with Ukraine aid is it is being seen more as charity and a harder political sale in donor countries. But with this deal aid is now can be seen as a transaction. That will sell better with conservatives. Peter Olandt of the Kos community found the full text of the agreement on the Kyiv Independent and read through it. And he concluded:

This isn’t a deal. This is a deal to make a deal. And this deal to make that deal has absolutely no measurables attached to it. No timelines, numbers, or anything approaching something to hold either party accountable if the “Fund Agreement” never gets completed.

Yet, Olandt considers this brilliant:

Ukraine and the US have been seen to make a deal together. Both sides can point to this deal and say “Hey, we made a deal!” Trump gets to pretend he did something. Zelensky gets precious time for Russia to collapse while hopefully keeping at least some US benefits going. If the deal wasn’t made, Trump could get all huffy, make a deal with Russia, and blame Ukraine for not making a deal first. But since Trump has “made a deal with Ukraine” he will hopefully tone down his man-crush on Putin for a bit and continue to both let previously agreed upon arms go to Ukraine while letting Ukraine (with European help if needed) buy the more essential US goods. Any time Trump drifts towards Russia, Ukraine can privately or publicly point to this deal and ask “Hey, didn’t we have a deal?” How much of an effect this will have on Trump, who knows.

That Fund Agreement shouldn’t actually appear. As long as it is unfinished the nasty guy at least needs to pretend to uphold his side. Emily Singer of Kos reported House Republicans passed a budget blueprint. It directs House committees to cut expenses by $2 trillion to partly offset the $4.8 trillion in proposed tax cuts with each committee getting a target to meet. Cuts of this size will affect popular programs. For example, the House Energy and Commerce Committee is to cut $880 billion, expected to come from Medicaid. Various Republicans say the word Medicaid isn’t in the bill and accuse Democrats of lying. Democrats counter that the entire rest of the committee’s budget is only about half of $880 billion. So, yeah, the plan is for Medicaid to be cut by a lot.

“The quick math on the House budget shows a stark equation: The cost of extending tax cuts for households with incomes in the top 1%—$1.1 trillion through 2034—equals roughly the same amount as the proposed potential cuts for health coverage under Medicaid and food assistance under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program,” Sharon Parrot, president of the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, wrote in a blog post. “Under what set of values does a budget target those who struggle to pay their bills for severe cuts, while giving an annual tax cut averaging $62,000 for those who make $743,000 or more a year?” she continued. “The tax cut for these wealthy households is greater than the annual family incomes for most of the 72 million people—1 in 5 people in the U.S.—who have health coverage through Medicaid.”

Even with cutting the budget by $2 trillion the proposed tax cuts would add $24 trillion to the federal debt over 10 years – pushing it to $60 trillion. In response to Musk searching for waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal budget Jon Stewart does a minute long segment where he is able to find a great deal of what Musk is looking for and he did it in just seconds. All that is in the form of subsidies to oil and gas companies that make big profits, tax deductions only the rich can take, and the F-35, an aircraft that can never meet all its requirements when the next war will be fought by drones. Morgan Stephens of Kos reported:

On Tuesday, 21 engineers, data scientists, and product managers who worked for what was once known as the United States Digital Service submitted a mass resignation letter in response to Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency interloping in federal jobs and agencies. In the joint letter, obtained by the Associated Press, staffers from the USDS wrote, “We will not use our skills as technologists to compromise core government systems, jeopardize Americans’ sensitive data, or dismantle critical public services. We will not lend our expertise to carry out or legitimize DOGE’s actions.” They also alluded to nameless DOGE bros wearing White House visitor badges infiltrating their office and grilling the nonpartisan staffers. The staffers told reporters these young men were rife with technological inefficiency, fandom for Musk, and ideological partisanship. ... “We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations,” the USDS employees wrote. “However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments.”

Singer reported:

More and more Republican lawmakers are being confronted by angry constituents at town hall meetings across the country. The opposition continues to grow to the chaos President Donald Trump and co-President Elon Musk have unleashed on the federal government with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.

Constituents have basic questions: Are you going to vote to restore funding? When are you going to wrest control back? When are you going to put Musk under oath and demand he explain what he’s doing? The House had a nine-day break. Democrats met with constituents. Republicans mostly hid. When they did see constituents they claimed the anger was a campaign from the left. Oliver Willis of Kos reported that the “savings” reported by Musk and DOGE is lies.

DOGE’s falsehoods are one of the most visible products of the Trump and Musk co-presidency, and the public is beginning to sour on it. Recent opinion polling shows that much of the public holds DOGE, Musk, and their actions in low esteem. But so far, Trump shows that he has no intention of stopping his assault.

Mark Sumner, a Kos emeritus, wrote about Musk’s assault on science and research. He listed about $100 million reduction on each of biotech, life science, and social science research. There are also studies he halted that have already been paid for. That means zero savings and considerable damage. Sumner asks the important question: Why is Musk destroying science? He lists some reasons. + Fascists love the ignorant so they can dominate public knowledge and obliterate shared understanding so people don’t know how to improve their lives. + Musk wants to be seen as the only source of miracles. Sam Altman of The New Yorker wrote:

Elon desperately wants the world to be saved. But only if he can be the one to save it.

+ Musk is an accelerationist. He believes society will collapse and the best thing for the ruling class is to hasten the fall. Sumner also wrote that Musk warns of “temporary hardships” on the way to his paradise, though he and his cohort won’t feel any pinch. The rest of us will feel mild discomfort to death by firing squad. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported that DOGE’s focus on probationary employees is hitting military families hard. A military spouse has to move every 2-3 years, as the military member does. Frequently the only job the spouse can get is a government job. Each change of job means the new one has a 1-2 year probationary period, so much of their time is as a probationary worker. And Musk is targeting them because they have fewer rights than regular employees. About three weeks ago Steven Dennis tweeted:

One way to think about the DOGE effort is it's an outgrowth of 20 years of hardliner conservatives frustrated by their inability to get the votes in Congress to do what they want to do. Deleting the Department of Education is not a new idea, but they don't have the votes to do that. Same with CFPB, USAID, food stamps, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, and on and on. Steven Dennis' maxim: If they had the votes, *they would be voting.* ... Sending in Elon Musk & 'Big Balls' to do what they can't get Congress to do becomes far more appealing to hardliners.

Because Congress has been so tied in knots Obama and Biden turned to using executive orders to make progress. So now governing is about what SCOTUS let the executive get away with. Lately, they’ve been allowing getting away with a lot. A few days ago I wrote about a cartoon in which the person on stage took being pelted by eggs as a compliment. Clay Jones saw the opposite. His cartoon posted on Kos shows a Republican member of Congress being pelted by eggs. He says, “Yikes! They’re mad enough to throw $8 eggs!”

He truly believes his actions are best for everyone

My Sunday movies were the two films by Netflix nominated for Oscars in the short film categories. The awards are handed out next week and only the Netflix movies are streamed now. The first one was the short documentary The Only Girl in the Orchestra. It is about string bass player Orin O’Brien and when she joined the New York Philharmonic somewhere about 1965 she was indeed the only woman. Leonard Bernstein was the one to hire her and he thought her playing was wonderful. The film was created by her niece Molly O’Brien, though Orin didn’t think she was special enough to have a movie made about her. Filming included her retirement from the NYP after 55 years, then moving from the apartment she had been in as long. O’Brien is the daughter of actors and while they sought the spotlight she avoided it. She chose string bass because the school orchestra had instruments and no players. Plus, playing string bass meant she was in the back of the orchestra. She and a friend read through some of the newspaper articles from when she got the NYP job and cringed at the sexist language. She noted the men had a changing room. There wasn’t one for women. Even as she retired from the NYP she has kept up her teaching schedule, so we meet a lot of her students. The second film is the short live action Anuja, which takes place in New Delhi slums. Anuja says she is fourteen, but she is clearly younger. She works with an older sister in a garment sweatshop. A school official wants her to take a test to see if she qualifies for a boarding school – he’s heard of her math skills. Part of the film is about coming up with the money to pay for the exam and part of it is about the factors that work to keep her in poverty. These include the sweatshop owner wanting her math skills for himself, and Anuja recognizing that her sister would not go to the boarding school with her. The Detroit Film Theater screens all of the short animation, live action, and documentary films during February. For several years I would attend the marathon viewings of the animation and live action. I stopped when I got tired of the violence in some of the live action shows. I see some of this year’s nominations were for violent films. Alas, most of the other short films don’t get to a streaming service. In an article for Capital and Main posted on Daily Kos Gabriel Thompson discussed the latest difficulty in resolving labor disputes. These disputes include such things as workers voting in union representation yet the corporation continues to refuse to recognize the union. The reason is that the National Labor Relations Board can no longer meet because the nasty guy fired a board member and it no longer has enough members to meet quorum requirements. An agency that’s supposed to be independent from politics can no longer function. This comes after a long period of being underfunded and understaffed and recently hit with a funding freeze.

The freeze at the National Labor Relations Board comes while attorneys for Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Amazon, which are both facing labor complaints, argue in federal court that the NLRB is unconstitutional, in part because it impedes executive power.

The nasty guy also fired enough commissioners from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to leave it without a functioning quorum. The NLRB can accept cases and probably begin work on preparing data and arguments. But any cases that need board action are now on hold, which may last a good long time. This will mean that workers, recognizing they can’t depend on a government agency will take matters into their own hands. The Republican threat to significantly cut Medicaid prompted Renuka Rayasam and Sam Whitehead of KFF Health News to write an explainer on Medicaid, posted on Kos.

In January, during a congressional hearing on his way to becoming secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. got basic details wrong about Medicaid — a program he now oversees. He said that Medicaid is fully funded by the federal government (it’s not) and that many enrollees are unsatisfied with high out-of-pocket costs (enrollees pay limited, if any, out-of-pocket costs).

Read the article and you’ll know more than RFK. Kos of Kos wrote another article about people who voted for the nasty guy and are now harmed by that decision. The introduction says:

As we sample the latest batch of regretful Trump voters, just note the theme: “I didn’t know it would impact me!” This is a core difference between us and them. They happily voted for President Donald Trump hoping he would hurt other people. We voted against him because he would hurt other people. So the question becomes, how do we build a society in which we are all in this thing together and vote for candidates who uplift rather than destroy? In the short term, sure, let’s pick up people who have been burned. Their votes matter. But as long as peoples’ motivation to vote is to hurt “the other,” we’re going to have a hard time building the caring, supportive, and progressive society we all deserve.

In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Adam Serwer of The Atlantic discussing the “Great Resegregation”

If the Great Resegregation proves successful, it will restore an America past where racial and ethnic minorities were the occasional token presence in an otherwise white-dominated landscape. It would repeal the gains of the civil-rights era in their entirety. What its advocates want is not a restoration of explicit Jim Crow segregation—that would shatter the illusion that their own achievements are based in a color-blind meritocracy. They want an arrangement that perpetuates racial inequality indefinitely while retaining some plausible deniability, a rigged system that maintains a mirage of equal opportunity while maintaining an unofficial racial hierarchy. Like elections in authoritarian countries where the autocrat is always reelected in a landslide, they want a system in which they never risk losing but can still pretend they won fairly. The battles of the Great Resegregation are now taking place in at least three overlapping arenas. The first is politics, where right-wing legal organizations have succeeded in rolling back many civil-rights-era voting protections; they want to now fully destroy the remaining shreds. The second is education and employment, particularly at elite institutions, such as the media and academia; right-wing legal strategies have been similarly fruitful here in attacking diversity, thanks to the conservative capture of the Supreme Court. The third is popular culture, where conservatives have sought to leverage anger and nostalgia against movies, television, books, and other creative media brought to life by artists of color. [...] As the Trump State Department official Darren Beattie wrote, “Competent white men must be put in charge if you want things to work. Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men.” This analysis is perceptive in the sense that the exact reverse is true—we are now in the second decade of a years-long temper tantrum sparked by the election of Barack Obama—not to mention the failed attempts to elect a woman to succeed him—and the effect it had on the fragile self-esteem of people like Beattie.

Kev also quoted Paul Krugman from his Substack talking about the congestion pricing for Midtown Manhattan that the nasty guy reversed.

This behavior may in part reflect the right-wing insistence, going back to Reagan, that government can never be a force for good, a doctrine right-wingers try to validate when they’re in power. Part of it may reflect jealousy: Trump, and only Trump, is allowed to have policy successes. But it’s also surely part of the effort to flood the zone — to do so many bad things at the same time that it’s hard to focus on any one outrage. And I’m sorry to say that this strategy often works.

In a second roundup Greg Dworkin quoted Heather Cox Richardson of her Letters from an American on Substack who quoted Timothy Snyder, scholar of authoritarianism. Snyder has noticed a shift:

People are starting to realize that there is no truth here beyond the desire for personal wealth and power.

Dworkin also included a tweet by Jennifer Schulze that was also a link to an article on Substack.

I think local news is doing a helluva job covering the doge fallout. Reporters are connecting the dots from DC to main street, going beyond acronyms to explain what government agencies do & giving voice to concerns of regular people.

With the tweet is a photo of some sort of citizen gathering that is standing room only. The people look angry. Yeah, that kind of DOGE fallout. A tweet by Carol Leonning:

Here's one creative way @SecretService managers told agents to respond to Elon Musk's surprise email demanding that fed employees list their 5 accomplishments last week. Sources said it was designed to avoid agents sharing sensitive and classified details of their work protecting @POTUS, the White House and more.

This week I accomplished: + 100% of the tasks and duties required of me by my position description. + 100% of the work product that my manager and I have agreed to. + 100% of the duties and performance elements that are used to evaluate my performance. + 100% of the deliverables requested of me by my direct supervisor. + I exceeded expectations in the delivery of the above.

In the comments is a cartoon by Jonesy showing the nasty guy talking to a firefighter. The nasty guy says, “Keep up the good work – you’ll need to” as between them the nasty guy sets fire to the Paris Climate Agreement. A meme posted by exlrrp has the caption “They never started by taking guns.” The image shows Nazi officials walking away with stacks of books. A tweet by Josh Marshall includes a quote from Vanity Fair that explains Musk’s goals. The Vanity Fair author isn’t named.

“Elon believes he should be emperor of the world, and this is his way of showing people what he’s capable of as emperor,” a close associated of Musk’s, who has worked with him for years and still speaks to him regularly, tells me. “He truly believes his way of handling the world is the best possible outcome for everyone in it.” In Musk’s mind, this person says, everything he’s done in his career to date has proven that thesis to be true – from Tesla’s electric cars reducing emissions and accelerating the transition to sustainable energy, to Neuralink’s efforts to help people with neuralogical disorders regain lost functions, to his belief that he single-handedly saved Twitter from collapse and turned it into a bastion of free speech, rescuing it from what he saw as the censorial grip of Jack Dorsey’s leadership.

He may believe what he does benefits all. But it clearly doesn’t. Or maybe “everyone in it” means only himself. Zez Vaz posted a cartoon of a singer with a guitar onstage being pelted by eggs. He says, “Eggs? In this economy? I’m flattered!”

Congress can’t do anything except complain

I finished the novel Growing Up Weightless by John M. Ford. One viewpoint character is Matt Ronay, who grew up in the settlement on Luna. His age is given in hours – 115,000 of them. Computing his age isn’t quite the same as dividing the number of hours in a day and then by the number of days in a year, because on Luna there are 25 hours in a day and the hour before midnight is 72 minutes. What other measuring unit should they use? Luna’s revolution is 28 earth days. I figure Matt is about 13 years and 3 months. Which on Luna means he’s at the age to consider getting a job. One job open to him is joining the youth theater group. However, the job he really wants is to join the crew of a starship. He thinks about decorating his bedroom to look like the interior of a starship, but he figures that is too obvious. Matt knows many places in the Luna settlement that are “cold” – places where his father can’t use the colony surveillance system to keep track of him. So like a young teen. The other viewpoint character is his father Albin Ronay. One of his jobs is to chair the water board, making sure the Luna cities have enough water. We also learn that Albin is a composer and sometimes leads the Luna Orchestra. Matt has friends Ruby, Cissa, Tani, Jack, and Raf, all about his age. They like to play a roleplaying game and are planning to take the trains to explore other Luna cities, even to the one on the far side, and do it without parental knowledge. Very little of importance happens during the story, which is typical of kids that age. Just little scenes of growing up. Since the Luna colonies were founded through a joint effort of American, British, Russian, Japanese teams their speaking is full of Russian and Japanese phrases. They’re not translated and most of the time that doesn’t matter. Overall I enjoyed the story. Lisa Needham of Daily Kos reported:

It was part of a weirdly low-energy afternoon affair where Trump stood by while [White House staff secretary Will] Scharf plowed his way through a prepared statement that the executive order Trump was signing “reestablishes the longstanding norm that only the president or the attorney general can speak for the United States when stating an opinion as to what the law is.”

Yeah, that is indeed saying the nasty guy, his AG, and no one else gets to define what a law means. There is no such thing as judicial review. And that is saying he isn’t above the law, he is the law. And that mean’s he has declared himself king. No, that is not a “longstanding norm.” Scharf’s statement was part of the nasty guy’s assertion there are no independent agencies, such as the FTC, SEC, and the rest, that all of them report to and can be politically influenced by him. Emily Singer of Kos reported that the nasty guy has pulled his approval for New York City’s congestion pricing. This has been in place for about six weeks and has made a big difference in the congestion in Midtown Manhattan, improving travel times. Earlier this month a poll found 59% of New Yorkers want to keep the system. The nasty guy praised his pulling of congestion pricing and included the phrase, “Long Live the King!” Soon after that the White House tweeted an image of the nasty guy with a big grin and with a crown on his head. Mayor Eric Adams doesn’t care one way or the other. Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler of Manhattan said the nasty guy’s reasons “are utterly baseless and frankly, laughable.” Gov. Kathy Hocul said:

We are a nation of laws, not ruled by a king. The MTA has initiated legal proceedings in the Southern District of New York to preserve this federal program. We’ll see you in court.

Singer concluded:

Republicans love to talk about states’ rights and letting states make their own policy decisions. But this decision is just more proof that Republicans only care about states’ rights when it benefits them, no matter how unpopular their actions are or how much damage they inflict.

Singer also reported that the personnel cutting done by Musk and DOGE doesn’t consider how valuable those employees are. One batch cut were the employees working the government’s response to bird flu, the reason why egg prices are so high and which the nasty guy promised to bring down. Also affected are national parks and the JFK Presidential Library and Museum in Boston. Some Republicans are getting annoyed. Singer concluded:

But these same Republican lawmakers are doing nothing to stop DOGE’s destruction. In fact, Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa said there is nothing Congress can do, even though Congress makes the laws that the executive has to abide by. “Congress can’t do anything except complain about it," Grassley said, according to a report from RadioIowa, “but I think we have to have sympathy and understanding for people that are laid off.” Cowards.

Singer reported that the nasty guy said he would not touch Medicare or Medicaid during an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News. Hours later he endorsed a bill from the House that includes massive cuts to Medicaid. Passing the bill in the House will be quite tight and in the Senate Josh Hawley said he doesn’t like cuts so deep. Alix Breeden of Kos listed 17 nightmarish things the nasty guy has done in his first month. I won’t list them all. + Pardoned those who stormed the Capitol + Tried to end birthright citizenship + Relaunched his Muslim travel ban + Attacked federal aid + Launched a personal vendetta against DEI + When a plane and helicopter collided he offered blame and gutted the aviation safety committee + He made enemies of Canada and Mexico, formerly our besties. + He issued a slew of anti-trans executive orders. + He opened the doors on Guantanamo Bay to house deportees. + He called to seize Gaza and remove its Palestinians. + He declared himself King + He kissed Putin’s ring again. Singer reported that the nasty guy is sucking up to Putin. Yeah, that’s been in the news a lot over the last three days. So I’ll include a bit I hadn’t heard elsewhere. It’s in response to the nasty guy saying Ukrainian president is a fraud because he hasn’t allowed recent elections. Yeah, Russia has destroyed lots of the country and many have fled, making elections impossible.

Even Republicans who usually kneel before Trump are against the idea of forcing Ukraine to have elections. Trump toady Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas said Russia wants Ukraine to have elections “because they want to meddle in them."

Ruben Bolling, in his Tom the Dancing Bug cartoon posted on Kos, shows what Luke Skywalker see if he went to the Rebel Alliance in 2025. Instead of the rebels showing resolve and creating plans they are making sure they don’t annoy Vader. The final frame shows:

Skywalker: Darth Vader is allowed in here?! Rebel Leader: We have to try to work with him! If we appear too extreme, we could lose the midterm elections! Vader: “Midterm ‘elections.’ (chuckle)”

Finally! Moscow Mitch has decided he would not seek another term in the Senate in 2026. He is in his seventh term and, if my math is right, would be about 90 at the end of an eighth term. The announcement gave Singer a chance to list some of the worst things he’s done in his tenure. + He weaponized the filibuster to keep legislation from passing. + He stole two Supreme Court seats from Democratic presidents. He blocked Obama’s pick to replace Scalia, then reversed his reasoning to approve a replacement for Ruth Bader Ginsberg before Biden could nominate someone. + He blocked dozens of Obama’s lower court nominees so the nasty guy could fill them. Yet when judges unretired last November to avoid the nasty guy appointing their replacement he said they were playing politics with the judiciary. + He blocked many of Obama’s initiatives. + Though he thought the nasty guy “stupid” and “narcissist” he gave the nasty guy his vote in 2024. + And, worst: In the second nasty guy impeachment he voted to acquit. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included a tweet from Andrew Perez:

Among those Trump and Musk fired at the FAA: - Lawyers who help keep drunk or reckless pilots out of the skies - Air traffic control support staff - Employees who track potential new flying hazards like cranes - Staffers who medically clear pilots to fly

Maybe I can drive across the river to Windsor, take the train to Toronto, and fly to Europe from there... In the comments TweetLD tweeted:

What a legacy for Mitch McConnell; having achieved his lifelong goal of a corrupt SCOTUS, he's slinking out of the office without even the respect or loyalty of the corrupt party he served.

That was with a cartoon by Mike Luckovich showing Mitch at a podium saying, “My work is done here…” as behind him the Capitol is crumbling and in flames. Another cartoon (I think the artist is Crampton) was first drawn after the school shooting in Parkland, Florida. It shows Mitch outside the gates of Heaven, where the guardian says, “Thank you for all the ‘hopes and prayers’, Majority Leader McConnell, but we’re sending you to burn in Hell. For all eternity.” In the comments of a second roundup Michael de Adder shows Putin and the nasty guy playing poker. In front of Putin are tall stacks of chips and the nasty guy’s clothes. In front of the naked nasty guy is a lone American flag. The nasty guy thinks, “Nobody makes deals like me.” Much further down is a cartoon by Ellis Rosen showing a couple at a restaurant as their robot server says, “And with your meal tonight, might I suggest a strong password?”

He’s still trying to prove his manliness to himself

I was a barely grown lad when Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre occurred on October 20, 1973. Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox was investigating the Watergate scandal. President Nixon ordered him fired. Attorney General Elliot Richardson (Cox’s boss) refused and resigned. Deputy AG William Ruckelshaus also refused and resigned. Solicitor General Robert Bork carried out the firing and intended to resign, but Richardson and Ruckelshaus persuaded him to stay. That started the impeachment process against Nixon. Lisa Needdham of Daily Kos reports in comparison to what happened over the last few days in the DoJ that night in 1973 looks like “a quaint tea party.” I’ll summarize. Deputy AG Emil Bove ordered the criminal charges against NYC Mayor Eric Adams be dropped. The reason wasn’t the usual prosecutorial misconduct or insufficient evidence. Rather pending charges meant Adams couldn’t devote enough time to fighting illegal immigration. This would be an illegal quid pro quo arrangement. Yeah, this echoes the nasty guy’s own presidential immunity. Also strange, the charges were to be dismissed without prejudice – they could be refiled at any time, such as when Adams is declared to be insufficiently vicious to immigrants. Bove demanded a federal prosecutor sign the order. Seven refused and resigned. These were not Biden holdovers but included a Federalist Society member and former clerks for Justices Scalia and Kavanaugh. They all recognized when something was downright illegal and they had limits. Since Bove could have signed the order himself he was using it as a loyalty test and to see how far he could push them into acting unethically and illegally.

All of these acts are part and parcel of Trump consolidating power within the executive branch. Demanding federal employees engage in illegal or unethical acts is designed to weed out those who won’t go along with his plans. It’s terrifying that it took such a short time for those demands to be so over-the-top that even people otherwise ideologically aligned with Trump had to tap out. It’s equally terrifying that he’s seeking complete control over agencies that were previously independent. He’s warping the whole executive branch to be nothing but a place where amoral loyalists do his bidding. Now, unvarnished, unrestrained authoritarianism feels right around the corner.

Kai Ryssdal, host of the NPR show Marketplace, talked to Sarah Binder, professor of politics at George Washington University and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. The topic was the new executive order from the nasty guy saying he is taking over several agencies that Congress designated as independent from the president, even though the prez. nominates the head and the board. The order includes: the Federal Election Commission, the Federal Communications Commission (TV and radio), the Securities and Exchange Commission (stock markets), the Federal Trade Commission, and more. This does not (yet) include the Federal Reserve’s ability to set interest rates, though the Reserve does a great deal more to stabilize the economy and those are affected. Yes, this is illegal. But who in Congress will stop him? It will end up before the courts. Will he abide by their decision? These agencies were set up as independent to they would be insulated from politics and the whims of the president. Having them under the control of the nasty guy affects the ability to control inflation, regulate banks to keep them healthy, keep companies that sell stock honest, decide who does or doesn’t get a radio or TV license, and whether candidates for office play by the rules. What these executive orders are doing is allowing the nasty guy to usurp Congress’ ability to designate how money is spent. And Congress isn’t standing up for itself. Steve Inskeep of NPR took up the same topic, discussing it with Jane Manners, a legal historian at Temple University Beasley School of Law. The discussion was prompted by Russell Vought, author of parts of Project 2025 and now the head of the Office of Management and Budget, has declared the nasty guy administration is rejecting the notion of an independent agency within the Executive Branch. Everything under the nasty guy is under his power. Inskeep and Manners have four key points. First, independent agencies go back to 1887 with the regulation of railroads, which were becoming quite critical to commerce. Because of the importance Congress wanted the agency to be insulated from politics. Second, independent agencies need to be accountable to someone. If not the president, who? But they can’t function properly under presidential pressure. Third, the current system says an agency is responsible to its appointed board. They can be removed only for neglect of duty and malfeasance. That accountability seems ambiguous. Fourth, the Department of Justice is headed by one person, not a board. It’s independence is (again) to shield it from politics. Scott Detrow of NPR started a segment with:

New York Times opinion writer M Gessen lived through much of Russia's slide into autocracy and wrote a book about it. They argue that one of the ways that Vladimir Putin consolidated power was by making a series of arguments that seemed outrageous at the time, like the idea that the LGBT population was a threat to Russian sovereignty.

That book is The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia. Gessen didn’t take that argument seriously, though a couple years later had to flee the country. In the same way the nasty guy has put out a “barrage of unthinkable ideas.” They don’t seem connected, but Gessen says they are. People who are the targets of an autocrat see it as terrifying. But for most people living under autocracy is just dumb. The US buying Greenland? Clearing Gaza? Dumb ideas. But they undermine the idea that people have obligations to one another and that there is a law-based world order. Gessen said:

I think that Americans voted for Donald Trump because there are some really major problems with the system of government as it's constituted. And I think that, basically, the Democratic Party, for at least three election cycles, has now insisted that things are fine just the way they are, that we just have to live in some sort of imaginary normal, really refusing to hear that the normal - whatever that is - isn't working for a lot of people, that they are anxious and miserable. And they would rather throw a grenade at the way things are in the form of Donald Trump than continue living the way they've been living. And the reason it's important to think about that now is that it's still the same sort of dynamic where Trump is taking a sledgehammer to the world as we've known it, and the Democrats are saying, well, you can't do that. That's not how the rules are written. Americans have said that the way that the rules are written and the way that the system functions doesn't work for them. So there has to be a bigger idea. The rules were written for a reason. They were there to perform certain functions. They were there to make sure that our obligations to one another are, in fact, fulfilled, and they haven't been.

I read that and think of the biggest issue Democrats didn’t touch – inequality and curbing the power of the extremely wealthy. Yeah, there have been voices – Sens. Warren and Sanders – but no action by a party supposedly for the worker yet paid off by those wealthy people. People were expecting the nasty guy’s second term to be similar to his first. And it isn’t. Now people may act to give the authoritarian more power over them.

I think that, rationally, people are settling in for the long haul and making decisions about their organizations that will benefit them or at least keep them safer in the short term. And that's really the problem with this kind of abeyance is that it is reasonable, it is well thought through and it is sometimes even values based. People are thinking, I'm protecting my employees. I'm protecting my organization. The problem is that when everyone does that, that is exactly how autocracy is built. It cannot be built without people's cooperation.

As part of a series Explaining the Right on Kos Oliver Willis titled his article, “Why conservatives are obsessed with phony masculinity.” As in at least one other article in the series the question isn’t answered, though several examples of phony masculinity are described. One is Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth at the NATO summit. His performance was seen to be quite an embarrassment. There is the nasty guy who posted his criminal mug shot outside the Oval Office. Bush II in his flight suit declaring “Mission Accomplished” when it wasn’t. Then the discussion turned to research that show diversity really does lead to a better armed forces.

But figures like Hegseth and Trump are locked into the worldview that only people who look like them are legitimate, and everyone else must fall to the wayside. That has historically been the path that leads to unwinnable quagmires, claiming the lives of millions of innocent people. History tells us that this time won’t be any different.

I did find an answer to the posed question in the comments. Mystic Michael wrote:

I’m not going to accept any lectures from the likes of Pete Hegseth — and certainly not from the likes of Donald Trump — about what it means to be a man. A real man doesn’t abuse women — as Hegseth does. A real man doesn’t pick on the weak, the underprivileged, the marginalized — as Trump does. A real man doesn’t feel the need to prove his manliness...because it’s obvious. Any man who’s obsessed with demonstrating his masculinity only succeeds in showing how insecure he really is...because he’s still trying to prove it to himself. Not exactly the most manly quality in the world. Spare me from these macho creeps. No wonder so many women are so on guard against their type. They give men a bad name.

But I thought we was owning the libs

Oliver Willis of Daily Kos wrote from a New York Times report that Musk and his DOGE boys have entered the Integrated Data Retrieval System of the IRS. This “would allow DOGE to manipulate transaction data as well as harvest sensitive information for millions.”

Both Trump and Musk have repeatedly shown interest in pursuing a vendetta against their adversaries, now they have access to some of the most private and sensitive data held by the U.S. government to pursue this agenda.

Willis reported:

The mainstream media is offering a tepid response to President Donald Trump’s decision to ban the Associated Press from covering official White House events. AP has been barred from reporting on at least two White House events because the wire service has said they will be using the term “Gulf of Mexico” in reference to the Gulf of Mexico.

The AP is still using “Gulf of Mexico” as only the US recognizes the name change and the AP is read around the world and must use easily recognizable place names for all audiences. The response is called “tepid” because while few have released statements in support of the AP they won’t “take any action beyond their statements, like boycotting White House events in solidarity with AP.”

Bending to Trump’s will while voicing support for the Associated Press would seem to be in complete contradiction.

Morgan Stephens of Kos reported on protests titled “No King in Presidents Day” or “No Kings Day.” The protests are led by 50501 a grassroots activist group that started on Reddit. The name means “50 protest, 50 states, one movement.” A website listed 80 events. The group demands “justice,” “transparency,” and “accountability” to “uphold the Constitution” and end Trump and Musk’s “executive overreach.” Stephens posted images from protests in Boston, Philadelphia, the National Mall, St. Augustine, and Austin. Another group of protesters are outside Tesla dealerships, where sales have been in decline.

Presidents Day was created in the 1880s to celebrate the birthday of President George Washington, but in Trump’s second term, it’s shaping up to be a day of resistance.

In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included a tweet by Dan Cluchey that was posted in response to the firing of several hundred Federal Aviation Administration employees, the people who staff air traffic control. Cluchey wrote:

Whole lot of folks, drenched by misinformation, are about to figure out that the 'deep state' they've been taught to despise are actually civil servants who keep our planes in the air, stop diseases from ravaging our communities, prevent banks from preying on us, et al.

Down in the comments is a meme posted by exlrrp and written by Ron Filipkowski:

It seems to me that if Musk has proof that millions of Social Security checks have gone out illegally to dead people, he should be presenting that evidence in front of a Grand Jury under oath tomorrow instead of s---posting it on social media. When can we do this under oath?

paulpro posted a cartoon by Slyngstad showing a guy in a red hat and a “I (heart) Elon” shirt. In the first panel he says:

Why are these libruls so mad that Elon Musk has their Social Security number! Oh, ‘cuz he’s ‘unelected’? Is that why? He’s fixin’ the system and he needs all that stuff. Grow up libs. Every one of them burecrats has your info and is unelected!”

In a second panel the man has a bill and a “You’re Fired” notice on his desk.

Whatdya mean I lost by job and lost all my Medicaid benefits? But I thought we was owning the libs. My grandma’s Social Security check too? But she needed that. All my bills are higher now ‘cuz no one can tell companies not to do that?

That makes me think of the saying: The best way to fleece someone is to get them to believe they are helping you fleece someone else. Paul Fell posted a cartoon of two children in “DOGE” shirts carrying a bucket of money. One is blowing a raspberry the other has a hand up to stop a skeptical Uncle Sam. The second child says:

Yes, we’re the experts President Musk has tasked with cleaning up govt waste, fraud, and abuse, and no, you can’t see what’s in the bucket.”

Below that exlrrp posted memes and screen shots showing the DOGE team is finally posting examples of their spending cuts. And the amounts and the claims around them are lies. Denise Oliver Velez posted a substitute roundup because the regular host could not. There is little in the body, though the comments have the usual bunch of cartoons. One of those was posted by Fiona Webster and is by Christopher Weyant. It shows a DOGE guillotine and being led to it is a person labeled “Government.” Beside him is Musk saying, “Don’t worry – I won’t feel a thing!” Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos wrote about the movie Mickey 17 to be released in a couple weeks. I watched the trailer and it’s way too violent for me. Bill mentions it because the bad guy, a despot, is Mark Ruffalo, playing against type. Bill quoted a report on CNN:

[A]s he drew upon a range of real world despots to form the character, Ruffalo found himself considering how: “They all end the same way.” “I mean, it might be brutal on the way to getting there, but all of these guys end the same way. It’s not sustainable,” Ruffalo told CNN on the red carpet, in London’s Leicester Square. “And I think that’s kind of one of the nicer things about the movie, is that, in the end, the people always win. It just takes some time and some suffering—horrible, you know, terrible things. But we gotta remember that we always win and they always lose. They’re too selfish, they’re too self centered, they’re too arrogant, they’re too stupid, they’re too insane for them to triumph,” added Ruffalo.

I like that sentiment, but it isn’t always true. A despot has been in control of China for 75 years. A family of tyrants has been in control of North Korea for nearly 80 years. However, in the case of America our current tyrant is indeed too selfish, too self centered, too arrogant, too stupid, and too insane. In another Cheers and Jeers column Bill wrote about the winners in this year’s contest by the Minnesota Department of Transportation’s name a snowplow contest Some of the winners:

We’re Off to See the Blizzard Plowabunga! Don’tcha Show I Came, I Thaw, I Conquered

No way to talk about Stonewall without trans people

My Sunday movie was Veselka. It’s a documentary about a Ukrainian restaurant in the Little Ukraine neighborhood of Manhattan. The name means “Rainbow.” The movie describes it as “The Rainbow on the Corner at the Center of the World.” The restaurant was started by Wolodymyr many decades ago, then turned over to his son-in-law Tom. As the story opens Tom is giving control to his son Jason. Jason’s nephew Justin is the fourth generation involved in running the place. Also on staff are Vitali, a manager, and Dima, a grill master, both from Ukraine. We hear their stories. There are also several cooks from Ukraine who seem to be constantly making pierogi. The first complication was the pandemic. When sidewalk dining becomes available their clientele supported them. The second, bigger, complication was Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Vitali’s mother tells him no you’re not coming back to Ukraine to fight in the war, as my only child I want you safe in New York. Jason begins a push to make sure his employees have green cards and to begins rescuing their families. He’s delighted that a refugee process that used to take years can suddenly produce results in a month. The restaurant declares for every serving of borscht they will donate to help Ukraine. They have shirts made that say “My Heart Beets for Ukraine.” They also receive donations of supplies of all kinds which they turn over to the area’s Ukrainian church. This is a marvelous example of a small group doing all they can to build up and take care of their community. I recommend it. I’ve known about the movie for quite a while, perhaps shortly after it was released about a year ago. Finding a streaming service took a while – I watched it on Fandango at Home. Alas, I didn’t think about it when I went to New York last summer. Now I want to pay a visit. The movie shows the effects of the war on people – the worry on Vitali’s face when he can’t reach his mother, the stories refugees tell when they come to the restaurant, their bafflement trying to figure out why Putin invaded. It also shows the support Americans showed during the first year of the war. So it is outrageous to now see the nasty guy appears to be siding with Putin. Juliana Kim of NPR reported:

The National Park Service website exploring the history and significance of the Stonewall Uprising has been stripped of any mention of transgender people. The page was also updated to remove the "T" from the previously used acronym "LGBTQ+" — now, referring to the community as either "LGB" or "LGBQ." References to the word "queer" have also been removed.

Those who know LGBTQ history in America know the importance of the Stonewall Inn and the Stonewall Uprising in 1969 which ignited the LGBTQ rights movement. Those people also know how central transgender people were to battling police over those few days. Isabella Gomez Sarmiento of NPR reported on the scores of people who gathered outside the Stonewall National Monument to protest the removal of transgender people from the website. Included in the story is historian Nikita Shepard:

There's absolutely no way that you can tell the story of Stonewall and the Stonewall uprising or of the broader history of gender and sexuality without talking about trans people. ... Whatever the Trump administration says, whatever the websites of the, you know, Parks Department says, we have always been here. We are here, and we will continue to be here.

And from Angelica Christina, board director of the Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative, said:

It is deeply offensive and such a slap in the face for what the National Park Service did in attempting to erase trans people and queer people from their website.

In what is now a regular column on Daily Kos Emily Singer reported on the lame excuses (or approval) various Republicans are giving for the nasty guy’s illegal and unconstitutional actions. This week’s edition is about the claim that the nasty guy can do whatever he wants. Wrote Singer:

Republicans agreed with the false statement that the courts are not allowed to check the president’s power—when that’s exactly what the Constitution dictates.

So, no, Republicans are not going to demand we as a country must uphold the Constitution. Irontortoise of the Kos community quoted a report in Raw Story about Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX):

"There’s an immigrant taking people’s jobs… his name is Elon Musk," the lawmaker wrote. "He’s snatching farms, government jobs (even those in which they manage our national security), and definitely those whose jobs are to root out fraud (inspector generals), & those that are keeping us safe (FAA), meals on wheels workers, head start, and the list goes on, so I’ll be the bigger person and admit to MAGA that I was wrong when I said immigrants wouldn’t take our jobs. You were 1000 percent correct."

Lisa Needham of Kos reported that religious groups are taking the nasty guy’s deportation policy to court, in particular the part that gives ICE agents permission to enter churches to carry out raids. The religious groups are basing their case on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993.

It prohibits the government from substantially burdening someone’s exercise of their religious beliefs, even if it stems from a generally applicable rule, unless the government shows that the burden is the least restrictive means of pursuing a compelling government interest.

The right has used the RFRA for a lot of mischief, such as the ruling “holding that the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate violated the religious freedom of the evangelical owners of Hobby Lobby.” The religious groups are saying caring for immigrants is core to their faith, as is such things as running food pantries and preschools. They also say their faith requires them to worship together in person – the same argument used by conservative churches against COVID stay at home orders. All that means is if ICE can arrest people in a house of worship that burdens their ability to exercise their religious beliefs. Their beliefs are already being harmed because so many are scared to come to services. This should be an obvious win for religious groups because the original policy already has lots of exceptions that cover any situation the nasty guy’s lawyers could come up with, such as imminent risk of death or harm, a threat to national security, or of evidence was about to be destroyed. Yeah, courts have sided with RFRA claims, but hard telling what these courts will do. Denise Oliver Velez of Kos posts a column on Caribbean matters each week. In this episode she discussed yellow journalism. In the 1890s the Linotype printers led to a massive surge in newspaper production. And they all wanted as many readers as possible. Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst had rival New York papers. Both wanted the Yellow Kid cartoon. Both used outrageous headlines and sensational articles, which became known as yellow journalism. The USS Maine exploded and sunk in Havana Harbor on Feb. 15, 1898, killing 266. Within days newspapers blamed Spain. Evidence was suspicious or fabricated. Once that idea took hold both Pulitzer and Hearst demanded action and goaded President William McKinley into a military response. Both papers profited from the American hysteria. Velez quoted M. Mallon, writing for the Urban Fictionary

Yellow journalism was so successful because it did not create an unfamiliar narrative, but rather buttressed its audience’s existing perceptions. The ongoing conflict between Cuba and Spain had already captured the American attention, so the public was poised to receive proof to support their ill will [towards Spain]. Because of this, Hearst and Pulitzer managed to deeply influence public opinion, despite the fact that they had fabricated information surrounding the culprit.

Does any of that sound similar to what’s going on today? At the end of the Spanish-American war the US had possession of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. America declared itself to be Puerto Rico’s liberator, and is still in Puerto Rico and Guam. That war also played havoc with Cuban independence. The peace treaty was between Spain and the US and Cuba wasn’t at the negotiating table. The US Navy established a base at Guantanamo Bay even though it was very unpopular with Cubans. So “Remember the Maine” and what it was really about. At the bottom of this post is an 8 minute video that explains the Spanish-American War. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted John Harwood of Zeteo:

Democratic strategists and commentators have spent weeks diagnosing the party’s ills, for good reason: They just lost an election they expected to win. But for the American body politic, that represents the equivalent of examining a sprained ankle while ignoring a gaping chest wound. The gaping chest wound is the moral and intellectual collapse of the Republican Party. The GOP’s descent into nihilism has become so familiar as to almost escape notice. Indeed, the reason Democratic shortcomings attract more scrutiny is that serious-minded people now take for granted that only Democrats remain capable of running our government consistent with the rule of law.

Nice imagery. But if people say only Democrats can run the government consistent with the rule of law, why didn’t they win last November? Was it something about “serious-minded people?” The Economist reported Musk and DOGE won’t get far in cutting the federal budget. “No matter how aggressive DOGE is, its actions are focused on barely more than a tenth of the overall federal budget.” I reply that though the DOGE boys won’t get anywhere near their goal of $2 trillion, they can wreak a great deal of havoc on the lives of Americans to achieve their small gains. Well wait – this article says that DOGE won’t go after Social Security and health care, which make up two-thirds of federal spending, and Musk and his minions have been talking about just that. Seth Masket of Tusk says one reason why Musk is so successful in targeting USAID, the Treasury payment system, and the indirect costs cut at NIH is because Americans are unaware of them and what little they know they don’t like. In the case of USAID Americans have a vastly inflated estimate of how much foreign aid American provides. In the comments exlrrp posted a meme showing:

“He who save his country violates no law.” -- Napoleon Bonaparte

That was retweeted by the nasty guy. Harry Sisson added:

Donald Trump just posted this. He’s doubling down on his quote. He wants to be a dictator. He’s not hiding hit.

Back to that quote. First, yeah, it was said by a dictator. Second, I see that and think saved from who and for who? Those are particularly important questions for the nasty guy. Way down in the comments is a tweet from Pete Buttigieg:

If you wanted to cut waste, fraud, and abuse, you would empower the inspectors general. If you wanted more waste, fraud, and abuse, you would fire them.

As long as the dollars are spent on them and no one else

To all you IT people and people just doing coding – back in my day we called in programming and I had the job title of programmer – do you know about COBOL? Unless you work in particular industries, have been doing coding for a long time, or are working on antique systems, you probably don’t. Which means you probably don’t know its idiosyncrasies. Such as how it stores dates. Thankfully, my need to use it was quite brief. COBOL is a computer programming (or coding) language, as are C++, python, java, and such. I’ve been out of the industry for a good many years so I don’t know the modern languages. So I looked up top programming languages for 2025 and found a list on Geeks for Geeks. Beyond what I mentioned above it listed C#, PHP, Ruby, Swift, SQL, Kotlin, and several more. I’ve heard of C# and SQL though used neither. I hadn’t heard of the others. lobachevsky of the Daily Kos community wrote:

Elon Musk claimed that his team found 150-year-old people collecting Social Security! He implied there were dead people being sent benefits, with checks cashed by someone else. But no—the people getting paid are very much alive. They are collecting their own benefits. They’re not committing fraud. They’re just not 150 years old, of course.

What’s going on is that on May 20, 1875 the International Bureau of Weight and Measures was established. Though computers, and COBOL, are nowhere near that old the creators of COBOL chose representing dates as the number of days since that date. That was ... let me see now ... almost 150 years ago. If the Social Security system doesn’t know a birth date it has as blank or zero. Elsewhere in the COBOL program it would know to say a birth date of 1875 should be interpreted as no birth date. But a person reading just the database would not know that. Which is a big reason why sending DOGE employees barely in their 20s, if that, rampaging through a computer system is a really bad idea. I guess they didn’t notice every one of those 150 year old people were born on the same date. Walter Einenkel of Kos reports that Musk is or will soon have the Internal Revenue Service in his sights. The primary goal is to lay off all those newly hired agents, the ones with the job to make sure the rich don’t cheat on their taxes. Yeah, the people from whom the IRS collected more than $1 billion last year. DOGE in the IRS means the boys have access to the tax info of every tax payer in America. That by itself is scary. It also means the richest guy in the world has the power to fire the people who collect his taxes. How that affects the speed of your tax refund is not known. File your taxes anyway. The deadline is still April 15. You don’t want to give them a reason to come after you. Oliver Willis of Kos reported that during a time of international turmoil – a tenuous cease fire in Gaza with the nasty guy talking about ethnic cleansing, the nasty guy and Putin discussing Ukraine’s fate without Ukraine, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth angering NATO allies, and the usual daily arguing and fighting at various places around the world – the US does not have an ambassador to the United Nations. One would think that would be necessary so at least the nasty guy and his minions could speak with a unified voice. There is a nominee for the job, Rep. Elise Stefanik. But her confirmation is on hold. That’s because the Republican House majority is so slim that her vote might be critical – for such things as approving the $880 billion cut to Medicare to ease in the vote for tax cuts for billionaires due later this year.

The state of paralysis once again shows that Republicans have prioritized the well-being of the wealthiest above everything else, even America’s role on the world stage.

Kos of Kos discussed the research funding given out by the National Institutes of Health to universities. Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama said she would work with Health Secretary Robert Kennedy to make sure the Alabama University system would be exempted. She must think the University of Michigan, the University of California system, or the universities of all the other states are not also doing top level research.

It’s so weird that the biggest moocher states like West Virginia, Louisiana, and Alabama suddenly love socialism—as long as the dollars are spent on them and no one else. And Alabama, the eighth-biggest moocher state in the country which gobbles up twice as much in federal funds as it pays in taxes, really needs to learn a lesson. Trump’s draconian cuts (instigated by his co-President Elon Musk and his shady DOGE cabal) won’t hurt blue states as much as they will decimate red states. If Republican legislators and voters alike want those federal dollars, maybe vote for the party that believes in sharing the wealth and uplifting everyone? Which brings us back to the difference between us and them: We are capable of empathy, even when something doesn’t affect us directly. Republicans only care when it does. Meanwhile, the University of Alabama will need to pinch pennies. Maybe they can start with football coach Kalen DeBoer’s $10 million annual salary, which will add up to over $80 million through 2031.

One agenda — stealing from the poor and giving to the rich

Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos reported that Robert F Kennedy Jr. has been confirmed to be the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. That’s bad. Emily Singer of Kos discussed Musk’s claim about DOGE being transparent in what it does. He says all their actions are on DOGE’s feed on X and on the DOGE website. And he says, “I don’t know of a case where an organization has been more transparent than the DOGE organization.” First the logic check – none more transparent than DOGE? That means all could equally be quite opaque and that statement would be true. Then the truth check – until he was called out the DOGE website did not describe what it does. Singer calls his transparency “a flat-out lie.” And after he was called out some stuff was added, but the important stuff, the stuff people want to know about what he’s doing to their government and why, still isn’t there. And several lies are. The important stuff that’s still missing: The people being laid off – what jobs were they doing in what departments? Were they doing critical things like inspecting drugs for safety? What goal is being achieved by laying off these people and not those? Why are these regulations being targeted? So far the reason seems to be the text of the regulation has too many words. Singer reported that Hose Republicans have a budget proposal that would “decimate Medicaid and slash food stamp benefits all to pay for tax cuts for the richest Americans.” For Medicaid it would cut $880 billion over ten years. They would add work requirements, which means people lose coverage because the bureaucratic process is too burdensome. Polls show that 78% of voters disapprove of Medicaid cuts and 82% disapprove to making cuts to health care to pay for tax cuts. The plan is to cut $230 billion from food stamps over ten years. But those cuts won’t balance all of the $4.5 trillion tax cuts for the rich. The plan is the rest, at least $3 trillion, will be covered through the improved economy. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Government said that would “would require fantastical levels of sustained economic growth,” ten times larger than any semi-credible estimates. Didn’t Republicans say the same thing when Reagan raised taxes back in 1981? More vigorous growth didn’t cover the deficit then either. Singer added a bit more. Medicaid covers 72 million low-income Americans. Cuts would mean states come up with the money or slash benefits or kick people off. The cut to food stamps is a cut of 20% to a program that helps feed 42 million Americans. West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Louisiana, all who voted for the nasty guy by wide margins, have some of the highest populations of food stamp recipients. There are some reports that Social Security is also being considered for big cuts. Wrote Singer:

Republicans have admitted that those kinds of cuts will be “painful” for Americans. Ultimately, making these kinds of cuts could be politically disastrous for the GOP.

The cuts will not be “painful” to the people passing these cuts into laws or to the billionaires who will benefit. Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina said, “They have one agenda — stealing from the poor and giving to the rich.” Oliver Willis of Kos reported:

The Trump administration is trying to hide plans to hand off $400 million in taxpayer funds to Tesla, the electric car company owned by the world’s richest man—Trump supporter Elon Musk. On Wednesday, a document published by the State Department laid out plans for the purchase of “armored electric vehicles” from Tesla during fiscal year 2025. But after reporting on the document emerged, it was edited at 9:12 PM and references to Tesla were removed without explanation.

A contract worth $400 million? Sweet reimbursement for spending $250 million to get the nasty guy elected.

Musk claims that he and Trump are working to create a more efficient and transparent federal government. Instead the two have lied and smeared for weeks. Yet Musk stands to make a lot of money thanks to the politician he bankrolled. That would be classic corruption.

Einenkel reported the nasty guy replaced the board of The Kennedy Center. The names of the new board members were not released. Then this new board elected him chair. He said he will make The Kennedy Center special and exciting. I do not want to know what he means by that. This is the first time a president has removed board members appointed by a predecessor and the first time a president has been the chair. Deborah Rutter, who has been the Kennedy Center president (I assume a job appointed by the board) since 2024 has announced he is leaving. Ben Folds, artistic advisor to the National Symphony Orchestra which performs at the Kennedy Center, resigned as has the entire NSO staff. Soprano Renee Fleming, artistic advisor to the Center, also resigned. This afternoon Mary Louise Kelly of NPR interviewed Rutter. Rutter explained why it matters:

So the Kennedy Center is absolutely the local performing arts center for the people who live in the region and who visit. But it is, by congressional mandate, the National Cultural Center. And we have a mandate from 1958 that calls for it to be the National Performing Arts Center and the National Advocate for Arts Education. In 1964, they added the Living Memorial to John F. Kennedy. So this is more than just the local performing arts center. It represents America to the world, and it invites the world to our nation's capital to be a showcase for all of the arts. ... The Kennedy Center is meant to be a beacon for the arts in all of America across the country. And we have worked so hard and accomplished so much over this last decade to really broaden the programming, to invite all manner of arts and artists to our stages. And we've expanded our audience as a result. I pray that that can be sustained. But that's my biggest concern.

Issa Rae canceled a show for next month that is supposedly sold out. Kelly asked if other artists should cancel. Rutter replied if “they know that the environment is safe for them to express their ideas and their art” they should perform. That sounds like a big if. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted David Weigel and Kadia Goba of Semafor. I’ll summarize. Yes, Democrats created a plan to resist the nasty guy’s destruction of the government, even though it appears they didn’t. Much of that plan appears to be taking those executive orders to court. They are debating which cases are the strongest and which risk an adverse precedent if they get to the Supreme Court. Some of their efforts have worked. Down in the comments exlrrp posted a meme. The caption says, “There’s a reason why they aren’t touching DEI in sports.” A young black guy says, “You ever seen the record of a high school team with no Black players?” Popitics tweeted about the notable people who have left the Kennedy Center. As mentioned above are Issa Rae, Renee Fleming, and Ben Folds. Shonda Rhimes, treasurer of the board, also resigned. Lisa Needham of Kos is puzzled.

In the last three weeks, Donald Trump has wreaked havoc on the American constitutional order. His actions have encroached on Congress' domain, and his administration is ignoring court orders. When the executive branch usurps the powers of the other two branches, that violates the separation of powers and creates the most stark constitutional crisis imaginable. So why won’t anyone say it? Neither the mainstream media nor Democratic elected officials seem capable of calling this what it is. Instead, we have the surreal occurrence of media outlets accurately describing how the administration’s actions violate the Constitution, followed by vague hand-waving about how maybe that means a constitutional crisis will happen at some as-yet-undefined point in the future.

Needham has examples by NBC and the Washington Post, both had framed a story exactly that way. She also lists several things the nasty guy and Musk are doing that really are a violation of the Constitution and should be called a constitutional crisis. They continue to freeze funding after two court orders say the money should be released. This is money that Congress has specified should be spent. They are usurping the powers of both of the other branches. WaPo talked about the hypothetical of should they defy court orders that would be a crisis. But they are defying court orders. And they are refusing to spend money as Congress specified. Republicans have always complained about unelected bureaucrats. Yet they are quite happy to let Musk, the ultimate unelected bureaucrat, determine what money gets spent. Needham also called out Democrats who describe the illegality of what the nasty guy is doing, yet also don’t call it a constitutional crisis. These Democrats include Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Andy Kim, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

The constitutional crisis we’re facing isn’t just about Trump running roughshod over separation of powers. It’s also about the fact that the courts lack adequate enforcement mechanisms when the president refuses to follow the law.

Yeah, the court could hold a person in contempt. I’m not sure what punishment that would mean. Besides, the Supremes just gave the nasty guy a big dose of immunity.

The constitutional crisis isn’t around the corner. It isn’t barreling toward us. It’s right here, right now, and no one with a microphone or power seems equipped to handle it.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in a Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, quoted late night commentary. A couple examples:

“Who wouldn’t trade our current environment for our 1870’s tariff-driven, be-candled, tuberculosis-laden, pre-industrial heyday? Quick point of order, though: to the extent that we were at our richest from 1870 to 1913, it wasn’t so much ‘we’ as, like, four guys—and we called them robber barons, as a sign of affection. … Meanwhile, for the rest of America the leading cause of death was falling into a vat at work.” —Jon Stewart “[W]hile his team attempts to fix his Gaza plan, Trump has already moved on. Because he’s basically the Norovirus. Every day he spews executive orders all over the place and while we struggle to clean up all the puke, he comes out the other end with something even worse.” —The Daily Show’s Desi Lydic

Uruguay is safe, prosperous, and has a good tax rate

In the last few days an online source said that when a particular cabinet nominee came up for a vote Democrats did all they could to slow down the process, even though they knew they could not stop it. But later sources say that’s not what is happening. Sources such as Oliver Willis of Daily Kos, who reported on the various things Democrats are not doing to slow things down. Part of the process of confirmation (or maybe handling all bills in the Senate) is asking for unanimous consent to bring a nomination to the floor. Back in 2020 Sen. Tommy Tuberville refused unanimous consent and was able to tie up military promotions for several months. But when the nominations of Tulsi Gabbard for national intelligence and Robert Kennedy for Health came to the floor, Democrats did not use the refusal of unanimous consent to slow things down for candidates as vile as Kennedy and Gabbard.

The moment encapsulates how Senate Democrats have handled many of Trump’s Cabinet nominees. While party leaders have voiced opposition to Trump and his picks, they have failed to use all of their power to slow the process. And in some instances, Democrats have even actively backed Trump’s picks.

One that got Democratic votes was Marco Rubio for Secretary of State. And now Rubio is helping dismantle USAID. Democrats also voted for Sean Duffy for Transportation, Doug Collins for Veterans Affairs, John Ratcliffe for CIA, Doug Burgum for Interior, Scott Bessent for Treasury, Kristi Noem for Homeland Security, Christopher Wright for Energy, and Lee Zeldin for EPA.

Democrats like Schumer have called out Trump’s actions and sounded the alarm on his attacks on U.S. democracy. But behind closed doors, many of those same leaders have been grumbling about receiving flack from Democratic voters for not doing everything they can to stand up to Trump. As long as the party keeps operating like business as usual, it can expect to receive even more criticism.

Receiving flak? Yeah, like this. Willis also reported:

Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill held closed door meetings where they complained that voters from around the country are organizing and asking them to be stronger in resisting President Donald Trump’s harmful agenda. Axios reports that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries attended the meetings in question, along with members of the House Steering & Policy Committee. The outlet reports that a senior House Democrat told them that Jeffries is “very frustrated” at activist groups like MoveOn and Indivisible that have helped concerned Americans make phone calls to congressional offices. The source added that “people are pissed” that Democrats are receiving pressure to significantly increase their opposition to Trump. ... Democrats were elected to Congress to represent their constituents. Their constituents are asking them to stop Trump from hurting the country—these calls are the way to make that clear. And Democrats are complaining about it.

That leaves us with the courts. Emily Singer of Kos reported on all of the legal cases trying to stop the nasty guy’s executive orders. Singer reviews the cases, then quoted a tweet by Sen. Ed Markey:

Birthright citizenship order - BLOCKED. Federal funding cut off - BLOCKED. Illegal feds resignation plan - BLOCKED. Access to Treasury's vital data system - BLOCKED. Firing 2000 USAID workers - BLOCKED. Drastic NIH Grant Cuts - BLOCKED. Removing public health websites - BLOCKED.

Singer wrote:

Trump’s losing spree is so bad that he and his GOP defenders are threatening to impeach judges who rule against him, or simply ignore the court rulings entirely—setting up a constitutional crisis. "We have to look at the judges,” Trump said Tuesday in the Oval Office.

We’ll be in grave danger if or when the nasty guy chooses to ignore the judges. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, CISA, works to evaluate mis-, dis-, and malinformation related to elections and alerting election officials across the country about foreign influence operations. Singer reported many of the staff doing that work are now on administrative leave. The CISA is part of the Department of Homeland Security and was formed when the nasty guy was first in the Oval Office in response to the alleged Russian influence in the 2016 race. But CISA wouldn’t agree to the lie that the 2020 election was stolen. Also Project 2025 calls for it to be hobbled, saying "The federal government cannot be the arbiter of truth." So it is now in limbo. Secretaries of State of both parties have praised CISA’s efforts to protect election security and say getting rid of it will make elections less secure. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported something that sounds petty and also typical:

The Associated Press announced Tuesday that it was banned from an Oval Office press event for failing to change references to the Gulf of Mexico to “Gulf of America.” ... On the other hand, Apple announced Tuesday that it is renaming the Gulf of Mexico on its maps app to conform to President Donald Trump’s bizarre executive order. Apple is following in the footsteps of tech giant Google, which has already bent the knee to Trump.

In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev opened with a discussion about what vice nasty Vance said about the meaning of love. He was drawing on his Catholic upbringing to say there is love for family, love for neighbor, love your community, love your country, and, if you have any love left, the rest of the world. Pope Francis issued a rebuttal in a letter sent to US bishops. “Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups.” It is a “love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.” Kev quoted a tweet from Rich Raho, who said the exchange came in response to the “major crisis” of “mass deportations.” Then Kev quoted the Bible, including this:

And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him. But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God. Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, in meteyard, in weight, or in measure. Leviticus 19:33-35

Kev added:

MAGA evangelicals have no problem wanting to enforce other laws in Leviticus, why not those laws regarding the treatment of neighbors and strangers?

Phil in Denver of the Kos community wrote that he and his family have decided they must leave the US. Part of it is he doesn’t see the US recovering in his lifetime. In a second post he wrote a guide on how to choose what country to move to. It is based on his own research and on previous times of living abroad. He has not researched every country. Some of his recommendations: The English speaking countries, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, are all difficult for Americans to get permission to stay and are rather expensive. Uruguay is safe, prosperous, and has a good tax rate. France, Spain, Italy, and Portugal have great transportation, reasonable housing if one doesn’t live in a major city, and great healthcare. Other places in Western Europe, particularly Germany and Austria, have high housing costs. Mexico, Costa Rica, and Ecuador are inexpensive, but Mexico has a drug cartel problem and the other two have rising crime. Japan’s population is shrinking, so they offer incentives to those pre-retirement. Major cities are expensive, smaller towns less so. Thailand and the Philippines are worth looking into. Yes, there is culture shock. People live at a different tempo and service won’t be as prompt as one expects in America. Yes, most of these countries speak a different language and more people will be willing to help you if make an attempt to learn it (or at least a few phrases). There are also apps for the phone that help with translation.

Eat Together, Stick Together

My Sunday movie was The Old Oak. It is one of a series of films director Ken Loach has made about the lower class in England. The Old Oak is a pub, the last one in a village in northeast England. The village is not named but is near Durham. The town is deep in poverty because it had been dependent on coal mines, now closed. Town houses are going for dirt cheap prices because people are leaving. Many of those who remain can’t sell when prices are that low. That means in 2016 there was plenty of space to move in Syrian refugees. The locals are quite annoyed because the refugee families get government assistance and they don’t. Of course, there are the usual white – non-white issues. The pub owner is TJ. He tries to do what he can to help the refugees and is soon working with Yara, whose English is decent. She had worked with the nurses in the refugee camp in Syria, which gave her some medical training and helped her learn English. The pub has a back room, which has been locked up for 20 years. It has been neglected so long it can no longer be used, even though it might be the last place in town that big enough for any sort of community gathering. TJ takes Yara into the room to get something. She sees on the walls photos and sayings from the miner strikes. One photo shows big community meals with the caption “Eat Together, Stick Together.” And that gives her ideas for how to get the English and Syrians to respect each other. Of course, it doesn’t go smoothly. In the meantime TJ is dealing with poverty and failed relations. Yara and the other Syrians are dealing with the trauma of having lived in a war zone, being pulled from their homeland, and trying to make sense of a new country where they don’t feel welcome. I recommend this one. It is a good example of building community. I finished the book Boys Come First by Aaron Foley. It is a novel about Dominick, Troy, and Remy, three black gay friends (not lovers) in their early thirties living in Detroit. Over about nine months they deal with common issues of that age. Looking for sex and trying to turn it into love. Struggling to keep or establish a new career. Worried the best in life has already passed them by. Dealing with aging parents. And some issues unique to being black and living in Detroit. It has been a black city for decades. So white people moving back into the city feels like gentrification, leading to pushing out the black people and taking over the levers of power. This is very much a Detroit story. It is full of Detroit and suburban locations and of Detroit products. People not in the area won’t know the character of such places as Corktown, Midtown (formerly Cass Corridor), Rosedale, Indian Village, Somerset, Ferndale, Livonia, Novi, and Birmingham. They won’t know the reputations of Renaissance and Cass Tech High Schools. They won’t recognize Vernors and Faygo. I’m familiar with them because I’ve now lived in the area for more than forty years. I enjoyed this one. An item in the news today is the nasty guy had a long conversation with Putin about Ukraine. Whether Ukraine had any input about its own fate seemed to not be a part of the discussion. Yesterday, Kos of Daily Kos reported that in an interview with Fox News the nasty guy sounded like he was saying he would give Ukraine a half-trillion in military aid and wants a half-trillion in rare earth elements. Kos says though an exchange like that is morally repugnant, it would be an easy yes by Ukraine. First is that half-trillion in military aid. Second, the biggest deposits of rare earth elements are in the districts that Putin claimed back in 2014. To give those elements to America implies pushing Russia out of there. And those elements were why Russia invaded. Third, it seems this offer comes without the conditions Biden put on his gifts. Ukraine could use the supplies to attack sites within Russia. Lisa Needham of Kos wrote that the way the nasty guy has been talking matches the idea of the unitary executive, that the Constitution gives the president complete authority over the executive branch of our government without any checks from Congress or the judiciary. The prez can ignore a law he doesn’t like and can fire any employee he doesn’t like. No, the Constitution does not say that. Needham says this is not a new idea. Back in the Reagan years Attorney General Edwin Meese created the idea. Under Bush I Deputy Attorney General Bill Barr used the idea to say Congress didn’t need to authorize sending the military into Iraq. Under Bush II John Yoo and Dick Cheney said the president could authorize torture even though it was illegal. And Barr was back to push that idea onto the nasty guy. Needham then described a couple of the ways the nasty guy is acting like a unitary executive. He fired 17 inspectors general and removed the chair of the National Labor Relations Board. Now the question is whether this Supreme Court will side with the nasty guy or tell the executive branch it must follow the laws laid out by the legislative branch. We’re depending on the Supremes to uphold the Constitution because, as Emily Singer of Kos reported, Republicans in Congress aren’t going to do it. She listed many of the excuses they are using. And I’m not going to repeat them. Jeff Stein of the Washington Post tweeted the apparent DOGE game plan. It has three parts: 1. Gut and fire the federal workforce, which unlocks: 2. Control over agency functions and records, which unlocks: 3. Mass budget and agency cuts, reducing the size of government. As part of (1) we’ve seen attempts at buyout and purges of agency leadership. Coming soon might be mass sales of federal property. Part (2) would include sucking up internal and personnel records that had been carefully guarded, feeding sensitive government databases to AI to look for automation, and to put allies in charge of the payment systems. Then in part (3) they cut freely.

To me the biggest outstanding question now is what happens if/when the courts say much of this is illegal, as is widely believed by senior U.S. officials. Do Musk/Trump back down? Or do they ask John Roberts what troops he commands?

Kos reported that the mass deportations ordered by the nasty guy aren’t up to demanded quotas. That’s because immigration officials are already at capacity. They need help from local and state law enforcement. The nasty guy doesn’t want to punish red states by doing his mass purges in friendly territory. He would rather punish blue states. So his Justice Department filed suit against Illinois for being a sanctuary state. The stated reason is that there is a national emergency from illegal immigration (which is not an emergency). Illinois’ defense is solid. Back in 2017 Antonin Scalia wrote the federal government cannot command state or local officers and police to enforce a federal program. And if the Supremes reversed that decision the next Democratic president could demand local police more aggressively enforce gun laws. That’s the reason why Scalia ruled as he did. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted the New York Times:

Mr. Vance, a 2013 graduate of Yale Law School, has repeatedly argued in recent years that presidents like Mr. Trump can and should ignore court orders that they say infringe on their rightful executive powers. While his post did not go that far, it carried greater significance given that he is now vice president. The post may also offer a window on the administration’s thinking toward the orders against it as Mr. Trump has openly violated numerous statutes, like limits on summarily firing officials and effectively dismantling U.S.A.I.D. and folding it into the State Department. It also raised the question of whether the administration would stop abiding by rulings if it deemed them to be illegitimately impeding his agenda.

A major part of any court ruling against Vance and the nasty guy will be whether what they did was indeed a “rightful executive power.” In the comments Frank Amari posted a cartoon by Garth German showing a barbecue presided over by a man in a MAGA hat, who says, “I don’t want immigrants bringing their culture and ruining our country!!” Around him are pointers to where the barbecue supplies originated – fireworks from China, hot dogs from Germany, beer and chips and salsa from Mexico, lemonade from Egypt, apple pie from England, Cole slaw from the Netherlands, and the hat made in China. In a second roundup Chitown Kev quoted Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo. This one is about the National Institute of Health drastically cutting indirect support (the costs of simply running a lab) to universities. Marshall thinks there are two reasons. One is payback for COVID research and a general hostility to scientific expertise with the belief universities are not friendly to the nasty guy. The second reason is once the grants are seen as coming at the political pleasure of the Oval Office they become a powerful tool to discipline the institutions. Criticize him and your budget gets cut. In the comments of this roundup is a cartoon by Dennis Goris. A husband and wife are in bed. She shows him her phone and says, “It’s a text from Elon Musk – he’s in our checking account. We just bought a Tesla.” Way down in the comments of a third roundup The Geogre talks about the advantages of demonizing DEI.

Quite simply, it is a magical term for every person a bigot hates explained away by category so as to escape any individual critical thinking or moral accounting. 1. I don’t want to work around [Black people/ women, because I’m convinced I’ll be sued every minute of the day by those 1980’s propaganda campaigns/ gay people (because I have a stereotype of Ru Paul calling me names I don’t understand], 2. There is this one person _____, and I really envy/hate/argue with her/him. 3. If there were no quotas affirmative action DEI, then THEY wouldn’t be around me. 4. Therefore, I don’t have to think about why I dislike/avoid/can’t talk to THEM, and, even better, 5. No one can tell me I’m a bigot! Best of all, 6. I can tell them that they’re for waste fraud and abuse because they want DEI!

Yes, we can tell him he’s a bigot. Further down in the comments is a cartoon by Paul Fell. It shows three wolves, labeled as the Nebraska Legislature and their Stand with Women Act, surrounding a girl with a red hooded cape. The wolves say:

Hiya, sweetie! Don’t mind us... We’re here to protect you from boys in girls restrooms! What’s in the basket?

The caption says:

What those pushing anti-trans legislation never tell you is that in order to apply their new laws, someone has to examine your kids. And as we all know, from religious figures to Olympic team doctors, too often that ends up with kids being assaulted.

Kyle Bravo posted a cartoon of God talking to an angel as he looks at a blackboard covered in mathematical equations, “I guess I can’t prove I exist either.” Pundit roundups seem to be a good way of getting a sense of what’s going on. In a fourth roundup Dworkin quoted Caleb Ecarma and Judd Legum of Musk Watch discussing the invasion of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Musk has been talking about creating a peer-to-peer payment system, the kind of app the CFPB regulates. With Musk in control of this system he “now has tremendous access to confidential information about his competitors,” an official warned. Dworkin included a tweet by Chad Pergram:

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) on Dems/DOGE: The Democratic party has latched on to this new, shiny object called the rule of law

Noah Smith of Noahpinion wonders what DOGE is up to. It moves so fast and is so secretive we can’t keep up. Coverage is mostly reactive, filing suits against it and digging up dirt on its people. That’s too slow. So we should focus on two questions: “1. What is the actual purpose of DOGE? What are the main dangers of DOGE?” We have to think about what it is doing now and what it will do in the future. David Dayen of The American Prospect notes that for a half-century conservatives have been digging up dirt on small government programs while ignoring the real waste, “like the trillions of dollars that get funneled up from ordinary taxpayers to elites like Elon Musk.” One reason DOGE is going after IT systems is to integrate AI into government operations. The purpose is to automate government work and use AI to catch discrepancies.

So you have a bunch of techno-futurists who think that the future of government efficiency is either cherry-picking stuff that sounds bad, or running everything through a supposed HAL 9000 super-computer to weed out the waste. Neither will accomplish their aims, and will probably lead to tons of negative consequences in the process.

Dayan titled his piece, “Government by Malicious Autopilot.” Down in the comments Regina Schrambling posted a cartoon by Pedro Molina:

Two weeks ago he said he wanted Panama. A week ago he said he wanted Canada, Yesterday he said he wanted Greenland. Today he said he wants Gaza. But what he really wants is the attention of the world while his minions destroy the USA.

Way down in the comments is a cartoon by Jen Sorensen titled “In the end it was a catch-22.” It shows a gay man and two women talking to a guy in a suit. The black woman says, “Hey, we’re feeling a little existentially threatened over here.” The suit responds, “So elitist and polarizing! You mustn’t alienate the people who demonize you.” Not so far down in the comments paulpro posted a cartoon by Marco De Angelis. It shows a formal dinner with a waiter serving an apple. Around the table are people looking to enjoy that apple – Adam and Eve and the snake, Isaac Newton, William Tell and his son, Snow White and the witch, a couple I haven’t identified, and Bill Gates (though some say it should be Steve Jobs). In a separate post on Kos is Sorensen’s cartoon about the Consumer Financial Destruction Bureau. The tagline is a CFDB official saying, “Remember, the weak call strength ‘crime.’” At the top of a Cheers and Jeers column for Kos from Bill in Portland, Maine is a video from Denmark’s TV2. Several dozen people come into a room, each definable group standing in a square on the floor. There’s us and them, people we trust and people we avoid, the young and old, farmers and city dwellers. The announcer asks people of various characteristics to come forward to stand before a wall for a group photo. Who was the class clown? Who are stepparents? Who believes in life after death? Who has seen a UFO? Who loves to dance? Who has been bullied? Who has bullied? Who has had sex in the last week? Who feels lonely? Who is bisexual? (Only one came forward.) Who admires his courage? Who loves Denmark? That brings everyone forward. “Maybe there’s more that brings us together than we think.”