Federal agencies can simply be replaced by banks of computers

The nasty guy, the vice nasty, and the war nasty have been claiming they are doing their war-mongering with the encouragement and blessings of Jesus. Pope Leo has been doing a pretty good job saying those statements definitely do not align with what Jesus taught. Denver11 of the Daily Kos community wrote:

From the story at Alternet:

“In January, behind closed doors at the Pentagon, Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre — Pope Leo XIV’s then-ambassador to the United States — and delivered a lecture,” said Hale. “America has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world,” Colby and his associates informed the cardinal. “The Catholic Church had better take its side.”

It even got to the point where Colby

“reached for a fourteenth-century weapon and invoked the Avignon Papacy, the period when the French Crown used military force to bend the bishop of Rome to its will.” Apparently Colby and his team were flummoxed that the Pope didn’t particularly like the [nasty guy]’s “might makes right” approach to diplomacy.

Don’t expect the pope to attend the American 250th birthday party. At 12:30 pm yesterday Oliver Willis of Kos posted an article about the Iran cease fire deal.

After the U.S. and Iran announced a ceasefire on Tuesday night, many of the details appeared to favor Iran’s cause, giving that nation more power in the Middle East than it had before President Donald Trump’s decision to engage in a bombing campaign. Despite this, the Trump administration took a victory lap that seems detached from the reality of the situation.

In the comments of a pundit roundup for Kos are a couple good articles and a couple good tweets. A comment by kurious discussed an article titled Dark Enlightenment Rising: The Billionaire Experiment to Kill Democracy, from the Hartmann Report of 3/21/25, a year ago. I don’t know why kurious is discussing it now. A couple excerpts of what kurious quoted:

A radical ideology known as the Dark Enlightenment is fueling a billionaire-led movement to gut our government, erase democratic norms, and install a technocratic elite in their place. Trump and Musk aren’t just tearing down institutions—they’re laying the groundwork for an experimental new kind of authoritarian rule. ... The audacious experiment Musk has embarked on — which Trump probably doesn’t even understand — involves the fundamental transformation of America from a nation ruled by its own people into one where decisions are made by a very specific elite group of self-selected “genius” white male technocrats… ...And once AI reaches the ability to think with the intelligence of a genius-level human...some of these guys believe that most of the decision-makers and agencies of the federal government can simply be replaced by banks of computers, deciding who gets what, when, and why.

In a later comment stream RandomNonviolence wrote:

Yep — first question: What is the purpose of an economy? 1. Facilitate the buying and selling of useful products for people 2. Provide jobs to workers 3. Ensure high profits for investors Second question: What is the purpose of AI? 1.Help produce more useful products and services for people 2.Reduce the number of workers 3. Ensure high profits for investors Right now, the third answer seems to dominate in each case. Maybe listening to what the humanities have to say might give us another answer.

A ways further down is a tweet by Richard Farr:

So we went to war with a country but during that period never once stopped their ability to pump nor ship oil. We allowed that to continue despite them blowing up our regional bases and their repeated attacks on their neighbors. They then shut down an international waterway, held the whole world hostage by it, and we just agreed they can control and charge fees for that waterway going forward. Meanwhile the regime didn’t change. They still have nuke materials and missiles. Americans are dead. We’ve spent and lost billions. But our leader claims we won the war.

And a tweet by Robert Pape:

The Iran ceasefire is being called a “pause.” It is not. It’s a revelation: The U.S. used overwhelming force – and still could not control the outcome. That’s a structural shift in power.

Emily Singer of Kos reported that the nasty guy has threatened to commit war crimes in Iran, yet that has “left the public screaming at Democrats to do something.” Like what? They don’t have control of levers of government. They don’t have power to actually stop the nasty guy. Many Democrats are saying how much they oppose what the nasty guy is doing. They are even calling on the cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment and forced multiple war powers resolutions to the floor that would call for Congressional approval of any more military action. They don’t have enough votes in the House for impeachment or in the Senate for conviction.

Just look at the responses to Democratic lawmakers’ criticism of Trump’s latest disturbing threats; they’re filled with leftists demanding action from Democrats and slamming their statements as weak and ineffective. But, sit down while I tell you this, that anger is severely misdirected and wildly unhelpful to actually stopping Trump. Rather than blame Democrats for “not doing something”—as many on social media accounts have been doing since Trump issued his threat—the public's anger should be directed at Republican lawmakers, who have both the House and Senate majorities and thus the actual power to stop this insanity. ... Anyone screaming at Democrats to do something needs to explain what, exactly, they think that Democrats can do at this point. And without a convincing answer to that question, they need to stop with the Democrat-blaming nonsense.

Audrey Carleton, in an article for Capital & Main posted on Kos reported that climate organizations have added another cause to their mission – fighting authoritarianism. For that they are starting to join up with organizations who protest ICE and the nasty guy’s administration in general.

The shift in strategy comes amid mounting environmental deregulation — there is an abundance of climate policy rollbacks on which these groups might normally focus — and a growing threat from the federal government to quash left-wing activism. ... The moves are also strategic — leaders say addressing what they see as fascism is a necessary precondition to climate action.

Helping in other movements is also a good way to recruit for your own. A tweet by Paul Rudnick from a couple weeks ago:

Trump can't read so he gets his briefings on video. Hegseth won't read because it's not manly. Rubio denies being able to read, to fit in. Pam Bondi fears reading because it's usually a subpoena.

A decision maker seduced by previous military successes

My Sunday movie was A Nice Indian Boy. The story centers on Naveen, a young gay man who is a doctor. He’s rather timid. He’s also annoyed that at his sister’s wedding everyone tells him, “You’re next.” A few years later Naveen meets Jay (played by Jonathan Groff). He’s white though adopted by Indian parents so knows the culture – somewhat. They seem to fall in love quickly. This is a romance story and follows the formula. The difficulty here is when Naveen finally gets the courage to take Jay to meet his sister and parents things don’t go well, more from misunderstanding than homophobia. The second difficulty was how to fit a gay couple into a traditional Indian wedding. I enjoyed it. Nearly all of the threads of the story conclude in the way one would want. The movie has a bunch of award nominations and a few wins. Zarna Garg plays Naveen’s mother. She is an Indian American comedian. Back in mid February she was interviewed for Pridesource by Chris Azzopardi. She talked about being an ally and working to tell other parents they need to support their queer kids, well, queer people in general. As part of the interview Garg said that her friends who are gay have the highest EQ of the people she knows. I had to verify what that means – Emotional Quotient or Emotional Intelligence, the ability to recognize the emotions in themselves and others to guide thinking and behavior. Garg says she’s used to the “brown guys” who avoid emotional friction and was startled when the gays around her are so empathetic. She also tells the story of her sister, who became an ally because of the movie. The family lived in Ohio after they came from India. The sister booked theaters across Ohio, telling Indians they have an obligation to see the movie. There is no excuse, it’s all paid for. I finished the book My Government Means to Kill Me, a novel by Rasheed Newson. The story isn’t as dire as the title might sound. The phrase comes from something many LGBTQ people, especially black gay men, figure out about their interactions with the government. The story is about Trey, called that because his full name includes “III” and he’s trying to distance himself from his family. He’s black and gay. He grew up in Indianapolis in a house big enough his parents named it. In 1986 at 17 he flees to New York City, rejecting the family wealth. At first, this reads like a biography instead of a novel. But then one notices the little differences between the story and history. Trey is mentored by Bayard Rustin, the gay assistant to Martin Luther King who did a lot of work to organize the 1963 March on Washington. They meet and do most of their talking at a gay bath house and a footnote tells us there is no evidence that Rustin ever visited a bath house. That bath house is where Trey finds his community (and a whole lot of sex). Through the rest of the book there are another 80 footnotes explaining the gay cultural significance of historical people, places, and songs that Trey and others meet or mention. This is Trey’s coming of age story, including how he becomes an activist. He becomes a volunteer for Gay Men’s Health Crisis (this is the AIDS era) an early member of ACT UP, founded by Larry Kramer. One of his early actions is to tangle with Fred Trump (yes, that Fred Trump), the racist slumlord who hid behind interlocking corporations. Each chapter’s title is a lesson he as an activist needs to learn, such as: “Devils Have a Weakness.” “Allies Don’t Always Harmonize.” “The Best Spontaneous Moments are Planned,” which is about the work that was done before Larry Kramer’s famous “last minute” speech that prompted the creation of ACT UP. I enjoyed the story and recommend it as a look into the history of gay activism in the AIDS era in NYC. Though there was a lot of the story I already knew there were a few things I didn’t. Reading about a participant in this era, even if a fictional one, leads to a greater understanding of what they went through. Yes, Trey spends a lot of time in a bath house engaging in sex during the AIDS era. He speculates the reason why it was allowed to stay open is because the clientele was mostly black. The news this morning was that there is a two week ceasefire between US/Israel and Iran and that the Strait of Hormuz is open. The news this evening was the Strait was closed again and Israel is still firing on Lebanon, because Israel claimed that Hezbollah wasn’t part of the deal. Check news again in the morning. Ilan Goldenberg tweeted:

I am thankful that we have a ceasefire. It happened much faster than I expected and it was the right move. But let’s be clear that this war ends (if the ceasefire holds) as a total strategic disaster. The scorecard: Nukes: Iran still has the HEU [Highly Enriched Uranium] Proxies: no change or impact Missile and drones: Iran demonstrated its arsenal is sustainable and survivable under massive US and Israeli pressure. Strait of Hormuz: Iran’s leverage to use it as a bargaining chip has dramatically increased.

There is more, some of which I’ll summarize: + The son of the Supreme Leader has the job and is likely stronger. + US Gulf allies screwed, relations with Europe strained. + Israel is more isolated and no more secure. + Global economy: major damage. In a previous post I mentioned that the nasty guy fired Pam Bondi as Attorney General. If you still need a news article or two about it here’s one by Oliver Willis of Daily Kos and one by Lisa Needham of Kos. The second one adds that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche will take the top job until a replacement can be confirmed so Needham reviews why the nasty guy likes him and why we won’t. I had also previously mentioned that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had fired – asked to take early retirement – Gen. Randy George, the Army chief of staff, a very strange thing to do in the middle of a war. An Associated Press article posted on Kos explains who George is. Jeremy Lindenfeld, in an article for Capital & Main posted on Kos, discussed the Imperial Valley, the region in California between the Salton Sea and the Mexican border. This is a fertile area for both white and Native farmers, but only because of water from the Colorado River. Because of global warming (I hear March set a record in heat) and a drought in the West the water level in the Colorado River has dropped. A lot of farmers have adopted methods to use less water, but they may need to reduce more. Now also snooping around the valley are companies that want to mine lithium from the enormous underground reservoir of geothermal brine and to set up data centers. Both need lots of water with the Colorado River being the only source. That loss of water could drive a lot of farmers out of business. In Monday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Heath Mayo commenting on the search and rescue effort for the downed Air Force pilot.

One emerging theme of the war effort is that (1) our military is extremely competent and extremely good at war fighting and doing its job even as (2) our political leadership that sets the strategic ends and objectives for military action has absolutely no clue what it’s doing.

David Baer of The Bulwark discussed the election in Hungary, which is this weekend. Baer’s title (from a week ago) says it well, “Orbán Will Lose Hungary’s Election in Two Weeks—If It’s Clean.” Baer then lists all the levers of power that dictator Orbán has seized or crafted for himself, enough for observers to think he can’t be removed. Then Baer describes Orbán’s opponent, Péter Magyar. So, back to that bit in the title, “If It’s Clean.” Idrees Kahloon of The Atlantic:

The Hormuz crisis has some beneficiaries: America’s adversaries. To prevent even higher oil prices, the Trump administration has lifted sanctions on Russian exports and even some of Iran’s. “Things that Iran and Russia had sought to achieve through negotiations with the United States, they’ve managed to achieve without having to negotiate,” Michael Froman, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, told me. “This is bailing out the Russian economy, which had been on the ropes, and, at least temporarily, it is giving a windfall to Iran.” Russia could recoup an additional $40 billion or more in oil exports this year, which it can plow into its war effort against Ukraine. Iranian oil production may be as high as before the war.

A tweet by Gandalv, which includes a video (which I did not listen to):

Retired Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling is not mincing words. The former Commanding General of US Army Europe says these generals were purged because they stood up against Pete Hegseth’s push to turn the US military into a Christian nationalist crusade. Retired Army Maj. Gen. Randy Manner says dozens of chaplains who don’t share Hegseth’s views are being marginalized and excluded from staff meetings. The chaplain corps exists to serve all service members regardless of faith. That apparently made Green’s position untenable. The Pope has now weighed in. Hegseth’s prayer for battlefield violence prompted a response from Rome: God does not listen to those who wage war in his name. Hertling has seen enough. So have the troops.

On Tuesday Willis reported the nasty guy had tweeted Iran should concede and do so quickly or “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” Yeah, that’s a vile thing for an Oval Office Occupant to say. Experts said the particulars would likely be war crimes. Willis reminds us that back in November Democrats warned us of such things. That’s when several members of Congress released a video saying military personnel have a duty to not follow illegal orders. Of course, the nasty guy and his minions tried to make life hard for the creators of the video, especially Sen. Mark Kelly. But prosecutors weren’t able to find an actual crime that had been committed. In Tuesday’s roundup Chitown Kev quoted Shane Harris of The Atlantic:

If a...panel of experts scrutinized the run-up to the current war in Iran, their assessment might go something like this: The intelligence community was accurate and consistent in its prewar judgments about Iran’s capabilities and intentions to attack the United States and its allies. Contrary to what President Trump has said to justify his decision, the intelligence showed that the Iranian regime was not preparing to use a nuclear weapon; it did not have ballistic missiles capable of reaching the United States; and in response to a U.S. military attack, Iran was likely to strike at neighboring countries in the Persian Gulf and try to close the Strait of Hormuz, precipitating a global economic crisis. All of this was known before the war and presented to President Trump. This was an intelligence success. […] The failures of the intelligence community on Iraq’s WMDs produced systemic changes meant to keep botched calls like that one from recurring. In many respects, those reforms have worked. But they couldn’t account for a decision maker who had been seduced by previous military successes into thinking that the U.S. armed forces, under his inspired and perhaps divinely endowed command, could never stumble.

In Wednesday’s roundup Dworkin included a tweet by Aaron Blake discussing the firing of AG Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche as her interim replacement.

Even in her confirmation hearing, Bondi assured cases would be judged on their merits -- "No one will be prosecuted, investigated because they are a political opponent." Here, Blanche conveys a more relaxed standard where the president just gets to order stuff.

That “here” is a tweet from Acyn:

Blanche: We have thousands of ongoing investigations going on and it is true that some of them involve men, women, and entities that the president believes should be investigated. That is his right and it is his duty to do that—meaning to lead this country.

In the comments is a tweet by David Shiffman. The image is a reworking of a meme I’ve seen before in which a rich man with a plate mounded with cookies sits between a white worker with a plate with one cookie and an immigrant worker with nothing in front of him. The rich man says to the white worker, “Careful mate... that immigrant wants your cookie!” Shiffman reworked the meme in response to the nasty guy issuing a proposed 2027 budget that increased the military budget by 40% to $1.4 trillion and saying the budget had no room for the social safety net. Over the rich guy’s face he put “ICE, War in Iran.” Over the white worker’s face he put, “Medicaid, Medicare, and daycare.” Over the immigrant he put the emblems of NASA, NOAA, EPA, NSF, NIH, and the Fish and Wildlife Service. The rich guy says, “Careful mate... that science wants your cookie!” Shiffman added:

Science is not why you and your family are struggling, friends. President Trump and Congressional Republicans are the reason why you and your family are struggling.

Tweets by Max Burns:

You guys don’t get Trump’s 4D chess. He had to attack Iran in order to open the Strait of Hormuz which was open before he attacked Iran. So Donald Trump fought this disastrous war with Iran and the end result is a deal in which Iran gets: – Control of the Strait of Hormuz – Unlimited uranium enrichment – All U.S. sanctions lifted – All U.N. resolutions against it lifted – Cash compensation from the US Who won again?

And just for fun, Fergi Jo Lisa posted a 15 second video of a bird (I think a parrot) and six dogs.

The responsible actor in contrast to the infantilized giant

This week the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the nasty guy’s attempt to rewrite the 14th Amendment to make birthright citizenship unavailable to children of immigrants. Part of the attempt is to eliminate birth tourism, in which a mother comes to the US primarily to give birth here so the child will be a citizen. Part of the attempt is he just doesn’t like people of color. On Tuesday Lisa Needham of Daily Kos reviewed how this case came about. Part of her focus is the white supremacists who developed the argument the nasty guy is using. On Wednesday Needham summarized how the oral arguments went. Before she got into that she noted the nasty guy attended the arguments, the first Oval Office occupant to sit in the Supreme Court chamber while arguments were heard. Perhaps he was trying to glare his appointees into submission. He left after his side of the case was presented so didn’t hear much of the other side, which was much better prepared. The nasty guy’s side was presented by Solicitor General John Sauer. He had a hard time answering questions from the Justices. Jackson: Do parents need to have citizen documents in the birthing room? Gorsuch: Do Native American children get automatic citizenship? Barrett: What if you don’t know who the parents are? Kavanaugh: Why consider whether other countries have birthright citizenship? – Sauer had claimed there weren’t any others when there are 32. While the final decision may not match the questions asked in oral arguments, this does not look good for the nasty guy’s position, which is good for the country. Given the rage tweeting afterward the nasty guy has the same opinion. Two weeks ago Mark Kreidler, in an article for Capital & Main posted on Kos, reported that Washington state passed a millionaire tax. It will go into effect in 2028 and will tax income above $1 million at a 9.9% rate. The tax will affect about 20,000 households or less than 0.5% of them. One reason for doing it is Washington relies on sales and business taxes, rather than income taxes, making it one of the most regressive in the country – the tax hits hardest on those least able to pay it. That system may have been great when the economy was based on timber and apples. But it is now based on defense contractors and tech giants. The advocates for the bill include Patriotic Millionaires, based in DC. Chuck Collins is one of their founders. They advocate for tax reform because the wealthy pay so little. The group is concentrating on the states because there is no action at the federal level. Massachusetts passed a wealth tax in 2023. New Jersey has had one since 2020 and Minnesota since 2024. California may vote on one this fall. Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Michigan, New York and Rhode Island are all debating a wealth tax. Data from Massachusetts shows a wealth tax does not drive the rich to move to other states, as is frequently claimed. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Paul Waldman, writing for his Substack.

Last weekend, Yonatan Touval wrote an essay in the New York Times with an explanation for the American and Israeli governments’ apparent failure to consider that if they attacked Iran, the Iranians might, you know, do things in response, making choices colored by their history, their beliefs, their culture, and their politics. “Our leaders preside over an extraordinary machinery of destruction, but they remain strikingly obtuse about human beings — about their pride, shame, convictions and historical memory,” Touval wrote. Donald Trump in particular is incapable of empathy, the capacity to see the world from the perspective of someone else, even only for a moment. Some responded to Touval’s essay by saying Trump has no theory of mind, no capacity to imagine how someone else thinks and makes decisions. But that’s not quite true. He has a theory, it’s just that it’s one in which all other minds exist only to regard him with awe. Everyone is a member of the his audience, watching him and reading about him and shaking our heads in wonder at him. You can see it in Trump’s obsession with the gaze of the crowd, which has gripped him all his life. The true measure of a person, an action, or an event, he believes, is that it is seen, and by how many. And the highest compliment one can pay, the greatest superlative imaginable, is that the crowd will say “We’ve never seen anything like it before.”

I note the emphasis on seen. Both the nasty guy and Pete Hegseth (and I’m sure many others) put their emphasis on being seen as smart, handsome, manly, and in power. They really don’t care whether they actually are any of those. The title of David Mastio’s article in the Kansas City Star is enough: “Pam Bondi was the best attorney general we’re going to get from Trump.” A tweet from PaulleyTicks plays on the old Star Trek idea that in a bad situation the characters wearing the red shirts are the one who will get injured or killed. This meme shows the nasty guy talking to Kash Patel and Pete Hegseth, who are both wearing Star Trek style red shirts – and, goodness, the sweat stains. In the comments exlrrp posted a cartoon by Winters showing men in a military aircraft:

Soldier: Where are we heading, Sarge? Sarge: Not sure. But @DonnieJunior just made a $150M Polymarket bet on Kharg Island beachfront futures.

A cartoon posted by paulpro and created by Daniel Medina shows Jesus talking for today’s world: “Blessed are the meek... Care for the poor... House the homeless... Feed the hungry... Love the immigrant and refugee for I was one, too.” A MAGA man: “Crucify him!” In the roundup for Tuesday, March 24, Chitown Kev quoted Andrea Rizzi of El País in English discussing American geopilitical suicide.

The first fundamental aspect of the self-inflicted blow to U.S. primacy is the destruction of the formidable network of alliances that Washington built, with bipartisan consensus, across the globe over eight decades. No ally trusts the White House anymore. Many are putting on a brave face for fear of suddenly being left without support—but all are organizing themselves to never again be so dependent on the U.S. In public, many leaders are opting for restraint, but in private, this writer has heard significant remarks that attest to an extraordinary level of distrust toward Washington from nominally pro-American sectors. The underlying logic is that the risks of dependence on Washington must be reduced, just as they must be with China, in a striking political equation. [...] The second crucial aspect is the devastation of the globalized economic system that has underpinned U.S. hegemony. It is true that, in recent decades, this foundation has allowed China to achieve astonishing growth by exploiting weaknesses in the system. But Washington’s furious assault shows no sign of correcting this situation. Instead, it produces damaging side effects for Washington, fostering distrust and disaffection that extend across the entire spectrum of the economic sphere. While some have caved in with unfavorable agreements and promises of investment, the reality is that everyone is now distrustful. And this is bad news. Because while Trump is obsessed with the manufacturing deficit, the U.S. was able to consolidate an impressive dominance in the services sector within that system. [...] The third aspect of this self-inflicted damage is the abandonment of an international order that the U.S. helped build more than any other nation. It is no coincidence that Republican and Democratic administrations, despite their differing sensibilities, agreed on the construction and maintenance of this project. It wasn’t due to a lack of vision, nor to the misguided concept of benign hegemony; it was because it benefited the U.S. Kennedy and Nixon, Reagan and Obama understood this. There must have been a reason. Now, its withdrawal from the system is causing a dangerous atrophy of many institutions. Some are becoming completely irrelevant. But the U.S. retreat also opens the door for others to build other things, for others to influence the development of initiatives while the White House is on its way out. China is seizing every opportunity to position itself as the responsible actor in contrast to the infantilized giant.

Krugman reminds us that the Strait of Hormuz is not the only important choke point in the world economy. Here are more: China could attack Taiwan, where 60% of all computer chips and 90% of advanced chips are created. North Korea could attack the South, a major exporter of memory chips. A dispute between the Netherlands government and Chinese chip company Nexperia could damage auto production around the world. India is a major exporter of vaccines. China is the largest source of rare earth elements needed in electronics. Over 40 years that global interdependence worked (though not perfectly) because the US supported it. And now the guy in charge is erratic.