A banner looking quite similar to Big Brother

I watched the Olympic figure skating gala, well about 30 minutes of it and mostly just the Americans because that’s all NBC showed (a disappointment). The skaters didn’t have to conform to any standards – no prescribed spins or jumps, no list of things they couldn’t do, no rules on costumes, just create whatever they want. And what they gave us was beautiful and much more heartfelt. Interesting that for this program the cameraman was also on the ice, able to give us a much closer experience. Ilia Maninin, the guy proclaimed the Quad God yet who finished 8th, did a marvelous routine. He dressed in jeans and a hoodie and portrayed his frustration with the expectations placed on him. Afterward Malinin said his purpose in skating now is to bring joy to himself and those who want to watch him. Sounds good. Alyssa Liu did the same thing and ended up with gold. So, yeah, these skaters can do a beautiful job, a meaningful job, and do it more creatively, when they’re not worrying about pressure, exactness, scores, and ranking. I also watched and enjoyed the closing ceremony, especially the references to Italian opera. I was puzzled because announcers occasionally mentioned Verona, which I thought was odd for the Milan Cortina Games. So this evening I checked out a map with street view. Yes, the closing ceremony was not held in Milan or Cortina, but in Verona, two hours east of Milan. The attraction was Arena di Verona, a renovated Roman Amphitheater that has actual seats installed and hosts a summer opera program. Quite a venue choice! Max Burns of Daily Kos reported on what the nasty guy said on Fox Business where he claimed he doesn’t need anything from Congress for the remaining three years of his term.

“In theory, we’ve gotten everything passed that we need,” Trump told Fox host and former economic adviser Larry Kudlow. “Now we just have to manage it, but we’ve gotten everything passed that we need for four years.”

Burns wrote this implies the nasty guy will do nothing for the next three years, in spite of the many problems facing Americans with the economy at the top of the list. I’ll agree that the nasty guy has done nothing for Americans in his first year except to make their lives worse and will do nothing more. But I don’t think Burns has it quite right. If the nasty guy doesn’t need anything from Congress he is implying he will rule as a dictator who no longer needs Congress to pass laws. He (or his aides) will just write them. Of course, Congress, at least while it remains under Republican control, doesn’t look like it will do anything anyway. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos quoted GOP strategist Susan del Percio on MSNOW discussing the Supreme Court overturning the nasty guy’s tariffs and his rant against them afterward.

I'm just reminded of the old saying, you never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel. So if you fast forward it to 2026, it's why would he pick this fight with the Supreme Court when there's so many other cases in front of it? And frankly, I think it gives the Supreme Court now more chance to, more freedom, to feel less beholden to Donald Trump because this is upsetting. This upsets all nine of them. No one likes to see the president do this.

In Sunday’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Jonathan Last of The Bulwark describing something that many people expected.

The latest trick of the regime has been to pretend that the occupation of Minnesota is over. Greg Bovino was removed from command and the new head of operations, Tom Homan, announced that DHS was pulling out of Minnesota. But this has not happened. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz told us, point blank, “I’ll believe it when I see it.” The observers I spoke to at Whipple said they have seen no reduction in the number of DHS vehicles going in and out on a daily basis, or detainees being released ... or street abductions. Another adaptation has been for DHS to push its theater of operations outward from the cities and into the suburbs and exurbs, where the lower population density makes it harder for a critical mass of citizens to observe them.

Dean Obeidalla tweeted a comparison of the banner the nasty guy installed at his Department of Justice, which features his face, to the film 1984 showing a banner of Big Brother. Obeidallah added, “The resemblance between these two is NOT a coincidence.” Other people offered similar images: Rome’s Palazzo Braschi, 1934. Banners of Putin and Stalin. And, of course, Hitler. Lisa Needham of Kos writes a column titled Injustice for All in which she reviews the latest rulings on the nasty guy’s court cases. In this column she wrote: Two courts have now ruled that university students peacefully expressing their pro-Palestinian views does not threaten national security. There is a Religious Freedom Restoration Act that bars the government from inhibiting people from freely exercising their religion. Conservatives love it because it was used to say Hobby Lobby’s health insurance doesn’t have to cover female contraception because it denies the evangelical owners their free exercise of religion. It is now used to say that ICE and government agents can’t go into churches to abduct people because that makes people scared to go to church and freely exercise their religion. Of course, this administration will fight it. No, the administration can’t re-detain Kilmar Abrego Garcia. I had written about the six Democrats, including Sens. Mark Kelly and Elissa Slotkin, who created a video telling military service members they must disobey illegal orders. The case against them went to a grand jury where not a single jury member voted to indict. Now we know why. Jeanine Pirro, Attorney for the District of Washington, DC, has had a very bad record of getting people indicted. In this case the reasons was simple: Pirro could not identify a law those six had violated. A year ago the Department of Education to every school in the country saying a school that promotes diversity, equity, and inclusion would lose its federal funding. The National Education Association sued, saying this was a violation of free speech, impossibly vague, and destroyed academic freedom. Last April a lower court blocked it. Recently a district court issued a final ruling saying the government was barred from enforcing its directive and from reviving it. So the DoE finally said it was ending the directive. Needham responded: “DEI is BACK, baby! Woke Mob Rise Up!” Scott Detrow of NPR spoke to Kelsey Piper, a staff writer at The Argument, and Martha Gimbel at the Yale Budget Lab discussing the scary thought that AI will soon (as within a decade or maybe much less than that) replace huge swaths of the workforce. This fear has come out of the tech world and into mainstream because people are quite anxious about the economy and a potential of a massive loss of jobs makes the anxiety worse. Another reason is AI is now able to do things that it couldn’t do (or couldn’t do well) just six months ago. Examples include writing computer code and doing scientific analysis a grad student used to do. But so far AI-related job loss is minimal and labor market disruption is not instantaneous. Yes, a labor disruption (see also the Industrial Revolution) is really hard on people, but, as Gimbel said, “at the end of technological change, living standards are higher, we are always better off.” Piper discussed the worries of job loss. How would a person feel if in 2028 there were 100 million students entering the workforce willing to work for free. The economy may end up being wealthier but if you are competing against those 100 million students – AI bots – you’re not going to like it and have good reason to be scared. In a crisis, such as COVID, Congress can act fast. But if the job loss is a lot slower Congress may not act at all. Gimbel said people don’t understand what is involved in AI taking over the tasks of a job and how long a company needs to figure it out. There is also how much consumers will allow AI to handle – we’re not going to turn child raising over to a robot. Piper said be wary of the promises and hysteria over AI. They’re likely trying to sell you something or to get you to gamble on AI. Don’t believe those who say you have only a few years to be a millionaire or end up in permanent poverty. There’s a ton of nonsense out there.

Wreck the government this way or wreck it that way?

Last evening I went to the Fisher Theater for Broadway in Detroit’s presentation of the musical Kimberly Akimbo. It was featured in the 2023 Tony Awards where it was nominated in eight categories and won five, including Best Musical. The featured scene and basic story intrigued me. Kimberly has a rare (one in 5 million?) disorder that causes her to age four to five times faster than normal. So she’s in high school, about to turn 16, and looks about 70. I’m pretty sure Victoria Clark, who played the part on Broadway and won the Tony for Best Actress in a Musical, got it because she really is in her 60s and acted like she was 16. Clark is not in the touring production and I was too far away to tell how old this actress looked. Kim becomes friends with fellow student Seth, one of the nerdier kids in the school. He likes making anagrams, which is where “Akimbo” comes from. Also at school are Martin, Aaron, Delia, and Teresa, members of the show choir. At times they also serve as a Greek Chorus. At home Kim is dealing with parents Buddy and Pattie, who have many issues of their own. Then Aunt Debra shows up. She has a shady past and wants accomplices for her next scheme while staying on the good side of her parole officer. In terms of the story I through Buddy and Pattie had too many of these side issues to fit in this story. I felt Aunt Debra and her scheme were not necessary to the story at all. As for the songs, they were OK, as in not memorable. The show does a good job of exploring Kim’s situation of having a teenager mind with a body in decline and not long to live. Because of that I enjoyed the show. The current federal budget runs out at midnight tonight. Signs strongly suggest continued funding will be passed in time. Avoiding a government shutdown is normally great news. Whether that is true this time is debatable. Usually, a CR continues the funding levels of the last budget and this one proposes to keep those funding levels until the fiscal year ends in September 2025. Which means the levels are essentially from when the last budget was passed (theoretically October 2023 but I’m sure it was actually signed much later). So the nasty guy would have to follow a budget signed by Biden? Sounds good! But... Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Daily Kos has a few reasons why this CR gets a jeer. One of them is that Congress would relinquish oversight of tariffs to the nasty guy. Emily Singer of Kos reported on Wednesday about the tariff oversight and another nasty thing: It cuts $1 billion from the District of Columbia budget, forcing cuts to police and teachers. One Republican voted against it, so it passed. Also one Democrat voted for it.

All but one Democrat (Rep. Jared Golden of Maine) voted against the funding bill for that very reason, saying the levels in the funding bill don’t even matter because Trump and Musk will ignore what Congress put in the bill and cut from it what they want. In fact, GOP leaders were selling the bill to Republican lawmakers by making that very point. “This Congress must decide: do we have the authority to control spending, as we were granted and is laid out in Article I of the Constitution? Why would we want to relinquish this to give this administration, which is already doing massive harm, dismantling agencies, firing people, telling them today they are no longer needed, the chaos and confusion caused by Elon Musk and President Trump—why would we want to turn over our authority to appropriate bills?” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, wrote in a statement explaining why she voted against the funding bill.

On Thursday, with the bill heading to the Senate, Republicans were already priming to blame Democrats if a shutdown comes. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted a tweet from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez written in response to Republican threat of blame:

Republicans run the House, the Senate, and the White House. You run the government. If you have the votes, then go ahead. If you need Democrats, then you need to negotiate with Democrats. Those are your two options. Blaming someone else because your shoes are untied isn’t one.

Dan Pfeiffer of The Message Box wrote:

A few weeks ago, I argued that Democrats could not — and should not — vote for anything that didn’t prohibit Musk from unilaterally shutting down government agencies. Last week, after interviewing several Senate Democrats on the night of Trump’s joint address, I softened my stance. Some Senate Democrats are scared of the fight and would prefer to roll over and play dead. But many others want a strategy and are considering whether a shutdown would actually help Musk accomplish his goals of gutting the federal government. A shutdown only works as a point of leverage if Trump et al feel pressure to reopen the government. If they plan to destroy the government or are content to let the government stay closed for as long as possible, the plan is useless.

In the comments Robert Petersen included a tweet by Sam Brody.

Old Soviet joke for our times: Guy stops by the newsstand every day, scans the front page, doesn’t buy the paper. One day the vendor asks what he’s up to. Guy says: “Looking for an obituary.” Vendor says: “Those are towards the back of the paper.” Guy says: “Not the one I’m looking for.”

In this morning’s roundup Chitown Kev quoted Laura Fox and Sarah Ferris of CNN:

The Democratic leader’s decision privately disappointed many in his caucus, and stunned his House colleagues across the US Capitol — leaving the party deeply divided on the path ahead at a moment when their base is clamoring for a strong response against Trump and Elon Musk’s actions to radically reshape the federal government. “We are in a perverse, bizarro land where we’re having to decide between letting Donald Trump wreck the government this way or wreck the government that way,” New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker said of Democrats’ predicament. It’s a moment that has been months in the making. Still, top Democrats in Congress struggled to find a cohesive message and strategy that would allow them room to fight without the potential risk of what it would mean if thousands of government workers were suddenly thrust into more uncertainty with a shutdown. Perhaps the clearest sign of the dilemma: Their top two leaders took opposite paths, with Schumer deciding to vote for the GOP plan that top House Democrat Hakeem Jeffries has spent a full week bashing.

Down in the comments exlrrp posted a tweet from Bryan Tyler Cohen showing a graph (source of data not given) showing the S&P 500 stock index scaled to show a value of 100 on four inauguration says and what happens for two hundred days after. Three of the lines – Obama in 2013, nasty guy in 2017, and Biden in 2021 – rise to some degree in that time. The fourth, nasty guy in 2025, rises for about 30 days, that drops sharply to day 50. Further down in the comments exlrrp posted a meme showing Marie Antoinette, though her face has been replaced by Musk and the words are now, “Let them buy Teslas.” Last week I included the little bit that the Defense Department removed from the Pentagon’s website and database photos of the bomber that released the first atomic bomb because the plane’s name was “Enola Gay.” Just after I mentioned that Alex Samuels of Kos posted a more complete account. The purge also include photos of U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Maj. A.C. Gay; of the Tuskegee Airmen, the first black squadron to fight in the US military; of an all female crew taken during Women’s History Month; and of Air Force Maj. Laura Perry before her gender reassignment surgery. D’Anne Witkowski, in her Creep of the Week column for Pridesource, wrote:

“Today, I signed into law a bill that safeguards the rights of women and girls,” Gov. Kim Reynolds (R-Iowa) said in a video posted to X. Sounds good to me! What’s in the bill? Reproductive freedom with abortion and birth control that is accessible to everyone who needs it? Strengthened domestic violence protections? Gun safety measures to keep kids from being murdered in school? Better access to mental health treatment? Better oversight of children in the foster care system in order to ensure that children are not placed in abusive environments? Sadly, the answer is none of the above. Gov. Reynolds did not, in fact, do anything to protect the rights of women and girls. What she did was intentionally and maliciously hurt transgender people in the state. With the stroke of her pen, Gov. Reynolds ended “18 years of protection against discrimination based on gender identity in Iowa's civil rights law," the Des Moines Register reports. “The signing makes Iowa the first state in the country to take away civil rights from a group it has previously protected in law.”

One of my church friends told me that her sister (who refuses to be put in the box marked “female”) was instrumental in getting those protections passed 18 years ago and is now quite upset at their demise. Bonnie Jean Feldkamp of Pridesource discussed how she refuses to teach her children gender stereotypes. Her son loves to help her cook and haters object. That son likes his mom to braid his hair. His peers said that makes him “look like a girl.” But she resolved even more to make sure she describes things in gender neutral terms. That includes describing future lovers as “spouse” or “partner.”

Social media will bring out the angry, bitter people who don’t know unconditional love. Home should be a space where you absolutely know you are loved. It should be your refuge when the world is cold. The best tool I have to counter outside hate is to work on dismantling the proverbial closets in my own home. I will challenge assumptions and give my children the freedom to learn who they are and the security to be the allies our communities deserve. They are the future and I plan to fill the future with love.

Top advisers became worried about the political fallout

I finished the book A Song Everlasting by Ha Jin. This story of Tian opens with him as the lead tenor in a Chinese cultural exchange choir on tour in New York. One of Tian’s friends who had already established himself in the US invites Tian to sing at a cultural event. At Tian’s insistence the tour director lets him stay in the US a couple extra days. But the event is culturally Taiwanese, not Chinese. So when Tian gets back to Beijing he condemned for his foolishness. He is asked to turn in his passport. Instead, he uses it to flee back to New York, leaving behind wife Shuna and teenage daughter TingTing. That’s all in the first ten percent of the book. The rest of the story is Tian trying to establish a singing career in the US, mostly among the Chinese diaspora. There are also numerous efforts by the Chinese government to get him to return to the motherland or at least stop singing songs not part of the required propaganda canon. There are attempts to discredit him when he refuses. Along the way Tian wrestles (a bit) with whether he would be better in a life of comparable ease in China singing propaganda or not singing at all or be a struggling artist in America able to sing what he wants. He laments the growing figurative distance with his wife brought on by his literal distance from her. There is even a comparison of Chinese and American health systems. The story is enjoyable, though I wondered how to characterize the writing. Plain might work. Simplistic seems too simple. It seems rather emotionally bland and at times there seems to be a lot of explaining. Oliver Willis of Daily Kos reported on the details of the on again, off again tariffs imposed on Mexico and Canada. Part of the reversal appears to be Mexican and Canadian leaders pushing back, part of it is reports on what tariffs will do to the auto industry and agriculture, and part of it is a big drop in the stock market. Kos of Kos wrote that one should not underestimate Canada. They may be small in population, but the nasty guy is turning on their own patriotism. What looked like a landslide for the Conservative Party in October’s election is now close to an even match with the Liberals. Canada also has some Americans on its side. The Wall Street Journal editorial board, who had disparaged Kamala Harris, calls the tariffs the “dumbest” in history. Rural Americans and their newspapers and senators are complaining about what tariffs would do to the agriculture economy of red states. In his first time in the Oval Office the nasty guy imposed tariffs and had to bail out farmers. This time there may not be enough money in the federal budget for a farmer bailout. I had written a while back that Republicans and Project 2025 called for privatizing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – the department that runs the National Weather Service and issues weather warnings – and giving two reasons for it. One, NOAA funds research into climate change which they want to stop and two, they wan a company to make money off what the government is giving away for free. Last week Walter Einenkel of Kos reported that Musk and DOGE have started firing workers at NOAA, aiming to cut 10% of 11,758 workers. Democrats condemned the move.

While Musk and DOGE have been unable to prove they have found any fraud or provided taxpayers with any meaningful savings, the San Francisco Chronicle points out that while the National Weather Service’s budget is around $1.4 billion, which averages to around $4 per tax payer, it is estimated to provide Americans with $102.1 billion in benefits. That's a lot of bang for the buck, according to any metric. You could even call it a model of “efficiency.”

Are you rich enough to pay for your daily weather report? Lisa Needham of Kos said a week ago we should celebrate the small wins. There are buffer zones around abortion clinics that limit how close anti-choice protesters can get, a space that is rather small. The zones are more important since the Supreme Court overturned the right to an abortion. Yet, this same court declined to hear a case that would have allowed them to declare buffer zones unconstitutional. Anti-choice demonstrators hate buffer zones.

They argue they have a First Amendment right to “counsel” people who are going to abortion clinics, framing their efforts as gentle, persuasive conversations. Instead, what the record in Turco showed actually happened was that anti-choice protestors blocked access to the clinic, assaulted patient escorts, screamed directly into patients’ faces, and videotaped them. Additionally, a meager eight-foot gap doesn’t prevent clinic patients from hearing protestors or seeing their signs. So, in terms of a First Amendment right to express oneself, all the buffer zones prevent is getting in the face of a patient and making them feel physically threatened. Protestors can still scream and wave their pictures of bloody fetuses—they just have to do it a few feet away. According to Justice Clarence Thomas, the court’s failure to take up these cases and throw out buffer zones entirely was an “abdication of our judicial duty.” Yes, Thomas is big mad that only he and Justice Samuel Alito would have agreed to hear the cases. As Mark Joseph Stern pointed out over at Slate, it isn’t unexpected that Thomas thought his conservative colleagues would join him in overruling Hill and ending buffer zones.

The nasty guy has no interest in stopping anti-choice protesters from being violent. He showed it by granting clemency to protesters who had blockaded clinics. Also, Republicans are working to pass a national abortion ban. So this small step by the Supremes is welcome. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Jonathan Lemire of The Atlantic:

Jesse Watters, a co-host of the Fox News hit show The Five, is usually a slick deliverer of MAGA talking points. But on February 19, Watters told a surprisingly emotional story about a friend working at the Pentagon who was poised to lose his job as part of the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts to the federal workforce. “I finally found one person I knew who got DOGE’d, and it hit me in the heart,” said Watters, who urged his Fox colleagues to “be a little bit less callous.” Although Watters soon resumed championing DOGE, the moment went viral. Trump watched the clip and asked advisers if it was resonating with his base of supporters, according to one of three White House officials I spoke with for this story (they requested anonymity so they could discuss private conversations). Over the ensuing weeks, the president grew unhappy with the television coverage of cuts affecting his voters, according to two of those officials, while the White House fielded calls from Cabinet members and Republican lawmakers frustrated by Elon Musk, the billionaire tech mogul empowered to slash the federal government. Some of Trump’s top advisers became worried about the political fallout from DOGE’s sweeping cuts, especially after seeing scenes of angry constituents yelling at GOP members of Congress in town halls.

Way down in the comments Jesse Duquette posted a cartoon with the caption, “When standing up to fascists, it’s important to always maintain a sense of decorum - Democratic Party proverb.” The cartoon shows a landing craft approaching the D-Day beach and one soldier says, “What if we tried wearing pink and holding little signs instead?” A meme posted by exlrrp and written by Brian Tyler Cohen says:

The US military has removed photos of the B-29 bomber “Enola Gay” – which dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan – apparently because it contains the word “gay,” which violates their new anti-DEI rules.

And way down in the comments is a cartoon by Jonesy for Private Eye Magazine showing a field with a scarecrow wearing a large dress and a young man sewing frills along the bottom. His parents are watching. His mother says, “I think our son is trying to tell us his future isn’t in farming.” In the comments of a roundup from a week ago is a meme posted by Annie:

Believing a small group of billionaires are suddenly working tirelessly for the benefit of the working class requires a spectacular level of stupidity.

A cartoon by Toonerman shows this exchange:

Red hat man: I didn’t think it was MY federal job they was gonna cut. A dog: But if other folks lose their jobs that’s okay? ... you’re a selfish prick.

He thrives in the chaos and constant distractions

I’m in the strange situation of enjoying a book but recognizing it will likely have limited appeal. I finished the book On Minimalism by Kerry O’Brien and William Robin. Minimalism is a musical style that originated in the 1950s by La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass. It’s major characteristic is frequent repetition of small musical ideas. When one isn’t bored the effect can be hypnotic, so it is also called trance music. The 400 pages of the book (plus listening list, notes, bibliography, and index) covers music associated with minimalism (a term all the composers hated, but we’re stuck with it now) from the earliest pieces in the late 50s to wide acceptance in the 1970s to what is happening today (as of 2021). The movement pulled in ideas from jazz trumpeter Miles Davis and Indian ragas. It influenced Donna Summers and disco. The fathers of the movement are all still alive (I think) and are in their late 80s. Back about the turn of the century when I started my master of music program the first class I had to take was how to do research into music. Of course, a term paper was required, practice for writing papers for music history and theory classes. I wanted to start my paper by saying “I love the music of John Adams. I hate the music of Steve Reich.” The professor said that’s much too provocative. I settled on something like, “I play CDs of John Adams’ music frequently. The music of Steve Reich rarely gets a second hearing.” The paper then explored the differences in their music which might lead me to like one and not the other. I will not go into that here. Composer John Adams is about a decade younger than Reich and Glass. He took many features of minimalism, combining them with more traditional aspects of Western music. If you want to explore this style of music I suggest: Steve Reich: Drumming and Music for 18 Musicians, also Different Trains (it has a backstory). Philip Glass: Music in Twelve Parts. Terry Riley: In C (be sure to read up on how this one is constructed). John Adams: Harmonium, then Harmonielehre, and Hoodoo Zephyr. There are also works by Arvo Pärt to enjoy. If you’re into it both Glass and Adams have written operas. While reading this book I listened to a couple of Reich’s pieces. One of them was Six Marimbas. While listening I though this is rather nice, why did I hate it decades ago? After listening to the second piece I was reluctant to play a third, and went to another composer. Then in this book I read an unfavorable critique of Reich and realized my term paper all those years ago was correct. When I listened to it recently I enjoyed it because I was also doing something else. Just listening to it is boring. Alix Breeden of Daily Kos reported that the nasty guy has been talking about a third term, even as he barely begins his second. Breeden discussed how he might beat the two term limit: Repeal the 22nd Amendment, the source of that two term limit. But a repeal needs 38 states, requiring some blue states, which isn’t going to happen. Run as vice president and after the election the guy elected president steps aside. But the Constitution says if you aren’t qualified to be president, you aren’t qualified to be VP. Simply run again and rely in the Supreme Court that gave him broad immunity. Repeat the 2020 post-election and not leave. Commenters note his age and physical condition and the high possibility he won’t live to the end of this term, or if he does will be too senile to run. iWalkthetalk added another possible way for him to attempt to stay in office. That is to create a national emergency – bird flu, invading another country, a financial collapse, whatever – with the assumption that he mobilizes all of American defense and declares the end of the rule of law for the duration of the everlasting emergency. Oliver Willis of Kos reported:

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency is being accused of manipulating Google search results to give the impression that the Trump administration’s immigration raids are more effective than they truly are.

Those manipulations are based on getting old (as in perhaps more than a decade old) news article of a raid to come to the top of a search. Sometimes that includes giving an old article a new “update” date. This is at a time that raids are falling short of the nasty guy’s campaign promises (which is a good thing). Willis also reported on the first actions on Pam Bondi the new Attorney General. She will follow her boss’s suggestion to instruct lawyers of the Civil Rights Division to no longer investigate and prosecute, you know, civil rights violations, but find ways to prosecute companies that still have diversity initiatives. She’ll also deemphasize white-collar crimes. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included a couple interesting quotes. The first is from the Israeli news service Haaretz, discussing the nasty guy’s desire to turn Gaza into the Middle East Riviera without the Palestinians:

So what does Trump want? Distraction. He thrives in the chaos and constant distractions he creates. Did he not impose 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico, and then grant them a 30-day extension since they promised they would do the things they are already doing? Trump is a preeminent agent of chaos. That's a trademark he has always paraded, boastfully and defiantly. As he said he would, he is actively generating and promoting chaos in America, discord within alliances, and is out to undermine the world order. Agents of chaos sow chaos. It's that simple. They instill discordance, confusion, controversy and uncertainty. That's a modus operandi, not a tailored policy or crisis management technique. Agents of chaos and anarchy are by definition out to disrupt the status quo by floating outrageous ideas, based on a simple principle: Everyone viscerally understands the status quo has exhausted its usefulness, more-of-the-same doesn't work anymore.

I had mentioned the nasty guy ordered the opening of a couple dams in California to show he was doing something about the supposed water crisis that impeded fighting the Los Angeles fires. The Mercury News reported the amount of water released was 2.2 billion gallons.

There are two major problems, water experts said: The newly released water will not flow to Los Angeles, and it is being wasted by being released during the wet winter season. “They were holding extra water in those reservoirs because of the risk that it would be a dry summer,” said Heather Cooley, director of research for California water policy organization the Pacific Institute. “This puts agriculture at risk of insufficient water during the summer months.”

Agriculture at risk means food prices at risk. Down in the comments Stuart Hardwick posted a cartoon of several red states saying, “Every state, no matter its size, gets two senators. It’s only fair!” California replies, “That’s fine. It just sounds like D.E.I. and affirmative action for red states, which I though you hated.” The caption says, “The Electoral College is D.E.I. for Red States.” Morgan Stephens of Kos reported the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of unions, launched a campaign called the “Department of People Who Work for a Living” or DPWL. Yeah, this is a spoof and direct challenge to Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

“The government can work for billionaires, or it can work for working people—but not both,” said AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler in a press release. ... “We will hold DOGE and Elon Musk accountable because we are certain that the people who keep our food and medicine safe know more about how to make government efficient than an outsider whose companies benefit from the very agencies he is infiltrating,” she added.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos quoted late night commentary. A sample:

“Anyone who’s ever had a toddler knows this feeling. You leave the room for one second, and when you come back everything from the bookshelves is on the floor, the walls are covered in ketchup, and when you ask who gave the dog a haircut with safety scissors, your kid says it was DEI.” —Stephen Colbert

It’s like a bank heist and the bank is America

My Sunday movie was The Remarkable Life of Ibelin, an unusual documentary of an unusual person. Mats Steen of Oslo, Norway had Duchenne, a muscle disease. His muscles got progressively weaker. It first showed up about age 2. By late elementary school he was in a wheelchair. He made it to 25. At age 9 he started gaming, his parents allowed it because there was so much else he could not do. But they became alarmed at how much time he played games, sometimes 12 hours a day. At age 17 he started playing World of Warcraft. He created an avatar he named Ibelin, who was big and muscular, all the things he wasn’t in real life. He joined the Starlight community. This was his escape from the prison of his body. He also started writing a blog, Musings of Life, talking about being disabled. By this time he needed special controllers so he could operate his computer with just twitches of his fingers. When he died his parents posted a notice on his blog. They were astonished at the large number of replies from his online community describing what Ibelin had done for them and how much he meant to them. Mom and Dad knew nothing of it. World of Warcraft has detailed archives of what its characters do. From that an animator was able to reconstruct scenes of Ibelin’s interactions with other characters. Instead of text boxes actors gave voice to the characters. Mats’ father thought his son would not be able to love and not have friends. But in Starlight he did. In addition he became quite supportive of other characters and the real people behind them. He became a sort of counselor. One example was a woman he befriended who admitted her autistic son refused to engage with life. Ibelin suggested talking to him within Starlight. That worked. The movie producers visited the mother and son and were able to get their side of the story. When Mats joined Starlight he was just 17. He had some growing up to do. And Starlight helped him do it. This is a beautiful movie of a man who embraced a community and made a big difference in many lives. I highly recommend it. Over the decades I have read science fiction stories in which a person in real life visits or lives in an online world (many much more immersive than our technology can manage right now). Out of those many stories there were some where the person went to the virtual world to escape the physical limitations of their real world. And here’s a real life story of that being done. Most of the stories I read were about what had gone wrong in the virtual world, not about what could go so right. Alex Samuels of Daily Kos reported:

Employees at several federal agencies were ordered Friday to remove their pronouns from any email signatures and grant applications, according to internal memos obtained by ABC News. The memos cited two of President Donald Trump’s Day 1 executive orders, both of which sought to curb diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in the federal government. One of the executive orders described DEI initiatives in the federal government as “illegal and immoral” and “radical and wasteful.” Of course, this isn’t true, and it’s clear that DEI is becoming a GOP scapegoat that’s fundamentally built on bigotry.

Also, the CDC website is being scrubbed for certain phrases, such as “environmental justice,” “LGBT,” and “transgender.” Info about trans youth wellbeing are already gone. Emily Singer of Kos reported that Sean Duffy, the new guy in charge of the Department of Transportation, has issued a memo that says the DOT will “give preference to communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average” as it funds money for commuter rail and bus transit. Duffy gives a reason, something about “restoring commonsense governance and merit-based policies at USDOT” and “eliminating excessive regulations.” But it doesn’t sound commonsense at all, there is no merit, and he seems to be trading one set of regulations for another. And adding a big dose of the far right obsession over babies. Want your road fixed? Have a baby. Alix Breeden of Kos wrote the nasty guy is expanding his empire into financial services. No, I would never take financial advice from anyone associated with him – this is a guy who bankrupted casinos.

Jessica Tillipman, an anti-corruption and government ethics professor at George Washington University, explained to Daily Kos last week that there are no laws stopping a president from profiting off of the people he was elected to serve. Laws were never made to prevent this type of behavior because past presidents typically acted in good faith. “We've always relied on this system of norms,” she explained. “I think people were pretty surprised to see how few restrictions there were on what a president could do because we hadn't seen this before.”

Oliver Willis of Kos reported:

The Washington Post reports that David A. Lebryk, the highest-ranking career official at the Treasury Department, is quitting after a clash with Musk’s underlings. DOGE has reportedly been pressuring Lebryk for access to the agency’s payment system, which is used to pay out trillions of dollars on behalf of the government. More than $6 trillion dollars flows through the system in question, which administers payments for vital functions like Social Security and Medicare benefits, tax refunds, payments to contractors, and federal salaries, among others. “It’s like a bank heist and the bank is America,” a source within the federal government told reporter Marisa Kabas, in response to the Treasury Department incident.

A reminder: the Department of Government Efficiency is not officially part of the government and has no official power. Yeah, this is as nasty and dangerous as it sounds. No one not employed by the Treasury department and with specific authorization should be anywhere near those computers. And this isn’t the only illegal meddling DOGE has been attempting lately. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted several people commenting on this story, though most say the same general thing. I will quote Seth Masket of Tusk:

It’s hard to know just how destructive this will be in the long run, but for now, this is arguably the most troubling development in a day of extremely troubling developments. Elon Musk appears to be trying to do to the federal government what he did at Twitter/X: massively disrupt its functioning and drive out experienced employees not on board with his transformations and his personality cult. After a week of trying to push civil servants out of jobs all over the federal government, Musk set his sights Friday on the U.S. Treasury’s payment systems.

Dworkin also included a tweet from Fred Wellman. The nasty guy spouted all kinds of strange theories about why California water sources couldn’t keep up with firefighter needs with the recent Los Angeles fires (correct reason: no water system could have kept up with that size fire). So the nasty guy signed an executive order taking over the California water system, whatever that means. Or maybe this is what it means. Wellman tweeted:

Remember how Trump said he "sent the military in and opened up the water flow" in CA? It appears he forced the Army Corps to just drain reservoirs into recently flooded farmland without telling local farmers or leaders. “In 25 years, I’ve never seen anything like this. I was given no explanation at all.” Rumors are that local Republicans are panicked over this screwing of their constituents. Nothing but chaos meddling in local water management from the White House.

Wellman provided a link to SJV Water, which is where the quote came from. An important question – how did all those Musk people get into the federal building and get access to the payment system? Singer answered that allegedly new Secretary of the Treasury let them in.

A group of unions representing federal employees filed a lawsuit on Monday against Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, alleging that he illegally allowed billionaire Elon Musk and his army of unqualified Department of Government Efficiency bros to access sensitive personal information in violation of the Privacy Act of 1974. The lawsuit is in response to a Washington Post report, which said that Musk forced out the top career Treasury official in charge of overseeing trillions of dollars of government payments so that DOGE aides could access the payment systems. Those systems are responsible for handling trillions of dollars of tax revenue, as well as disbursing payments for Social Security and Medicare benefits, tax refunds, government grants, and more.

Mark Sumner, a Kos staff emeritus, discussed what a coup looks like.

There’s also a type of coup known as an "autocoup" or a "self coup." That's what's happening in the United States right now. Right. Now. In a self coup, the government isn't displaced by some new faction or overturned by rebellion. Instead, the people already in charge of the government expand their power. That can come in the form of refusing to leave after losing an election, refusing to hold new elections, or simply usurping powers that should belong to other portions of the government and putting them under the control of the coup leaders. ... Musk and his team are not only violating laws protecting the privacy of workers and citizens, they are interfering with the operation of programs and agencies authorized, not by executive order, but by law. Their actions are illegal. ... Resisting a self coup is even more difficult. The people who are violating the law and grasping for ever more power are the ones who already hold the capital, already control the military, and already have friends and allies in the legislature.

Standing up to this type of coup takes bravery, because it may mean losing freedom or life. That bravery is sorely lacking. Delaying the challenge only gives the despot time to increase his power. Then removing gets more difficult and costly. The time to defeat a coup is before it starts, which we missed in November. After that the best time is while it is still in progress.

To that end, Democratic leaders should be calling for the arrest of Elon Musk and the removal of his team from government offices; drafting articles of impeachment against Donald Trump; and blocking all Senate votes until action has been taken to restore the executive to its lawful functions. All of that represents a huge risk. But none of it carries the price of refusing to act.

xaxnar of the Kos community noticed a few things about what’s going on that reminded him of something else. A few of the things mentioned: + Entire divisions shut down + Purge of leaders, replaced by loyalists. + Assets set up for looting + PR nonsense that it’s all to increase efficiency + A sense that no one can stop it

This is what it looks like when vulture capitalists descend on a company and loot it. This is a hostile takeover — applied to government. This is what they truly mean when they refer to running government like a business.

In another pundit roundup Chitown Kev quoted Heather Cox Richardson of her Letters From an American Substack:

I’m going to start tonight by stating the obvious: the Republicans control both chambers of Congress: the House of Representatives and the Senate. They also control the White House and the Supreme Court. If they wanted to get rid of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), for example, they could introduce a bill, debate it, pass it, and send it on to President Trump for his signature. And there would be very little the Democrats could do to stop that change. But they are not doing that. Instead, they are permitting unelected billionaire Elon Musk, whose investment of $290 million in Trump and other Republican candidates in the 2024 election apparently has bought him freedom to run the government, to override Congress and enact whatever his own policies are by rooting around in government agencies and cancelling those programs that he, personally, dislikes. [...] ...permitting a private citizen to override the will of our representatives in Congress destroys the U.S. Constitution. It also makes Congress itself superfluous. And it takes the minority rule Republicans have come to embrace to the logical end of putting government power in the hands of one man.

In the comments, a couple memes posted by exlrrp. The first is by Brendanmcp:

I really am having difficulty wrapping my mind around the fact that a bunch of losers hired by a billionaire, none of whom were elected, are using the guise of a fake government agency to loot our government of money and information, and none of them have been arrested yet.

The other is by Father James Martin:

In its simplest terms, the apparent demise of USAID is the result of the world’s richest man ending a program that helps millions of poor people. You don’t need a Ph.D in moral theology to see why this is an evil. You can just read Jesus’s parables on the rich and the poor.

NoFortunateSon of the Kos community wrote about the phrase that is becoming more well known: F--- Around and Find Out. It means if you do something stupid you will face the consequences. But, as I’ve noted before, the finding out part – the facing the consequences – probably won’t happen to most of those who voted for the nasty guy (yeah, others are already finding out). First some history. For the last three Republican presidents – Bush I, Bush II, and the nasty guy – mismanaged the economy and it was significantly worse when they left the Oval Office. They were followed by Democrats who worked hard to restore the economy. And in all three cases two years later they returned Congress to Republicans, hampering the economic restoration. An example from elsewhere: Berlin was reduced to rubble before citizens questioned the Nazis. Then consider that since cruelty is the point of MAGA, a large number of them are anticipating enjoying the consequences. Add to that the miserable condition of the US news industry. A lot of people get their news through social media algorithms. We know how biased they are. So a great number of MAGA voters will see the price of eggs rise and may notice disappearing neighbors. In that sense they will find out. But, because the state of media, they will not find out that the nasty guy and Musk are the cause. Instead, they will hear the causes that we’re already hearing – those price rises are because of DEI, Biden, or Democrats. Sarah Longwell tweeted:

In two weeks Trump has: -Released the J6 prisoners who violently assaulted cops to overturn an election. -Started a trade war with allies, but gave China a light touch. -Turned over the entire government to the unelected billionaire who ruined this platform—including the Treasury payment system. -Nominated the most unqualified cabinet in modern history, several of whom are actual national security risks. -Blamed a horrific crash on DEI without any evidence. -Added billions to his personal wealth by launching a scam crypto meme. -Purged the FBI of anyone who worked on the J6 investigations. -Randomly wasted a bunch of water in CA and nearly flooded out farmers just so he could act like he was turning on water for the state. What’d I miss?

Hmm... a nickname for Musk... Caligula?

Send deportees to Guantanamo for a more macho message

Mary Louise Kelly and Sacha Pfeiffer of NPR talked about the nasty guy’s announcement of using Guantanamo to hold deportees as they’re processed and before they are sent to their country of origin. The big issue is cost to get perhaps up to 30,000 deportees there, to feed, house, and supervise them. Congress would have to allocate the money and they might not approve it. There are also legal issues. They brought Ben Wittes of the legal website Lawfare to talk about the legal issue and also why the nasty guy thinks this is a great idea. Said Wittes:

The name Guantanamo Bay to America signals terrorist detention. So it elevates the status of what are really routine immigration enforcement actions into something like holding major terrorist figures that signals, I'm going to bring back the big bad Guantanamo Bay for this.

Pfeiffer adds that putting the detention center somewhere on the US mainland “wouldn't send as much of a macho message.” Khalil AlHajal is an opinion page writer for the Detroit Free Press. I’m pleased that with the Detroit region having such a large Arab population the Freep has an Arab opinion writer, though the piece I’m discussing isn’t about Arab issues. It’s about a Detroit program that has helped lower homicide rates. Detroit has a ShotSpotter system in which microphones are placed around the city that listen for gunshots. When the system registers a shot police are notified with the hope they will respond quickly. Detroit also has various neighborhood watch programs to help reduce crime. These are run by the citizens and have been quite successful. They helped get funding so the ShotSpotter system could expand. Along with that help they went to police and said there is a fundamental flaw to the system. By the time it registers something, the shot has already been fired. That’s too late. What we need is a ShotStopper system. That’s us. So help us get funded so we can do the work full time, rather than as volunteers who also have full time jobs. Detroit Police Chief Todd Bettison described the program and the people who work it.

“They actually understand and know the lifestyles of these young men and women,” Bettison said. “These community violence intervention groups know exactly where to find them, exactly how to communicate with them and how to inspire them to leave that life. When they realize that they do matter, and they start seeing themselves in the future, at that point, with hope, they stop acting reckless ... “If you’re hopeless and you don’t see yourself in the future, you’re very, very dangerous, because you don’t care about yourself or anybody else. You’ve just completely given up. And the young folks have a word for it — crash out. … You just don’t care about nothing. At that point, you’re a suicide dummy, and you don’t care who you destroy as you’re going out.”

In the program areas homicides dropped 45% between Nov. 1, 2023 and Oct. 31, 2024. AlHajal gets to the reason for his opinion piece. State funding to keep the program running didn’t actually get into a state law by the end of the year. This program is worth funding. Without it lives are at risk. Wednesday night a commercial airplane about to land at Reagan National Airport in Washington, DC collided with a military helicopter. Both craft ended up in the Potomac River. Between the two craft 67 lives were lost. Of course, NPR has been looking at this story from every angle they can think of. There have also been many related political stories. And one of those is by NPR host Kelly talking to reporter Lisa Hagen. The kernel of the story is in Kelly’s introduction:

So the investigation into what caused this fatal air collision is just beginning, but almost immediately, President Trump and other administration officials said diversity, equity and inclusion programs at the Federal Aviation Administration were to blame. Trump also acknowledged he had no direct evidence that DEI had anything to do with the crash.

Hagen talked to Ian Haney Lopez, a law professor at the University of California who wrote the book “Dog Whistle Politics.” Hagan summarized what he said:

Blaming DEI is shorthand for a story that America used to be based only on competence and meritocracy, which - that's an inversion of our actual history of pervasive discrimination against people other than straight, white men.

During the press conference the nasty guy read from the actual FAA DEI policy, decrying what it said. But it is the same policy that was in effect during his first term. The argument for DEI is that it makes hiring more about merit than anything else. The argument against DEI is that it makes hiring less about merit. With those competing claims I know who I believe. Oliver Willis of Daily Kos wrote that the nasty guy gutted an aviation safety committee just a few days before the crash. He couldn’t eliminate the committee because that would require an act of Congress. But he could fire all its members. The article doesn’t say in what way, if any, gutting the safety committee had on the collision. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported the nasty guy blamed more than DEI for the collision. He also blamed outgoing Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, Barack Obama, Democrats, air traffic control, and all the kinds of people the DEI policy helped. Emily Singer of Kos reported on Buttigieg’s response, posted on X.

Despicable. As families grieve, Trump should be leading, not lying. We put safety first, drove down close calls, grew Air Traffic Control, and had zero commercial airline crash fatalities out of millions of flights on our watch.

Buttigieg also said the nasty guy bears part of the blame. He had succumbed to Musk’s demands to fire the head of the FAA because he fined Musk’s company SpaceX. So at the time of the crash there was no head to the FAA. Singer included a tweet by Vince Monroy about a moment in the press conference:

Reporter: You blamed the diversity elements but then told us you weren’t sure that the controllers made any mistakes. Trump: It’s all under investigation. Reporter: That’s why I’m trying to figure out how you can come to the conclusion right now that diversity had something to do with this crash.

Singer also noted the new Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth seem quite unprepared to handle the situation. And that’s because they’re quite unqualified for their new jobs. Singer also reported that staffing at the control tower at Reagan National was low. Note above that Buttigieg said he “grew Air Traffic Control” which is still below what it should be, though getting staffing up to where it should be takes time. Singer discussed what we face if the DOGE group is able to shrink the government workforce as they say they want to. Too few air traffic controllers would lead to flight delays, fewer flights, higher prices, and less safe skies. Too few Food and Drug Administration inspectors would lead to unsafe food and contaminated drugs. Too few Occupational Safety and Health Administration inspectors would lead to more workplace injuries and deaths. Getting passports, Social Security cards, and payment for Medicaid and Medicare claims would take longer. We’ve had one big pandemic, gutting the National Institute of Health could mean a second one. And a whole lot more government services would be interrupted. Liam Clymer of Pridesource offers guidelines on how to keep yourself safe when protesting. His tips are from LGBTQ advocates. The tips are offered because LGBTQ people can be especially targeted by counterprotesters. I’ll mention the tips and let you read the article for details. Research the event and understand its goals. Know the situation and what voices will be raised against yours. Practice self-care. Know your limits. Don’t wear anything that would let others think your intentions are violent. You may also want to protect your identity to prevent doxxing, which might mean wearing a COVID style mask. Take water, snacks, fully charged phone, and ID. If you use Face ID to unlock your phone turn it off. With Face ID police may feel emboldened to pressure you into unlocking your phone. Use a digit-based code. Observe your environment for danger from those who want to escalate the protest and from police. Move to minimize risk. Have a buddy, both outside of the protest and within. When someone tries to escalate remain calm with your voice steady. Avoid provocative behavior that others might interpret as leading to escalation or violence. If necessary, remove yourself. Learn from the elders and veterans at meetings beforehand and at the event. Know your rights. You have a right to demonstrate in public places and to photograph anything, including police, that’s in plain view. Identify where the protest marshals are. Also, medics and who has water supplies. Make sure the marginalized (such as trans people) are included and their voices heard. Write the number of a lawyer on your arm. See Michigan Legal Help and ACLU. If detained try to write down police names, badge and patrol car numbers, and the agency they work for. Also record and take pictures of injuries. Use social media to amplify the message of the protest. In a Cheers and Jeers column from a week ago Bill in Portland, Maine of Kos included his usual late night commentary.

"Well, ladies and gentlemen: it happened. Donald Trump is president again. I have an important announcement to make: for the next four years we get to live by airport rules: calories don’t count, and it's perfectly reasonable to have a vodka tonic at 8am." —Stephen Colbert

And more late night commentary from today.

"A new report shows that since last year the price of eggs has risen more than 35 percent, due to a shortage caused by new laws in red states that force chickens to carry their eggs to term." —Michael Che

Would your state like to become Canada's 11th province?

Yesterday I wrote that the House ban on transgender people (meaning Rep. Sarah McBride) using single-sex bathrooms didn’t make it into the rules for this Congress. Alix Breeden of Daily Kos has an update. As was done after the election Speaker Johnson announced the ban, using his authority as Speaker to just do it. So the ban is back. A staffer says Johnson did it on his own so that House members didn’t have to vote on it (and have that vote on record). Over the last couple days I’ve had in a browser tab the Incidents page from CalFire zoomed in to Los Angeles and on to the north to see the extent of the Palisades Fire (over 21.3K acres or 33 square miles), the Eaton fire (over 13.7K acres, 21 square miles), and the smaller Kenneth, Hurst, and Lidia fires. The fires ignited in hurricane strength dry Santa Ana winds and have destroyed more than twelve thousand buildings, most of them homes. Thankfully, only ten deaths reported so far. Reports say this will be the most expensive disaster in the history of Los Angeles. This huge loss of housing will make the housing crisis much worse. Rebuilding will take years. Emily Singer of Kos discussed that this disaster will be the first test of the new Congress and the nasty guy. The test will be simple: Will they help through supplying disaster relief and recovery money, or not? Speaker Johnson was noncommittal. The nasty guy spread lies and hurled insults at Gov. Gavin Newsom. So... probably not. Biden already triggered federal emergency response and said he’ll be there “as long as it takes” (or until he leaves office in ten days). That link and the ones below include photos of the fire, which you may want to look at or avoid. Morgan Stephens of Kos has more about the lies Musk and the nasty guy have been saying about the fires. They’re more interested in the politics they can squeeze out of the damage than they are in the lives of the people who are now homeless. Oliver Willis of Kos reported that far right media is blaming the fires on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs. The claim is such programs undermine the effectiveness of business and government response. Supporters of DEI say that the programs make government more effective and please stop saying that white men are the only ones who are capable. Following the lead of the nasty guy far right media has “prioritized bigotry and politics over the lives of tens of thousands Americans.” I’ve written that the nasty guy wants to annex the Panama Canal, Canada, and Greenland. With force, if necessary. He’s also talked about renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. Breeden reports that officials in both Canada and Mexico are trolling. Elizabeth May, leader of Canada’s Green Party has an offer. Would California, or maybe Oregon or Washington be interested in becoming Canada’s 11th province? From a press conference on Wednesday:

No more one-year-olds who suddenly fall off the Medicaid list and their parents are in the news because they’re trying to do a GoFundMe to get their daughter to a doctor. And guess what? Those gun laws that your Congress is too afraid to pass because of the National Gun lobby? We already got our strict gun laws. That’s why we have the safest streets around the world.

She added Canada still offers the right to abortion. She has an offer for the nasty guy. He could get rid of all the states that always vote for Democrats. They’d even take Bernie Sanders off his hands. Drat. Michigan doesn’t always vote Democratic. Yet I think we have closer ties to Canada than California does. Off the Southern border Claudia Scheinbaum stood in front of a map of North America of 1607 with a big chunk of the center of the continent labeled Mexican America. “It sounds pretty, no?” As for the Gulf of Mexico, it was named 170 years before the US was founded. Stephens reported:

GOP senators were left bewildered after President-elect Donald Trump delivered a bizarre hour-long rant on Tuesday about annexing Greenland and the Panama Canal. Two top Senate Republicans voiced their confusion and uncertainty as to what Trump meant when he said he wanted to acquire Greenland and the Panama Canal during his press conference.

Bill from Portland, Maine, in a Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, included late night commentary. A good one:

“Canada can’t become part of America. That’s the country I pretend to be from when I’m traveling abroad.” —The Daily Show host Desi Lydic

In the comments of a pundit roundup for Kos is a cartoon by Michael de Adder. It is labeled “Canada invading the USA” and shows planes helping put out the Los Angeles fires. I had heard on Canadian news that planes had been sent and that one had already been damaged by striking a drone. There is also a cartoon by Max Espinoza and posted by BabylonBros. He added the trash talking would happen soon, but saw it is already happening. The cartoon shows an elephant watching a woman read her crystal ball. She says, “I see you blaming the L.A. fires on a water restoration declaration that doesn’t exist! Then, when that doesn’t work, you’re going to blame DEI, gay kids and illegal immigrants!” Singer reported:

Donald Trump's co-president, Elon Musk, admitted on Wednesday that he probably can't cut $2 trillion from the federal budget as he had promised, running into the political reality everyone told him existed but that he refused to accept because he’s a billionaire who thinks he knows better than everyone else. In an interview with Mark Penn, the contemptible political strategist who once backed Democrats but now has become a Trump defender, Musk said that his toothless Department of Government Efficiency advisory committee can probably cut only half of the original $2 billion he promised to slash.

Where billionaires replace barons and run their kingdoms as they see fit

I wish I didn’t need to write about the nasty guy. Well, yeah, I could just ignore him. So I wish he wasn’t doing stuff that prompts me to write about him. I would appreciate if he just ... disappeared. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos wrote the nasty guy has, in some ways, been acting like he’s still in the Oval Office. He effectively vetoed the border security bill. He held a pseudo state dinner with Hungarian despot Viktor Orbán. And he has his own diplomat in Richard Grenell. On behalf of the nasty guy Grenell meddled in Gruatemala, trying to get an election overturned. In Kosovo and Serbia he worked to undermine the official US diplomacy and damage a peace deal. He was part of why Turkey took so long to approve Sweden for membership in NATO. It got to the point where there were questions whether Grenell violated the Logan Act, which forbids private citizens from undermining US diplomatic efforts. Aldous Pennyfarthing of Kos wrote that investors in the nasty guy projects or companies usually get burned. Many of his companies have gone bankrupt. He has a strong tendency not to pay people. And people can run afoul of the law because of some of the illegal things he’s done (contesting the 2020 election has ruined many careers, such as that of My Pillow Guy Mike Lindell). So when the nasty guy’s Truth Social went public earlier this week why did so many people think it would be different this time? I’m pleased to see that, as Sumner reported, many actual Christians (people who actually do what Jesus says to do) are aghast and appalled over the nasty guy hawking a Bible. They call it a desecration, blasphemy, and offensive. I heard in all the conservative blaming over the collapse of the Baltimore bridge there were voices saying there must be – somewhere – a diversity, equity, and inclusion program that caused this mess. Maybe it was the ship’s crew, or the port crew that loaded the vessel, or maybe a DEI program somewhere else. In a large cartoon for Kos Ruben Bolling, as part of his Tom the Dancing Bug series, he says that DEI really means, “Demographically Entitled Idiots.” They ruin cultural institutions with unearned privilege and incompetence. They glide into important positions and fail upwards.

Who hasn’t boarded a plane, seen a straight white male pilot, and thought, “Oh, no! I bet he coasted into this job without any true talent or expertise!” We must get rid of D.E.I. principles, and let people whose merits and mettle were put to the test, overcoming poverty, discrimination, and/or systemic barriers, rise through true achievement!

In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted an article on Axios that discussed the religious undertones of the nasty guy rallies have grown more apocalyptic and messianic. The bottom line is that...

64% of Republicans view Trump as "a man of faith," according to a November poll by Deseret News — more than his former vice president and vocal evangelical Mike Pence.

In the comments are a few good memes. One posted by Captain Frogbert shows on one side check marks beside “Greed, Lust, Wrath, Vanity, Envy, Gluttony, and Sloth.” The other side shows these words crossed out, “Charity, Faithfulness, Mercy, Humility, Kindness, Self Control, and Diligence.” Across the bottom is “All sin, no virtue.” Below that Frogbert wrote:

Let’s face it. Trump exhibits NONE of the behavior expected of good or decent men. That so called “christians” could literally WORSHIP him is a testament to how corrupted and false their faith has become. They have been twisted and perverted by false prophets and grifters masquerading as “pastors” of their megachurches and television evangelism shows.

One posted by exlrrp: “A true Billionaire Christian would be donating Bibles, not selling them.” To that one I reply a true Christian wouldn’t exploit his employees and suppliers to become a billionaire. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, quoted late night commentary:

"Look, of course America's infrastructure is in need of updating. But I don’t think this is the proof. Falling down is kinda what you expect a bridge to do when a giant cargo ship slams into it. If your grandma gets body-slammed by The Rock, you're not gonna blame her broken bones on a calcium deficiency." —The Daily Show's Jordan Klepper, on right-wing fearmongers blaming the bridge collapse on "whatever is most convenient to them." "Trump selling the Bible? That's like if Mike Pence was selling copies of Fifty Shades of Grey." —Jimmy Fallon Happy Holy Week, Donald. Instead of selling Bibles, you should probably buy one. And read it, including Exodus 20:14. —Liz Cheney

I looked up Exodus 20:14 – “You shall not commit adultery.” Ronna McDaniel, fresh from being booted from the chair of the Republican National Committee was offered a job as an NBC News Contributor. She made it on air once. Then the pushback from the rest of the newsroom prompted NBC News to fire her. Sumner reported that NBC journalists knew that a paid pundit who supported overthrowing the government and ending democracy was a red line.

It wasn’t just the long and excellent tirade from skilled commentator Rachel Maddow (though Maddow’s willingness to absolutely go there certainly made any thought of McDaniel making another on-air appearance seem ludicrous).

It was also Chuck Todd of Meet the Press.

Taking their grievance over McDaniel’s hiring and making public, on-air statements that were 180 degrees opposed to their management was an act of journalistic bravery by Todd, Maddow, and others. That brave act was also largely enabled by the name recognition and status that both Todd and Maddow enjoy. Had either of them sat quietly, it’s not clear how many others would have been able to stand up.

In an article posted at the end of January Sumner discussed the state of news. He titled it No news is terrible news. A lot of media companies are cutting staff or going out of business.

The biggest reason is simple: Ad revenue is no longer adequate to support news organizations. But the deeper reason behind that decline is elusive and while everyone scrambles to find some alternative, lights are shutting off in newsrooms across the nation. If “Democracy dies in darkness,” as The Washington Post’s motto insists, it’s starting to look pretty dim out there. And nightfall may not be far away.

It isn’t that people aren’t buying the physical paper and switching to reading online. Those readers have gone away. There are two exceptions: local broadcast stations whose revenues have been flat, and Fox News, which isn’t trusted as a news source except by its base. Because so many large media companies have folded luring investors is difficult. Unless one is Musk, Murdoch, or Bezos, who can buy a media company without worrying about profit. That also means their news is suspect.

If you want a glimpse of the feudal society ahead, where billionaires replace barons and run their kingdoms as they see fit, news outlets provide a pretty good sneak peek. At a time when the United States is facing an enormous crisis in just trying to hold on to representative democracy and there may be more news than ever that absolutely demands to be reported, the resources to do that reporting are disappearing. ... The online space was supposed to democratize news. But actual news—collected, analyzed, and written by human beings—requires resources. The precipitous drop in ad revenues has made those resources thin on the ground. How this crisis will be solved remains unclear and it’s far from certain that it will be solved.