Random brain activity this morning: Going to talk to one of the exercises running, thinking, "good to go." On your radio. And I'm cold getting paid cuz Rick said so. Make your woofers wallop... Weird place, this brain.

Nineteen pending relief requests, one dating from January - this administration will let people die rather than following the budget passed into law by Congress. wapo.st/44X3kEp

FEMA faces backlog of emergenc...

"90 to 95 of those being ousted are policy or subject-matter experts." Well, who needs experts when you've got a puddle of goo under your piss candy floss hair? apnews.com/article/trum...

White House slashing staff in ...

This is an insane bill attempting to criminalize abortion medication. But on top of that...

"The bill also contains a controversial provision that says it cannot be challenged in state court before it is enforced, and a state judge who holds the law to be unconstitutional can be personally sued for $100,000."

https://www.texastribune.org/2025/05/23/texas-legislature-abortion-pills-crackdown/

"What has driven rising deficits are the George W. Bush and Donald Trump tax cuts, which had added $8 trillion and $1.7 trillion, respectively, to the debt by the end of the 2023 fiscal year."

Objective reality, how does that work? As an extra spicy indicator of "cui bono," the bill also forbids any regulation of AI by states.

"[T]he tax cuts would go into effect immediately, the cuts to Medicaid are currently scheduled not to hit until 2029."

"The continuing Republican insistence that spending is out of control does not reflect reality. In fact, discretionary spending has fallen more than 40% in the past 50 years as a percentage of gross domestic product, from 11% to 6.3%.

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-18-2025

Cognitive Decline

Jake Tapper’s new book came out this week, so there’s wall-to-wall coverage of how the previous President was obviously suffering cognitive decline and his team covered for him. None of that is shocking, if you were paying the slightest attention. But, also who cares in 2025? Maybe we should spend a little time looking at the obvious cognitive decline of the current President.

Gotta love Jordan Klepper’s reaction to whatever the fuck this was. Buckle up, it’s a ride.

“When you look at what’s happening with Russia and Ukraine the drone is killing tremendous numbers of people. You hide behind a tree and the drone comes down and it circles you with fire. You don’t have a chance and the tree comes down also by the way.

It’s so intense the.. I mean you see these trees being knocked down like… Like they’re being sawed down by a top of the line, uhh, timber man like — like — you know who? Sean.. Duffy.”

Do you know that Sean Duffy, the head of the Transportation Department, who’s working right now on the airports and getting a system because Biden didn’t do a thing for four years and Pete Buttigieg was the head and he goes bicycling to work. He takes a bicycle to work, can you believe it? He’s head… he’s running the biggest air system in the world and he takes a bicycle to work. What a — and they say he’s going to run for president, I don’t see it.

Who knows right? But I don’t see it.

But, uh, when I look at what they’ve done uh, it’s so horrible what they’ve done and the work they did do they wasted billions of dollars. They tried to hook up air systems to — to copper. They tried to hook up copper to glass and the glass doesn’t work with the copper and… uh they had 30,000 different contractors doing 30,000 jobs and when they put it all together they spent billions of dollars. It didn’t even come close to working and we’re going to be giving out a brand new system. It’s very important. We’ll have the best system. And we think we know who that system is but we have a lot of bidding.

But we want one check.. we want a unified system. We don’t have, uh, 5,000 contractors and all different places, some digging ditches and some not doing ditches because they want to go by satellite. Satellite seems to be the way to go. We’re going to be giving that out pretty soon.

But what people don’t know about Sean cause I mentioned lumberjacks that Sean… you probably didn’t know this that uh… I’m not talking about this Sean, this Sean no, not, this is not… This is a different Sean. Sean Duffy, the head of Transportation. He’s a great Sean though, I have to tell you but Sean Duffy was the world champion for five years climbing trees and down, up and down, world champion. So that’s what you call a serious a lumberjack.

And he’s doing a fantastic job too, a really respected guy and terrific guy and I mentioned the champion because when somebody’s the champion — he’s the world champion for a long time — he came down, when you come down those trees, coming down at a rapid.. he said that started getting your back. You will often break your back. You.. you miss.. you miss a shot and you’re coming down a lot faster than the human body was meant to come down. But he’s doing a fantastic job at Transportation. But this has been a very, uh, historic trip.”

I've been hearing about how airships will become the new hotness for cargo and passenger (at least tourism) flights for literally decades now. You'd think something would be here instead of "the future of air travel" by now. wapo.st/43vL6IH

Why these startups think zeppe...

The breathless misreading of "86" as "murder" is so blatantly performative that nobody should take it seriously. Unfortunately, this bullshit dinner theater production stars the actual Director of National Intelligence, who is not quite as stupid as she pretends to be.

James Comey investigated over ...

The first two episodes of #Murderbot were released last night. Who else has watched them? It's been a few years since I read "All Systems Red," so I can be surprised by plot points. I was a little surprised they went with sitcom-length episodes, but they've been good so far.

Maybe we can stop pretending that cutting taxes on rich people is a good policy? No? Cool cool.

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:jjheidmljqrsatjic4e6hmm2/post/3lpcbkifjwp2o

He continues to claim that other countries will pay tariffs. That's not how that works at all. AND, let's pretend that the exporting country pays the tariff directly before shipping products. That will STILL raise the cost of the product to the end purchaser. No matter who pays, it's higher cost.

Trump says US will unilaterall...

I've been loving the various "try each other's" videos. This one is hilarious. Like...I'm not from Philly, but what the fuck are these people making? Just stick with the classics. www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8kj...

Philadelphians Try Each Other'...

Who fucking CARES? I'm sure the book is interesting, but the amount of coverage it's receiving in the media is ridiculous. Let's stop obsessing about the past.

RE: https://www.threads.com/@theatlantic/post/DJt6m4JuoKA

Making America Gross Again.

“They are taking the land of white Farmers, and then killing them and their families.” Literally every word of this statement is a lie. wapo.st/4keI7tH

wapo.st/4keI7tH

The company has ZERO revenue, but somehow has $300,000,000 to buy imaginary money. Definitely not a grift or bribe. Just normal business. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/13/u...

Tiny Company With China Ties A...

We "sort of" have an agreement with Iran. We have a concept of a deal with China. We have a framework of an understanding with the UK. All different ways to say, "no agreements have been signed." apnews.com/article/trum...

Trump says the US and Iran hav...

The people have spoken!
GOP: Fuck the people.

#USPol
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/14/us/missouri-abortion-ban-lawmakers.html?unlocked_article_code=1.HU8.Z5Fg.HL6mxZeHiuBv&smid=url-share